Witnesses to Truth

by Edward Hoare

Can you explain how it is that the will, that secret, hidden, indescribable power within you, makes your hand move in obedience to your wish? But would you on that account think it wise never to move your limbs?

The fact is that in practical life we are surrounded in all directions with things which we cannot explain, and problems which we cannot solve. We cannot escape from such difficulties; they meet us at every turn. But in daily life we never think of them. Our practical conduct is not affected by them. We see what we have to do, and we do it. We take our place in the train, we go on board the ship, we send our telegram, we eat our food, and we move our limbs, without ever endeavouring to solve the mysteries which underlie all that we are doing. Now all I ask is that men should act on the same principle with reference to the Gospel. There are, as I have said, difficulties, and if you never act until they are solved, a weary time you will have to wait. But there is also a plain, simple, clear word of invitation; there is a great salvation prepared, presented, and proclaimed. There is a way of life so clearly taught that he may run that readeth it. So the wise course is to say, “Difficulty or no difficulty, I accept the invitation,” and to act practically just as you do with your food or your medicine. Your physician gives you medicine, and, though you cannot explain how it will act, you take it in trust. So your God gives you His salvation, and your part is to accept His gift, and leave it to Him to solve the deep mysteries of His hidden will.

But I cannot leave the subject there, for I am prepared to maintain that these difficulties should confirm the faith, and to claim them even as “witnesses to truth.”

1. They are witnesses to the truth of the Scriptures, for in them we are told that we are sure to meet with them.

While, as I have already said, the way of life is presented so clearly that he may run that readeth it, there is at the same time the perfectly clear statement that we must expect to find difficulties in the revelation of God. Only look at St. Peter’s description of St. Paul’s Epistles in 2 Peter iii. 16. In that passage he associates those Epistles with the other Scriptures, and plainly declares that they contain some things “hard to be understood.” Are we then to be surprised if, in reading them, we meet with things “hard to be understood,” or if we meet with men who venture to cavil at them, and so wrest them to their own destruction? I am prepared to maintain that if in St. Paul’s Epistles, and the other Scriptures, there had been nothing “hard to be understood,” then St. Peter himself would not have spoken truth. The difficulties in the writings of St. Paul are necessary to the complete truth of the Epistle of St. Peter.

So St. Paul himself plainly teaches us that our knowledge in this world is only partial. Only refer to his language in 1 Cor. xiii. 12. There are two facts there stated—first, that our vision is indistinct, and then that it is limited. It is indistinct, for we see through a glass darkly, or through a dull refractor; and it is limited, for we know only in part. “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Are we to be surprised then if we do not enjoy a full, clear, sun-light vision of the whole? And is not the indistinctness of our vision a proof of the truth of the Scriptures?

So we meet in the Scriptures with the full recognition of the selfsame difficulties that arise in modern times. These difficulties are no new discoveries of the sharpened intellect of the nineteenth century, but are as old as the Gospel itself.

Do you find a difficulty in explaining the perfect union of a perfect Godhead and a perfect manhood in the one person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? I acknowledge frankly, “So do I.” I am not afraid to acknowledge that I cannot explain it, and that I believe no one can. But my point is that the Scriptures have prepared us for it, and that it is the very difficulty which our Lord Himself presented to the Pharisees when He said, “If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt xxii. 45.)

Do you find a difficulty in the doctrine of “election,” and are you unable to reconcile the gift of life to a chosen number with the perfect equity of the universal government of God? If so, remember that there is nothing new in such a difficulty. It is as old as the Gospel itself, and it is fully recognized in the Scriptures. Nothing can be more perfectly clear than the statement made respecting it in Romans ix. 1–13, or than the full recognition of the difficulty in verse 14—“What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.”

So, once more, with the resurrection. Does it appear impossible that the dead should rise again? Are you unable to conceive the possibility of a body, lost in the ocean, burnt in the flames, or corrupted in the grave, being restored to unity, life, and vigour? I grant you that it does seem impossible. I see the difficulty as much as any of you. But let no man suppose that this difficulty is new, or the discovery of it the result of his own independent intellect; for in the Scriptures of truth we are fully prepared for it. We are not taken by surprise, for we were warned of it 1800 years ago in our Bibles; for there we read, in verse 35 of the great resurrection chapter (1 Cor. xv.), “But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” Possibly there may be, at this present time, some whom I am addressing, actually fulfilling that prophecy, and so living amongst us as unintentional “witnesses to its truth.”