for example, the notable case of the Syro-Phenician woman, whose faith he seems to have regarded as especially worthy of remark, and see in what it consists. Believing that He had come from God, and that He was invested with miraculous powers to execute God's gracious purposes, she had sought Him out to engage His assistance on behalf of her child, whose disease was beyond all human aid. She is received by Him, as you remember, in a way calculated to extinguish all the hope of relief which she had cherished, "He answered not a word." But she persevered under this heavy discouragement, in supplicating His compassion, so earnestly indeed that the disciples interposed in her behalf, but less, as it would seem, from sympathy with her in her distress, than from impatience of her urgent entreaties for relief. They ask Him to grant her petition that she may go away, and no longer follow them with her outcries. In answer to them the Lord speaks, though He had refused to vouchsafe any reply to the suppliant herself. "I am not sent," said He, "but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." His mission did not extend to the outcast race to

which this heart-broken mother belonged. Of what avail, then, can it be to press her petition upon Him any more ? But she does press it still upon Him with deeper humility, but with greater earnestness than before. And, when at length her importunity brings from Him an answer addressed to herself, it is even harder and more disheartening than the one given to her through the disciples: "It is not meet," He says, "to take the children's bread and to cast it to the dogs."

To confidence less steadfast such an answer would have been a final repulse; but hers was too genuine and too strong to be repelled. Her memorable reply shows at once the nature, the foundation, and the strength of the principle which urged her to prayer, and sustained her in it. It

showed that she confided in the Ruler of the world, not because she was insensible to the great and perplexing inequalities in human condition which He has established here; but because she had been enabled to see, in all the arrangements of His providence, the gracious character which pervades them all; to see that His tender mercies are over all His other works; that nothing, however humble, is neglected or overlooked by Him, but that He has wisely and kindly accommodated the circumstances to the nature even of the meaner animals, so as to secure a supply for the wants of the very lowest of the beings He has made. Her reply, I say, proves that she had been enabled to discern all this, and enabled her to draw, too, from all that she saw, the very lesson of humble confidence in God that the Lord's touching expostulation, just now adverted to, was calculated to teach to those who were so much more favorably circumstanced for collecting it. "Truth, Lord," she replies, "yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their Master's table."

Is it not the conviction thus affectingly expressed, that however low were the place which she occupied among mankind, however far removed she was from the high privileges which she unrepiningly saw others enjoying, she was not scorned or neglected by her Creator; but that, filling the station assigned to her by His wisdom, she was still the object, in the proper degree of which He alone was the proper judge, of His love and care. Is it not manifest, I say, that it is this humble and steadfast confidence in God, acquired under circumstances so untoward, and retained under a trial so severe, that moves the admiration and wonder (if we may so speak) which appear in the Lord's reply, "O woman, great is thy faith!"

I need hardly direct your attention to the importance of this example as confirmatory of the conclusion which we

drew from those which we looked at before. These instances, rightly considered, seemed not only to fix the true nature of the principle, but sufficiently to overthrow both the erroneous notions of it; for we saw that, when the Lord reprehends the want of faith in those to whom He speaks, there is not anything in what draws forth this reproof which can be fairly described as a failure in obedience, or a want of belief in any specific proposition proposed as the object of belief, or a want of belief in any sense that does not identify belief with trust; it is plainly want of trust that he condemns. And you must see how strikingly this last example, which is of a different kind, confirms the conclusion as to the proper sense of the word to which the former example led. For here, His recommendation of faith is drawn forth by no signal act of obedience, by no act of obedience of any kind; and as little by any act of belief as distinguished from trust. It is manifestly, as I have before said, an exhibition of trust in God, every way deserving of wonder; but of trust, it is to be remarked, not manifested in believing what the Lord said, but in disbelieving it when in its apparent sense it contradicted her views of God's character, and tended to shake her confidence in Him by representing Him as careless about her sufferings, and indisposed to relieve them.

Here, then, is as strong a confirmation as could be desired of the sense which the former cases seem so clearly to assign to the Word. And if you examine in the same way other instances you will find, I think, just the same elements in the state of mind commended by our Lord under the name of faith. Not merely will you find in all of them strong desire for some benefit, and a strong hope of obtaining it, but, moreover, firm confidence that the Being applied to could and would bestow it, appears clearly to all.

But I must leave it to private investigation to establish this, and must pass over all intermediate instances of the use of the Word in the Acts and the Epistles, that we may have time for considering a passage which it is impossible to omit, and which seems to render the consideration of others superfluous; I mean the well-known account of faith which occurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Apostle, as you know, there describes it as "the substance of things hoped for-the evidence of things not seen." And though there may be felt to be at first a little obscurity in the word "substance," yet I suppose most persons understand the sentence as conveying that it is the character or property of faith to give to things future and hoped for, all the reality of actual existence, all the effect upon the feelings and the conduct of substantial realities. And this is so easy a figure, and so fairly represents what is most important in the Apostle's meaning, that I do not know whether it be worth mentioning here, that the original probably expresses this meaning more directly. For while substance (taken in its common signification) is one of the primitive meanings of the Greek word for which it stands in our translation, that word has among its derived meanings confident expectation; and is, in fact, used familiarly in that sense both by sacred and profane writers. And when you recollect that, in this way of writing, the things not seen in the second clause, of which faith is the evidence or conviction, are the things hoped for in the first, you must see that this character of faith which describes it as the confident expectation of the things for which we hope; and a conviction that, though unseen, they are real and sure, coincides with the account which I have attempted to give from other sources; and the entire of what follows falls in perfectly with this account, and strongly confirms it.

I do not mean to go through, in detail, all the instances of the force of faith in God, which the Apostle takes from the lives of patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs, to illustrate his general account of the principle. But by referring to the places you will easily see that in all these servants of God, the principle, though existing doubtless in different degrees, and though tried and exhibited in very different ways, and upon very different occasions, is everywhere the same; that it is confidence in God, founded upon such a manifestation of His character as He saw fit to make; a reliance so deep and secure upon His power, His goodness, and His truth, as enabled them to hope undoubtingly for all He promised, and in hope to endure patiently all that He appointed, and to perform resolutely all that He enjoined.

The Apostle points to Noah, for example, sustained by this principle amidst the scoffs of a faithless generation, in his patient preparation of the appointed refuge against the day of God's wrath; to the severely tried father of the faithful in the strength of the same principle, raising his hand to slay his son, "his only son Isaac, whom he loved," at the command of Him who had given him that son by a miracle, and in whom he trusted as able and true to restore him by a miracle again; to Moses in faith, abandoning the luxuries of a sinful court, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, and esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the pleasures of Egypt, in certain hope of a future recompense of reward, and fearlessly encountering the vindictive wrath of an earthly monarch, under a sense of the presence of Him who is invisible; to Jephtha and Gideon, and the other heroes of Jewish history, who, in faith, renounced the arm of flesh in peril, and fearlessly trusted in Him who is mighty to save; yea, even to the heathen Rahab, in faith, severing so