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CHAPTER I I THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD BY REV. DAVID JAMES BURRELL, D. D., LL. D., MINISTER OF THE MARBLE COLLEGIATE CHURCH, NEW YORK CITY The man who does not know God has not begun to live. He may eat and drink, make merry, accumulate a fortune or wear a crown; but he has not entered into that better life of high hopes and noble purposes and aspirations which make us worthy of our Divine birthright. For “this is life enternal, to know God.” To put ourselves into just relations with God is literally a matter of life or death. All the ologies are worth mastering but T heology is indispensable. Wejmust know God. But where is He? “Oh, that I knew where 1 might find Him! Behold, I go forward but He is not there, and back ward but I cannot perceive Him; on the left hand where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him; He hideth Himself on the right hand so that I cannot see Him!” The horizons recede as we approach them, and the darkness thickens as we grope like blind men feeling their way along the wall. There are three roads which are vainly trodden by multi tudes who pursue this holy quest. Each of them is marked, “This way to God” ; and each of them is a cul de sac or blind alley, which leaves the soul still groping and crying, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!” The first of these paths is Intuition. There are no natural atheists. All are bojp wjth an in- dwehing sense of God. We do not enter on conscious life like the inferior orders; but “trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home”. In regions- of darkest paganism there are traces of two innate convictions; namely, 30
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