Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them.
What acquaintance man can have of God without Divine revelation
Consider--
I. His means of information. Conscience; nature; providence.
II. The extent of his information. God’s natural perfections, eternity, power, wisdom, etc.; even something of His justice, etc.; but nothing of His infinite holiness and mercy. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Ignorance of God is
I. Criminal Because every man has the opportunity of knowing something of Him; is only hindered by his corrupt nature and love of sin.
II. Never total God reveals Himself in the conscience, in nature.
III. A judicial consequence of sin. Sin darkens the heart, eclipses the intellect.
IV. A precursor of final judgment. They are without excuse. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Divine revelation is
I. Limited. “That which may be known”--hence some things may not be known. Do not pry into the mysteries of the Divine existence, futurity, etc., but be humble and contented with what may be known.
II. Sufficient. “That which may be known.” God knows best what this is. Enough has been revealed to make us holy and happy; let us be thankful.
III. Manifest to reason and conscience. Reason approves the contents of revelation as true, and conscience accepts them as good.
IV. Clear. Therefore--
1. Study it.
2. Embrace it.
3. Carry it out. (J. W. Burn.)
The limit of nature’s revelation
Nature proclaims the existence of a God; but concerning what that God is to us, nature is altogether silent. Nature tells us that there is a God, possessed of boundless wisdom and of vast benevolence; but nature’s oracles do not announce that that God will pardon sin. It gives us intimations from our conscience that He is just; it gives us intimations from the mechanism of our frames that He is infinitely wise; it whispers to us from the broad surface of the world we gaze on that He is a benevolent God; but conscience, while it tells us that God is holy, tells us, too, in the tones of a despair that it cannot dissipate, that man is a fallen, guilty, miserable sinner. I ask philosophy, How shall God be just while He justifies the ungodly? I ask of physiology, with all its bright and brilliant announcements, Will God forgive me my sins? I ask of astronomy, as it discloses world piled on world, If amid the brightness and the glory of those stars, if amid the splendour of those ten thousand lamps, it has discovered that there is “a just God and yet a Saviour”? And all nature is dumb; astronomy is dumb; the mechanism of a man’s frame is dumb. Still the great proposition that must be solved before my dying pillow can be peace remains unexplicated, unreconciled, unknown. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Our knowledge of God limited
A young child, who has hitherto fancied that the rim of the sky rests on the earth a few miles away, and that the whole world lies within that circle, sails down the Forth there, and sees the riverbanks gradually widening and the river passing into a frith. When he comes back, he tells his young companions how large the ocean is. Poor boy! he has not seen the ocean, only the widened river. Just so with all creature knowledge of God. Though all the archangels were to utter all they know, there would still remain an infinity untold. (J. Culross, D. D.)
For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.
Invisible things clearly seen
See here, I hold a Bible in my hand, and you see the cover, the leaves, the letters, the words, but you do not see the writers, the printer, the letter founder, the ink maker, the paper maker, or the binder. You never did see them, you never will see them, and yet there is not one of you that will think of disputing or denying the being of these men. I go further; I affirm that you see the very souls of these men in seeing this book, and you feel yourselves obliged to allow that they had skill, contrivance, design, memory, fancy, reason, and so on. In the same manner, if you see a picture, you judge there was a painter; if you see a house, you judge there was a builder of it; and if you see one room contrived for this purpose, and another for that, a door to enter, a window to admit light, a chimney to hold fire, you conclude the builder was a person of skill and forecast, who formed the house with a view to the accommodation of its inhabitants. In this manner examine the world, and pity the man who, when he sees the sign of the wheat sheaf, hath sense enough to know that there is a joiner, and somewhere a painter, but who, when he sees the wheat sheaf itself, is so stupid as not to say to himself, “This had a wise and a good Creator.” (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
The illustrious manifestations of God and the inexcusable ignorance of men
I.It is more knowable that there is a God than anything else is knowable.
1. In respect of the fulness of being that is in Him. We sooner find out the sun than a lesser light, the sea than a little fountain.
2. In respect of the ways of knowing Him. We come to a more certain knowledge of God--
(1) By way of perfection. We need not fear to say too much of God. If we speak of man’s soul, or of an angel, we may speak too much; but of God we cannot speak too much.
(2) By way of negation. We can never remove imperfection far enough from God. When we have done our most we must say, God is beyond what finite and limited understandings can lay out.
3. In respect of our relation to Him. We stand nearer related to God than to anything in the world; our souls and bodies are not nearer related than our souls and God (Act_17:28).
4. In respect of our dependence upon Him, and His conservation of us and cooperation with us. Any man that is in any degree spiritual and intellectual, and not altogether sunk down into sense and brutish affections, seeks in himself foreign suggestions and whispers that direct him better and carry him beyond his own mind and resolves (Job_32:3; Job_35:27).
II. I infer--
1. The excellency of religion. It is no stranger to human nature, nor any of the eminent notable acts of it. Man contradicts his own principles and departs from himself when he falls off from God.
2. The use of reason in matters of religion. In religion there is the natural knowledge of God, and the knowledge of the revelation of His will. In the former we are made to know; in the latter we are called to partake of God’s counsel. In the former we know that God is and what His nature is; and in the latter we know what God enjoins in order to oar future happiness.
3. That there is no invincible ignorance as to the great rights, viz., that God is to be worshipped and adored, and that there is a difference between good and evil. If a man varies from these laws, he contracts guilt to his conscience, and is condemned by the sense of his own mind.
4. That reason is so far from doing any disservice to Christian faith, that it fits men to receive it. For man in the true use of his reason, knowing that he hath not performed his duty to God, reason puts him upon deprecating God’s displeasure, and to think that God, who is the first and chiefest good, will certainly be ready to commiserate the case of him who repents and returns to duty. And this is gospel, that Jesus came into the world to confirm. And taking up the Bible and finding that “God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” Reason says, “This is that I did expect: I did believe such a thing from the first and chiefest good; and now I am assured of it by the gospel.”
