I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. That informing power of spirit is God, and since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. And is this power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is the supreme Good. But He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done through a definite realization, more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within. Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself. This realization is preceded by an immovable faith. He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love. I confess that I have no argument to convince through reason. Faith transcends reason. All that I can advise is not to attempt the impossible.

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Source: Gandhi, 'Young India', 11 October 1928 (the 'Living Power that is changeless' / 'in the midst of death life persists' statement); reproduced in CWMG and Gandhi anthologies.

About this quote

Faith here is treated as a decision, not a conclusion you argue your way into. Reason can map the world but stops at the edge of the moral order; what convinces a person is the change they feel in their own conduct once they trust that truth and love govern life. You test it by living it, not by debating it.

When to use it

  • A recovering gambler stops arguing about willpower and simply notices he no longer reaches for his phone at the track.
  • Someone commits to plain honesty for a month and judges it by how much lighter conversations feel, not by theory.
  • A volunteer keeps showing up at the shelter and finds her conviction confirmed by the steadiness it gives her, not by any argument.