Guided By Faith 7/13/41
Scripture: Exodus 13: 11-20; [Hebrews 11: 1-10, 22-38.]
Text: Exodus 3: 12a: “And he said, certainly I will be with thee.”
[Hebrews 11: 1; “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”]
Many a sailor loves to put out to sea because of possible adventure in each voyage. Particularly is this true if he happens to be on some cruise of discovery or exploration. He gladly weighs anchor and casts off lines and leaves behind that which seems certain, for that which seems uncertain.
I am not at all sure that I should make as good a sailor as some of my ancestors are reputed to have been. What little sailing I have done has not been particularly hazardous, though its novelty excited me some. Boarding a modern ocean liner in peace time is hardly more dangerous than checking in at the Hotel Witter.
But it is a fact that he never leaves behind certain realities on which he continues to depend. He knows that there is an anchorage in his home port to which he may return, and to which he expects to return. He knows that he can depend on the course of the stars to guide him whenever he makes observations. If he did not know these things, and how to navigate with reference to these realities, he would not be truly adventurous, but simply foolhardy.
A philosopher enjoys speculating on the nature of man, whence he came and where he is going, his relation to the world and to the universe of which he is a part. But sooner or later the philosopher hopes to arrive at some certainties, some truth, on which he can depend and around which he can build his ideas. Furthermore, he always proceeds from some certainties.
Most of us enjoy new or unfolding experience. Life is interesting and thrilling to us. But we want to know what we can tie to. Sooner or later, we become aware of the fact that we live by faith and that we do not live without faith in any area of life.
All of learning is a process of becoming aware of truth, of realities, of the facts by which, henceforth, we endeavor to guide our living. The effort toward truth and the use of truth essentially involves faith. Indeed, as Dr. Fosdick points out, “positive faith is the only normal estate of man.”
The only value of doubt - and unpleasant though it may be, doubt does have real value, - “is that it clears away rubbish and stimulates search for truth.” As a man’s life progresses, he outgrows many positions. He may get barnacles attached to the hull of his thinking. He gets slightly off course through turning port a little, starboard a little, to meet varying waves of experience. He uses up certain equipment that, when worn out, needs replacement by new equipment, sometimes different, usually improved equipment.
As he looks over his situation, he knows that the barnacles are doing him no good, that he may miss his port at the present course, and that the next voyage may be not so good with the old worn equipment. These are his doubts, his intelligent dissatisfactions and disapprovals. And they have a definite worth in clearing away what is wrong or mistaken and what is no longer useful. But that is their only value, and they are futile unless something positive follows.
The doubtful skipper immediately takes his bearings and straightens his course. He decides to have the barnacles scraped off, and the hull painted again before the next voyage, in the reasonable faith, borne out by experience, that the sea will thereafter flow more swiftly and easily around his speeding ship. He plans to recommend new equipment the next time the ship is dry-docked for overhauling. These are positive steps and they are steps not of doubt, but of faith. In every ordinary walk of life we check up and improve the details of living by constructive faith.
The same is true of every important, vital thing that we do. Christopher Columbus discovered a new continent and demonstrated the probability of new routes to the Orient, not by his doubts as to the flatness of the world but by his faith that the earth is round. That he doubted the world is flat was a perfectly natural and necessary step. And it was a difficult step because of the firmness with which that mistaken belief was held by mankind in his day. But the only thing that made Columbus what he was in positive fashion was his faith, reasonably conceived and then tested by experience.
We live by faith. Some of living is repetition. Some of it is adventure. Even the repetitions do not always run true to previous form and when they depart from previous form, they change from repetitions to adventures.
We are guided through repetitions in life by experience; that is, confirmed faith. We are guided in adventure by expectation; that is, faith in the process of being tested.
Faith, we may thus see, is a perfectly real and natural part of living. In fact it is the vitally important part of living. For it is that by which we are guided. If one persists in thinking of faith as just so much gullible foolhardiness his is missing the whole point. For faith is never to be associated with negative qualities - with blindness, ignorance or gullibility. Faith is altogether positive. It is our attitude of vital expectation based on reason and experience.
