As the Heavens Are Higher Than the Earth by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 7, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 36.

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“As the Heavens Are Higher Than the Earth”

By W. A. S.

WHAT a difference between the Christian Scriptures and the sacred books of the heathen!

In the heathen scriptures it is everywhere man talking about God and about religion.

In the Book of books it is God talking to man.

The difference is as great as that between heaven and earth.

In one, it is a helpless human hand reached up from earth toward heaven. In the other, it is a divine hand of might stretched down from heaven to earth.

In the one case, man is wandering blindly in the darkness, thinking his own vain thoughts, speaking his own words, with never a gleam of light from above, no voice from the world beyond.

Sir Arthur Lyall describes the barrenness and loneliness of it in his “Meditations of a Hindu Prince:” —

“And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests, The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts! What have they wrung from the Silence? Hath even a whisper come Of the Secret, whence and whither? Alas, for the gods are dumb!”

Even so it is without the divine revelation. Man must do all the talking, and his thoughts have no power to lift him beyond himself. It is the black, impenetrable darkness of unbelief.

But with the Holy Scriptures how different! Our whole outlook is flooded with light from heaven above. We hear on every page the voice of God calling to us. The Bible is the living Word. Not man talking about God, but the loving Father speaking to our hearts, is what we find in it.

It is not the lost sheep left to grope its

impossible way in the darkness that we see in the blessed Book, but the Good Shepherd come from above, seeking the lost and bringing it back to the fold.

It is a wondrous treasure, this Book of God, a divine gift sent down from heaven. The possession of it, in faith, makes all the difference between Christianity and heathenism. And modern unbelief and criticism is seeking to rob men of this voice from above. In the Outlook of May 13, Dr. Lyman Abbott speaks for the “modern view of the Bible” as follows:—

The Bible was formerly regarded as a letter from God; it is now regarded as a personal introduction to God.

And this introduction, he says, is written “not by amanuenses inscribing at dictation” or receiving “miraculous information.” It is simply the word of men who tell “what they have seen and felt.”

No; that will not do. Man’s word can never save. It leaves things just as they are in hopeless heathenism—men talking about God.

Thanks be to God for the revelation of the “sure word,” the voice that speaks in clear tones from heaven above.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,” saith the Lord, “so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

W. A. S.