en it is that confidence in the divine word or promise, by which the
good man, in lack of present evidence, sustains his courage or his
prayer and wins his victory over the world: so especially in Hebr. xi,
Luke xviii. 8, James ii. 23, 2 Cor. v. 7, 1 John v. 4. But its most
characteristic use, as said above, is what first appears in the
Gospels. The person of Jesus is there represented as eliciting from
men a supreme trust in His power to heal diseases, and also to satisfy
that deeper human need of which the disease is an outward symbol. And
this power of Jesus to heal men in body and soul is seen in the Gospels
to depend upon the extent of their faith: 'Thy faith hath saved thee;'
'According to thy faith be it unto thee.' Thus Jesus Christ appears
constantly as inspiring, requiring, and rewarding faith in Himself, and
that as the manifested Son of God, e.g. John xiv. 1. This is 'the
faith which is through Him,' i.e. which He produces; and which as
'faith in His name' remains the characteristic Christian quality when
He is gone from sight (Acts iii. 16). 'The faith' in the Acts (vi. 7,
xiii. 8, xiv. 22, &c.) means this Christian attitude towards the unseen
but living and energizing Christ.

Thus when St. Paul came to believe in Jesus Christ, 'faith in
Jesus,'--as meaning not merely acceptance of His claim or of His word
or of His grace, but {207} whole-hearted devotion to His person, entire
self-surrender or self-committal to Christ or God in Christ--became the
dominant note of his new state: 'I know him whom I have believed, and I
am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto
him against that day' (2 Tim. i. 12[3]). And this same devotion to
Christ becomes, in St. Paul's theology, in its various stages, the only
ground of man's acceptance with God. And though he uses 'faith' in a
morally lower sense, as distinct from love--the faith which qualifies
for miracles (1 Cor. xiii. 2)--yet in his characteristic sense of the
term it involves the deepest love towards its divine object[4].

Naturally, as faith is thus _the_ characteristic of Christianity, and
this faith in a person involves a belief about Him--His divine sonship,
His resurrection, His mission of the Spirit--so 'the faith' comes to
mean (objectively) that which the Christian believes, or his creed; and
this sense of the word appears almost in the Acts, in Gal. i. 23, and
in Eph. iv. 5, and certainly in the Pastoral Epistles freque