Faith--and the Future

The pessimism of the failure of faith is a discouraging kind of pessimism. It is deeply damaging to lose faith in other men. But it is yet more damaging to lose faith in ourselves. The will to live has carried many a man through a critical condition, when others with greater physical strength but with less faith have failed to survive. The failure of faith makes men hopeless, and hopeless men are lost⎯until they find faith again. Some of this pessimism, some of this failure of faith, is fostered by those who believe that their own purposes will be prospered by the utter hopelessness of other men. And this is but one earnestly urgent reason for fighting the failure of faith. To those, therefore, who find themselves willing or unwilling partakers of this spirit of pessimism, remember that all the elements of happiness that ever were in this world are here now. All the factors and forces and purpose of Providence are ever yet with us. God and nature, and the sun and soil have done their work well. And it would be a peaceful and a provident world if men would do their work as well. But men give the world much trouble. And when men don’t care, when men don’t believe, when men are cynical and disillusioned, when they cease to set their sights higher and higher, they drift lower and lower. But there is as much worth saving as ever there was. There is as much of promise as ever there was. But we can save neither ourselves nor anyone else so long as we move in a pall of pessimism, for we rise no higher than we think, no higher than we plan, no higher than our purpose, no higher than our faith. But believing in God and His goodness and in ourselves, there is no reason under heaven or in the earth why we cannot have a finer future than ever yet was found, if we have faith in the future, and the will and the willingness to work. And for these reasons, and for many others we must fight the failure of faith.