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stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at;
but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17: 22-30).
In Psalm 33: we read:
"Lat all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of
Him. For He spake and it was done: He commanded, and it stood fast" (Psa. 33: 8, 9).
In Psalm 19: also we read of creation, particularly in connection with the heavens:
"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handywork. Day
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge."
A day is coming when the doctrine of evolution will have reached its ultimate goal,
and God will have been driven from His very creation. In that day it will be the
"everlasting gospel" that will be preached, a gospel which contains no word concerning
redemption, but proclaims the fear of God and His acknowledgment as the Creator"
(Rev. 14: 6, 7).
In all our studies, however, we must keep steadily before the mind the fact that the
knowledge of God is relative and conditional. We cannot know God unless He manifests
Himself to us, and our knowledge is inevitably limited by the necessity of His being
described to us in terms of human thought. Language is symbolic. "Our symbols are
windows through which we apprehend a reality which transcends our conceptions. The
symbols are true as far as they go" (H. Spencer).
God and Revelation.--We cannot emphasize too strongly or too frequently, that all
names and attributes of God that we find in Scripture are analogical and symbolical. God
Himself is far greater than all His names and attributes. He, the Infinite One, has
condescended to the limitations of human terms, but He Himself is above and beyond the
reach of language, logic, or philosophy. We have in the Scriptures a faithful, true,
inspired, infallible manifestation of the Invisible and Incomprehensible God.
"At present we only see the baffling reflections in a mirror, but then it will be face to
face. At present I am learning bit by bit, but then I shall understand, as all along I have
myself been understood" (I Cor. 13: 12, Moffatt).
"For the present we see things as if in a mirror, and are puzzled; but then we shall see
them face to face. For the present knowledge I gain is imperfect, but then I shall fully
know, even as I am fully known" (I Cor. 13: 12, Weymouth).
The A.V. here: "Now we see through a glass darkly" is rather misleading as it tends
to make the English reader think of transparent glass. The preposition (dia) should be
rendered: "by means of"--"Now we see by means of a glass". The only other
occurrence of esoptron, "glass" or "mirror", is James 1: 23: "Like a man beholding his
natural face in a glass."
We must, however, be careful in this passage (I Cor. 13:) not to think that the Apostle
is referring to the imperfect character of the dispensation of the Acts period, as contrasted
with the perfect character of the dispensation of the Mystery. No one, surely, would