Simplicity of Faith by I. S. Spencer, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 17, 1909

Simplicity of Faith.

By I. S. Spencer, D.D.

THE simplicity of faith was once illustrated to me in the following manner:

I was preaching my ordinary weekly lecture in the evening, when I was sent for in great haste, to visit a woman who was said to be dying, and who very much desired to see me. I closed the service, as soon as I could, and went immediately to her house. She was a member of my church, whom I had known very well for years; with whom I had been acquainted ever since her first serious impressions, before she became a communicant. As I entered the room where she lay, I found it filled with her friends, who had gathered around her to see her die. Making my way through the midst of them, I reached the side of her bed, and found her apparently in the last agonies of death. She was bolstered up in her bed, gasping for breath, almost suffocated by the asthma; and the whole bed shook, by a palpitation of her heart, which seemed to be shaking her to pieces. It appeared to me, that she could not live a quarter of an hour. I said to her,—

"Mrs. M., you seem to be very sick?"

"Yes," said she, "I am dying."

"And are you ready to die?"

She lifted her eyes upon me with a solemn and fixed gaze, and speaking with great difficulty, she replied,—

"Sir, God knows—I have taken Him—at His word—and—I am not afraid—to die."

It was a new definition of faith. "I have taken Him at His word." It struck me in an instant as a triumph of faith. "God knows I have taken Him at His word and I am not afraid to die." It was just the thing for her to say. I have often tried to think what else she could have said that would have expressed so much in such few words.

I prayed some four minutes by her bedside, recited to her some passages of God's word, and was about to leave her for a moment to her friends, whom she seemed anxious to address. She held me by the hand, and uttering a word at a time, as she gasped for breath, she said to me, "I wanted to tell you—that I can—trust—in God—while—I am dying.—You have—often told me—He would not—forsake me.—And now—I find—it true.—I am—at peace.—I die—willingly—and happy."

In a few minutes I left her, uttering to her such promises of the Saviour as I deemed most appropriate.—However, she did not die. She still lives. But that expression of her faith has been of great benefit to me. It has aided me in preaching and in conversation with inquiring sinners very often. It gave me a more simple idea of faith than ever I had before. It put aside all the mist of metaphysics, speculation, and philosophizing. It made the whole nature of faith plain. Everybody could understand it:—"God knows I have taken Him at His word."

Many of the published dissertations on the nature and philosophy of the atonement may be deep, but they are dark. We can not afford to travel along such weary distances and through such twilight paths in order to get at the fact—at what it is, that we are to believe and trust in. The Bible puts it directly before us—"slain for us,—the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." We are asked to receive it, just on God's testimony; not by the aid of philosophy; but on the declaration of the fact. We "make God a liar" if we do not "believe the testimony which He hath given us of His Son." We must take it on God's declaration. That is faith. The speculations may be useful to silence skepticism; but they never soften hearts. They may make us scholars; but they never make us children, or lead us home. The atonement satisfies God. He says so. That is enough. Leave it there. Men may try; but they will try in vain when they attempt to convert the weapons for defending against infidelity into bread to feed God's hungry children. We must "take God at His word." The philosophy of religion is just faith; nothing more.—I. S. Spencer, D.D.