our day,
nothing like the Gospel to transfigure character, on the spot, here and
now, and thus to transfigure the scene and the persons around the man,
before his eyes, within reach of his hands, in the whole intercourse of
his life, by giving them all a new and wonderful yet most practical
importance through the Lord's relation to them and to him. But it does
this always and inevitably in the power and in the light of facts which
are out of sight now, and of prospects essentially bound up with "the
life of the world to come." The most diligent and sensible worker in
Christian philanthropy, _if he is fully Christian_ in his idea and
action, does what he does so well for the relief of the oppressed, or
for the civilization of the degraded, because at the heart of his useful
life he spiritually knows "Him that is invisible," and is animated by
the thought that he works for beings capable, after this life's
discipline, of "enjoying Him fully for ever." He labours for man, man on
earth, because he loves God in heaven, and because he believes that God
made man and redeemed man for an immortality to which time is only the
short while all-important avenue. In the calmest and most normal
Christian periods, accordingly, for the least perilous and heroic forms
of faithful Christian service, it is vital to remember that attitude and
action of the soul which we call faith. For faith is essential both to
the victories and the utilities of the Christian life, just so far as
that life touches always at its living spring "things hoped for,"
"things not seen." And at a time like that of the first readers of the
Epistle every such necessity was enhanced indefinitely, both by the
perils and threatenings which they had to face and by the majestic
illusion to which they were continually exposed--the illusion under
which the order of the Law, because it was Divine in origin and
magnificent in its visible embodiment, looked as if it must be the
permanent, the final, phase of sacred truth and life on earth.

In our next chapter we will consider both the account of faith here
given and some main points in the illustration of it by examples.

CHAPTER IX

FAITH AND ITS ANNALS

HEB. xi. (II.)

We considered in the last chapter the account of Faith with which the
apostolic Writer opens this great recital of the "life, work, and
triumph of faith" in holy human lives. His words, as we found, lend
themselves to some variety of explanati