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the practical value of faith. Yet the very men who would unhesitatingly set such a stickler for evidence aside,
often take exactly the same position when it comes to the things of God.
One man tries to impress us with the awful and solemn fact that until he has a full and complete answer to the
question, "Who was Cain's wife?" he can proceed no further in this matter of life and death. One wonders whether,
when lying on a bed of sickness, knowing that he had working in him some disease that had every appearance of
fatal issues, this same person would refuse the doctor"s medicine, and risk an awful death, until he had mastered
with fever-stricken brain the contents of the library of the Pharmaceutical Society. Would he not be better
persuaded to take the medicine, and get well first, and if he felt so disposed go into the why's and wherefore's after?
Bishop Butler says, "Probability is the law of life". In this world perfect knowledge is unattainable, and unless
we are to stagnate and die, we must go forward without complete evidence. Now, see how the Bible opens:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).
What God does is before our eyes, but what God is, is outside the range of human enquiry. The New Testament
does not depart from this attitude:
"He that cometh to God must BELIEVE that HE IS" (Heb. 11:6).
None but a fool says in his heart, "There is no God" (Psa. 14:1), for as W.H. Fitchett, in his Unrealized Logic of
Religion, has so well said:
"What height and depth, what eternity and universality of knowledge, must be assumed as a warrant for such an
assertion! Who is entitled to announce such a negative? The mere sense of humour makes, or ought to make,
such a performance impossible. Here is a little creature who was born yesterday and will die tomorrow. He
comes he knows not whence; he is hastening he knows not whither. He is hedged round with mysteries,
imprisoned in ignorance. He knows only one little patch on the surface of only one little planet. He knows, and
that only dimly, a few of the mysterious laws touching him and shaping his life. He cannot tell how his own
nails grow, or why his hands obey the impulse of his thoughts, or whether, when tomorrow's sun rises, he will be
in existence. He cannot say, of his own knowledge, whether there is not a man in the moon. And shall he
undertake to proclaim to the astonished race that there is no infinite God in the immeasurable universe!"
Just as the epistle to the Hebrews says, "God IS", so it declares "God hath SPOKEN" (Heb. 1:1,2), and it is equal
folly to attempt to deny the one statement as the other. Whatever we may believe or deny, each man in his own
heart of hearts knows that something is radically wrong. What if the Bible word sin should prove the answer? Man
everywhere is seeking and searching for some remedy. What if the Bible plan of redemption should prove the
answer? Will that man, who cannot deny his sin and his mortality if he would, refuse the cure testified in Scripture
(and by countless thousands) simply because he has not sufficient "proof"?
Just as Scripture uncompromisingly says, "God is", so the meaning of faith is at once simple and positive. With
one exception every occurrence of the words "faith", "faithful", and "believe" in the Old Testament is some form or
other of the Hebrew word Amen. Amen, with which we close all prayer, is the Hebrew word "truth", and faith,
according to the Scriptures, simply takes God to mean what He says. Faith is simply saying "Amen" to all that God
has revealed. It is said of Abraham, when he believed the stupendous promise of God, that:
"He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being
fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He was able also to perform" (Rom. 4:20,21).
Further on in Romans 10:17, it is clearly stated that:
"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God".
While in one sense this covers the whole of the Scriptures, we are not left with the idea that if a man believes
that there is one God, or that the whale swallowed Jonah, that he will be saved. James says that:
"Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the demons also believe, and tremble" (James 2:19).