He find Faith' (or, the Faith)' on the earth?

I am unable

to understand these words except in the sense that though God will avenge his saints' speedily' (see the preceding verse), yet the time will appear so long before the second coming that the love of many will have waxed cold. 'Faith,' or 'the Faith,' will hardly be found on the earth. 1 must confess that the words sound more like an expression of the discouragement which we know to have been felt by the second and third generations of Christians, when 'hope deferred' of the raрovoría was making the heart sick,' than what we should have expected to have from the lips of our Lord. If the words are authentic, we must take Faith' (with the best orthodox commentators) in the less natural sense of the necessary Faith,' or the Faith that perseveres in prayer.'

To sum up: Faith,' and 'to believe,' in the Synoptic Gospels, means a spirit of simple receptiveness towards the Messiah and His message, a state of mind which, unlike the righteousness of the Pharisees, requires no previous course of discipline in meritorious actions. 'Faith' is the primary motion of the human spirit when brought into contact with Divine truth and goodness. Its fruits are loyal self-devotion, even unto death, complete renunciation of all earthly ties, in so far as these could come between the disciple and his Master, untiring energy in service, and an enthusiastic temper, full of love, joy, and peace. This is really the whole content of Faith, as preached by Jesus to the simple folk whom He gathered round Him in Galilee.

We next turn to St. Paul's Epistles. I do not wish to discuss the more technical theological problems connected with the Pauline doctrine of Faith, but only to determine what the word means for him. One of the most significant passages is Gal. iii. 23, πρὸ τοῦ ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν, before the coming of [the] Faith.' This expression proves that the Christians felt their 'Faith' to be something new in the world; as new as their 'Love,' for which they required

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an almost new word in the Greek language, their 'Hope,' which the pagans conspicuously lacked (Eph. ii. 12), and their 'Joy,' which no man could take from them. The coming of Christ was the coming of [the] Faith. The Acts of the Apostles shows that the disciples soon began to call themselves 'Believers'; it was one of the earliest names of the Christian society. Whether, as Lightfoot suggests,2 the name indicates The Trusty' as well as 'The Trustful,' is uncertain; the active meaning certainly predominates. The name was familiar to friends and foes in the time of Minucius Felix, who shows that it had been Latinised— pistorum præcipuus et postremus philosophus ' 3—since 'credulus' was impossible. The pagans in the time of Celsus employed it as an opprobrious term for their opponents. In other places St. Paul uses the Faith' almost as equivalent to the whole body of Christian doctrine and practice (Gal. i. 23 ; vi. 10, τοὺς οἰκείους τῆς πίστεως= the Church; Rom. xii. 3, 6; Eph. iv. 13.)

The coming of Christ was the beginning of the dispensation of Faith, and the new virtue had found a name both in Greek and Aramaic. For the Jews, a bridge was found in the text about 'faithful Abraham,' which, as we have seen, was made to support a heavy superstructure of doctrine even by Philo, and was discussed with equal eagerness in the Rabbinical schools.1 The meaning of Faith was being defined by controversy, and the concept was as yet so fluid that St. Paul and St. James can flatly contradict each other in words without differing much in meaning.

St. Paul's theology, we are now beginning to see, must be interpreted by what we know of his personal religious experiences, which he naturally expounds by the help of current theological ideas and conceptions. Put very 1 Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, ii. 6.

2 Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 157.

8 There is a play on words here, between pistus and pistor. See the context, Octavius, 14, 4 Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 159.

