od is to long for His existence and, further, it is to
act as if He existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the
inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets
hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this
divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.

Let us see how this may be.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Lecture I., p. 36. London, 1895, Black.

[39] _No quiero acordarme_, a phrase that is always associated in
Spanish literature with the opening sentence of _Don Quijote: En an
lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme_.--J.E.C.F.

[40] W. Hermann, _Christlich systematische Dogmatik_, in the volume
entitled _Systematische christliche Religion. Die Kultur der Gegenwart_
series, published by P. Hinneberg.

[41] _Dieu a fait l'homme a son image, mais l'homme le lui a bien
rendu_, Voltaire.--J.E.C.F.

[42] _Vivir un mundo_.

[43] _Sermons_, by the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. First series, sermon
iii., "Jacob's Wrestling." Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebuer and Co., London,
1898.

IX

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

Sanctius ac reverentius visum de actis deorum credere quam
scire.--TACITUS: _Germania_, 34.

The road that leads us to the living God, the God of the heart, and that
leads us back to Him when we have left Him for the lifeless God of
logic, is the road of faith, not of rational or mathematical conviction.

And what is faith?

This is the question propounded in the Catechism of Christian Doctrine
that was taught us at school, and the answer runs: Faith is believing
what we have not seen.

This, in an essay written some twelve years ago, I amended as follows:
"Believing what we have not seen, no! but creating what we do not see."
And I have already told you that believing in God is, in the first
instance at least, wishing that God may be, longing for the existence of
God.

The theological virtue of faith, according to the Apostle Paul, whose
definition serves as the basis of the traditional Christian
disquisitions upon it, is "the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen," _elpizomevon hupostasis, pragmaton
elegchos ou blepomenon_ (Heb. xi. 1).

The substance, or rather the support and basis, of hope, the guarantee
of it. That which connects, or, rather than connects, subordinates,
faith to hope. And in fact we do not hope because we believe, but rather
we believe because we hope. It is hop