"MacDONALD, George - Faith, the Proof of the Unseen" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

had gone too far and that St. James had to write that epistle to set him right.
It is not any of us, friends, that will find St. Paul or St. James wrong, nor
was there the smallest difference between them. On the contrary, I assert that
faith is simply the greatest work that man can do. Taking it in its simplest,
original development, it is the highest effort of the whole human intellect,
imagination, will, in the highest direction. Never does the human nature put
forth itself in such power, with such effort, with such energy as to have faith
in God. I say it is the highest, and sometimes the most difficult, work that a
man can do.
Then, that is attended by thousands and thousands of other works of faith. In
the present state of England's history--and we may add that of several other
countries to it--it seems as if it were more difficult to believe than ever it
was before. It seems also--I may say seems--it seems also to many people, and
some people in certain moods, as if there was less faith in the world than ever
there was before. And when they look in their own hearts--even those who would
feign rank themselves among believers they recognise there an amount of doubt,
difficulty, and fear that appals themselves. What?! Is the whole thing going to
vanish like "the baseless fabric of a vision"?--all this story of Christ, His
life and death, and the conquests that were made in His name--is it all going
out of sight; and are we to be left where the world was before He came? I should
like to help some of you, if I can, friends, about all this. It troubles some of
your hearts; and some of you, perhaps, ought to be a little more troubled about
it than you are, because it lies at your door in some measure; but I should like
if, ,on the minds of young men particularly--although there is sad enough ground
for including young women, too--if I could impress upon them that, let the thing
look to them as it may, it is a notion and a false idea of Christianity that has
come into their minds, partly because their own doors were opened narrow, partly
because their own aspirations were so low, partly because they have been so
little in earnest for the truth; it is about to vanish away and must perish; but
the true thing--God's notion of it; what Christ thought and felt while He was
here; what He thinks and feels now when He is here still--is that which shall
never pass away but is the true fountain of truth and life to all the
generations. But first of all let me say a word to the man or woman who is
troubled with the difficulty of believing. Now-a-days, there is such a talk
about science, and such a contempt poured forth on the man who thinks to walk
without that kind of science for the guide of his life, who has a different
goal, a different ambition, whose thoughts stretch further than the things of
this life--the things he sees and hears and handles--if there be such a man
among us, friends, who does the work of the world, and does it well, but his
head is in heaven--that is the kind of thing we ought all to be an to seek. And
there are perhaps a few even now of this kind, and there are more growing. But
let me say to you about your own fears and doubts and difficulties--it is a
great thing to believe. Are you fit to believe? I have just said that I believe
it to be the loftiest exercise of the human being and of human nature. How can
you expect to believe? Are you like Nathanial--an Israelite indeed, a man
without guile? What are your ways? What have you been about? What are your
desires in life? How have you been ordering yourself? If it may be that although
the power of God upon you makes you feel that you ought to believe, that you are
such that you cannot believe, and it is your own fault. Fully do I recognise the
difficulty. I question if there is a doubt or a sense of difficulty that