of the Understanding. Indeed a Faith which was merely a belief founded on the calculations of the Understanding, would be no Faith at all. It would want that very quality which is absolutely essential to all Faith, and which makes it what it is. For in all Faith there must be confidence, there must be reliance, there must be trust. The intellectual conviction may be indistinct; the grounds for it may be feeble, may never have been duly examined. Very strong Faith in one man may rest upon weak grounds; while that of another may be frail and tottering, though based on irrefragable certainty. But in proportion as our confidence, as our trust, is firm and stedfast, so is our Faith: wherefore this, and not the intellectual belief, is the formative principle in Faith. In like manner, if we examine the other worldly senses of the word, Faith, we shall find that the moral ingredient in them predominates over the intellectual. Can it be then, that the Gospel, the dealings of which are almost wholly with man's moral nature, the aim of which is not to elevate and ennoble his Understanding, but his moral nature, the doctrine of which is, that the way to the knowledge of spiritual truth lies not through thought and reasoning, but mainly through action and endurance,

should leave out, nay, cast out the moral element in the faculty to which it addresses its primary appeal? That this cannot be so, becomes nearly certain, when we look at the word in the Greek original, which we render by faith. In that word, as every reader of Greek knows, the leading idea is that of confidence, of reliance, of trust. Only in a secondary sense does it come to be used for intellectual belief; and even then it mostly implies an admixture more or less of moral confidence. The same too is the case with the Hebrew word answering to that which

in the New Testament we render by faith, and by the corresponding verb, to believe. And this explains how it comes to pass that in our Version of the Old Testament we so seldom find mention of Faith. The idea is there, and of perpetual occurrence, though not spoken of under the form of a general abstract proposition. Nor could it well be wanting in a book treating of the relations between man and God; Faith being the only faculty whereby man can be conscious of such a relation. The word however, by which that idea is exprest in the Old Testament, is rendered in our Version by trust. I should have to repeat a large part of the book of Psalms, were I to cite all the passages in which we are exhorted to trust in God. The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants; and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate (xxxiv. 22). Trust in the Lord, and do good: so shalt thou dwell in the land (xxxvii. 3). Commit thy way to the Lord; trust in him; and he will bring it to pass (5). The Lord will save them; because they trust in him (40). It will hardly be questioned, that the state of feeling designated in these passages by the expression, trusting in the Lord, is very nearly akin to what in the religion of the New Covenant bears the name of Faith. For trusting in God must needs imply a belief in him: only this belief may be a more general one in his goodness and providential care; whereas the belief and the Faith of a Christian centre in the specific act of the redemption wrought for him by Christ. Hereby his belief becomes a more definite and prominent element in his Faith. Indeed it is a general characteristic of the scriptural view of man, that the intellectual part of his being is hardly ever regarded, according to the abstractions of human philosophy, as distinct and separate

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from his moral nature. Light in the Bible is life; and life is light: knowledge is indeed power: if true knowledge, it is power for good; if false, for evil: and one or the other it must be: for no act of a living responsible soul can be of a neutral negative character: that which is not with God, is against him. This appears, to refer to one proof among hundreds, from the description of Wisdom, according to its twofold origin and nature, given in the Epistle of St James; where the Wisdom which descendeth not from above, is said to be worldly, carnal, devilish; while the true Wisdom, which is from above, is set forth in its heavenly beauty, as pure, peaceful, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy; every quality ascribed to each being wholly of a moral and practical character.

Here perhaps it may not be altogether idle to remark, that the poverty and want of formative power in our language, in which there is no verb manifestly belonging to the same family with Faith, by leading us to have recourse to the verb believe, which in its ordinary acceptation expresses an act almost purely intellectual, has helpt to foster the erroneous notion, that in Faith also the intellectual act is all in all. The verb, believe, being far more widely spread and connected in our language, has drawn away its corresponding substantive, Faith, from its more appropriate meaning; instead of adopting that meaning, as it ought to have done. So likewise in the Latin verb, credo, which tended much to determine the signification of fides, the notion of the intellectual act is more prominent than in the Greek πιστεύω.

Hence it was with the fullest right that Luther and

Melanchthon, when the true idea of Faith and of its power was reasserted at the Reformation, were anxious to urge again and again that faith is trust, that faith signifies trust: fides est fiducia; fides significat fiduciam (c). This was only to assert, that the faith prescribed in the New Testament is a feeling of the same kind with the trust enjoined in the Old Testament; as is proved,-to take a single instance,—by the passage in the Gospels, where the disciples are frightened by the tempest, while their Master is asleep in the ship, and where, on being awaked by them in their terrour, he rebukes them for their want of Faith (Matth. viii. 26); that is, for their want of trust, for their want of confidence in him. To the same purpose it is well observed by Calvin, that, "if theologians would attend to that passage in the Epistle to the Romans (x. 10), For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, they would give over talking about their frigid fiction of a fides formata: for that, if this passage were our only argument, it should suffice to finish the dispute, proving that the assent of Faith is of the Heart, more than of the Head, and rather of the Affections than of the Understanding" (D). Accordingly, in the Apology for the Confession of Augsburg, it is laid down with perfect truth, that "Faith is not merely a perception of the Understanding, but a confidence in the Will, that is, the willing and receiving what is offered to us in God's promise" (E). And this agrees with the definition of Faith given by many of our own most eminent divines; in proof of which I will only refer you to Bishop Taylor's Discourse on Faith, where he says in so many words, that "the Faith of a Christian has more in it of the Will than of the Understanding." (F)

To establish and illustrate this truth,-to set forth the kingdom and the power and the glory of Faith, so far as

the Spirit of God shall enable me to look into its mysteries, and to shew how Faith, under one relation or other, has always been the main agent in whatsoever man has accomplisht toward overcoming the world,—will be the aim of the following sermons. At first thought indeed one might be inclined to suppose, that this elementary principle, lying at the root of all Christian life, no less than of all Christian doctrine, must needs have been fully elucidated long ago. Nevertheless I have deemed that, even in this place, it might not be inexpedient for him who is appointed to preach before you, to bring forth old things as well as new out of his treasure. Nay, this may be the more expedient from the manifold temptations which may here withdraw us from common subjects to matters of abstruser speculation or more learned research. Moreover there are peculiar circumstances in the present condition of the Church, rendering it desirable that men should be reminded of the great truths concerning Faith which were proclaimed in the age of the Reformation. Vital and fundamental as the question touching the true nature of Faith is, there are few questions on which greater and more mischievous errours have prevailed. From the Epistle of St James we perceive that even in those primitive days a party had arisen within the Church, which had stript Faith of its living power, and held that a naked intellectual recognition of the truths delivered in the Gospel was the only thing requisite to salvation. When heresies sprang up, and it became necessary to define the doctrines of the Church by the promulgation of Creeds, as the reception of those Creeds was deemed indispensable to true Christian Faith, that reception, the belief in the doctrines thus ascertained and defined, was held to constitute that Faith, and