CHAPTER XX.
WHENCE OUR BELIEF: GRACE AND WILL.

TO believe is to assent to a truth on the authority of God's word. We
must find that the truth proposed is really guaranteed by the authority
of God. In this process of mental research, the mind must be satisfied,
and the truth found to be in consonance with the dictates of right
reason, or at least, not contrary thereto.

But the fact that we can securely give our assent to this truth does
not make us believe. Something more than reason enters into an act of
faith.

Faith is not something natural, purely human, beginning and ending in
the brain, and a product thereof. This is human belief, not divine, and
is consequently not faith.

We believe that faith is, of itself, as far beyond the native powers of
a human being as the sense of feeling is beyond the power of a stone,
or intelligence, the faculty of comprehension, is beyond the power of
an animal. In other words, it is supernatural, above the natural
forces, and requires the power of God to give it existence. "No man can
come to me, unless the Father who has sent Me, draw him."

Some have faith, others have it not. Where did you get your faith? You
were not born with it, as you were with the natural, though dormant
faculties of speech, reason, and free will. You received it through
Baptism. You are a product of nature; therefore nature should limit
your existence. But faith aspires to, and obtains, an end that is not