FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.

Εν τη πίστει ὑμῶν
"Add to your

faith

τὴν γνῶσιν.

knowledge."-2 PETER i, 5.

KNOWLEDGE and faith, as set forth in our text, are, in the opinion of the world, two opposite things, and mutually exclude each other. Faith in revealed verities, as one has remarked, is incompatible with that profound erudition of the human intellect, which probes the depths of the earth, measures the expanse of the heavens, and explores the still more mysterious realms of the spirit of man. The names of Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Leibnitz, Euler, and a host of similar spirits, have come into collision with, and more than once repelled, that singular assertion. You will nevertheless constantly meet it in the world, for there is not a single error which men are not incessantly struggling to rebuild in our midst.

It is not, however, to combat this error that we shall devote the present hour. Our design is to penetrate farther into the essence of faith, andi nto the domain of knowledge. We shall consider another faith and another knowledge; the faith of the heart, or the Christian life, and theology, or the knowledge of God.

In reality, if we step beyond the threshold and enter the sanctuary of divine knowledge, we will there discover the same claims set up, which we had just left behind in the world, applied, however, to other objects. Faith is there the new principle of life, and of holiness, which the word of the Holy Spirit develops in the hearts of the elect of God.

Knowledge, or theology, is the philosophy of that faith, the result of researches, reflection, and patient labor of the human intellect applied to divine things, and endeavoring to investigate and impart to them clearness, definiteness, and that systematic oneness, of which they are susceptible.

In this novel field the spectator is immediately struck with the decision of its incompatibility with knowledge; not, it is true, that certain historic faith, of which all theologians ought to a greater or less degree to be in possession, but the living faith of Christians. Unregenerate theologians direct against this doctrine the same attacks, and the same engines of war, as the wise of this world employ against the wisdom of God. There is not the slightest agreement, if you listen to those men, between a living faith and theology.

It must be acknowledged that there is some truth concealed under their assertions. The two things, faith aud theology, have been, and are still often separated by many ministers of the gospel. Among them are those who are uniquely theologians, intimately acquainted with the various branches of theological science, and able to explain the Christian system with the most methodical exactness, but in whose hearts the life of faith never had existence. On the other hand, there are some of their number who enjoy the faith of the heart, the Christian life, but are strangers to theology, and regard it as an undoubted science, but still a barren one, from which they may never hope to derive any personal advantage.

With a

Your feet are exposed to both these by-paths of error. large number of theologians we have believed that it was unnecessary for the ministers of Christ at the present day to isolate these two things, and that their just combination would result in the greatest utility to the service of God. We have concluded, in accordance with the apostolic declaration, that the pastor ought to be a teacher. (Ephes. iv. 11.)

Let us then briefly investigate the relations in which faith stands to knowledge; let us indicate the necessity of the former, and the advantages of the latter, and at the same time lay down in our charts the sunken rocks which we should avoid.

FAITH.

And first, I address myself to those who, not having in their heart the living faith of Christians, may be harboring the imagination of supplying its place with theology.

It is impossible for a Christian, and by consequence for a minister, to exist without the life of faith. You may think that the scientific development of Christian doctrine will produce within you that living faith, without which you cannot exist. No, my brethren. The work of man cannot create the work of God. Theology is not the mother of faith, but faith is the mother of theology.

The cultivation of theological science has never produced a renovation of Christian life in the church. It is the simple preaching of Christian truths, it is that faith of the heart, that conviction, and those intimate experiences, which are expressed by the Apostle with a holy enthusiasm-"I believed and therefore have spoken" (2 Cor. iv. 13)—from which such renovations have ever taken their rise. If these are instances where theological instruction has been the means of producing the faith of the heart-and the number is by no means small-it was due not to the theological element, but the element of faith, which was found in that instruction. It was because the teacher was full of faith, and not because he was full of reflection, that he became a means of regeneration. Faith produces faith, but idea produces only idea. The purity, the definiteness, and the systematic arrangement of doctrines, has never given birth to spiritual life.

It is not a school, nor a theologian, to whom the minister or the

simple believer in quest of faith ought to address himself. It is to the chief, to Jesus Christ. Seek life not in the apophthegms of knowledge, but in Him " in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," (Col. ii. 9.) Every believer, and consequently every minister, is called upon in his office of prophet, to ask immediately from Jesus Christ his own measure of grace. The quality of mediator between God and man no more appertains to the knowledge of the theologian, than to the hierarchy of the priest. It is not in any theological summary, nor in any common places, in which men should search for faith; but in the Bible, immediately in the Bible, through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, promised unto all.

