ON FAITH 95 



Faith, in the reality of such truth, serves to repress the 

 arrogance of man, and enables him to discover that he is 

 really but an atom in the inappreciable " dust of the 

 balance," and therefore, to all intents and purposes, a 

 negligible quantity, while, at the same time, it stimulates 

 him to make the best of his opportunities to make himself 

 appreciable in the absolutely true and exhaustive reckoning 

 of the universe in all its parts, the atom, then, having 

 its place recognised and its essential value as an indis- 

 pensable part of the whole assigned to it, with the precision 

 of absolute law and as the reward of duty done and 

 purpose fulfilled. 



If we might say so, faith, as between the component 

 parts of the universe of both the so-called animate and 

 inanimate alike, permeates the whole, i.e. every unit of 

 that whole responds, with unquestioning alacrity, to the 

 behests and necessities of the whole, whether consciously 

 or unconsciously, and thus the progress of universal events 

 is regulated by universal assent, notwithstanding the 

 sometimes apparent frictions between passing examples of 

 them. Thus, great physical masses cling to each other 

 by the exercise of cohesion, chemical elements ally them- 

 selves by the exercise of affinities, the ivy hugs the ruin 

 with the strength of absolute necessity, the tiny fish 

 companions play about the cavernous jaws of the ravenous 

 shark, the parasite insinuates itself into the good or bad 

 graces of its host, while still a hundred and one other 

 examples, equally obvious, might be enumerated, in which 

 the exercise of mutual faith, trust, or confidence, char- 

 acterises the relationships maintained between the elements 

 composing them, all proving that faith, or its equivalent, 

 permeates nature, and is largely responsible for the admini- 

 stration of her laws and for the shaping of her destinies. 



While we thus recognise that faith, or its equivalent, 

 is largely in evidence throughout the inanimate and lower 

 animate world as a factor in the great work of evolution, 

 we must be prepared to find that it projects itself along 

 the lines of animate existence into the regions of conscious 

 being, and that it there receives its highest development 

 amid the higher animal world, and finally in the human 

 family, where, at last ceasing to be blind and assuming 