shortly, his doctrine of justification by Faith was arrived at somewhat in this way. Jewish thought knew of two, and only two, roads to salvation. One was by natural descent from Abraham. This belief was discredited for various reasons. It was unethical; it was falsified by history; and it was contradicted by religious experience. The other was by righteousness. This St. Paul had tried and found wanting. Justifying righteousness was unattainable; the verdict against the claimant was a foregone conclusion. The good news of the Gospel was the assurance of a free pardon to all who would 'believe.' God will reckon their 'Faith' as righteousness. Remembering the other and older theory as to the title to salvation, descent from Abraham, he represents this saving grace also as adoption' to sonship, through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal. iii. 26). The true Israel, then, are the adopted 'children of Abraham,' and their faith in Christ is accepted instead of the impossible requirement of legal righteousness. The Christian, therefore, has a double title to salvation: he is a son and heir by adoption, and, by the free grace of God through Christ, he is accounted to have fulfilled the law of righteousness. The one condition is 'Faith.' Now what is this Faith? Not the mere fiducia (subjective assurance) of Lutheranism, even if this theory can support itself plausibly by certain expressions in St. Paul's writings. We must remember that at this time Faith involved the open acceptance of Christianity, adhesion, in the face of the world, to a persecuted sect. St. Paul never even contemplated an inner state of confidence in God's mercies through Christ that did not exhibit itself in this overt, decisive, initial step. 'If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.'1 And assuredly Faith included also a changed life

1 Rom. x. 9.

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as a member of the new society. In short, we must beware of forgetting the very different terms on which a subjective confidence in the merits of Christ's death may be held now and in St. Paul's time. What St. Paul dreads, and protests against in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, is a baptized Pharisaism which would remain in all essentials pre-Christian. He is determined that Faith shall not lose its new active meaning, as a decisive moral act of trust; he dreads that it may become again Jewish and passive, a mere fidelity to the terms of a covenant. He is fighting for the new content of the word Faith, as a Christian virtue. But it is as a Christian virtue bound up inextricably with the other Christian virtues, and especially with Love, which is its proper activity or évépyeta (Gal. v. 6), that he claims such importance for it.

This consideration, that 'Faith' in St. Paul includes not only subjective trust in Christ's promises, but all that such trust necessarily led to, in an honest and consistent man, at that time, that is, that it included public relinquishment of paganism or Judaism, and adhesion to the Christian Church at a time when the Christians were regarded as the scum of the earth (1 Cor. iv. 13), will help us to understand, in particular, what Faith in the atoning blood of Christ meant for St. Paul. I will not now discuss the sacrificial aspect of Christ's death. But it is right to insist that the key to the whole of St. Paul's Christology is the doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with his Lord, which is for him the necessary fulfilment of the life of Faith. To understand the Pauline doctrine of justification by Faith as summed up in such ideas as 'resting in the finished work of the Redeemer,' or any other detachment of Christ for us from Christ in us, is an unfortunate

1 Dobschütz (Christian Life in the Primitive Church, p. 368 seq.) has justly emphasised the remarkable standard of moral purity which was demanded and, on the whole, attained in the primitive Church.

mistake. The 'whole process of Christ' must be reenacted in the experience of the believer, and the culmination of the whole is spiritual crucifixion and resurrection. 'The new and significant peculiarity,' says Pfleiderer,1 ' in Paul's conception of Faith, is the mystical union with Christ, the self-identification with Christ in a fellowship of life and death. In this unreserved, self-forgetting surrender of the whole man to the Saviour, in which the revelation of the Divine love, as well as the embodiment of the ideal for man, is beheld as a personal life, the believer feels himself to be a new creature. That is expressed in the fine saying: "It is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live in the Faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Life in the Faith means the same as Christ liveth in me.

''

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In Romans xiv., Faith is represented as a graduated progress in the mind of Christ. 'Weakness in the Faith shows itself by anxiety to keep formal rules, by superstition, in fact. 'Faith to eat all things' is a strong Faith. So in Colossians, feasts and fast-days are shadows of things to come.' This chapter contains also the declaration (v. 23), ́ whatever is not of Faith, is sin'; which has been taken out of its context and made to support the contention that the virtues of the heathen were splendid vices,' or that all works done before justification are sinful.' St. Paul, however, appears only to mean that in matters of abstinence or indulgence we ought to have a clear conscience. The half-superstitious man is likely to wound his conscience, whether he keeps his fast or breaks it.

In the well-known words, 'We walk by Faith, not by sight' (2 Cor. v. 7), St. Paul means, as the context shows, that the form (eidos) of the exalted Christ is hidden from Faith is the condition of our present life (dià iotews 1 Primitive Christianity, vol. i. p. 347.

us.