The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1906-04-20

God is like unto us physically-that he
has two eyes, two hands. two feet and
a beating heart? Just as | find Queen
Victoria's face stamped upon the Eng
lish shilling, so some people think Gods
face, in a physical sense, is stamped
upon us. But is this true? Nay Am.
plify! Amplify your idea of Gods per.
sonality. In the One Hundred and
Thirty-ninth Psalm read these words:
"Whither shall / go from thy spirit
or whittier shall l flee from thy pres
ence? If ascend up into heaven, thou
art there; if l make my bed in hell,
behold, thou art there; If l take the
wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there
thy right hand shall hold me. Yea, the
darkness hideth not from thee, but the
night shineth as the day. The darkness
and the light are both alike to thee"
In other words God is here, God is
there, God is everywhere at once How
can all this be and yet God be like
ourselves in physical sense? Men in
capable of conceiving pure spirit have
supposed that God has human form,
as did the ancient anthropomorphites,
or an animal form, as did the ancient
idolaters, but the Bible doctrine as eX-
pounded by Jesus is, God is a spirit,
and they that worship him must wor
ship him in spirit.
1t Passes Comprehension.
Not only does the omnipresence of
God pass all human conception and
explanation, but his personality, called
the Trinity, also passes human ex-
PLANTATION. Here we have God the Fa-
Their, God the Son and God the Holy
Spirit. How can you interpret it? A
dear friend of mine told me how an
old Spanish artist once tried to explain
it, Above one of the affairs of a Next
can cathedral was a picture amid
clouds. Out of these clouds appeared
the, faces of three men. These three
faces were all the same. Under the
picture, in Latin, were the words, 1.-THE
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost"
These three faces were all alike; they
were like three photographs of one
face taken from the same negative.
But had that artist caught a true con-
ception of the Trinity? No. He no
more pictured the true God than did
the artist who tried to picture the face
Of the Trinity as that of one man. The
full conception of Gods eternal exist
ence and of Gods personality passes
all human grasp. Therefore l say to
you, as Michael Angelo said to Raphael,
when thou art. trying to reach out after
the personality of God, amplify and
keep on simplifying. God is Spirit
infinite. That means no flight of human
Imagination can reach the heights or
plumb the depths or touch the bounds
of the realms of his presence. We
must accept Gods personality as in
finitely more comprehensive than we
can prove him to be or else we shall
never accept him at all.
But, though l have dwelt long upon
my first point, l believe it is the least
important of any shall present, for it
is almost an impossibility for any one
Of us to get away from our belief in an
overruling God who was the creator Of
the universe after we have studied the
wonderful harmonies of the natural
world. We are like the student of skep-
teal tendencies who was seated at the
feet Of that master of anatomy, DR..
Marshall. The great professor was ex-
planning to his class the marvels of the
points of the knee or of the hand. Aft
err he had finished his talk this student
exclaimed, "a man must be a fool in
deed who, after duly studying his own
body, can remain an atheist" So we |
say, "a man must be a fool who can
study the harmonies of nature and not
believe that a master mind, called the
ALL" But, after we have
studied the signs and the wonders of
the heaven and the earth and have ac-
cepted belief in God, the next ques-
ton which naturally confronts us is
this: "How do we know that this God
the Creator is the God who is the
author of the book we call the BIZ
Die, in which the coming of Christ
Is foretold and the promises of for
giveness of sin in Christs blood are
made to a dying human race" How
10 we know that God is the author
IF the Bible? Why, by the testimo-
ny of the Bible itself. The internal
evidences Of a manuscript carry their
own proof of genuineness. For centu-
res upon centuries the Bible has had
the test Of internal criticism applied to
It. The Bible lives as the word of God
because its evidences have been proved
true. Its signs and wonders are I'M
The Bible story of Creation.
Let the first chapter of Genesis come
forth and speak. That is to me one Of
the most wonderful Of all passages Of
the Bible. Have you ever carefully
studied It? Suppose that Luther Bur
bank, California's wizard of flowers
and fruits, should bring to us a new
kind of fruit. This fruit may be diff
ierent from any other fruit ever grown.
Then suppose he told us how he got
that fruit. Perhaps it was developed
by grating an Italian grape upon a
certain kind of American grapevine If
he told us all this, and we knew that
no other such grape had ever been
grown, we would believe that he had
developed that grape. Well, in the
same way thousands of years ago God
told Moses how he had created the
world. First came the water. then the
and, then the grass, then the living
,reatures in the water, then the ami
mails, then man. "Oh," you say, that
s a simple story" Yes, it is so simple
hat for thousands of years the scien-
lists were trying to discover the order
II creation, and now, much to their
l.a.I-.-a..Ac.