How To Find God by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Dec 5, 1878

How To Find God.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

"THE fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Ps. 14:1. The holy Bible, in which Christians believe, teaches that there is one living God, who is almighty, infinite in every perfection, eternal in his nature, the Creator of everything which exists, and the Father of all. This Bible claims to be a revelation of his will to man. It teaches that those who do his will shall be rewarded for it, both in this life and also eternally in the life to come; and that those who disobey him shall be punished.

But what evidence have we that the Bible is what it claims to be—the word of God, a revelation from our Creator? Infidels pretend that there is not sufficient evidence to justify this claim. We affirm, and shall show, that there is an abundance of evidence that the Bible is the word of God. Indeed, there is so much evidence in proof of this, that many volumes would not suffice to contain it all. However, we shall state only a few of the plainest evidences for Christianity. Our acquaintance with infidels has thoroughly convinced us that it is not merely evidence which is needed to convince them, but that the difficulty lies far back of that.

If an overwhelming amount of evidence could cure infidelity, the disease would long since have ceased to exist.

"Well," says the skeptic, "if there is a God, why don't he show himself? If he will appear in mid-heaven, if he will come personally and talk with me, then I will believe. I will stand in the door and call upon him to cause it to thunder out of a clear sky, to flash his lightnings where there are no clouds, to make the earth shake in answer to my questions—let him do this, and then I will believe."

"Suppose God should take as much of his nature as we can understand, and bring it to us in the way of adequate personal manifestation to the senses. Could we endure the exhibition? Why, we can hardly bear such sights and sounds as we ourselves can produce. We can kindle such glory of conflagration, can detonate such might and majesty of sound, as will destroy sight and hearing, and even shock the weakly out of life. And surely if God should come upon our senses with such imperialism of sights and sounds as would appropriately represent the utmost power and knowledge we can conceive—as would worthily express our ideas of Eternity and Almightiness and Omniscience—that moment would be our last.

"Even now, when the common lightning shoots before our eyes, how they quiver back from the blinding flame; and when the common thunder comes upon us in some great crash, how our ears and hearts quail under the terrible bass! And were God himself to come flashing and pealing on the world in all that outward majesty that rightfully belongs to him, and fitly signifies to sense the presence of a virtually infinite being, who of us would see another moment in the body? We should straightway be dazzled out of life. Our frighted senses and hearts would give one leap, and then become motionless forever—and this though they were a thousand-fold stronger than they are. . . . The men who ask that God should personally manifest himself to their senses as God, know not what they ask. . . . Should a being of virtually infinite glory and majesty come on our senses, or our thoughts, with any but the most inconsiderable fraction of his greatness, our feeble souls would infallibly go into unhingement." Pater Mundi, pp. 122-124.

Foolish man, you have no right to thus put tests to your God, to say just how he must prove himself to you. Do you know that God himself has given many tests by which he offers to prove to any man that he does exist; and that he will manifest himself to all who will put him to the proof? Now if you despise the way that God has chosen, and demand some other test, of your own invention, do not expect God to come to your terms and change from what he has declared he will do. You would better first try the tests which God submits. If you will do this thoroughly, we are willing to warrant that the results will be perfectly satisfactory. They have never failed and they never will fail in the case of any individual who will put them to thorough trial.

Try the following test: The Lord says, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." John 7:17. Now, skeptic, here is a chance for you to try an experiment. Commence to walk carefully according to the light you already have on matters of duty, and see whether faith in the Bible, and the God of the Bible, does not spring up in your heart. Begin to act upon the Bible as a rule of life, and see if it does not harmonize with your better nature. Promise this hour, that for the next six months you will go once a day, and, upon your knees, alone, humbly ask that if there is a God he will help you to the light, will help you to find him, will help you to know the truth; if the Bible is his word that he will help you to believe it, and open it to your understanding so that you may see it is the truth. My skeptical friend, do this and your infidelity is gone.

"Who cannot put God and the Scriptures on the test of this actual experiment? Who so poor, so weak, so ill-informed, so uncultured, so busy, that he cannot try these things by his liberality, by his prayer, by his conscientious living? Such a variety of easy practical methods enables all the world to become critics in religion." Pater Mundi, pp. 20, 21. But I have little hope that any skeptic will try this test. And why? Because he is not so willing or anxious to believe as he pretends. God must come to his terms or he will have nothing to do with him. The trouble, my friend, is not in the head; it is deeper than that, in the secret springs of your heart. Yours is a corrupt, sin-loving heart, which does not desire communion with a holy sin-hating God. However loudly you may talk and prate, the judgment will show that this was the trouble.

"There are persons who would as soon be without God as not; nay, there are those who could hardly hear pleasanter news than that the whole Theistic argument has been fairly overturned from the foundation, and the impossibility of a God proved beyond all possibility of denial. Oh, how scoffing Voltaire, and licentious Rousseau, and bloated Paine would have clapped their hands and shouted, could they have fallen on some wonderful geometry which by its rigid demonstrations could compel even the most unwilling to give up their last plea for Deity! Oh, how the high-handed evil-doers of every name, sinning and impetuously bent on sinning, would congratulate themselves, could it be made as plain as day that such a machine as a thinking, embodied man was created by chance; that chance fitted up the earth as his convenient home, and hung out the heavens above him with the blazon of stars and suns!"

"But as soon as a sinner has made up his mind conclusively against sin, and has fully committed himself for endless war upon it in all its forms, then he ceases to be averse or indifferent to the divine existence; then he begins positively to like the idea, as including that of a righteous, divine government; then he begins to cling to it, to bless it, to feel that he cannot do without it; and as he goes on to higher and higher grades of virtue, the feeling in behalf of God gradually deepens into a profound hunger and thirst. He says, 'My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.' To him an offer to disprove God would be an offer to make the universe an awful solitude and desert." Pater Mundi, pp. 203, 204.

It is neither impossible nor difficult to find God to the entire satisfaction of your mind, if you are really in earnest about it. If you will humbly study the word which God has given, and try the many tests there proposed by God himself, you will soon lose all your doubts, and receive in exchange firm faith in God.