Studies of Bible truths

Front matter

STUDIES ibie 'Jlrutbs

JOHN C. KEENER

SlieltL.

Preface

The wisest of men has said : " My son, be admonished : of making many books there is no end ; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."

With these admonitions, one should be able to give a reason for swelling the vast store of books already made. But for this book I am not wholly responsible ; for had it not been for the encouragement and help of the editor of The Methodist Review^ Dr. Tigert, I do not think its pages would have seen the light.

It has been my purpose to present in these "Studies" only that which is original, and to exclude error, not by controversy, but by constructing truth.

Contents

Page

Introduction ix

I. The Creative Glory in its Two Distinct

Introduction

Is it not possible to construct an arch that would cover the entire space between religion and SCIENCE, one that would connect and cement the two?

The sensation of being at rest, when in fact we are moving through space in one direction a thousand miles an hour, and in another direction sixty thousand, is in evidence of the utter unreliability of our mental impressions. The deception is aided by everything around : the trees are quiet, maybe not a twig moves, for there seems to be no wind, though we are going fast enough to make all nature an yEolian harp. Then, too, we think we are standing upon our feet, vertically, whereas we are like flies on the ceiling, walking feet upward ; if we are up, the Chinese are down ; if they are up, we are down ; but whether up or down, we know no difference. The whole earth seems to be still and resting upon solid foundations, only the stars and the moon and the sun seem

(ix)

X Introduction .

to be moving ; though, in fact, they are still, and we are moving. So far from being solid, we rest upon the "empty place," upon thin air, hung up over depths fathomless. How vast the wisdom that could devise a system of motion and rest, of emptiness and solidity, for the comfort and habitation of intelligent life, so complete and so complicate ! And how infinite the power that could create, start, and hold up such a system of worlds without weariness or waning from the "beginning" until now!

But how may one be sure that the astronomers are correct in all their statements in regard to the celestial mechanism, the roundness and motion of this earth? Why, by the almanac which tells in advance the month, day, hour, minute, and second of an eclipse, a year before it takes place — indeed, many years before, if necessary. By telescopic observation and algebraic equation, by parallax and geometry, by mathematical calculation, Kepler and Newton, Laplace and Copernicus have fixed the shape of the orbits of planets, the rates of their motion, their distances, their measurements and solid contents. Yet they have stretched no lines,

Introduction . xi »

only imaginary ones, by which they arrive at these tremendous and accurate truths. What is the secret of their power ? It is that the mathematics of the human mind corresponds to that of the heavens. The same One who created man created the heavens and the earth. Nature was submitted to human thought, and man was endowed with powers of reason adequate to the subHme labor of discovering the wisdom and power and presence of God in nature.

It would seem impossible to apprehend the world, in all nature, and not be able to apprehend its Creator. " Canst thou by searching find out God ; canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? " Yet such is the fact. St. Paul, in his history of faith (Heb. xi.), sets forth, among its achievements, the ability to understand God's method of creating and framing all visible things out of that which does not appear — something out of nothing ; that by his word the worlds were framed. The efforts of the most advanced scientific mind to conceive of creation are seen in the introduction of the principle of growth, as illustrative of the force which originated the universe. The difficulty

>xii Introduction.

seems to be the starting point of such a force. Was it an Q%^^ a seed, or a jelly ?

Not only an inability to discover the Almighty appears, but a desire not to know, lest it should prove a person ! This personal knowledge, not speculation, that "He is" (Heb. xi. 6) is declared to be a resultant upon the gift of faith, a supernatural personal apprehension of the Divine person, the Maker of all things. To believe that God exists, and is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him, is and was an absolute necessity at the earliest hour of human history : the hour when Abel obtained the witness that his sacrifice was accepted, the period of Enoch's translation, when before his disappearance he had the testimony that he pleased God : this was the instant when God added to man's natural powers the gift, potentially, of supernatural perception and conscious knowledge of the Almighty.

