Is there a God?

Nevertheless, by strange coincidence, fresh evidences are constantly accruing which go far to convince even the unwilling scientist of the presence of a Designer’s hand. Stones cry out! Nature speaks!

Creation should, indeed, speak, and its voice be heard. What is invisible in the Creator should be and is seen, and seen clearly, being understood by the things that are made—even His eternal power and Godhead—not, indeed, His grace, or truth, or love, but infinite power and design, so much so that people are left thus without excuse. (See Romans 1:20.) Creation declares the power of God. It does not reveal what He is in Himself—His nature—but to any, except those wilfully blind, it is evidence sufficient of the existence of a Creator-God!

That God exists and that He originated all things is assumed and stated. Unbelieving men may demand that proofs of His existence be produced, but nowhere in Scripture does God condescend to furnish such proofs. Were He to do so they would not be intelligible to the feeble minds of puny men. Moreover they are no more really needed than proofs that the sun exists and shines. That fact could only be doubted by a man who had neither sight nor feeling, and it is just because unbelieving men have neither sight nor feeling of a spiritual sort, that they doubt, or even deny, the existence of God.

First: If it is claimed that there are men who do not even know that there is a divine Being, he shows the claim cannot be allowed. Creation, both as a whole and in detail, is incessantly declaring there is a Creator, a God over all. It is a demonstration of both the eternal power and divinity of the Maker of all things. The responsibility and accountability of the intelligent finite creature is involved in this testimony of creation. No one, then, can excuse himself for violating the nature and character of his relation to the Creator — a creation of which he knows himself to be a part. As rational beings, all men owe subjection to their Creator, and sin in every form is in violation of this subjection, but no valid excuse can be made. No plea for violating creation's witness will stand. It is inexcusable guilt (vers. 19, 20).

1916_159 Of the Gentiles it first speaks, showing that that which was "knowable" of God from the testimony of created things, contained a voice for any listening ear, wherever or whenever found. "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For 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, so that they are without excuse." Creation, open to the observation of all, is full of manifestation of God. Above and around man there are strewn in abundance evidences of a divine, hand at work, and the most darkened, one would say, would have real trouble to escape the conviction of a wisdom and power therein displayed nothing less than divine. Yet, widespread, continuous, and eloquent as is its testimony, men have not so read God's plain speech in it. And, remark, it is no mistaken reading of the evidence merely that we must lay to man's account, but the wholesale rejection of it. There was little room left, one would think, for mistake, had not the hearts of men been really desirous of some alternative signification. Yet just there it lies. Anyone or anything but Him they would willingly invest with the glory of such handiwork. They say unto God — "Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways." Yet, even in face of this want of desire after God, these silent witnesses remain, to be accusers, if nothing more; and the sum of their accusation here is that ungodly men are "without excuse." This witness of creation to the great Originator and Sustainer of all, infinite in His might and wisdom, is fact beyond challenge or dispute. Designed so to testify to man, legitimately therefore is it to be reckoned as one more instance of truth bestowed, of truth resisted.

That which proves there is a God, proves that we cannot know, nor conceive an idea of Him - i.e., that there must be a cause for what subsists. There is a God, because a thing cannot exist without a cause, but that is not God - it is, after all, only saying that we are finite. I must believe that He is. I am sure that there is a God, because I am sure that what exists, cannot exist without a cause, but what cannot exist without a cause is not God. The impossibility of conceiving existence without a cause (which proves there is a God) is the impossibility of conceiving Him who is that cause, and who exists without one.

The infidel, desiring to deny the existence of God, must of necessity deny the existence of a Creator. In loud, swelling, empty words he will tell you that the earth, with its beauties, was the result of “a fortuitous concourse of atoms,” which simply means that a lot of atoms coming together without guiding hand, by pure chance, produced this world. The belief infidelity requires is far beyond that which revelation asks. The latter is simple, understandable, and majestic. The former is staggering beyond all belief. For if there is “a concourse of atoms,” how came they to be atoms? and if they came together, who gave the law of motion? In short, how did something come out of nothing? Of course, the idea of an uncreated, eternally-existent God is beyond the creatures’ powers of explanation, but yet the soul demands such an idea; and if we could explain the idea it would cease to satisfy our souls, for God is to be worshipped and adored. How can the creature understand the Being of his Creator?

In every human soul, too, scripture testifies, since the fruit of the forbidden tree in Eden was partaken of, the voice of conscience makes itself heard. "Knowing good and evil describes the new moral outlook of man in his fallen state, come under the power of evil now, alas! though his "conscience bearing witness" as we read in Rom. 2:15 — not in regard to Jews, not in that sphere where the light of revealed-truth shone, but among "those of the nations," "the heathen." Instances of commendable ethics among the Gentiles, rare enough no doubt, were sometimes in evidence. This does not prove, however, "the law" to be "written on their hearts." It is "the work of the law" of which this is affirmed, conscience bearing corroborative witness therewith. The thoughts of accusation or extenuation that flit across such dark minds, show them capable, inherently so, of moral exercise, and evidence clearly enough the sense of moral accountability, and the witness of conscience to be, both of them, universal features. All this in its own way we must allow is testimony to the existence of God.

To prove that a God of infinite goodness is not the author of this world in its present state requires no elaborate argumentation, nor does it make any demand upon the least ratiocinative ability. It is everywhere, and in everything, abundantly manifest that a beneficent Creator would not voluntarily give His unoffending creature, whom He has endowed with intelligence, affections, sensitivity, accountability to Himself and to his fellows, into the darkness, the distress, the sufferings, the sorrows, the woes that are the portion of the whole human family.

There must be some terrible reason for the state of things we find in this world—the pestilences, the horrors of war, the hatred, the murders, the corruption, the fear of death, the silence of heaven, the shrinking from the grave to which all are hastening, and the dread of something after—these evils cry out against our attributing to a benevolent Creator the invention or origination of such a woeful state of things.

“Bewildered.” —Yes, thousands are bewildered at the unparalleled destruction of human life of which we are the witnesses—unparalleled not merely as to numbers, but as to the hatred that inspires it, the callous ingenuity with which it is planned, the ferocity with which it is done, and the unspeakable misery and tears that accompany it. They are bewildered because they know that God is good, and also almighty; and they cannot understand why He does not intervene in power and punish the instigators and perpetrators of such crimson deeds, and establish a reign of righteousness on the earth. The scoffer also says, “Why does God allow such things to happen, if He is what you claim for Him?” And in the taunt the blame for all man's misery is cast upon God.

The reason why man, without a revelation, cannot reach up to creation as a certainty, I suppose to be this, — that man, as such — apart from a higher being — cannot rise above that which he is himself. He is but a creature. He may reason as to the effects of creation around him; he may arrive at inferences and convictions — and so he has, as the Apostle Paul shows us — of God's eternal power and Godhead. At the same time, as creation is clearly out of the sphere of sense and demonstration, so there can be no certainty of it unless God reveal it. When revealed, it at once accounts for and explains that which is before the eyes of all.