t this criticism misses altogether the drift of
St. John's teaching. Faith, for him, is not the acceptance of a
proposition upon evidence; still less is it the acceptance of a
proposition in the teeth of evidence. It is, in the first instance,
the resolution "to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis"; that is
(may we not say?), to follow Christ wherever He may lead us. Faith
begins with an experiment, and ends with an experience.[65] "He that
believeth in Him hath the witness in himself"; that is the
verification which follows the venture. That even the power to make
the experiment is given from above; and that the experience is not
merely subjective, but an universal law which has had its supreme
vindication in history,--these are two facts which we learn
afterwards. The converse process, which begins with a critical
examination of documents, cannot establish what we really want to
know, however strong the evidence may be. In this sense, and in this
only, are Tennyson's words true, that "nothing worthy proving can be
proven, nor yet disproven."

Faith, thus defined, is hardly distinguishable from that mixture of
admiration, hope, and love by which Wordsworth says that we live. Love
especially is intimately connected with faith. And as the Christian
life is to be considered as, above all things, a state of union with
Christ, and of His members with one another, love of the brethren is
inseparable from love of God. So intimate is this union, that hatred
towards any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God.
The mystical union is indeed rather a bond between Christ and the
Church, and between man and man as members of Christ, than between
Christ and individual souls. Our Lord's prayer is "that they all may
be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in us." The personal relation between the soul and Christ
is not to be denied; but it can only be enjoyed when the person has
"come to himself" as a member of a body. This involves an inward
transit from the false isolated self to the larger life of sympathy
and love which alone makes us persons. Those who are thus living
according to their true nature are rewarded with an intense
unshakeable conviction which makes them independent of external
evidences. Like the blind man who was healed, they can say, "One thing
I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." The words "we know" are
repeated again and again in the first E