THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION SUPERNATURAL.
By J. H. Pettingell
THE manifest drift of the present age is towards a religion of science and philosophy, and away from the simple truths of the gospel. Many well-meaning but sophisticated minds are being led away by the delusion that these truths must be brought within the scope of natural laws. They would bring the facts and doctrines which it reveals to the test of reason and science, as though the Christian religion were one of the many forms of a natural religion, only more scientific, purer, and better. Here is the real source of the confusion and darkness and doubt of many who would become scientific and philosophical Christians—if Christians at all—forgetting that the first step in knowledge of divine things is to become little children at the feet of the Master. The supreme truths of the Christian religion are revealed, not to our reason, but to our faith. They do not come within the sphere or scope of natural science, or human philosophy. Its great facts are altogether divine and supernatural, and until this great fact is apprehended and allowed, no real progress can be made in the right direction. They are above nature, and cannot be explained by natural laws. The creation of the world, in the beginning, was a supernatural act; and—whatever speculations one may entertain as to the mode of this creation—to deny its supernatural character, as though it could be explained by natural laws, is to be an atheist. The same is true of the creation of man. He is not the outcome of self-operating processes, but the special object of divine creation, which no law of progressive development can explain. Sin itself is in opposition to all law, and nature provides no antidote to the death to which it inevitably leads, nor any way of recovery from its ruin. If there be any remedy or recovery from its fatal poison, it must be supernaturally provided. It is just here that we find the radical difference between our holy religion and all other systems of religion the world has ever seen. This is given from heaven. As for the others, they are, at best, but human devices, "broken cisterns that can hold no water." The new birth, the resurrection from the dead, and the life everlasting, are not the orderly steps in any natural progress, as, alas! too many in this scientific age are endeavoring to show. They are truths beyond the reach of scientific discovery. There is no law of nature that can explain, or prove, or disprove them. They are specially and divinely revealed to our faith, and are to be received because they are revealed, and as they are revealed, if at all.—J. H. Pettingell.