STONES IN THE ROUGH 
 
 OR 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS A STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 APPROACHED FROM THE HEATHEN SIDE 
 
 OF THE FENCE 
 
 'That gospel which I preach among the gentiles — Gal. ii : i 
 
 BL 
 
 2775 
 .A8 
 V.2 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ZX^ XA..-^.f,^.^y . / -^fcfetc 
 
 WILLIAM ASHMORE 
 
 PRICE 
 
 50 CENTS 
 
 Book will be sent postpaid on receipt of price, by the publishers, 
 A. M. SKINNER & CO., 655 Atlantic Avenue, Boston 
 
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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 Presented by Vv-(£. S \ cX<2.rA'V \~'cJ\W o 
 
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 BL 2775 .A8 v. 2 
 
 eii Z / / . AO V . Z I 
 
 Ashmore, William, 1824-1909 
 
 Stones in the rough, or, i 
 
 Contributions towards a ' 
 
STONES IN THE ROUGH 
 
 OR 
 
 CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS A STUDY OF THEOLOGY 
 
 APPROACHED FROM THE HEATHEN SIDE 
 
 OF THE FENCE 
 
 That gospel which I preach among the genti/es-^Ga\ . ii : 2 
 
 PART IL 
 
 WILLIAM ASHMORE 
 
PUBLISHER'S CARD 
 
 WILL BE IN FOUR PARTS WHEN COMPLETED 
 
 I. The Method of Study, and the Reason Therefor 44 Pages 
 II. The Theology of Nature . . . . • 77 " 
 
 III. The Theology of Revelation . Probably about 150 " 
 IV. Related Subjects, Issues and Questions " 80 " 
 
'Respectfully 2)e^icate^ 
 
 TO 
 
 The Executive Committee and Administrative Officers 
 
 OF 
 
 THE AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONARY UNION 
 
 As Illustrative of the Gospel They Send Out Their Missionaries 
 to Preach, as Apprehended by One of Their Number 
 
 WILLIAM ASHMORE 
 
THEOLOGY IS THE SCIENCE OF GOD 
 
 By a "science" we mean a classified presentation of 
 all the facts we can ascertain about God ; about him 
 personally; the mode of his being; the nature of 
 his attributes; the creations of his hand; the adminis- 
 tration of his government; the relations he sustains 
 to the universe he has made — and to the creatures 
 that are in it; together with his plans and purposes 
 so far as it is possible or proper for us to know them; 
 and, as a consequential result, a classified statement 
 of the attitudes, feelings and actions due to himself 
 as God over all blessed forever more; towards spiritual 
 beings, who, though we have nothing to do con- 
 sciously with them, have much to do with us — and 
 towards our fellow human creatures as being made of 
 one blood with us to dwell on all the face of the earth. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Sources of Knowledge of a Theology of Nature 
 Natural Reason ....... 
 
 Teachings of the Natural Reason about the Existence of 
 God, The Creator ....... 
 
 The Natural Conscience ...... 
 
 Teachings of the Natural Conscience on Obligations 
 
 These Two Obligations Form the " Law of Nature " 
 
 The Gospel of Nature ...... 
 
 The Saving Value of this Inchoate Faith . 
 
 An Objection Which Here Interposes Itself 
 
 The Three Elements Which Enter into the Theology of 
 Nature ...... 
 
 Application to the Men of Antediluvian Times 
 
 Grounds of the Condemnation of the Antediluvian World 
 
 The Gospel Among the Antediluvians 
 
 Why the Old World Perished 
 
 The Question of a Second Probation 
 
 What Constitutes a " Probation " 
 
 A Most Erroneous Conception 
 
 The First and Second Trials of Adam and Eve Compared 
 
 The Antediluvians Then Have Had Their Second Pro- 
 bation ....... 
 
 " Unto All and Upon All" .... 
 The Theology of Nature Among Post Diluvians 
 
 The Stage of Another Rapid Religious and Mora 
 generacy ...... 
 
 Light They Had, but They Walked Not in It 
 
 Lingering Rays on the Mountain Tops . 
 
 Confirmation in Remains of Primitive Literature 
 
 Post Diluvian Gospel ..... 
 
 Universality and Value of Post Diluvian Gospel Gleams 
 
 1 De- 
 
Three Books of Holy Scripture Taken up Largely With 
 THE Theology of Nature 
 
 The Book of Job ..... 
 The Book of Proverbs .... 
 The Book of Ecclesiastes 
 II. The Stage of Heathen Constructiveness 
 
 III. The Stage of Philosophical Speculation and Inquiry 
 
 Why Primitive Philosophy Failed . 
 The Torch of Philosophy in Transition . 
 The Shortages of Philosophy .... 
 Is Sound Philosophy Inimical to God and Truth 
 
 IV. The Stage of Scientific Investigation and Ascertain- 
 ment ....... 
 
 The Shortages of Science 
 Is True Science Antagonistic to Religion 
 Four Great Schools of Learning 
 
 The School of Faith .... 
 Faith Our Greatest Source of Knowledge 
 The Method of Faith and the Method of Science 
 The Conclusion of the Whole Matter 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 48 
 
 50 
 
 52 
 58 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 
 63 
 
 63 
 66 
 
 67 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 71 
 
 72 
 
 74 
 
PART SECOND. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF NATURE. 
 
 Entirely apart from the teachings of divine revelation, there is 
 a vast amount to be learned about God, about his nature, about his 
 attributes, about his administration of human affairs, — supporting 
 the good and condemning the evil — and also about human beings in 
 their relation to God and their relations to each other. This is usually 
 called "The Light of Nature." "Nature," so-called, is then a divinely 
 appointed teacher. "Doth not even nature itself teach you?" 
 
 The light of nature involves a large measure of moral responsi-' 
 bihty. Its lessons are gathered partly by intuitional perception — as 
 when the physical senses perceive material objects, and the moral 
 sense perceives moral relations, — the objects of light and the sense 
 of light being mutually fitted for each other. Men are required to see 
 and to think and to feel, even in a state of nature. Failure or negli- 
 gence in this on the one hand, or diligent compliance on the other, in- 
 volves condemnation or justification. This condemnation or justifica- 
 tion may have a far-reaching effect extending quite over into a morally 
 different condition of affairs. It is quite manifest in the scriptures 
 that in God's plan there are provisional states preparatory to a final 
 one. The provisional compliance or non-compliance under the law of 
 nature may be accepted and negotiated under the law of grace when 
 the fulness of time should come. Acts of faith in the early ages of the 
 regime of faith, when men did not know much and could not beheve 
 as intelligently as they could at a later date with more light, as we 
 understand the Old Testament teaching, were like what the financiers 
 call convertible bonds, the value of which was to be determined by 
 what Christ was to do at a later day when he should come as a minister 
 of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made 
 to the fathers. 
 
 II 
 
56 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 The Theology of Nature is a universal theology. It is coeval with 
 human existence. It is a theology possessed by every nation, by every 
 tribe, by every kindred, by every individual of the human family in 
 less or more of clearness. It is a heritage alike of the civilized and of 
 the uncivilized, — of the bond and the free; it antedates the Theology 
 of Revelation, which began to be given at a later day. So far as the 
 teachings and the sanctions of the tAvo theologies go, their outcome is 
 the same, though the teachings of the theology of nature are or have 
 become confessedly inadequate to meet human needs. It is because 
 they are or have become inadequate that they have had to be sup- 
 plemented by the later theology of revelation. 
 
 It is a deplorable characteristic of much of the religious thought 
 of this generation that many men are turning back from "the true 
 light that now shineth," and are taking Up with a superficial glamour 
 which they style scientific, but which is in reality a reversion to, in 
 their case, and a going beyond the superseded light of nature. They 
 drop emphasis on the personality of a divine Being, and talk about a 
 universal and omnipotent "energy." They cease to talk of creation, 
 and expatiate on evolution. They talk about law, about fixed law, as 
 they call it, but they no longer see the guidance and supremacy of a 
 Law Giver. 
 
 On this account also and because nature worship is reasserting it- 
 self so much in this twentieth century, it is all the more important that 
 the theology of nature itself should be examined, first of all, to know 
 what it can teach and what it cannot teach — as a necessary pre- 
 requisite to the study of the theology of revelation. 
 
 SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE THEOLOGY OF 
 
 NATURE. 
 
 I. The Natural Reason. — Or that group of faculties (including 
 the bodily senses and the intellectual capabihties) by which we see and 
 
 12 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH " 57 
 
 note facts, principles, phenomena and all operations of cause and 
 effect, in the created universe around us, alike in the realm of mind, 
 and of matter. It compares, it contrasts ; it speculates ; it draws con7 
 elusions and applies them ; making forecasts also into the future. 
 
 II. The Natural Conscience. — It discerns moral qualities, in ac- 
 tions, in principles and in conduct. It possesses not only a discern- 
 ing power to discriminate between right and wrong, but also a judicial 
 power to enforce its own conclusions by enjoining and forbidding — by 
 commendation in case of compliance, and commendation in case of 
 non-compliance. "The Moral Sense." 
 
 III. The Natural Reason and the Natural Conscience in Their 
 Interaction With and Upon Each Other. — Each one separately dis- 
 covers to us many truths of prime importance which enter into our 
 make-up of the theology of nature. In their interaction and comple- 
 mental relationship they reveal to us some entirely new aspects of 
 truth, and of moral relationship which cannot be gathered by simply 
 adding together one and one which makes two, but still a third phase 
 of truth comes in sight, which makes three, perceived at one glance 
 from two data. This peculiarity is conformable to the scientific fact 
 that when one object, — a globe for example, is seen through a binocu- 
 lar, properties of the globe become apparent which are not perceptible 
 when a monocle is used. Our whole science of metaphysics is built up 
 largely on the principle that from two discoveries we can deduce a 
 third, and from three data we can deduce a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth, 
 with an approximate degree of probabilitj^ 
 
 IV. The Vast Aggregate of Experience of the Human Race 
 Acquired by it in the Course of its Historical Development, All 
 Bearing on the Problems of the Theology of Nature. — This experi- 
 ence of mankind is of the nature of that decisive testing known in the 
 divine economy as Fruitage. Its results summed up at the end of 
 many generations shows what the theology of nature can do for the 
 enlightenment and the uplift of mankind, and what is of even greater 
 
 13 
 
58 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 importance, what it cannot do, and which therefore enforces the de- 
 mand for a supplemental theology of revelation. 
 
 This human experience, with all its teachings and deductions of 
 such transcendent importance in divine pedagogy, is contained : 
 
 I. In the literature of the non-biblical writers of all ages. His- 
 torians, philosophers, poets, moralists and expounders of all the 
 heathen religions, Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Confucian and 
 Buddhist, and all modern systems of naturalism. In this list is to be 
 included their vast collection of aphorisms and proverbs and their 
 maxims for the government of society and the conduct of individuals, 
 and all such writers as Seneca, Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Homer, Virgil 
 and others. 
 
 II. In certain portions of Biblical literature, such as the Book 
 of Job, the Book of Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes, and selections 
 from other places. Though these books are in the inspired Canon they 
 are mostly taken up with an authoritative setting forth of the teach- 
 ings and sanctions of the Theology of Nature, and derive their trans- 
 cendent value from the fact that they form God's imprimatur on a 
 correct estimate of what the Theology of Nature can be and can do. 
 
 NATURAL REASON. 
 
 By this designation we mean that faculty or grotip of faculties 
 by which we discern all matters of design as distinguished from 
 chance, all relations of cause and effect, of antecedent and consequent. 
 It is the faculty by which we compare and contrast, by which we de- 
 duce consequences and conclusions, by which we discern harmonies 
 and discord, by which we analyze and synthesize and classify — by 
 which we determine adaptations and by which we derive inferences, 
 and also formulate conjectures and reckon probabiUties. 
 
 The possession by human beings of such a faculty or such a group 
 of faculties presupposes the prior existence of an anterior world of 
 
 14 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 59 
 
 spirits in each of which are many and varied entities of being, arranged 
 in grades and gradations. These entities of being in the three reahns 
 of matter, mind and spirit, have conformities and correspondences with 
 each other, which make it possible to reason from one to the other. 
 That is to say, the laws of action in the material world have some sort 
 of counterpart in the laws of action in the still higher realm of the 
 spiritual world. Were it not so it would be impossible to reason from 
 one unto the other as we now continually have to do, and moreover it 
 would be impossible for a person in a lower state of existence to rise 
 to a higher state of existence, for what we call personality would be at 
 an end at every transition. The experiences — the mutual acquisitions 
 and the character attained in the lower state and which become insepar- 
 able acquisitions of the original soul substance would not be transmis- 
 sible. Again, personality and individuality would be at an end. Im- 
 mortahty itself would become questionable and all the biblical 
 suppositions based on the assumption of its truthfulness would have 
 nothing to rest upon. If experiences and character are not transmis- 
 sible, then what is, and what is the use of having anything transmis- 
 sible ? For practically it would mean that all has to be blotted out and 
 a new beginning made. There is no Christian doctrine of immortaUty 
 about that; it is the heathen doctrine of Nigban and absorption into 
 some primal essence. 
 
 But as sentient beings are now constituted with their three-fold 
 natures, their possibilities of adaptation to three separate kingdoms of 
 nature, and their three sets of capabilities co-existent in one person- 
 ahty, — with all such beings the acquisition and experience of a lower 
 state are not lost when a hne of demarkation is crossed, but are thrown 
 forward into the new state of existence and become the capital stock of 
 attainment of that new nature as it enters on its higher career. The 
 earthly material which forms the present housing of a living soul may 
 go back to its original dust, but all the acquisition of the soul substance 
 during its incarceration in its tenement of flesh and blood will inhere 
 
60 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 in the soul substance itself, and not be cast off with the worn-out in- 
 tegument when its usefulness is at an end. Forms of life may change, 
 and outside garments may be altered, but soul substance, being an im- 
 partation of the breath of a living God, is of the very nature imperish- 
 able and unchangeable. 
 
 TEACHINGS OF THE NATURAL REASON 
 
 ABOUT 
 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD THE CREATOR. 
 
 The Natural Reason exercises itself on "the things that are 
 made." It studies adaptations; it notes evidences of intelligent pur- 
 pose and of obviotis design. It examines into relations ; it investigates 
 properties and capabilities, and notably it is bound to inquire into 
 origins and beginnings and causal relations of all kinds, and finally it 
 reaches and formulates conclusions. 
 
 Among the ascertainments and conclusions of the Natural Rea- 
 son the most preponderant and stupendous of them all is that the uni- 
 verse has a Creator, that there is but one Creator, and not two, for the 
 laws and the system of the universe are one and not two; that this 
 Creator is a spiritual being who fills all time and all space — that he is 
 omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient and eternal. In other words, 
 it demands as indispensable to an explanation of the phenomena it is 
 made cognizant of, the eternal power and Godhead of a supreme 
 Being. 
 