Toward evening, after a day of driving about in Yellowstone National Park, a party of us drew near the site of Old Faithful Geyser. We had seen scenes of marvelous beauty, wonders of nature, and some curious phenomena not completely understood. On that August day our eyes had feasted on the beauty of the drive in from Cody, Wyoming, past the Shoshone dam; then into the Park around Yellowstone Lake. We paused at Artist Point and Inspiration Point to see lovely waterfalls, rushing waters and a many-colored canyon. Bears had crossed our road, a bull moose had been feeding near the road. There was wooded beauty everywhere. We drove into the upper and lower geyser basins, saw mud bubbling about, steam arising, jets of water rising and falling. We looked into pools marvelously beautiful in color, shape and depth, like giant morning-glories fallen from the vine and nestled in the ground.
But there was one thing more that we wanted to see before the day ended - Old Faithful itself. We had all seen pictures of it and had heard it described by eye witnesses. So it was with eagerness and confidence that we drove the car up near the inn and got out.
A crowd of people sat or stood in a semicircle around a rather wet-looking little hill formed of minerals. All were watching the top of that mound. Few seemed restless, and all wore an air of expectation. A forest ranger stood a bit in front of the crowd. I stepped out to him and inquired, “Is Old Faithful due to erupt soon?” “It’s overdue now,” replied the ranger. There was nothing of uncertainty in his voice or manner. His tone only suggested that we were most fortunate to have arrived just then.
A few moments later, there was a little spurting of the already restless water which had been bubbling about the top of the little hill. Then there was a hissing sound, and then came the firm roar of the rising jet of steam and spray shooting high in the air, a fountain of grace and strength designed by God’s own hand.
The attitude of the ranger was interesting. There seemed not the slightest doubt that the eruption would come and that shortly. Nor had I any doubt of it either. The ranger had seen that geyser shoot up at intervals of about an hour, every hour, for a long time. He thoroughly believed that it would erupt again, though he had nothing whatever to do with controlling it. It was a simple matter of experience that Old Faithful could be depended upon.
It was with a good deal of this kind of faith that Abraham “went out, not knowing whither he went.” He had had certain vital experiences with God. He had learned to know that he could depend on God. So it was with this definite reality to tie to that he went out into the “place he should receive for an inheritance.”
It is with faith born of experience that many thousands have come to perceive that wrong-doing is always rewarded with the death of something precious. “The wages of sin is death.” It is by such faith that men have come to know that right is always triumphant in a most real and satisfying sense. By faith we understand that “love never faileth.”
If we have not made such faith a part of our experience, we may do so by reasoning the matter out and then honestly experimenting to see if it be so.
But - “Faith is (also) holding reasonable convictions in realms beyond the reach of final demonstration, and, as well, it is thrusting out one’s life upon those convictions as though they were surely true. Faith is vision plus valor.” [Fosdick] Wherein life is an adventure, it always demands both insight and daring.
Man lives only by faith because, faith is his only means of trusting his experiences, of moving ahead into new experience. Only with the perception of visions that are reasonable and probable does man have the courage, the patience and the movement to make those visions a part of experience. Logic is not enough, though it is absolutely essential as far as it goes. No life is balanced without it. But neither is any life complete with just that alone. For faith goes beyond and leads logic. “Faith always sees more with her eye than logic can reach with her hand.” A scientist who is not also a poet or philosopher has only a mechanical fraction of the knowledge he may achieve if he has the visions of faith - of quick perception yet to be tried - to lead his inquiry on. It is a man’s faith that builds and broadens his character. And it is the greatness of some men’s faith, caught up by others in contagious enthusiasm, that moves the world for good or ill.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” “Cast not away therefore your confidence.”
The sun rose this morning. It will set this evening and rise again tomorrow morning. The stars continue in their courses as they have done from the beginning of time. Cherries and apples will ripen. Snow will fly in the autumn. And trees will blossom and turn green in the spring. Farmers who sow wheat will reap wheat. People who sow hatred and harm will reap, not love, but hatred and harm. Those who love will find love returning to them, like the bread that was cast upon the waters.
God is not mocked, but is eternally like the rock upon which the stormy waves my break, or in whose lighthouse warning, and guidance, and shelter abide forever.
---------------
Dates and places delivered:
Pilgrim Church, November 1, 1936 AM
Central Union Church Women’s meeting, February 26, 1937
Pearl City Hawaiian Church, August 15, 1937
Wisconsin Rapids, July 13, 1941
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, July 28, 1941