Ah, we all exercise it. You put it forth in certain low levels and
directions. 'The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her,' is
the short summary of the happy lives of many, I have no doubt, of my
present hearers. Have you none of that confidence to spare for God? Is
it all meant to be poured out upon weak, fallible, changeful creatures
like ourselves, and none of it to rise to the One in whom absolute
confidence may eternally be fixed?

But then, of course, as we may see by the exercise of the same emotion
in regard to one Another, the under side (as I have been accustomed to
say to you) of this confidence in God or Christ is diffidence of
myself. There is no real exercise of confidence which does not
involve, as an essential part of itself, the going out from myself in
order that I may lay all the weight and the responsibility of the
matter in hand upon Him in whom I trust. And so Christian faith is
compounded of these two elements, or rather, it has these two sides
which correspond to one another. The same figure is convex or concave
according as you look at it from one side or another. If you look at
faith from one side, it rises towards God; if from the other, it
hollows itself out into a great emptiness. And so the under side of
faith is distrust; and he that puts his confidence in God thereby goes
out of himself, and declares that in himself there is nothing to rest
upon.

Now that two-sided confidence and diffidence, trust and distrust,
which are one, is truly a work. It is not an easy one either; it is
the exercise of our own inmost nature. It is an effort of will. It has
to be done by coercing ourselves. It has to be maintained in the face
of many temptations and difficulties. The contrast between faith and
work is between an inward act and a crowd of outward performances. But