Whence comes this wisdom of holiness which makes the loftiest ideal of man no higher than the dust of the roadway, his best righteousness criticizable goodness and altogether a negligible quantity?
If it is from man, it must arise from two sources—human experience or human imagination.
It cannot come from human experience! no natural man in the past has experienced it—none today experience it.
It cannot come from imagination; for a man cannot imagine what he has not seen, known or experienced. As he has not experienced holiness he cannot imagine it.
In the nature of the case—the Bible concept of holiness did not originate with man, and that much of the Bible, evidently, is not of man.
That the Bible is not the word of man is shown by its statements of accurate science, written before men became scientific, and while as yet natural science did not exist.
The record of creation is given in the opening verses of Genesis.
Whence came the wisdom which enabled the writer in a pre-scientific age to set forth a cosmogony in such a fashion that it does not contradict the latest findings of the geologist?
The Bible says the earth was without form and void.
Science says the same thing. Over a hot granite crust, an ocean of fire, and beyond that an impenetrable atmosphere loaded with carbonic acid gas.