5. Since the great things of religion and conscience are committed to reason to keep and secure, why should we think the reason of a man may not be trusted with those things that are of lesser moment.
III. The impious and profane are therefore without excuse. There is a natural sense of Deity in every rational soul; and this is fundamental to all religion. The eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. If men are ignorant, it is through their own fault; either through the neglect of their own faculties, or through an inobservance of the great effects of God in the world, which show and declare what He is. To pursue the argument a little further. The Scripture doth thus represent the state of man’s creation that the proper employment of mind is to inquire after God (Act_17:27). God did never intend that reason should ever be adjudged to be a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, but for observance of God and attendance upon Him. “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.” A candle is a thing first lighted, then lighting; so that mind is first made light by Divine influences, and then enlightens a man in the use thereof to find out God, and to follow after Him in creation and providence. And we find degeneracy is thus described: “They have no fear of God before their eyes.” “Without God in the world.” And it is the fool’s sense that “there is no God.” There is therefore no plea for want of the sense of Deity.
1. No invincible difficulty lies upon any man but that he may come to the cognisance of a God. Not the difficulty of--
(1) Ignorance; for we are made to know there is a God.
(2) Impotency; for every man may use his natural parts and powers.
(3) Foreign impediment; for it is a transaction performed within a man’s self. If anyone be devoid of all sense of Deity, I declare it is the malignity of the subject upon a three-fold account. First, because of the nearness of God to us. Secondly, because of the sagacity of our faculties. And thirdly, because of the nearness of light of knowledge.
2. There are invitations everywhere afforded us to acts of acknowledgment and taking cognisance of God.
(1) The communications of God awaken us. All we have and are is by a voluntary communication from God. We are nowhere but receivers.
(2) The very principles of man’s make do incline him to God. All things move to their centre, and God is the centre of immortal souls. Caesar’s money was no more properly his than mind is God’s; for it bears His impress. The soul of man, ally ways by violence torn off from God, is like leaves fallen off from the trees, that wither away; but in God, who is their centre, they have rest, perfection, and quiet.
(3) If we consider the whole creation about us, they contribute, by way of object, to God’s glory; for they have not ability to do it by way of efficiency. And this is the sense of the Psalmist. For mind in man is to see and observe the wisdom and power and goodness of God.
3. To speak a little more home, and only to the Christian world. There is God’s superadded instrument, the Bible, which contains matter of revelation from God whereby also our natural notices of God are awakened and enlivened. Being disposed by the two former arguments, this Book gives further assurance. So that here are my three arguments.
(1) The language of our own souls within.
(2) The impressions of the Divine wisdom throughout the whole creation, and objective acclamations of all creatures, carry us strongly on to the knowledge of God.
(3) Holy Scripture comes in to the pursuance of these, to repeat and reinforce them, so that he must needs be of a stupid mind, or a havocked conscience, or dissolute in his life and manners, that lives in the midst of so many arguments, and doth not spell out God and understand the audible language of heaven and earth.
Conclusion: Note--
1. The infinite patience of God to endure men of stupid minds, havocked consciences, and profligate lives (Heb_12:3).
2. The business of the Day of Judgment is very easy on God’s part, but very sad on degenerate men’s part. For God’s work is prepared to His hands; all sinners are self-condemned.
3. The greatness of the work of reconciliation. A man must be made whole in himself, or else he cannot be kept out of hell. A man cannot be at ease until all that he hath sinfully done be undone, and until right judgment hath been renewed which hath been violently forced, and regular life and conversation be restored. Now these are the materials of regeneration. (B. Whichcote, B. D.)
The doctrine of correspondences
The science of correspondences is little understood at the present day; yet it is in truth the grandest of all sciences. For it is founded on the relation that exists between heaven and earth, between the Creator and His creation. There is nothing existing in the material world, whether of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, which does not correspond to something spiritual, as an effect corresponds to its cause. Here is the foundation of what is called figurative writing, in which human thoughts and feelings are described by natural images. Thus we say in ordinary conversation, “bold as a lion,” “cunning as a fox,” etc.; and the Lord Himself is called, in the Divine Word, a Lion, and also, in other places, a Lamb. He calls Himself also a Vine: “I am the Vine, ye are the branches.” The Scriptures, indeed, are written throughout according to this science, and it is only by means of an understanding of its laws and principles that we can rightly interpret Scripture. Thus the sun, moon, and stars are all used in Scripture as metaphors or correspondences, and a knowledge of their signification is a key to many singular passages. As for instance, when it is said, “that the sun and moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall fall.” By the sun is here meant Divine love, because love is spiritual heat, of which Divine love is the sole source. Hence the Lord is called the “Sun of Righteousness.” The moon, again, is the emblem of faith, because all the light of faith is derived from love, as the moon derives all her light from the sun. The stars signify the various forms of knowledge in the mind with reference to Divine truth: for as the stars are little points of scintillating light scattered through the sky, so these truths in the mind are as little points of spiritual light, whereby the young Christian may be guided in his dark way, ere yet the brighter light of faith of the glowing sun of love has arisen in his soul. The declaration, therefore, that at the “end of the world the sun and moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall fall,” means, when spiritually understood, that at the end of the Church love and faith should be extinguished, and that even the very knowledge of truth should be lost. Other things also in the visible heavens, or in the atmosphere, as rain, snow, clouds, etc., are all correspondences. Water refers in a general sense to truth; hence rain, which is water falling from the skies, signifies truth descending from heaven into the human mind. As the objects above the earth are correspondences, so are all things upon the earth itself, whether in the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdom. A knowledge of this will explain innumerable difficult passages in the Scriptures. Let us look first at the mineral kingdom. The Lord says in Isaiah, “For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver.” Brass corresponds to natural goodness, and gold to celestial goodness. Iron, again, refers to natural truth, and silver to spiritual truth. The meaning, therefore, is that when the Lord came to publish the gospel, and to establish Christianity, then instead of only natural or external goodness and truth, which had prevailed in the Jewish Church, He would bring to men celestial and spiritual goodness and truth--in other words, that the Christian Church was to be an internal or spiritual church. Let us now turn to the vegetable kingdom. We know that the olive, the vine, and the fig tree are very often mentioned in Scripture, and frequently simultaneously. The same general meaning is implied as in the case of the metals already explained. By the olive is signified celestial, by the vine spiritual, and by the fig tree natural goodness; for there are three distinct degrees or regions in the human mind. Turn now to the signification of the animals mentioned in Scripture. The Lord Himself is compared both to a lion and a lamb; a lion from the power of His Divine truth, and a lamb from the innocence of His Divine love; for a lion in a good sense signifies the power of truth, and a lamb the principle of innocence. In a bad or opposite sense, a lion is used to denote the power of falsity and its destructive influence in the Church; for false doctrines have a powerful effect in leading men into evil practices. Birds represent generally thoughts and intellectual faculties. Thus where it is said in Jeremiah, “I beheld, and there was no man, and all the birds of the heaven were fled,” the meaning is that the Jewish Church had come to an end; there was no wisdom left, and no thought of spiritual things. From the views here set forth, we learn how all things in nature are representative of things in the spiritual world; how the outward universe reflects, as in a mirror, the inward and unseen, and how the whole creation is an image of the great Creator. (P. Hiller.)
