The Penn's Grove record., 1910-03-25
THE PULPIT.
A SCHOLARLY SUNDAY SERMON BY
DR.. CHARLES w. MCCORMICK.
Theme: Faith.

AfOAuO VI L.. OAulCA PI CdOACo Jun
day morning the sixth in a series of
notable m on 1.-THE Fruits of
the Spirit" The special subject was
"Faith.p The text was from Gala
tians SEP: Now the fruit of the
Spirit is faith" DR.. Mccormick said:
What is faith? Perhaps no one
can answer. Certainly no one will
be able to give a scientific definition.
For faith is one of those ultimate Inn
pulses of the soul which defes ac-
curate metes and bounds. Like love,
1t Is so wrought into the fiber of per-
sonality that it cannot be separated
and viewed apart. Yet faith is one
of the most kingly of all human quail
/ ties. The old question, which is
greater, faith or love, may never find
its answer Each is great and in GER
conditions the other. Without faith
there can be no love, and without
love there a be no faith. Yet 1t
would seem as If faith has a certain
priority in that it holds up the light
for love to walk by. If love and faith
are one In their initial manifestation,
they travel but little way hand in
hand. Soon faith takes a step ahead
duu D6COluCb tAO 6ulQO VI 4OFCs
though sometimes faith falls back on
love when 1t is itself menaced. Like
wise the question, which is greater,
faith or reason, may be difficult to
answer. Reason in its low ranges
has to do with facts and phenomena
and their arrangement. But reason
in It's high ranges draws mighty in
~ferences, makes great congratulations
- -z-.Lo. ~1-1I;N-1 ~ NJ a Ia-
fly demonstration for generations, If
not forever. Here reason merges into
faith and faith finds its foothold in
reason. 1t seems that faith is after
all hardly other than the highest ut
terance of reason. Especially does
this seem true when we remember
that reason in the large meaning al
ways assume some great and indie
monstrable principle. 1t seems easy
to say that a grain of wheat will pro-
duce its thirty or sixty fold of wheat
when planted in congenial soil, but
the great assumption underlying this
simple statement is that the laws of
nature are uniform in their operation
and this is demonstrable only to
faith.
But what is faith? Can we get any
nearer to an understanding of it? At
any rate, we may clarity our thought
by determining the use we will make
of the word. The term faith Is ap-
piled either to the act of believing or
to the content of belief; that is, to
belief as a function of the soul or to
what the individual believes. The
latter meaning is found in the phrase,
''the faith once delivered to the
saints" Here Paul has in mind the
great body of Christian doctrine re-
ceived from Christ and generally ac-
| cepted by the church of that day. On
the other hand, when Paul exhorted
the Philippian jailer to believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, he referred to
an act on the part of the jailer though
he did not forget that the Christ upon
whom the jailer was to believe was
the Christ of the Gospels, and there
fore possessed well-known and ac-
cepted characteristics. We have
taken a short step toward under
standing whct faith is when we make
this distinction and limit ourselves to
faith as an action of the soul. But
we need to make clear also that faith
is not the action Of some special soul
power, It is Lothing less than the
act of the whole spiritual nature.
This conception excludes any def1ni-
ton of faith which makes 1t a mere
intellectual process. Pure intellect
is only a theoretical concept. 1t is
not found in reality. All Intellectual
processes are the outgrowth Of the in
dividual soul as it is, and no soul can
be separated for a single instant from
its feeling, its ,-end and its accumu-
lated voIitions or habits. Faith, then,
can be nothing less than the action OF
the whole nature of man. In like
manner, a distinction must be drawn
between a transient and a permanent
actiSity. Faith in the New Testament
sense is not a single act CON Hsete IN
itself. It is a constant and enduring
movement or trend of the soul.
In the interest of further clearness,
it may be noted also that faith as an
action may relate either to facts or
persons. We may believe either that
certain statements are true, or we
may believe in a person. Faith IN
the Christian sense involves both
facts and a person.. Here we must
speak very guarded1y. There is much
in the present trend of theological
thinking. which finds its echo in pop
ular thought, that tends to looseness,
and, 1t would seem, to vagueness.
When we are told that faith has to do
with God as a person, or with Jesus
Christ as a person without regard to
any definition or clear historic set
ting, we are asked to do either the
impossible or the. absurd; perhaps
both. 1t is hard to think of God
without giving to Him some definite
qualities. If we know Him at all, we
must know Him as we know u fell
lows, through His manifestations.
That is, through the display OF His
qualities The "unknowable" of Her
bert Spencer may be a fine refuge for
intellectual incompetence when the
mind has failed in it's vain endeavor
to account for the universe and ex-
plain its processes. 1t is worth some
thing to fall back upon the assertion
that there Is an unknown n per-
haps unknowable power working
everywhere and always in nature,
which on the whole makes for right
But that conclusion grows
out of the inability of the human in
tellect to go any further in Its search.
And this assertion, empty as 1t is, Is
the assertion of faith and not OF the
intellect. 1t is a postulate which man
must make because he is made as he
is. But it is impossible either to love
or to believe in a ~postulate. Faitn
must find for its full exercise much
more than a mere force without quail
ity or attribute. The personality of
Jesus Christ means something If we
accept as substantially true the Cos
pei narrative, Illuminated and en-
forced by the progress OF Christian
history. But If deny the Gospels, or
with Schmfedel reduce the biography
of Jesus to two or three sentences of
the most ordinary sort, it does not
seem credible that Jesus as a person
shall long survive. Whatever else
may be true, it is rue that the Christ
In whom the world believes, and be-
lieving has found a regeneratfng
power from age to age, is the Christ
of the Gospels. In all our present
day-thinking, it is this Christ whose
- r.n we 1