What is natural religion?

With the Gentile, God begins with the fundamental truth of His Godhead — we may say the simplest principles of natural religion. This was the test applied to the Gentile king — it was the right one for him. If Israel were tested by a revealed law, the Gentile was by what needed no revelation. "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." (Rom. 1:20.) God was recalling this to their minds; truths which, though forgotten, left man without excuse. Now that Christ is revealed, mere natural religion becomes infidelity. God has revealed Himself in His word, in Christ. Men talk of nature, and of God as the God of nature; and though this is true, and man responsible on that ground, there is no salvation in it. In effect it is denying Him and His word. Even in Adam, while untainted with evil of any kind, we have proof that natural religion, in its pure form and when all was good, did not preserve him from sin. How wilful the ignorance and pride of the infidel, who, denying plain fact, assumes to be on the ground where Adam fell! He had dominion given him, but soon became a slave. Sin made him the lawful captive of Satan. The serpent at the first gave the lie direct to God, and though Adam did not believe the devil's lie — "Adam was not deceived" (1 Tim. 2:14) — yet he preferred the creature to the Creator, and thus he fell under Satan's power. And here is evidence that Satan's power is unbroken. The Gentile king is no sooner invested with authority than he commands the whole world, under pain of death, to worship his image. The first act of universal power was to decree universal idolatry. "And whoso falls not down and worships, shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace." (Dan. 3:6.) In the arrogance of pride he forgets that it was the "God of heaven" who had given him a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory; he defies God, and daringly says, "Who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?" Pride was the condemnation of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), and Satan employs that which caused his own fall to effect the ruin of the Gentile. The first State religion established by man was idolatry.

There are things concerning God that the natural man is capable of discerning, if he is at all disposed to ponder what he sees in the creation. Of this, the Apostle Paul writes in Romans1, "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" (verse 20). But God Himself, in His nature of love, is not to be known from the study of the creation; only by the revelation of Himself in His Son could God be known. Nor can man apprehend the purpose of God apart from divine revelation; and without the knowledge of God and His purposes, man must take his way in darkness through this world; but the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is not in darkness, for he has been enlightened with the knowledge of God through faith; and the purpose of God has been made clear for us in the holy Scriptures.

What is faith? Faith is the principle that links the soul with God. Cain is the leader and first exponent of what I may term natural religion, for spite of his sin — yea, because of it — man is a religious being. He has the sense that there is a supreme Being, and knows he must appear before that Being sooner or later, and he gets filled with the thought that he must propitiate Him, and do something that will fit him for God's presence. Hence he often strives in order to do that something. Many a young man has done that, when he has found out through practical failure that he is a faulty creature. Many a young fellow sets out from his father's house with his pockets well lined. He finds the world a fine place as long as he has plenty of money. While you have plenty of money, you will be asked out, and much made of. But let the resources dry up, and you are not able to do as you formerly did. How short-sighted will your friends become! When the nap of your coats, and the silk on your hats have become worn, and you are a little shabby, it is strange how suddenly your old chums fail actually to know you. The world seeks you when you are a pigeon to be plucked, and whenever that is done it throws you over. The world wants you as long as you can be of use to it, and no longer. When that day arrives, it bids you good-bye. That is the world. There is many a man who has experienced that, and has learned what a disappointing thing it is. Then it often is that a man, weary of the world, seeks rest in natural religion. He tries "the way of Cain." A round of religious exercises is commenced, in the hope that these may expiate his sins. "I will appease Him with a present," is man's thought of God. But this is fatal folly, for "without shedding of blood is no remission" is God's irrevocable dictum. Works never saved a man yet, nor ever will.

