THE GENESIS OP NATURE; 



33 



they do personally know the Lord Jesus Christ. ^loreover this 

 asserted knowledge is commonly seen to have a most marked 

 effect on their lives. Their lives, and sometimes their deaths, 

 are proofs that this asserted knowledge heconies the dominant 

 factor in their being. It results among other things in their 

 regarding tlie teaching of Christ not only as authoritative, but 

 as having infallible authority, based on their personal 

 •experience of the infallibility of its Author. They believe Him 

 implicitly : therefore they believe His testimony implicitly. 

 And His testimony concerning the Scripture is that it is the 

 Word of God. Of that he spoke with authority and not as the 

 scribes. His words in St. Mark x, 6, 7, alone mark its first 

 chaptei s as the authentic records of creation. " From the 

 beginning" (Gen. i, 1) "He made them male and female" 

 {Gen. i, 27) " therefore shall, etc." (Gen. ii, 24). And as the 

 ■seal of Christ stamps the Old Testament as the inspired word of 

 G-od, so is the Xew Testament stamped as such by the fact of 

 Christ, for it is composed either of His own words or of 

 teaching derived from Him. 



o. The revelation of God in the BiUe. 

 Thus we have found that the Bible can on many independent 

 grounds be definitely proved as a revelation from God ; and that 

 this proof may be reached in two distinct ways: (1) by a 

 personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, who then 

 becomes, to those who know Him, the final authority on its 

 inspiration, and (2) by the ordinary scientific examination of its 

 history and its contents, and of all the facts that are known 

 .about it from whatever source. Consequently, as it is 

 given by inspiration of God, its words are true words 

 in regard to that which it is its purpose to reveal. Now what 

 at present we are seeking is to form a conception of God 

 Himself. ^May we therefore seek to form that from tl-.e Bible ? 

 Without the slightest doubt the primary purpose of the Bible 

 is this verv actual thingj — to reveal God to men. Even if we 

 micjht use the Bible for nothing else, at least we may use it for 

 this. It is the handbook to the knowledge of God. It is a 

 storehouse of data, authoritative for the science of God. It is 

 the revelation of God by God. As the Bible conveys the true 

 word of God, the view which it presents to us of God Himself 

 must infallibly be true. 



4. GocL as seen in Nature and in the Bihie, identieal. 

 But before going further, a question may be asked, and a 



