Ezekiel 18:29

O house of Israel, are not My ways equal?

Scripture appealing to the reason and conscience of man

This is one among the many instances to be found in Scripture where the rational and moral nature of man is appealed to in justification of the Divine conduct. Christianity must be felt by us to be true before it can be felt by us to be binding on our consciences. And who is to be the judge of its truth or falsehood? Where and what is the tribunal before which its credentials are to be produced, examined, and decided on? What is it, or what can it be, but the reason of man,--Reason in her high seat of purity and power, lifted up above the tainted and corrupting atmosphere of worldly passions and prejudices, and calmly and serenely engaged in the consideration and contemplation of truth. This is one of the first and plainest rules to be adopted for our intellectual guidance. It is regarded as an axiom by all sober thinkers, that every proposition or statement which is found to be self-contradictory or irrational is at once to be regarded as incredible. This, of course, imposes upon man the heavy responsibility of using his reason fairly, of judging not according to the appearance, but of judging righteous judgment. With this condition it will be the surest and safest light to our feet and lamp to our path. There is another and a similar proposition to the one just mentioned, which I shall now proceed to enforce, having respect not so much to our intellectual as to our moral nature. In the Scriptures, appeal is not only made to our reason, our understanding, for the truth of their declarations, but to our moral feelings and convictions, And accordingly I would lay down this principle as akin to the one already touched upon, namely, that any representations of God, and of the character of God, which went to the subversion or destruction of those primary and essential distinctions of truth, justice and goodness, which have been established by the common consent of the wise and good of all ages,--any such representations, assuming what pretensions they may, are to be met with instant and utter rejection. When the Scriptures address our consciences, when they speak of the law written on the heart, when they ask us to judge of ourselves what is right, and when God appeals to us for the justice of His proceedings, saying, “Are not My ways equal?”--they take for granted that we have that within us which is capable of forming sound moral judgments, and of coming to right moral conclusions. So again, when the Scriptures speak to us of the goodness and the loving kindness and the mercy of God, they do not begin with defining the sense in which they use these terms. They suppose that we have already a general and sufficiently accurate knowledge of them. They take for granted the existence of these qualities among men, as arising out of the very constitution of their moral nature, wherever the faculties of that nature have been suffered in any degree to develop and expand themselves. What is goodness in man is the same that we mean by goodness in God. And so with justice, faithfulness, and mercy. These qualities, which we ascribe to God, we have first gotten a knowledge of by our own feelings and experience as human beings. If the Divine mercy and benignity mean not something like this, if they have no resemblance to kindred qualities existing in our own bosoms, what are we to understand by them? They become mere sounds and nothing else, words to which there attaches no significance, and all our conceptions of the character of God are reduced to the greatest possible vagueness and obscurity. Once overrule and bid defiance to the clearest dictates of the understanding, once set at naught and despise the deepest and most universal of our moral sentiments, and the mind is fitted and prepared for the belief of any opinion, however absurd, for the reception of any sentiment, however cruel and revolting. Demand of me anything but the surrender of my intellectual and moral guides. Require of me to give heed to the evidence you may tender in favour of a proposition, however strange, however remote from my present views and apprehensions, and it may be my duty to attend, to ponder, and at length to believe. But require me to give audience to assertions and statements in behalf of self-evident contradictions and palpable moral incongruities, and I revolt from the rashness of the attempt. I feel it to be an affront to the nature which God has given me. If we have no faith in the fundamental principles of human reason, and in the primary and essential moral feelings of the human heart, the foundations of all rational conviction are destroyed, and we are let loose to be driven about by every wind of doctrine, to be the victims of the wretchedest fanaticism, or of the most deadening and depressing scepticism. I am aware that, in answer to these remarks, we shall be reminded of our profound ignorance of the nature of God, and of the utter inadequacy of the human intellect to take unto itself the measure of the Divine. Most true it is that there is much belonging to the nature of God of which, in this dim twilight of our being, we have scarcely more than a mere glimpse. This is especially the case with what are called the natural attributes of God. We know but little, and can know but little, of what Infinity is, and Omnipotence and Eternity. Our apprehension of them may not come up to the fulness and completeness that distinguish them; but still, as far as it goes, it seems to be clear, definite, and exact. While much obscurity, perhaps, attaches to what we may term our metaphysical notions of God, we have no resting place on which the mind can repose, but the moral conceptions of God. That resting place, therefore, let us never abandon. Rather let us cleave to it, and guard and protect it as the home of our affections and the sanctuary of our consolations. But it may be asked, Do you mean, then, to exalt reason and conscience above the Word of God? Do you mean that that Word should submit itself to our erring human judgments? What we contend for is simply this, that no doctrine deduced from Scripture by human interpretation, which is at war with the intellectual and moral nature of man, which is at variance with the first and plainest directions of the understanding and the conscience, can be the Word of God, and entitled to the authority thence arising. We have no ideas of God clearer than those belonging to our moral conceptions of Him. When we say, Lo, God is good, we have a distinct understanding of what we mean by it. And so we have when we say that He is just and kind and merciful. These are properties with which reason and Scripture agree to invest Him. Fortified by these authorities, we take into our minds, and cherish as our greatest treasure, corresponding moral views of the Divine character. There they are lodged firmly and abidingly. From them our thoughts and hopes should never be separated. If, therefore, I perceive anything in the Scriptures which at first sight appears to be discordant with these views of the character of God I endeavour, by wider inquiry and deeper search, to find out a more consistent sense; but if that cannot be found, I say not that God is not the benignant and merciful Being that I took Him to be, but that from some cause or other I understand not the passage before me. In this way it is that I would meet and object to the doctrines of Calvinism. They begin with setting aside the clearest deductions of reason, and then with sweeping away every notion of justice and goodness that had fixed its habitation in my soul. Why are the most impressive appeals made to us in the Scriptures in behalf of the loving kindness and tender mercy of our God, if neither the reason nor the conscience of man can understand and feel what, as respects the Divine Being, goodness and mercy are? In that case goodness and mercy may mean anything or nothing; and to draw from them any reasons for consolation and trust must be vain and useless. Our belief will be a belief in a God unknown, and our worship will be the worship of we know not what. Fear not, then, to use your reason, your understandings, on the subject of religion; but beware of using them for purposes of display, for the gratification of your vanity, and the exercise of your skill. Consider them as talents, for the faithful employment of which you will have to render an account at the bar of Almighty Justice. Feed the immortal lamp within you by meditation and prayer, and elevate your souls to heaven; and then reason, in union with the Word of God, will guide you into the ways of wisdom, and her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and her paths are the paths of peace. (T. Madge.)