Bible CharactersTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
Bible Characters
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Bible -- Biography
Who can tell how many angels are round about the praying man? How is it
that when the arresting hand is laid upon some men it becomes softened,
the muscles relax and have no more pith in them, and the men come back
to say: “Never man spake like this man; arrest him we can not”? This is
a tribute paid to the Christian religion. Men have passed parliamentary
statutes against it, but the religion of the cross has outlived the
statutes--has seen them grow into yellow letters, has observed them being
canceled or otherwise passing into obsoleteness.
We are now brought to a very striking point in the incident. The servant
of Elisha came back, saying: “Alas, my master, how shall we do? I have
been up early, and behold, a host compasses the city--both with horses
and chariots.”
Then Elisha said: “Lord, open his eyes; let this young man see. At
present he can only look upon appearances, which are not realities. The
universe is within the universe. The Bible is within the Bible. The man
is within the man. This servant of mine sees only the outer circle--the
rim or rind of things. Lord, show him the reality; let him see, and then
he will be at peace.”
There is a view of sight; there is a view of faith. The worldly man goes
by what his bodily eyes notice or discern; the spiritually minded man
walks by faith, not by sight.
The telescope does not create the stars; the telescope only reveals them,
or enables the eye to see them. If, then, a telescope can do this, shall
we deny to that spiritual power within us called Faith the power which we
ascribe to a mechanical instrument which our own hands have fashioned?
Look upon a given object--say, you take a piece of glass two inches
square; look upon it and ask: “Is there any thing on that glass?” Looking
with the naked eye, the sharpest man would say: “That glass is perfectly
free from blot, stain, flaw or inscription of any kind whatsoever.”
Now, put that same two-inch square of glass under a microscope, and look
through the microscope. What is upon it? The Lord’s Prayer, upon a speck
not discernible by the naked eye.
If, then, we ascribe such wonderful powers to a glass which we ourselves
have determined as to its size and its relation to other glasses, shall
we deny to a certain spiritual faculty the power of seeing that which can
not be discriminated by unaided reason?
By all the pressure of analogy, by all the reasoning of inference, we
insist that, if such wonderful things can be done mechanically, things at
least equally wonderful can be done by forces that are spiritual.
The Sun does not make the landscape; the Sun only shows it. A man may
stand upon a high hill on a dull-gray day and say: “I can imagine what
this would be when the Sun was shining.” But no man can imagine light. It
stands as a sacred mystery in our life that the Sun never comes within
the lines of imagination. The Sun light is a continual surprise, even to
the eyes that have most reverently and lovingly studied it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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