Holy Script1,re and Modern Negations
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if that claim to a supernatural revelation from God falls, the Bible falls, because it is bound up with it from beginning to end. Now, it is j ust here that a great deal of our modern thought parts company with the Bible. I am quite well aware that many of our friends who accept these newer critical theo ries, claim to be just as firm believers in Divine revelation as I am myself, and in Jesus Christ and all that concerns Him. I rejoice in the fact, and I believe that they are warranted in saying that there is that in the religion of Israel which you cannot expunge, or explain on any other hypothesis but Di vine revelation. But what I maintain is that this theory of the religion of the Bible which has been evolved, which has peculiarly come to be known as the critical view, had a very different origin-in men who did not believe in the supernatural reve lation of God in the Bible. This school as a whole, as a wide spread school, holds the fundamental position-the position which its adherents call that of the modern mind-that mira cles did not happen and cannot happen. It takes the ground that they are impossible ; therefore its followers have to rule everything of that kind out of the Bible record. I have never been able to see how that position is tenable to a believer in a living personal God who really loves His creatures and has a sincere desire to bless them. Who dare to venture to assert that the power and will of such a Being as we must believe God to be--the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ-is exhausted in the natural creation? That there are no higher things to be attained in God's provi dence than can be attained through the medium of ttatural law? That there is in such a Being no capability of revealing Himself in words and deeds beyond nature? If there is a dogmatism in the world, it is that of the man who claims to limit the Author of the universe by this finite bound. We are told sometimes that it is a far higher thing to see God in the natural than to see Him in something that transcends the
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