The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 216

HOLY SCRIPTURES

i-je

my

IN

NEW TESTAMENT

children's highest interests depend; so that,

be untrue,

e.g.,

if

they proved to

we should an eternal salvation?

the report of the resurrection of Christ,

suffer the priceless

and irreparable

loss of

This can not be it is absolutely unthinkable. And experience proves that the efforts of foolish people to prop their faith by such proofs has always ended with the loss of all faith. Nay, such kind ;

of proof is

by

its

very insignificance either unworthy to be men-

tioned with reference to such serioiis matters, or,

anything,

it

can not be furnished, nor ought

it

if it

Notarial or mathematical proof neither can nor nished, because the character

be worth

to be.

may

be fur-

and nature of the contents of Scrip-

ture are inconsistent with or repellent to such demonstration.

No man may demand

whom

legal proofs for the fact that the

he loves and honors as father

made such proof impossible by

is

man

God has case. The

his father indeed,

the very nature of the

delicacy which ennobles all family life cuts off the very appearance of such investigation; and,

if it

were possible, the

son, furnished

with such proof, would ipso facto have lost his father and mother; they would be his parents no more

dence his

child-life

;

and beneath the

pile of evi-

would be buried.

The same principle applies to the Holy Scripture. The nature and character of the revelation has been so ordered that it allows no notarial demonstration. The revelation to the apostles is unthinkable, if other persons could have heard, recorded, and pubIt was an operation of holy energies, not lished it as well as they. intended to compel doubters to a mere outward faith, but simply to accomplish that for which God had sent it, without caring much for the contradiction of the skeptics. It concerns a work of God which legal or mathematical investigation can not fathom which manifests itself upon the spiritual domain where certainty obtains not by outward demonstration, but by personal faith of the one in the other. As faith in father and mother springs not from mathematical demonstration, but from the contact of love, the fellowship of life, and personal trust in each other, even so here, A life of love unfolded itself. The mercies of God came bending down to us in tender compassion. And every man touched by this divine life was affected by its influence, taken up by it, lived in it, felt himself in sympathetic fellowship with it; and, in a way imperceptible and not understood, obtained a certainty, far above any other, that he was in the presence of facts, and that they were divinely revealed. ;

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