But even God can't work without man. We are called to co-operate. History is the story of the race, of the nation, of the individual; and so, while God has been making His revelation, He has been making it to men and He has been looking for men who will apprehend the revelation and carry forward His purpose here in time. My brethren, I point out to you that God has never wrought anything tremendous by means of masses and crowds in human history. He has wrought His wonders through the ages by individuals--people whom He could trust, people who exercise faith. What is faith? We are told in this first verse of the chapter, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The objects, therefore, of faith, are the future and the unseen; and the office of faith is to give present existence to future things and vital reality to unseen things. And wherever such faith has been exercised, wherever men have laid hold of the divine revelation, God has built a new era in the human story. It is the advent of personality which alters the current of history. The sharp turning points of history are due to the rise of great personalities. It is not so much by ideas as by personalities that God sets the world forward. The mightiest civilizing powers are personalities, and the mightiest civilizing personalities are Christian men.
