To know good and evil, right and wrong—to have a conscience, a moral sense—that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach to-day. Because it is through that knowledge of good and evil, and through it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. It is through our moral sense that God speaks to us; through our sense of right and wrong; through that I say, God speaks to us, whether in reproof or encouragement, in wrath or in love; to teach us what he is like, and to teach us what he is not like.
To know God. That is the side on which we must look at this text on Trinity Sunday. If man be made in the image of God, then we may be able to know something at least of God, and of the character of God. If we have the copy, we can guess at least at what the original is like.
From the character, therefore, of every good man, we may guess at something of the character of God. But from the character of Jesus Christ our Lord, who is the very brightness of his Father’s glory and the express image of his person, we may see perfectly—at least perfectly enough for all our needs in this life, and in the life to come—what is the character of God, who made heaven and earth.
I beseech you to remember this—I beseech you to believe this, with your whole hearts, and minds, and souls, and especially just now.
For there are many abroad now who will tell you, man can know nothing of God.
Answer them: ‘If your God be a God of whom I can know nothing, then he is not my God, the God of the Bible. For he is the God who has said of old, “They shall not teach each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least unto the greatest.” He is the God, who, through Jesus Christ our Lord, accused and blamed the Jews because they did not know him, which if they could not know him would have been no fault of theirs. Of doctrines, and notions, and systems, it is written, and most truly, “I know in part, and I prophesy in part,” and again, “If a man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.” But of God it is written, “This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”’
But they will say, man is finite and limited, God is infinite and absolute, and how can the finite comprehend the infinite?
Answer: ‘Those are fine words: I do not understand them; and I do not care to understand them; I do not deny that God is infinite and absolute, though what that means I do not know. But I find nothing about his being infinite and absolute in the Bible. I find there that he is righteous, just, loving, merciful, and forgiving; and that he is angry too, and that his wrath is a consuming fire, and I know well enough what those words mean, though I do not know what infinite and absolute mean. So that is what I have to think of, for my own sake and the sake of all mankind.’
But, they will say, you must not take these words to the letter; man is so unlike God, and God so unlike man, that God’s attributes must be quite different from man’s. When you read of God’s love, justice, anger, and so forth, you must not think that they are anything like man’s love, man’s justice, man’s anger; but something quite different, not only in degree, but in kind: so that what might be unjust and cruel in man, would not be so in God.
My dear friends, beware of that doctrine; for out of it have sprung half the fanaticism and superstition which has disgraced and tormented the earth. Beware of ever thinking that a wrong thing would be right if God did it, and not you. And mind, that is flatly contrary to the letter of the Bible. In that grand text where Abraham pleads with God, what does he say? Not, ‘Of course if Thou choosest to do it, it must be right,’ but ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do RIGHT?’ Abraham actually refers the Almighty God to his own law; and asserts an eternal rule of right and wrong common to man and to God, which God will surely never break.