Religious Faith | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1879

Religious Faith.

THOSE who object to the supernatural element involved in Christian faith forget that in religion the supernatural is really the natural. There never existed a religious system among men, acting upon them as a power to control their thoughts, and excite their hopes or fears, that did not professedly rest upon the supernatural basis. The scientist may not like this, and say that it is so only because the great mass of men are fools; but human nature, whether savage or civilized, says and has always said that it shall be so, whether the scientist likes it or not.

A revelation from God, with signs and seals of its reality, and different from and above the mere authority of unaided human reason, is, as the facts show, the normal condition precedent to the existence and power of religious faith.

A religious system that man can make and equally destroy, the world will not receive as authoritative.

The system must profess to be supernatural or it will not be accepted.

The supernatural in religion is a natural law of human feeling.

No fact is better proved by experience than this.

The great body of the people in this country, and in every other, who regard the Bible as the word of God, and Christ as the Saviour of men, could not, if put to the test, apologetically defend their own religion. They are not adequate to the intellectual task of answering objections, and do not understand the great question of Christian evidences. They are not scholars on this subject, and never will be. They do not, however, the less believe. Their subjective condition is one of faith, often very intense and controlling, as well as the source of untold joys, although their logical grasp of its reasons may be comparatively limited, certainly taking in vastly less than the whole field of thought. They assume that the faith in which they have been educated, the faith of their fathers, the prevalent and acknowledged religious faith of the country in which they live, is the true faith. This assumption, for all practical purposes, is to them sufficient. They do not dispute it. They read their Bibles true, and not false. The doctrine of Christ is true to them, and the doctrine of salvation true to them. There is for them a God, whether they can answer the objections of the atheist or not.—Independent.