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The Fundamentals. scarcely read like a definition at all. For a definition is a description which fits the thing defined and it alone, so that the thing is fixed and settled by the description. But the words “certainty of things hoped for, proof of things not seen,” are not exclusively applicable to Faith. They would be equally fit to describe, for example, God’s promises in their power. For they are able to make the hoped-for certain and the unseen visible. And this is just what we take the words to mean as a description of Faith. They do not define Faith in itself; they describe it in its power. They are the sort of statement we make when we say, Knowledge is power. That is not a defi nition of knowledge, by any means. It is a description of it in one of its great effects. The whole chapter, Heb. 11, illustrates this, and, as it seems to me, confirms our simple definition of Faith. Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses—they all treated the hoped-for and the unseen as solid and certain because they all relied upon the faithful Promiser. Their victories were mysteriously great, their lives were related vitally to the Unseen. But the action to this end was on their part sublimely simple. I t was reliance on the Promiser. It was taking God at His Word. I remember a friend of mine, many years ago, complain ing of the skeptical irreverence of a then lecturer at Oxford, who asked his class for a definition of Faith. Heb. 11:1 was quoted as an answer, and he replied, “You could not have given me a worse definition.” Now this teacher may have been really flippant. But I still think it possible that he meant no contempt of the Scripture. He may merely have objected, though with needless roughness, to a false use of ihe Scrip ture. He felt, I cannot but surmise, that Heb. 11:1 was really no definition at all. DEFINITION AND EFFECT. I t is all-important to remember alike this simplicity of
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