If we look at the realm of knowledge, how exceedingly small and limited is that part acquired through our own senses; how wide is that we gain from other sources.
We know the past and its great events, the present in its multitudinous complications, chiefly through faith in the testimony of others.
The realm of immediate or personal knowledge is a narrow circle in which these bodies move; the realm of knowledge derived through faith is as wide as the universe, and old as eternity.
Passing into practical life, illustrations of this fact are found everywhere; the distant, or the unseen, steadies and strengthens us against the rapid whirl of things around us.
Not in purity or in holiness merely, for in Paradise man was holy, and he shall be holy when redeemed through the sacrifice of Christ and made an heir of heaven.
If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.
If you live for fame, men may turn against you.
If you live for pleasure, your ability to enjoy it may pass away and your senses grow dim.
If you live for any joy on earth, you may be forsaken; but, oh, live for Jesus, and he will never forsake you!
There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.
The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.
I do not purpose to discuss faith in its dogmatic sense today.
Taking it in its wider and generic application, I understand faith to be the supplement of sense; or, to change the phrase, all knowledge which comes not to us through our senses we gain by faith in others.
Of history, how little do we know by personal contact; we have lived a few years, seen a few men, witnessed some important events; but what are these in the whole sum of the world's past.
If, then, knowledge be power, how much more power to we gain through the agency of faith, and what elevation must it give to human character.
If, then, faith widens the connections, it elevates the man.
Angels are spirits, flames of fire; they are higher than man, they have wider connections.
Man wants to be reconciled to God; wants to know that the past is forgiven.
Human nature is the same now as when Adam hid from the presence of God; the consciousness of wrong makes us unwilling to meet those whom we have offended.
We shall see our friends again. We can lay them in the grave; we know they are safe with God.
