Attention to these considerations will probably enable us to discover some of the fallacies which have obscured and bewildered this important subject. When the impression, which is thus allowed to influence the mind, is one which has not been received by the judgment, upon due examination, and adequate evidence of its truth,—this is enthusiasm, not faith.—Our present course of inquiry does not lead us to treat of the notions which have, in various individuals, been thus allowed to usurp the place of truth. To those who would preserve themselves from the influence of such, the first great inquiry, respecting their own mental impressions, ought to be,—are they facts,—and on what evidence do they rest which can satisfy a sound understanding that they are so. On the other hand is to be avoided an error, not less dangerous than the wildest fancies of the enthusiast, and not less unworthy of a regulated mind. This consists in treating real and important truths as if they were visions of the imagination, and thus dismissing them, without examination, from the influence which they ought to produce upon the moral feelings. It is singular also to remark, how these two modifications of character may be traced to a condition of the reasoning powers, essentially the same. The former receives a fiction of the imagination, and rests upon it as truth. The latter, acting upon some prejudice or mental impression, which has probably no better foundation, puts away real and important truths without any examination of the evidence on which they are founded. The misapplication of the reasoning powers is the same in both. It consists in proceeding upon mere impression, without exercising the judgment on the question of its evidence,—or on the facts and considerations which are opposed to it. Two characters of a very opposite description thus meet in that mental condition, which draws them equally, though in different directions, astray from the truth.
When a truth has fully received the sanction of the judgment, the second office of faith is, by attention and conception, to keep it habitually before the mind, so that it may produce its proper influence upon the character. This is to live by faith;—and in this consists that operation of the great principle, which effectually distinguishes it from all pretended feelings and impressions assuming its name. We speak, in common language, of a head-knowledge which does not affect the heart;—and of a man who is sound in his creed, while he shews little of its influence upon his conduct. The mental condition of such a man presents a subject of intense interest. His alleged belief, it is probable, consists merely in words, or in arguing ingeniously on points to which he attaches no real value. These may have been impressed upon him by education;—they may constitute the creed of a party to which he has devoted himself; and he may argue in support of them with all the energy of party zeal. In the same manner, a man may contend warmly in favour of compassion, whose conduct shows a cold and barren selfishness;—but this is not benevolence;—and the other is not faith. Both are empty professions of a belief in certain truths, which have never fixed themselves in the mind, so as to become regulating principles or moral causes in the mental constitution. We may indeed suppose another character, slightly removed from this, in which the truths have really received the approbation of the judgment, and yet fail to produce their proper influence. This arises from distorted moral habits, and a vitiated state of the moral faculties, which have destroyed the healthy balance of the whole economy of the mind. The consequence is, that the man perceives and approves of truths, without feeling their tendencies, and without manifesting their power.
Intimately connected with this subject, also, is a remarkable principle in our mental constitution, formerly referred to,—the relation between certain facts or truths, and certain moral emotions, which naturally arise from them, according to the chain of sequences which has been established in the economy of the mind. A close connexion thus exists between our intellectual habits and our moral feelings, which leads to consequences of the utmost practical moment. Though we have little immediate voluntary power over our moral emotions, we have a power over the intellectual processes with which these are associated. We can direct the mind to truths, and we can cherish trains of thought, which are calculated to produce correct moral feelings;—and we can avoid or banish mental images or trains of thought, which have an opposite tendency. This is the power over the succession of our thoughts, the due exercise of which forms so important a feature of a well-regulated mind, in regard to intellectual culture;—its influence upon us as moral beings is of still higher and more vital importance.
The sound exercise of that mental condition which we call Faith consists, therefore, in the reception of certain truths by the judgment,—the proper direction of the attention to their moral tendencies,—and the habitual influence of them upon the feelings and the conduct. When the sacred writers tell us that, without faith, it is impossible to please God,—and when they speak of a man being saved by faith,—it is not to a mere admission of certain truths as part of his creed, that they ascribe consequences so important; but to a state in which these truths are uniformly followed out to certain results, which they are calculated to produce, according to the usual course of sequences in every sound mind. This principle is strikingly illustrated by one of these writers, by reference to a simple narrative. During the invasion of Canaan by the armies of Israel, two men were sent forward as spies to bring a report concerning the city of Jericho. The persons engaged in this mission were received in a friendly manner, by a woman whose house was upon the wall of the city;—when their presence was discovered, she hid them from their pursuers; and finally enabled them to escape, by letting them down by a cord from a window. Before taking leave of them, she expressed her firm conviction, that the army to which they belonged was soon to take possession of Jericho, and of the whole country, and she made them swear to her that, when this should take place, they would shew mercy to her father's house. The engagement was strictly fulfilled. When the city was taken, and the other inhabitants destroyed, the woman was preserved, with all her kindred. In this very simple occurrence, the woman is represented, by the sacred writer, as having been saved by faith. The object of her faith was the event which she confidently expected,—that the city of Jericho was to be destroyed. The ground of her faith was the rapid manner in which the most powerful nations had already fallen before the armies of Israel,—led, as she believed, by a divine power. Acting upon this conviction, in the manner in which a belief so deeply affecting her personal safety was likely to influence any sound mind, she took means for her preservation, by making friends of the spies. Her faith saved her, because without it she would not have made this provision; but, unless she had followed out her belief to the measure which was calculated to effect this object, the mere belief of the event would have availed her nothing. When we therefore ascribe important results to faith, or to any other mental operation, we ascribe them not to the operation itself, but to this followed out to the consequences which it naturally produces, according to the constitution of the human mind. In the same manner, we may speak of one man, in a certain state of danger or difficulty, being saved by his wisdom, and another by his strength. In doing so, we ascribe such results, not to the mere possession of these qualities, but to the efforts which naturally arose from them, in the circumstances in which the individual was placed. And, when the inspired writer says, that without faith it is impossible to please God,—he certainly refers to no mere mental impression, and to no barren system of opinions; but to the reception of certain truths, which in our present state of being are entirely the objects of faith, and to all that influence, upon the moral feelings and the character, which these must produce upon every mind that really believes them.