Let us advance another step. How far soever theology may be from producing life, it is nevertheless the Christian life which produces theology. It is faith which furnishes science with the media of knowledge, the ideas upon which it ought to reflect, and the elements which it ought to combine. For the true knowledge, which enlightens the eyes, is constructed not out of abstract ideas and dead elements, but out of living doctrines and principles, which are quickened into life by the Spirit of God.

The

There is another point farther on, which we may also reach. It is a living faith, which imparts to the spirit that rapture, that expansion, that depth, and that activity, necessary to set in motion the primitive elements, and thus give birth to a system with all its ramifications entire. An epoch dead in the matter of faith has never produced, and never will produce, a theology. epochs which have been creative of knowledge have uniformly been preceded-history assures us of the fact by a revival of Christian life in the Church. It was the upsoaring of faith which was the parent of those theological treatises that signalize the age of Augustine, of the scholastics of the thirteenth century, and of the Reformers.

If you would be theologians, cast yourselves into the current of living waters. It is faith which gives the impulse, without which no noble deed can ever be produced: that just truth, without which you will ramble in despair among vain systems; that life, without which (your path will only lie through a valley of dry bones.

Test, then, the opposite system. Let the Christian life be only a principle of your theology, and then you will fall into the one or the other of two evils: for either you will cast yourselves, as thousands have done before you, upon the speculative distinctions of useless dialectics; or, choosing a negative tendency, and a hostile attitude, you will take up arms against what you ought to defend; you will exercise, in the sphere which is assigned to you, only a destructive influence, and instead of erecting an edifice to the living God, you will be amusing yourselves, as so many theologians, alas! have done, in destroying that which already exists, and rejoicing over its ruins.

*Summa theologica and Loci communes, were the ordinary titles of theological theories before and after the Reformation.

And what basis, gentlemen, would you construct for theology, if not the Word of God, and faith in the divine testimony wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit? If theology has not that basis, it must of necessity repose either upon the transitory direction of the spirit of the age, or else upon the adventuresome speculations of the human reason. With only such points of support, knowledge will have strange wanderings, lamentable falls, and will soon be lost from view in those winding passages, the limits of which are overhung with the shades of night. In order that the tree of knowledge may prosper, it must, as David says, be planted upon the banks of the stream of the law of God; and it should uniformly and exclusively gather from that pure current its sap and its elements of life. Then it will send forth its fruit in its season; its foliage will not dry up; it shall flourish for ever. But if any strange elements should be absorbed by the roots, the same tree will soon change its color, will languish, will perish and die.

Or rather, plant the tree upon the declivity of Golgotha, in the shadow of the cross, and under the very eyes of the love of the crucified God, who is the wisdom of God and life itself. That which gives life to the most humble faith of the poorest believer, is the same as that which gives it the most sublime knowledge of the wisest teacher.

At

Faith is not only the creative principle of theology, but is also its renovating power. Knowledge--we have too many examples of the fact-can detach itself from the Word of God. such times it goes astray; a fever of incredulity rages in the veins, and a crisis has entered upon its development. What will heal the disorder? What will restore the wanderer to the right path?

Statutes, laws, acts of power? Doubtless those who have been appointed to the oversight of education ought to guard against the influence of that which, instead of communicating life, gives only death. But any external force, arrests of justice, and human power, will never suffice for the cure of the malady. Restrain its action temporarily without, and it will only commit the greater ravages within.

What then shall save knowledge?

The life of the Church, my brethren, the simple faith of believers. That faith and that life existed anterior to all theology, and independently of all knowledge; they can never perish, and in them is found the energy which is to heal the nations. Upon theology they exercise a powerful reaction. The teachers, environed on every side with manifestations of the Christian faith, will, in spite of themselves, be drawn back, and that by an irresistible force, towards the focus of light and life. They will be constrained to abandon, one by one, all their perilous positions. Truth every day will gain greater power in the camp of the enemy, and will gradually concentrate an overwhelming opposing force. Knowledge itself, obliged to recognize the fact of her former detachment from that to which it ought to have been united,