THE GENESIS OP NATURE. 



29 



go forward, and enter upon a second stage of our inquiry. 

 The lessons from the effects do not of necessity exhaust the 

 knowledge of the cause. We may ask, if there is not more to 

 be learned about God, tlian even nature teaches. If God be 

 adequate to have produced nature, may He not be adequate for 

 even more than that ? May we not learn fr()m other sources 

 still more about Him : and, if we can arrive at this further 

 knowledge, may it not give us yet further insight into His ways 

 and purposes. His power and His plan in the production of 

 things natural, than that which can be attained from the study 

 of even nature itself ? As there is a revelation of God in 

 nature, is there to be found any other revelation of Him 

 elsewhere. And if there is, may we not examine that, and see 

 if it in any w^ay enlarges and defines our conception of the 

 Nature of God ? 



And here, in starting on this second stage, we claim to 

 make this second assumption, that the words of God are true 

 words. We claim that, where we have an assertion that can 

 be shown to have come to us from God, that assertion must 

 be taken as beyond controversy. It may not be understood, 

 but it must not be denied. It may be capable of bearing 

 more or other meanings than we ourselves may put upon it, 

 but in itself it is a thing which partakes of the nature of 

 God, and demands that we should construe it by the infallible 

 authority of that nature. 



2. The fact of the Bible, 

 Our search for a revelation of God outside nature is at 

 once met by the great fact of the existence of the Bible. 

 Whatever be said about it, the fact of the Bible cannot be 

 denied : — that we have in it, a compendium of writings from 

 different pens, and certainly of great but different antiquities, 

 wiiich taken together profess to be, and have been largely 

 acknowledged to be, a revelation from God. There can be no 

 doubt that nothing less than this is its claim. It needs no 

 scholarship to discern thus far. The plain reader as he turns 

 from page to page, cannot avoid coming to this conclusion. 

 He finds it simply full on the one hand of information 

 concerning God, and on the other of sentences which are 

 asserted to be the "Ipse DirW'* words of God. The 

 question comes therefore : " Is this claim of the Bible to 

 be acknowledged ? Is the Bible to be accepted as con- 

 taining the message of God ? " Now it is evident, that to 



* "And God said." 



