XVIII
"THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH"
You cannot believe little things and do great ones; you cannot believe in half successes and accomplish whole ones. A man's faith sets the boundaries of his work. He will do what he believes and accomplish what he believes can be accomplished. Mountains are not subdued by men who stand discouraged at a mole-hill. A man must conquer the fatigues of the way in his own heart or he will never set out on the road.
Back of all free action lies some creed, some conviction. All great battles have been fought and either lost or won in the heart. The simple or stubborn confidence that leads to all-conquering effort, this is faith, the vision that vitalizes. The eye of faith sees the prize at the end long before it is reached; the eye of fear looks so closely at the difficulties and dangers of the course that the prize is not seen at all.
There is a good deal of fatalism seeking to pass as faith. People say we must have faith in God; let things take their course and they will come out all right. The church long commended the slothful who let things drift, and called their laziness resignation. But faith feels the certitude of a harvest because it has first diligently plowed and sown and because of the goodness that has ever brought the seed-time and the harvest.
Superstitious credulity is not faith. It is more than the foresight that feeds on visions of a future heaven; it is the clear eye that looks keenly at the things of to-day. No truth is the better for being taken on trust; it cannot be possessed until it is known, not on the authority of another but on your own experience. No man ever became a martyr for a truth he received at second hand.
Only a first hand faith is a force in the world. It is born of life; it determines life. Your faith forms you. If you do not believe men, how can you be a man? If you do not believe in things better, nobler, purer, how can you move towards them? If at bottom your faith is in things mean, sordid, sensual, base, then thither turns your life, and no extraneous efforts, no badges, buttons, or creeds can change its course.
You can measure a man's weight in this world, by the strength and clearness of his convictions. Poor you may be, friendless, alone, weak, unlearned; but all this can be overcome if bright in the heart there burns the unquenchable flame of some great passion, some high faith. Given this fire within them, all the tools shall be found, but without it the finest endowment of brain and body is valueless.
Given but some great principle, some purpose that becomes a holy passion, something that leads you, like one of long ago who "steadfastly set His face to go up to Jerusalem," then all power is yours. The man who has faith to remove mountains always finds the picks and the steam shovels somewhere. He takes the tools he has, though they may seem but toys beside his task, and lo! some morning when the dreamers awake the mountain is no longer there. Faith has had her perfect work.
It is faith that gives fortitude, faith that gives force. The dreamers of dreams have ever been, after all, the doers of the great deeds. Seeing the things that are not seen is the secret of doing the things that remain to be seen.
No worthier word was ever said of the divine Man than that which spoke of Him as the leader and completer of faith. So great a work was possible only with sublime confidence in the glorious possibilities of mankind, only with unshakable assurance that all that was good and true in the universe was working with Him for the good of all. With Him faith was an eye that saw man's hidden good, a hand that grasped the infinite might moving for the best.