Orthodoxy: Its Truths And ErrorsClarke, James Freeman
Religion
Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors
Clarke, James Freeman
Unitarianism
Supernaturalism has generally disregarded God in nature, and only sees him
in revelation. It has allowed a sort of natural religion, but only in the
way of an argument to prove the existence of God by what he did a long
time ago. But it has not gone habitually to nature to _see_ God there,
incarnate in sun, moon, and stars; incorporate in spring, summer, autumn,
and winter; in day and night; in the human soul, reason, love, will. God
has been all around us, never far from us; but theology has only been
willing to see him in Jewish history, in sacred books, or on Sundays in
church. Let us see him there all we can, but see him also in every
rippling brook, in every tender flower, in all beauty, all sublimity, all
arrangement and adaptation of this world. No wonder that naturalism should
come to do what the Church has left undone—to find its God and Father in
this great and wonderful world which he has made for us. The creed says,
“God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost;” that is, God the
_Creator_, seen in Nature and Providence; God the _Redeemer_, seen in
Christianity; and God the _Sanctifier_, seen in every righteous and holy
soul. But the Church has neglected its own creed, and omitted _God the
Creator_, often also God the Sanctifier, and has only seen God in
_Christianity_, in its history, its Church, its doctrines, its
ceremonies.(8) Against this, naturalism comes as a great and needed
protest, and calls us to see God also in nature and life.
Then the Church has been too apt to teach a miraculous revelation, in
which the miracles are violations of law. But as God is confessedly the
author of law, it has made the Deity violate his own laws; that is, has
made him inconsistent, arbitrary, irregular, and wilful. Deep in the human
mind God has himself rooted a firm faith in the immutability of law; so
that when miracles are thus defined, naturalism justly objects to them.
§ 9. No Conflict between Naturalism and Supernaturalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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