 A question has been raised in this day of philosophic incertitude 
 as to whether "design proves a designer." Paley's argumentation has 
 been impugned as inconclusive. But few rational thinkers are caught 
 by the subtleties of these sophists. The universal experience and hard 
 common sense of mankind refuses to surrender so self-evident a con- 
 clusion. If there is a design there must be a designer ; if there is a 
 building there must be an architect ; if there be a boat there must be a 
 
 i6 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 61 
 
 builder. If there is a bridge there must be a framer; if there is an 
 eiFect there must be a cause. On this whole subject God's own teach- 
 ing is explicit. He affirms that things created prove the existence of 
 a Creator. Paul's declaration in Romans cannot be set aside by any- 
 human sophistry. "Because that which may be known of God is mani- 
 fest in them" — not merely to them but in them, inwrought by God 
 himself in the very fibre of their intellectual being; it is a neces- 
 sity of their law of thought. "For God hath showed it unto them. 
 For the invisible of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, 
 being understood by the things which are made, even his eternal power 
 and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." We accept this divine 
 utterance as conclusive and final. Nor need any Christian teacher feel 
 called upon to spend any time to confute a man who contradicts out- 
 right the teaching of an inspired apostle. Christ once gave some ad- 
 vice about the proper scattering of pearls. 
 
 THE NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 
 
 The natural conscience, or the Moral Sense, as we also term it, is 
 that faculty or that group of faculties by which we perceive moral re- 
 lations, and moral qualities, and by which also we feel the impulse of 
 moral obligation. It has thus a double function — to perceive and to 
 impel, and forms the basis of what we call moral accountabihty. It is 
 proper to call it a "sense," like the sense of seeing, or the sense of hear- 
 ing; its action is spontaneous, as soon as the object to be perceived 
 and the perceiving agency are confronted with each other. It does 
 not have to reason ; it sees for itself. 
 
 It is by this faculty that we perceive moral qualities in God, moral 
 qualities in angels, and moral qualities in men, and by which also, as 
 soon as the quality or relation is perceived we at once feel the pressure 
 of an obhgation to correspond. The sense of "oughtness" arises in- 
 stantaneously. "We perceive, therefore we ought." It is this faculty 
 
 17 
 
62 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 also that discerns the moral quaUty of principles of action, of motives 
 of conduct, and by it also we pass judgment on the concrete conscience 
 of a community or of a state, as we do in the conscience of an in- 
 dividual, for conscience is always judged by its peers. Emphasis must 
 be laid on the fact, already stated, that it has not only a judicial but 
 also an executive function ; it decides what is right and what is wrong, 
 and then it executes its own decisions in accord therewith. It com- 
 mends and it condemns ; it accuses and it excuses. ^ 
 The conscience faculty does not have to be imparted to any one, 
 by a process of education, though it needs to be guided by enlightened 
 educators. It is born with every one and in every one, whether civi- 
 lized men or savage men, which show the work of the Law written 
 in their heart. Notice the word "in" in preference to the word "on." 
 There is a difference between having a color stamped on an article, and , 
 having its colored threads woven in the article — hke water-lined paper, ' 
 as some would call it. "Their conscience also bearing them witness and 
 their thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." The 
 natural conscience then is an Instructor, a Witness, a Judge, an Exe- 
 cutor, a Recorder, and a moral Representative of God in the soul. 
 
 TEACHINGS OF THE NATURAL CONSCIENCE ON OBLIGATIONS. 
 
 I. Due from the Creature to the Creator. — It teaches that hom- 
 age, obedience, worship and service are due to God because he is God. 
 It may be misled as to who is God, and may substitute a false God 
 for the true God — ^but whoever is in the place of God will be consid- 
 ered as entitled to the homage, and will receive the homage until the 
 conscience is better informed. 
 
 II. Due from the Creature to the Creature. — Because the fel- 
 low creature is an equal, therefore he is entitled to equal consideration, 
 to the same rights, the same privileges, the same immunities; as all 
 others are possessed of. 
 
 i8 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 6a 
 
 THESE TWO OBLIGATIONS FORM "tHE LAW OF NATURE." 
 
 They are the equivalents of the commands given at a later day, 
 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy 
 soul and all thy mind, and with all thy strength," and "thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The first is the Religious Law of 
 Nature, and the second is the Moral Law of Nature. They constitute 
 man a religious being and a moral being. He is required to be reli- 
 gious towards God and moral towards man. Together in their com- 
 bined character they form the law which every created being is re- 
 quired to obey; they form the law by which angels and men alike are 
 judged, tried, condemned or exonerated as the case may be. These two 
 laws are distinct and yet united — the law of obligation towards God 
 and the law of obligation towards man. The first leads to the second ; 
 the second rests on the first for its foundation. The man who violates 
 the one will be sure to violate the other. Men who do not fear God 
 cannot be depended upon to regard man. No man on the face of the 
 earth can escape responsibility and pretend ignorance of the law, for 
 every man has in his own heart and mind a full copy for himself. Be- 
 fore proceeding to apply, we must take into account another factor. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF NATURE. 
 
 The gospel of nature includes all those intimations, premonitions 
 and initial acts of grace and mercy that are scattered up and down the 
 word of God, and that are seen in innumerable mercies large and 
 small along the pathway of human history, which show that God is 
 willing to be gracious, forgiving and helpful to men even if they have 
 sinned; that he has not cast them off entirely as they deserve, but 
 will do something to help them, and which also inspire men to hope 
 that all is not lost, but that God will have compassion on them in some 
 way or other, though when and how they do not know. They hope and 
 they hope, and they study signs and indications and add to their hope, 
 
 19 
 
64 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 and there grows up within them a faith — ill-formed and inchoate 
 to be sure, and yet which has in it the primal essence of all faith, — ^be- 
 lief in God's undeserved mercy, — a faith which may antedate faith in 
 Christ. "Ye believe in God, believe also in me," — and a faith which is 
 saving in its day and generation as much as any other faith, at least 
 provisionally so, until Christ should come and take up the counters 
 which were held. 
 
 This Gospel of Nature is succinctly set forth in Paul's sermon at 
 Lystra, Acts 14, when in speaking of God's providence he says, "Who 
 in times suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless 
 he left not himself without witness in that he did good and gave rain 
 from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and 
 gladness." All this is gospel preaching, not law preaching. In Ro- 
 mans 1 : 18, is preached the condemnation that comes by the law of na- 
 ture: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all 
 ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the tnith in un- 
 righteousness." But here at Lystra he preaches the great complemen- 
 tary truth that as wrath is revealed so goodness is revealed. We are 
 led to infer, therefore, that one lies over against the other in the divine 
 plan, that in every period of the world and among every people when 
 there has been a law to condemn there has been a gospel to save. God 
 has never left himself without a witness of his readiness to be merciful 
 and to do good is a truth as complete as that his wrath is revealed ; we 
 can draw no other conclusion from the texts adduced. 
 
 THE SAVING VALUE OF THIS INCHOATE FAITH. 
 
 The question is often asked. Will not men (the heathen for ex- 
 ample) be saved if they do as well as they know how? This is but an- 
 other way of asking if men cannot be saved by their own works of 
 merit. The answer is given in the negative once for all by the Apostle, 
 when he says, "Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be 
 
 20 
 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 65 
 
 justified." Men cannot be saved by works, by merit, by character or 
 by heredity. When Adam fell, that gateway to heaven became impas- 
 sable to men who had become sinners, or who had become sinful in na- 
 ture, for, in the category of a holy God, sin and sinfulness and a sinful 
 nature, sin and the potency of sin, are classed as one and treated as 
 one. The Lord Jesus is the only one who ever went through that gate- 
 way triumphant and a victor, which he did on behalf of his people, and 
 won for them a success they never could win for themselves. 
 
 But if now the question be asked, "Can men be saved if they believe 
 up to, or (what perhaps is better to say) believe according to the light 
 or the evidence they have, the whole face of the issue is changed, and 
 the subject is not to be set aside in a summary way. The mercy of 
 God towards the ancient world which perished before Christ came lies 
 in that direction wholly. A theory is advocated nowadays that all men 
 must have an opportunity to learn about "The Historic Christ" as they 
 call Jesus of Nazareth, or "Christ after the flesh," as Paul puts it. 
 This way of stating it implies that Christ is not merely one, but more 
 than one; he is two in their estimation. We accept that so far as it 
 goes, for Paul knew a Christ after the flesh and a Christ who was not 
 after the flesh, but a Christ enthroned and glorified. There is not only 
 a Historic Christ, but there is a prehistoric Christ, and a post Historic 
 Christ, which was Paul's other Christ, and there is a Prophetic Christ, 
 and the Christ of Types and shadows. Faith in any one of these 
 presentations of Christ is faith in Christ in the concrete — it is 
 constructively and sequentially faith in every form, and contains 
 the promise and potency of all faith. Salvation is by faith. 
 It has always been by faith, and will never be by anything 
 but faith. The "character" that men love to speak of is only 
 an evidence of the existence of faith, but it is faith that does the 
 saving. 
 
 When we come to study it, we find that faith exists in various 
 forms and various degrees. Salvation is revealed from faith to faith ; 
 
 21 
 
66 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 from one degree of faith to another degree of faith ; from one acquisi- 
 tion of faith to another acquisition of faith; from the faith of one 
 generation to the more fully developed faith of another generation ; it 
 is aggregative and cumulative. Its different yields may vary in de- 
 gree, but the end of them all is the same, "the salvation of your souls." 
 Faith is accepted of a man according to the evidence which he has; it 
 is not required of him according to evidence which another may have 
 but which he himself has not. That is God's unchanging law of 
 equity and his way of evening up in human affairs and human condi- 
 tions. God will give to the poor, low-down groper after God, who be- 
 lieves in a halting and feeble way, according to the few dim rays of 
 light from above that penetrate his darkness, the same as to you who 
 believe according to the mighty blaze of sunlight and the accumulated 
 weight of twenty centuries of evidence ; — the eleventh hour men re- 
 ceived the same as the first hour men, a penny apiece all around. Shall 
 not God do as he pleases with his own? It is all grace from fu'st to 
 last, — not merit nor personal worth. 
 
 AN OBJECTION WHICH HERE INTERPOSES ITSELF. 
 
 But if the possibilities of a mere glimmering of faith are likely 
 to be attended vrith so much acceptance before God, why not leave the 
 heathen nations alone in the conditions they nov/ are, backward though 
 they may be? Two replies at once present themselves to such a con- 
 clusion. ( 1 ) The life-giving processes of the great Creator are never 
 limited to the product of elementary forms. Elementary or inchoate 
 faith is not the terminus ad quern in this department any more than in 
 any other department of God's work. It is his purpose that men 
 should have life and furthermore that they should have life more 
 abundantly. It was for that purpose that Christ came, as he himself 
 tells us. He would not have us content with any morning twilight, 
 but would have us look forward to the powerful blaze of the noonday 
 
 22 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 67 
 
 sun. And we are commanded to act accordingly. The darkness is 
 past and the true light now shineth. The people who sit in darkness 
 shall see great light. We have that light and are commanded to 
 "Arise" and let it shine. (2) From reasons which will appear as we 
 proceed we think that numbers, probably large numbers, more or less 
 large according to states of society, will be found who are among those 
 that "hope in His mercy." Their conceptions are crude and their ascer- 
 tainments are limited. Nevertheless they may be of the kind that God 
 accepts, and we may reasonably hope to find a multitude of them, out 
 of every tribe and people, that had not known His scripture name nor 
 know how it was done, yet standing at the right hand of the Judge, 
 justified by their inchoate faith, which the Holy Spirit knows how to 
 translate into the terms of the sacrifice slain from the foundation of 
 the Avorld. But it is startlingly true that this faith receptivity seems 
 to have diminished as the ages have gone on. Men have lost their ca- 
 pacity for it, or have ceased to exercise it, and it is absolutely needful 
 that there be a new and fuller increment of a mightier grace of God 
 that bringeth salvation. 
 
 THE THREE ELEMENTS WHICH ENTER INTO THE THEOLOGY OF NATURE. 
 
 And now we summarize together the three constituent elements 
 which form the Theology of Nature. They are: 
 
 I. The first, or the Religious Law of Nature, corresponding to 
 the first table of the law of God. 
 
 II. The second, or the Moral Law of Nature, corresponding to 
 the second table of the law of God. 
 
 HI. The Gospel Law of Nature, as seen in the works of God; 
 the providences of God ; and in various ways, the teachings of God, as 
 discerned in human history and contained in human experience. 
 
 According to their regard or disregard of these three laws are the 
 sons of men to be tried, to be judged, and to be condemned or exoner- 
 
 23 
 
68 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 ated. Of these three the most awfully momentous is the third. The 
 first two involve a sentence of death ; the third one involves deliverance 
 from the fiist two, or a confirmation of their sentence — a hf e eternal or 
 a death eternal. Later we shall have to do with the marvellously 
 greater gospel of the Son of God, but at present we are concerned only 
 with the workings of the Gospel of Nature. 
 
 APPLICATION TO THE MEN OF ANTEDILUVIAN TIMES. 
 
 That the men of the antediluvian world were swept away by a 
 flood brought upon the world of the ungodly by a long suffering and 
 offended God, is a fact of sacred history. Old and young, children 
 and infants, shared in a common destruction. Was this visitation an 
 outburst of caprice on the part of God? Surely it was not. That 
 which was a hundred and twenty years coming on was not of sudden 
 caprice. It was very premeditated and deliberate and formally an- 
 nounced beforehand. Was it an infliction on men not conscious of 
 their violation of moral law? It surely was not. Men cannot plead 
 ignorance who have been warned for a hundred and twenty years. 
 There was a law that had been broken, and we have no difficulty in 
 finding it. Were they cut off without a single chance of escape, and 
 without some sort of a respite to allow them time to think and act? 
 Again, surely not. To say so or to imply such a thing would be an im- 
 peachment of God's justice and fair dealing, in the one case, and a 
 denial of any tenderness and mercy in his nature in the other case. If 
 the flood was an unwarranted severity, and a precipitate and unjustifi- 
 able harshness, the character of the Judge of all the earth is smirched 
 at the very start. Were they tried without law, condemned without 
 law, sentenced without law, and executed without law? Assuredly 
 they were not. Everything was in accord with the strictest law and 
 the highest equity, and then nothing was done Until a wonderful and 
 long continued opportunity was given to avert the judgment, but 
 which was treated with neglect and contempt. 
 
 24 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 69 
 
 GROUNDS OF THE CONDEMNATION OF THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. 
 
 I. They were guilty of a total disregard of the first great re- 
 quirement of the moral nature, — that they should fear, honor and obey 
 the great Creator who had made them. 
 
 That they knew about God is incontestible. Thej^ were as yet 
 very near that early period when their great father Adam had been a 
 personal companion and a personal pupil of God. That Adam was 
 thus in familiar converse with the infinitely wise Creator, not merely 
 for a few years, but in all probability for many years possibly, what 
 would be a lifetime or more than a lifetime in our day, can hardly be 
 questioned. The work alone of naming the animals made to pass be- 
 fore him would require years of study and observation of their natures 
 and habits in order that the naming should have significance. Adam 
 lived nine hundred and thirty years. His own knowledge of God must 
 have been made known to multitudes of his descendants. Besides this 
 they had their own double law of nature, which taught them their own 
 duty towards God and towards men. That they were utterly regard- 
 less of that duty is manifest from the testimony of Enoch. He was 
 the seventh from Adam. In his day defection from God had made 
 fearful progress. And Enoch also the seventh from Adam prophesies 
 of them, saying: "The Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints to 
 execute judgment on all and to convince all that are ungodly among 
 them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed, and of all 
 their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." 
 
