harmonizes its more conspicuous features, and removes the veil which to the ignorant or careless observer, obscures the traces of God's glory in the works of his hands."[1]
The disappointment which many minds experience, at finding in the phenomena of the natural world no indications of the will of God, respecting the moral conduct or future prospects of the human race, arises principally from an indistinct and mistaken view of the respective provinces of Reason and Revelation.
By the exercise of our Reason, we discover abundant evidences of the Existence, and of some of the Attributes of a supreme Creator, and apprehend the operations of many of the second causes or instrumental agents, by which he upholds the mechanism of the material World; but here its province ends: respecting the subjects on which, above all others, it concerns mankind to be well informed, namely, the will of God in his moral government, and the future prospects of the human race, reason only assures us of the absolute need in which we stand of a Revelation. Many of the greatest proficients in philosophy have felt and expressed these distinctions. "The consideration of God's Providence (says Boyle) in the conduct of things corporeal may prove to a well-disposed Contemplator, a Bridge, whereon he may pass from Natural to Revealed Religion."[2][3]
"Next (says Locke) to the knowledge of one God, Maker
- ↑ Sermon at the opening of King's College, London, 1831, pp. 19. 14.
- ↑ Christian Virtuoso, 1690. p. 42.
- ↑ "Natural Religion, as it is the first that is embraced by the mind, so it is the foundation upon which revealed religion ought to be superstructed, and is as it were, the stock upon which Christianity must be engrafted. For though I readily acknowledge natural religion to be insufficient, yet I think it very necessary. It will be to little purpose to press an infidel with arguments drawn from the worthiness, that appears in the Christian doctrine to have been revealed by God, and from the miracles its first preachers wrought to confirm it; if the unbeliever be not already persuaded, upon the account of natural religion, that there is a God, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Boyle's Christian Virtuoso, Part II. prop. 1.
