Life and Times of David. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. VIMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Life and Times of David. Miscellaneous Writings of C. H. Mackintosh, vol. VI
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Theology
Here the poor human heart lets itself out, in its ignorant reasonings.
How little did these skeptics understand either the person or the path
of the Son of God! How could they appreciate the motives that actuated
Him either in what He did, or in what He did not do? He opened the
eyes of the blind, in order that "the works of God might be made
manifest in him." And He did not prevent the death of Lazarus, that
God might be glorified thereby.
But what did they know about all this? Absolutely nothing. The blessed
One moved at far too high an elevation to be within the ken of worldly
religionists and skeptical reasoners. "The world knew Him not." God
understood and appreciated Him perfectly. This was enough. What were
the thoughts of men to One who ever walked in calm communion with the
Father? They were utterly incapable of forming a correct judgment
either of Himself or of His ways. They carried on their reasonings in
that thick moral darkness in which they dwelt.
Thus it is still. Human reasonings are begun, continued, and ended in
darkness. Man reasons about God; reasons about Christ; reasons about
Scripture; reasons about heaven, about hell, about eternity; about all
sorts of things. But all his reasonings are worse, far worse, than
worthless. Men are no more capable of understanding or appreciating
the written Word now, than they were of understanding or appreciating
the living Word, when He was amongst them. Indeed, the two things must
go together. As the living Word and the written Word are one, so to
know the one we must know the other; but the natural, the unrenewed,
the unconverted man knows neither. He is totally blind, in utter
darkness, dead; and when, without reality, he makes a religious
profession, he is "twice dead"--dead in nature and dead in his
religion. What are his thoughts, his reasonings, his conclusions
worth? They are baseless, false, ruinous.
Nor is there the slightest use in arguing with unconverted people. It
only tends to deceive them by leading them to suppose that they can
argue. It is always the best way to deal solemnly with them as to
their own moral condition before God. We do not find our Lord taking
any notice of the unbelieving reasonings of those around Him. He only
again groans and goes on His way. "Jesus _therefore_, again groaning
in Himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon
it."
This second groan is deeply affecting. He groaned, at first, in
sympathy with the mourners around Him. He groaned again over the
hardness and dark unbelief of the human heart, and of the heart of
Israel in particular. But, be it carefully noted, He does not attempt
to explain His reasons for not having hindered the death of His
friend, although He had opened the eyes of the blind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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