On Faith

"Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change whatever view you reason takes…Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable… Unless you teach your moods “where they can get off”, you can never be a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Faith is that which, knowing the Lord's will, goes and does it, or not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills--neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action." George MacDonald

“To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken; to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a hair-breadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand; to wait patiently, ready to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail—such is the victory that overcometh the world, such is faith indeed.” George MacDonald