Is God imaginary?

"The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom. 1:20).

If only men would listen to the testimony of creation it would be a mercy. Most men see the wonders of creation, and yet live as if they had no responsibility to their Creator. Forgetting God, they will worship images like to corruptible man, to birds, beasts and even creeping things. Thus is man, who will not retain God in His knowledge, degraded. He drops down to the level of the beast, as he turns his back on God.

The testimony of creation, majestic and passing wonderful as it is, does not, however, reveal God's heart to us. It reveals His fingers, for the Psalmist David, contemplating the night sky, exclaimed, "When I consider the heavens, THE WORK OF THY FINGERS, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; what is man, that Thou art mindful of him" (Ps. 8:3-4).

Conscience is a great difficulty with infidels. It is practically the weak point in their armour. Protect themselves with reasonings as they may, yet they cannot shield their conscience.

Conscience is; it cannot be shelved. I am, and my conscience exists in me. And to him who is conscious of his sinful being, it is a terrible reality. Besides doing battle daily within the breasts of men, against their very wills, conscience spoils the pleasures of sin, renders the prosperous wicked man miserable, scares the sceptic, ruins the fine theories of no future, and forces men, against their judgment and their feelings, to confess their crimes, and to yield themselves to justice and to death.

Man alone, of the creatures upon this earth, has a conscience. ... By the aid of a stick a cow can be educated into refusing to pluck the green leaves over the fence which her tongue longs after. The memory of the beating she has more than once received for interfering with her master's wishes, teaches her to forego her inclinations. But memory is not conscience.

Where the word of God has been heard, we cannot dissociate God from conscience. Our moral instinct, our sense of right and wrong, bear witness to the unseen God; within us there is that which knows together with God.

The positive proofs of it — proofs such as no event, no system, no person on earth has for itself — have been detailed in the language of every civilized people. ... If the system at large is positively proved, a difficulty attached to it which I cannot solve is a demonstration not of the falseness of the system, but of my incompetency to deal with the difficulty.

The historical facts and documents of Christianity are proved with an evidence such as no other universally-believed event or acknowledged book has any evidence to be compared with, and if proved show that it is divine.

There is no book in existence to be compared to the New Testament scriptures. Nothing in the least degree approaches its simplicity, power, moral depth and moral purity, profound knowledge of God, adaptation of His love to the heart of man; none that displays God so much, brings Him forward so constantly, without ever committing itself by anything unworthy of Him, brings Him down so near man, and yet only more fully to show Him always to be God.

Revelation controls the passions which creation does not. A judgment to come, sin having to answer to God — these are what revelation treats of. And they are what man does not like. A God of providence he will have and reason about, because he wants Him, and he prides himself on having to say to the Almighty as he (man) likes it; but to be judged by Him, or even to own himself a sinner, and to be in so humbled a condition as to be loved by Him and to need it — ah! that is another matter.

The light of reason cannot find out God by searching. It is only the light of the life in the Word become flesh that can declare God.

No man was great enough to declare God. None but a divine Person could reveal a divine Person. "No one has seen God at any time." The Son, as the only-begotten in the bosom of the Father, revealed the Father as He knew Him.

The presence of Christ amidst the darkness of the world was the complete exposure of man and the full revelation of God.

Creation reveals God's almighty power and wisdom, but man needs an Object for his affections, and above all a Being, whom He can worship. ... It has pleased God to reveal Himself in infinite love in sending into this world His only begotten Son.

Could anything be more wonderful than that the Son of God, the Eternal Word, should become incarnate, should come into this world to make a God of love known.

If the coin bore the image of Caesar, and therefore was his, on whom was the image of God stamped? It was stamped at the beginning upon man, and in spite of the fall it has not been altogether effaced. The image and superscription of God are still discernable. Man was made in the image and likeness of God.

I believe in God by Christ: I do not believe in Him by nature, astronomy, or geology, but entirely by Christ.