FAITH NOT REASON | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 11.

FAITH NOT REASON.

THE word of God alone reveals the beginning of life. No science is so modern as to pretend to tell us what was "in the beginning." There is therefore more truth in it in the region of physics, as well as metaphysics, than in all other books. The natural is hard to be understood, and scarcely two wise men are wise enough to understand nature alike. But it is the super-natural that we are after. Science is concerned only with the natural. It excludes with reverence or with contempt, according to its measure of sense, the supernatural, and asks only that natural causes be explained, the mode of existence and natural relations. This is the legitimate domain of the scientist. The natural is first, and afterward that which is spiritual. If the student has a soul with breadth and scope to embrace the higher relations of physics and metaphysics he perceives the grand necessity of knowing whether or not there is vital force that integrates the quartz, uniforms the lily, and wheels the stars. He drops the retort and crucible, shuts the telescope, puts out the fires in the laboratory, enters his closet, and on his knees he prays:—

"Infinite truth! the life of my desires, Come from the sky and show thyself to me. I'm tired of reading and this hearing tires, But I am never tired of telling thee 'Tis thy fair face my spirit burns to see."

The prayer is answered. Out of the darkness that covers the earth and sky, there comes in robes of celestial beauty, in her hands the keys of wisdom and truth, and on her head a diadem of stars, the gift of God, whose name is Faith. She comes to make us partakers of the divine nature. By faith we know. By faith, only, we know the worlds were made; not grew, were made. Here, just here, is that immeasurable gulf that separates belief and unbelief. Here we find the solution of that supposed, unproved, and unreal antagonism between science and religion. There is no probable reconciliation because there is no antagonism. The subjects in discussion belong to distinct worlds and cannot come in conflict. One is concerned with natural things, the other with spiritual. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."—Irenæus, in New York Observer.