Isaiah 43:10 You are my witnesses, said the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he… Granting that there is a Divine Being of whom we can at best Know exceedingly little, we have nothing to draw upon for our conceptions of Him but the best and highest of the phenomena of the universe within reach of our observation; and we have no language in which to express our conceptions but that which is more, or less anthropomorphic. And it is not only necessary to do this in order to satisfy our natural aspirations, but it is eminently becoming so to do. For it accords best with the demands of reason, and also with our instincts of piety and reverence. Anthropomorphic conceptions of God are not therefore necessarily false because they are anthropomorphic; nor are they necessarily false because they are very inadequate. They may be true as far as they go, and may be trusted provisionally till more light and wider experience enable us to relinquish them for truer conceptions. It is very important to this argument to keep continually before our minds the fact of man's superiority and supremacy over the whole portion of the universe within human ken. With all its grandeur and glory and benignant power, we put the sun lower in the scale of being than the poor, flail man who owes his life and all its blessings to its heat and light. And why is this, if not because we have found no trace in the sun of consciousness or intellect; still less of affection and moral sense? 1. Man's superiority over other animals is admitted to consist chiefly in the comparatively enormous preponderance of his reasoning faculties — which have at length given rise to articulate language, to literature and to abstract reasoning, to say nothing of the infinite variety and number of skilful inventions. 2. Man is also distinguished from the lower animals by the possession of a moral sense, which means not a mere category of things which he may, and of things which he may not, do, but a sense that he is bound to do what is believed to be right and because it is right, even though he may not personally benefit by it. 3. Man is distinguished by the capacity for an altogether nobler affection than that usually manifested by the other animals. It is true, they share with us the possession of sexual and parental and sometimes of social love, and under the influence of domestication are capable of the purest and most devoted friendships, both for man and for their fellow-creatures; but man is capable of the highest known form and degree of love, and has manifested heroic devotion for his fellow-man such as no animals have ever shown. 4. Man is by nature religious, and though he himself is the noblest being on earth, yet he persists in believing in some One infinitely higher than himself, to whom, in some yet undefinable way, he and all creatures owe their being, on whose bounty all things depend, whose will it is the main duty of life to discover and obey, and who is conscious of our heart's reverence and love. That man pictures to himself a God proves one of two things; either that he is, in this particular, inferior or superior to the other animals. If there be a God, corresponding however imperfectly with man's ideal, then it is a mark of superiority to have imagined one; but if there be no God, it is a mark of inferiority to have made such a frightful departure from the truth, to have committed such a blunder. So long as external nature was regarded as superior, it was natural and rational for man to conceive of the forms or forces of nature as deities. But when the superiority of man dawned upon the human mind, by reason of its own progress in knowledge and goodness, then the symbols of deity were no longer to be drawn from the outer world, but from man himself, his reason, his conscience, and his heart. Why? Because these were the highest forms of existence known to him. So it must be Anthropomorphism or Atheism. Make what provision he will mentally, make what concessions to his own conscious infirmity, make what margin of error for inevitable ignorance, his God must be like himself. So far like as to think, and to know and to be capable of communion and affection with those who seek His face. Only let us beware of rushing into the opposite error of supposing that the most perfect man that ever lived is good enough or great enough to be a perfect representation of God, who is as far above the "brightest and best of the sons of the morning" as the heavens are higher than the earth. There are grave difficulties in the moral government of the world; in fact, if this world be the end of existence for many living creatures, men included, there would be much to shock our moral sense and lead us to impute either imbecility or criminal injustice to the Author and Governor of the world. Now, we have two means of surmounting these difficulties, but only through Anthropomorphism. (1) There is the conscience which believers in God regard as having a Divine authority — not to lay down specific rules for conduct, but to give supreme sanction to the claims of duty when perceived. We naturally attribute conscience, or a reverence for the right, to the Author and Lord of our consciences; and this is absolutely essential to our conception of God. This is one help to us in facing the moral difficulties of the world. It gives us time. It enables us to say, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"(2) The other help is that man in his best estate perceives the superiority of goodness over happiness, knows also by experience how many of the noblest blessings come to us disguised as pain and trouble and even sin; moreover, he knows full well that he would never, if he could help it, inflict any pain or injury upon any creature but for its own ultimate good, while he would put himself to the greatest pain in inflicting it upon others if he saw no other way of securing that final good. Now, piety and reverence enable us to project this goodness of heart into the ideal world, and to attribute to God the same inflexible devotion to the well-being of His creatures, and to be assured that God has resources of which we know nothing, whereby the inequalities and injustice of the present order will one day be fully justified by the end achieved. And when confronted by the reproach of Anthropomorphism, our only reply can be, "Do you think God can possibly be below the highest moral standard of His creatures? As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts." (C. Voysey, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. |
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