February 16

The ways unto God are as the number of the souls of the children of men.

A LIVING faith always has this quality of growing and changing with our growth. It is incomplete because we, thank God, are incomplete. Mankind is still "in the making"; we know in part, and we prophesy in part. The witness of the heart to God has long made its deep and tender tones heard throughout the world. The witness of the conscience, the "stern lawgiver" who "yet doth wear the Godhead's most benignant grace," has caused its trumpet-call to sound during long ages. The full witness of the reason is yet to come. Latest born of our faculties, it has been the slowest to reach maturity, the last to come to complete self-consciousness. But it has its goal (which in a sense is also its starting-point) in God's own truth; and as faith leads us onward toward the beatific vision which shall one day be ours, it will take away and give us back, transmuted and purified, each of our early beliefs in turn, till nothing is left that has not been baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire.

WILLIAM RALPH INGE

A LIVING FAITH