Natural Religion: Its Strength and Weakness

“Arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that weperish not.” — Jonah i. 6.

“He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that chastiseili the heathen, shall not He correct? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall He not know?”

“The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.” — Ps. xciv. 9-11.

THE pilot not only rebuked the prophet; he had a proposal to make him, — a call to address to him — a call to prayer: “Arise, call upon thy God.” And he backs his proposal by a reason, a motive, an expectation of benefit: “If so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”

All this, as coming from a heathen, is peculiarly instructive. And the two great truths it conveys are these: — First, That in man’s inmost nature, originally and radically, there are certain principles of religion most strong and ineradicable; and, Second,. That these, without the guidance of revelation and faith, are altogether insufficient as guides in his real relation to God. Man’s natural helplessness, as he stands related to the material world, liable continually to become the victim of powers and elements far mightier than he; and his natural conscience, as he stands related to the moral world, liable continually to be the victim of a sentence and a condemnation which he is constantly passing on himself, and constantly feels that a living Being far mightier than he is passing; — these two facts and conditions of his existence on the earth necessarily imply a capacity for religion and a certain religiousness, appertaining, of necessity, to human nature, and developed in peculiar strength even in heathen worship. In fact, the strength of these natural principles of religion in the heathen reads a very solemn and alarming rebuke to multitudes in civilised and Christian lands. In the progress of modern civilisation, man may emancipate himself from the solemn awe with which the heathen contemplate the powers of nature; but if he rise not to a holy veneration of the one Supreme Author of nature, as a revealed and reconciled God, it is very questionable whether he does not become in some respects a more shallow and trifling being than the worshipper of idols. And the weakening of this element — the sense of his littleness as in the grasp and at the disposal of power higher than his own, — weakens also the other element — his sense of the gravity of his moral relations. Between these two, there is a strange interplay and interchange of action. The one — his relation to the material world — when rightly realised, tends to impress him with a deep sense of his extreme insignificance — of his perfect helplessness and littleness. A rotting worm in the ship, or a raging wind in the heavens, may sink him; a flash from the thunder-cloud, the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the arrow that flieth by noonday, may lay him low. Any one of a thousand accidents may remove him from this passing scene of things. He is extremely vmimportant, it would seem; and when nature gathers up her energies, and, as in the storm before us, puts forth her mio-hty powers, the pride and self-sufficiency of man are swept away in a moment, and he feels his littleness. Strange to say, he thereby feels also his greatness — his true significance as a moral, responsible, immortal being. Is there a judge? Is there a jrreat court of the universe — a final tribunal for all creatures — an ultimate throne, occupied by a King of kings? Before that throne he feels that it is his high prerogative to stand; before that throne he is under call to compear. He feels iliat most of all, when, in the great excitement and alarms of nature’s threatening and uncontrollable powers, he is led most of all to feel his littleness. The very hour when, in relation to the material world, and partly by the display of its gigantic elements, man learns to read his helplessness, is the hour when, in relation to the moral world, he learns to feel the high significance of his being.

Now, weaken the first of these, as in a highly artificial state of society, where man seems to bend the elements to his pleasure, making the very lightnings pass safely where he pleases, or constraininof them to bear his messages; and let there be no corres-Its Strength and Weakness. 95

ponding improvement in his knowledge of the true God: feeling less his real littleness, he becomes more blind than ever to his true greatness, and (apart from grace) becomes more dependent upon some alarming providence, such as now threatened the ship and all on board with destruction, for being wakened up to feel his true position, as a moral, responsible being, under law to the great Ruler of the universe, and bound to compear and stand at His bar.

It is on grounds like these that we might very easily maintain and prove the assertion, that godless men, in the days and in the state of society in which we live, are more thoroughly irreligious than the heathen are; that covetousness, which is idolatry — the rage for money-making, which supremely governs multitudes, and is adapted by them as man’s chief end — is more contemptible than the worship of stocks and stones; and that under its sway human nature becomes even more perverted, and, as to every element of natural excellence, suffers a more complete break-down than in the case of the poor savage who roams the forest, trembling at the thunder’s voice, and bowing the knee to the setting sun.

But we cannot prosecute this line of thought. It would lead us too far from our present purpose. Be it simply remembered, without attempting to trace their mutual relations and mutual actions on each other, that, apart from revelation, prior to it, and pre-supposed by it, as what revelation itself appeals to, there are these two facts conspiring to make man naturally and necessarily a religious being, namely — jirst, his observation of the powers of nature, and, secondly, his experience of the powers of conscience.

