"Seeing I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord whereas I am dust and ashes" (Genesis 18:27). "In the morning man shall grow up like grass and flourish, in the evening he shall fall, grow dry and wither" (Psalm 89:6). "Can man be compared with God, even though he were of perfect knowledge" (Job 22:2). "None is good but God alone" (Luke 18:19). "Of his greatness there is no end" (Psalm 144: 3). "All nations are before him as if they had no being at all, and are counted to him as nothing and vanity. To whom then have you likened God, or what image will you make for him? It is he that sitteth upon the globe of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as locusts: he that stretcheth out the heavens as nothing, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. All flesh is grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of the field. The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen because the wind of the Lord had blown upon it. Indeed, the people is grass" (Isaiah 40:17, 18, 22, 6, 7). "He that bringeth the searches of secrets to nothing, that hath made the judges of the earth as vanity—hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighed the heavens with his palm? Who hath poised with three fingers the bulk of the earth, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance" (Isaiah 40:23-12).
An Ingersoll might sneer and cry out: Surely Isaias had no idea of the size of the earth. Even though he did not know that the globe is such an immense ball, and that the volume of the sun is one million two hundred thousand times greater than the earth, and three hundred thousand times its weight, God who inspired the prophet knew infinitely more about it than our conceited astronomers.
I fear Mr. B. H. Roberts will be inclined to think God jealous because he gives man no show for comparison with him. This would certainly be a less blunder of the Utah man ("I will not give my glory to another") (Isaiah 42:8) than his contention, which is a mere echo of Satan's promise in Paradise; "You shall be as gods." (Genesis 3:5.)
Man is indeed capable of progress, but his forward movement is slow, and in some matters his attainments remain stationary; for instance, nothing has been added to philosophy since the days of Aristotle, and nothing to geometry since Euclid. Both of these geniuses lived over three hundred years before Christ. Conclude we, then, with the Psalmist: "All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like to thee?" (Psalm 34:10).
THE UNITY OF GOD.
1. The first chapter of the Bible reveals the supreme fact that there is One Only and Living God, the Creator and moral Governor of the universe. As Moses opened the sacred Writings by proclaiming him, so the Jew in all subsequent generations, has continued to witness for him, till from the household of Abraham, faith in the one only living and true God has spread through Jerusalem, Christianity and Mahometanism well-nigh over the earth.[A]
[Footnote A: "Hours with the Bible," by Geikie, vol. 1, chapters 1, 2.]
Primeval revelations of God had everywhere become corrupted in the days of Moses, save among the chosen people. Therefore, the first leaf of the Mosaic record, as Jean Paul says, has more weight than all the folios of men of science and philosophers.
While all nations over the earth have developed a religious tendency which acknowledged a higher than human power in the universe, Israel is the only one which has risen to the grandeur of conceiving this power as the One Only Living God. If we are asked how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the Divinity, as he had revealed himself to all mankind, but passed through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the One God, we are content to answer, that it was by a special divine revelation.[A]
[Footnote A: "Chips from a German Workshop," by Max Muller, vol. 1, pp. 345-372.]