Article September 17, 1904 Issue

From our Exchanges

with contributions from James Orr, Philip S. Moxom

If God is holy, and this world and man are His creation, very evidently the world is not in a state answering to God's idea of it, or His desire for it. Something has gone wrong. There has emerged something which is not according to God's will, which ought never to have been there, which our deepest moral instincts tell us God can only look on with condemnation and abhorrence. Our own hearts condemn us, and God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. This something which is wrong we are wont to call by the dark and terrible name of Sin. We dare not make light of it, or weaken it down into some transitory but necessary stage of human development, or tamper with the condemning testimony of our consciences regarding it. But if the world is in such a state of sin, a new problem arises which unaided reason can never solve or even guess at the true solution of. It is the old problem,—on the one hand, What is God's relation to sinners? and on the other, How is man to regain his right relations to God? How is he to get out of his wrong relations to God? And to these questions man can never from his own resources find an answer; it is God who must speak, man who must listen.

Prof. James Orr, D. D.
The Watchman.

Man has within him a mysterious power which thinks of God, desires God, reaches out after God, seeks after God, enters into fellowship with God, feels the presence of God, and rejoices in His presence and love. Man is a physical being, an intellectual being, a social being, and a religious being. The religious power may be impaired, as the imagination or memory may be impaired. Those who refuse to hear the voice of God, and turn away from Him, will lose the power of faith if they persist in this course. That faculty which goes out after God and is so sensitive and quick in childhood may be obliterated. The inner light may become darkness. The tender heart may become hard as a stone. The eyes, once so keen to discern spiritual things, may be put out.

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