Let us now, in the first place, estimate the strength of these principles; and then their weakness: both of these as exhibited in the proposal of the heathen pilot. Let us consider, in a word, how far natural religion can go, and where it fails. We have before us a fair opportunity of settling this question. In this hour of nature’s terrors, where man’s littleness comes into clearest light, and where, in the prospect of death, man’s greatness also comes out in its fullest proportions; when the speaker, moreover, is no nervous and excited timid female, but a self-possessed mariner, habituated to the dangers of the deep, and not unduly alarmed; in such a man, at such a time, — when not overdriven g6 Natural Religion

by alarm, yet stimulated to the highest pitch of earnestness, — we seem to have a very embodiment, an impersonation of natural religion in the very crisis of its power, acting to the utmost of its capacity, and pausing only where its capacity ends. Hence, in the proposal of the pilot, we may read — First, the power; and, secondly, the weakness of natural religion. And then we may see that, whether among heathens or merely nominal Christians, natural religion is substantially the same; in other words, that without converting and enlightening and renewing grace, without the evangelism and spirituality of the gospel, without the blood and Spirit of Christ, man’s religion, anywhere and everywhere, is essentially heathen.

I. What is it that reason, unenlightened by the word and Spirit of God, can do towards furnishing man with a religion? What can natural religion do for us?

1, First of all, then, it may tell us that there is a God, and that that God is One. The existence and the unity of God may be proved by reason. These heathen mariners had many gods, “They cried every man unto his god.” And the pilot would have Jonah to call on his God: “Arise, call on thy God.” Jonah, he took for granted, would have a God too. There were “gods many,” according to the mariner’s views. And yet under this multiplicity there lurked the idea of a unity also. For while the pilot speaks as if he had the idea of many — Call on thy God; see, we are all calling each to his God; call on thine too; yet he closes with a remark that seems to indicate that this system of multiplication was rather, after all, a system of division, and that out of the many they reconstructed and rose to the idea of a single Supreme Being. For he adds, “if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not,” — if so be that God,” — the God, the One God, the Supreme.

And unquestionably the whole herd of inferior deities whom the heathen worshipped, were only so many sectional representatives of a portion of the powers believed to reside in a God to whom might fairly be given, even by reason, the lofty designation, “God over all.”

And, in point of fact, it is easily shown that, however it may have been usually in the history of the world, it is quite within the competency of reason to demonstrate the unity of God. Man’s connection with the natural world — his observation of nature — suggests a designing mind; a being possessing wisdom, and power, and purpose: it never suggests more than one. The wisdom, power, and goodness, which it sees to be requisite for creating, preserving, and controlling the visible universe, are felt to be unbounded, infinite. One such infinite Being is felt to be necessary to account for things as they are. But not more than one is felt to be necessary. Rather, more than one such infinite Being, possessing all knowledge and power, is felt to be impossible. The same result follows from connection with the moral world. Conscience tells us of a Ruler and Judge, but only of one. Its whole dictates would be misread, misinterpreted, and reversed, by the introduction of two rival Gods claiming co-ordinate shares in its veneration. The most distinct and sharp intimation which conscience gives is that of One higher, one supreme Ruler, claiming undivided allegiance. The good conscience — tender and true and confessing — owns this: — “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.” The bad conscience, whether in man or lost angels, if examined aright, is seen to take this for granted, to have this graven on itself as by a pen of iron, to have this as the foundation of its terrors: — “Thou belie vest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” The trembling, the terror, the fearful looking for of vengeance, is all in one direction — all concentrated in one.

2. But further; reason, fairly interpreted, assures us that this God is a being capable of intercourse with His creatures. Reason, indeed, cannot tell on what terms God will conduct intercourse with His creatures; or whether He will actually do so at all. But reason can tell that God is a Being capable, if He pleases, of conversing with His intelligent, reasonable, responsible creatures. And this it deduces from the general principle, that God, the Creator, cannot confer powers or privileges on His creatures higher than He Himself possesses. It is one of the plainest arguments that can be framed, “He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that giveth man knowledge, doth He not know?” (Ps. xciv. 9, 10). The very purpose or desire on God’s part to create man capable of seeing, proves that seeing — vision — is familiar to God Himself.

The creating of an intelligent being is surely the work o£ a Being who Himself is intelligent. And so the bestowal on man of a capacity of holding intercourse and converse with another implies, on God’s part, the possession of the same capacity, and that in the highest degree. For if I, God’s creature, can reveal my mind and thoughts to you, and am capable of receiving the revelation of your thoughts, and wants, and wishes, which in turn you make to me; assuredly God, who made us both, must much more be capable of disclosing His mind to both of us, and hearincy us when we go to disclose our mind to Him.

