Isaiah 37:18-19 - Homiletics

Faith neither blind to seemingly adverse facts, nor chary of admitting them.

Sennacherib thought to destroy Hezekiah's trust in Jehovah by an array of facts which he regarded as having the force of an induction. Hezekiah fully admitted the facts ("Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries"), but did not suffer his faith to be shaken by them. His faith rested upon another distinct set of facts, which Sennacherib's did not and could not invalidate. The truth is that inductions, being never complete, are never demonstrative—they do but establish a probability, and the first adverse fact that can be adduced against them upsets them, or rather upsets the general conclusion that has been drawn from them. Faith, therefore, has no need to be afraid of any amount of seemingly adverse facts, drawn from the region of the sensible. For faith's facts lie mainly in a different sphere, and are untouched by the facts of sense, however numerous. The miracle of our Lord's resurrection rests, for instance, first upon prophecy, secondly upon testimony, thirdly upon vision ( Revelation 1:18 ). No amount of ascertained facts that others have not risen, can touch the sufficiently established fact that our Lord did rise. There is no even seeming clashing or contradiction, until the physicist proceeds to draw from his army of facts the general conclusion: "Therefore no men rise." But this conclusion is one that he has no right to draw; it is illogical; the data do not entitle him to infer more than that" Most men do not rise," or rather, "have not yet risen." And so generally with the facts that are adduced against the dicta of faith. They are no disproof of that which they are alleged to disprove. Faith, real faith, is always ready to admit the facts, when once they are established as facts. It disputes the illogical conclusions drawn from the facts, and the ingenious hypotheses projected from the brains of scientists to account for them.