The existence of God is the basis of all religious belief. If there is
no God, there is no moral obligation. If there is no Almighty Being to
whom men owe existence, and to whom they must give account, worship is a
vain show and systems of religion are meaningless. Theologians,
therefore, from the days of the first Christian apologists to our own
time, have endeavoured to establish by proof the doctrine of the Divine
existence. To those who accept the authority of Scripture the existence
of God is a fact which no argument can overthrow; but as there are many
who reject this authority, evidence has been sought elsewhere than in
Scripture to establish the doctrine. The arguments for the Being of God
are mainly threefold, being drawn: (_a_) from the consciousness of
mankind; (_b_) from the order and design that are manifest in the
universe; and (_c_) from the written revelation which claims to
have come to men from God Himself.
(_a_) (_Consciousness_) There is a wonderful agreement among men as
to the existence of a great invisible Being by whom the world was
created and is governed, and who charges Himself with the control and
guidance of its inhabitants and concerns. In a land such as our own, in
which Christianity has held place for many centuries, belief in God,
however it may fail to produce holy living, is almost universal. This
belief exercises a strong influence, and has contributed not a little to
the formation of our national character. It is an atmosphere always
around us, sustaining and promoting the healthy life of those even who
are the least conscious of being affected by it. The belief is indelibly
impressed upon our laws, our literature, and even our everyday
occupations. It is stamped upon the relations men sustain to one
another. It is this which for one day weekly suspends labour that
Christians may have leisure to worship God and to meditate upon the
duties they owe to Him. It is in recognition of this that we see tall
spires pointing heavenward, and churches opening their portals to the
inhabitants of crowded cities and to the dwellers in scattered villages.
In Christian lands the consciousness of men bears testimony to the
existence of God, but it is not in such lands only that this
consciousness exists and confirms belief in the Divine. In the earliest
times, long before history began to be written, such a consciousness was
prevalent, leading men to faith in and worship of a Being or Beings
infinitely greater than themselves, present with them and presiding,
though invisibly, over their destinies. The study of Comparative
Religion has shown how nearly the primeval inhabitants of lands widely
distant from each other were at one in the views they had come to
entertain. Hymns, prayers, precepts, and traditions are found in the
sacred books of the great religions of the East, and archaeologists have
deciphered on ancient monuments, and traced in primitive religious
rites, clear evidence of belief in the existence of the Divine. The
valleys of the Nile, of the Euphrates, and of the Tigris have revealed
facts for the theologian's benefit that are almost exhaustless. In the
Egyptian Book of the Dead, and in the religious hymns and the ritual of
which they formed part in the sacred literature of Babylonia, there is
proof that four thousand years ago hymns were sung in honour of the
gods, and prayers were offered to propitiate them and secure their
favour. But belief in God had place long before these hymns were sung or
these prayers offered. This is shown by the existence of words in the
most ancient hymns, prayers, and inscriptions which could not have been
used unless the ideas which they conveyed had already existed in men's
minds. These words--some of which are preserved in modern tongues--when
traced to their roots, help greatly to explain the character of early
religious thought, and prove the existence of a widely diffused belief
in the Divine Being and His government. They serve as confirmation of a
belief, which is in harmony with many facts, that God had revealed
Himself to humanity before He furnished the revelation which has come
down to us. Words are not originated by accident. They are expressions
of real existences, and before they found place in hymns or prayers the
ideas which they denoted must have been matters of faith or knowledge to
those who used them. Before man is found professing faith in pagan
deities some idea of God must have existed in his mind. Men did not like
to retain God in their knowledge, and so the idea of the Divine became
perverted, and in its first simplicity was lost, and the multitude
followed numberless shadows all illusory and vain. Still, there
lingered remnants and traditions of belief in a Divine Creator and
Governor which must have originated in such a primeval revelation as the
book of Genesis records. We find there the statement that God revealed
Himself to our first parents by direct intercourse. They heard and saw
and talked with God. They therefore knew of the existence of God by
personal perception, and the ideas they held regarding Him were founded
on His own manifestation of Himself.
Closely connected with this consciousness is the sense of responsibility
universally prevalent. There is a law written on the heart of every
rational human being, under the guidance of which he recognises a
distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. He possesses a
faculty to which the name of conscience has been given, that convicts
him of sin when he violates, and approves his conduct when he conforms
to, its dictates. However much different peoples and different ages may
be at variance in their particular ideas of what is right and what is
wrong, the conception itself has place in all of them. There are certain
fundamental notions as to what is just and what is unjust, what is
virtuous and what is vicious, that find universal or all but universal
acceptance. This power of distinguishing between right and wrong
constitutes man a moral being, and separates him by infinite distance
from the lower animals. To the beasts that perish there is nothing right
or wrong. They live altogether according to nature, and have no
responsibility. Man stands in a different relation to the Lawgiver who
bestowed on him the faculty of conscience and impressed on his soul a
conviction that he will have to give account for all his actions. The
Being to whom he must give account is God.
