Matthew 17:20

Matthew 17:20

The ground of faith in God and immortality is not authority or demonstration, but our sense of right.

I. First, the very fact of our having a sense of right makes it probable that God exists. We do not know where that sense of right comes from. It is the one thing which the theory of development has to stop short of; it is the one thing it cannot give any credible reason for. It seems that there must be an intelligent Will outside of us who is the source of truth, a living Goodness which does not grow into being in us through ages of development, but which has been always and is.

II. Let us take this sense of right with us, and look at the world around us. How shall we explain its being? There are two theories of the world the Atheistic and the Theistic. We are bound, as scientific men, to choose that theory as probably true which explains best the greatest number of facts, which agrees and harmonizes best with what we have observed. We find order, intelligence, progress to an end, unity among infinite diversity; and the conclusion is that it is probable, in a very high degree, that there is a thoughtful Will behind and in the universe.

III. I turn to the spiritual world. I find existing in myself, and in the greater number of mankind, a whole world of feelings which belong to this idea of God; I find, on looking back through history, that these and similar feelings existed in all civilized communities, nay, that in savage nations, even before the social ideas took shape, these existed in rude form. Did these ideas develop out of nothing? Are they going in the end to nothing? All my sense of right in matters of feeling denies that. I must suppose some One who is Himself the feeling source of all this feeling, and who is its end. Thus probability is added to probability in our minds, and by such addition faith is built up built up not out of spiritual feeling only, but also out of the confessions of probability which the intellectual sense of truth and the moral sense of right are induced to make.

S. A. Brooke, The Fight of Faith,p. 38.

References: Matthew 17:20. D. W. Simon, Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 307; H. Goodwin, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 296. Matthew 17:21. H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,p. 2.83; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 223.Matthew 17:24; Matthew 17:25. W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles,vol. ii., p. 180. Matthew 17:24. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 223; T. Birkett Dover, The Ministry of Mercy,p. 182.Matthew 17:25; Matthew 17:26. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1,780.