p. 8 | Supreme Authority by Thomas Hamilton

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 24, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 50.

Supreme Authority

By Thomas Hamilton

SUPREME authority is involved in the very idea of a Supreme Being. It is His to command. Being God, He will command nothing but what is right. It is for His creatures to obey, satisfied that implicit obedience is at once their duty and their interest. Therefore if He has spoken as He has in the Bible, whatever He has declared there is most surely to be believed, because it is so declared, and whatever He has indicated as His will is most carefully to be obeyed, because it is His will.

Moreover, that revelation of His is to be taken in its plain grammatical meaning. Its histories are neither to be transmitted into myths nor allegories. Its statements are not to have read into them non-natural senses, such as similar statements in any other book would never be subjected to. The fact that this Bible is a revelation for man, therefore intended surely to be understood by man, so far as he is capable of understanding it, is to be kept in view.—The Rev. Thomas Hamilton, M. A.