(_b_) (_Order_) Another ground of this belief is the order manifest
in the universe. There is a symmetry that pervades all material things
of which we have knowledge. Part is adapted to part; objects are
accurately adjusted to each other; "wheels within wheels" move smoothly;
every portion fits into and works in harmony with every other portion
without discord or jarring. It is unthinkable that these effects should
be due to chance or to a cause that is without intelligence. The perfect
arrangement of parts that work together must have been planned by a
living Being of infinite wisdom, knowledge, and power. This Being, whose
creatures they are, must exist. Behind the pervading order there must be
personality, purpose, and action. The fool may say in his heart, "There
is no God," but, as nature bears testimony to the existence of an
omniscient and omnipotent Creator, reason calls for another conclusion.
(_c_) (_Scripture_) There is a limit to the knowledge of God which
the consciousness of man and the order and design in the universe
impart. These serve to establish the truth that God is, but they do not
convey the intimation that He is a moral Governor and the rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him. They declare little of His character, and
are silent as to many of the duties which He requires. To make God
known, the teaching of conscience and of reason must be supplemented by
revelation. It is in the Bible that the believer finds the strongest
proofs of the existence of the Divine Being, and from the Bible he
obtains also the most comprehensive and satisfying view of the Deity
and of man's relation to Him. He there finds that what he has to believe
concerning God is, that He is Jehovah--the Being infinitely and
eternally perfect, self-existent, and self-sufficient; the only living
and true God, there being none beside Him. The heathen believed in and
worshipped many gods. The untutored savage peopled the groves with
them, and the pagan philosopher built innumerable temples in their
honour. The Pantheons of Greece and Rome were crowded with the statues
of favourite deities. The doctrine of one living and true God was
prominent in the revelation given to Israel. God's message by Moses had
its foundation--truth in the proclamation: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God is one Lord."[018] His glory and His work are shared by no other
being. He is the absolute Sovereign and Lord of all creatures. In the
Bible, too, man learns that God is his own personal God who cares for
him, and to whom he owes love, allegiance, and obedience. All who refuse
to believe in the existence of God reject the testimony of Scripture
regarding Him, but to such as acknowledge its claim to be the Word of
God, the evidence it supplies is convincing and all-sufficient.
Examination of ancient heathen religions and of the views they set forth
regarding God shows clearly the distance at which they stand from the
revelation of Scripture. The gods of the heathen were of like passions
with their worshippers--selfish, cruel, vindictive, and without regard
for equity or justice in their treatment of men. The God of the Bible,
on the other hand, is a righteous God, merciful to His creatures, and
desirous of their temporal and eternal wellbeing, and when He inflicts
suffering it is not as a passionate Judge, but as a Father who chastens
His children for their profit.
The doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in the God-head, though not
expressly stared in the Creed, is implied in the clauses which refer to
each of the Persons who compose it. There is one God, but in the Godhead
there are three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, whose
names indicate the relation in which each stands to the others.
Each of the Persons is complete and perfect God. While there are three
Persons in the Godhead, the same in substance, equal in power and glory,
these three are one. The doctrine thus stated is termed the doctrine of
the Trinity. This word is not found in Scripture, but the truth which it
expresses is set forth there, dimly in the Old Testament, distinctly in
the New. In the first chapter of Genesis the word "God" is in the Hebrew
a plural noun, and yet it is used with a singular verb, thus early
seeming to intimate what afterwards is clearly made known, that there is
a plurality of Persons, who yet constitute the one living and true God.
The same indication of plurality in unity appears in the account of
man's creation: "Let _us_ make man."[019] This doctrine of the
Trinity is essentially one of revelation. Natural religion testifies to
the existence, the personality, and the unity of God, but fails to make
known that the unity of God is a unity of three Persons. The doctrine
does not contradict reason, it is above reason.
It is sometimes said that the doctrine of the Trinity involves a
contradiction in affirming that three Persons are one Person. This
charge misrepresents the doctrine. Trinitarians do not say that Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost are three Persons in the sense in which three men
are three individuals. They believe that there is one God, and that
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are yet so distinct that the Father can
address the Son, the Son can address the Father, and the Father can
address and send the Spirit. God's ways are not as our ways. He is not a
man that He should be limited by the conditions of human relationships.
When we say there are three Persons in the Godhead, we use a word
applicable to men, which, though the most fitting one at our disposal,
must come far short of fully describing the relations of Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost to each other. Possessing no celestial language, we
cannot fully describe or understand heavenly things.