Its Own Best Witness

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 28, 1883

Its Own Best Witness.

The Teachings of Christianity are the best vindication of their own divinity. The impartial biographies of the Old Testament, and the faithful pictures of the imperfections and failures of a Job, an Abraham, and a David, are simply superhuman. The ten commandments contain a code of righteousness so comprehensive and divine, and so unapproachable by any human ethics that even scepticism has been compelled to ask, "Where did Moses get that law?" The life of Jesus is a greater miracle than any of his works; and even Rosseau had to admit that to have invented it would involve a greater miracle than to have lived it. Where is the clever author? Why has he hidden his name from a world that would have immortalized him above Homer, Shakespeare, or Milton? The plan of redemption, its deep wisdom, inevitable righteousness and unfathomable love; its wonderful unfolding in ancient type and prophecy; its marvelous adaptation to man's guilt and sin, misery and helplessness; its power to heal the conscience, cleanse the soul, transform the life, and satisfy the aspirations of man; this is the wonder of angels, the glory of Christians, the self-evidencing witness of the gospel. The heart that truly receives it knows that it is true. The principles of the gospel need no other vindication than their blessed fruit, heavenly characters, holy lives and beneficent influences. Let any one read the Bible itself, with a candid spirit, and he will be constrained, like many a former inquirer, to acknowledge, in the face of its holy effulgence, this is the true light of men.—Word, Work, and World.