Faith beginning where science ends.
In the first verse of the chapter things not seen are spoken of. Faith is the evidence of these things not seen. There can be no other evidence, for things not seen are eternal; they are beyond the ken of our senses; if we cannot be certified of them by spiritual intuitions, we cannot be certified of them at all (2 Corinthians 4:18). But the things that are seen have also to be dealt with; we want to know the connection of the seen with the unseen; and the origin of the seen we also want to know. Faith has something to say concerning the ου βλεπόμενα; what has it to say in respect to the βλεπόμενα? The answer is that as faith gives our only resource for being sure of the reality of unseen things, so faith gives our only resource for being sure of the origin of seen things. The seen things, at least as to the surface of them and certain manifestations of them, lie before us. Especially there are before us those seen things which have life in them. We see them spring into being, have their time of growth, maturity, decay; and then they pass out of any life that we can see. They are not only seen things, but also φαινομένα, things that appear. Yesterday they had not appeared; today they appear; to-morrow they will disappear. And yet in disappearing they leave behind them that out of which will come a succession of phenomena like themselves. Thus generation is mysteriously linked to generation, and the world goes on. Suppose we have before us a field of grain. A little time ago that stretch of waving stalks was not; nothing but an extent of broken soil. We look for an antecedent; and the first antecedent we find is the seed that has been sown. We do know that if grain-seed is sown in the earth the result will be a crop of grain, but to say this does not satisfy us. The heart cannot believe that natural observation has the last word to say on the matter. Scientific inquiry goes as far as it can into the seen, and then faith spreads its wings for a flight into the unseen, and declares that if generation so regularly succeeds generation, and age so regularly succeeds age, it must be because God is joining them all together—framing the ages, as in this verse it is sublimely expressed. The verse must be taken as referring, not only to the original creation of the world and all that is therein, but also to the continuance and reproduction of life. The first origin of life is not more mysterious than the continuance of it. And faith says that the word of an unseen God has to do with these mysteries, and the word "God" carries all the rest that has to be said. To say that God speaks the life-giving word is to say that all is spoken in love, in wisdom, and in all-comprehending power.—Y.