If there need be a mathematical correspondence between the human mind and the celestial universe to enable man to measure the mechanism of the skies, is it not reasonable to suppose that higher powers must needs be imparted to

Introduction. xiii

man to understand the heavenly things — the upper realm of intelligent being? To accept the personality of God, the Maker and upholder of all things, that he is the " Word of God " — the Christ ; to believe that he has offered " one sacrifice for sins forever " ; that he has resided in the world, and now sits in heaven — a man, a divine-human person ; that he has loved me, and died for me, and has, by his Spirit, witnessed the fact to me, all this can only be by a supernatural belief, which is natural belief raised to a higher power, by the "operation of God," and that is faith.

Whatever comes within the range of our natural powers is outside of the region of faith ; for faith only exists in the region of the impossible. So long as the eye or the mind can grasp the object, it belongs to the purely natural field of human intelligence, and is neither strictly invisible nor future. But "faith is the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of things hoped for." It supplies the wants of a spiritual life, an apprehension of truths that no thought could discover and an experience that only the " Spirit of truth " could reveal.*^ ^ . . .

xiv Introduction,

A consciousness of the personality of God would seem to lie entirely beyond the precincts of earth ; but when we read that " He was in the world, and the world was made by him," the wonder is that "the world knew him not." Or when we learn that "He had by himself purged our sins," and that he now sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, the wonder is that a world of sinners is not drawn to him by the loadstone of a mighty love. The love of man's heart can only move toward a person, not toward a principle, however sublime, not toward height or depth, or angelic regions ; not, it may be, toward the Creator, as only the Maker of all things, but toward hirn who is Father of men, of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; toward him by whom we have re^ ceived the atonement.

Faith would be worth little to us if it did not "work by love." We are made to love, to love persons ; we were constituted with ties of blood, with relationships of protection and de^ pendence, stronger than death, sweeter than life. These mysterious natural ties are but the T-rehide to the still more wonderful spiritual

Introduction, xv

ties between us and our God ; for " he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto him." How strongly are these ties accented in Christ's last interview^ and prayer for the disciples (John xvii. 14), "that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. . . . Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me."

Carrollton, La., February 11, 1899.

I

The Creative Glory in Its Two Distinct Realms — The Natural, The Moral.

From a human standpoint the greatest of all problems is that of the presence of the Son of God in this world — a point in creation so small as to be at the distance of Sirius, and in comparative size, scarcely more than a single ray of light: Who was not barely present, but abode here in person, in speech, action, and passion; nor simply abode, but upon leaving the earth bore away with him, into an eternal life, his manhood and ours. There can be no greater *' problem"; save only the Son of God in Gethsemane — Gabbatha — Golgotha ! Any problem of earth that for its solving secures such Presence becomes an infinite wealth to humanity. No wonder then that " the things " which *' angels desired to look into" were the " sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow ' '

Two Realms.

These two — the moral universe, and the natural — are far apart in their creative glory. The apostle has separated them by the order of time in the creation of man — **HGwbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual" (i Cor. xv.

The natural universe is the realm of One will; the moral universe is the realm of Two wills : (') the will of the Lawgiver, and the will of man to whom the law is given. The realm of one will is as distinct from the realm of two wills as ** the heavens and the earth" are distinct from **the law and the prophets." The lack of those who have attempted a Theodicy has been a clear definition of these realms, which, while appearing intimate, are really far apart. One may ask, What divides them? Are they not the creation of One Mind ? If we know the laws of nature, their wisdom, order, stability, have we not an exact statement of the Divine will in the realm of grace? are not its laws as fixed, and were they not as wisely determined in advance and as easily calculated, as the angles and curves of a celestial mechanism?

Moral law is flexible, natural law is fixed ; the one illustrates the other. Moral law is indivisible, pressing with its whole weight upon each offense: '* He that offends in one point, he is guilty of all" (James ii. 10). Natural law goes by measure and weight, and is therefore divisible. Moral goodness is the assent of man's will with the will of God; moral evil is the dissent of man's will from the will of God.

The school that would relieve the moral universe from the cast-iron necessity of natural law finds its citadel in the constitution of the will ; that it is a cause, therefore free ; that it cannot be fixed and free, no more than a geometric square can at the same time be a triangle ; that a conscious freedom could not exist in the atmosphere of absolute necessity, and in that of absolute truth, at the same instant.

