478 The Spiritual Man
However dry, tasteless or dark it may be, they continue to advance—
trusting God and advancing as long as they know this is God’s will.
Frequently their feeling appears to rebel against this continuation:
they grow exceedingly sorrowful, melancholic, despondent, as
though their emotions were pleading with them to halt every spiritual
activity. They nonetheless go on as usual, entirely ignoring their
adverse feeling; for they realize work must be done. This is the
pathway of faith, one which pays no heed to one’s emotion but
exclusively to the purpose of God. If something is believed to be
God’s mind, then no matter how uninterested one’s feeling is he
must proceed to execute it. One who walks by sensation undertakes
merely what he feels interested in; the one however who walks by
faith obeys the complete will of God and cares not at all about his
own interest or indifference.
The life of feeling draws people away from abiding in God to
finding satisfaction in joy, while the life of faith draws believers into
being satisfied with God by faith. They having possessed God, their
joyful feelings do not add to their joy nor do their painful sensations
render them woeful. A life of emotion induces the saint to exist for
himself but a life of faith enables him to exist for God and cedes no
ground to his self life. When self is entertained and pleased it is not a
life of faith but simply a life of feeling. Exquisite feeling does indeed
please the self. If one walks according to sensation it indicates he has
not yet committed his natural life to the cross. He still reserves some
place for self—wishing to make it happy—while simultaneously
continuing to tread the spiritual path.
The Christian experience, from start to finish, is a journey of faith.
Through it we come into possession of a new life and through it we
walk by this new life. Faith is the life principle of a Christian. This is
of course acknowledged by all saints; but strangely enough many
seem to overlook this in their experience. They forget that to live and
to move by emotion or happy sensations is to do so by sight and not
by faith What is the life of faith? It is one lived contrary to a life of