Believers shrink from being thrown
inwards on themselves; they fear the wavering of their own faith; they
are alarmed at the prospect of the buttresses of their belief being
taken from them. They find it easier to believe the spiritual evidence,
if they can first find much physical evidence. They wish (to use the
Apostle's words) to walk by sight and not by faith. And unbelievers want
a tangible proof that shall compel their understanding before it awakes
their conscience. They demand a Revelation, not only confirmed by
miracles at the time, but confirmed again and again by repeated miracles
to every succeeding generation. They want miracles in every age adapted
to the science of the age, miracles which no hardness of heart would be
able to deny, which would convince the scientific man through his
Science independently of his having any will to make holiness his aim
when he had been convinced. This kind of evidence it has not pleased God
to give. It is not the scientific man that God seeks as such, any more
than it is the ignorant man that He seeks as such. And the proofs that
He gives are plainly in all cases conditioned by the rule that the
spiritually minded shall most easily and most keenly perceive their
force.
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