A great many people's faith is like the old woman's trust. The horse ran away with a wagon in which she was seated and she was in imminent peril. But she was rescued, and some one said to her: "Madam, how did you feel when the horse ran away?" "Well," said she, "I hardly know how I felt; you see, I trusted in Providence at first, and when the harness broke, then I gave up."—John B. Gough.
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Faith in Christ—See Christ, Faith in. FAITH IN GOD I pluck an acorn from the green sward and hold it to my ear; and this is what it says to me: "By and by the birds will come and nest in me. By and by I will furnish shade for the cattle. By and by I will provide warmth for the home in the pleasant fire. By and by I will be shelter from the storm to those who have gone under the roof. By and by I will be the strong ribs of the great vessel, and the tempest will beat against me in vain, while I carry men across the Atlantic." "Oh foolish little acorn, wilt thou be all this?" And the acorn answered, "Yes, God and I."—Lyman Abbott.
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FAITH IN MEN A graphic account of how Adjutant S. H. M. Byers, of the Fifth Iowa Infantry, carried to Grant before Richmond the news of General Sherman's advance through North Carolina on his march to the sea in 1865 is told in Harper's Weekly. After a perilous trip, he finally reached Grant's headquarters at City Point. "I ripped open my clothing, handed him my dispatches, and excitedly watched the pleased changes on his flushed face while he hurriedly read the great news I had brought from Sherman," says Mr. Byers. "General Ord happened in at the moment, and the good news was repeated to him. Ord clanked his spurs together, rubbed his hands, and manifested joy. 'I had my fears, I had my fears,' he muttered. 'And I, not a bit,' said Grant, springing from his seat by the window, 'I knew Sherman—I knew my man.'"
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FAITH NECESSARY If all the world did not trust all the world, we could not do business for a single day. The amount of coin and bank-notes in circulation is ridiculously inadequate to the needs of business. By far the larger part of every day's transactions of every kind is conducted by means of promises to pay. The National Monetary Commission has just reported an investigation of this matter. About seventy per cent of the daily bank deposits consists of checks. More than ninety per cent of the payments in wholesale dealings is made by checks, and even more than half of the retail business is conducted in the same way, while the banks report weekly pay-rolls aggregating $134,800,000, seventy per cent of which is settled by checks. This is a gigantic illustration of the principle of faith. We have faith in the integrity of the average man. We have faith in the business institutions of the country. We have faith that the future will be as good as the past. And in this faith we continue to accept bits of paper in return for most of our labor and the goods we sell. In exalting the principle of faith in our relations toward God and the concerns of the next world, religion is merely applying to the Owner of all things the same rules that we apply without question to the petty properties of earth.—Christian Endeavor World.
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Faith of Friends—See Dependence.
FAITH, ROAD TO
Take the little "radioscope" in your hand—a
tiny tube less than an inch in length, closed
at one end, with a small magnifying lens at
the other. In the closed end of the tube
you observe a small disk of paper covered
with microscopic particles of yellow crystals—sulfid
of zinc. In front of the yellow
crystals is a small metallic pointer, like the
second-hand of a very small watch, and on
the end of the pointer is—nothing, absolutely
nothing, so far as your eye can see.
Look at it very carefully. No! Nothing!
Now, take the little tube, go into a darkened
room, and look into it through the lens end,
and you will see a sight incredible. The
metal pointer does have a minute speck of
something on its tip, and between that tip
and the yellow crystals are leaping showers
of sparks of light. Will the shower stop
after a few minutes? No. After an hour?
No; nor after a thousand hours, or a thousand
years, or ten thousand years! The
calculation is that that all but invisible speck
on the tip of the pointer will keep that
shower of sparks going day and night, for
thirty thousand years! For that speck is
