are most conscious, the teaching of St. Paul in this
epistle is found to meet it full face.

Truly we may thank God with a continually growing gratitude for the
gift to us of a letter so inexhaustibly full of spiritual wealth, and
so complete in its provision for the whole of life.

[1] If we retain the words 'to whom' the grammar of the sentence breaks
down, but the object to whom praise is ascribed is probably the Father.

[2] 1 Cor. ii. 7, 10.

[3] See especially Eph. iii. 1-13. Cf. also 2 Tim. i. 9-11; Titus i.
2, 3.

[4] It is fully treated in Lightfoot's _Biblical Essays_ (Macmillan,
1894), pp. 287 ff, by Lightfoot himself and Hort from different points
of view, and by S. and H., pp. lxxxv. ff.

{205}

APPENDED NOTES

NOTE A. See vol. i. p. 59.

THE MEANINGS OF THE WORD 'FAITH.'

The history of the original Hebrew and Greek words for believing or
faith, is very interesting. The Hebrew verb ('aman') means 'to prop'
or 'support'[1]. Now (1) a form of this verb means 'to be supported,'
hence 'to be firm,' hence '_to be trustworthy_'; (2) another form of
the verb means 'to support oneself on,' and hence '_to trust_,' '_to
believe_.' From (1) comes the Hebrew substantive ('emunah') meaning
'faithfulness,' 'trustworthiness,' which is used, as elsewhere, so also
in Habakkuk ii. 4. In that passage it is revealed to the prophet,
that, while the apparently overwhelming wave of Chaldaean barbarism
rolls over him and passes away, 'the just man shall live (or save his
life) by his faithfulness.' But this faithfulness of the righteous
Israelite means a faithful holding on through the dark days to the word
of God as to a secure ground of confidence; and thus the substantive
used in this place in the Greek Bible ('pistis') tends to pass into the
meaning which it mostly, though not always[2], has in the New
Testament--a meaning derived {206} not from form (1) but from form (2)
of the Hebrew verb mentioned above (which however had no corresponding
substantive)--trust or faith in the word and promise of another,
especially God or Christ; or, still more characteristically, trust in
_the person_ of Christ and so of God.

Even under this heading of belief or trust the range of the word's
meaning is considerable. In one passage of St. James' Epistle it is a
bare intellectual recognition of the truth of things, without any moral
value ('the devils also believe' that God is one, James ii. 19). More
oft