Expositor's Bible: The Book of JobWatson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Job
Watson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Bible. Job -- Commentaries
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made
us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till
an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human
life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth
all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the
mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more
it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme
of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for
evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save
in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass
our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in
our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him;
it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect
holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater
than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that
gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in
thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science has taught us
very little if it has not banished the notion that the _small_ means
the _unimportant_, that minute things are of no moment in evolution.
For many years past science has been constructing for us the great
argument of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the
small details into the vast evolutionary design. The microscopist, the
biologist, the chemist, the astronomer, each and all are engaged in
building up this argument, forcing the confession that the universe is
one of inconceivably small things ordered throughout by law. Finish
and care would seem to be given everywhere to minutiæ as though, that
being done, the great would certainly evolve. Further, science even
when dealing with material things emphasises the importance of mind.
The truthfulness of nature at any point in the physical range is a
truthfulness of the Overnature to the mind of man, a correlation
established between physical and spiritual existence. Wherever order
and care are brought into view there is an exaltation of the human
reason which perceives and relates. All would be thrown into confusion
if the fidelity recognised by the mind did not extend to the mind
itself, if the sanity and development of the mind were not included in
the order of the universe. For the psychological student this is
established, and the working of evolutionary law is being traced in
the obscure phenomena of consciousness, sub-consciousness and habit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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