Faith

of nece ity, believes in wonders, and fears examination. Buddha shook off Bhakti when, after studying all faiths and philosophies of his age, he rejected them all alike as unproven, and attained to the path. He too had felt a “ call,” like many another pious youth. Yet some, like Confucius, have reached wisdom without suffering from the struggle which early belief makes hard for others. Cha it any a, the Vishniiva reformer, on the other hand, declared Bhakti to be “more efficacious than abstraction; than knowledge of the divine nature (on which Brahman philosophers insisted); than subjugation of the pa ions; than the practice of the Yoga (austerities); than charity, virtue, or anything deemed most meritorious ” (Wilson), Faith, said the Christian (Heb. xi, 1), “is the a urance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen”—of things therefore that can only be imagined. But the word for “evidence” is not witne (martiria), but only “statement” (elenkhos). It is faith such as led Abraham to offer up bis son in obedience to a dream; or Sarah to believe, though she knew the physical laws of nature —and laughed. The walls of Jericho fell, not to battering rams, or the blowing of trumpets, or even because of perambulations with the sacred ark, but to faith, which slaughtered old and young, guilty and innocent alike, in the doomed city—a fair example of the evils that followed an unreasoning faith in a “God of Battles.’ Faith has required bloody sacrifices, and scorns doubt, and enquiry, by which alone we advance on the road to truth.