Divine Reasoning and Human Reason.

 
IN these days of fashionable agnosticism, when unbelief walks abroad under the thin disguise of rational belief, and when man’s mind, as it has ever done, seeks to make its own conceptions the measure of God, one would fain lift up the voice in a word of warning, even though it be disregarded.
Are you one who believes that man’s reason is the only infallible guide? Think you that your own conceptions are the limit of your responsibility? Then read on, just for a moment, and see Divine reasoning brought into contact with the “infallible” human mind.
First of all it is noticeable that the process of human reasoning in all ages tends upwards. Man reasons from that which is inferior to that which is superior. Witness the many systems of idolatrous worship in which man, forming his ideas of the Supreme Being from lower and created objects degraded God’s glory to the likeness of mortal man and beasts (Rom. 1).
In modern times the theory of evolution is a striking example of this.
In a word, man reasons from himself to what he conceives God ought to be, and the result is either as in Psalms 14:1,1<<To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.>> The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. (Psalm 14:1) he in his folly says, “There is no God,” or else, as is the way of modern thought, limits the Divine by the human, and insists that all in revelation concerning God, which seems to him contrary to or beyond reason, is false, and impossible to be believed.
Thus man reasons up to God, his aim is to understand and define what God is, and the sense of responsibility is the motive of this restless inquiry.
If God is beyond man’s conception, then man’s responsibility is necessarily infinite.
This would never do, for it would be a confession of helplessness; so man, as said before, solves the difficulty by limiting God, and therefore his own responsibility, by his own reason.
I know, dear reader, that if your mind has at all traveled on this line, you will say that this result is the one arrived at. Moreover, you will own, too, that the result is not entirely satisfactory, that it does not satisfy you in your heart of hearts; it may perfectly satisfy your reason, but is that all?
Answer this question to yourself alone, and then turn with me to Job 13:33Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. (Job 13:3)―
“I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to
reason with God.”
I see this strikes a chord in your heart, not your reason. You have reasoned long enough about God; would you now “reason with God”?
Ay, would you reason with Him, about all the sin and sorrow and suffering that fill a world that He has created? Reason with Him as to all the difficulties and inconsistencies which you have found in Him?
Ah, you would then, were it only possible! There might be some solution, which, as you confess, your reason cannot discover.
Well, the man who uttered that wish, apparently so daring, was one who knew God, which you do not. His wish was answered indeed in a way that doubtless even he, knowing God, in nowise expected, — “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind” (Job 38:11Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, (Job 38:1)). Tremendous scene! The imagination quails bore it. Nevertheless it is a true answer to Job’s desire, and we will turn presently to the result of it.
But you will say, Knowledge and intellect have let in too much light for such manifestations, even if true, to be possible now; and how shall my desire to reason with God be granted?
The grace that answered Job is unchanged by modern thought and new light. Your desire can be granted; and though the granting may be unattended by the manifestations of creatorial power, yet the results must be the same as with Job, if you are, as you profess to be, open to conviction.
let us reason together,
saith the Lord.”
No whirlwind is here, just the still small voice, to you, dear reader, answering your desire, “Let us reason together.”
These are the opening words of the Divine reasoning―
“Though your sins...”
My sins! But that is not what I wanted to reason about!
No, friend, it is the last thing in the world you would desire, but you have made the first great discovery.
We have seen that man reasons up from what he is.to God. Now you have discovered that God reasons down from what He is to you. It is true, though terrible and painful. No question now of logical inquiries into the nature of God. God has found you out, brought you into His presence, stripped away the wretched rags of logic with which you would cover from yourself and from Him what you are. You stand revealed. The Divine reasoning makes short work of you, and sets you down a sinner in perfect truth.
There is no need for God to declare what He is — you know enough to seek to obscure that knowledge; nevertheless you know it, and the deep-rooted sense of what God is, and of how far you have come short of the Divine standard, is the secret of your efforts to get behind your logic.
