Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

422 ;rbc Doliest of ail
realities of the future and the unseen. Just as we have our
senses, through which we hold communication with the physical
universe, so faith is the spiritual sense or organ through which
the soul comes into contact with and is affected by the spiritual
world. Just as the sense of seeing or hearing is a ^dormant
power till the objective reality, the light or the sound, strikes it,
so faith in itself is a sense with no power beyond the possibility
or capacity of receiving the impressions of the eternal. It is
as an empty vessel which wants to be filled with its unseen
contents. It is only when the eternal realities draw near and
exercise their power that faith becomes and is the substance of
things hoped for, the foundation which they lay in the soul,
the proof or conviction of things
unseen, the convincing power
with which they give evidence and proof of their own supernatural
existence.^ Faith as a dormant faculty is the capacity
for receiving this communication ; faith as an active power is
what it is in virtue of the overshadowing of the Invisible. The
Invisible takes the initiative and wakens faith ; faith receives
the impression and seeks for ever fuller union with it.
Faith is thus much more than trust in the word of another.
That trust is of extreme importance as its initial exercise, but
' The iwo words substance and proof are used bolli in the objective and sub
jective sense. The word for substance properly means the foundation, and is used
of the real nature of a thing as opposed to appearance. So, in chap. i. 3, of the
substance of God, the divine essence. Or it is used of the confidence which knows
tha4 it rests on a sure foundation. So, in chap. iii. 14, the beginning of our confidence.
It is of importance to hold fast the connection between the two meanings. So the
word proof, or conviction, from the verb used in passages, as, The Spirit shall
con'i'ince of sin, and often elsewhere of reproof, chiding, means both the conviction
of guilt, or the conviction of a truth which is brought from without, and the
subjective conviction which comes when one submits and allows himself to be convicted.
It thus means both the means of proof and the proof itself. See 2 Tim.
iii. 16 Scripture profitable for reproof.