 The striking points in this terrible announcement were that they 
 had a clear apprehension of God as a personal being — that they not 
 only acted against him but complained of him and villified him per- 
 sonally in hard speeches. The frequency with which the v/ord un- 
 godly is used shows the nature of their defection. They were not 
 Godly. God would judge them not only for what they are, and ought 
 not to be, but for what they are not but ought to be. Furthermore 
 
 25 
 
70 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 they were not to be under condemnation ; they were already under con- 
 demnation. Ten thousand executioners were ready to execute judg- 
 ment upon them. And this did not include all their wickedness. As 
 yet there were the violations of the second tablet to come in. They 
 were sentenced to death, for the one single and sufficient reason that 
 they were not godly but were disobedient towards God and maligned 
 him, and were contemptuous towards him, paying no attention to what 
 he said. 
 
 II. They were guilty of a total and conternptuous disregard of 
 the second great requirement of their moral nature, that they should 
 love their neighbors as themselves. 
 
 Here again they needed not to go outside of themselves to find the 
 law. It is written within, the same as the fii'st law. Every man has 
 a copy for himself. Some hundreds of years later than Enoch's day 
 we are made acquainted with the facts of the second count in the in- 
 dictment. Disloyalty to God precedes wrong-doing towards man; 
 the latter is sure to follow the former. And it is always so in human 
 history. There never can be any true and abiding love for man which 
 is not based upon a previous love to God. "The earth also was corrupt 
 before God (violation of the first table) and the earth was filled with 
 violence (violation of the second table) ." And now the time had come 
 of which God had said: "My spirit shall not always strive with man! 
 A world filled with wicked, God-hating men and with man-hating 
 violent men, is the picture now given to us of the state of mankind. 
 The law of brotherhood was trampled under foot, and now for a 
 second reason it became necessary to destroy such a race. But there 
 was still a third reason yet to come. 
 
 III. They were guilty of despising the Gospel of Nature which 
 meanwhile had been made known to them, partly by direct announce- 
 me7it and partly by providential manifestations. As already stated 
 (and we cannot emphasize the fact too strongly), sentence of death 
 impends immediately as soon as the offence is committed. The of- 
 
 26 
 
Part II J STONES IN THE ROUGH 71 
 
 fender has no right to ask for a moment's clemency or respite. If, 
 therefore, respite obtains we may know it is because some change of 
 condition has taken place. Suspension of judgment is a matter of 
 grace, not of right. In the divine purpose God had included a pro- 
 vision of mercy which antedated the fall — a promise not extended to 
 the angelic host. "The end of all flesh is come before me"; that was 
 the sentence of death. "Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty 
 years." That was the respite granted to allow him to avail himself of 
 the gospel provision. 
 
 THE GOSPEL AMONG THE ANTEDILUVIANS. 
 
 They had : I. The Gospel of Promise. 
 
 It was a clearly stated and full rounded gospel preached to that 
 ancient world. It was first announced by God himself. "And I will 
 put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her 
 seed: it shall bruise th}^ head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Beyond 
 this vague utterance that a deliverer should come and that he would be 
 a child of the woman, there was nothing definite. Where, when and 
 how was not revealed. It was a gospel of promise and a gospel not com- 
 prehended beyond the mere fact. But because it was a belief in what 
 God had said it was of the very essence of saving faith. By it, so far 
 as we know, Adam and Eve were saved. When her first child was 
 born Eve supposed it was the promised deliverer and said, "I have 
 gotten the man that is to be," or "I have gotten the coming one." 
 This became a designation of the Messiah. "Behold he that cometh." 
 "I am he that cometh," "Ho Erkomenos." The Coming One. Christ 
 has been "the Coining One" — is nov/ "the Coming One," and ever will 
 be "the Coming One." 
 
 They had: II. The Gospel of Sacrifice. 
 
 This followed on the heels of the Promise. It was a tremendous 
 stride in advance. When Adam and Eve saw their nakedness they 
 
 27 
 
72 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 sewed fig leaves together and made them aprons. "But the Lord 
 God made them coats of skins." Where did these skins come from? 
 Life had to be taken in order to get them. God himself had to pro- 
 vide a covering. Thus the idea of substitution was taught them from 
 the start, and also of an expiating sacrifice. God himself impressed 
 on Cain the place of an expiation and the necessity of an expiation. 
 That this expiating by offerings continued to be made during the en- 
 tire antediluvian period is indisputable. Though neglected by the 
 many thej'^ were regarded by the few (Abel among them) , who were 
 saved thereby. 
 
 The all-important place given to them in the theological concep- 
 tion of the time is apparent from the requisition on Noah to take 
 clean animals into the ark by sevens, while other kinds went by twos. 
 The distinction betw^een clean and unclean, therefore, antedates 
 Moses, and must have been highly elaborated among the devout of the 
 Antediluvian period. This is further evidenced by the fact that at a 
 certain stage of the history the growing defection from Jehovah was 
 arrested and now they began to organize themselves into a religous 
 association for the restoration of Jehovah worship, — the first associa- 
 tion of the kind in human history. 
 
 Further emphasis is given to the significance and transcendent 
 importance of the sacrificial system as an education in gospel truth by 
 the fact that as soon as Noah came out of the ark he resumed sacrifice 
 as an expiation. His sacrifices were accepted by God and a new as- 
 surance given that condemnation could be and would be set aside by 
 means of applied sacrifice. 
 
 They had: III. T'he Gospel preached to Cain. 
 
 Adam's sin was a violation of the first law written on the heart — 
 and was a sin against God. The sin of Cain w^as a sin against the 
 second law written on the heart, and was a sin against man, and that 
 man his own brother. As in Adam's case, the Gospel of Mercy was 
 proclaimed even before the sentence of condemnation was pronounced 
 
 28 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 73 
 
 — so with Cain, his attention was called to the promise for mercy and 
 acceptance before any violence occurred. If he did well would he not 
 be accepted on that account, that is for his own sake? and if he did not 
 well was there not a sin oiFering at the door to be availed of at once? 
 Thus the gospel was preached to Cain before he became a murderer. 
 
 And then, after he became a murderer, it was preached afresh 
 with wonderful accompaniments of grace. People would kill him, he 
 said. So God put a mark upon Cain that people should not kill him as 
 he deserved; a more significant intimation could not be given that God 
 was ready to extend mercy to him. He should be punished, but the 
 extreme penalty of broken law should not be visited upon him. And 
 then, at the door, as long as he lived, the sin offering ever lay ready. 
 
 The mercy extended to Cain was appealed to several hundred 
 years afterwards by Lamech. If Cain was to have mercy much more 
 should Lamech have mercy. He reasoned logically; with God mercy 
 to one meant mercy to another, indeed, mercy to all. And so we see the 
 gospel was well promulgated several hundred years after the crime of 
 Cain was committed. Even a man slayer had a gospel. 
 
 They had: IV. The Gospel of the Ark. 
 
 But the crowning manifestation of the antediluvian gospel and 
 of its abihty to save was given in connection with the Ark. God now 
 made an appeal to the men of that generation based on their love of 
 hf e — the most powerful that can be made to a human being. It was 
 announced that God intended to destroy the world because of its 
 wickedness. Nevertheless men might be saved if they would. Notice 
 was given of how the deliverance could be effected. A flood would 
 sweep the earth, but an ark could ride over the flood. Therefore 
 their salvation was to come through an Ark. Noah believed the pre- 
 diction because it came from God. He was moved by fear and immedi- 
 ately set about building an ark for himself. He was to have plenty of 
 time for it, for God would keep the sentence suspended until all the 
 ark room that would be called for could be provided. 
 
 29 
 
74 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 But Noah was more than an ark builder to save his own house. 
 He was a preacher of righteousness ; that meant that he was a preacher 
 of repentance to the whole world around him. God appointed him to 
 preach and to warn men. Salvation by an ark! Salvation by an ark! 
 Tliis was his perpetual refrain, day in and day out, year in and year 
 out for a hundred and twenty long years. We are told "the long suf- 
 fering of God waited" — waited to see if anybody would repent, if 
 anyone would believe, — if anybody else would go to building arks. 
 Noah preached, and Noah sawed and Noah fitted timbers and Noah 
 hammered away. His faith and his works wrought together. He had 
 no monopoly of the timber of the forest nor ownership of all the tools 
 of the shipyard. They could do it if he could, and the fact that God 
 waited and waited and waited was proof positive that he would be just 
 as good to any of them as he was to Noah, if they would exercise 
 Noah's faith. 
 
 The points of Noah's preaching were that men have sinned, — 
 that God has decreed his sentence of death, — but now he was gracious 
 to men if they would only believe and go to work. The first probation 
 under Adam was an awful failure, but now they were to have another 
 one under grace. Therefore, "Save yourselves from this untoward 
 generation," was the preaching of Noah, as it afterwards was the 
 preaching of Peter. Salvation by the old law of righteousness by 
 works was gone forever, but salvation by the new law of righteousness 
 by faith was within every man's reach. This was the gospel of Noah 
 and the Gospel of the Ark. What more and what better could any of 
 them wish for than was preached by this mighty evangelist who led 
 off in the number of those who had "the spirit of Christ which was in 
 them?" That is plain speech. It was not simply Noah that spoke; it 
 was "the spirit of Christ which was in them," the "prehistoric" Christ, 
 which was preaching repentance and faith for a hundred and twenty 
 years. 
 
 30 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 75 
 
 WHY THE OLD WORLD PERISHED. 
 
 It is plain enough. It is not because they had no gospel but be- 
 cause they did not believe what gospel they had. Perhaps they 
 thought that such an undertaking was too big even for the Almighty ; 
 perhaps they had their ideas, as moderns have, about "fixed law"; and 
 that "miracles were contrary to human experience," — and they dis- 
 carded the supernatural on that account. But whatever be the reason, 
 they took no stock in Xoah's prediction, — they kept on buying and 
 selling, marrying and giving in marriage, and rollicking away. When 
 at last God shut in Noah and aU the animals that were ready to go, 
 and when the windows of heaven began to be open and the fountains 
 of the great deep to be broken up, it was then too late to go to boat 
 building, and so they all were lost. They perished not because of the 
 broken law of the first table, for that could have been remedied; not 
 because of the broken law of the second table, for that could have been 
 remedied, — but because they despised the gospel they had within their 
 reach, and which was sufficient for their salvation. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF A SECOND PROBATION. 
 
 It is contended, and to this contention all heartily agree, that 
 while the sinner has no right in equity to ask a second probation other 
 than the one he had in his father Adam, yet God, in his goodness and 
 grace has promised and provided for all the children of Adam a sec- 
 ond probation, one of the supreme wonders in the economy of salva- 
 tion. Men may recover under grace what they lost under law. The 
 sinner is allowed a new trial after the first one has failed. The rela- 
 tion between the old trial of man while yet in a sinless state, and the 
 new trial granted after he had become a sinner, is also a supreme won- 
 der. The real and decisive trial is not in the prior one but in the after 
 one, and it may be correctly affirmed that the first trial is merely a 
 stepping stone to the second one. 
 
 31 
 
76 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 WHAT CONSTITUTES A "PROBATION?" 
 
 It is necessary in order to a correct apprehension of this whole 
 subject that the question be stated and answered, — What constitutes 
 a probation? Men who give their opinions in the matter often fall 
 into the gravest mistakes. First of all the word "probation" as usually- 
 apprehended, is itself misleading. The word usually implies a process, 
 longer or shorter, by which character is developed and tested as to its 
 quality and its endurance. Starting out with this erroneous concep- 
 tion, to begin with, men proceed to determine times and seasons and 
 continuances of the process which they think ought to take place. 
 Many speak of Adam's probation, and think it may have continued 
 many j^ears, and that the real object of his probation was to work out 
 a fixed and determinative character which should decide his future posi- 
 tion. It is the first conception we have of "Salvation by character," 
 but by no means the last one. "Salvation by character" is not salva- 
 tion by faith, and it is not salvation by grace. It is salvation by merit. 
 
 In pursuance of this conception of a probation these same think- 
 ers, some of them, have reasoned in this way: 
 
 They say it is true the first probation in Adam has failed, but that 
 God in his grace and goodness has been pleased to grant man an op- 
 portunity to retrieve himself, which is done by a second probation, in 
 Christ and not in Adam any longer. 
 
 Continuing, they say — that as the second probation is in and 
 through Christ, therefore all men must have an opportunity to hear 
 about what they call "the historic Christ/' that is, the Christ who Hved 
 and taught in Judea and who died on the cross at Jerusalem. Men, 
 they say, must have as good an opportunity to hear all about the per- 
 sonality of this Jesus as the Jews had who lived in his day, — that if 
 they do not have such an equal opportunity then they have not 
 had a full and fair probation, and if they have not had it in this world 
 they must have it in the next world. To their minds this process of 
 
 32 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 77 
 
 reasoning all seems legitimate and the conclusion unmistakable, but 
 in reality it is unsound, full of flaws, and involving most inconginious, 
 unscriptural and even absurd consequences. 
 
 A MOST ERRONEOUS CONCEPTION. 
 
 For if this conclusion be accepted, then nobody has had "a full 
 and fair probation." Probation must follow probation after proba- 
 tion in the next world until God has actually exhausted himself in fu- 
 tile endeavors to get all sinners to come to terms — and there must be 
 a regular stated ministry in the underworld at this time, for multi- 
 tudes are continually coming in who know nothing about "the historic 
 Christ." Even then in these Christian lands of ours are those who 
 have heard albeit only a few thousand or a few hundred times, yet are 
 nevertheless in gross ignorance, — their attention having been so taken 
 up with a hundred other things. Why should not they also claim a 
 probation under better circumstances than any that exist here. Fur- 
 thermore if these views contain the true solution, it is difficult to see 
 how God can escape the charge of being the author of a set of dis- 
 jointed schemes liable to all sorts of contingencies, and furnishing 
 further an opportunity for finical casuists among seminary professors 
 to lay down for him the rules by which his administration of human af- 
 fairs ought to be guided. Indeed, that sort of thing has become very 
 common already. There are plenty of critics more ready to point at 
 God's duty to the sinner than the sinner's duty to God. It is necessary 
 to avoid confusion of thought, and in order thereto the first step is 
 to discard the word "probation' as commonly used. 
 
 Instead thereof substitute some word signifying "test" or "trial," 
 and we shall be nearer the purpose of God and to the divine idea of what 
 we have been accustomed to call a "probation." God's purpose in the 
 two trials of Adam was not character making — that is something which 
 comes later — but for the determination of choice which leads to charac- 
 
 33 
 
78 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 ter making. A "test" or a "trial" may be single or immediate, and 
 then over with, or it may be repeated and long continued, but whether 
 long or short, the purpose is choice determining and not character 
 making, Abraham was tried — not to make character, but to determine 
 the character that was in him ; Joseph was tried in the same way ; Job, 
 also; and still more conspicuously the Lord Jesus when he was led of 
 the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested of the devil; and the saints 
 are tried also prior to their receiving the blessing. In exactly the same 
 manner Adam was tried as to his obedience of his will in the garden 
 of Eden, and then he was again tried immediately afterwards as to his 
 acceptance of the promise. One trial being over and lost, the other 
 took its place without an interregnum and was won by Adam and Eve, 
 as is manifest from the Scripture, and certainly by Abel and Seth and 
 a long line that followed. 
 
 THE FIRST AND SECOND TRIALS OF ADAM AND EVE COMPARED. 
 
 In these two trials there were marked features of resemblance 
 and marked features of difference. 
 
