FOR THE SABBATH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 564, 3 May 1913, Page 3

FOR THE SABBATH.

REASONS FOR FAITH. WHY DO I BELIEVE IN GOD? Those who have ever known what it is to doabt that there is. or who may hava lived for r time without a bslief in such a Being, will know the awful blank which the absence of such a belief leav6B. I think it is a French writer who sayi, "When I come across a man who has given up his belief in a God, I take off my hat to him as to one who has suffered a great loss." "The Great Companion is dead:" they are the words, I think, of Professor Clifford, and there ia no more touching description of the condition of a man who has loßt his belief than that.

I ask the question in that particular form, because it at once differentiates our discussion to-night from two or three other things. This question, "Is there a Being of infinite Power, Wisdom, Righteousness, and Love?" means, Do we believe in what is called Theism' And Theism is a totally different thing from a mere belief in aome religious force. You will find, if you read much philosophy or modern writing, that many people admit the existence of some kind of vague religious influence, which they cannot avoid perceiving as they think out things; but what we set ourselves to discuss to-day's is something much more than that —Is there a personal God?

So, again, our question to-night is distinct from Pantheism. Pantheism is that form of belief which identifies God with the world, and the world with God. I have no time to discußß that to night. So, again, it is distinct from Deism. The Deiit does believe in a God, but in a God who is anthroned in magnificent inactivity, somewhere far away from the world, with no effective or efficient influence upon the world at all. And therefore it is not a mere religious influence, it iB not Pantheism, it is not Deism, we are discussing to-night; what we are discussing to-night is, Have we any grounds for believing in Theism?

And in discussing this there ate three things we have to beware of in our attitude. First of all, we have to beware of what is called anthropomorphism. You will find that time after time people warn us against anthropomorphism—that ia, making out that God is eaxctly like man. Of course, the real truth is that as men we have to speak in terms of men; a geologist has also to do so —he has to speak of "tilted rocks," and so on. We can only speak in terms of a man to men; but we must beware, in speaking of God, as though He was a magnified man. Man iB in the image of God, but that is a very different thing from saying that God is in the image of man. So, again, we must beware of undue dogmatism. "God is in heaven, thou art on the earth; therefore let thy words be few." In other words, anything like undue confidence, anything like speaking as if we had seen the whole thing before our eyes, is very offensive in a lecture or discussion like this. Just bb a minnow in a little cannot possibly know all about the great ocean, n we must not speak as if we, with >3r finite intelligences, could grasp a id comprehend the whole infinite. Yau will find, as we go on, that that explains many of our difficulties —so many of us refuse to admit that We cannot know everything. Ab a matter of fact, in one sense we are all agnostics; we all have to admit that there are great legions of truth and regions of knowledge which we can only partially comprehend. Then, thirdly we have to beware of what I may call agnosticism; because we can only see part of a thing, it does not j follow that we have not got a real knowledge of that part; and because we can only apprehend part of the great heavenly truths by which we are ! surrounded, it is false modesty to say that we cßnnot know what we do know. I mean this: if you have in your offices agnoßtic friends, and they say to you, "How is it possible to know all thingß?" your answer iB this: "I may not know, all these I things; but what I do say is, that when certain parts of them have been revealed and told me, I can know what 1 am told —I can know the part which I do apprehend." Now, with these safeguards, we will take, one by one, the various attributes of God. And first of all we will a ke ourselves this: How do we know God at all? How do we know anything whatever about God? And we are answered at once by a similar I question, How do we know anything about our brother man? How could I, for instance, if I lived with you a month, know anything about you? I never could see you—you would be out of my ken, right behind anything I could see. I should judge what your character was through your manifestations. I Bhould hear what you say, I should see what you do, I should watch your conduct, and make a kind of instantaneous inference from your manifestations to who and what you were behind it all. When a man dies we say, "He is gone." The body is lying there* his limbs are there, every part of him that is physical is there; but we say, "He is gone," which 3hows that we realise that we only know him through his manifestations, and that the mere eye, the mere arm, the mere head, is not the man. So is it we learn to know God—we learn to know Him through His manifestations. And when the Indian hunter was asked about God, and said, "I see His footprints on the sand," he was giving a very true answer; he meant that, just as he traced some great animal in his native country by watching the tracks that he made, and gathered from them the sort of an animal it was that he was tracking, so he had to use the pame method in discovering God. And, therefor®, we will make up/ our minds that the only way to to know God is exaetly the we

learn to know our brother man, and that is through watching His manifestations. Let us, then, watch the manifestations of God, and see whether from them we can collect these four things of which we are in search: Is He powerful? Ia He wise? Is He righteous? and Is He loving?