The Truth About God And The Bible
By Robert Roberts
Introduction
I. IS THERE A GOD?
No subject comes near this in the immensity of the issues involved.
The conclusion we may come to is very practical in its influence,
whether we consider the principles on which we regulate our present
lives, or the hopes and cravings with which we instinctively contemplate
the limitless future of time. Other themes exhaust themselves
in the short life we now live, beginning in the feebleness of
the cradle and ending in the decay of all our powers, and our
inevitable disappearance in the silence and oblivion of the grave.
This goes forward and links itself with the universe and the everlasting.
The man who says there is no God cuts himself away from the elevating
power that comes with reverence for the eternal, and from the
sunshine that comes into the darkness of human life with hope
of a better state. He may not be aware of the injury that comes
from his denial, nor in the moment of polemic heat can he be expected
to admit it; but the effect works itself out with the slow, but
inexorable, persistence and irresistible power of a law of nature.
In times of private crisis, that come to every man sooner or later
-- in times of calamity, times of disease and solitude and weakness,
and it may be desertion -- the quenching and desolating power
of unbelief makes itself felt in the innermost soul.
In times of public turmoil it becomes a menace to the safety of
society, as the leaders of the French Revolution found out over
100 years ago, and at last were led to say if there were no God
it would be necessary to invent one.
What do we mean by God? It is impossible in a single sentence
to express all the significance of the glorious idea, but for
present purposes it may be said that by God we mean a conscious
Being possessed of intelligence and organising energy sufficient
to produce and sustain the system of nature as we see it, and
of which we ourselves form a part. Is there such a Being? Or is
the universe the chance evolution of fermenting
elements destitute of the power of intelligent contrivance for
present ends, or of the capacity to form plans of beneficence
for the future?
Three great lines of evidence converge upon a decisive answer
in the affirmative to the first question. These are:
1. The intuitions of commonsense.
2. The necessity arising out of the inductions of science. And
3. Most powerful of all, the answer furnished by actual occurrences
in the history of mankind.