 (1) They were both of them essentially trials of faith; in the 
 second trial that is plain enough, but it is equally so when one comes 
 to look into the substructure of the first. We speak of it as a test of 
 obedience to a positive command not to eat of a certain tree — but 
 underlying that was a belief of what God had said about the peril of 
 eating that fruit. The trial was indeed a test of obedience to com- 
 mand, but it was a test of faith back of that command; Paul, in his 
 vocabulary of terms, speaks of the obedience of faith as the highest of 
 all the obediences, active and passive. It follows that the test submitted 
 to him before his fall and the test submitted to him after the fall are 
 generically the same. God has not changed the ultimate form of his 
 requirement — thus implying a sort of failure and disappointment — 
 but he continues it under new conditions which render compliance 
 more illustrious to himself. 
 
 34 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 79 
 
 (2) The new trials were especially adapted to the new condi- 
 tions in which the offending parties had placed themselves, thus show- 
 ing the immutability of the divine counsel even though Adam had 
 sinned. The test in the first case was exactly suited to the circum- 
 stances of a person whose nature was holy and whose moral powers 
 were in full strength. The test in the second case was exactly suited 
 to the circumstances of a person whose nature had become unholy and 
 his moral power weakened. 
 
 (3) The antediluvians who fell in Adam had some advantages 
 in making a choice which the sinless Adam did not have ; and all man- 
 kind since then have an accumulated incentive to a wise choice which 
 even the antediluvians did not have. Adam had been told he should 
 die, but he had seen no one in a death agony. He had no conception 
 of what God meant in that terrible communication; nor did he have 
 that kind of conviction which arises from seeing a thing verified before 
 his eyes. But afterwards Adam did have that evidence. In his 
 hundreds of years before the flood he must have seen many die and 
 he knew what death meant. If it were now some great moral action 
 required of him for which he had no longer the moral quahfications he 
 would have been pitiably helpless, but it was nothing of the kind. 
 Again it was simply choice! Choose for yourself! Choose whom you 
 will believe ! Choose whom you will serve. It may be added this ever 
 has been and is now the test, and will be the test from generation to 
 generation. 
 
 THE ANTEDILUVIANS THEN HAVE HAD THEIR SECOND PROBATION. 
 
 They had it in their own day and generation, here, in this world, 
 and therefore it is not to be repeated in the next world. It began the 
 moment the other one ended so disastrously. It was a probation (if 
 we still wish to use that word) which God considered sufficient. He 
 has not promised a third one to them or to anybody else. Then as 
 
 35 
 
80 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 now, and now as then, men have the opportunity to choose for them- 
 selves — (every man for hhnself) whether they will admit or deny the 
 justice of God's charges against themselves, and whether they will ac- 
 cept or reject such mxans of salvation as God has placed within their 
 reach. The whole trial (or probation, to use the old term) is reducable 
 to one answer — ''yes" or "no" and can be settled without delay at once. 
 
 "unto all and upon all." 
 
 In this citation from Romans III: 22, is set forth a profound 
 principle in the divine administration. It involves a parallel of tre- 
 mendous scope and application. 
 
 The effects of Adam's sin were not limited to his personal self. 
 They included and extended to all his posterity to the latest generation 
 "unto all and upon all" — not only to them but upon them. It was like 
 a wave of lava which comes first of all '^'to" and then ''upon" completely 
 covering up, and that, too, without the knowledge or consent of that 
 posterity. Does this federal relation seem unjust? To the minds of 
 men it often does. What they demand is this. They say ''Let us each 
 stand for ourselves." If we have an equally independent opportunity 
 and fail, then we admit our condemnation will be just. 
 
 Be it so. That is just what God has provided for; every man shall 
 stand or fall by his own choice, and it is accomplished in this way. 
 
 If by one relation of federal headship a universal wave of destruc- 
 tion is made to flow "to and upon" all of our entire race — by another 
 relation of federal headship another universal wave of mercy is made 
 to flow "to and upon" all of that same race. If the first came without 
 the knowledge or participation of the parties involved, so also does the 
 second. The individual free will comes in in connection with the sec- 
 ond. Man gets into sin without his knowledge or consent, but if he 
 stays there it will have to be with his knowledge or consent. A com- 
 plete deliverance from the consequences of Adam's sin is within his 
 
 36 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 81 
 
 reach. He refuses to avail himself of it — therefore he makes the sin 
 his own. Adam was to blame for getting into a place he knew so little 
 about. How much more his posterity are to blame for choosing to con- 
 tinue in when they know so much about it. Death comes "to and 
 upon" all through Adam. Life comes to and upon all through Christ. 
 But a positive acceptance is required of all who are capable of accept- 
 ing. The charge against Adam is choosing sin ; the charge against his 
 posterity is choosing to remain in sin by rejecting the oiFer of mercy. 
 
 It is for this reason that we believe in the salvation of infants — 
 of all the infants that ever lived. Salvation comes "to and upon" them 
 through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus being applied by the 
 Holy Spirit himself directly without their refusal, which means with- 
 out their knowledge or consent at the time. 
 
 These facts are set forth by the Apostle in Romans V. One man 
 sinned, and death came to and upon all. One man obeyed and hfe 
 came to and upon all who do not reject or resist the Spirit as he works 
 upon them, the striving of the spirit, as God himself put it in Noah's 
 day. "My spirit shall not always strive with man." 
 
 Does this view of the case lend countenance to the doctrine of 
 Universalism? Not the least whatever. A pardon may be granted, but 
 until it is accepted it is no pardon. It must be accepted in God's own 
 appointed way. Negligence or non-compliance cancels a pardon al- 
 ways by the individual's own choice. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF NATURE. 
 AJNIONG POST DILUVIANS. 
 
 The new world started out with that capital stock of religious as- 
 certainment and experience possessed by Noah, the entire stock of a 
 previous world. Of itself that must have been great. His knowledge 
 of God was great. His knowledge of beginnings was great. Such 
 documentary records of the creative process as had come down from 
 
 37 
 
82 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 Enoch would be in his hands. The man who built the Ark was a man 
 of scholarly attainments; without them he could not have built the 
 Ark. Noah therefore was an intrepid worshipper of Jehovah. His 
 immediate posterity, too, must have been with him fully informed 
 to begin with. And then they had written on their hearts the two great 
 self-luminant sources of light and impulse, the primal "law of re- 
 ligion" and the secondary "law of morality" — continually replacing 
 the wear and tear on their better natures ; — laws which were self-acting 
 and self -generating as already stated. To their religious and moral 
 impulse a tremendous emphasis must have been given by the experi- 
 ence of the flood. Naturally they would tell it to the generations fol- 
 lowing, and naturally, even without an intimation from revelation and 
 purely from the light of nature which included all the deductions of 
 human reason and human experience, that generation ought to have 
 been a God fearing generation. 
 
 From that time on and down to the present the religious and the 
 moral history of mankind, taken apart from revealed religion, and 
 considered solely as a product of the Theology of Nature, is divided 
 into distinct stages, following and also overlapping each other. 
 
 I. The stage of another rapid religious and moral degeneracy — 
 of fading light and gathering darkness, culminating in a fearful de- 
 pravity which again brought down upon them the judgment of heaven. 
 
 II. The stage of Heathen Constructiveness. Having lost their 
 knowledge of the true God they begin to construct religions of their 
 own with gods of their own. 
 
 III. The stage of philosophical speculation and inquiry. The 
 more thoughtful minds among men, not satisfied with the diction of 
 heathenism, began their attempts to find the beginning of things and 
 to solve "the riddle of the universe" thousands of years before HfEckel 
 was born. 
 
 IV. The stage of scientific allegation and ascertainment. This 
 
 38 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 83 
 
 is almost wholly a modern phase, in which we have as yet but barely 
 entered and in which men are still burning their bellows in the fire. 
 
 The history of these four stages of himian thought and experience 
 will compass the entire domain of the Theology of Nature taken apart 
 from the Theology of Revelation. 
 
 But we have also, beginning far back in the remote antiquity, an- 
 other kind of Theology called Revealed Theology, and developing 
 along side of the Theology of Nature. To this revealed theology we 
 come in close order of time and sequence, but at present we are to deal 
 with the Theology of Nature alone. 
 
 I. 
 
 The stage of another rapid religious and moral de- 
 generacy; — of fading hght and gathering darkness, 
 culminating in a fearful depravity, compelling a sec- 
 ond visitation of judgment from heaven, the first judg- 
 ment being of water, the second of fire and brimstone. 
 
 It might be supposed that the terrible lesson of the flood would 
 have shaped the development of the new humanity, and that men would 
 have recoiled from a repetition of the old sinfulness. But it was not 
 to be so. Men were to have a fresh lesson in the deeply rooted nature 
 of human weakness and corruption, and the manifestations were to 
 multiply until God could no longer endure it, without a downpour of 
 wrath. 
 
 Noah became drunk. But there is no reason to suppose that 
 Noah was a drunkard. He seems to have been simply unintentionally 
 careless and indiscreet. But his indiscretion furnished an opportunity 
 for an exhibition of coarse and vulgar depravity on the part of Ham, 
 which was in itself a revelation, and which boded ill for coming human 
 nature which had already become leprous. 
 
 39 
 
84 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 The Bible itself does not furnish us details of the spread of de- 
 pravity in these first early ages after the flood. But it must have been 
 rapid and fearful. Such a coarse nature as that of Ham tainted the 
 tribes, kindreds and types that rose one after another. Such con- 
 temporary secular history as we have had transmitted to us, all con- 
 firms the sacred writ. Virtune waned rapidly and vice waxed rapidly. 
 That much we are sure of. 
 
 After between four and five hundred years the Spirit of God 
 drew aside the curtain just once, to let us see how inconceivably de- 
 praved the human race had become. Adapting himself to human 
 methods and human phraseology, God represents himself as going 
 down on a tour of inspection. "Because the cry of Sodom and Gomor- 
 roh are great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down 
 now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of 
 it which is come unto me, and if not I will know." Of course the 
 Omniscient knew, but he conforms himself to human administrative 
 order in his mode of procedure. Then follows the awful revelation of 
 Sodom, and then the overthrow of the cities when the smoke of the 
 country went up as the smoke of a furnace. The curtain drops, but 
 a presage and a precedent are entered on the books, indicative of what 
 will take place in the far distant future. 
 
 LIGHT THEY HAD BUT THEY W^ALKED NOT IN IT. 
 
 Meanwhile during this same period, and extending far beyond it, 
 are the multipHed evidences of the light sufficient to guide them in 
 a pathway of peace if they had been disposed to desire it. But then, 
 as at a later day, they loved darkness rather than light, and would not 
 come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved. 
 
 LINGERING RAYS ON THE MOUNTAIN TOPS. 
 
 First of all the fading Hght of the knowledge of a living God 
 
 40 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 85 
 
 lingered in various quarters as the rays of the setting sun linger around 
 a mountain top, while the shadows thicken below. These rays lingered 
 long after the overthrow of Sodom as well as before. Pharoah, King 
 of Egypt, recognized the personality and power of a living God in 
 his day. Abimelech, king of Gerar, had messages direct from God and 
 was guided thereby in his duty towards God and towards his fellow 
 men. Balaam was clear visioned, and could tell about God with 
 wondrous vigor. OiF in that land of Moab where Balak dwelt the 
 name of Jehovah was well known long before Moses roamed the 
 Midian desert. In the land of Uz the knowledge of God and of the 
 methods of his administration were surprisingly wonderful. Job and 
 his friends were astute scholars in the Theology of Nature, as we shall 
 have occasion presently to point out. 
 
 CONFIRM ATION IN REMAINS OF PRIMITIVE LITERATURE. 
 
 Confirmation to all this comes to us in the secular literature of 
 these primeval post diluvians, which has come down to us, and there 
 is quite enough of it to answer our purpose. While the world was full 
 of sin, and full of wickedness, and all manner of grossness and cruelty, 
 yet the writers of those days were constrained always to magnify rever- 
 ence for "the Gods" and to exalt fair deahng among men. In their his- 
 torical annals and in their poetry this characteristic is conspicuous. 
 That there were vile writings in abundance is no doubt true, but the re- 
 ligious law and the moral law within them did not allow them to trans- 
 mit such things to future generations. They have handed down good 
 writings and not vile ones. This shows how profoundly operative was 
 that law which God had woven in their moral constitutions and which 
 as a divine force unceasingly impelled them to virtue and repelled 
 them from vice. So when they went astray they could not plead ig- 
 norance ; nor could they palliate their evil conduct by saying they lived 
 in an evil atmosphere. Their own literature will rise up in judgment 
 
 41 
 
86 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 and condemn them. Their Horaces, their Senecas, their Ciceros, their 
 Virgils, their Vedas, their Analects, will witness against them. They 
 were not ignorant; they knew the better if they had chosen to follow 
 the better. 
 
 In the laws and institutes made for the government of society 
 and in the regulation of interhuman relations in the enforcement of 
 the principals of justice, honesty, truthfulness, purity and the due 
 order in the family and the state, they all indicate moral elevation of 
 conception and purpose which has made men wonder where it all came 
 from. 
 
 POST DILUVIAN GOSPEL. 
 
 Paul's declaration is positive that God has not left himself with- 
 out witness of his readiness to be merciful. When Noah went forth 
 from the ark, the first thing he did was to build an altar and offer 
 sacrifices for the expiation of sin, such as God had taught Adam and 
 Eve to offer. It was at once accepted in these words of superlative 
 hope, — "And the Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in 
 his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, 
 for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth ; neither will 
 I again smite any more every living thing as I have done; while the 
 earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat and summer 
 and winter and day and night shall not cease." 
 
 Thus the new world began with a gospel of wondrOus breadth; 
 no threatenings were included in it. It was free grace abounding, and 
 that with a full recognition of man's tendency to perversity and of the 
 certain workings of his unregenerate heart. Law and restriction, to 
 be sure, came in due time, but gospel had precedence and the right of 
 way. 
 
