WHAT BELIEVING REALLY MEANS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 79, 14 March 1936, Page 8

WHAT BELIEVING REALLY MEANS

When a man says "I believe in God” he ought not to mean that after a careful review of the evidence he inclines to the opinion that there probably exists a Being who may not improperly be called God ; he ought to mean “I put my trust in God; I am determined to live in reliance on His Love and Power.” So the Christian trusts in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit, and in the universal Church, and in the fellowship of the Saints, and in the resurrection of the body anfi the life everlasting. He is determined to live in confident reliance on all these. So, too, when he says that lie believes in the forgiveness of sins he ought not to mean that he holds the opinion that God forgives sins, but that he believes in forgiving sins as a principle of practical life —God’s life and man’s. He puts trust in God’s forgiving love; but

trusting that as good, he must needs imitate it; and therefore he trusts also the excellence and power of forgiveness in human affairs. For as we have seen, and Our Lord has taught us, God’s fprgiveness of us cannot be separated from our forgiveness of one another. We must forgive even as God forgives. The forgiveness of sins as an article of the Creed, is the supreme test of practical Christianity. Dr. TEMPLE, Archbishop of York.