He vividly sets forth the development of the evil by the use of three more illustrations drawn from the Old Testament. Recalling the history of Cain he exclaims of the corrupters of Christendom, "Woe to them! for they have gone in THE WAY OF CAIN." The way of Cain was the way of natural religion. Cain was a religious man, but his religion was according to the thoughts of fallen man and not according to the revelation of God. His natural religion led him to belittle sin, to despise God's provision to meet sin, to attempt to draw nigh to God on the ground of his own works, and to persecute the true child of God. Alas! through the corruption of ungodly men, the large mass of professing Christians have gone in the way of Cain. The popular religion of the day ignores the revelation of God, and takes no account of sin in the sight of God. It treats the fall as a mere myth and hence, denying that man is fallen, has no use for the atonement. Rejecting the propitiatory work of Christ, it naturally falls back on the works of men for the ground of acceptance with God. Moreover, it holds in great contempt, and special hatred, all those who, cleaving to the revelation of God, trust in the atoning blood as their only plea, and love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth. Upon all those who follow in the way of Cain God pronounces "Woe."

The natural man may fear God, fear Him with a slavish fear, make an attempt to worship Him and do something, yet he does not know God nor can he know Him by himself. Christendom, even today, bears witness to the worship of the natural man. Yet this natural religion, which recognizeth the existence of a Creator, speaks of Him as the All-wise, the Omnipotent and the Eternal, makes an attempt to worship in a house by ceremonies and ritual, or that which takes on a more liberal form, does not meet the needs of man. God is still in heaven and man on earth (verse 2), and a vast distance between--an unbridged gulf. To bring man to God, to give him peace and assurance, to deliver him from fear, revelation is needed that which is "above the sun." The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only provision.

All that the religion of Christ brings comes into collision with natural religion. The question was whether the flesh could be bettered; Saul thought it could, Paul proved it could not be. If others thought to trust in the flesh, he could more than match them on that line, and he gives a long catalogue of things that were once the ground of Paul's trust, all connected with himself as in the flesh. All natural religion is about myself, and about something in the world. I am to be made something better, and if so it must be in this world. But he has now a new standing in Christ before God; and God and Christ in heaven are now his religion. The cultivation of the flesh in the world, and his standing in Christ could not go together. What distinguishes me in the world, directly I come to Christ, I shall find in the way. Offer what you would to Paul, it would have been discarded as coming between him and Christ: the two things could not go together. To thoroughly enjoy Christ, I must suffer the loss of all things I cultivated as a man down here, counting them loss.

There was here in particular, what there is generally, a great deal to reason on; and this is exactly the basis of natural religion of any kind and at any time. It is a religion that man reasons out as becoming himself and others with God. But as man is its only source, there is nothing of God in it, only man's pretension and profession.

Now it is remarkable as showing the far-reaching truth here, that Cain was the one who took the lead in two innovations. He was the first to set up natural religion. Cain was not what people call an irreligious man, if thereby be meant that he had no religion. He was what answers in our day to a man that goes regularly to his church or his chapel. It was simply the religion of nature, and raised no question in his soul whether his offering became his own state or was according to the mind of God. People generally do not consider this at all. "Their fathers went there;" that is enough for most. They were christened, confirmed, and took the sacrament; or they became members, as others call it, of the church and congregation. It was all assumed to be the proper thing for a decent man. The Jesuits go rather farther, as they say, for God's greater glory: the alleged ground for their heartless, unscrupulous, and wicked ambitions. For they are sworn to obey their General, if he declares that any means promote that object; as the General acts for, and not merely with, the pope; sometimes far in advance of the pope, but still it is all nominally to promote their lord the pope's glory.

When the voice of the Lord God is heard in the garden, the fig-leaf apron avails nothing. He hides himself from God among the trees of the garden: "I was afraid, because I was naked," is his own account. This is what alternates ever with self-justification in a soul: the voice of God — the thought of God — is terror to it. These two principles will be found together in every phase of so-called natural religion the world over, and they will be found equally wherever Christianity itself is mutilated or misapprehended, making their appearance again. Man, in short, untaught of God, never gets beyond them; for he never can quite believe that he has for God a righteousness that He will accept, and he never can imagine God Himself providing a righteousness when he has none.

Nature, on which infidelity rests as the means of rising from the visible to a knowledge of the Invisible, fails to tell who and what God is. Nature was never intended to tell us. But even what nature, or rather creation, should have shown was reasoned away — His eternal power and divinity. The heavens declare His glory, and the firmament shows His handy work. But not even that glorious display of wisdom and power could tell more than that there must be God, not that God in His nature was essentially light and love.