 We do not say that a positive promise such as Noah had is to be 
 considered a part of the gospel of nature ; but the evidences to support 
 that promise were a part of every man's every day experience. Seed- 
 
 42 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 87 
 
 time and harvest never have ceased; day and night never have inter- 
 mitted. No man is ever more than twelve hours from a sign post. All 
 human experience of good, every act of goodness in the day's round 
 prove the presence of the grace of God, and which in the logic of 
 Providence form premises on which to reason out an expectation* of 
 more grace and of continued good, — all this is a part of the gospel of 
 nature. When God provides premises, it is man's duty to reason on 
 those premises, and his neglect to do so forms a part of his condemna- 
 tion for rejecting the gospel. The new race started out then with a 
 gospel and not a code of enactments, and so man was started off right. 
 Noah, a preacher of righteousness before the flood, could be depended 
 upon to preach with the same earnestness the gospel of God after the 
 flood. There could have been only one sentiment among men about 
 God. The air was not murky then as it is now, with all manner of 
 quibblings and questionings which impair faith receptivity. There 
 was no place for skeptics at that time. God's bestowments on the new 
 race were wonderful ; the fear of it should be on the whole animal cre- 
 ation. Every living thing and every green herb were given into its 
 hands. Grace could do no more. Neither was there any code of laws 
 and requirements such as became necessary at a later day to keep men 
 within bounds. The preciousness of human hfe was to be safe- 
 guarded. There was to be a protection against a repetition of the vio- 
 lence of their antediluvian forefathers. "Whoso sheddeth man's 
 blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Beyond that there was no im- 
 position, nor were they hampered in any way whatever. They were 
 to be left to the guidance of that double law within their hearts, to the 
 awfully solemn lessons of human experience in the past, to their ap- 
 preciation of the Divine goodness, and to the sense of gratitude and 
 love most powerfully appealed to when God made over to them the 
 whole earth, and set his bow in the cloud as a pledge of his mercy. God 
 started them ofl", not with whip and spur and snaffle ; he beckoned them 
 with fruits and flowers, and with a cheery commission he bade them go 
 
 43 
 
88 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 ahead to replenish, to possess, and to manage the whole earth for them- 
 selves. Not before or since, except when Christ Himself came, has 
 any man ever had such a free and generous gospel with such fullness 
 of specification and such amplitude of resource. Adam and Eve were 
 not sent forth so kindly. There was never a word of upbraiding, no 
 twitting them with the sins of their fathers, though they had to be 
 told of them later, — God loaded them down with gifts and promises. 
 It would seem as if he meant to throw them on their own manhood, 
 and their honor and gratitude, as well as their self-interest, and let 
 them do right from voluntary choice, and not from compulsion. He 
 anticipated the words of a later day: "Surely they are children that 
 will not He;" surely such transcendent goodness will lead them to per- 
 sistent penitence and keep them loyal. Alas, for poor, degenerate 
 human nature! God knew how it would be, but men did not. So it 
 was necessary that they should have continuous lessons in their own 
 frailty and unreliability. The tutelage of G<)d was to be kept up from 
 generation to generation yet before God would develop his own plan 
 of deliverance. 
 
 UNIVERSALITY AND VALUE OF POST DILUVIAN GOSPEL GLEAMS. 
 
 We find them everywhere, — among all tribes and kindi-eds and 
 tongue; in a Vedic hymn there is an utterance of a groaning spirit, 
 voicing forth its expectation of a deliverer whom Heaven would surely 
 send sometime of other, which reads like a quotation from Isaiah. 
 Similar hopes are found in heathen literature ; they are often shadowy, 
 but again they are enough to take hold of. In the older China litera- 
 ture an expectancy of hope in the mercy of "High Heaven," as they 
 call it, is a conspicuous feature. We ourselves have often heard 
 among the wronged and the suffering the conviction poured out from 
 an anguished spirit toward heaven with a sigh: "But heaven is good; 
 heaven is true; heaven is just, and heaven can see; heaven can hear; 
 
 44 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 89 
 
 heaven can remember; heaven will judge; indeed High Heaven, or 
 Azure Heaven, or Supreme Heaven, has been and is to multitudes in 
 China a great court of final appeal." Even Confucius himself ap- 
 pealed to it when wrongly judged by his fellowmen. Poor people and 
 helpless widows have appealed to it against heartless exactors. 
 Chinese patriots have appealed to it when marching to the execution 
 ground where their blood was to be poured out by tyrannical rulers. 
 The number of these appeals from a lower to a supreme tribunal it is 
 impossible to enumerate, for no record is kept among men; but that 
 does not say there is no record of them in heaven. There must be an 
 enormous list on the docket up there, — the accumulation of generations 
 of ages, and of mankind. But the court has plenty of time, and scales 
 of unswerving justice, and the unredressed wrongs of earth will be 
 rectified there; and so also will the unHquidated hopes of faith, how- 
 ever meagre, be fully honored there. 
 
 And all this because God is God and not man. With him there is 
 no difference; he will render to very man according to his deeds; to 
 every sort of men, to the Jew and also to the Gentile, to the Christian 
 and also to the heathen; more than that he will deal with every man 
 according to the light he has, and according to his faith in that light, 
 — "According to thy faith be it unto thee," to the Jew first and also 
 to the Gentile, to the Christian and also to the heathen, for there is no 
 respect of persons with God. Those that have sinned without law 
 shall perish without law; those that have sinned in the law shall be 
 judged by the law. Blessed are they who have seen and believed, but 
 blessed also are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Blessed 
 are thej^ who have had the full gospel of the four evangelists and have 
 believed; but blessed also are they who have only the gospel types and 
 shadows, and have had only the blood of bulls and goats to trust in, 
 and yet have believed. Blessed are they who lived before the days of 
 Moses and Aaron and had only the gospel of Noah to inspire them, 
 and yet have believed, and blessed are they who lived before the flood 
 
 45 
 
90 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 and had only the dim adumbration of a gospel given to Adam and 
 Eve, and yet have believed. God will honor all his own presages and 
 premonitions, — large and small, without fail, according as they are 
 accepted by those who have them. To him that hath shall be given ; if 
 they believe their littles they will get the benefit of much. If they do 
 not use the little when they have it, why should they expect, or presume 
 to ask for more? They will not get it. There will be taken from 
 them even that they seem to have. Though God is lavish in the be- 
 stowal of grace, he never squanders grace, and Christ bids his disciple 
 follow a similar rule, and cast not their pearls before swine who will 
 trample them underfoot. The promise is handed down from age to 
 age and from generation to generation, enlarging as it goes. "It is 
 from faith to faith." "The just shall live by faith," is a universal law 
 in the kingdom of grace ; by such faith as they have the means of form- 
 ulating in the day and generation in which they Mve. Paul spoke to 
 the Athenians of a god whom some of them had ignorantly wor- 
 shipped, and why not, presumably, with a saving sincerity? It is evi- 
 dent there were men and women in Athens not content with the popular 
 mythology, and who concluded there must be something better. This 
 was an inchoate faith, but it was faith, and though it was as yet with- 
 out form and void, an Areopagite and certain women were ready to 
 hsten to Paul when he gave a name to the unnamed, and definiteness 
 to the unknown God. There is an equation of faith ; there is an equa- 
 tion of law ; there is an equation of gospel, a provisional and a tempo- 
 rary gospel, and a substantial and real one which imparts ejSicacy to 
 the whole. For is he the God of the Christian only who believes up to 
 the light he has? Is he not also the God of the heathen who beheves 
 also up to the light he has? 
 
 THREE BOOKS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE TAKEN UP 
 LARGELY WITH THE THEOLOGY OF NATURE. 
 
 These three books are Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes ; they form 
 
 46 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 91 
 
 part of the sacred canon, and are there by the endorsement of the 
 Holy Spirit. They form also a part of the literature of the theology 
 of nature. The special value of them in this connection is that they 
 have the imprimatur of the Holy Spirit as being correct representa- 
 tions of the thought of their times. This does not mean that the Holy 
 Spirit endorses all that is said, as the reasoning of Job's three friends, 
 for example, was repudiated by God himself. Nevertheless, it is a 
 correct statement of the way they reasoned, and of the progress men 
 had made in ethical discovery from the hght of nature. The value of 
 these books is not yet fully assessed, but they will be properly rated 
 some day when the final summing up of human experience is con- 
 summated. These books are not only books of the past ; they are also 
 books of the future. The fixing of their place in the sum total of re- 
 hgious and moral ascertainments will be largely a work of the genera- 
 tions to come. 
 
 THE BOOK OF JOB. 
 
 In the book of Job we find that the comprehensive subject of dis- 
 cussion was the divine administration of human affairs. Under it the 
 problems of good and evil, of God's methods in general, of divine 
 providence in particular, and of his treatment of specific cases all come 
 in for detailed consideration. The scope of the discussion was far- 
 reaching, involving some principles that would reach back affecting 
 angelic conditions in pre-Adamic ages, and reaching forward into 
 coming eternity. The striking feature of the whole discussion is the 
 fact that in the main the arguments of all the disputants were drawn 
 from the light of nature. This shows that so late as Job's day, eight 
 hundred years after the flood, there was a clear knowledge of Jehovah 
 and of his chief attributes still existing. There are some faint refer- 
 ences to direct revelation, but they did not quote from any sacred 
 books, as they reasoned from premises to conclusions; they appealed 
 to the natural conscience, to the lessons of history, to the teachings of 
 
 47 
 
92 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 human experience, and to the transmitted light of earher days. "For 
 inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the 
 search of their fathers," all of which is an appeal to the light of nature. 
 The rehgious and moral lesson from the book of Job and which 
 will enter into a final estimate of human responsibility in different 
 ages of the world is the setting forth, both of the sufficiency and of the 
 insufficiency of the theology of nature. It will sufficiently guide men 
 in the right way if they wish to be guided; if they are not responsive, 
 it is their own fault, and they are without excuse. It is insufficient be- 
 cause man's eyes are made for a more exceeding measure of light, and 
 needs the fullest blaze in order to the highest development ; and further, 
 because man's normal perversity is so great, and so grows upon him 
 age by age, that only an intense concentration of light and heat rays 
 will suffice to affect him at the last. The spiritual demand of the lat- 
 ter ages of humanity exceed in scope and f uUness the demands of the 
 earlier age. The book of Job is a justifier of the ways of God with 
 the men in primitive generations. 
 
 THE BOOK OF PROVERBS. 
 
 Here is a book of extended length in the very heart of the Scrip- 
 tures ; it does not seem to have any special adaptation to the great plan 
 that is developed in Holy Writ, beginning with Genesis and ending 
 with Revelations. Is it then an alien in the inspired procession? Far 
 from it. Those proverbs were certainly not all of them written by in- 
 spired men, but the collection and incorporation of them in the Bible 
 record is by a decree of inspiration. Proverbs are condensed summar- 
 ies of popular wisdom, of common experience, and of general accept- 
 ances among men. It is this feature that gives them their value. 
 Every nation and every tribe has its proverbs, — even savages have 
 them. The more cultured and literary peoples have them by the 
 thousands. The Indian peoples have them in multitudes ; the Chinese 
 
 48 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 93 
 
 have them in number quite equal to those of Solomon, many of them 
 covering the same ground and teaching the same lessons as do those 
 of Solomon. These proverbs indicate the progress of the ages 
 through milleniums of existence. Their applications are religious, 
 moral, social, political, industrial and economic. Not only are they 
 descriptive and declarative of character in the past, but they are also 
 predictive and formative of character in the future. 
 
 A study of these proverbs discloses several things of weight; in- 
 deed they may be said to form a volume of practical ethics towards 
 God and towards man. They present summaries of human experi- 
 ence and practical living ; they reveal the blessing that is in well-doing, 
 and the curse that is in evil-doing; they exalt trtithfulness and hon- 
 esty and industry and purity ; they are witnesses on the side of religion, 
 of morality, and of industrial thrift. As go its proverbs, so measur- 
 ably heads the nation, though not always forcibly and successfully, for 
 it is always falling off before the wind, as regards both rehgion and 
 morality. 
 
 so IT IS WITH THE PROVERBS OF SOLOMON. 
 
 Three thousand of these proverbs are spoken of ; they were not all 
 composed by Solomon; he sought them out and set them in order, so 
 they are not all Jewish proverbs, but were the proverbs of all the na- 
 tions round about. They therefore represent the moral state of per- 
 haps a score of nations. Of course as might be expected in the case of 
 Solomon, they are pervaded with a theistic spirit and theistic concep- 
 tions throughout; but they are also of a much higher grade than are 
 the proverbs of the idol-worshipping nations. Wisdom is exalted on 
 a lofty pedestal, and is manifestly something higher than ordinary 
 human wisdom. Notably, the traits of virtue-loving and correctly- 
 walking members of the community are commended, whilst the traits 
 of the vicious and the scornful are held up to universal reprobation. 
 
 Our interest in the proverbs of Solomon in this connection lies in 
 
 49 
 
94 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 their religious and moral bearing. There is no exphcit mention of 
 Christ, as in Isaiah and the Prophets; but in the word Wisdom there 
 is a manifest reference to some one who will be the impersonification 
 of wisdom, and who can be none other than Christ. But the absence 
 of such explicit reference is in exact accord with the plan and the pur- 
 pose of the book, which is to be a text book in the possibilities of 
 natural religion ; as such, it stands out unique. Even if a man had no 
 other book than these Proverbs, it would guide him in his treatment of 
 his fellow men. Its reference to a Living supreme, mere starlight only 
 though it might be, would be sufficient as a light in a dark place until 
 the daybreak and the shadows flee away. God hath not left himself 
 without witness. 
 
 THE BOOK OF ECCLESIASTES. 
 
 A singularly unique place does this book occupy in the sacred 
 canon. It is certainly a book of the remote past, and yet certainly a 
 book of the remote future, for it is a prophecy of things yet to come. 
 The writer of it was King in Jerusalem; he was possessed of all the 
 appliances of wealth and luxury. With time on his hand, with re- 
 sources at his command, with great mental capacity and of a restless 
 inquiring spirit, he set out to put to the test the power of pleasure and 
 enjoyment that could be supposed to lie in all these things. He began 
 his round; he went from one thing to another. As one thing proved 
 to be a disappointment, he dropped it and tried another thing; when 
 that also failed him, he took up with something new again. So it 
 went on, change after change, round after round, experience after ex- 
 perience, until he had completed the wearisome list of possibilities. 
 Everything proved futile, until at last he had to sum up the totalities 
 of his experiences. He then put it on record, and put it as the final 
 conclusion of the whole matter : in order for any one to make a success 
 of life, he must fear God and keep his commandments; this was the 
 whole duty of man; outside of that any and all human endeavor to 
 
 50 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 95 
 
 be blessed would prove to be a bitter disappointment. "Vanity and 
 vexation of spirit; vanity of vanities, all is vanity." 
 
 Viewed in this light, the book of Ecclesiastes, instead of being a 
 pessimistic wail that some have taken it to be, having no proper place 
 in record of a gospel of expectations, is one of the most impressive 
 courses of Divine pedagogy that we have in all the whole range of re- 
 ligious literature. 
 
 But now what gives its transcendent value is its prefigurative 
 and predicitive character. It takes its place alongside of 
 all those figurative institutes, incidents and observances which 
 so abound in the Old Testament, in which a smaller round 
 of occurrences is made an analogue of a larger round to 
 come; thus we all accept the experience of a natural Israel in 
 its journey to the Land of Promise as an analogue of spiritual Israel 
 on the w*ay to heaven. Solomon's individual experiences were an 
 epitome of race experiences as a whole ; that is, Solomon's experiences 
 are an analogue of the experience of humanity. All that is in accord 
 with the divine method of teaching in which a microcosm outlines a 
 megacosm, — a thing present, a thing future, — a thing earthly, a thing 
 heavenly. When humanity has reached its stent of history in the 
 future, then will moralists re-write and re-read the character of its suc- 
 cessive generations, and the book of Ecclesiastes will be found to be 
 one of the most up-to-date books of the times. As Solomon found it, 
 so have we found it; as God said he would do, so have we all found 
 that he has done. "The Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of 
 the earth, and shall say : Surelj^ our fathers have inherited lies, vanity 
 and things wherein there is no profit." The lesson of all human ex- 
 perience, and all nations of mankind is "fear God and keep his com- 
 mandments, for this is the whole duty of man." "For God shall bring 
 every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good 
 or whether it be evil." 
 
 51 
 
96 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 II. THE STAGE OF HEATHEN 
 CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 
 
 Having lost the knowledge of the true God and being still im- 
 pelled by those laws planted within them and instinctive belief in in- 
 visible being, future existence and future rewards and punishments, 
 men now began to construct religions of their own, and to devise other 
 gods out of their own hearts. 
 