Hence reason itself demonstrates the possibility of a revelation from God; and the possibility of prayer, and of the efficacy of prayer.

This the heathen pilot, you will observe, proceeds upon when he summons Jonah to “arise and call upon God.”

These are the two great truths that reason is competent to establish: jirst, that God exists; and, second, that prayer is possible, reasonable. The superior power observed in nature, in the material world; and the supreme authority felt by conscience, in the moral world: these two great general facts testify of a God. And then the danger to which man is exposed in the material world at the hands of nature and its elements; and the distress which man suffers in the moral world at the hands of conscience: these two great general experiences prompt intuitively to deprecate God’s anger, “that we perish not,” and prompt to seek his favour, “if so be that God will think upon us,” or shine upon us, be propitious, or favourable to us; prompt, in short, naturally and necessarily, to prayer. A God; and a God to whom prayer may be offered: these are the dictates of reason. In establishing these two truths, reason is within its own sphere, thoroughly within its competency; and in establishing them irrefragably, reason exhibits its excellence and power.

II. But now observe reason’s limit, and reason’s weakness. The God whom reason knows to exist, that God reason does not personally know at all; and the prayer which reason teaches to be possible and reasonable, reason cannot conduct. Here, therefore is the twofold need for revelation from God on His part, and for faith in that revelation on ours.

1. Reason knows that God exists; but reason does not know God. Reason tells that there is a God; but we need revelation to make us acquainted with Him. To know His existence is one thing; to know Himself is another.

I go into a gallery of paintings. My reason at once infers a painter. These pictures did not spring into existence by chance. They are the products of a designing mind, an agent, an artist. The existence of such an agent is at once proved by the existence of the paintings. Further, I examine them one by one; I find them all connected with each other. They are a closely concatenated series. The same style is visible in them alb The same ultimate idea is kept in view by them all. They present, let us say, a single individual in childhood, youth, manhood, old age. They exhibit the great leading incidents of his life. From this order and design, this purpose and idea, and from the manner in which the painter has carried it out, I am gathering information about him, about his style, his abilities, and powers in his art. Nay, more, from the hearty manner in which I may see he has brought forth all his finest powers to depict some scene, we shall say, of home enjoyment, I may gain an insight into more than his artistic and professional abilities. I may read not a little of his personal predilections, his moral tendencies and tastes.

All this, however, I may learn, and much more. All that in this way, at the very best, any man could learn, I may be supposed to reach; and yet the painter himself I may never have seen — him as yet I know not. “I have neither seen his shape nor heard his voice,” nor understood his character, and mind, and heart. Clear it is that wholly another style of knowledge of him is possible; yea, that another style of knowledge, not higher in degree merely, but especially diferent in kind is needed, before I can be said to know himself.

But let him enter his own gallery of paintings, and meet me face to face.* Let him come into converse with me. Let him tell me the idea which he meant, by this series of pictures, to convey and impress; let him carry me from one to another in regular order, from first to last, and tell me all his purpose and

* This is but the reproduction, in another form, of a fine thought of Dr. Candlish’s in “Contributions towards an Exposition of the Book of Genesis,” Vol 1., pp. 3-5.

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design. Clearly I am beginning to know liiin after another fashion now; and he casts more light now on the scope of the paintings than the paintings formerly threw upon the skill of the painter.

Still, however, if all that passes between him and me refers exclusively to these works of his hands, I may have got a high intellectual treat; I may have got great light on the finest themes of the finest of the fine arts; his intellect, and skill, and art, and science, may have been all made to pass before me, and here and there a gleam of deeper principles and feelings may incidentally have Abashed forth; yet still I cannot yet be said, in any real sense, to know the painter himself. For aught that has passed between him and me, we may part, never to meet again, never to feel the slightest interest in each other’s fate and character. It may live in my memory as a familiar recollection and a gratifying incident that I had this rencontre with him; but personal knowledge of him I have not gained: and in an hour of sadness, and of sorrow, I could no more proceed to cast myself on his sympathy and aid, than on any stranger whom I had never even seen in the flesh.

And the reason is, that you never become acquainted with, you never really know, any person, merely by discovering his intellectual or scientific abilities. You never do know a neighbour, save by knowing his moral character and his heart. It is when you have evidence of his unbending rectitude, and get an experimental insight into his unbounded beneficence; when you know that your friend can do you no wrong, and know that he is disposed, to the limits of his power, to do you all good; it is then you know himself. When you know his righteousness and goodness! when you have experimentally ascertained that in these two qualities he is all that you can ever need to draw, or depend upon him for; that in these respects you can thoroughly lean upon and trust him: then you have formed a true acquaintance, not with the man’s abilities, but with himself. Till you reach and arrive at this knowledge, you must feel that you have not the pleasure of his real acquaintance. If you have sought in vain to get this knowledge, you must confess that you do not know him, — perhaps that you do not know what to make of him.

