SERMON V. FAITH



HABAKKUK, ii. 4.

"The just shall live by faith."

This is those texts of which there are so many in the Bible, which,
though they were spoken originally to one particular man, yet are
meant for every man. These words were spoken to Habakkuk, a Jewish
prophet, to check him for his impatience under God's hand; but they
are just as true for every man that ever was and ever will be as
they were for him. They are world-wide and world-old; they are the
law by which all goodness, and strength, and safety, stand either in
men or angels, for it always was true, and always must be true, that
if reasonable beings are to live at all, it is by faith.

And why? Because every thing that is, heaven and earth, men and
angels, are all the work of God--of one God, infinite, almighty,
all-wise, all-loving, unutterably glorious. My friends, we do not
think enough of this,--not that all the thinking in the world can
ever make us comprehend the majesty of our Heavenly Father; but we
do not remember enough what we DO know of God. We think of God,
watching the world and all things in it, and keeping them in order
as a shepherd does his sheep, and so far so good; but we forget that
God does more than this,--we forget that this earth, sun, and moon,
and all the thousand thousand stars which cover the midnight sky,--
many of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds larger than