Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 36:141 (Jan 1879)
Article: Organic Forms
Author: Thomas Hill

BSac 36:141 (Jan 1879) p. 1

Organic Forms

Rev. Thomas Hill

If any apology is needed for handling again in the Bibliotheca Sacra the great theme of the manifestation of the invisible attributes of God in the visible forms of creation, I hope it may be found in the transcendent interest of the question, and in its inexhaustible fulness.

The writers of the Jewish and Christian holy Scriptures plant themselves upon certain postulates in theology as unmistakably and firmly as the Greek mathematicians upon postulates in geometry. Among these is the being of God and his moral attributes. The sacred writers do not, like Grecian and Roman philosophers, give teleologic and morphologic arguments to prove the presence of creative intellect, nor appeal to innate ideas as proof of the unity and perfection of a First Cause; they simply assume that their readers acknowledge the being of God and the reality of his moral government over men. That most ancient fragment of prophecy, for example, with which Moses opens his compilation of the Book of Genesis, begins by saying, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This is the assertion of the creative act; it takes for granted that the reader knows of the being of God and his creative power; The Hebrew writings thus show in these earliest fragments.

BSac 36:141 (Jan 1879) p. 2

the sharp monotheism which distinguishes them from the dreamy pantheism of the farther East, and from the polytheism of the West.

In their divine wisdom the inspired penmen knew that they could safely make these postulates. They knew that God had not left himself without witness, and that in the normal state of the human mind there can be no more doubt of the being of God than of the being of our fellow-men. We have, in fact, been assured by a philosopher of our own day, who insists that we neither have nor can have any knowledge of God’s attributes, that his existence is, nevertheless, more certain than our own existence. No truth can have a higher warrant than this — that there is an original or ultimate cause of the universe. And, inasmuch as the universe everywhere exhibits intelligible order and adaptation of part to part, men will always, unless under adverse influences, acknowledge that cause to be intelligent. The argument is admirably put in the last letter of the revered and beloved Joseph Henry. We have the highest possible assurance of the being and presence of a friend, if we receive from him intelligible answers to our intelligent questions. But every human being begins from birth to put, consciously or unconsciously, questions to the Power which rules the universe; and receives, in the vast majority of cases, intelligible answers. The only sound inference is, that in the exceptional cases it is our unders...