to prove it. The belief was one natural to th« human mind and common to all men. Scripture does indeed speak of those who say in their heart there is no God (Ps M' 53') ; but these are the fools, that is, the practically ungodly, and their denial is not a theoretical or speculative one, but merely what may be held to be the expression of tlieir manner of life. Even the phrase ' there is no God ' hardly means that God is not, but that He is not present, does not interfere in life ; and, counting on this absence of God from the world and on impunity, men become corrupt and do abominable deeds (I's 14, Job 22'-''-), and for tlieir wickodiiesa they shall be turned into Sheol, tlie region of separation from God, together with all the nations that forget God (Ps 9"). Yet even this forgetful- ness of God by the nations is something temixirary. It is a forgetting only, no obliteration of the knowledge of God from the human miiul, and these nations shall yet remember and turn unto the liord ( Ps 22-^).
Again, as Scripture nowhere contemplates men as ignorant of the existence of God, it nowhere depicts the rise or dawn of the idea of His exist- ence in men's minds. In the historical period the idea of God's existence is one of the ]>riniary tlioughts of man ; he comes po.ssessed of this thouglit to face and observe the world, and his conception of God already possessed explains the world to him ; the world does not suggest to him an idea hitherto strange, that of God's existence. And, of course, the bare idea of God's existence is not the primarj' thought which Scripture supposes all men to possess ; this abstract conceittioii has gathered body about it, namely, a certain circle of ideas as to what God is. And with these ideas the Hebrew took up his position over -against the world. To him God and the world were always distinct. God was not involved in the processes of nature. These processes were caused by God, but He was distinct from them. Tlie Hebrew, however, came down from his thought of God upon the world, he did not rise from the world up to his thought of God. His thought of God ex- plained to him the world, both its existence and the course of events upon it ; these did not suggest to him either the existence or the nature of God, these being unknown to him. His contemplation of nature and providence and the life of man was never of the nature of a search after God whom he did not know, but always of the nature of a recognition of God whom he knew. When the singer in Ps 19 says ' the heavens declare the glorj' of God,' his meaning is that the glory of God, who is and is known and is Creator, may be seen reflected on the heavens. But the psalmist only saw repeated on the heavens what he already carried in his heart. And when in Is 40-'''''- J" asks, 'To whom then will ye liken me? Lift up your eyes on high and behold : Who hath created these tilings ? bringing out their hosts by number ' — it is assumed as known that J" is Creator, and that His omnipotence is revealed in the nightly' parade of His hosts on the sky, not one failing to answer the roll call, and the inference is that, with this God for their God, Israel cannot despond or be fainthearted — ' Wliy sayest thou, O Jacob, My way is hid from the Lord ? An everlasting God is J", creator of the ends of the earth ; He fainteth not, neither is weary. He giveth power to the faint.' The passage teaches nothing new or un- knoAvn ; it recalls what is known, rebumishing the consciousness of it, in order to sustain the faith and the hopes of the people. There is, however, in one or two passages an approximation to some of the arguments of Natural Theology. In Ps 94"'- it is said, probably of the excesses of the heathen rulers of Israel, ' They break in pieces thy people
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id:
O LoKD. Yet they say, The Lord doth not see. Understand, J'e brutish anion;; the people : He that planted the ear, shall He not Lear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see ? '