Let us take for the beginning of our study, one of the mighty parentheses of God’s Word—2 Corinthians 5:7: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.8

You hear it many times among our people, especially in these days of fulfilling prophecy, that we walk by sight, not by faith. I presume that I with others have repeated the expression in that way many times, and yet I am saying it no longer. I think we ought still to hold to the way that the Word puts it, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.9

Of course we see some things that we once held by faith now fulfilled; but God does not teach us to exercise faith yesterday, and not ask us to exercise faith to-day. We pity a child that can walk well to-day, but does not learn to walk better on the morrow. God wants us to have faith all the time. If we have had strong faith in the past, he wants us to have more faith to-day. There is always a reason, necessity, and opportunity for the exercise of as strong, clear faith to-day as there was yesterday; and if we are not learning the lesson, we are not advancing in the divine life.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.10

The very text itself implies progress. “We walk;” we are going somewhere. We are taking a journey, one of the mightiest that was ever undertaken in all the history of the universe, a journey from darkness to light, from sin to everlasting righteousness, from death to life, from earth to heaven, from infamy to everlasting glory through grace. And every man, every human being, may take the journey. Praise God for it. And every human being must take it or be everlastingly lost.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.11

But the text implies progress. We walk by faith. The man who has faith is yielded to God’s Word, to do what the Word asks him to do, to wait where the Word asks him to wait, to enter where faith throws open the doors for him to enter, to do, to suffer, and to be all that God’s Word implies. That is faith. Faith means absolute submission to God’s will, and taking God at his word.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.12

“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” Faith always has the upward and outward aspect, not the inward view; faith always looks outward to God. The man of faith does not look to himself, but always to the infinite God; to the infinite, outward opening which God is constantly placing before his children; so that there is always development of character, always enlargement of heart and mind, always progress in divine knowledge, throughout all eternity. The finite can never compass the infinite; and consequently God has progress for us throughout all eternity; but it is always by faith, always by looking unto God.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.13

Faith always has reference to the now, never to the past. I do not know a single instance in God’s Word where faith pertains to the past; it always has reference to a present God, who is a present help in the now, with direct aspect of course to the future. You may take every example that is given us in that wonderful chapter of faith, the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, and it pertains to the duty of the now, with a constant looking forward to the glorious reward.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.14

Take the time of the deluge. To human sight Noah entered upon a work that was utterly incomprehensible to human reason; and yet out of that God saved Noah. It was special, present faith that Noah had at that time.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.15

It was so when God through Moses called the children of Israel out of Egypt. It was so pre-eminently when Christ Jesus died upon the cross, when his followers had all forsaken him, and there were only two to do him homage,—the thief dying by his side, and the centurion, who said, “This is the Son of God.” When our Lord died upon the cross, and was buried in Joseph’s tomb, and locked there by the Roman seal, it would seem as if the very hopes of the world were locked in that sepulcher; yet out of all that God brought the very salvation of the race, the very stability of the universe itself. Those who had faith in God at that time were among those who triumphed. In the last great, closing conflict of this world, we ourselves will come up to places where it would seem as if utter, absolute defeat was before us. Those who walk by sight at such a time will meet defeat; but those who have abiding faith in the Word of God will go through to glorious success.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.16

Let us bring faith closer home. We need faith in our personal experience. We need faith to believe when God says a thing is sin, to see sin in it. I wish that I could appeal to our young people on this point. Sometimes the pleasures of the world are spread out before us. If God says such a pleasure is sin, let our hearts say, Lord, it is sin. If God says it is inadvisable, let our hearts respond, Yea, Lord, thy servant heareth. We ought to choose what God asks of us, for it is always the best for us. When God tells us that a certain course is wrong, and a certain thing is sin, let us answer God by turning away from that thing with all our heart, and putting in the place of that sin God’s everlasting righteousness. Having faith in God for the one, we shall have faith in God for the other. We shall see all his glorious promises; we shall believe, when he tells us that the sin is overcome, and his righteousness is in the place of that sin, that this is so. We shall believe that he takes it because Christ died to take away the sin and to give the righteousness.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.17

We ought to be the gladdest people on the face of this great earth; for God has given us that which points out sin as he has to no other people. We ought to have the most glorious views of God’s righteousness, and that righteousness ought to be an ever-present experience to us, so that we could be among those who would give that everlasting glad tidings to the world. Let it come home to our hearts as good tidings. Believing God that way, we can believe further. Believing in the gift of the good spirit which he gives to all his children in the forgiveness of sin, in the gift of righteousness, surely we can believe in the promise of his Spirit for service.GCB May 24, 1909, page 125.18

It is too bad to have a faith stop with forgiveness of sin, yet how true it is of a great many of the revivals of the world at the present time.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.1

We get just so far, but no farther. God forgives our sins, he brings peace to our heart, and we are content to fold our hands and stop there, when God wants to endow us with his Spirit for service. The faith that claims the promise of forgiveness of sin ought to claim just as strongly and clearly the promise of the gift of God’s Spirit. Why not believe that he who promises the one has promised the other, that he who has fulfilled the one will fulfill the other? God is more willing to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him than earthly parents are to give good gifts to their children. We ought to believe that God by his Spirit will come into our hearts; we ought to believe that God will take that Word, and transmute it, in our own lives, into living character, until it shall be incarnate in us.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.2

We need living faith day by day. It is not faith for to-morrow that we need now. It is not yesterday’s faith that we need now. The faith that we want is the faith that will meet our needs to-day, just this moment. We need it in the perplexing trials and cares of to-day. We need it in every walk of life. Aged men need it, aged women need it, the fathers and the mothers need it, our children need it. We need it in our homes. We need it when we go abroad. We need it not only when standing in the pulpit, but when living out the life of Jesus Christ at the fireside and in the home. We need it when feeling bad physically, when it would seem as if every physical feeling was against exercising faith; we need a faith that will rise above all feeling. We need faith, when the angry word is prompted, to have grace from the Lord Jesus Christ to speak the pleasant word. We need it when we would give a sharp retort to this brother or that brother who has wronged us. We need to have grace enough from God to speak pleasantly, just such words as we are willing to meet in the day of judgment. We need personal, living faith right at this moment and for all time to come.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.3

Sometimes we fix up wonderful things for God to do. We look ahead a little way, when we think that we shall see wonderful miracles wrought, and men speaking with tongues, and wonderful healing manifested, and all that. Now I believe there will come a time when all these things will be manifested; but God wants you and me to learn a greater miracle than these, and that is the transmuting of his power into human nature. When our faith will take hold upon that mighty miracle moment by moment, God can trust us with far greater blessings; but just as long as we allow our unsanctified hearts and natures to overcome us, to dominate our lives day by day, just so long we are not in that place where God can trust us with greater blessings.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.4

We need simple faith in the constantly unfolding and developing light that God is giving us in this message. God wants our sermons to-day to have the living, vitalizing power to meet the needs of the moment. He wants you and me, my dear brethren in the ministry, to see more and more of the wonderful light of God’s truth which he has for our time, that will meet our needs to-day. He wants us to have faith in the gift to carry this message to the world. [The speaker then read 1 Corinthians 1:4-8, commenting briefly on the same.]GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.5

We need more faith, brethren, to see the gifts which God has placed in our church. We read of Saul, that whenever he found a mighty and valiant man, he took him unto himself. I believe we ought to be looking out for every kind of talent in God’s church that might be enlisted in this message now. First, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; and after these all the other gifts. Have not our brethren whom God has sent out into the regions of this world the gift of apostleship? I met some Mormon teachers not long ago, and they asked, “Have you apostles?” “Yes, sir,” I answered, “we have apostles. God has given us those who are going out to spread the gospel into all these nations of the world, and they have a right to claim God’s power in proportion to the gift that he has bestowed upon them in the carrying forward of that message to the world.” The we have gift after gift, until we come down to that last gift of ministry, the gift of service. This gift is universal in all his church. There is not one single soul among them but can serve God in some act of service, for ministry means serving. Every one of us may be ministers of God.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.6

We need new faith, that we may take broader views of the work than we ever have before. When we see some of our large, strong conferences doing no more to-day, with double the tithe, than they did fifteen or twenty years ago, we wonder if these conferences ought not to say, “Here is half of our tithe for the great mission fields beyond; and here are half of our laborers: take the very best that we have for the needy mission fields.” Of course wisdom must be used in these things, and God gives faith for the wisdom. Our schools must not be hindered from lack of teachers and funds; our institutions must not be injured. But it seems to me that our faith ought to take hold of larger things than ever before: it ought to take hold of new and simpler plans. I was glad for the thought that Sister White brought out yesterday, of simple means for accomplishing God’s work. I believe that God has simpler means for us. Our great danger is in looking to great, elaborate means for doing great, elaborate work. The Lord can use the very smallest means for doing the mightiest work; he gets glory to himself in that way. If we use elaborate means or machinery, and accomplish a great work, our neighbor may follow our example, and fail. God wants every one to work in his own harness. He wants machinery, he wants organization, surely; but it ought to be so elastic, so controlled by God’s Spirit, that there is room for the exercise of every gift among his people. O, if all of God’s children were aroused and guided by that Spirit, how much we could do in the home land, and still let a large number of our strong, developing young men go out into the great regions beyond!GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.7

Brethren, this Conference marks a new era in our lives. We can not look to the past; God does not want us to do that. Let us now get rid of everything that stands between us and the giving of this message. We must discard old, worn-out plans, and adopt plans fitted to the needs of the times. We have a present, living Christ, and the message to you and to me to-day is: “He is not here; he is risen; behold, he goeth before you into Galilee,”—away out beyond Judea, away out beyond Jerusalem. Christ is going out before us into China, into Japan, into India, and into the great fields that need help now. Let us follow him; let our faith take hold of present duty, present responsibility, present opportunity, and present glorious success for God.GCB May 24, 1909, page 126.8

Departmental Meetings

Conference Proceedings. SIXTEENTH MEETING