Faith & Spirit Quote by Roy L. Smith

Self-belief is framed here less as a self-help mantra than as a moral prerequisite. Roy L. Smith, a clergyman writing in the early 20th century, stakes out a stark chain of custody: if you distrust your own inner witness, every other belief you claim to hold is on borrowed credit. The line isn’t about swagger; it’s about reliability. A person who can’t trust his own integrity can still recite doctrines, join institutions, even perform virtue. But Smith implies that none of it “sticks,” because the self is the first tribunal where truth is either honored or quietly negotiated away.

The subtext is pastoral and disciplinary at once. “Faith” is doing double duty: it’s religious language, but it’s also psychological language. Smith doesn’t separate the soul from the will. Integrity, in his construction, isn’t merely adherence to external rules; it’s the lived confidence that you are the kind of person who will tell the truth when it costs you. That’s why he links character to “whatever faith we have in our own integrity”: the phrase acknowledges gradations. People don’t simply have integrity; they cultivate a believable self, one that can withstand temptation, shame, and rationalization.

Context matters: Smith preached in an America reshaped by industrial modernity, mass persuasion, and the aftershocks of war. In that landscape, public piety could become performance. His intent reads like an antidote to hypocrisy and moral drift: before you claim God, nation, or principle, you’d better be able to look yourself in the eye and mean it.