We see it in the great things of history. Witness the inferior mentality but the burning ardor of a Peter the Hermit, moving all Europe to the most extraordinary war the world has seen. Consider Napoleon crossing the Alps—an achievement all men said was impossible. Impossible! That word is found only in the dictionary of superstition.
But your faith, young man, you who are about to go into the Pulpit, does not deal with little things. It is not interested even in the large affairs of statesmanship, as such. Yet it embraces all matters. It involves concerns more important than all history.
Limitless eternity is its field. Everlasting life is its subject. The Ancient of Days is its awful familiar. It has to do with the righteous conduct of individual men and women here on earth and of their eternal felicity in the world to come. The Ineffable One whose crucifixion has made the cross a symbol of all good and the emblem of our highest hope is its divine and inspiring author.
How noble the attitude of that intellect which is uplifted by a belief so glorious. No wonder that he who possesses this faith works miracles in human character more astounding than the dazzling wonders which science wrings from reluctant matter. No, not he who possesses this faith, but him whom this faith POSSESSES. The faith is the reality—you are but the instrument through which that faith works out the winning of the world. Look to your faith then, you who seek to save the souls of men.
For now as ever mankind awaits the magic voice of him whose faith in God the Father, in Christ His son and in the life eternal is strong as knowledge itself. Think of John Wesley, think of Ignatius Loyola, think of the inspired young man who this very year has lifted all Wales to spiritual heights as elevated as those to which Savonarola led beautiful and dissolute Florence, and the fire of whose revival promises to spread over the United Kingdom, purifying all it touches.
What said they of the Master? "For He spake as one having authority and the common people heard Him gladly." It was true of Him, too. And it has been true of each of those princes of faith who, during two thousand years, have followed the directions of their thorn-crowned Lord.
He declared to his disciples: "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."
If you have not an undoubting belief, you may carve out your sentences as curiously as you will; deliver them with the voice of music, and yet be nothing but an entertainer. Speaking as one of the "men of the street," as one of the millions, I think that the best thing for you to attend to is this question of faith.
I have no respect for a lawyer who does not know certain fundamental definitions by heart; and I have less respect for the preacher who cannot repeat the eleventh chapter of Hebrews offhand.
Get your faith into your blood; the brain is the place for your reasonings and argumentations.