then, that there is a Law of Faith, and that Faith is not a
denial of the universal reign of Law, but the perception of its widest
generalization, and therefore giving scope to its highest
specialization. The opposition between Faith and Law, of which St. Paul
so often speaks, is the opposition between this broad view of the
ultimate Principle of the Creative Law and that narrower view of
restriction by particular laws, which prevents us from grasping the Law
of Faith; but that he does not deny the _Principle_ of Law, that is the
relation between C and E, is clear from his own statement in Rom. viii,
where he says: "The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus sets me
free from the law of Sin and Death;" in other words: the Law of the Good
sets us free from the Law of Evil; and for the same reason St. James
says, that the perfect law is the law, of Liberty (Jas. i, 25).

Of course if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law of
the Universe we at once import into our thought the negative quality
which entirely vitiates our action. We rightly perceive that the laws of
the Universe can never be altered, and if our notion of Faith be, that
it is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the best
definition we can give it is that given by the little girl in the
Sunday school, who said that "Faith is trying to make yourself believe
what you know is not true." The reason for such a misconception is, that
it entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation. It considers,
only the Law, and gives no place to the Word in the scheme of things.
Yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistry
and electricity. We take the immutability of the Law as the basis of
these sciences, but we do not expect the immutable Law to produce a
photographic apparatus, or an electric train, without the intervention
of a reasoning and selective power which specializes the fundamental
general Law into particular uses. We do not look to the Law for those
powers of reasoning and selection, through which we make it work in all
the highly complex ways of our ordinary commercial applications of
it--we know better than that. We look to Personality for this. In our
every-day pursuits we always act on the maxim that "Nature unaided
fails," and that the infinite possibilities stored up in the Law, can
only be brought to light by a power of reasoning and selection working
through the Law. This co-operation of the P