And the same principles hold good as to your acquiring a

Its Strength and its Weakness. lor

knowledge — a true knowledge of God; your essaying to obey the command, “Acquaint thyself with God.” You may know about God from the works of creation; but in this way you can never rise to a true and ‘personal knowledge of God himself. It is one thing to know about God; another to know Him. Nature and conscience may tell about Him; but revelation alone discloses Him. Reason may discover much truth concerning His intellectual powers, so to speak — His natural attributes; but His moral character and His heart it remains for Himself to reveal. Is He so inflexibly just that rather than allow the least unrighteousness to prevail — that is to say, to be unpunished; for where unrighteousness is not annihilated or married to his eternal punishment, there it does prevail — is He, I say, so inflexibly just that rather than allow the least unrighteousness to prevail, He would suffer all heaven and earth to become one everlasting hell? and my conscience can get no rest and no satisfaction in estimating His character for righteousness till this be admitted. But if this be admitted, what hope can there be for me, a sinner? Is it possible that at the same time He can be, towards me a sinner, a God of grace, one infinite, boundless ocean of free, forgiving, saving love? Is this possible? I cannot trust in God unless He be infinitely, inflexibly, eternally righteous. If He could do the least wrong, — or, which is the same thing, wink at the least wrong, — even for the purpose of saving me, I cannot respect Him; I cannot trust Him. But if He cannot do on His own part, nor tolerate on my part, the least unrighteousness, oh, how can I trust in Him, or draw near to Him in peace? He is to me, more and more, an infinite mystery. As a living person, with whom I have to do — my Maker and my Judge — the more I think of Him, and the more I scan all that reason teaches and conscience tells, so much the more do I find that, in proportion as I thus hnoiv about Him, the less do I seem to knoiu Himself. Himself, in fact, I cannot know till He reveal Himself to me as in the holy Scripture, shining forth there as in a mirror infinitely more bright than creation, infinitely more serene than conscience. There I see His glory, when I look to Christ. There I see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In Him, dying the death of agonising wrath for sin — thirsting, mourning, bleeding, outcast, condemned, and dying — I see that God, not

I02 Natural Religion

only rather than tolerate the least unrighteousness, would suffer all created beings to become as hell, but bringeth hell into the very soul of His beloved Son; while rather than suffer me, the hell-deserving one, to become as hell. His love to me is so inconceivable that for me He giveth His eternal and beloved Son, a sacrifice for me. If the Holy Ghost open my heart to receive this revelation, I know my God now. I know Him personally. I know Himself. I know Him far better than I know any other person. My truest brother, my dearest friend, cannot so reveal and make known himself to me as my God can and does. By the Spirit and word of the Lord, the Lord God in Christ Jesus becomes truly and surely known to me.

Thus while reason may tell that there is a God, and tell about God, it is by revelation — by faith — that you know God himself.

2. In like manner, secondly, as reason tells that prayer is possible, yea, reasonable, revelation alone puts us in possession of the terms on which God actually hears prayer — puts us in a condition actually to pray.

And, here, to speak solely of the essential point, reason tells that, prior to obtaining aid and blessing, it is essential that the Divine anger should be removed. “If so be that God will think upon us;” — literally, if the Lord will shine upon us, if the Lord will be propitious to us — “that we perish not.” So spake the pilot: and he spake the language of universal reason and conscience. If God be propitious; if God be favourable; if God turn away His anger, and turn to us in kindness — then, only then, “we perish not.” This, therefore, becomes the hinge of all the inquiry: How shall God be propitious? How shall man be just with God? How shall God be favourable to man?

Take away my Bible from me; obliterate from my mind the knowledge which, from holy Scripture, I have derived; or, in the hour of my storm of terror in conscience, or alarm in the approach of death, let me be incapable of spiritually realising, believing, using and improving the information which holy Scripture conveys on this point; let it still be to me a question, “How shall God become favourable?” and I am incapable of true prayer; my prayer is simply heathen. I cry to a Supreme Being, perhaps — it may be in a very agony of earnestness; but mark the tremendous error of my prayer. I pray in order to make God favourable. And this is a work too great for me. This is a work in which I have no success. That is the aim and object of all the sacrifices, penances, and prayers of Popish and heathen worship. They are designed, if possible, to make God favourable. With this intent — with this end in view — a heathen pilot prays, and calls the prophet to prayer. And with this same end, every awakened, startled, unconverted, unbelieving man prays, whether nominally a heathen or a Christian.