You may not have known it in full consciousness, but now, in the presence of a God perfectly holy, dwelling in light unapproachable, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity or look upon sin, you feel how scarlet your sins are, how deep is the dye of your guilt, how infinitely short you have fallen of that Divine glory.
Do not seek to stifle the feeling; you cannot! God has answered your desire, met you, reasoned with you, and lo! instead of finding your difficulties solved, you find yourself out-faced, overwhelmed with what you are, a sinner before God.
If so, it is well, very well. It was the same with Job. When God reached the end of His wondrous reasoning, Job had reached the end of himself. Listen―
“I abhor myself.”
Do you? There is good cause. You have set up your weak reason, God’s gift, against Him; have weighed Him, the Almighty, in the balances of your miserable criticism; measured Him with the compasses of your false science; have esteemed the terrible declension of man shown in the many forms of idolatry, as the progress of the race in the knowledge of that God whose glory they have thus willfully corrupted! You have sought to evade your responsibility as a creature, and above all, by your very position, exalting man in the flesh, you trample upon God’s revelation of Himself in His Son at the cross, count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and despise the blessed Saviour Himself who gave His life for such a one as you.
“I ABHOR MYSELF.”
Dear reader, when you get down to this point, you will find that the Son of God has been lower still.
When you find that you have utterly come short, and that nothing but wrath can be the due reward of such spurning; when you tremble before that wrath and own its righteousness, then God will reveal something more — “declare, I say, at this time His righteousness, that He might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”
That is glad tidings — gospel — that Jesus bore all the wrath that was your due, bore it in love to you, met all that God’s nature demanded in respect of your sin, satisfied God’s holiness, glorified His nature, so that now God can be just, and yet justify such a one as you.
Ah! love, Divine love, is better than logic. The one has met your needs, and desires to have your heart in order to satisfy it fully for time and eternity, — the other blinds your mind, hardens your heart, leaving it all unsatisfied; shuts out the Saviour’s love, and hands you over in chains, that are gilded with the show of irresponsibility, to the Devil, whose existence doubtless you deny, but who by reason of this very delusion has got you all the more surely in his power.
Which is better, God’s love or your logic? Which will you choose?
Can a man judge of wine until he has tasted it? Can a blind man know what the light of the sun is?
How then can you discuss and weigh God’s wondrous love when you have never tasted of it?
To take no higher ground, is it rational to require proof that wine is wine before you taste it, that fire is fire before you draw near to enjoy its heat.
Come then, and instead of trying to disprove that God is Love, taste His love, learn what a wonderful thing it is to have His love shed abroad in your heart.
I cannot speak of Love Divine, cannot describe it to you. I have tasted it, and I can indeed tell you that it passes knowledge. Your reason cannot grasp one atom of it, but it can fill your heart, and nothing else can.
Is it not a love that can only be Divine? God commends it to you, while you are busy reasoning it away.
Is it not Divine love that God should think such creatures as you and me worth the sacrifice of His only Son! that the Son Himself should see in us a treasure worthy the sacrifice of His glory and majesty, and come down to us in our own likeness! For us He was weary and sorrow-laden, despised and rejected; the love we reason about and despise was the love that touched the poor leper, that sat weary beside the well and poured joy into the heart of a poor woman of no repute.
That was the love that entered into all the sorrows, that wept with them that wept, but turned the weeping into joy. That was the love that led Him to the exceeding sorrow, all the weight of rejection — no one cared for His love then, as now — all the shadow of the darkness that lay before Him.
Dear reader, can your reason stand before the cross?
The love of the Father provided that wondrous ransom in the person of His Son for you.
The love of the Son led Him to the cross through a path of suffering to die for you.
Oh, triumph of love! Bow your soul before Him who died for you and rose again! Own Him Lord now! Let His love conquer now, let it break down every barrier and flood your heart, a blessed exchange for the heartless reasoning that would shut out such love.
Human words are feeble indeed, even with such a theme, but Divine love is mighty, and may that love, that has wrought such a work that God can manifest Himself to you in all that He is, consistently with Himself; conquer, change and fill your heart! S. H. H.