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I. ITS NATURE. It is an argument from what we see in ourselves to what exists in God. If God has given to us certain powers, such powers must exist in him.

II. ITS FORCE. It is inconceivable that it should be otherwise. A man must have brutalized his soul, and become a fool, not to see this. God is not as man is - the mere employer of force which he does not and cannot create, but he is behind all force, its Creator and Source.

III. ITS SAFEGUARD.

1. For this argument needs guarding. If it be said that the presence of faculties in ourselves proves the existence of them in God, which is the argument in these verses, then might it not be said God is the author of the sin that is in us as well as the good, of that which is wrong as well as of that which is right? The heathen thought so, and hence they regarded their gods as altogether like themselves - embodiments of not merely good qualities, but also of lust and hate and all abomination. The idea of a holy God they never knew. And sinful men now often say, "God made us so," and thus cast on him the responsibility for their sin. "He that planted in me the love of sin, doth he not love it too?" So they falsely reason.

2. But how must such wrong extension of the argument of these verses be met? By noting that man has not merely the powers of thought, feeling, will, but also of conscience. This last is the regal, the judicial faculty, and decides what is of God, and what is only the product of our corrupt nature. Apart from conscience, there could be no right or wrong, but it infallibly tells, by its "excusing and accusing," how far we may go in arguing from what we see in ourselves to what exists in God. Else a man might say, "He that made me to lust, shall he not lust?" The ancient Greeks and the whole heathen world did say this.

IV. ITS MINGLED COMFORT AND WARNING.

1. As to the comfort this argument supplies.

(1) It shows that all our gifts are of God. "It is he that planted the ear," etc. (cf. James 1:16-18). As we think of the manifold advantages that come to us through these gifts of God, and what joy, can we fail to see the beneficence of our God?

(2) That they are reflections of God, mirrors, minute indeed, but yet true, of what he is. Therefore my thought tells of thought in him; my love, of his, my conscience, of moral judgment in him. It is our Lord's argument (Matthew 7:9-11; Luke 15.). But:

2. There is warning likewise. Against pride: "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" Against envy. We are as God willed us to be, and, if we be but obedient, equally well pleasing in his sight. Against trifling with sin. If we condemn it, and will to punish it if unrepented of, that condemnation and that will reveal what is yet more in God. They tell of judgment to come. - S.C.

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KJV: Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?

WEB: Consider, you senseless among the people; you fools, when will you be wise?