March 29

She turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

FAITH is a certain pliability of the living mind in respect to the Truth, by which a man is ready to follow it "whithersoever it goeth" with perfect liberty, certain that God "will save His word in all things," and "be justified in His sayings." It is not a state of inflexible rigidity—of a rock graven with inscribed formulæ; but of a living converse between the Creator and the creature who sits at the Master's feet and drinks in the ever-progressive stream of His words. A faith which does not grow every instant into something new that swallows up and includes the faith of the moment before, is dead in formalism and unreality; for life is movement before everything. Hence while living faith clings with unshaken confidence to the Divine Word, it is wholly detached from its own inadequate apprehension of that word; ever ready to receive continual correction and adjustment; never surprised at any new face the familiar but many-sided Truth may present. It will never be so obstinately set upon looking for the Truth in one direction only, according to some ungrounded prepossession, as not to be ready at a word to turn right round and find Jesus standing in the light of the Sun, not lying in the darkness of the tomb; living among the living, not dead among the dead— nearest where He seemed farthest away.

FATHER TYRKELL

FAITH AND REASON