e in God, it is the ardent longing
that there may be a God who guarantees the eternity of consciousness,
that leads us to believe in Him.

But faith, which after all is something compound, comprising a
cognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective,
biotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element, is presented to us
under the form of knowledge. And hence the insuperable difficulty of
separating it from some dogma or other. Pure faith, free from dogmas,
about which I wrote a great deal years ago, is a phantasm. Neither is
the difficulty overcome by inventing the theory of faith in faith
itself. Faith needs a matter to work upon.

Believing is a form of knowing, even if it be no more than a knowing and
even a formulating of our vital longing. In ordinary language the term
"believing," however, is used in a double and even a contradictory
sense. It may express, on the one hand, the highest degree of the mind's
conviction of the truth of a thing, and, on the other hand, it may imply
merely a weak and hesitating persuasion of its truth. For if in one
sense believing expresses the firmest kind of assent we are capable of
giving, the expression "I believe that it is so, although I am not sure
of it," is nevertheless common in ordinary speech.

And this agrees with what we have said above with respect to uncertainty
as the basis of faith. The most robust faith, in so far as it is
distinguished from all other knowledge that is not _pistic_ or of
faith--faithful, as we might say--is based on uncertainty. And this is
because faith, the guarantee of things hoped for, is not so much
rational adhesion to a theoretical principle as trust in a person who
assures us of something. Faith supposes an objective, personal element.
We do not so much believe something as believe someone who promises us
or assures us of this or the other thing. We believe in a person and in
God in so far as He is a person and a personalization of the Universe.

This personal or religious element in faith is evident. Faith, it is
said, is in itself neither theoretical knowledge nor rational adhesion
to a truth, nor yet is its essence sufficiently explained by defining it
as trust in God. Seeberg says of faith that it is "the inward submission
to the spiritual authority of God, immediate obedience. And in so far as
this obedience is the means of attaining a rational principle, faith is
a personal conviction."[44]

The faith which St.