Some Chief Truths of Religion

HOLY SCRIPTURE does not begin by proving the existence of God and describing His nature and attributes; it assumes belief in Him, and some knowledge of Him, and gradually reveals more and more fully His Divine perfections and His relations to man. So in these thoughts about God, we do not propose to go into a careful proof of His being and attributes; but, assuming that our readers believe in Him, and have some knowledge of Him, we shall endeavour to lead them to a consideration of some of the great truths concerning His being which are less frequently thought of; sometimes merely asserting a truth, sometimes elucidating it, sometimes giving evidence in support of it, as may seem most likely to be of practical advantage to those for whom we write. If the proportion of our pages devoted to the Godhead is large, it is from a conviction that the foundation of our religious knowledge ought to be laid broad and deep in a knowledge of God. The first thought which we put forth is this, that

GOD IS SELF-EXISTENT.

Our reason helps us to rise up rapidly and easily to the conception of this first great truth. Thus :-I exist; I have not always existed; I came into being out of nothingness a few years ago. I am not the author of my own being; I owe it to another. That being to whom I owe my existence either derives his being only from himself, or, like me, he owes it to another. If he exist of himself, he is the Self-existent Being. If he derive his existence from another, I go still further back, reasoning about him as about the former. And thus I go back and back until I must at length arrive at a being who existed of himself. We cannot go back in an infinite series.*

As an illustration, take an oak-tree. It sprang from an acorn; that acorn was produced by an oak-tree. Carry this series back, and we must come at last either to the first acorn from which all the oak-trees have sprung, or to an oak-tree which shed the first crop of acorns; and that first acorn or that first tree must have been produced otherwise than by the natural process by which oaks and acorns are now produced. Or take the case supposed, of a man: we cannot trace back our being to an infinite series of men ; we may trace-we do trace-mankind back to one pair of parents; to suppose that pair sprang from an infinite series of pairs of parents, of whom each pair gave being to one male and one female child and no more, is absurd.

Again, the Being who first existed must have existed always. For, if anything whatever exists, something must have always existed; if there ever was a time when nothing existed, nothing ever could have come into existence, for nothing cannot produce, anything; the first Being could not make Himself before He existed, therefore He must

* It is an axiom of philosophy that number is finite.

have existed always of Himself, i.e., He is self-existent. Nor can He ever cease to be. For if He could, it must be either of His own will, or of the will of another. It cannot be of the will of another, for there is none greater than He. Nor of His own will, for it is impossible to conceive that the Self-existent should will His own annihilation. He necessarily exists.

This is the meaning of the great name by which God reveals Himself to us. "I am that I AM” (Exodus iii. 14). God is HE WHO IS. In the Book of the Revelation God the Son says, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Rev. i. 8). "From everlasting to everlasting Thou art God" (Ps. xc. 2).

Carry back your thoughts to a period before the world was made, or any worlds; before the angels were made; before anything visible or invisible had been created; and try to realise God as existing from all eternity, alone in the universe, alone before there was a universe, Himself the universe, and you will recognise that in this self-existence lies especially the grandeur, the awful grandeur of the Divine Being. You will recognise how we, minute existences, who owe our being to Him, ought to adore Him, the Author of all existence. And so the Psalmist, contemplating the Divine self-existence, utters his adoration—" Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting and world' without end" (Ps. xc. 2); and in St. John's vision of the heavenly worship, "the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give Thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come" (Rev. xi. 16, 17).

GOD A PERSONAL GOD.

This self-existent Being is not merely a Force, or a principle of Life, but a Person.

When we examine the natural works which surround us in the world, we find in them evidence of what we call design, of the skilful adaptation of means to an end, as in the wing of a fly, the jointed armour of a shell-fish, the hand of a man. We compare these with what men are accustomed to produce when they use means to attain some end which they have in view. And we conclude that the author of the existence of all these things is a Designing mind. But a designing mind is not a force or a principle, it implies a person.

Moreover, we conclude that the whole universe is the work of the same Person.

In the works of man we observe that every man's work has features which differ from the work of another, so that we can pick out the work of any artist or any workman by the characters of his style or handling. When we examine the natural things which surround us in this world, we observe in them all the characteristics of one mind and one hand. Moreover we find that all the things which surround us in this world have relations to one another, the vegetable world to the mineral world, and the animal to both-e.g., the roots of vegetables are so formed as to extract from the soils in which they grow elements which the plant needs, and their respiratory organs to extract from the atmosphere that element which is necessary to their growth and not the other. So the eye is adapted to light and light to the eye. A million complex relations run throughout the world, binding the whole earthly creation into a system, an organised whole, which must be the work of one designing systematising mind.

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