facts relating to the order of the universe and our place in it. And we shall see in the sequel that this conviction is not the result of a purely intellectual judgment, but has a more vital origin. It involves an eager and loyal choice, a resolution to abide by the hypothesis that the nature of things is good, and on the side of goodness. That is to say, Faith, in the religious sense, is not simply belief; it is inseparable from the sister virtues of hope and love.1

After this preliminary statement about the meaning of the word, I will proceed to sketch the historical growth of 'Faith' as a theological concept. For it is a complex idea and has a history.

Let us take first the history of the Greek words TíσTIS and πιστεύειν. Πίστις means the trust which we place in any person or thing, and the conviction, or persuasion, which we hold about any subject.2 Less frequently, it means fidelity, and so the pledge of fidelity, acquiring the meaning of promise, security. Eschylus (Frag. 276) has oỷk åvdpòs ὅρκοι πίστις, ἀλλ' ὅρκων ἀνήρ; and πίστις became a common technical term for 'proof.' 3 The word first

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occurs in Hesiod—πίστεις γάρ τοι ὁμῶς καὶ ἀπιστίαι ὤλεσαν avopas, i.e. 'in money matters be neither confiding nor suspicious'; while Theognis has learned by experience that it is safest to trust nobody: πίστει χρήματ' ὄλεσσα, ἀπιστίῃ δ' ἐσάωσα. In the first-mentioned sense it is opposed to knowledge, and is thus almost a synonym of δόξα, though πίστις could never (like δόξα) be contrasted with ἀλήθεια, or νόησις, but only with ἐπιστήμη, or γνώσις. Very instructive is Plato (Rep. 10. 601): TOû aνTοû ǎρa σκεύους ὁ μὲν ποιητὴς πίστιν ὀρθὴν ἕξει περὶ κάλλους τε καὶ πονηρίας, ξυνὼν τῷ εἰδότι καὶ ἀναγκαζόμενος ἀκούειν παρὰ τοῦ

1 On the connection between Faith and Hope, cf. Newman, Lectures on Justification, p. 256 n. 'Luther and Calvin both virtually grant that faith and hope are inseparable, or parts of one thing, though Luther (and perhaps Calvin) denies this of faith and love.' Cf. p. 15.

• Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon, p. 495. Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 156.

εἰδότος, ὁ δὲ χρώμενος ἐπιστήμην ( though the implement is the same, the maker will have only a correct belief about the beauty or badness of it . . . whereas the user will have knowledge'). Пioris is not necessarily weak conviction, but it is unverified conviction. As, however, all conviction should seek to verify itself, it may be called incomplete science. Plato (Rep. 6. 511; 7. 533) gives us two divisions of the mind, intelligence (vónous) and opinion (sóga), each having two subdivisions. The four divisions thus produced are science ( Tý), understanding (Stávola), belief (or faith or persuasion-iσTIs), and the perception of images (cikaσía). And he says that as being is to becoming, so is intelligence to opinion; and as intelligence is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to the perception of images. Faith, for Plato, is a mental condition which still takes the visible and opinable for true; though it possesses a higher degree of clearness than eikaσía. It is a stepping-stone to true knowledge.

Ilioris is used in classical Greek of belief in the gods; generally (e.g. Eur. Med. 414) of confidence in them rather than of belief in their existence; but examples of the other sense are not wanting. By the time of Plutarch, Greek thought was already familiar with the idea of 'Faith' as that which guards a traditional deposit of divine truth. Cf. Mor. 756 Β. : ἀρκεῖ ἡ πάτριος καὶ παλαιὰ πίστις, ἧς οὐκ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν οὐδ ̓ ἀνευρεῖν τεκμήριον ἐναργέστερον. “The ancient ancestral Faith is sufficient, than which it is impossible to mention, or to discover, anything clearer. If [he continues] this common foundation for the pious life is disturbed and shaken at any point, the whole becomes insecure and suspected.'

The verb ToтEVELV, when used in relation to persons, seems to have expressed a somewhat stronger emotion than the substantive Tíoris, and accordingly it was not much used in classical Greek of mere belief in the existence of gods. For this belief voμígev was the regular word,

indicating acceptance of statutory beliefs rather than any warmer sentiment. At the beginning of the Memorabilia, Socrates is accused of not believing in' (voμíce) the gods whom the city worships, and Xenophon replies that since he certainly trusted in the gods, how can it be true that he did not believe in them? So a distinction is recognised which is of great importance in the history of Faith.