The inexcusableness and unreason of unbelief
Thelaw of manifestation is that there must always be hidden powers and forces adequate to produce the manifestation. The law is worthy of all honour, and commands our reverence; it is the basis of faith in invisible things. Whatever we see is but the face, or expression, which the unseen substance and energy, have made for themselves. If men are dubious about there being an invisible universe behind the veil of the visible, they are mentally and spiritually blind. Our houses, ships, steam engines and whatever is mechanically fabricated are made out of things which appear; but living, breathing organisms could only be evolved by an invisible spirit. Bells on the stem of the lily, the petals of the rose, equally with the constellations of the heavens, could only be played into form by an inscrutable mind. Not only is the visible creation a birth from the invisible; but it is every moment fed and kept alive by the communication and inbreathing of the invisible potency. To scientists who affirm “We can know nothing but phenomena,” I reply we can know, and do know, the invisible world of our affections, of our thoughts a great deal better, and with much more certainty, than we can ever know phenomena. If we speak of an imaginary world, it must be the world that, is outside of us rather than the unseen world of our consciousness. We all know the hidden world of our likes and dislikes, our designs and motives, our hopes and fears, much more indubitably than we can ever know external appearances. Aspirations, reasonings, and intuitions are constantly coming to birth within us, and are very living realities; but they can neither be seen nor handled. Nor can they be ascribed to the solids and fluids of our physical structure. By physical observation a man can no more find himself than he can find God, who is to the universe what man is to the organs of his natural body. Observe that the conclusions of our very knowing, but unknowing, friends empty the universe of all real contents, and the soul of all reverence and hope. Yet it is somewhat instructive to find many of these cold sciolists surrendering and even bowing down the invisible fire of love which they find embodied in woman, and pulsing through woman. Man’s admiration of woman has no adequate ground, nor can it endure, unless she be regarded as a shrine for the love and beauty of eternal God. Suppose a man has actually come to such a conclusion,” and that his” final positivism is, There is no infinite understanding in and over the universe, nor is there any enduring spirit in man”; what in that case has he done for himself and the human race? He has set up reasonless atoms above reason; for he has made them to be the cause of reason. He has exalted icy indifference to the throne of the universe. In effect, he says, “I have searched creation through, and I find everywhere complicated contrivance, realising most admirable results; and from beginning to end law reigns, all-comprehending, but there is no Lawgiver, no supreme Fount of Life, no God and Father of the spirits of men.” Now if that be reason, I earnestly pray that I may be forever and ever void of such reason. The truth is, that men who magnify material forms, above spiritual and personal entities, suffer the penalty in the infatuation of their own minds. Strictly speaking, education is not the acquisition of knowledge from without; but consists rather in awakening and leading out the latent and superior powers which are in the man, that he may be able to correct the conclusions of his outer senses--a work this involving a vastly higher estimate of humanity than the wretched postulate that you can catalogue the contents of a man by the analysis of his physical form. There is a path of entrance to the sacred substance and centre of life; but neither the lion nor the vulture of materialism will ever find it. And let me press the inquiry here: How could there be in nature such a scope for the researches of the human mind, unless she were a revelation of mind? If the heavens and the earth do not show forth the wisdom of God, how is it they are so attractive to mind? And surely, if we admire mind and wisdom in the men, who are no more than appreciative observers, we must much more ascribe mind and wisdom to the originating genius and architect. If mind, and mind only, can read and study the book of the heavens, how is it possible to escape the conclusion that mind, and mind only, could have composed the book? Our friends, therefore, who say that they can discover no evidence of mind in the structure of the universe are, as it appears to us, strangely illogical. We are afraid also that they are answerable for some degree of perverseness. For they treat not the works of man as they treat the works of the Infinite. They see man’s mind in his machinery, and in his manipulation of the forces of wind and water; steam and electricity; but fail to see the Mind of minds in the forces and the laws, the processes and beneficent results of nature. The infinite soul which streams through and through nature, blending with our souls, gives us an intense feeling of at-homeness in the universe. It is our Father’s house and our house. Light, hope, and joy reign in our bosoms. And, by a like law of cause and effect, all human souls who turn to God as the earth turns to the sun, and whose affections attract the Spirit of His love, become absolutely conscious of a new summer in their breasts, which is their heaven begun. We compassionate greatly all blind and paralysed souls who never see what is best worth seeing, and never taste the sublime, the undying human joy. (J. Pulsford.)
