But He has not
so willed. He has made our belief in Him rest mainly on the voice within
ourselves, in order that we might walk by faith and not by sight. It
will be a hopeless task to convince men that there is a God by
pointing, not to His creation but to His interference with creation. But
if a man do believe there is a God, what kind of evidence ought he to
expect to show him that God has interfered in the course of the
creation?
In the first place, he must not expect that the physical evidence, that
is the miraculous evidence, for Revelation should be of such a character
as to stand above the spiritual evidence. Just as the fundamental
evidence for the existence of a God is to be found in the voice of
conscience, and the arguments from design and from the order and beauty
and visible purpose of the creation are secondary--corroborative not
demonstrative--so too the primary evidence of a Revelation from God must
be found in the harmony of that Revelation with the voice of conscience,
and only the secondary and corroborative evidence is to be looked for in
miracles. And in both cases the reason is the same. For it is not God's
purpose to win the intellectually gifted, the wise, the cultivated, the
clever, but to win the spiritually gifted, the humble, the
tender-hearted, the souls that are discontented with their own
shortcomings, the souls that have a capacity for finding happiness in
self-sacrifice.
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