In the later Platonists, we have a doctrine of Faith which closely resembles that which I shall advocate in these lectures. The nature of God, says Plotinus, is difficult to conceive and perhaps impossible to define. But we are sure of His existence, because we experience, in our inmost being, expressible and definable impressions when we come near to Him, or rather when He comes near to us. The ardent desire with which we turn towards Him is accompanied by a pain caused by the consciousness of something lacking in ourselves; we feel that there is something wanting to our being. It must be by His presence in our souls that God reveals Himself to us, for we have no means of knowing things except by something analogous to contact. The light of God's presence is brighter than the light of science or reason. But none can see it who is not made like to God, and whose being is not, like that of God, brought to an inner unity. Elsewhere, Plotinus explains Faith as a kind of spiritual perception, as opposed to demonstration (áródeigis), which is the result of reasoning.1

In Hebrew, the verb 'trust' or 'believe' is connected with words meaning 'support' and 'nourish'; and the fundamental idea is stability, trustworthiness. 'Whatever holds, is steady, or can be depended upon, whether a wall which securely holds a nail (Isa. xxii. 23, 25), or a brook which does not fail (Jer. xvi. 18), or a kingdom which is firmly established (2 Sam. vii. 16), or an assertion which has 1 Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, v. 5, 11; vi. 7, 24-26; vi. 9, 4.

been verified (Gen. xlii. 20), or a covenant which endures for ever (Ps. lxxxix. 28), or a heart found faithful (Neh. ix. 8), or a man who can be trusted (Neh. xiii. 13), or God Himself who keeps covenant (Deut. vii. 9), is faithful.'1 The difference between 'believing in' (placing trust in) and simple credence is marked in the Old Testament by different prepositions following the verb. It cannot be said that the verb is very common in the Old Testament in a religious sense; and there is in Biblical Hebrew no substantive properly meaning 'Faith' in the active sense. Accordingly, the Revised Version only admits the substantive Faith in two places (Deut. xxxii. 20, and Hab. ii. 4). These are not translations of the same Hebrew word. In

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Deut. xxxii. 20, the words are: they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no Faith.' Here one may doubt whether the meaning is not simply,' they cannot be trusted.' In Habakkuk, however, the active sense is apparently intended: the just shall live by his faith'; but even here the sense is disputed, and the margin of the Revised Version has 'in his faithfulness.' I think, however, that the marginal rendering, though more in accordance with the usage of the word, gives a less satisfactory sense, because the context shows that a contrast is being drawn between the arrogant self-sufficiency of the Chaldæan and the humble trust in God of the 'just.' We may perhaps, then, hold that in this one passage of the Old Testament we have the word Faith used in something like its full Christian or Evangelical meaning, as an enduring attitude of the mind and heart towards God.

The notion of Faith, or rather, faithfulness, in the Old Testament is largely determined by the idea of a covenant between God and His people. Faith, trust, or faithfulness belongs to the parties to a covenant; it has no meaning outside that relation. The covenant was made between God and His people collectively; individuals were parties 1 Warfield in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible, s. v. Faith.

to it as members of the favoured nation.1 Faith, or faithfulness, is the observance of a right attitude towards the covenant with God-it is the conscientious observance of the human side of the covenant, the divine side of which is grace and mercy. We may trace a development in the Jewish ideas about this covenant. With the decay of the national fortunes Faith became more spiritual and more individualistic. It became finally the mental attitude of those who waited for the consolation of Israel,' trusting in promises which seemed every year further from their fulfilment.

The Septuagint was not able to preserve the distinction, above referred to, between 'to trust to' and 'to trust in.' It usually renders both by TσTEVE:V with the dative. Nor can the Greek reproduce all the meaning of the Hebrew words. It wavers in translating the Hebrew word for trustworthiness,' the nearest equivalent to Faith, and the corresponding adjective, rendering them sometimes by ἀλήθεια, ἀληθινός, and sometimes by πίστις and kindred adjectives. In Isa. vii. 9, there is a kind of play on words. 'If ye be not firm' (in Faith), 'ye shall surely not be made firm' (in fact); or, 'If ye hold not fast, ye shall not stand fast.' This is lost in translation. In the important verse, Hab. ii. 4, the Septuagint manifestly misunderstands the original, translating ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεώς μου ζήσεται = the Just shall live through my faithfulness (to my covenant).' Still, the word TUOTEVEL is satisfactory, as it has the right association with moral trust, as well as with what may be called the earlier Greek associations of Tiσris, as opposed to ἐπιστήμη.

Philo's notion of Faith is characteristic of his position as a mediator between Jewish and Greek thought. As a Jew, he emphasises trust as determining Faith; but his philosophy leads him to single out the unchangeableness of God almost exclusively as the ground and object of Faith. 1 A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, p. 280.