The Will.

The will is so early an expression of man, on his mother's lap, that any definition of it would be but a waste of words. Whether it be the will of a responsible being subject to law, or the will of the Creator himself, it is the supreme expression of personality, of conscious personal existence. Two wills imply two persons. (^) The realm of two wills is that in which God and man cooperate — the will of man with the will of God. The realm of one will is that in which God's will is the one ever-present, all-determining principle ; impossible of change, except by Jehovah himself.

What then can be farther apart, theologically, metaphysically, naturally, morally, than these realms? The one cannot be measured by the other; the one was declared by Christ to be the least conceivable expression of the stability of the other; that in its firmness the world was as nothing to the word of God. The Master has put these two realms so far apart that no metaphysician may wisely venture to merge them in any system of speculative theology. The one includes the sum of angelic and superangelic being; and all those of the yet higher plane, the redeemed, whether in heaven or earth. These are they who, while conscious of freedom, have lived and obeyed; have suffered and loved. The other includes all the imponderables : electricity, light, heat, gravity, and all chemical affinities; all forces that hold the weight of moving worlds together; all those vital forces which keep animate natures to their physiological bounds, whether of (^) instinct, or reason, or other subtile sense; so that the bloom of spring, or the harvest of autumn, the color of the rose, the whiteness of the lily, the nest of the bird, the flight of the crane, the roar of the lion, the wax of the honeybee, the ** flower basket" of the silicious sponge, are as unchangeable as the spectrum of stars or the orbits of planets. Here the Divine mind reigns supreme; whether amid dews and butterflies (^) or amid the illimitable spaces of the Milky- Way, that river of worlds released by the hand of the Spirit from the womb of the morning.

The Realm of Nature.

The order of nature must be to every one the earliest and weightiest lesson of life. The sun rising daily, holding his speed through the sky, and then going down in a bed of gold and crimson. The moon steadily growing from a bow of silver to a full round shield, and then, night by night, changing back again, becoming less, and presently disappearing altogether. The tide rising, wave after wave, on the shore, until it is full; then in the same measured way falling off to low tide. The spring with its opening bud and leaf, then the full bloom of summer, and then autumn with its billows of grain, all ready for the sickle. All which gives the impress of a law too great to be disturbed. Even if one should die, these changes would go on. The moon would shine on the sea, just as it now does. In fact, the very stars that Job saw, Orion and Arcturus, and the Pleiades, we see. And Abraham and David watched the Seven Pointers to mark the passage of time, and needed no better timepiece. This mighty motion overhead, so far, so high, so steady, fills the soul of man with the thought of an infinite Life and Power somewhere. Can all this go on forever; and how long has it been going on this way? This dome of quenchless fires, and clusters of stars, all marching with the even step of armed hosts, at the command of an unseen Majesty, across the field of the sky — it is the first lesson that God gives the shepherd boy.

The glory of the Maker of worlds, his eternal being, his bounty, his strength, are all written on the face of this upper deep, in the bright sea, and in the rich fields, and would fill the mind of a boy with the thought of heaven : whether there were flocks and pastures there, or only persons; by what route one might come to such a height and distance ; whether a cloud could carry us in sight of God's home ; and if so, would it be town, or only country? would there be high buildings with towers, and princely palaces for great people, built of what — diamonds, or rubies, or pearls? or would they be like the air, or solid like stone ? And who can wonder if that boy became a poet, who daily saw such fields of light and beauty?

God is pleased to reveal himself in such large letters even in the earliest lessons of life, that before anything else the spirit of man may be filled with the glory of the Creator. The earth by itself is not large enough to give full expression of his wisdom, so the work of his hands in other worlds is added, that the mind of a boy even may be lifted above the ground upon which he stands, and drawn out toward our immortal home. It would be quite different with a heathen man or boy. The motion of lights, orbs, and clouds would suggest life; and he would look to see where it was most likely to center, or in how many distinct things it could be lodged. Each of these things, stronger than himself, would be the object of awe, the dread mystery of an unknown power.

