For the paricular case, I think bar function would be more appropriate.
text = "In the realm of possibilities, actions speak louder than words." +...
"Faith is the guiding force that propels us to act with conviction." +...
"Through acts of kindness and faith, we can make a difference.";
words = ["act", "faith"];
for i = 1:numel(words)
word_counts(i) = numel(strfind(lower(text), words{i}));
end
bar(word_counts);
xticks(1:numel(words));
xticklabels(words);
title('Histogram of Specific Words');
xlabel('Words');
ylabel('Frequency');