It is the reverse with the converted — the believer. He prays, not because he imagines God to be unfavourable and tries to propitiate Him, but because God in Christ is favourable, and he believes in Him as a propitious, pardoning, gracious God. He does not pray in doubt, like the heathen pilot — “if so be God may be propitious;” but because God is propitious. A doubt on that point quells all his power to pray. So greatly does he fear the Holy One of Israel, that a doubt as to whether He be propitious strikes him dumb, and he dare not pray on such a supposition. The prayer of faith, which alone is truly prayer, takes hold with tenacious grasp on the declaration, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” And maintaining this glorious ground — resting on this sure foundation — knowing the terms of infinitely free and sure grace, and the gift of perfect and imputed righteousness, which, in Christ Jesus, is the basis of holy, trustful, true, and pure-hearted prayer, the believer casts away all such “perchance,” and “perhaps,” and “if,” and “if so be;” all such hesitations and uncertainties as spring from the unbelief of heathenism and the heathenism of unbelief; and relying on the truth of the Father’s gracious revelation, and the freeness and perfection of the Son’s righteousness, and the secret security of the Spirit’s light and grace; in one word, taking God at His word, and taking God’s proposal as good and true; feeling more and more deeply his tremendous weight of sin, but looking more and more intensely to the perfect sacrifice, and realising it as an all-worthy object of immediate faith, and an all-worthy theme of immediate gratitude and praise, the believing worshipper, with a true heart, and in the full assurance of faith, may be heard exclaiming: — “Praise waiteth for Thee, O God, in Zion: and unto Thee shall the vow be performed. O Thou that hearest prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come. Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, Thou shall purge them away. Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple” (Ps. lxv. 1-4).

Thus we have seen both the power and the weakness of reason in reference to religion. Reason is powerful enough to tell, first, that there is a God; and, secondly, that He is a Being capable of holding intercourse with us if He pleases. But reason is so weak that, in the first lolace, this God, whose existence it teaches, it does not enable us to know; and, in the second iilace, this exercise of prayer, whose possibility and reasonableness it teaches, it cannot enable us to conduct.

Reason, therefore, without revelation, is sure fatally to err; and whether in ancient Paganism, or in modern Rationalisms, which are heathenisms, or in Popery, or in nominal, formal Christianity, the error at bottom is identically one and the same. If you would avoid being at heart altogether as the heathen, there is no course for you but one. Awake to a sense of sin, and of your tremendous yet glorious responsibility to God; and come in truth of heart to the cross of Christ’s humiliation, agony, and shame — His vicarious sufferings and death. There you must by faith unite your responsibility with Christ’s, or take His for yours. Your guilt — your righteous liability to wrath, you must terminate and quench in His blood; your Judge by that blood appeased, your Father by that blood reconciled. And in the unlimited brokenness and gratitude of heart which will thus be inspired; in the perfect trust in God and adoring admiration of Him; in the fervour of thanks which you render at the remembrance of His holiness, and the reverence of filial joy with which you contemplate and share His love; you will feel a new life begun, a life of prayer, the prayer, not of probability, of doubt, of hesitation, of timid, shrinking, creeping fear and bondage; the prayer, not of abject flattery, of craven cringing, of labouring to propitiate, or persuading to cease from wrath; but of faith, of the full assurance of faith, of access with boldness and confidence through the faith of Christ; for “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will. He heareth us: and if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him” (1 John V. 14, 15). This is Christian prayer; less — less in essence or principle — is heathenism.

There is one other remark to be made on this verse before closing, and it is this; — that a heathen pilot may here be accepted as teaching us the reasonableness and propriety of united prayer. Nature itself teaches that there is something in united supplication more calculated to secure an answer. And what nature suggests, the Scriptures confirm. We are told by our Lord that “if two of us shall agree on earth as touching anything that we shall ask, it shall be done unto us of our Father which is in heaven” (Matt, xviii. 19). Do we then bring the concert and union of our prayers into Christ’s family with us, if, indeed, we have entered that family? If we have made common cause with the kingdom of Christ — if we have embarked in this ship — can we really be indifferent to its general interest and safety, to the comfort, and interest, and safety of our fellow-passengers for eternity? If we can — if we can sleep at our ease while the vessel is in danger, are we not marked out thereby as the very souls for whose sake the danger has come upon the vessel? And what a call does this thought address to us, as in the very language of a heathen rebuking us; while — making allowance for the heathenism — we may well on that account also be all the more ashamed by the peremptory earnestness of a heathen man’s demand: — “What meanest thou, 0 sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God; if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.”