 The first chapter of Romans contains an inspired account of the 
 genesis of heathenism, the development of heathenism, the sentence of 
 heathenism, and the judgment on heathenism. In face of that chapter 
 it is impossible to see how men can say, as do some professors of com- 
 parative rehgion, that heathenism is a stage in a movement towards 
 God, and therefore has divine endorsement. This makes God do evil 
 that good may come. Heathenism has never been a movement to- 
 wards God, but a movement away from God. 
 
 The key to the whole defection is contained in the words: "They 
 did not like to retain God in their loiowledge." Having created a 
 vacuum in their own minds and hearts, they must now fill it with sub- 
 stitutes. The materials they had for their various constructions of 
 heathenism, were, as already intimated, — ( 1 ) natural belief in the ex- 
 istence of gods and spirits of some kind ; ( 2 ) natural belief in rewards 
 and punishments in a future state; (3) a constraining and a restrain- 
 ing conscience ; (4) a sense of dependence on superior beings ; (5) re- 
 mains of early traditions and revelations ; (6) environment; (7) man- 
 ipulations, — to these must be added Satanic manipulations. 
 
 It will be noted that the different systems of ancient heathenism 
 all took their rise about the same time, and that for the reason that they 
 took their departure from God about the same time, and with a com- 
 mon imjoulse of their corrupt natures. Sabeism, Hinduism, Con- 
 fucianism, the worship of ancestors and of deified heroes, are all of 
 them most ancient forms of religion. It is to be further noted that 
 
 52 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 97 
 
 the further back we go the less gross and sensual we find to be the re- 
 ligious conceptions of men. Indeed, their first idolatries did not imply 
 direct repudiation of Jehovah. The calf that Aaron made was 
 more of an advance in their estimation than a supercedure, it 
 ^v^as only giving to Jehovah a visible form: "These be thy 
 gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of 
 Egypt." Jehovah was made to assume the form of a calf. 
 The same thing is presumably true about other forms of primi- 
 tive idolatry. Sun worship was at first monotheistic. The Egyptian's 
 Sun was divided up into the morning sun, the mid-day sun, and the 
 setting sun. To the men of that day, the one and the three were all 
 representative of the Living God. It is not at all strange that to the 
 men of old the Sun should be the chief emblem of deity. The life of 
 nature apparently proceeded from it. But God utterly repudiated, 
 and condemned to destruction all such attempts to materialize himself, 
 — ^a spiritual being. Such worship is not accepted as a worship of Je- 
 hovah. The conception of Jehovah is lost in the transmission, and the 
 things they sacrifice they sacrifice to devils. 
 
 We must not fail to note the steps in this down grade ; the order 
 is indicated by the apostle, — "Because that when they knew God they 
 glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in 
 their imagination, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing 
 themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the 
 incorruptible God into an image made like too corruptible man, and to 
 birds, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things." It is a tre- 
 mendous stride from lofty sun-worship down to the worship of slimy 
 snakes; yet that is the course that heathenism has run. It certainly 
 was not God who led them along that tortuous road leading to the 
 mouth of the pit. Teachers of comparative religion, who want to es- 
 tablish a divine element in heathenism, may dislike to admit that Satan 
 was in it. We positively affirm that it was not God who was in it. 
 
 To these statements the facts of human history all correspond. 
 
 53 
 
98 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 The first stage was the dignified and refined worship of the host of 
 heaven which occupied the human mind for some hundreds of years. 
 The second stage followed when prominence was given to men of re- 
 nown, to heroes, and to dead ancestors. The Greek and Roman pan- 
 theon with its Jupiters, its Saturns, its Mercuries and its Venuses who 
 lived like mortals, reveled like mortals, intrigued like mortals, and 
 fought and scratched and bit each other like mortals, mark the second 
 part of the downward grade. In close succession followed the reptile 
 and the groveling stage, when animals were adored, when monkeys 
 were worshiped, and snakes were honored as gods. Then Satan's 
 work of bestializing and devilizing mankind was complete. 
 
 And still there is another combination, — a combination which 
 calls to mind the unnatural blending of a man and a fish, as was Dagon 
 of the Philistines in order to make an object of worship. It is charac- 
 teristic of such systems that they do not seek the dim shadow of heathen 
 darkness for their development; they spring up in the blaze of Chris- 
 tian sunUght. Among them we must include Mormonism, Eddyism, 
 Spiritism, and certain minor systems which are not yet fully de- 
 veloped, but which seem to be on the way. In all these, some arrogant 
 and usurping human leadership guides the movement, while the Bible 
 is appealed to to furnish phraseology and form of concept for what is 
 only a new form of idolatry. All claim that they are in harmony with 
 the Bible. What they want to contend for is that the Bible is in 
 harmony with them; but they override the Bible and explain away its 
 teachings when it conflicts with the teachings of their books. These 
 systems are classified as semi-heathen, for such they are. They have 
 little in common with the system of the Bible, save its stolen 
 phraseology. 
 
 It is characteristic of organized heathenism that it tries to meet 
 some of the essential needs of the human soul, or to say, what is prob- 
 ably nearer the truth, that imperative longings of the human soul have 
 embodied themselves in formulas which afterward are incorporated 
 
 54 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 99 
 
 into their several systems, though they may have been added to or 
 modified by subsequent teachers among themselves. Heathenism is not 
 always the product of these leaders of thought; it is often an expres- 
 sion of the sentiment of their people, and is a slow growth during suc- 
 cessive generations. Mythological and speculative monstrosities are 
 added by their adventurous thinkers as might be expected. There are 
 things in heathenism intended to satisfy the conscience, other things 
 intended to satisfy the cravings of a solution for the profound myster- 
 ies of being; and other things again intended to explain the condition 
 of things in the world around. These systems serve a purpose after 
 their sort; they do not satisfy, but they do pre-occupy, and do 
 hinder the entrance of genuine light, and they do administer so- 
 porifics which make it difficult to arouse the soul out of its stupor. A 
 study of these heathen systems is a needful concomitant of missionary 
 service; but it is too vast a subject to be entered into here, and with 
 this remark it must be relegated to an appendix. Such books as Hard- 
 wick's, "Christ and Other Masters," Monier WilHams' book on 
 Hinduism, Rhys David and Spence Hardy on Buddahism, Dr. 
 Legge on Confucianism, will furnish sufficiently adequate survey 
 of the whole field to start with. 
 
 IS ANY PART OF HEATHENISM OF DIVINE ORIGIN? 
 
 Right here comes in an issue which requires immediate consider- 
 ation. It is a favorite thesis to some students of Comparative Religion 
 that heathenism, partially at least, is of divine origin as already stated. 
 These students ask the question: "Is there not some good in heathen 
 precepts, and if so, did not that part of it come from God?" "The 
 Devil does not incorporate good in a system," — so they say. But 
 now that depends ; of his own accord and for his own sake, Satan does 
 not incorporate good, but if the admixture of some truth will enable 
 him to give effect to a deal of deadly falsehood, we expect him to do 
 it. We are not ignorant of his devices. The good that is in heathen 
 
 55 
 
100 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 teaching came from the lingering light of revelation, or from a sur- 
 viving tradition of better days, and notably from the law written on 
 the table of the heart. We know where thej^ got their ideas of sacri- 
 fice for sin; they came from the days of Noah before there was any 
 heathen system of any kind. The ten commandments of Buddhism 
 came from moral law written on the heart before there was any Bud- 
 dhism, and so with all of their clear discernments of the rights of man 
 found in the code of Hammurabi, the laws of Manu, the Analects of 
 Confucius and still other heathen summaries of right and wrong be- 
 tween man and man. It is not necessary to come down to the days of 
 Moses ; they were older than Moses ; they were older than Hammurabi ; 
 they were as old as the human heart on which they were written by the 
 same divine finger that afterwards wrote them on the tables of stone. 
 We do not think the spade has yet completed its work of digging up 
 buried evidence. IMen are now claiming that the use of an ark as a 
 rehgous emblem is older than Moses, and that he was only a copyist. 
 He was no copyist. We are told in Exodus where he got his whole 
 series of designs; they came from God in the first place. Though as 
 yet we have not the evidence that it was so, yet if it should turn out 
 that an ark and its attended paraphernalia were used before Moses, 
 we shall then be on the lookout for further evidence of what there was 
 in the rehgious thought of that early time ; there may have been an en- 
 deavor to perpetuate the memory of the ark as a means of salvation, 
 just as afterward men wanted to perpetuate the brazen serpent for 
 the same purpose. The Christian archaeologist has nothing to fear 
 and everything to hope for from the diligent use of the spade. God 
 has a deal of evidence yet hid away like the memorial of the prophet to 
 be "found after many days." 
 
 One of the new speculations of this generation is that God has 
 assigned to each one of a dozen nations some special moral problem 
 to work out, and then all their results are twisted into a common cable 
 to be used as a tow-line for Christianity. Mohammedanism, they say, 
 
 56 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 101 
 
 furnishes a strand; Hindusim, a strand; Buddhism a strand; Con- 
 fucianism a strand; and Judaism a strand, and so on all the way- 
 through. This conjecture is fanciful in the extreme; we know of not 
 a word of Scripture to support it, nor is there anything in actual 
 human experience to justify it. Instead of being helps to Chris- 
 tianity, these heathen religions are hindrances. In India when the 
 question is put: "What is the greatest hindrance to the entrance of 
 Christianity?" — the answer is, "Hinduism"; in Ceylon it is Buddhism; 
 in China is is Confucianism, and in Turkey it is Mohammedanism. 
 To say that God, in order to prepare the way for the Christianity of his 
 Christ, preoccupied the ground with a false religion, which is found 
 to be the greatest hindrance to his purpose, is to attribute to him a 
 want of business capacity that would discredit an apprentice. As 
 against all this, we deny that Christianity has borrowed any material, 
 or any suggestions whatever from heathenism. Heathenism, on the 
 contrary, has borrowed from Jehovah worship. Christianity has a 
 full and a divinely given outfit of its own, clothed in symbols and 
 words which the Holy Ghost teacheth. Its doctrines are its own; its 
 usages are its own; its methods are its own; and its power is its own. 
 A seeming exception to this is the "nomenclature of religion," but the 
 exception is seeming only. That part of the religious phraseology 
 which is really serviceable to us is that originating from the inner 
 laws of rehgion and morality written in the heart ; so heathenism is not 
 entitled to the credit of any of it. Even such nomenclature as they 
 have is like a flagon made to hold wine, but which has been used for 
 bailing out tar; it is hard to get the taste of the tar scoured out. Be- 
 sides, the working terminology of to-day which is doing effective work, 
 is one which missionaries have gradually elaborated for themselves. 
 
 In old times certain leaders of human thought proposed to have 
 an image of Christ set up in the pantheon. In our days the proposed 
 enlargement is in the other direction; it is proposed to instal heathen- 
 ism among the builders of God's revelation. A precedent for this has 
 
 57 
 
102 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 come down to us from the days of Nehemiah. Eliashim prepared a 
 lodging place for Tobiah in the courts of the house of God. Nehemiah 
 says about it: "And it grieved me sore, therefore I cast forth all the 
 household of Tobiah out of the chambers, then I commanded and they 
 cleansed the chambers, and thither brought I again the vessels of the 
 house of the Lord with the meat offering and the frankincense." If 
 rejection and fumigation took place once, it may have to take place 
 again, — "The thing that hath been is the thing that shall be," — says 
 Solomon. 
 
 III. THE STAGE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULA- 
 TION AND INQUIRY. 
 
 The constructions of the heathen mind with all their foolish cos- 
 mogonies did not satisfy the more thinking ones among them ; so they 
 began to seek a better explanation of the phenomena of existence, 
 and thousands of years before Heeckel was born, they were agitating 
 the subject and laboring at the riddle of the universe. Philosophy 
 came in to supercede the blundering of priestcraft, which had held the 
 human mind in thraldom for its hundreds of years already, but which 
 had reached no result. The word Philosophy is our modern term for 
 what in the ancient term was known as Wisdom. A philosopher is a 
 man who claims to love wisdom for its own sake ; pure, unadulterated 
 wisdom, no matter where it is to be found, and no matter whither it 
 may lead, — what they say they want is Truth, plain, simple, substantial, 
 universal, eternal and divine Truth ; and surely there could be nothing 
 nobler under the sun for the men of intellect and candor than the dis- 
 sipation of error and the ascertainment of truth. The fullness of the 
 field, of philosophical inquiry, subsequently open to men, was not per- 
 ceived at the outset. Its dimensions widened as progress was made, 
 and this has been and ever will continue to be a perplexity to the philo- 
 sophic thinker. While his scope of vision has widened immensely, he 
 
 58 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 103 
 
 thinks he can see pretty near to the end already; but his horizon re- 
 cedes, and continues to recede, and keeps on receding forever, and that 
 is the trouble. He is not alone in this. The man of Science, who is 
 sounding the depths in his department, finds his plummet too short 
 and has no means of lengthening it. His apparatus for investigation 
 is scanty, and far more scanty than it need be if he would be willing 
 to believe only some few of those things which have been told to him 
 which came from God. He relies wholly on his own power of ratiocin- 
 tion ; he knows how to work by means of the sylogism, how to compare, 
 how to deduce, how to reason, and how to reach conclusions; but he 
 lacks data. He can pry if he can only get a fulcrum. Hypothesis 
 and speculation and tentative thought are largely his methods of ap- 
 proach to his theme; but this constitutes the most difficult method of 
 human research, for in a reasoning process there are primary premises 
 and primary conclusions, and then there are secondary premises and 
 secondary conclusions, and there are tertiary premises and tertiary 
 conclusions, and so on, we might say, forever. But the difficulty of 
 drawing correct conclusions increases enormously as we advance to 
 the third and fourth and fifth and sixth alignments of thought. The 
 possibilities of mistakes and the certainty of sophistries and fallacies, 
 and non-sequiters, can hardly be exaggerated. Yet here the philoso- 
 pher is formulating a theory, working at it for a little while, then giv- 
 ing it up, to go through the same process with a new theory, and then 
 suddenly finding out that his whole apparatus needs readjusting. 
 There is something captivating to a human intellect in a man's throw- 
 ing himself bravely into deep water, trusting to his native powers, and 
 his ability to dive to the bottom and bring up some pearl of great price. 
 The line of philosophers from the old Aryans, and from Thales the 
 Greek, down to the German and Anglo-Saxons of modern time, con- 
 tain a succession of the strongest, brightest and most acute intellects 
 the world has ever seen. That such an array of heavy-weight thinkers 
 has been alloted to them by a Providence careful in the utihzation of its 
 
 59 
 
104 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 resources need not excite surprise. If it were possible for philosophy 
 to solve the great problems before it, and to know God by its own in- 
 herent sagacity, then what need of another revealer coming down from 
 heaven. If philosophy did not have the very best opportunity, and the 
 very best expounders that humanity affords, then it might be alleged 
 that it had not yet had a chance to do its best. Therefore God has 
 assigned them this great cavalcade of scholars to carry on their search 
 for them. If such men cannot achieve success, then nobody can, for 
 there is no indication that the acuteness of the world's intellect wiU 
 ever surpass them. The verdict therefore remains for the "word which 
 was made flesh and dwelt among us." The world by wisdom knew 
 not God. The philosopher by searching could not find out God, at 
 least he did not. 
 
 AVHY PRIMITIVE PHILOSOPHY FAILED. 
 
