WHAT FAITH MEANS by Sunday-School Times

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Sep 21, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 37.

WHAT FAITH MEANS.

By Sunday-School Times

FAITH means venture. What we have learned by experience to be true is no longer a matter of faith, but of sight, of conviction, of certainty. It is not a matter of faith with us that the earth will sustain us as we walk upon it, but it may once have been such in our infancy, if we had clearness of thought sufficient to deal with that problem. When a boy has learned to swim, it ceases to be a matter of faith with him that the water will bear him up, but it was so at the outset of his learning. And as the baby trusts itself to the ground and the boy to the water, the believer trusts himself to God by an act of volition, by an act of courage, at a venture. Eliminate these elements, and you have eliminated the essentials of faith. You may have a calculating prudence left, or a doctrinal speculation, or a pious emotion, but not faith.