Restricted, then, to its proper function our R or condensing quality is an essential factor in the work.  But if it be allowed to take the form of doubt or unbelief, then it renders the flow of the current from the Spirit ineffective to the extent to which the doubt is entertained; and if doubt be allowed to degenerate into total unbelief and denial of the Power of the Spirit, we thereby cancel the originating force altogether.  To put it in terms of the electrical formula, we make R greater than E, in which case no current can flow.  We thus find that the words “According to your faith be it unto you” are actually the statement of a Mathematical Law, having nothing vague about them.  This may be a somewhat original application of Ohm’s Law, but the parallel is so exact, that I cannot help thinking it will appeal to some of my readers who may be conversant with Electrical Science.  For those who are not, a simpler simile may be, that you cannot deliver a more powerful stream of water than the bore of the pipe through which it flows will admit of; or, to employ a legal truism, delivery on the part of the donor must be met by acceptance on the part of the donee before a deed of gift can become operative; or, in still simpler language, “you may take a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink.”

We see, then, that there is a Law of Faith, and that Faith is not a denial of the universal reign of Law, but the perception of its widest generalization, and therefore giving scope to its highest specialization.  The opposition between Faith and Law, of which St. Paul so often speaks, is the opposition between this broad view of the ultimate Principle of the Creative Law and that narrower view of restriction by particular laws, which prevents us from grasping the Law of Faith; but that he does not deny the Principle of Law, that is the relation between C and E, is clear from his own statement in Rom. viii, where he says:  “The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus sets me free from the law of Sin and Death;” in other words:  the Law of the Good sets us free from the Law of Evil; and for the same reason St. James says, that the perfect law is the law, of Liberty (Jas. i, 25).

Of course if we suppose that faith is something contrary to the law of the Universe we at once import into our thought the negative quality which entirely vitiates our action.  We rightly perceive that the laws of the Universe can never be altered, and if our notion of Faith be, that it is an attempt to work in contradiction to these laws, the best definition we can give it is that given by the little girl in the Sunday school, who said that “Faith is trying to make yourself believe what you know is not true.”  The reason for such a misconception is, that it entirely omits one of the factors in the calculation.  It considers, only the Law, and gives no place to the Word in the scheme of things.  Yet we do not carry this misconception into the sciences of chemistry