Not Feeling but Faith

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 7, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 22.

Not Feeling but Faith

THERE are many who think—or at least this is indicated by many expressions—that Christianity is largely a religion of feeling, emotion, or sentiment; that its chief evidence to its devotees is the feeling which it arouses.

It is freely granted that this misconception of Christianity exists among many professed Christians. They are only Christians when they are wrought into an ecstasy of feeling at revivals, under powerful exhortations, or at some warm social meeting. Unless such excitement, incitement, or association continues, the religion wanes. Such religion must necessarily be ephemeral and shallow.

Christianity is based on life union with Christ Jesus; and the channel of that life, the bond of that union, is faith, faith in God's eternal, omnipotent Word. Genuine lasting faith is absolute submission to God persistently maintained. The soul yields to God's commandments, yields the sin God's law condemns, yields himself that God's promises may work out in him the will of God, and grasps joyfully the forgiveness, the righteousness, the life, the joy there is in Christ Jesus. Faith to the Christian is just what the trolley is to the electric car; it connects with the life of God, the Source of power.

The Christian's confidence, therefore, is not based on feeling, but on God's Word. And that Word does not change. Feeling may be absent, emotion may die away, but God's Word abides. We are sinners; but Christ purchased us as sinners; and we, therefore, confess our sins and yield all to Him. He forgives the sins, for so has He promised. It matters not whether we feel like it or not, the sin is forgiven, because we have submitted to the conditions, we have made connection with the Power which takes the sin away. In that promise we may rejoice. Satan may recall those sins by taunting us with them; we may be grieved by seeing their results before us; dark clouds may at times shut out the light of heaven; but God's Word changes not, and our faith rests on the Word. The sins are forgiven, for God has spoken.

This faith will be more manifest in the time of trial. The worldling and Christian may walk together in sunlight and prosperity with little to distinguish between them; but let sorrow come, business reverses take place, friends forsake us, our good name be reviled, death remove loved ones from our presence, then it is that faith is tested. He whose hope is based on the seeming, the feeling, the immediate surroundings, will fail, while he whose hope is in the sure promises of God, will stand secure in Christ Jesus. His house can not fall; it is founded on the Rock. This is genuine Christianity and its basis. Would there were more of it.