SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 294, 8 June 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

Sermon preached by REV. T. H. ROSEYEARE on Sunday. June 2, in St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. ; Y~e believe in God, believe also in .Me."—John 14-1. The disciples, as loyal Jews, had already learned to trust in tlie unchanging faithfulness of God displayed in the times of Israel's oppression as well as in the times of prosperity. Now these disciples have learned to love their Master and are saddened at the news of his departure. The message of comfort the Master gives is. "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." The ground of this exhortation is that He claims to be on an equality with God—"l and my Father are one"—so that the reasons that led them to trust in God should also obtain as reasons for their faith in Christ. The truth here set forth is that a consistent and thorough-going theist ought logicallv to be a Christian also. BELIEF IX GOD. Let us examine some of the reasons for our belief in God and see how they lead us to the Christian position. 1. I\e believe in God because we feel our need of Him, Our need of God arises out of our feelings of dependence and obligation which are common to human hearts. As for dependence, we are never satisfied with that which pertains to the material and finite. Our souls search after the infinite and eternal, and hence it is universally true that man prays, i The supreme spirit to which he prays may not be very clearly defined, and may niffer with the country in which men dwell, but the fact remains that man prays. Again, man feels a sense of obligation to the moral law. He feels he ought, and he ought not, and he also feels discomfort if he perforins what he ought not. Xow, goodness is not an abstract standard of conduct. We only know goodness when we know a good person, and ■we only know perfect goodness when we know a perfectly good person, i.e., God. Our belief in God, therefore, arises out of the dictates of our souls, out of our sense of our need of One on Whom we can rely, and Who will he a perfect standard of virtue. Now Christ claims to meet these very requirements. He claims to be the monarch of ■ the souls of men, with greater authority than any earthly lawgiver; and He also claims to be able to deal with the moral problem of our lives, to pardon our sins and to enable us to conform to a righteous standard, and so he says, "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me."

GOD THE CREATOR. 2. 'We believe in God because He is the Creator and Preserver of the world. (Gen. 1-1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"; Psalm 10430: "Thou renewest the face of the earth"). The mind of man cannot rest satisfied with the origin of things until it arrives at God. Scientific research gives us the knowledge of a long series of causation, informing us that "b" is the cause of '"a" and "c" is the cause of ,f b," and so on, but there is no finality about such a process until we come to the first cause itself uncaused, or, technically, a causa sui. It is at this point that we come to a knowledge of God as Creator and Preserver of all that is in existence. Believe also in Me, says Jesus Christ. John tells us that Christ, the Pre-incar-nate Word or Logo?, was operative in the Creative activities. "In the beginning was the Word .... and "the Word was God." That Christ Who was operative in Creation comes and says (John 10-10): "I am come that they might have life." He Who created physical life, is also able and prepared to call us to a spiritual life. Such me can come from Christ alone. ORDER AND DESIGN. 3. e believe in God because of the order and design of the world. The order, the purpose, the beauty, the progress of the world all speak of intelligence in the Creator. This was illustrated long ago by Paley. He pointed out that the mechanism of a watch compels us to believe that it is the product not of chance but of the mind of a watchmaker. So in the world there are evidences of mind, and it is this that makes science possible. Nor does evolution necessarily conflict V'ith the idea of an intelligent" Creator, for it deals with the "how" and does not touch the "why" of phenomana. It is not sufficient to say merely that such and such is the result of natural selection. That is merely the "how." We must next ask, Why those advantageous variations? If chance alone were operative. then disadvantageous variations would nullify the advantageous. Tim fact of order in the world of God. "BELIEVE ALSO IX ME." "Believe also in He." Christ came to bring order into the moral world. "1 came ... to fulfil the law." And what is law? Just simply the expression of order. Sin is disorder. The shorter Catechism says: "Sin is any want of conformity to or transgression' of the law of God." it is sin that disturbs the world and causes unrest. Christ came to deal with this problem and to set the world at rest. There are other reasons for believing in God which also lead up to a belief in Christ. But. mark you, the end is not attained when you simply assent to the existence of Christ. Your belief in God as the Creator and Preserver of all tilings leads you to adopt a certain course of action in conformity with that i belief. So it must be with'your belief | in Christ. Does He give newness of life? Does He pardon sins and guide the souls of men? Does He meet all the wants of the human soul? Do you believe He does? Then yield to Him, trust Him, respond to Him, and allow Him to do these things for you.