Simplicity of Faith by Guthrie

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1882

Simplicity of Faith.

By Guthrie

ALL men are born with faith. Faith is as natural to a man as grief or love or anger. One of the earliest flowers that springs up in the soul—it smiles on a mother from her infant's cradle; and living on through the rudest storms of life, it never dies till the hour of death.

On the face of a child which has been left for a little time with strangers, and may be caressed with their kisses, and courted with their smiles, and fondled, and dandled in their arms, I have seen a cloud gathering and growing darker till at length it burst in cries of terror and a shower of tears. The mother returns; and when the babe holds out its little arms to her, I see in these the arms of faith; and when, like a believer restored to the bosom of his God, it is nestling in a mother's embrace, and the cloud passes from its brow, and its tears are changed into smiles, and its terror into calm serenity, we behold the principle of faith in play.

This is one of its earliest, and—so far as nature is concerned—one of its most beautiful developments. So natural, indeed, is it for us to confide, and trust, and believe, that a child believes whatever it is told, until experience shakes its confidence in human veracity.

Its eye is caught by the beauty of some flower, or it gazes up with wonder on the starry heavens; with that inquisitiveness which in childhood, active as a bee, is ever on the wing, it is curious to know who made them, and would believe you if you said you made them yourself.

Such is the faith which nature gives it in a father, that it never doubts his word. It believes all he says, and is content to believe where it is not able to comprehend. For this as well as other reasons, our Lord presented, in a child, the living model of a Christian. He left Abraham, father of the faithful, to his repose in heaven; he left Samuel, undisturbed, to enjoy the quiet rest of his grave; he allowed Moses and Elias, after their brief visit, to return to the skies, and wing their way back to glory. For a pattern of faith, he took a boy from his mother's side, and setting him up, in his gentle, blushing, shrinking modesty, before the great assembly, he said, “Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in nowise enter therein.”—Guthrie.