Article February 26, 1949 Issue

Signs of the Times

The Quest For Truth

with contributions from T. T. Shields, Wilburn B. Miller, Ralph W. Sockman, member of the Society of Friends

Dr. T. T. Shields in a lecture printed in The Gospel Witness and Protestant Advocate Toronto, Ontario, Canada

By what faculty or faculties is knowledge acquired? Have we no knowledge but that which is received through the senses? Is it true that I can have no positive knowledge of anything that I cannot see or hear or taste? Is knowledge always and only "of things we see"? Am I shut up to the testimony of my senses? Sometimes we speak as though we were. We say, "If I believe the evidence of my senses." But your senses may deceive you in what you see, or hear, or taste, or smell.

The Bible ... says, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." ... Surely the eye and the ear are representative of the physical senses. And the Apostle Paul tells us in effect that there is a realm of knowledge, of truth, ... that we may come to understand and to know, that there is treasure of inestimable worth laid up for us in that realm, but that neither the eye, nor the ear, nor any of the senses, can establish communication with that realm of the spirit. The things of that realm are apprehended by another faculty than the natural senses, for he proceeds to say, "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God."

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