On this great subject, much misconception appears to have arisen from not sufficiently attending to the condition in which, as moral beings, we are placed in the present state of existence, and the important part which must be performed by the mental exercise called faith. As physical and intellectual beings, we have certain relations to the objects by which we are surrounded, and with these we communicate by means of our bodily senses. But, as moral beings, our relations are entirely of a different nature; and the facts and motives, which are calculated to act upon us in these relations, are chiefly the objects of faith: that is, they are not cognizable by any of our senses, but are to be received by a different part of our constitution, and upon a separate kind of evidence. This, accordingly, is the simple but important distinction, referred to by the sacred writer, when, in allusion to our condition as moral beings, he says,—"we walk by faith, not by sight." The objects of sight, here intended to express all the objects of sense, exercise over us a habitual and powerful influence. They constantly obtrude themselves upon our notice without any exertion of our own; and it requires a peculiar exercise of mind to withdraw our attention from them, and to feel the power of events which are future, and of things which are not seen. This mental exercise is Faith. Its special province, as we have seen, is to receive truths which are presented directly to the mind,—to place them before us with all the vividness of actual and present existence,—and to make them exert upon us an agency analogous to that which is produced by objects of sight. The next great point in our inquiry, therefore, is, what are the truths which are calculated thus to operate upon us as moral beings, and which it is the object of faith to bring habitually before us.
When we withdraw our minds from the influence of sensible things, and send forth our attention to those truths which are the province of faith, the first great object which meets our view is the eternal incomprehensible One, the moral governor of the universe,—a being of infinite perfections and infinite purity. From the stupendous works of nature, we trace his operation as the great First Cause,—and infer, with absolute certainty, his boundless power and wisdom, and his independent existence. The impress of his moral attributes he has fixed with indelible certainty, upon our moral perceptions,—where, in the light of conscience, co-operating with a simple process of reason, we perceive him to be a being of infinite holiness, and of unerring truth and justice. Our knowledge of these attributes is not the result of any process of reasoning which can admit of deliberation or doubt. They force themselves upon our conviction by the most simple principles of induction, when, from our own mental and moral endowments, we infer the perfections of him who formed us.
From every conception we can form of such a being, we have an equally insuperable conviction of his universal presence,—that he is the witness not only of our conduct, but of the thoughts and imaginations of the heart;—and that from these, as indicating our real condition, and not from our conduct alone, our moral aspect is estimated by him,—the pure and holy One who seeth in secret. Each moment, as it passes rapidly over us, we know is bringing us nearer to that period, when all our hopes and fears for this world shall lie with us in the grave. But we feel also that this is the entrance to another state of being,—a state of moral retribution, where the eternal One is to be disclosed in all his attributes as a moral governor. These considerations fix themselves upon the mind, with a feeling of yet new and more tremendous interest, when we farther take into view that this future existence stretches out before us into endless duration. This is the truth so powerfully expressed by the sacred writer, in terms which by their brevity convey, in the most adequate manner, their overwhelming import,—"The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
These truths are not the visions of enthusiasm; neither are they the result of any process of reasoning, by which different men may arrive at different conclusions. They force themselves upon our conviction with a power which we cannot put away from us, when we turn our attention to the solemn inquiry, what we are, and what is God. In the sacred writings they are detailed and illustrated, in a connected and harmonious manner; and are impressed upon us with the force of a revelation from the Deity himself. But the principles there disclosed meet with an impression, in our moral constitution, which pleads with authority for their truth. It is the province of faith to keep these habitually before the mind, and to cause them to influence the feelings and the conduct, as if they were objects of sense,—as if the Deity, in all the purity of his character were actually disclosed to our view,—or as if we were present at that dread hour which shall witness his righteous retribution. The man who thus feels their power, and exhibits their influence upon his character, is he who lives by faith.