 The reason for this failure lay largely in his defective method 
 and in his unreliable verifying test. The old Aryan philosopher 
 started out with his confused tradition of a Supreme Being. He said 
 this being dwelt alone in solitude, supreme and unapproachable. "The 
 Great Sohtary One." He was discontented because he had no progeny 
 and resolved to transmute himself into creation, into a universe full of 
 life and activity, that should contrast with the previous eternal qui- 
 etude. Hence came the sun, the moon and the stars, flowers and ani- 
 mals, fishes and insects, and all these are parts of God, and are God. 
 He himself is the ineffable, the incomprehensible, sole-hypostasis of 
 all that is, the absolute monistic substance of all being, the protoplasm 
 of the universe. He is the undeveloped universe, while the universe, 
 including all the imps and devils, is simply developed and organized 
 deity. 
 
 This view soon failed to satisfy the demand of the more thought- 
 ful intellects, even at that early day. Then followed the Sankya phil- 
 osophy, the progenitor of all the schools of pure reason. It took a 
 
 60 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 105 
 
 more practical turn by seeking for a panacea for all ills by resolving 
 all intellectual difficulties, and by revealing the real nature of all that 
 is. Kapila might have been able to satisfy his own mind, though that 
 is doubtful, but he could not answer anxious questions put to him about 
 the Supreme Intelligence. When asked by whom the human soul 
 had been made to emanate, or why the great primordial eternal was 
 individualized in human bodies, he could only say it had always been 
 so, and was a step in an inscrutable and eternal process. 
 
 A new school of Sankya followed and a foundation was laid for 
 the philosophic religion of Buddha. But whatever the variation, the 
 same speculative conjecture pervades them all. They reached no- 
 where and they settled nothing. 
 
 THE TORCH OF PHILOSOPHY IN TRANSITION. 
 
 It was then that the torch of philosophical inquiry passed over to 
 the Greeks, as already pointed out. Whence, Why, How and 
 Whither? The Physicists led off and the JSIathematicians followed. 
 What is the beginning of all things? "It is moisture," said Thales. "It 
 is air," said Anaximenes, and the rattle of clubs and the battering of 
 shields began, and has since continued without a let-up. For twenty- 
 four hundred years has the tournament gone on. The Indians died 
 and gave place to the Greeks; the Greeks died and gave place to the 
 Germans; but they have formulated no conclusion yet. Hypothesis 
 has been pitted against hypothesis, but the all-embracing unity has 
 not been found. The brain energy expended has been enormous ; the 
 intellectual achievements are a monument of wonder. The mass of 
 teachings fill volumes; the broken derricks are heaped lip like cord- 
 wood; the burnt-out beUows htter the ground. 
 
 And now England and America are having their turn ; but neither 
 have their men of philosophy reached a terminus. Herbert Spencer, 
 one of the greatest of modern philosophers, has elaborated his Syn- 
 thetic Philosophy. With him as with others, the kinship of all knowl- 
 
 6i 
 
106 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 edge is indisputable. He sees that all the lines converge, as the spokes 
 of the wheel converge to a common centre, and he has been trying to 
 find the hub, but he has not found it. He had got to the point where 
 he said that all the entities and phenomena of existence could be ex- 
 pressed in terms of Matter, Force, Emotion. Behind that he said he 
 could not go. The truth is that back of that he did not want to go; 
 for if he had taken another step he would have stood face to face with 
 the fact of a living and personal God. 
 
 THE SHORTAGES OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The current philosophy of the day has made a little progress in 
 some quarters towards something ultimate and final. Philosophy in 
 our day is driven to postulate a supreme potential energy of some 
 kind ; but in the main it is still in a bog of indefiniteness and uncer- 
 tainty. It talks of evolution, and it talks of monism ; it talks of physi- 
 ology ; it talks of physchology ; it has a nomenclature of new and per- 
 plexing terms, which have to be revamped every little while. But the 
 vast enigma remains unexplained. Whence came the universe? 
 What is the purpose of the universe? What is to be the final destiny 
 of the universe? and whence came moral evil? and how are we to get 
 rid of it? What is behind Force? What is back of Motion? What 
 is the substratum of ^Matter? Shall we be told the unknown and the 
 unknowable? Then what have we gained since the days of the 
 Aryans. They told us of perpetual ebb and flow. They set forth a 
 rounded system of monism. They told us of evolution. They dis- 
 coursed about an inexplicable energy. Israel of old started out from 
 Kadesh Barnea, and after forty years' wandering brought up at 
 Kadesh Barnea again. And like unto them the weary and footsore 
 columns of philosophy will bring up where its leaders started thousands 
 of years ago, that is, one portion of them will. The other portion will 
 not, and that is the portion that disdains to accept a clew from the Al- 
 mighty. 
 
 62 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH IO7 
 
 IS SOUND PHILOSOPHY INIMICAL TO GOD AND TRUTH? 
 
 And is philosophy then inimical to the truth of God? By no 
 means. Philosophers themselves, some of them are inimical; but it is 
 not philosophy that made them so ; it is because their own hearts have 
 been averse to disclosures concerning a holy God. It is hohness they 
 dislike, and it is the distaste for the holy that warps their judgment 
 and that limits their ascertainment. The objects of study to which 
 philosophers, have devoted themselves are all of them parts of God's 
 creation. One line of God's truth is never at war with another line of 
 his truth. Therefore philosophy if rightly studied will lead towards 
 God. It will not discover all the truth about God that needs to be 
 known, but it will discover a vast deal more than undevout philoso- 
 phers have ever deemed possible. The true measure of sound philo- 
 sophical ascertainment, and the uplifting impulse heavenward and 
 Godward belong to the students of the future. When skeptically 
 predisposed philosophers have done their utmost, and have exposed 
 their inability, another class will arise to work over their materials, and 
 fit them for a place in the temple of eternal truth. The philosophy 
 builders of the past have wrought for a structure in which God was 
 not. They handle many of his truths, but himself, the author of them, 
 they ignore. The philosophy builders of the future will have God in 
 all their thoughts. They will accept God as the starting point. The 
 fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. They will recognize God 
 in all their progress, and they will point their disciples to God as the 
 end and consummation of all wisdom. Philosophy will then go hand 
 in hand with theology and become its obedient handmaid, while the- 
 ology in return will make the castofF slag of their furnaces even irri- 
 descent with glory. 
 
 IV. THE STAGE OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 
 AND ASCERTAINMENT. 
 
 This is a modren phase. We have but recently entered upon it, 
 
 63 
 
108 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 and have as yet only begun to enumerate its discoveries and to draw 
 conclusions. The years of the immediate future are to be full of the 
 wonders of science. Its contributions to the sum total of human 
 knowledge, and notably to theology, as will be found, is inestimable, 
 philosophy discredited and superseded the pretensions of priestcraft 
 in human thought, so in turn it is coming to pass that science begins 
 to dispute the claims of philosophy to leadership. So many were the 
 uncertainties of speculative thought, and so conflicting were the con- 
 clusions reached after hundi-eds of years of trial, that a new school of 
 thinkers came to the fore. They declared philosophic theorizing to be 
 wholly unreliable. They started a school for the study of facts, and 
 to induction from established facts only. The result was the inaugura- 
 tion of the Inductive Philosophy, culminating in Inductive Science, 
 And so Science forged ahead to the front, and there it is to-day leading 
 the vanguard of thought in many intellectual circles. 
 
 Science applies itself to the study of phenomena and the laws of 
 nature. It professes to exclude all theorizing from its apparatus, and 
 it excludes also the credenda of the faith. What can be established 
 by incontrovertible facts it accepts. What cannot be so established it 
 regards with disfavor. As a consequence of its method its field of 
 observation is self -circumscribed. The man who says he will accept 
 nothing but what he has verified for himself is at once shut up to nar- 
 row confines. How much of all the arcana of knowledge which he 
 professes to believe, and which he really does believe has he ever 
 demonstrated or worked out for himself? Has he calculated for him- 
 self the distance of the sun — the size of the earth — the composition of 
 water — of air — and of a hundred other things ? Not at all. He takes 
 them all on trust from somebody who has worked them out, or who 
 does know. That is why the Christian believes what he does about the 
 creation of the heavens and the earth. He takes the word of the person 
 who was there, who made them, and who does know. 
 
 In the pursuance of their inductive method scientists come to be- 
 
 64 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 109 
 
 lieve that law is supreme. The tendency with them is to do away with 
 any law-giver, and any superintending and administrative providence, 
 and to confine themselves to the possibilities of their own scales and 
 retorts, and crucibles, and measuring sticks. In the use of them great 
 progress has been made, and much more will be made. But as already 
 said, the same difficulties meet the scientists that has already met the 
 philosopher. The field widens as he advances, and it widens into an 
 interminable vista. He thought he was getting well along in his ex- 
 plorations, and was approaching some finality; but the finahty is far- 
 ther off than it was a hundred years ago. There is an infinity of vast- 
 ness in one direction, and an infinity of littleness in another. And so 
 the end is not reached in either direction. The power of the telescope 
 gives out, and the power of the microscope gives out. There is a mini- 
 mum of lens capacity and a maximum of lens in capacity. This maxi- 
 mum seems to be within reach already, when lo ! new stellar systems are 
 discernible in space, which cannot be resolved. And so in the way of 
 minute analysis, the complexity increases, while the capability of the 
 instrument decreases. Substances and elements that were supposed to 
 be simple are found to be complex. Gases that are supposed to be 
 primary are found to be combinations. More than once has a jubilant 
 "Eureka!" gone up from the laboratory as if the primordial constitu- 
 ents of nature has at last been discovered. But after a little while a 
 vague suspicion flashes in that further analysis is required, and yet the 
 implements are not to be had. How far yet is it to infinity back, and 
 infinity ahead; or from infinity above to infinity below? Where is the 
 scientist that can speak with confidence ? In one direction are yet sixty 
 unresolved elements that at present defy the finest instruments, and in 
 the disc area of our mightiest telescopes are tiny specks that refuse to 
 be measured. What are they, and what is beyond them again? 
 Science has pushed back the known, that is all; she has exhausted her- 
 self, but has not yet exhausted her problems, and never will. 
 
 Human language cannot exceed the eulogy due to science for the 
 
 65 
 
110 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 benefits it has conferred upon humanity by its discoveries. But when 
 it comes to answering the questions of ambitious and soaring intellects 
 it is pitiably irresponsive, and when it comes to the still deeper ques- 
 tions that concern the welfare of every human being, why am I a sin- 
 ner, and how shall I ever break the shackles that bind me? — ^it is sor- 
 rowfully dumb. What is science worth and what is philosophy worth, 
 with all their blazing torches of learning, if when I come to step down 
 into the dark valley they cannot furnish me a taper to hght up the 
 gloom. Of what use to me, then, is all the learned nonsense about the 
 fortuitous concourse of atoms ? Or the incessant round of change from 
 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, and back again? Is that the 
 best they can do in the way of a definition? If so, then a scientist who 
 talks that way is found to be a man who professes to have explored 
 the depths of science, and then sums up the work of his life in the utter- 
 ance of a platitude. "A fortuitous concourse of atoms" — what does 
 that amount to? A round of "change from the homogenous to the het- 
 erogenous and back again" ; and how much does he know now? Verily 
 the unsolved riddle of the universe is as much a riddle as ever. The 
 man has got back to the old speculation of the ancients. It is an ap- 
 plication to natural things of the old doctrine of metemphyschosis 
 among animated existences. 
 
 THE SHORTAGES OF SCIENCE. 
 
 As regards the fundamental question raised in the theology of 
 nature, the religions and the moral law of nature, and the gospel of 
 nature, science at present is a blank. All the law that it knows any- 
 thing about is physical law, or natural law in the natural world, the 
 law of weights and measures, the law of knives and scalpels, the law of 
 cause and effect in the realm of matter, unless it be that mind is mat- 
 ter, a question not yet settled among them. As for any gospel in the 
 ordinary sense of that word, there is none. There is "promise and 
 potencj^" for this life. There is length of days, and scope of enjoy- 
 
 66 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH HI 
 
 ment ahead when science has mastered the forces at work. But gospel 
 in relation to the world to come forms no part of its elaboration. Ex- 
 planation of the fact of sin there is none. Hope of delivery from sin 
 there is none. Yet in a full rounded scheme of knowledge, how can 
 these things be left out ? It is unscientific to leave them out ; it is hor- 
 ribly cruel to leave them out. The scientist says that the things of 
 morality, and the things of a future world do not lie in the sphere of 
 his researches. But why do they not ? Do they not concern humanity 
 as much as in the discovery of a new form of breakfast food, or the 
 composition of a new pill for stomach-ache? But science prefers to be 
 concerned only with things that can be proved by inductive process, 
 or be worked out with algebraic formulas. But then there are other 
 kinds of reasoning than algebraic, and there are other fields of 
 research than the physical, and in them there is as much room for sci- 
 entific skill as in the more materialistic domain. 
 
 IS TRUE SCIENCE ANTAGONISTIC TO RELIGION? 
 
 And is science then irreligious? By no means. The men of 
 science, like the men of philosophy, themselves are too often irre- 
 ligious ; neither do they love to retain God in their thoughts, and that 
 for the same reason that influences the undevout philosopher, they 
 shun the paths which have finger boards pointing to the unknown God. 
 They themselves are non-religious or irreligious, and therefore they 
 make their science non-religious or irreligious Hke themselves. If we 
 have a godless science it is because our expounders of science are god- 
 less men to start with. 
 
 Science itself is divine. All the data in its category are data come 
 from God. They come from God and they revert to God. There is not 
 a single branch of study in the whole curriculum which does not start 
 men on the way to God, if they would cease to hold down the truth in 
 unrighteousness. All the lines of true science lead upward and God- 
 w^ard. If they would let them but speak out instead of that utter 
 
 67 
 
112 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 nescience of God that characterizes them, they would be cr;v^ng out as 
 their discoveries proceed, as did the seraphim of Isaiah, "holy, holy, 
 holy is the lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." 
 
 And as with the philosopher, so again with the scientist. When 
 the latter was shown his inability to master the phenomena presented, 
 the Lord will raise up devout scientists who will do what the other has 
 failed to do. They will take up his facts ; they will include the moral 
 characteristics that attend them, but which the undevout scientist has 
 cast aside as the slag of his furnace. 
 
 They will take them all up and construct a new science which 
 will be truly and fully scientific. For the new science will have God 
 for its beginning and God for its ending, God for its author and God 
 for its finisher. The science of the future will be radiant with the 
 thoughts of God and fragrant with the frequent repetitions of His 
 name. Nothing is so striking in the science of to-day as the careful- 
 ness with which all reference to Him is avoided. Our text book on 
 astronomy or botany or geology, and kindred sciences, of great value 
 though thej'^ are, and composed some of them by Christian men, and 
 filled with occasions to point out the evidence of design, and purposes 
 of blessing, and to render luminous the existence of a personal God, 
 are nevertheless as devoid of all allusion to Him as if composed b}^ 
 heathen who never heard of Him. Indeed, any recognition of God is 
 considered out of place in a scientific treatise, or in a scientific class- 
 room. That is why science is so often called atheistic. Science always 
 talks of Nature, but never talks of Nature's God. 
 
