the constitution of our nature. He only thinks rightly who thinks with Christ. He who commits his mind as a docile disciple to the Spirit of Christ is delivered from the bondage of error and brought into the liberty of truth, and the highest point of religious certitude is reached when the Christ within the Bible speaks to a man and is answered by the Christ within the man. Apart from Christ, The intellectual power through words and things Went sounding on its dim and perilous way. Since the true Light has shined, it is our duty and our salvation to follow Him till every thought be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and at last we stand where the day has broken and the shadows have fled away. XVII CONTEMPORARY FAITH "We trust in the living God."- HIS is the faith of the Christian Church THI and also of the human soul. But it is apt to be denied from two opposite quarters, and first by those who are not believers. They have reasoned that as the microscope reveals no Deity in matter, and the telescope does not find Him in the heavens that He is nowhere; or, they have been so puzzled by the anomalies and contradictions of life that they have not been able to accept the idea of any moral controlling will. For one reason or another a number of quite honest people have concluded that we cannot get behind the phenomena of the universe, and that if we did we should not find that intelligent mind and personal will which represents the idea of God. They cannot trust in the living God, because there is no convincing proof of His existence. With this attitude of intellectual agnosticism we have nothing to do on this occasion. The second person who denies the idea of the living God is an earnest believer, and his denial is not a theory but a practice. He believes firmly that the universe has had its creator, the human race their ruler, and the soul her Saviour, but his faith is couched in the past tense. God lived once without doubt-hearing prayer with evident response; doing wonders in the eyes of all men; sending forth prophets from His presence; judging nations with rewards and punishments-a God whose going could be seen by all the nations and who was more real to the saints than the sun above their heads. But, and here faith passes unconsciously into unbelief, the same person does not believe with unrestricted mind in the living God of the present, guiding nations now as surely as He guided Israel in the days of the prophets, doing wonders now as in the days of the apostles, speaking to men now as He spoke when the books of the Bible were being formed, visible unto those who have eyes to see, and audible to those who have ears to hear. His presence has to be found in the dead centuries; His character is a fresco on the walls of an ancient temple, His fellowship lives in the experience of Jewish saints. This faith looks back to see God, it does not look round; it trusts in God who once came forth from His secret place, but has withdrawn Himself. Many a devout person recoils from the thought that God still works as in the former days. If he desires to know what God's mind is he betakes himself to the voices of Hebrew writers; if he desires to know what God does he travels back to Hebrew history. God in that past is clear and active, in this present He is silent and ineffective. And this seems a reverent and devout faith. Is it not really an insidious and enfeebling form of religious unbelief? Can God be living if He has ceased to speak and to act? Can one conceive a God who is indifferent? If he be God in the robust sense in which the Hebrew prophets believed when they made their triumphant comparison between the living God of Israel, and the idols of the heathen, or in the more intimate sense in which Jesus spoke of His Heavenly Father, then His spirit is still guiding men as He guided the apostles and prophets, and He is still moving down the paths of present day history as the ark led the Children of Israel. God has not withdrawn Himself from nature, which is sustained by Him as surely in this late age as when the world was young. Neither has God abandoned the government of men, and the world of human souls. It is thinkable, though less than reasonable, to deny God altogether; it is neither thinkable nor reasonable to affirm a living God up to the year 100 A.D. and then to imagine Him henceforward handless and speechless. When one says that he does not deny that there have been certain periods of unique spiritual recaptivity when elect souls came into the secret of God, and became the medium of radiant revelation. It has indeed been a feature of history that the human mind has at times been lifted, as mountains rise from the plains, and has come near to the skies, and this law of elevation runs through other departments than religion. There was a century before Christ at Athens when Art, literature, philosophy, and politics touched their zenith, and to-day we travel back to see the shapes of beauty and to read the books |