"What a mercy, when with the revelations of the firmament there goes ** the testimony of the Lord, which is sure, making wise the simple " ! (') The work of God and the word of God explain each other. The law is not nature, though many come to think that nature is itself law, and law is nature. From this strange perversion, many otherwise wise men see no God, excepting in the machine-like movement of nature ; will lO Studies of Bible Truths,

ing to get rid of a Divine Person, they reason that once a start was given, and a law fixed, and after that only law remains. All the unbelief in the world sooner or later takes this shape, that under this pretext it may secure the liberty of living without responsibility to a Divine Person. In ten thousand things it would seem there could be no change. The pine tree cannot change to a cedar; the persimmon cannot become a peach ; a gourd will never round up into a pear. Some strange law of life, as strong as that which rules the laboratory of the universe, holds each of these plants to its own foliage, flowers, and seed. And if we could go back to the garden of Eden, we should find the roses, lilies, camellias, violets, four-o'-clocks, tulips, and the sweet olive, with their tints and perfumes just as we now have them. Amid all the whirls, earthquakes, and disturbances of sea and land, these frail beauties have held their own for six thousand years, and have

The Creative Glory, ii

brought to us the fragrance of that sinless region, built by God for the entertainment of the most beautiful man and woman that ever breathed the breath of heaven.

And as to the birds : how could the peacock's rich train be more beautiful? and surely it was never less. The wren, the sparrow, and the swallow build as near the house and in the exact style of their ancient custom ; nor is there any likelihood of change. The hen with her chicks can yet give lessons of care and solicitude to the young housekeeper, as well as to erring Jerusalem. No beast, no bird, has materially changed. The leopard has the same spots. The elephant, of ungainly build, yet swift in motion and instinct, is still a beast of burden or an ally in war. The horse, the dog, the ox, and the sheep remain the companions and conservators of man. The destructive creatures, that constitute the police of nature, have not changed their hideous features. The whale and the sealion, the seal and the dolphin, continue to give life and majesty to the illimitable deep: the cod, the mackerel, the herring, the mullet recur, year by year, to their hatching and feeding grounds, and supply all nations with their exhaustless wealth of food. The invisible elements of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen abide in all their movable yet immovable strength, for the security of animal and vegetable life. Even upon the dull clods of inorganic matter there abide the grace lines of His touch and a record of His final purpose in creation.

This natural universe is a changeless expression of the One Will. For who could divide with him the weight of Jupiter or Neptune, and countless worlds that are *'the dust of his balance"? Who else can hold back the typhoon, or the storms that gather for a thousand miles upon the seas and shake their iron coasts? who can check the throb of the earthquake, or stay the flow of lava ? whose will can give a limit to the sun's photosphere, or say to its lightnings, *'Go," that they may say, *'Here we are :

The Moral Realm.

But far away from these fields of magnificent expression there is the yet more wonderful realm of *' the excellent glory " ; that which is to remain when the foundations of the earth and the heavens shall perish. ** For they shall all wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed."

The realm of angels and of men, how enduring! and on the other hand, how transitory is all else in the comparison ! ** If we consider," says Bentley, '* the dignity of an intelligent being, and put that in the scales against brute inanimate matter, we may affirm, without overvaluing human nature, that the soul of one virtuous and religious man is of greater worth and excellence than the sun and his planets."

God has been pleased to give fo man his own breath and a personal will : but with it a law of harmony with the Divine will ; or if otherwise, a law of death — that is, of freedom with responsibility. Without such ''a law of liberty," it is doubtful if God ever created immortal beings. (^) The angels that were overthrown, and are held in chains of darkness, left their first estate; they wanted to be something higher than the stars of God, but were cast down with Lucifer. Their fate establishes the fact of an original freedom.

