THE LIFE OF FAITH.

BY THE REV. EDWARD CRAIG, A.M.

THE Holy Scriptures and the world in general are at issue on the subject of faith. Wherever we turn in the Scriptures, the principle of faith appears to be strongly marked with the divine approbation, as the principle by which the just, and those who love and serve God, are to live. But whereever we turn among men, who have not yet heartily submitted themselves to the authority of the Scripture, the principle of faith as a principle of action is opposed and vilified, and brought into contempt. In whatever

form faith appears as really influencing men's mind and conduct, whether they admit the doctrine of justification by faith, or faith in prophetic Scripture, or faith in the special providence of God, or faith in the divine power of a preached gospel, and the ultimate and universal success of its ministrations, or faith in the coming of the Son of Man to judgment, in every such case, the man who really believes and shows that he believes, is made a jest of among his fellows. He finds that he has to encounter on every side the opposition of practical infidelity; and if he speaks on any of these subjects as really believing them, if he ventures to utter a thought in society that indicates a firm belief influencing his actions, men look up from their several occupations of business or of pleasure with the gaze of astonishment, or the sneer of contempt, wondering that any man who has even a remnant of common sense, can turn away his attention for a moment from visible realities, to occupy it with things which are invisible. And he who should be novice enough in general society

to utter a single remark savouring distinctly of a belief in the truths of real religion, and his serious expectation of death and judgement, would be at once set down as a man wild and strange, and to be avoided as unfit to be associated with without caution, the subject of one of the worst forms of conta gious and pestilential disease.

All this might be expected, if the mass of men had set themselves openly and unreservedly against the Scriptures as a system of fraud and falsehood; or, if they had as openly, and with more daring, declared, that whether the Scriptures were true or not, they would have nothing to do with them. But the extraordinary part of the case is, that this is the conduct of men of all ranks and stations in life, who are at the time avowedly members of the Christian church, who declare the Scripture to be a divinely inspired record, and who avow their acceptance of Jesus Christ as a Saviour, and their conviction of his present dominion on the throne of glory, and of his coming again at the end of the world to judge the quick and

dead. And it is a common inconsistency on all hands, and even among men who are called the ministers of Jesus Christ, thus to make a formal and nominal profession of Scriptural religion, while they deny and oppose, and hold up to ridicule the great, prominent, and characteristic feature of religion, which is faith in God and in his written word.

If this is the fact, and for the truth of it an appeal may be fearlessly made to the general tone of society on all hands, then in what an awful state are the souls of men! How dreadful that they should be in possession of a record, the divine inspiration of which they cannot deny; but that in the height of their practical ungodliness, they should live in the habitual resistance of the great principle which it recommends as the way of salvation, and endeavour to laugh the real belief of God's word out of his own world. What a crowd of God's enemies enemies to his holiness and justice, to bis power and authority, to his mercy and grace, are found among nominal Christians,

confirming each other in unbelief by irreligious example, and resolutely labouring to live only for the things that are seen, and temporal, instead of living by faith upon the things that are not seen, and that are eternal. How many are there, who, if they examined themselves honestly, would be compelled to confess, that they have no real faith in what the Scripture declares ;-that its statements have never seriously influenced their conduct; and that often seduced by evil example, they have made this faith in others the subject of a scornful jest. And yet, how plainly the Scriptures speak on this point;-they say, "The just shall live by faith." This is the language of the Old Testament; and it is recognized and approved in the New. It is affirmed in both, that those who are just or righteous shall be made to be essentially so righteous or just, by means of the principle of faith in God and in his word; and shall so habitually exercise that principle of believing reliance upon God and his promises, that it shall mark, and characterize, and separate them as a class of men by themselves,