An Anchor of the Soul Author:James Vila Blake Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: questioning: 4. That it confounds moral distinctions: 5. That History soon puts her besom to it if we let her in. CHAPTER III. That, nevertheless, in the S... more »tudy of Faith we must set out from the Pacts as they are. But now it may be said,—'Tis true indeed that these evils come of unreasoning and fanatical devotion to a creed; wherefore they would be good reasons against confusing Faith with this same creed-believing if Faith had any better character to offer for itself. But in truth Faith is no more than another name for fanatical belief in a creed— a name by which to gild over the coarse stuff of the fact. 'Tis mere prejudice, slavishness, passion, frenzy, " essentially irrational, blind and the fruit of ungoverned imaginations," "invoked sometimes to make up for the silence of reason and sometimes to constrain the reason to be silent," Faith is no more than the turmoil, tumult and fury of the creed-passion. Well, if this be so, then we have in Faith but another soft-draping word for an ill and hard thing. But I think 'tis worth searching whether there be not a central spiritual fact in us belonging to the word;—or rather I would say the word belongs to the fact, and has sprung from it. And having searched, I think I find it indeed. Men havefelt somewhat stir by nature in the depths of them which in act, to the great sorrowing and suffering of many innocents, they confused with creed- fervor and belief, which, notwithstanding, they could not think to be exactly the same with mental assent however fanatical. From the effort of men to name this somewhat has sprung the word Faith —so I think. In searching whether this be true or not, we must gather first all the facts that have marked what men have called Faith and take the light of them. We must set out from the ancient a...« less