know even as we have been known, but fundamental reality shorn of all

symbolism for ever lies beyond the powers of the creature.

If these limitations pertain even to the Christian, how impossible it

must appear to any less enlightened to arrive at a semblance of truth.  Men

have attempted to arrive at truth in two ways.  (1) The abstract method.  (2)

The concrete method.  It will only enhance the value of the Scriptures if we

pause to observe these abortive attempts of unsaved men.

The abstract method can be illustrated by a reference to what is known

as Porphyry's Tree.  In this method, the inquirer starts with some given

individual, say Socrates, and ascends by gradually omitting differences

through an indefinite series of intermediary species and genera (man, animal,

organism, material body, etc.), until one arrives at length to the summum

genus 'Being', the common essence of all things whatsoever.  When we reach

this apex of what is called Logical Realism, what do we find?  An empty

abstraction, a being 'without attributes' as the Hindu Brahma.  For fear of

degrading this so -called Deity to the level of the perishable and imperfect

world of finite experience, then philosophers speak of 'God Who is not,

without thought, without perception, without passion, without desire', and

one writer has made the trenchant comment 'abstraction has bled reality

white'.  Truth we have already discovered must be 'revealed reality', but in

such speculations there is neither 'revelation' nor 'reality', it is indeed

anaemia, a bloodless impersonal abstraction.  As we face this climax of human

reasoning our hearts echo the words 'Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us'.

This the Scriptures do, and this no system of man can ever do.  'Shew us the

Father' is one thing, to pray 'show us God' (in the fullest sense) may be a

very different matter:

'To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that

I should bear witness unto The Truth' (John 18:37).

The Concrete Method works in the opposite direction from the abstract

method.  It attempts to interpret reality on terms discovered from

experience; it attempts to discover the ineffable and the absolute through

the experiences of the senses.  A writer has said in verse,

'Our muddling intellect

Misshapes the beauteous form of things:

We murder to dissect'.

By the very fact that we are men, we must think anthropomorphically.

Every attribute of God that is made known to us in the Scriptures, and

conceived of in the mind, is conceived in human terms.  In this there is a

dim foreshadowing of truth, for all that we know or can know of the invisible

God is what we see and what is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ.  If at

the end of the former investigation we found relief in quoting the words

'shew us the Father', at the end of this quest we shall discover that it is

only really ended when we have found Christ and heard Him say, 'He that hath

seen Me hath seen the Father'.

The state of mind that is best prepared to receive revealed truth may

be said to be 'a reverent awareness of inadequacy'.  The seeker after truth

must at last find himself uttering the words of Peter, if he is ever to reach

his goal, 'Lord, to whom shall we go, Thou hast the words of eternal life'.

Outside the Scriptures the processes of human thought lead to a spiritual

vacuum, to a mathematical abstraction.  The Scriptures on the other hand lead