July 16

Tuesday after Trinity Sunday

For we walk by faith. 2 Corinthians 5:7.

WE learn from the Festival of the Blessed Trinity in Unity to walk by faith, that is, not to ask jealously and coldly for strict argument, but to follow generously what has fair evidence for it, even though it might have more systematic evidence. It is in this way that we believe that there is a God. Our very state and warfare is one of faith. Let us reach after and, as it were, catch at the things of the next world. There is a voice within us which assures us that there is something higher than earth. There is that in our hearts which prompts us to religion, and which condemns and chastises sin. This yearning of our nature is met and sustained, it finds an object to rest upon, when it hears of the existence of an all-powerful, all-gracious Creator. It excites us to a noble faith in what we cannot see. Believe: evidence will come after faith as its reward, better than before it as its groundwork. Faith soars aloft; it listens for the notes of heaven, the faint voices or echoes which scarcely reach the earth, and it thinks them worth all the louder sounds of cities or of schools of men. Let us embrace the sacred mystery of the Trinity in Unity, which, as the Creed tells us, is the ground of the Catholic religion. Let us think it far too great a privilege for sinners such as we are, for a fallen people in a degenerate age, to inherit the faith once delivered to the Saints; let us accept it thankfully; let us guard it watchfully; let us transmit it faithfully to those who come after us, bearing in mind that

The greater height [our] graces reach, The clearer they the mystery teach; Saints best in their own souls may read The illustration of their creed.