2 MODERN DIFFICULTIES 



Christians should feel these difficulties, and should fail 

 to attain to that certainty touching Christian doctrine 

 which characterizes faith in its perfection. Faith may 

 be very genuine, and yet be attended by tormenting 

 doubts. One may cry, ''I believe; help Thou mine 

 unbelief," ^ without misrepresenting himself in either 

 half of the cry. Belief has many stages, reaching all 

 the way from hesitating opinion up to the full assurance 

 of knowledge; and if its goal is freedom from doubt, 

 that goal is won, in countless instances among sincere 

 believers, only by long continued struggle with diffi- 

 culties of faith. 



Obvious reasons for this exist. The truths of religion 

 are exceedingly mysterious. They may indeed be re- 

 vealed in very definite and intelligible terms — terms 

 which are true so far as they go, and which will never 

 cease to be true. But the realities with which these 

 terms are concerned transcend any capacity of ours 

 adequately to grasp them. And while it is possible 

 for us to gain true knowledge concerning them, this 

 knowledge is exceedingly fragmentary — so fragmen- 

 tary that the darkness of our ignorance often threatens 

 to swallow up and hide from view the light of the 

 knowledge which is actually available. 



The result is that the language of dogma and of 

 theology is to some degree symbolical. That does not 

 mean that it is untrue, or that we err in insisting that 

 it will never cease to be true. It really means that the 

 conception of truth which theological language conveys 



1 St. Mark ix. 24. 