The universe a manifestation of God
Some may ask, “What has this to do with our sins and our salvation--with this life or the life to come?” I answer, “Much,” for the root of them all lies in the nature of God and in the state of man; and as we should know more of our own selves if we knew more about humanity, so should we know more about humanity if we knew more of the great truths which God has written upon the tablets of the universe. The beauty of the works of God is one of the most signal manifestations of the Creator’s handiwork, and the recognition of this is one of the purest sources of human happiness, and one of the surest proofs that the universe is a revelation of its God. The reason why I am not sorry thus to touch on this theme is because in these great cities, where we lose nine-tenths of the lessens of nature, we are more liable to be feverishly absorbed in our personal and material interests, and because we should be much purer, wiser, larger-hearted men if we looked more lovingly and thoughtfully at the great works of God. The remedy for much personal sadness, narrowness, irreligious spirit of much that calls itself religion, is that deeper knowledge of God to be found not only in Scripture, but in nature, history, conscience, and the reason of mankind. For them who have the knowledge and the humility to read His awful signature, God has written His name upon the universe.
I. Even the heathen read it there. The mythology of Greece, in its purer and earlier stage, was but an expression of the sights they saw and the lessons they read therein. In Homer, the earliest of Greek poets, we see throughout this cheerful piety. St. Paul himself appeals to the holy lessons which the Greek poets had learnt from the works of God. “We are all God’s offspring”; “God giveth us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness”; and, in my text, he argues with the Romans that God was manifest even to the heathen, because “the invisible things of Him,” etc. Many an age had intervened between the early Greek singers and the late Stoic philosophers; yet in them, too, we find exactly the same feeling to the works of God. “All things,” says Marcus Aurelius, “come from that universal power. Everything harmonises with me which is harmonious to thee, O universe! Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring.” Is not this the language in every age of natural piety? And if, in all ages, it has been thus that the best and wisest have interpreted the universe, is not that alone a proof that God meant it to be so interpreted?
II. The scriptures leave us in no doubt upon that matter. Read over Psa_104:1-35, which has been called the natural theology of the old Jews. It is eminently refreshing, at all times, to turn from the wordy strifes, and petty jealousies, and miserable interests of earth, to these sweet and wholesome truths of natural theology. When God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind to console his sorrows, to revive his sinking faith, He points him to the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the bands of Orion, etc. And is it not thus in our Lord’s own sermon on the Mount? Did not our Lord speak there of the fowls of the air and of the lilies of the field? And does He not draw parables from the simplest objects of nature? Why should He have done so if it were not to show us that this universe is a parable of God?
III. God’s true saints in all ages have not been unmindful of the lesson. They have ever regarded nature as a revelation of God’s awfulness and goodness, of God’s care and love. When St. Anthony was asked how he could exist without books, he replied that to him who read the two books of Scripture and of nature no other teaching was necessary. Take the medieval saints. St. Bernard said that the oaks and beeches of Clairvaux had been his best masters in theology. St. Francis thanks God “for our brother, my lord the sun, and for our sister, the moon, and for the jocund strength and irresistible brightness of our brother, the fire, and for the sweet, chaste usefulness of our sister, the water.” Take the outburst of our own Milton, “These are Thy glorious works, Parent of good,” etc.; and the sweet hymn of the poet-statesman, “The spacious firmament on high,” etc.; and the touching story of the dying Livingstone, revived into the effort which saved his life by seeing there, in the African desert, the little tuft of moss, and thinking that if God could water that little beaming moss, and keep it moist with the dew and bright with the sunshine, He surely would care for him.
IV. And this also has ever been the attitude of all true science. It is the attitude of Bacon, praying that after labouring in God’s works with the sweat of his brow, God would make him partaker of His rest and Sabbath. It is the attitude of Faraday, worshipping Sunday after Sunday in his little, quiet Dissenting chapel. It is the attitude of Linnaeus falling on his knees under the open sky to thank God for the unspeakable beauty of fields, golden in the sunshine with a summer gloss.
V. And such, also, is the intuition of genius. The great poets, painters, musicians of this and the close of the last century, seem to have been specially commissioned to interpret nature to man. Who that has heard the thrilling jubilance of the “Creation,” has not seen, as it were, a new door opened into heaven--has not been drawn nearer to the presence chamber of God? To Wordsworth it was given to make others feel that “the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” To Turner it was given to perpetuate the most transient glories of nature, and the scenes he painted became an apocalypse of the splendour and the meaning of the world. The greatest thing which Ruskin’s writings have done for us has been to show us how all creation testifies to its God, and that we miss the happiness which His mercy has provided when we fail to trust Him, and to learn of Him as we drink in the delights of the hearing ear and the seeing eye. Conclusion: Believe me, it is often the most humble and obvious arguments which are most irresistible; and the simple earthwork stops the cannon ball which shatters the buttress into dust. Once when the great Napoleon was sailing to Egypt, he sat on the deck with a circle of distinguished savans around him, who were openly boasting of their infidelity. He listened in silence; but as he rose to leave them, he raised his arm towards the starry canopy of night, and he asked them the simple question, “It is all very well to talk, gentlemen, but who made all those?” And if this natural conviction has been shaken in some minds by the pride of science, it has, as we have seen, been simultaneously intensified in others; and that is why the great painters, and poets, and musicians have not only saved many of us from being crushed by the revelations, or inflated by the discoveries, of science; but, pouring on every realm of nature a flood of Divine illumination, they have opened our eyes to beauties before unnoticed, and filled our souls with melody, which heaven only can excel. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
God in nature
I.Wherever we see a change, we are forced by the very constitution of our mind to believe that it had a cause. If we see a plant growing today where there was none a short while ago, we conclude that some hand has planted it there. If we feel pain we at once ascribe it to some cause, and immediately set about to discover what it is. And so with every change. I take the book geologists have opened for me, and I find there that innumerable changes have passed upon our globe. Science takes us back to a time in its history when there was no life upon it. Nothing, therefore, is more certain than that life had a beginning on our globe. What produced it? The most distinguished scientific men have to confess that there is a gulf here which they cannot bridge. “The present state of knowledge,” says Professor Huxley, “furnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.” “I am,” says Sir W. Thomson, “ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all space and through all time, that life proceeds from life and nothing but life.” So far, then, as science is concerned, the origin of life remains a mystery. “Give me matter,” said Kant, “and I will explain the formation of a world; but give me matter only, and I cannot explain the formation of a caterpillar.” I contend, therefore, that the existence of life on our globe proves its origination by a living Being.
II. Wherever we see order, we see an evidence of mind.
1. When we see that changes have been produced through which there runs a principle of order, we are compelled, by the very constitution of our nature, to say, Here is not only a power which causes these changes, but one which has intelligence.
(1) “One day at Naples,” says a French writer, “a certain person in our presence put six dice into a box, and offered a wager that he would throw sixes with the whole set. I said that the chance was possible. He threw the dice in this way twice in succession; and I still observed that he had succeeded by chance. He put back the dice into the box for the third, fourth, and fifth time, and invariably threw sixes with the whole set. Then I exclaimed, ‘The dice are loaded!’ and so they were. And when I look at the order of nature, and consider that there is but one chance which can preserve the universe in the state I now see it, and that this always happens in spite of a hundred millions of other possible chances of perturbation and destruction, I cry out, ‘Surely nature’s dice are also loaded’”; which is just saying that order is due to intelligence.
(2) Or suppose you come upon a quantity of type lying in confusion. You say these types have been thrown together by accident. But close beside this confused mass you find a form of types, which are so placed as to make words, and the words sentences, and the sentences a continuous story. What would you be constrained to conclude? That it was the result, not of chance, but of intelligence.
(3) Or let us take this building. There you have window, doorway, wall, roof, forming a structure in which you see unity, order, and beauty. All this, you know, is the result of intelligence, and any man who would try to persuade you that as much order and beauty can be produced by mere blind force acting on matter, might as well ask you to give up using your reason altogether.
2. Now, when we turn to nature, we find order everywhere. There may be much in the world of which we do not know the precise use, except that of ornament. The architect who planned this building designed much which was not needed, except to please the eye. And so, in the works of nature, we find precisely the same thing. As Professor Le Comte puts it, “The law of order underlies and conditions the law of use”; and he illustrates this in the following way.
(1) He goes back to the period when fishes were the only representatives of the vertebrate plan of structure. This machine, as he calls the fish, was a swimming machine, fitted for locomotion in the water. Ages pass away, and then reptiles appear; but there is no new organ created to enable them to crawl upon the land. The swimming organ is so modified as to become a crawling one. Ages again pass away, and then birds are introduced. Here again the same order is modified, and becomes a wing which enables them to move in the air. Ages again pass away, and at last man appears on the scene. What is wanted now is not a fin, nor a wing, but a hand; and this is obtained by another modification of the same organ. “And thus, in the hand of man, in the forefoot of a quadruped, in the paw of the reptile, in the wing of a bird, and in the fin of the fish, the same organ is modified for different purposes.”
(2) Dr. M’Cosh arranges order under four heads--number, time, colour, and form. Take--
(a) Number. You find seven bones in the vertebrae of the neck of all mammalia, whether the neck be short or long.
(b) Colour. Seldom or never are the two primary colours, blue and red, found on the same organ, or in contact on the same plant. Every dot in the flower comes in at the proper place, every tint and shade and hue is in accordance with all that is contiguous to it.
(c) Form. All minerals crystallise in certain forms, and every living object, though composed of numerous parts, has a definite shape as a whole, and a normal shape for each of its organs.
(3) But take a wider view. Sweep the universe with your eye, and you will everywhere find order. “Our own planet is so related to the sun and moon that seed time and harvest, the ebb and flow of tides, never fail. The countless millions of suns and stars are so arranged and distributed in relation to one another, or in accordance with the profoundest mathematics, as to secure the safety of one and all, and to produce everywhere harmony and beauty” (Prof. Flint). Now can you think of that universal order and beauty without thinking of a mind behind it to which they are due?
3. But all this, we are told, is the result of evolution, in which force is revealed but mind dispensed with. But evolution only describes a process, and does not account for it. It is not enough to point to force as the explanation; it may account for change, but not for order. Force throws no light upon the evolution of protoplasm now into a fish, now into a bird, and now into a man. The prevalence of order is the “reign of law”; and the “reign of law” is the reign of mind.
III. In the arrangements and adaptations to ends which we find in matter we have also the evidence of mind.
1. Take the simple illustration of a rude hut. The materials are so placed and adapted that you have not only order, but a useful end; you have a contrivance, an evidence here of design, and this means that you have here a proof of mind. Or take the steam engine. There you have iron, water, coal, and fire; but observe how they are arranged. The iron is so disposed as to furnish a receptacle for the water, and a chamber into which coals can be put and lighted. You have also cylinders, pistons, connecting rods, and wheels. And then the connection of all the parts is such that, when the coals are lighted, the water is changed into steam, which gives motion to piston, rod, and wheel, and sends the engine along its track, or propels the vessel over the ocean. No mere shaking of coal, iron, and water, for any period, however lengthened, and by any forces, however mighty, could ever have resulted in forming such an engine. No union and adjustment of them, such as we have, could have been brought about by mere chance. This adaptation and arrangement of different elements of matter, so as to accomplish this end, the production of motive power, required mind, ay, and vastly more of it than the construction of a rude hut.
2. Now, let us turn to the works of nature, and we shall see that whether we look to earth, or ocean, or sky, or man, we meet everywhere with arrangements for distinct ends, which reveal the highest intelligence, and not only constrain belief in the Divine existence, but rouse to admiration and praise.
(1) We take this globe, which revolves around the sun. There are two forces acting upon it, which balance each other--the one tending to draw it towards, and the other to draw it away from, the sun. If the first of these had been greater than it is, the earth would have been drawn into the sun and destroyed; and if the second had been stronger than it is, then, just as a stone slung round the head flies off when the string is let go, so the earth would have rashed from its orbit into darkness and ruin. In this adjustment of forces, then, which preserves our world, do we not see the manifestations of a controlling mind?
(2) We take the book which the geologist has opened. The great convulsions it records prove to have been but the birth throes of a world fitted for the varied necessities of the living creatures which inhabit it. The coal and the iron, for example, which, more than anything else, have contributed to human civilisation and comfort, have had their strata tilted up by these, so that man could reach them. The disposition of land and water; the elevation, slope, and direction of the mountain ranges; the scooping out of the valleys; the elevation of vast plateaus; the formation of the lakes; the streams; the oceanic currents--all these affect the temperature, rainfall, and vegetation.
(3) Turn to the atmosphere, which is essential to life.
(a) Its chemical elements are being constantly abstracted in the vital processes of vegetable and animal; but what the one consumes the other supplies; and so, by this and other arrangements, the balance of elements in the air is maintained, otherwise it would become unfit to support life.
(b) Look at it us the medium for the diffusion of light and heat and sound. If we had no atmosphere, then, while every object on which the sun’s rays fell would dazzle us by its brightness, everything else would be in the deepest darkness. Nor could we hear, for the air is necessary to the transmission of sound. Nor could the heat of the sun’s rays be retained and diffused without an atmosphere.
(4) From dead matter let us turn to organic or living matter. Take vegetable life. When a certain cycle of existence has been passed, vegetable growths die; but before they die they make provision for the continuance of their species.
(5) Let us ascend to a higher region. The structure of the human body. “How complicate I how wonderful is man!” The writer of one of the old Hermetic books called “The Divine Poemander” puts the argument from man’s structure in this way: “Consider, O son, how man is made and framed in the womb; and examine diligently the skill and cunning of the workman, and learn who it was that wrought and fashioned the beautiful and divine shape of man. Who circumscribed and marked out his eyes? Who bored his nostrils and ears? Who opened his mouth? Who stretched out and tied together his sinews? Who hardened and made strong the bones? Who clothed the flesh with skin? Who divided the fingers and the joints? Who flattened and made broad the soles of the feet? Who digged the pores? Who stretched out the spleen? Who made the heart like a pyramid? Who made the liver broad and the lungs spongy and full of holes? Who made the belly large and capacious? Who set to view the more honourable parts and hid the filthy ones? See how many arts in one matter; and how many works in one superscription, and all exceedingly beautiful, and all done in measure, and yet all differing. Who hath made all these things? What mother? What father? Save only God that is most manifest--that made all things by His own will.” Now, “Who in the world is a verier fool,” as Jeremy Taylor puts it, “than he who is an atheist?…Can anything in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance for blind force when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects and no cause; an excellent government and no prince; a motion without an immovable; a circle without a centre; a time without an eternity; a second without a first; a thing that begins not from itself, and therefore not to perceive that there is something from whence it does begin, which must be without beginning; these things are so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must needs be a beast in understanding who does not assent to them; this is the atheist. ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’“ (A. Oliver, B. A.)
Nature’s revelations overlooked in their commonness
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown. (R. W. Emerson.)
God seen in the order of nature
A clergyman asked an old negro his reasons for believing in the existence of a God. “Sir,” said he, “I have been here going hard upon fifty years. Every day since I have been in this world, I see the sun rise in the east and set in the west. The north star stands where it did the first time I ever saw it; the seven stars and Job’s coffin keep on the same path in the sky, and never turn out. It ain’t so with man’s works. He makes clocks and watches: they may run well for a while; but they get out of fix, and stand stock still. But the sun and moon and stars keep on the same way all the while. There is a power which makes one man die, and another get well; that sends the rain, and keeps everything in motion.”
The existence of God
I.Grounds of belief in the existence of God. God reveals Himself--
1. By the works of nature.
(1) Every effect must have a cause. You see the picture of a flower or a bird, and you ask at once, Who drew it? You behold a statue, and you inquire, Who was the sculptor? But how much more is a real flower, bird, man, the proof of a Creator!
(2) The same conviction is only confirmed when you observe the adaptation of means to ends. The plant is designed to be stationary, and accordingly its roots are firmly fixed in the earth. The bird was designed for locomotion, and hence in its wings we find a perfect apparatus for transporting it from place to place. Man was intended to govern all creatures, and accordingly he is endowed with an understanding that renders him capable of doing so: the human understanding--the most wonderful of the works of nature--cannot be accounted for, but upon the ground of the existence of an Infinite Mind. Vegetation was to be sustained, and hence roots have so many mouths to extract nourishment from the soil, while their leaves are for lungs to inhale from the atmosphere those gases that are congenial and to exhale those that are unwholesome. Vegetation was to be propagated, and hence every plant is made to produce its own seeds; and in the work of sowing them, winds, waves, and animals, are all made to do their part. The construction and furnishing of this world were intended mainly to promote the welfare of the human family--and how admirably is this object accomplished! Do our lungs need air? Nothing is so free. Do we need food to satisfy our hunger? It springs up all around us. Do we require water to slake our thirst? Its limpid currents murmur at our feet. Do we want clothing to defend us against the changes of the seasons? It grows in our fields, or is brought to our doors upon the backs of the bleating flocks.
2. In providence.
(1) Which connects vicious habits with disease, disgrace, and poverty, and a virtuous life with health, wealth, and honour.
(2) Which leads to the detection and punishment of crime, and which pursues every criminal with the scorpion lash of self-condemnation.
(3) As exerted in favour of that best and purest system of morals, the Christian religion.
3. In the Scriptures. Here we have the portraiture of His moral character.
4. To the soul by His Spirit.
II. Improvement. This doctrine lies at the foundation of all religious truth. This established, and the most important inferences follow.
1. To the impenitent hearer. If there is a God, He is your Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer; and you are under infinite obligations to serve and obey Him.
