Psalm 17:15 As for me, I will behold your face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with your likeness. Man is capable of discovering, and has actually discovered, some true knowledge of God. The best answer we can make to the unbeliever in an objective revelation will be to say — 1. The religion which you accept on an external authority had for its origin nothing else in the world than the human consciousness which you now despise. Place all the religions of the world in their chronological order, and yon will find that each one is the revolt of independent thought against the authority of the religion which preceded it. 2. At all events, we cannot any longer abide by your revelation, for we have discovered error in it. To our minds it represents God in an unworthy and even in a degraded aspect. 3. We will tell you how our conceptions of God are determined in the first instance, how they are sustained, and how they can be corrected and improved. We look at man, we examine ourselves. In relation to puzzling problems and analogies in the outer world we feel the necessity for faith and patience towards God, such as our children have to exercise towards, the most. loving, parents. The reverence, for goodness as goodness is universal m man, differing only in degree in proportion as different men have higher or lower conceptions of What goodness is. The verdict of humanity has long been passed, that morality, justice, love, righteousness, goodness, call it what you will is the best and highest in man, and the most righteous man, or most loving man is the noblest. From this we rise by one step into a conception of God's moral attributes. God must be, at least, as good as the noblest of men. We cannot accept as a God one whose moral principles are below those of his own finite creatures. Mankind itself is the ever-expanding bible in which the Divine revelation is being written. Every religion in the days of its youth was the immediate result of some previous progress in human morality. If you want proof that the real origin of religions belief is the reverence of human goodness, take not the mere creed of Christendom, but the cherished belief of its heart. Why do Christians worship Christ as God? Certainly not because it was said that He was God, but because they believed Him to be a perfect man. They first admired and loved Him for His goodness, and then they made Him Divine, and robed Him in all the splendours of heavenly royalty out of gratitude for His human love. To those, then, who are really Christians, and really religious, we come on their own ground, and say, If it is human goodness you really worship, we can show you plenty of that, equal to Christ's, and even better still. We can show you at least the same thing free from some of His personal errors. In almost every particular the conceptions which we have of God are more exalted and pure than any which have gone before it. They are attained, as all other conceptions are, namely, by the gradual advance in the moral and intellectual nature of man. Our faith is nobler than yours, because we have allowed ourselves to be taught by the moral progress of our own times, and by the highest instincts of our souls. To our moral instincts and our attainment of the knowledge of goodness we must add our own deep and earnest aspirations, as witnesses of what God really is. No words so well express the possession of soul by the Divine presence and its loftiest aspirations as those of the text, "As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness; and I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness." (Charles Voysey.). Parallel Verses KJV: As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. |
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