TRUSTING A FALSE GUIDE.
By Editor
In a recent number of a religious weekly we find the following:— "Think how Abraham received his message in Chaldea. Little by little his mind opened to the truth. Day after day he became more certain of divine help. By and by, clear and sweet as an audible voice, came the words into his soul, 'I will bless thee,' and 'thou shalt be a blessing.' The Holy Spirit will bring the words of Jesus so close that you know they were sent from God to you." This paragraph occurred in the course of an article designed to teach that we should recognize God in our every-day life. The real effect of such things is, however, to induce people to take their own imaginings for the voice of God. We have seen of late a strong tendency toward eliminating the supernatural from the Bible, and bringing everything down to the human level. The "new school" will have it that God did not speak to Abraham with an audible voice, but that when the Bible says that God spoke to Abraham, it means that he had an overpowering impulse from within, to do a certain thing. We cannot expect such people to be logical, but if they were, they would necessarily have to explain the command to offer Isaac, and the subsequent call to Abraham not to harm the lad, as meaning that Abraham felt an uncontrollable impulse to kill Isaac, which, when he had the knife in his hand, suddenly passed away. The great trouble with such interpretation is not alone that it robs the Bible narrative of all sense and consistency, but that it teaches people to follow the insane promptings of their own hearts. It teaches that the voice of God is simply a strong impression, and is thus identical with the Spiritualist teaching that "truth is the voice of God speaking through the human soul." And all such teaching, if believed, as it surely will be, can result in nothing else but moral anarchy and corruption. We may never hear the voice of God as did Abraham, and there is no need that we should, for God's will is fully revealed in his word, and we are to follow that, and not feelings and impressions. That alone can make us wise unto salvation. It is as true now as it ever was, that "he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool."