The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 16
B
B
Faith, "the faith," is here written of in such a way as to imply that there is no true faith outside the fashionable page 48 theologies of Christian lands, and further, (when taken in connection with the Bishop's tenets) that God cannot be approached or worshipped except through one or other of these.
I will ask, however, if it is not a tremendous exertion of faith, a most righteous and saving one, that in spite of these fashionable creeds, and the eloquence and power with which their champions support them, in spite of the literal sense of the Word even, we believe in a God infinitely majestic, noble, just, and consistent. Should not such a faith as this be styled "the faith," rather than the one his Lordship has gone out of his way to broach!
Further, I will ask, if it is not also a tremendous exertion of faith in the infinite power of God, to give up our hereditary notions of matter for one which holds it to have even, as to its minutest portion, a proper motion of its own, one of inconceivable, rapidity—for one which holds that the minutest atom is itself an inexhaustible store of force and of the most diverse kinds.
Again, I ask, do not the development doctrines as now so profitably applied to the elucidation of nature require, of those who believe them, faith? faith to throw off the Biblical idea that God works by spurts, that is by sudden creations.
Truly it must at least be owned that these are mighty and majestic movements of faith, the most elevating and glorious of philosophical reformations, nay, of all reformations, this rising on our part to entertain these lofty ideas of God, of the infinite power of His works, and of the one grand method by which they are being eternally evolved.
Printed by James Hughes, Lambton Quay, Wellington.