See also illustration of faith and assurance, in C. S. Robinson's Short Studies for S. S. Teachers, 179, 180. Faith should be distinguished not only from assurance, but also from feeling or joy. Instance Abraham's faith when he went to sacrifice Isaac; and Madame Guyon's faith, when God's face seemed hid from her. See, on the witness of the Spirit, Short, Bampton Lectures for 1846; British and For. Evan. Rev., 1888:617-631. For the view which confounds faith with assurance, see Alexander, Discourses on Faith, 63-118.
It is important to distinguish saving faith from assurance of faith, for the reason that lack of assurance is taken by so many real Christians as evidence that they know nothing of the grace of God. To use once more a well-worn illustration: It is getting into the boat that saves us, and not our comfortable feelings about the boat. What saves us is faith in Christ, not faith in our faith, or faith in the faith. The astronomer does not turn his telescope to the reflection of the sun or moon in the water, when he can turn it to the sun or moon itself. Why obscure our faith, when we can look to Christ?
The faith in a distant Redeemer was the faith of Christian, in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Only at the end of his journey does Christian have Christ's presence. This representation rests upon a wrong conception of faith as laying hold of a promise or a doctrine, rather than as laying hold of the living and present Christ. The old Scotch woman's direction to the inquirer to “grip the promise” is not so good as the direction to “grip Christ.” Sir Francis Drake, the great English sailor, had for his crest an [pg 846]anchor with a cable running up into the sky. A poor boy, taught in a mission school in Ireland, when asked what was meant by saving faith, replied: “It is grasping God with the heart.”
The view of Charles Hodge, like that of Alexander, puts doctrine before Christ, and makes the formal principle, the supremacy of Scripture, superior to the material principle, justification by faith. The Shorter Catechism is better: “Faith in Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest on him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.” If this relation of faith to the personal Christ had been kept in mind, much religious despondency might have been avoided. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 30, 31, tells us that Frances Ridley Havergal could never fix the date of her conversion. From the age of six to that of fourteen she suffered from religious fears, and did not venture to call herself a Christian. It was the result of confounding being at peace with God and being conscious of that peace. So the mother of Frederick Denison Maurice, an admirable and deeply religious woman, endured long and deep mental suffering from doubts as to her personal election.
There is a witness of the Spirit, with some sinners, that they are not children of God, and this witness is through the truth, though the sinner does not know that it is the Spirit who reveals it to him. We call this work of the Spirit conviction of sin. The witness of the Spirit that we are children of God, and the assurance of faith of which Scripture speaks, are one and the same thing, the former designation only emphasizing the source from which the assurance springs. False assurance is destitute of humility, but true assurance is so absorbed in Christ that self is forgotten. Self-consciousness, and desire to display one's faith, are not marks of true assurance. When we say: “That man has a great deal of assurance,” we have in mind the false and self-centered assurance of the hypocrite or the self-deceiver.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 231—“It has been said that any one who can read Edwards's Religious Affections, and still believe in his own conversion, may well have the highest assurance of its reality. But how few there were in Edwards's time who gained the assurance, may be inferred from the circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New England, remained to the last uncertain of their conversion.” He can attribute this only to the semi-deistic spirit of the time, with its distant God and imperfect apprehension of the omnipresence and omnipotence of Christ. Nothing so clearly marks the practical progress of Christianity as the growing faith in Jesus, the only Revealer of God in nature and history as well as in the heart of the believer. As never before, faith comes directly to Christ, abides in him, and finds his promise true: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Mat. 28:20). “Nothing before, nothing behind; The steps of faith Fall on the seeming void and find The Rock beneath.”
(d) That faith necessarily leads to good works, since it embraces the whole truth of God so far as made known, and appropriates Christ, not only as an external Savior, but as an internal sanctifying power (Heb. 7:15, 16; Gal. 5:6).
Good works are the proper evidence of faith. The faith which does not lead men to act upon the commands and promises of Christ, or, in other words, does not lead to obedience, is called in Scripture a “dead,” that is, an unreal, faith. Such faith is not saving, since it lacks the voluntary element—actual appropriation of Christ (James 2:14-26).
Heb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life”; Gal. 5:6—“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”; James 2:14, 26—“What doth it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have not works? Can that faith save him?... For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead.”
The best evidence that I believe a man's word is that I act upon it. Instance the bank-cashier's assurance to me that a sum of money is deposited with him to my account. If I am a millionaire, the communication may cause me no special joy. My faith in the cashier's word is tested by my going, or not going, for the money. So my faith in Christ is evidenced by my acting upon his commands and promises. We may illustrate also by the lifting of the trolley to the wire, and the resulting light and heat and motion to the car that before stood dark and cold and motionless upon the track. [pg 847]Salvation by works is like getting to one's destination by pushing the car. True faith depends upon God for energy, but it results in activity of all our powers. Rom. 3:28—“We reckon therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” We are saved only by faith, yet this faith will be sure to bring forth good works; see Gal. 5:6—“faith working through love.” Dead faith might be illustrated by Abraham Lincoln's Mississippi steamboat, whose whistle was so big that, when it sounded, the boat stopped. Confession exhausts the energy, so that none is left for action.