We know that'one-of the quali: 4iés distinguishing man from the mere brute animal is that power "Which we call the intellect, and we also know that this intellect of ours under normal conditions and ju normal circumstances naturally seeks io know the truth. Actually, there are only two principal ways by which our intellect can reach. -the truth. The first of these is by means qf its own operation, the process of Teasoning, either after or without exverimentation—and then the iniellect is said to know.: The second means is by accepting the truth on {He word of someone else, and this process we know as faith. Here the elect is said to believe rather jan know, but even in this act. of believing the reason is used to decide on the knowledge and honesty df the one who supplies the information.
Out employing our reasoning powers, not arrive at either consciously or unconsciously to satisfy ourselves as to the fitness of the one in whom we place our belief, be it man or God.
Preciely in connection with this point the position has always seemed most strange to me of those who are perfectly willing to accept on man's evidence the truth of something they cannet personally test for themselves or even understand, while at the same time they reject as foolish or impossible a thing whose truth we have the word of God to guarantee. In the field of science, for example, we accept as unquestioned and ' unquestionable truth the positive statements of those eminent in electricity, physics, as-astronomy and the like, even though what they tell us seems an unimaginable impossibility. revelations and doctrines is definitely much more than a feeling; it is a most reasonable conviction, arrived at po the grace of God, that all that Supernatural Faith What about faith in things supernatural which we can never understand for ourselves in this life? Here we must distinguish between the Catholic and the non-Catholic idea of supernatural faith. A good example of the latter is found in a passage in one of the current. peste sellers, '"This Above AN," by Eric Knight, where a minister tells a young man who has come to him for advice: "I do not believe intelleetually in the hereafter, heaven, hell and the like, and yet I have faith in. them. Any fool can have faith in what reason tells him is certain. Faith is the quality of believing beyond reason. Remember that, and when the world has Christ am faith again, so many troubles will vanish and problems be solved... You're looking for something in which to have faith. You're trying to find it by intellectual processes, and that's what the world is doing. Don't think, my boy—feel! Consult your feelings, not your reasonings."
This is a non-Catholic viewpoint. For the Catholic, Faith is much more than mere feeling. It is an act of the intellect, under the direction of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.