Man lives by Faith, Godward and Manward––
Canon Beeching’s Eleven Sermons on Faith are in refreshing contrast with this sort of modern Sadduceeism. In his view, faith is not mystic, supernatural, an exceptional development; it is the common basis of our dealings with each other. Credit, trust, confidence––the framework of society rests upon these. ‘I can not trust you’––what worse thing can we say to one another? The law recognises every man’s right to the confidence of his fellowmen, and will have a man accounted innocent until he is proven guilty. Our whole commercial and banking systems, what are they but enormous systems of credit, and only one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, fails to sustain this credit. Family and social life rest upon credit of another sort, let us call it moral credit; and only one in a hundred or one in a thousand forfeit the trust. If one here and there give occasion for jealousy, mistrust, suspicion, why, the exception proves the rule. In his dealings with men man lives by credit; in his dealings with God, man lives by faith. Let us use the same word in both cases and say that man is a spiritual being, and in all his relations, Godward or manward, he lives by faith. How simple and easy a thing faith becomes! How especially easy to the children who trust everybody and offer a confiding hand to any guide. Could we only rid ourselves of the materialistic notion that spiritual things are not to be understood by us and that to believe in God is altogether a different thing from to trust a friend, how easy we should find the questions which we allow to stagger our faith.