If we are to offer a suggestion, as we have stated a difficulty, we
should hold that the only way of obviating or explaining the contrast,
which is so perplexing to susceptible minds, is by recurring to the same
primary assumption which is required to satisfy our belief in God’s
infinity, omnipotence, or veracity. We cannot _prove_ in any way that
God is infinite any more than that space is infinite; nor that God is
omnipotent, since we do not know what powers there are in nature—that He
is perfectly true, for we have had no experience or communication with
Him, in which His veracity could be tested. We assume these propositions,
and treat them, moreover, not as hypothetical assumptions or provisional
theories to be discarded if new facts should be discovered, and to be
rejected if more elaborate research should require it, but as positive
and clear certainties, on which we must ever act, and to which we must
reduce and square all new information that may be brought home to us. In
these respects we assume that God is perfect, and it is only necessary
for the solution of our difficulty to assume that He is perfect in all.
We have in both cases the same amount and description of evidence, the
same inward consciousness, the same speaking and urging voice, requiring
us to believe. In every step of religious argument we require the
assumption, the belief, the faith if the word is better, in an absolutely
_perfect_ Being—in and by whom we are, who is omnipotent as well as most
holy, who moves on the face of the whole world and ruleth all things by
the word of His power. If we grant this, the difficulty of the opposition
between what we have called the natural and the supernatural religion is
removed; and without granting it, that difficulty is perhaps insuperable.
It follows from the very idea and definition of an infinitely-perfect
Being, that He is within us, as well as without us—ruling the clouds of
the air, and the fishes of the sea, as well as the fears and thoughts
of man—smiling through the smile of nature, as well as warning with
the pain of conscience, ‘Sine qualitate bonum; sine quantitate magnum;
sine indigentiâ creatorem; sine situ præsidentem; sine habitu omnia
continentem; sine loco ubique totum; sine tempore sempiternum; sine ullâ
sui mutatione mutabilia facientem, nihilque patientem.’ If we assume
this, life is simple; without this all is dark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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