future will enable them to know each other better, and to trust each other more.
A fourth man may go further still; he may mean, “I love God and believe in him as a person”. A man cannot love someone whom he does not know. If he says he does, he is either a liar, or has taken leave of his senses. One might as well say one fell in love with a woman, on seeing her photograph. Few people would spare the unfortunate lover their facetious ribaldry. To assert a love for God, inevitably involves knowing him, but much more besides. It implies that one regards him as a worthwhile person; and if one believes that Christ was God it implies that the things Christ stood for and died for were good and right; though it by no means implies that one has any intention of standing for the same things or incurring the same penalty oneself. I am a regular church-goer, but I think only twice in my life have I ever heard a parson tell his congregation that it was the duty of the man-in-the-pew to carry his own cross. Not surprisingly one of the occasions was a Good Friday.
Lastly a fifth man might further still; he might mean “I love God with all my heart; and I will do whatever I believe he wants me to do, whatever the consequences. Even though he kills me, yet will I trust in him”.
The examples taken in this short analysis are only examples. There are infinitely many shades of belief, stretching from the bare belief that God exists to the passionate intensity of absolute faith, or to use a more modern word trust.
Generally speaking therefore religious faith or belief varies infinitely from person to person. No two people share exactly the same beliefs. And a person's beliefs do not stay constant from day to day; some will get stronger, others will get weaker and finally slip away. So too, faith always tends to be mixed with lack of faith in the same person. Faith one may picturesquely regard as the light of the consciousness; and lack of faith as darkness in the sense of doubt, lack of confidence, uncertainty, distrust, hesitancy. And darkness is only…