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Experience and Revelation
and God's Existence and Nature
and The Goodness of God
On Natural Theology, Vol. 1 (Robert Carter & Brothers: 1857) pp. 71-3.
The prima facie evidence for a God may
not be enough to decide the question; but it should at least decide
man to entertain the question. To think upon how slight a variation
either in man or in external nature, the whole difference between
physical enjoyment and the most acute and most appalling of physical
agony may turn; to think how delicate the balance is, and yet how
surely and steadfastly it is maintained, so as that the vast majority
of creatures are not only upheld in comfort but often may be seen
disporting themselves in the redundance of gaiety; to think of the
pleasurable sensations wherewith every hour is enlivened, and how much
the most frequent and familiar occasions of life are mixed up with
happiness; to think of the food, and the recreation, and the study, and
the society, and the business, each having an appropriate relish of its
own, so as in fact to season with enjoyment the great bulk of our
existence in the world; to think that, instead of living in the midst
of grievous and incessant annoyance to all our faculties, we should
have awoke upon a world that so harmonized with the various senses of
man, and both gave forth such music to his ear, and to his eye such
manifold loveliness; to think of all these palpable and most precious
adaptations, and yet to care not, whether in this wide universe there
exists a being who has had any hand in them; to riot and regale oneself
to the uttermost in the midst of all this profusion, and yet to send
not one wishful inquiry after that Benevolence which for aught we know
may have laid it at our feet — this, however shaded from our view the
object of the question
may be, is, from its very commencement, a clear outrage against its
ethical proprieties. If that veil of dim transparency, which hides the
Deity from our immediate perceptions, were lifted up; and we should
then spurn from us the manifested God — this were direct and glaring
impiety. But anterior to the lifting of that veil, there may be
impiety. It is impiety to be so immersed as we are, in the busy objects
and gratifications of life; and yet to care not whether there be a
great and a good spirit by whose kindness it is that life is upholden.
It needs not that this great spirit should reveal Himself in characters
that force our attention to Him, ere the guilt of our impiety has
begun. But ours is the guilt of impiety, in not lifting our attention
towards God, in not seeking after Him if haply we may find Him.