 All that will pass away in the science of the future. Indeed, with 
 a few men it has passed away already. More than fifty years ago the 
 late General Mitchell, so distinguished as an astronomer, was accus- 
 tomed to deliver courses of lectures on his favorite science. He would 
 break forth into a rhapsody, as he said onc;e: "Gentlemen, how ought 
 we to regard a being who can do such things as these?" No wonder 
 that even unconverted hearers, as one of them himself told me, involun- 
 tarily bowed the head in worship. 
 
 68 ^ 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 113 
 
 We know a little already of what the science of the future will be 
 when the text-book and the classroom will begin to call on the name 
 of the Lord. The Bible is replete with illustrations. In that majestic 
 grand march of the creation, the Nineteenth Psalm, David does not 
 end, but he begins his astronomical survey by saying: "The heavens 
 declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. 
 Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowl- 
 edge." There is no speech nor language where their voice is 
 not heard; at present it may be said that with but few ex- 
 ceptions there is no speech nor language, nor text-book nor classroom 
 where it is heard. David always connected the name of God and the 
 hand of God with the ordinary meteorological events of the day. 
 "Thou visiteth the earth and watereth it; thou waterest the ridges 
 thereof abundantly; thou makest it soft with showers." In another 
 place he calls on all creation to unite in a grand diapason of praise. 
 "Praise him sun and moon and stars, praise him all ye stars of light; 
 praise ye the Lord ; ye dragons, and all deeps ; fire and hail, snow and 
 vapor, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountain and all hills, fi-uitful 
 trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying 
 fowl, kings of the earth and all people, princes and all judges of the 
 earth, both young men and maidens, old men and children, let them 
 praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is excellent, his glory 
 is above earth and heaven." This is a prediction of the way in which 
 science will be taught in the millenium, when everything will be made 
 to show forth his power, his wisdom, and his goodness. Praise ye the 
 Lord ! Praise God in his sanctuary ! Praise him in the firmament of 
 his power! Praise him for his mighty acts! Praise him for his ex- 
 cellent greatness. 
 
 FOUR GREAT SCHOOLS OF LEARNING. 
 
 It is fitting that this brief reference to the school of Philosophy 
 and the school of Science should be supplemented by a glance at the 
 
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114 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 teaching of quite anotiier school, — the School of Faith. There is also 
 the School of Experience with which men have had much to do 
 already, and with which they will have more to do when the footing 
 up time comes in the millenium. All these make their contributions 
 to the theology of nature and add their full measure of confirmation 
 to the theology of revelation when mankind takes its post graduate 
 course, and the great round-up of the nations is called in the program 
 of Providence. Philosophy is preeminently deductive in its method ; 
 science is inductive ; faith is receptive, and experience is ratifying and 
 confirmatory. There was a time when there was no school of philoso- 
 phy; there was a time again when there was no school of Science; 
 there never was a time when there w^as no School of Faith, and no 
 School of Experience. 
 
 THE SCHOOL OF FAITH. 
 
 Modern thinkers, fond of metaphysical formulas, abound 
 in intricate definitions of faith. It is spoken of as a special 
 sense which has a certain metaphysical insight into certain 
 liidden qualities. To common people, faith does not seem 
 to be so hard of explanation. In the final analysis. Faith 
 is simply believing. According to the Scriptures, a man may 
 believe with the head only, or he may believe with the heart only, or he 
 may beheve with both combined. It is the heart element that gives to 
 faith its moral character. If it is a mere matter of intellectual percep- 
 tion, it has no moral character. It is the attitude of the heart towards 
 a truth that determines the quality of the faith. Two persons may 
 beheve the same thing, but may feel very differently in regard to it. 
 The devils beheve there is one God; they beheve it because the evi- 
 dence is indisputable, but they hate it nevertheless. The Christian be- 
 heves there is one God ; he is glad of it and loves to have it so, and tries 
 to add to his conviction. Faith in the one case is a manifestation of 
 wickedness; in the other it is a manifestation of goodness; in every 
 
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Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 115 
 
 case, it is the heart. Take another illustration: exactly the same kind 
 of evidence is presented against a boy engaged in some mahcious trick- 
 ery ; a neighbor who dislikes the boj'", and is glad to believe anything to 
 his detriment, quickly accepts the whole story; his mother, who loves 
 the boy and who is not willing to accept anything to his discredit, will 
 not believe a word of it. Both are evidently sincere, and again it is 
 the heart that makes the difference. And so the Bible insists on men 
 believing with the heart, — "If thou believest in thine heart." The rea- 
 son why myriads of men do not believe the testimony that God has 
 given is because they don't want to. The heart dominates the in- 
 tellect. 
 
 FAITH OUR GREATEST SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 But the point now to be made is that faith is our greatest school 
 of learning. More of our knowledge comes in that way than from all 
 other sources combined. "By faith we understand," is the scientific 
 statement of Paul, the philosopher. We learn from books; we learn 
 from our parents; we learn from our teachers a thousand things we 
 should never know if we had to demonstrate them for ourselves. This 
 point has already been adverted to above. The knowledge we gain 
 through faith is thoroughly philosophic and thoroughly scientific; 
 nothing can be more so. It is also thoroughly judicial to take the tes- 
 timony of a credible and competent witness, or of an expert, or of the 
 deviser and manager of any sj^stem of causations. Not only is faith 
 our greatest source of knowledge as to quantity, but it is our most re- 
 liable source of knowledge as to quality. When, as a philosopher, or 
 as a scientist, we investigate and speculate and reason about the things 
 of God, we are liable to continue in mistakes. Our data may be 
 wrong; our premises may be wrong, and our inferences may be wrong, 
 and we may be years groping our way back. But if we take anything 
 on the word of the Omniscient, that is the end of it. We drop no 
 stitches; we have no loose ends to take up, and we have no aberrations 
 
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116 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 to correct. In the schools of Philosophy and Science, we have to lean 
 on ourselves; in the school of Experience, we have to wait until the 
 experiences are all in and counted ; but in the School of Faith, one sen- 
 tence from the Living God disposes of the whole matter. 
 
 THE METHOD OF FAITH AND THE METHOD OF SCIENCE. 
 
 In the school of Faith, the learner takes God's word for it ; in the 
 school of Science, the learner prefers to find out for himself. Which 
 is the better way? The difference between the two is that one is aprori^ 
 and the other is apostori. One begins at the top and goes down; the 
 other begins at the bottom and goes up. Thus if it were a question of 
 the rise, the course and the outlet of the Mississippi River, for ex- 
 ample, the aprori student begins at Turtle Lake; with chart in hand 
 on which it is all marked out, he goes down the river; he finds every 
 city and town just as marked on the map ; he lands at the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico where he was told at the start he would land. The aposteriori stu- 
 dent starts at the Gulf of Mexico and works his way up without any 
 chart, but he is not sure of any of his conclusions until he gets to the 
 end. When he gets there, then both students have the same informa- 
 tion, but they have gotten it in different ways. The attitude of the 
 Faith student and of the Science student may be illustrated in another 
 way. An Atlantic cable is laid from Queenstown to Halifax. One man 
 learns all about it from the shipmaster who laid the cable and who as- 
 sui es him that one end is at Queenstown and the other end at Halifax. 
 Another man says he will take no hearsay about it ; he will find out for 
 himself. Being possessed of vast wealth, he charters a vessel, and with 
 steam up, a mighty grapnel at the bow, he goes fishing up the cable 
 every few miles across the Atlantic, and finally comes out at Queens- 
 town. He triumphantly makes known his discoveiy to the world, and 
 he says, — "the great Atlantic cable has one end at HaUfax and one 
 end at Queenstown." It is announced as a wonderful scientific dis- 
 covery ! But now with all his toil, all his labor, all his time and all his 
 
 72 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 117 
 
 expense, what does he know more than the other man knew from the 
 start without the sacrifice of labor, or time, or money. 
 
 Apply this reasoning to the world of matter around us. The 
 Christian starts out with the dicta contained in the Bible; he beUeves 
 in a creator; he believes that God's hand made all these things; he 
 beheves that for his own glory, and that includes the blessedness of his 
 creatures, they are and were created. The scientist has not got there ; 
 for all these many years since his science became inductive, he has been 
 experimenting and feeling his way. He was not willing to admit a 
 personal Creator ; he believes in law, as he calls it, — fixed and unalter- 
 able law; he talks of energy, — of omnipotent energy. But little by 
 little has he been forced to drift towards the conclusion with which the 
 faith student started out. He, too, is beginning to admit that there 
 is and there must be a Living God who has not only created but sus- 
 tains all things by word of his power. The great problems so contin- 
 ually coming to the front in their studies, Whence, How, Why and 
 Whither, are no stumbling block to the student in the school of Faith. 
 In the word of God, which is his supreme guide, he sees his pathway 
 clear and marked out; he follows the predictions they contain, and is 
 ever moving towards his portal of rest. The dictum put forward so 
 frequently in our day, that if theology w^ould gain acceptance for it- 
 self, it must be put on a scientific basis, that is, must be established by 
 a scientific formula. To this reply is made already : That faith is emi- 
 nently philosophic and scientific as well as theologic; but it is more 
 than that; it transcends them all and holds sway in a domain which 
 none of them ever can reach except by the help of faith itself. Fun- 
 damental and distinctive articles of the credenda of the faith are be- 
 yond the power of philosophy to handle or even to touch. Among 
 these fundamental articles of belief are, — that Christ is coming to 
 judge the quick and dead; that He will give a crown of rejoicing 
 to all who long and look for his appearing; that He will take and 
 present us to His Father with exceeding joy; that we shall sit down 
 
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118 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 with Him on his throne, and a score of other things concerning which 
 Science cannot say yes, and it cannot say no. How can Science affirm 
 or deny that Christ is going to come in the clouds of Heaven ; how can 
 it affirm or deny that He will present us to His Father; how can it 
 affirm or deny that we shall sit on his throne ? It cannot. To attempt 
 any such scientific appHcation of its scientific method would only turn 
 rotaries into a scientific laughing stock. We who are Christians beheve 
 these things, not on scientific ground, but on the warrant of testimony. 
 We take Christ's word for it ; he said he will come, and we believe it ; 
 he said he will give us a crown, and we beheve it; he said we will sit 
 with Him on his throne, and we believe it, and we are glad of it, and 
 rejoice in hope of the Glory of God, and that is the end of the whole 
 matter. That is faith of the head and faith of the heart, and it is faith 
 in Christ and faith in God. 
 
 LET us HEAR THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER. 
 
 We take the privilege of repeating a little and of summing up 
 the points which are made in this discussion : 
 
 I. It is as proper to speak of the theology of Nature as of the the- 
 ology of Revelation; the two are distinct, and yet coordinate. 
 
 II. There is religious and a moral law of nature, written on the 
 table of every man's heart, which accuses or excuses every man the 
 same as does a judge. One law has to do with man's relation to 
 God, and the other law with his relations to his fellow men. 
 
 III. There is also and always has been since time began, a Gospel 
 of Nature, — a due regard for which is of the nature of faith, even 
 though very rudimentary in form, and which owes its value to the 
 relation it bears in the promise and plan of God to Christ the Lamb of 
 God, who redeems and takes up all the pledges, promises and portents 
 that God ever made. In all matters of apphcation of the gospel of 
 nature, God alone and never man is the exclusive judge and dispenser. 
 How many persons in all the ages may be saved by this gospel of nature 
 
 74 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 119 
 
 we have no means of knowing ; but that there are some, we confidently 
 believe; that there may be many, — a greater multitude perhaps than 
 we dare dream of, we devoutly hope. The gospel of nature seems to 
 be set over against the law of nature as Gerizim was sent over against 
 Ebal. This appears to be entirely reasonable and we think not unscript- 
 ural. It would be the height of presumption to dogmatize here, but if 
 it be so, a sort of seeming one-sidedness of God's judicial treatment of 
 men is taken away, and the Divine administration is rendered illustrious 
 in its equability. In these views there is nothing to cut the nerve of mis- 
 sions. Christ came that men might have life, and might have it more 
 abundantly ; having got it ourselves, we are bound by every considera- 
 tion of love and loyalty to impart it to others. If we aUow others to 
 abide in darkness, by witliliolding the torch which God has put into 
 our hands for them, we are robbers, and ourselves will have the dark- 
 ness gather upon us. In our own land even now there are callous souls 
 in which colorific and calorific rays have ceased to penetrate, and are 
 stumbling upon the dark mountains. It was a gracious and yet a fear- 
 ful sentence which Christ spake: — "For judgment am I come into this 
 world that they which see not might see, and they which see might be 
 made blind." Christ is the Son of Righteousness; his rays light up 
 the mountain tops before he himself appears, and also many a dark 
 valley out of the path of his orbit. For the darkness is past, and the 
 true light now shineth, — the true light that lighteneth every man that 
 Cometh into the world. Refracted rays, reflected rays and twihght 
 rays are all of theme sunlight rays. 
 
 IV. The river that went out of Eden to water the garden parted 
 into four streams. When the four great schools of learning are to 
 unite, the order will be reversed; they will unite before they enter 
 Eden. "When the union does come, the faith stream will give its name 
 to the waters of the whole. For faith is supreme and must be su- 
 preme ; for its credenda are a dicta of omniscience, and therefore faith 
 is ever sure of itself. The supreme and ultimate questions of the eter- 
 
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120 STONES IN THE ROUGH [Part II 
 
 nal world can only be answered by God himself. There will be no 
 antagonism there, though men create antagonisms here. A true phil- 
 osophy, a true science, a fully rounded human experience, and a true 
 theology will all be found coming in at the same time, at the same ter- 
 minal, and bearing the same testimony, — all having reached the same 
 conclusion. Philosophy and Science, footsore and weary with their 
 wanderings in the desert, will frankly admit their inabihty to find out 
 the Almighty to perfection, and the necessity of their falling back to 
 take a post-graduate course in the School of Faith. A great volume 
 can be filled with the things they have found out ; but a much greater 
 volume will be required for the things they don't know and cannot find 
 out until God tells them. They cannot now exhaust the mysteries 
 there is in a blade of grass ; the secret of life eludes them ; go which way 
 they will, they are always butting against the unknown. Human ex- 
 perience, having completed its round from Gilgal to Gilgal and from 
 Eden to Eden, will add its confirmatory testimony, "Like as the Lord 
 said he would do unto us, so hath he done." From the ends of the earth 
 Jiave we come, confessing that our Father's have inlierited vanity and 
 lies and things wherein there is no profit. Henceforth let us go up to 
 the mountain of the house of the Lord ; He will teach Us of his ways, 
 and henceforth we will walk in his paths. 
 
 This harmony will continue to exist in the next world as well as 
 at the close of this world, for there too must there be philosophic con- 
 ception of the plans of God, scientific study of the works of God 
 sought out of all them that have pleasure therein, living experience 
 of the ways of God and theological surveys of all the infinities of the 
 universe, and above all of the infinity of God himself. And then not 
 philosophy, not science will be in the ascendant, but faith. Faith will 
 be primate forever. A scientist of the world's type who discards the 
 data of faith and who wants to find out everything for himself, and 
 professes to deal only with phenomena, will be an exotic, an ignora- 
 mus and a nuisance, even to the end. As things now are, let science go 
 
 76 
 
Part II] STONES IN THE ROUGH 121 
 
 on and collect her facts ; when she gets them she will need a philosophy 
 to unite them into a system, and both philosophy and science will need a 
 theology of faith to coordinate them and fix their place in The 
 Science of God. 
 
 77 
 
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