Fact and Truth

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 34.

Fact and Truth.—Fact and truth are not the same in spiritual life. Fact comes from the Latin facio, “to make.” It is a thing accomplished. Truth is that which is; verity, reality. Some of the dictionary definitions are identical. But we can hold the fact, as fact, entirely apart from ourselves; the truth, as truth, never.

There are many who believe the statements of the Bible. They acknowledge its record of past events to be fact. God created the world. Man sinned. God gave His Son. That Son came into humanity, lived the Example of the race, and died its Sacrifice. He is now the Great High Priest before God, and the only Saviour of the world. All these are believed to be correct statements. They are great and all-important facts. But they are held only as facts, just as men hold to the fact of the War of the Revolution, or the circulation of the blood, or the rule that the sum of the squares of the base and perpendicular of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse. They are cherished as valuable knowledge, superior to that of the heathen and the infidel. Talking upon their beauty and greatness is pleasant, and those are condemned unsparingly who do not believe them. But after all, the great facts do not particularly affect the life and character. The heart is just as grasping, just as avaricious, just as uncharitable as ever.

Facts are cold, dead things apart from the life. They sometimes wall us in like stones, protecting us from the assaults of the infidel; but in the cold fortress we pine and die. The dead walls give no warmth nor meat nor drink. They furnish no companionship. Facts add nothing to stature. They oftentimes repel the seeker after truth. They make encyclopedias and museums; but they give no life.

Truth is living; for God is in it. Received as truth, it becomes a part of our very being. It meets all our needs. It banishes all error and falsity. It shines away all darkness. It separates the soul from the world, and sets it apart unto God. It clothes the naked. It warms into life the cold, and dead, and dying. It feeds the hungry soul. It gives the thirsty drink. It gives birth to longing for other souls out in the cold and need of the world. It creates, and generates, and regenerates sympathy, and love, and kindness for the suffering and unfortunate. Our God is “the God of truth.” His “law is the truth.” His message to a dying world is “the Gospel of truth.” Jesus Christ our Lord is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” It is good to know the facts, if we know more. It is all sufficient to know the truth which makes free, and sanctifies, and saves.