APOLOGETICS from page 10 induced attempts in the past have been able to find this solution adds to its unique and authoritative posi tion. To answer the rationalist, to claim that any genuine experience is ineffable, is to contradict both the Bible and experience, unless all direct experience be classified as ineffable,
IN CHRIST IS LIFE
W h a t Is Y ou r H eart Th irst? F armers like to see things grow. I have a friend who is a farmer in California’s sprawling Central Valley. Next to singing a hym n in church on a Sunday evening there’s nothing he likes better than to stand with the hot sun beating down on his back while he looks out over his farm. “ There’s something about clean dirt and hot sun and streams of water trickling between the rows of growing things that gets into a farmer’s blood. I like to watch the heat waves rise among the grapevines and the fig trees and the silver-leafed olives. W h en that water starts running over the hot dirt,
YOUR M IN IST RY • Christ said, "Y e shall be witnesses unto me both in Jeru salem, and in all Judaea, and Samaria, and unto the utter most part of the earth." This is God's program. You can be a witness today by giving or sending the In Christ Is Life column to an unsaved person.
being a sort of universally shared in ter-subjectivity. If it is true, as W. James, R. Otto, and Bergson have re peatedly emphasized, that conceptual thinking cannot do justice to the im mediacies of experience because of its inevitable abstractness, then also in relationship to spiritual experience, the qualitative aspects of it would al ways escape through the verbal net. But, to answer Tennant, this certainly does not mean that we can know nothing about it. “My peace I give unto you” ,can have no meaning unless we can know something about it, and thousands of practicing Chris tians would be willing to testify with St. Paul, I know whom I have be lieved. And from the standpoint. of pure scientific methodology, the sub jective empiricist here is in no sense at a disadvantage, for the same in ductive methods, at least, induction by analogy and explanatory induc tion (from effect to cause) would still be applicable. One would have to take into account, of course, the basic Epistemological peculiarities of each field, and these would decide on the applicability of induction by simple enumeration. From the methodological stand point, it is not the isolated experience X alone which would stand up under inductive scrutiny, but the sequence X I, X2, X3 . . . which would pro vide us with a chain of occurrences necessary for inductive probability and thus for this type of an apolo getic. X I, X2 and X3 standing for ex periences of conscious spiritual intui tion would be separated by inbetween phases of spiritual aridity or neutral ity lacking any direct knowledge of this type and thus entirely dependent CONTINUED ►
Like sun-baked earth our hearts are thirsty for life-giving waters.
there’s a smell of life in it. A nd it’s a good smell.” That’s the w ay he talks about his land and the water that brings life to it. Like dry, thirsty land most of us have deep heart thirsts. W e thirst for security, for understanding, for someone to love us, for forgiveness, for real inner peace. You know your thirst. You m ay not be able to tell another soul about it. But you know. And you want your thirst quenched. Christ once talked to a woman about her thirst. She had sought to quench it in marriage. She had been married five times and the thirst was still there. Christ knew her problem. H e told her that the waters of this world would never quench her thirst. Then H e said, “ If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. A nd he that believeth on me shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give h im shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” There’s the answer. Like a stream of fresh water on parched, sun-baked earth Christ can come into your life and make it blossom. In H im is every answer to every heart thirst. H e w ill fill your deepest longings, forgive your blackest sin. Your part is only to be willing. Simply let go. Stop trying. Look away from yourself and up and out to H im who is the way, the truth, the life. If you are willing you w ill find that Christ is the answer to your deepest heart thirst. H e will not, cannot fail you if you w ill but ask H im . — L. H. If you have found in this short article a way of life that you would like, we urge you now— this very moment— to yield your will to His will and in doing so find that in Christ is Life. If you want to make a decision for Christ please write us. Your letter will be held in the strictest confidence. We'll send you without charge a special Gospel of John and other helps. Address: The Editors, King's Business, 558 S. Hope, Los Angeles 17, Calif.
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