THE DOCTRINE OF GOD THE ONE TRUE GOD The fundamental truth.-Three false roads: Intuition, Reason, the Senses.-The scientific method.-Two true roads: Revelation, the Incarnation.-Teaching of Christ about God: As to his being, his personality, his providence, his moral attributes.— Reconcilation.-The grapple with God. The fundamental truth.-The fundamental truth of religion is God. As he was in the beginning, so is he the beginning of all. The man who does not know God has not begun to live. He may eat and drink, make merry, accumulate a fortune or wear a crown; but he has not entered into that better life of high hopes and noble purposes and aspirations which makes us worthy of our divine birthright. For "this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God." To put ourselves into just relations with God is literally a matter of life and death. All the ologies are worth mastering, but Theology is indispensable. We must know God. But where is he? "Oh, that I knew where I might find him! . . . Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot per ceive him; on the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold him; he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him!" The horizons recede as we approach them; and the darkness thickens as we grope like blind men feeling their way along the wall. Three false roads.-There are three roads which are vainly trodden by multitudes who pursue this holy quest. Each of them is marked "This way to God," and each of them is a cul-de-sac or blind alley which leaves the soul still groping in the dark. Intuition. The first of these roads is intuition. There are no natural atheists. All are born with an indwelling sense of God. We do not enter on conscious life like the inferior orders; but "Trailing clouds of glory do we come In regions of darkest paganism there are traces of two innate convictions, namely; a divine birth and a sinful alienation. Hence the universal spirit of unrest so pathetically expressed by Augustine, "We came forth from God, and we are restless until we return to him." No doubt there have been some who, with no light but that which shines along the pathway of intuition, have made his acquaintance; but the vast multitude have simply arrived at idolatry. They |