This I Believe

I believe, How easy to get so far, how hard to get much farther. Yet, certain beliefs I do definitely hold. They’re not, for the most part, the beliefs embodied in the Apostle’s creed. There, indeed, I find myself checked at the outset: “In God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Of heaven? Of heaven as Jeans, Eddington, and still later astronomers have revealed it? I don’t disbelieve. But how can I say I believe in something so infinitely beyond the human comprehension?

Do I believe in God? Yes—or at any rate, certainly not no. I believe in God because of Jesus Christ and because of myself. If Christ had never lived, I should have been convinced that some being—whom for want of any other name we may call God—must exist in the universe, and I should have felt after him and, perhaps in some degree, found him. But Christ came to reveal God, and did reveal so much more than we should have ever discovered for ourselves. He linked God with humanity. And while, therefore, I could hardly begin to comprehend God, I think I have enough conception of what He must be to make all the difference to life at home or in the office or anywhere else.

Quakers—I was brought up a Quaker and still remain one—talk about what they call the “inner light.” I believe in that too. The best way to explain it is by a traditional Quaker affirmation: “There is in every man a spark of the divine.” You may identify that if you like with what in the New Testament is called the “Spirit of Truth,” or the “Holy Spirit.” I accept that, for I believe in a spiritual world with which the human spirit can come into contact.

Because of all this, I believe that men and women matter, to themselves, to one another, and to God. I believe in life, as something to be thought about and made the best of, not just got through. I believe in democracy, and not because I think it works particularly well, but because it works better than anything else.

And finally, I believe in life’s continuance—if belief is not too strong a word to use about the utterly unknown. I believe in it because this life, with all its evil and suffering and injustice, would be incomprehensible if that were all; because Christ declared it, and I think He knew; and because I find complete extinction harder to conceive of than survival. If I’m right about that, I shall know before very long, but I shan’t be able to send a message back.

Such is one man’s faith—not enough by a long way to satisfy him, but enough to live by from day to day. Like J.H. Newman, “I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step, enough for me.”