2. To Christians this doctrine is the source of great consolation. If there is a God, the Christian’s hopes are all safe; death loses its terror, and the bright visions of heavenly bliss are a glorious reality. (N. Rounds, A. M.)
The existence of God; evidence for
Basil called the world a school, wherein reasonable souls are taught the knowledge of God. In a musical instrument, when we observe divers strings meet in harmony, we conclude that some skilful musician tuned them. When we see thousands of men in a field, marshalled under several colours, all yielding exact obedience, we infer that there is a general, whose commands they are all subject to. In a watch, when we take notice of great and small wheels, all so fitted as to concur to an orderly motion, we acknowledge the skill of an artificer. When we come into a printing house, and see a great number of different letters so ordered as to make a book, the consideration hereof maketh it evident that there is a composer, by whose art they were brought into such a frame. When we behold a fair building, we conclude it had an architect; a stately ship, well rigged, and safely conducted to the port, that it hath a pilot. So here: the visible world is such an instrument, army, watch, book, building, ship, as undeniably argueth a God, who was and is the Tuner, General, and Artificer, the Composer, Architect, and Pilot of it. (J. Arrowsmith.)
No effect without a cause
A man of talent was supping one evening with some atheists. The philosophers spoke of their denial of the existence of God, but he remained silent. They asked his opinion, and while they were speaking the clock struck. He answered them by pointing to the clock and saying, “Clocks do not make themselves.” (A. G. Jackson.)
So that they are without excuse; because that when they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.--
Natural religion, without revelation, sufficient to render a sinner inexcusable
I. The sin here followed--Idolatry. “They glorified not God, as God,” which general charge is drawn into particulars: as, that they “changed His glory.” etc. (Rom_1:23); where, by glory, he means God’s worship; that by which men glorify Him, and not His essential glory, which is not in men’s power to change or debase. Note that the persons charged with idolatry are affirmed to have known and worshipped the true God. From whence it follows that they did not look upon those images, which they addressed, as gods. So idolatry is a worshipping the true God in a way wholly unsuitable to His nature--viz., by the mediation of corporeal resemblances of Him. For the defence of which no doubt but they pleaded that they used images, not as objects of worship, but only as instruments by which they directed their worship to God. But the distinction, which looks so fine in the theory, generally miscarries in the practice; especially where the ignorant vulgar are the practisers.
II. The persons charged with this sin. The old heathen philosophers, who “professed themselves to be wise.” Their great title was
óïöïé́
, and the word of applause, still given to their lectures, was
óïöù͂ò
. Pythagoras was the first who brought
öéëḯóïöïò
down to
öéëḯóïöïò
, from a master to a lover of wisdom, from a professor to a candidate. These grandees and giants in knowledge looked down upon the rest of mankind, and laughed at them as barbarous and insignificant, yet blundered and stumbled about their grand and principal concern, the knowledge of their duty to God, sinking into the meanest and most ridiculous instances of idolatry--having confessed a God, and allowed Him an infinite power and an eternal Godhead, they yet denied Him the worship of God. Had the poor vulgar rout only been abused into such idolatrous superstitions, it might have been detested or pitied, but not so much to be wondered at: but for the stoa, the academy, or the peripaton to own such a paradox; for an Aristotle, or a Plato, to think their Eternal Mind, or Universal Spirit, to be found in the images of four-footed beasts; for the Stagirite to recognise his gods in his own book, “De Animalibus,” this, as the apostle says, was “without excuse.”
III. The cause or reason of their falling this sin: their holding of the truth in unrighteousness.
1. What was the truth here spoken of? There were these six great truths, the knowledge of which the Gentile philosophers stood accountable for: as--
(1) That there was a God; a being distinct from matter, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, good and holy. And this was a truth written with a sunbeam, clear and legible to all mankind, and received by universal consent.
(2) That this God was the Maker and Governor of this visible world. The first of which was evident from the very order of causes; and the second followed from it; for that a creature should not depend upon its Creator in all respects (among which, to be governed by Him is one), is contrary to the common order and nature of things. Besides all which it is also certain that the heathens did actually acknowledge the world governed by a Supreme Mind.
(3) That this God was to be worshipped. For this was founded upon His omnipotence and His providence.
(4) That this God was to be worshipped by virtuous and pious practices. For so much His essential holiness required.
(5) That upon any deviation from virtue and piety, it was the duty of every rational creature to repent of it. The conscience of every man, before it is debauched and hardened by habitual sin, will recoil after the doing of an evil action, and acquit him after a good.
(6) That every such deviation rendered the person liable to punishment. And upon this notion, universally fixed in the minds of men, were grounded all their sacrifices.
2. These truths they held in unrighteousness.
(1) By not acting up to what they knew. As in many things their knowledge was short of the truth, so almost in all things their practice fell short of their knowledge. The principles by which they walked were as much below those by which they judged, as their feet were below their head. By the one they looked upwards, while they placed the other in the dirt. For they neither depended upon God as if He were almighty, nor worshipped Him as if they believed Him holy. For the proof of which go over all the heathen temples, and take a survey of the absurdities and impieties of their worship, their monstrous sacrifices, their ridiculous rites and ceremonies. And then so notoriously did they balk the judgment of their consciences, in the plainest duties relating to God, their neighbour, and themselves; as if they had owned neither God nor neighbour, but themselves.
(2) By not improving those known principles into the proper consequences deducible from them. For surely, had they discoursed rightly but upon this one principle, that God was a Being infinitely perfect, they could never have been brought to assert or own a multiplicity of gods. Nor could they have slid into those brutish immoralities, had they duly cherished these first practical notions and dictates of right reason. But they quickly stifled and overlaid those seeds of virtue sown by God in their own hearts, so that they brought a voluntary darkness and stupidity upon their minds (verse 21).
