Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/65

 and regulates all the rest. For just as a blind man may turn the eyes of his head to the sun and see no physical light, so the rationalist may turn the eyes of his mind to the Bible and see no spiritual truth. It takes the eyes of the heart to see spiritual truth, and they can function only through faith.

b. The Method of the Believer.

In order clearly to understand the method of faith, we need right here to guard against another extreme. By the contrasts we have drawn in the last few pages, it is not at all meant that there is no place in the exercise of faith for the exercise also of the intellect at the same time and toward the same object. For, in the nature of things, the intellect must be exercised in a mental apprehension of that which is to be believed before the way is even open for faith to begin.

Neither is it meant that reasoning is so out of harmony with and destructive of faith that its exercise in connection with faith is impossible. For faith is not blind credulity; it is not jumping in the dark; it is not an irrational impulse; it is not swallowing something with the eyes shut. It is rather an open-eyed stepping out on to the spiritual foundations of the universe. But notice—it is stepping out on to spiritual foundations.

It is meant, however, by the contrasts above, that the moment an intellectual apprehension of what is to be believed, followed by a conclusion to accept or reject it according to whether it is reasonable or not—the moment such an attitude is substituted for the heart acceptance of the bare Word of God, even though