This responsibility of a moral nature met Adam and Eve on the instant of their creation. *'The Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. . . . And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." All law is condensed into this simple statement of God's will. How long the folly of the first man and woman was gathering we know not; possibly threescore years and ten. Let us hope that they dwelt in the favor of God a long while. Their dissent from his will we may be sure was not an accident. It was doubtless intelligent and willful, if not deliberate. It arrayed man against his Maker, and put him in concert with the tempter; it asserted man's personality at the cost of his life. No wonder the sky darkened, or that thunder rolled round the garden. Some think the heavens and the earth should have collapsed, rather than such a bankruptcy should have overtaken the fortunes of humanity.

The Arch of Mercy.

But now it was that mercy's arch was thrown far over the fathomless abyss that separated man from God. A Son was promised — the unity of a Divine life with the human — and the defeat of man's enemy forever assured. In the natural universe such an event as the fall could not have occurred, unless God should hold himself responsible for disobeying his own will. An effort to make God responsible for Adam's fall has been the struggle of the centuries ; not merely between believers and unbelievers, but also in the theological metaphysics of spiritually-minded men. It has been held that the fall was but a necessary step in the direction of God's ultimate purpose of redemption ; that before the foundation of the world his wisdom ** ordained it unto our .glory."

That God arranged, before the creation of a being free to stand or fall, a plan that in either event should display his own loving nature, we cannot doubt. But that would only be in accord with his infinite wisdom, and is very far from the compelling force of a definite means to a definite end. What his sublime purposes were, in the event of Adam's obedience, we shall know when we see the Redeemer in his incarnate glory. Possibly the same result might have been attained by a different route; one without the shame, peril, and agony of a dying life, or the darkness of Calvary, or the martyrdom of myriads *' of whom the world was not worthy." It is certain that whatever arrangements were made to meet a possible disaster, when it came God was grieved at his heart, and *'it repented him that he had made man on the earth " (Genesis vi. 6). Language could not more exactly define the distance between God's will and man's disobedience. Not a few find that the will of man while seeming free to himself is not really so ; constructively ij) free, but nothing more. Such freedom makes God responsible for the result, and

removes the whole transaction from the moral to the natural universe. It enlarges the one at the expense of the other.

The school of Scotch metaphysicians, represented by Dean Mansel, does not hold God responsible for the moral quality of a divine purpose; as something beyond our just powers of estimating it, because v^e are incapable of conceiving the extent of the natural universe ! This of course brings every question of human freedom within the precincts of the One Will. Such theorists would leave nothing but a region of absolute necessity. All would be held by its adamantine chain. The moral universe would cease for lack of expression, and the moral nature of God himself be held in doubt. («)

A region where seraphs cry, '* Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts ; the whole earth is full of his glory," and veil their faces the while — if they do this by constraint, and not of their own great will — would be but part of the natural universe.

Why Free?

This all leads to the plain question, Why did God create a universe that is so far away from his own control? The answer is, that Love, in its nature, is not of necessity; it must be free, or else cannot be at all. God wills to be the supreme object of love. (^) He delights in the anthems of angels, but lives in the love of those who have loved his Son. Those mighty hosts that were led forth to witness the laying of earth's corner stone, that by anthem and chorus celebrated this act of infinite love, and "shouted for joy," composed the habitation that God delighted to dwell in. And it is among such free and grateful intelligences that Christ, by the Spirit, has prepared the mansions of the redeemed.

The Flexibility of Moral Law.

The conduct of Israel through the desert is one long and vivid illustration of the nature of moral law. The fourteenth chapter of Numbers specially recounts the changes in God's purpose, as provoked by the rebellion of the people: **And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me ? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and make of thee a greater nation, and mightier than they." But Moses would not suffer it. He importuned God to dismiss the thought — *' Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people, according unto the greatness of thy mercy, as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now." And the Lord said: *' I have pardoned according to thy word. . . . Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it. . . . Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness, and your children shall wander in this wilderness forty years. . . . And ye shall know my breach of fromiseJ'^

The illustration, on a national scale, of this flexibility is in the history of Nineveh. (^^) By God's command, and by the force of mighty miracles thereto added, Jonah gave notice, *'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown." **But the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. . . . And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them, and he did it not." (Jonah iii. lo.)