NATURE AND REVELATION

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Apr 22, 1880

NATURE AND REVELATION.

We have great reason to be thankful that God has not left us to the uncertainties of natural religion. For evidently even the entire period of human history shows too small an arc of the whole divine plan for us to gather from it all the elements of the orbit in which we are moving. For ourselves, we confess to a growing distrust of endeavors to prove the deeper doctrine of revelation from the point of view of natural religion. It is sufficient for us that the doctrine of atonement and of future punishment are both beyond the reach of successful attack from the region of natural religion. At the same time we are not troubled if they are equally beyond the reach of any great amount of positive support from that quarter. In this generation, now, as in former times, interest continues to center in the evidences of Christianity, and in the proper interpretation of Scripture. What think ye of Christ? is still the paramount question. When many ceased to follow him, he asked his disciples, "Will ye also go away?" Often when our own faith has shown a tendency to waver, we have been checked by the pathos of Peter's reply, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." Christ's character as a witness to unseen things is confirmed to us by many signs and wonders. We should be extremely foolish to cast overboard such a pilot till we were sure his place could be supplied. Nature certainly does not furnish adequate testimony to encourage in us a lively hope of eternal joys, or to restrain the fear of unending and inimitable shame and contempt for our sins. Nor is nature an adequate guide in those practical duties which relate to the powers of an endless life. In our own sphere nature's revelations are sufficiently marvelous. But, like John the Baptist, it is but a voice in the wilderness, proclaiming something higher "which is for to come." Great is the man of science! But the feast in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he!—Sel.