Adventures in the Land of Canaan

by R. L. Berry

"There is no use to tell you the rest. Here am I, by God's help, at home in my possession. The giants are dead, and I hold peaceable possession by right of divine promise, the oath that God swore to our father Abraham that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life [Luke 1:74, 75]. Thanks be to God for His great gift!"

We may visit Caleb again, since the recital of his conflicts and victories has uplifted our souls so greatly.

You say you can not understand faith. Let me ask you if you can understand joy? or sorrow? or a heartache? or rapturous rejoicing? Can you find the cubic contents of anger? or measure love in bushels or weigh it on scales? And because these things are intangible and elusive, do you think they are not real? Indeed not! You love someone, and while you can not cube your love, nor weigh it, the reality of it you never question. So also with acts or decisions of your will. Who ever saw a will in action? And yet the outer life, in all its forms, is proof enough that a will has been functioning all the while.

Now faith is the same kind of thing as joy and love. It belongs to that family of intangible, unseen realities of life. They have to do with the spiritual part of our nature, and through them we rise higher or sink lower than we can through any mere physical feelings or actions. Faith, joy, love, are spiritual qualities, spiritual things, things of the soul, affecting it favorably or adversely according as they themselves are affected by causes good or bad. Doubt, unbelief, anger, wrong ambition, pride, and such are as intangible as are faith and love, but they are at the opposite pole.

Faith is no harder to understand than is doubt. Faith is believing, and doubt is not believing. One is the opposite of the other, just as heaven and hell are opposites. Considering doubters more closely, we find that doubters believe; but they believe the opposite of what they should believe. Doubters believe the wrong thing. A doubter is one who could and ought to believe facts, but for some reason or other can not bring himself to do it. Instead, he believes another set of things, which appear to be facts but are not.

Let us illustrate faith and doubt. You pick up a newspaper this morning and read that a fire destroyed a hotel in Chicago and four persons were burned, that a train ran off the track in Iowa and no one was hurt, and that a Congressman from Florida died. Do you doubt these facts or believe them! If you believe them, that is proof that you have faith. You look at the almanac and find it says that tomorrow there will be an eclipse. If you prepare to look at the sun through smoked glass, it is proof that you have faith. If you receive a letter stating that your uncle John died and feel sad at the thought of his leaving his family in destitute circumstances, it is proof that you have faith. If someone in your place of business brings you a report that fire has destroyed your warehouse and you feel at once the loss, it is proof that you have faith.

Then, of course, there are things which you doubt. You are told that some one has discovered perpetual motion. You smile, and do not believe it. You doubt. Doubt is simply the opposite of faith.

Now to show or illustrate how faith works instantaneously always, let us suppose you are a parent and one of your children is lost. It is your youngest child but one. You have hunted until you are exhausted, and find no trace of the child. Your heart is sick; a load as heavy as lead bears down upon you. You can think of a dozen different things that could have happened to the child; he may have been kidnapped, may have been run over and killed, may have fallen into the water and drowned, may be weeping his heart out somewhere. At last the whole neighborhood gets out to search, and you, exhausted, sit impatiently waiting. By and by you hear some one halloo. Then you hear another. And then some one runs up excitedly and says, "The child is found, safe." The very moment you believe that news the load lifts, the heart is light, the soul is happy. Tears of joy flow freely.

But suppose it proves a premature report, and by and by another comes and says it is a mistake, that the child was found dead. Then all your joy is turned immediately to sadness. Faith always works instantaneously.

The quickness with which faith works has been illustrated by this: Suppose some one rushes into an office of philosophical, higher-critical professors, and cries, "Fire!" You would see those hard-boiled skeptics, if they believed the cry, rush unceremoniously and indecorously out of that building with all speed. People may scoff at faith working with lightning speed; but every exhibition of it only proves that it does.