The Wisdom of this World 4 7 astronomer sweep the skies with his glass, and count and classify 270,000 stars, and then come and tell us that he neither saw nor heard of any personal God in all the infinitude of space; let the scientific smatterer gravely inform intelligent men that faith in God must now give place to knowledge of nature and her laws; let the atheistic materialist tell us that he has searched the boundless universe, and found no intel ligent Spirit, but only matter and force; let the brazen blas phemer proclaim that Moses is a liar, Jesus an impostor, and man’s immortality a delusion; to one and all we say—these things are almost as old as the human race; this godless creed was held by men wiser than you, long before you were born; it was held by the wise men of the ancient world in the days of its highest civilization; it is held now by the cannibal tribes of Ureega, Manyema, and Bengala, in the dark places of the earth, filled with the habitations of cruelty; you are simply asking us to go back to the times when the world by wisdom knew not God; and the race has had enough and more than enough of this godless wisdom; if Christ the Crucified cannot save us, then indeed are we doomed and damned forever. THE DEMAND OF MODERN “ WISE MEN” The wise men of this world, filled with philosophy falsely so-called, ask, first, that we give up the miracles of the Old Testament; then the imprecatory Psalms; then the “immoral parts” of the Scriptures; then, the “vindictive and bloody laws of Moses;” then Moses himself; then, all the prophets; then, the miracles of the New Testament; then, the Apocalypse; then, the doctrine of eternal retribution; then, the Holy Ghost; then, Inspiration; then, Jesus Christ; then God Himself—this is the modest demand of the unbelieving wisdom of our day and generation; this substituting “knowledge of nature for faith in God”—this is “progress” ; this is “advanced thought" —and so the race is left, its “grave without a resurrection”, its “universe without a God,” its sin without a Saviour.
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker