Faith is a recognition of those things which are above the senses.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.
SAM HARRIS, The End of Faith
However logical our induction, the end of the thread is fastened upon the assurance of faith.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
I believe faith is a human universal. We are endowed at birth with nascent capacities for faith. How these capacities are activated and grow depends to a large extent on how we are welcomed into the world and what kinds of environments we grow in. Faith is interactive and social; it requires community, language, ritual and nurture. Faith is also shaped by initiatives from beyond us and other people, initiatives of spirit or grace. How these latter initiatives are recognized and imaged, or unperceived and ignored, powerfully affects the shape of faith in our lives.
JAMES W. FOWLER, introduction, Stages of Faith
In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart--in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
While the object of faith, or truth to be believed, remains constant or invariable, faith itself has degrees. It may be weak or strong, and the weak as well as the strong may be saving. It is the object, not the receptive instrument, which saves. If it had been anywhere said that he who believes enough shall be saved, we might be forever doubtful whether the standard had been reached. But the promise is, "He that believeth shall be saved." A feeble hand may as effectually endorse a check for a hundred thousand pounds as the hand of a giant. The entire charge of an electro-magnetic system of batteries may be drawn out by the touch of an infant.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER, Faith
No piece of evidence--or lack of evidence--can either support or refute faith. Unfortunately, few people realize that. Some people search for proof of spiritual things in the material world. That is foolish and doomed, because nothing material has any bearing on anything spiritual. Spiritual truths can only be learned via spiritual means.
BOB LONSBERRY, A Various Language
The magic key that unlocks the treasure house of infinite supply is FAITH in the almighty God whom Jesus called His Father--the Supreme Life-giver--and realization that nothing is impossible with God. Faith that He hears when you call, or ask for anything, and knowledge that it is His pleasure to give you the desires of your heart to make your life comfortable and happy. I have often said in my lectures all over the world that if the dear, precious souls who are in the poorhouses today had known the power of FAITH, they could be living in beautiful homes and have someone to take care of them if that was their desire. If they had asked God in their daily prayers to provide such homes. Instead of that, those same dear souls have told me they lived lives of fear that they would end their days in a poorhouse. Therefore there was no other place for them. They could not end their days in a rich-house when all the time they were visualizing a poorhouse.
PHOEBE MARIE HOMES, Faith: The Magic Key to Miracle Healing
Faith enables many of us to endure life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.
SAM HARRIS, The End of Faith
Faith is an orientation of the total person, giving purpose and goal to one's hopes and strivings, thoughts and actions.
JAMES W. FOWLER, Stages of Faith
We do not compromise our own faith by admitting the honesty of another's doubt.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
No man can be any greater of any stronger, in Christianity, than his faith.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER, Faith
If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists should be less moral than believers. In fact, they should be utterly immoral. Are they? Do members of atheist organizations in the United States commit more than their fair share of violent crimes? Do the members of the National Academy of Sciences, 93 percent of whom do not accept the idea of God, lie and cheat and steal with abandon? We can be reasonably confident that these groups are at least as well behaved as the general population. And yet, athiests are the most reviled minority in the United States.
SAM HARRIS, Letter to a Christian Nation
Faith means a sanctified imagination, or the imagination applied to spiritual things.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
A transcendent faith, a cheerful trust turns the darkness into a pillar of fire, and the cloud by day into a perpetual glory. They who thus march on are refreshed even in the wilderness, and hear streams of gladness trickling among the rocks.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
Faith is a coat against ... nakedness. For most of us, most of the time, faith functions so as to screen off the abyss of mystery that surrounds us. But we all at certain times call upon faith to provide nerve to stand in the presence of the abyss--naked, stripped of life supports, trusting only in the being, the mercy and the power of the Other in the darkness. Faith helps us form a dependable "life space," an ultimate environment. At a deeper level, faith undergirds us when our life space is punctured and collapses, when the felt reality of our ultimate environment proves to be less than ultimate.
JAMES W. FOWLER, introduction, Stages of Faith
If faith, about which we are now speaking, were so inscrutable, undistinguishable, and complex a product of our activity as many suppose, we might have expected numerous and most guarded definitions of it in the Scriptures. As faith is the instrument of salvation, we might expect that so doubtful an act of the soul would be set forth by numerous distinctive tests. If the faith of true experience is so utterly diverse from all the believings of mankind about all other things, we might confidently look for certain marks of difference. On the contrary, often as believing, belief, and faith are mentioned in the Scriptures, they are always introduced as if with a presumption that the words are to be taken in their ordinary sense. This gives us much reason to conclude that evangelical faith is a simpler thing, and more familiar to us every day, than the theologians sometimes teach. The fear of such theologians is, lest faith shall be made so easy, and so little diverse from common natural acts of man, that careless and unconverted sinners will flatter themselves that they have faith when they have none. They therefore interpose numberless cautions, to prevent mistake as to faith. They sedulously distinguish various kinds of faith. They refer faith to various so-called faculties or powers of the soul; the nomenclature of which faculties varies with every system. They dissect the act of faith into several parts, nicely following one another, and of which no one must be wanting, or the faith is spurious. And they succeed in hopelessly confounding some, and landing others on the unscriptural conclusion that faith is something different from believing, or accepting truth as true.
JAMES WADDEL ALEXANDER, Faith
Scepticism has never founded empires, established principles, or changed the world's heart. The great doers of history have always been men of faith.
E. H. CHAPIN, Living Words
That state of mind in which a man is impressed with invisible things is faith.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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