(3) By concealing what they knew. For how rightly soever they might conceive of God and of virtue, yet the illiterate multitude were never the wiser for it. Socrates was the only martyr for the testimony of any truth that we read of amongst the heathens. As for the rest, even Zeno and Chrysippus, Plato and Aristotle swam with the stream, leaving the poor vulgar as ignorant, vicious, and idolatrous as they first found them. And thus I have shown three notable ways by which the philosophers held the truth in unrighteousness. This disposed them to greater enormities; for, “changing the truth of God into a lie,” they became like those who, by often repeating a lie to others, come at length to believe it themselves. They owned the idolatrous worship of God so long, till, by degrees, even in spite of reason and nature, they thought that He ought so to be worshipped. But this stopped not here; for as one wickedness is naturally an introduction to another, so, from absurd and senseless devotions, they passed into vile affections (verse 24, etc.). God knows how far the spirit of infatuation may prevail upon the heart, when it comes once to court and love a delusion.
IV. The judgment, or rather the state and condition penally consequent upon the persons here charged by the apostle with idolatry: “they were without excuse.” The last refuge of a guilty person is to take refuge under an excuse, and so to mitigate, if he cannot divert the blow. It was the method of the great pattern and parent of all sinners, Adam, first to hide, and then to excuse himself. But now, when the sinner shall have all his excuses blown away, be stabbed with his own arguments, and, as it were, sacrificed upon that very altar which he fled to for succour; this, surely, is the height and crisis of a forlorn condition. Yet this was the ease of the malefactors who stand here arraigned in the text; they were not only unfit for a pardon, but even for a plea. An excuse imports the supposition of a sin, and--
1. The extenuation of its guilt. As for the sire itself, we have already heard what that was, and they could only extenuate it on the ground either of ignorance or unwillingness. As for unwillingness, the philosophers generally asserted the freedom of the will, which, in spite of the injury inflicted by sin, has still so much freedom left as to enable it to choose any act in its kind good, as also to refuse any act in its kind evil. This is enough to cut off all excuse from the heathen, who never duly improved the utmost of such a power, but gave themselves up to licentiousness. The only remaining plea therefore must be that of ignorance, since there could be no pretence for unwillingness. But the apostle divests them even of this also (verses 19, 21).
Conclusion: Note--
1. The mercy of God to those to whom He has revealed the gospel, since there was nothing that could have obliged Him to it upon the account of His justice; for if there had, the heathens, to whom he revealed it not, could not have been thus without excuse.
2. The unspeakably deplorable condition of obstinate sinners under the gospel. The sun of mercy has shined too long and too bright upon such, to leave them any shadow of excuse. (R. South, D. D.)
Sin without excuse
How fearful an evil is sin! Its nature precludes all apology for it. And yet all men “with one consent make excuse.” Apt scholars of the first apologist! Adam and his fallen race, rather than condemn themselves on account of transgression, will venture to charge the Holy One with the occasion of it. Many lines of Scriptural argument might be adduced to show the inexcusableness of sin. But we know of none more answerable than that of the text--man’s impiety and ingratitude. Take the case of--
I. The first silence. Whatever was the occasion of Satan’s sin, the text gives a clue as to its nature. “The first estate” of the fallen angels was doubtless one of extensive knowledge. In their present condition what craft, what subtlety do they display! And yet angels were made to live even in His unveiled presence--to know Him, to love, serve, and glorify Him. But from some unrevealed cause, their knowledge did not beget humility, their surprising privileges did not ensure gratitude; whilst standing before “the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity,” they were “lifted up with pride,” and rebelled against Him. And God, who created them and had blessed them, spared them not, and “they are without excuse; because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.”
II. Our first parents. Their nature was one degree lower than that of the angels. They were created after the image of God in holiness and happiness. What bounds could have been fixed to that mind which held daily converse with God? What privileges were there! The body and soul united in blissful harmony, and both united in the God of love! But notwithstanding, impiety and ingratitude were the sin and ruin of Adam! He credited the word of “the father of lies” before the word of the God of truth. Ambition made him forget his privileges. And “they were without excuse, because that,” etc.
III. The heathen. The apostle proves that though they are ignorant of the revelation of grace (and they will not be condemned for rejecting that which was never offered to them), yet they cannot be ignorant of the revelation of nature. The present awful and ruinous state of the heathen has arisen from the depravity of human nature; the love of sin, and consequent hatred of holiness. They abused their privileges, “loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”
IV. The jews. What nation was ever so blessed as they! Raised from obscurity to The dignity of a theocracy, they passed on from one degree of glory to another, till the Lord of glory appeared as “the King of the Jews.” And notwithstanding all this, impiety and ingratitude were the sin and the ruin of Israel.
V. Nations professing Christianity. Have we not known God. Are we not blessed by Him with extraordinary and peculiar privileges? To what modern nation has God revealed Himself so signally as the God of love has unto us? And how great our temporal prosperity, and our influence and power over the whole world! Such are our privileges. And what use do we make of them? If we “know God,” by what national acts do we “glorify Him as God”? Does He receive the glory due unto His holy name in the calm deliberation of our senators? Is His Word alone the acknowledged and the supreme rule of faith and practice? Is truth and piety upheld and protected, and are falsehood and idolatry trampled under our feet? Alas! if our candlestick were removed, we are “without excuse, because that,” etc.(G. A. Rogers, M. A.)
Inexcusable irreverence and ingratitude
After a missionary had gone into a certain part of Hindostan, and had given away New Testaments, a Hindoo waited upon him, and said, “Did you not write that first chapter of Romans after you came here?” “No; it has been there nearly two thousand years.” “Well, all I can say is, that it is a fearfully true description of the sin of India.” However, I am not going to talk about Hindoos; they are a long way off. I am not going to speak about the ancient Romans; they lived a couple of thousand years ago. I am going to speak about ourselves, and about some persons here whom my text admirably fits. Here is--
I. Want of reverence. “They knew God,” but “they glorified Him not as God.”
1. Many never think of God. Whether there is a God, or not, makes no practical difference to them; if we could prove that there were no God, they would feel easier in their consciences. “Well,” says one, “I do not care much whether there is a God or not;
