Sec. 4.  FAITH.

Faith in its religious sense is distinguished not only from opinion (or belief founded on reason alone), in that it contains a spiritual element:  it is further distinguished from belief founded on the affections, by needing an active co-operation of the will.  Thus all parts of the human mind have to be involved in faith—­intellect, emotions, will.  We ‘believe’ in the theory of evolution on grounds of reason alone; we ‘believe’ in the affection of our parents, children, &c., almost (or it may be exclusively) on what I have called spiritual grounds—­i.e. on grounds of spiritual experience; for this we need no exercise either of reason or of will.  But no one can ‘believe’ in God, or a fortiori in Christ, without also a severe effort of will.  This I hold to be a matter of fact, whether or not there be a God or a Christ.

Observe will is to be distinguished from desire.  It matters not what psychologists may have to say upon this subject.  Whether desire differs from will in kind or only in degree—­whether will is desire in action, so to speak, and desire but incipient will—­are questions with which we need not trouble ourselves.  For it is certain that there are agnostics who would greatly prefer being theists, and theists who would give all they possess to be Christians, if they could thus secure promotion by purchase—­i.e. by one single act of will.  But yet the desire is not strong enough to sustain the will in perpetual action, so as to make the continual sacrifices which Christianity entails.  Perhaps the hardest of these sacrifices to an intelligent man is that of his own intellect.  At least I am certain that this is so in my own case.  I have been so long accustomed to constitute my reason my sole judge of truth, that even while reason itself tells me it is not unreasonable to expect that the heart and the will should be required to join with reason in seeking God (for religion is for the whole man), I am too jealous of my reason to exercise my will in the direction of my most heart-felt desires.  For assuredly the strongest desire of my nature is to find that that nature is not deceived in its highest aspirations.  Yet I cannot bring myself so much as to make a venture in the direction of faith.  For instance, regarded from one point of view it seems reasonable enough that Christianity should have enjoined the doing of the doctrine as a necessary condition to ascertaining (i.e. ‘believing’) its truth.  But from another, and my more habitual point of view, it seems almost an affront to reason to make any such ’fool’s experiment’—­just as to some scientific men it seems absurd and childish to expect them to investigate the ‘superstitious’ follies of modern spiritualism.  Even the simplest act of will in regard to religion—­that of prayer—­has not been performed by me for at least a quarter of a century, simply because it has seemed so impossible to pray, as it were, hypothetically,