Why should I care if God exists?

Who cares about God? I look around me upon a world of fallen men, and find myself, in my natural condition, one of the meanest of its wretched myriads. I see every one seeking to exalt himself, and that regardless of the fact that he may have to victimise his neighbour to accomplish his object. Pride, covetousness, hatred, malice, injustice, murder, meet the eye wherever one may look. And I ask myself, What is the meaning of it all? From whence has it all proceeded? Where is it all drifting?

We are glad that the writer of this paragraph has the feeling that if God is, He will love His creatures and care for them, but he stands with the fool when he says, "There is no God" (Ps. 14). If there is no God we are without hope, for without God we have only ourselves or our fellow-men to look to, and what faith can we have in men when we see that all their efforts to deliver themselves from their miseries and attain their ambitions only increase their sorrows. When we see that the more strenuous their efforts are the worse are the results.

We are glad that the writer of this paragraph has the feeling that if God is, He will love His creatures and care for them, but he stands with the fool when he says, “There is no God” (Ps. 14). If there is no God we are without hope, for without God we have only ourselves or our fellow-men to look to, and what faith can we have in men when we see that all their efforts to deliver themselves from their miseries and attain their ambitions only increase their sorrows. When we see that the more strenuous their efforts are the worse are the results.

It is only that which will make our lives at all what they ought to be; it is only that which will redeem them, so to speak, from the littleness and meanness and unimportance otherwise attaching to them. The meanest life in His presence ceases to be drudgery, and becomes ennobled; the noblest without it, what is it but utter vanity?

If it were impossible for our thoughts and hopes to reach beyond the time-sphere, and if the enjoyment of material things were the only good, if pleasure, ease, and an unruffled life in this world were the highest things to which men might attain, and to lie down in an eternal sleep the lot of all, then these days were dark indeed, the war an unmixed evil, and the God who permitted it were not the friend of humanity. But the truth is that men have immortal souls, that they have been made for eternity, and in comparison with their existence the longest life in mortal flesh is but as a vapour that disappears before the wind; that there is no lasting satisfaction in material things, and that GOD ALONE IS SUFFICIENT TO FILL THE SOUL WITH GOOD.

If it were impossible for our thoughts and hopes to reach beyond the time-sphere, and if the enjoyment of material things were the only good, if pleasure, ease, and an unruffled life in this world were the highest things to which men might attain, and to lie down in an eternal sleep the lot of all, then these days were dark indeed, the war an unmixed evil, and the God who permitted it were not the friend of humanity. But the truth is that men have immortal souls, that they have been made for eternity, and in comparison with their existence the longest life in mortal flesh is but as a vapour that disappears before the wind; that there is no lasting satisfaction in material things, and that GOD ALONE IS SUFFICIENT TO FILL THE SOUL WITH GOOD.

Yes, we can understand the fears and gloom of the man who is without God, for without God we are without hope and without good.

Yes, we can understand the fears and gloom of the man who is without God, for without God we are without hope and without good.

It is blessed for the people of God to realise that theirs is a living God who is intensely interested in all that concerns them, who meets all their varied needs, and who preserves them amidst all the dangers with which they are surrounded in a hostile world. Men generally, even in Christendom, are ignorant of God and indifferent to His claims; but the true believer has learned from the Holy Scriptures that He is indeed a living God, the originator of life, the sustainer of life, and the preserver of life. Although the evidences of death are all around, yet the universe pulsates with life which testifies to the work of a living God; but there is also a life over which death has no power, the eternal life that was manifested in the Son of God, and which He has given to every one who believes in His Name.

In fact, man's very existence is bound up with God, however little he realizes it. "In Him we live:" He is the source of our life; "and move:" He sustains all of our activities; "and have our being:" our existence is totally dependent upon Him. Paul quotes a Greek poet as saying, "For we are also His offspring."