42
The Fundamentals beyond the sweep or even reach of human fore-thought, criticism, or co-operation ! What a labyrinth upon whose least and minutest turning hangs entire redemption, since a chain is never stronger than its smallest link! Who then will dare to speak till God has spoken? “I will declare the decree!” That pushes everything aside—that makes the dec- laration an extension, so to say, of the Declarer. “I will declare the decree !” When we consider that the Bible is an exact projection of the decrees of God into the future, this argument is seen to lift, indeed, to a climax; and, in fact, it does reach to the very crux of controversy; for the hardest thing for us to believe about God is to believe that He exactly, absolutely knows, because He has ordained, the future. Every attribute of God is easier to grasp than that of an in- fallible Omniscience. “I will declare the decree,” therefore, calls for direct inspiration. (5) The Bible is the optime of authority, because the hooks at thè end of the chain prove the dictated inspiration of its every link. Compare the fall in Genesis—one link—with the resurrection in the Apocalypse—the other. Compare the old creation in the first chapters of the Old Testament with the new creation in the last chapters of the New. “We open the first pages of the Bible,” says Vallotton, “and we find there the recital of the creation of the world by the Word of God—o f the fall of man, of his éxile far from God, far from Paradise, and far from _the tree of life. We open the last pages of the last of the 66 books dating 4,(XX) years later. God is still speaking. He is still creating. He creates a new heaven and a new earth. Man is found there recovered. He is restored to communion with God. He dwells again in Paradise, beneath the shadow of the tree of life. Who is not struck by the strange correspondence of this end with that beginning? Is not the one the prologue, the other the epi- logue of a drama as vast as unique?”
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker