A true test of Divinity.
When these words were written the question to be solved was—Which god, of all the rival deities, is worthy of human trust and worship? The question now is—What is the authority to which we shall submit our judgment and in which we shall rest?—is it human nature, or is it the forces of the material world, or is it the Lord God? The verses before us suggest to us that one criterion in this state of inquiry is to be found in the consideration that we cannot find rest in anything which does not tell us what we most want to know as dependent, struggling, sorrowing, sinning, dying men. The idols of the heathen were valueless; they could not tell "things to come hereafter;" they were utterly ignorant; they had no voice to answer the most urgent and pressing questions which men were asking. Those great and profound inquiries which we are now putting are beyond the reach of nature and of man. Nature, at the demand of science, can shed no light at all on the most sacred problems, the solution of which is everything to us. It makes no sign, it leaves us as we were. Its teaching is as consistent with one conclusion as with the opposite. Man, unaided by special illumination, can reach no certainty, can attain to nothing like assurance; he can guess, can argue, can hope, but he cannot know. God alone, the Author of our being, the Lord of our life, the Arbiter of our destiny, can tell us whence we came and whose we are and whither we go. He can tell us "things to come hereafter," and much else which it is as urgent that we should know. He makes plain and sure to us the truth concerning—
I. THE ORIGIN, SUSTENANCE, AND GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD.
II. OUR HUMAN NATURE. That it is not what it was when it came forth from his creative hand; that it has fallen through sin; that there is a way back which is a way up, toward himself and his favour.
III. HIMSELF—HIS NATURE, CHARACTER, AND WILL.
IV. THE FUTURE.
1. Future things here.
2. The great future—the fact of another life, of a day of account—eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.—C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK