act of judgment.[1] Everyone knows you may have this, and yet not have faith.
Faith does imply belief, but more than this, it implies also will. If my will is not identified with that which I hold for fact, I have not faith in it. Faith is both the belief in the reality of an object, and the will that that object be real; and where either of these elements fails, there is no faith. But even this is not all. When Mr. Bain, for instance, (p. 526) says, ‘The infant who has found the way to the mother’s breast for food, and to her side for warmth, has made progress in the power of faith,’ we are struck at once by an incongruity. That the child who is most forward in a matter of this sort, is most likely in after life to have what we call faith, we see no reason to believe; that he has it already, we see is an absurdity. And we found above (p. 166) that, even in ‘My Station and its Duties,’ we could not properly speak of faith, because there was there what might be called sight.
What does this point to? Does it mean that faith implies uncertainty, or defective knowledge; and that this is the reason why, where you see, you can not have faith? No, this we think is a mistaken view, and the facts confute it. Certainly you may have faith without feeling sure of the fact; but, generally speaking, a doubt about the fact weakens faith. Nor is it the case that theoretic certainty excludes faith. If it were so, the raising of belief with doubt to belief without doubt would ipso facto destroy faith; and this is not so.
We can not maintain that, when mere belief is raised to speculative certainty, the necessity for faith disappears; or further, that faith is here impossible. We must try to show the cause of the error. What can be said in its favour is this, that sight does exclude faith; and hence faith is not imagined to exist in the Paradise after death, nor, I suppose, in ecstatic vision during life. This is all consistent; but what it points to is the fact, that faith is incompatible, not with such and such a degree, but with
- ↑ I use belief in the ordinary sense. Of course our account of the matter is wrong if all belief is practical. This Mr. Bain (Emotions, Ed. ii. p. 524 and foll.) tries to show; as it seems to us, at the expense of facts, and with not sufficient success to warrant our entering on the matter.
