The Reformed Quarterly Review (Volume 36) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1889. Excerpt: ... VI. DIVINE PROVIDENCE: GENERAL AND SPECIAL. BY REV. C. Z. WEISER, D.D. Fifty years ago the conviction that a Creator--an Infinite, Supreme and Perfect Deity--exists, whose nature inclines unalterably towards the highest good, mankind cherished as firmly as the human mind holds any one of the universally accepted axioms of truth. And possessing this certitude, the kosmos of the universe was ever regarded as the great treasury-house, whence the strongest proof of the being of a God must necessarily be derived. "If you ask for a monument of a God," it was commonly said, "look aloft and around; consider the unity, harmony and design in nature." To-day, however, the Theist finds his once fruitful field invaded by the Deist and Agnostic, to harvest in, and to carry away some of the choicest stones for erectiog the walls of their temple of doubt and unbelief. The believer in the ancient and respectable tradition, that "in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, with all that is therein," is confronted by the sharp-cutting criticism: --" The realm of Nature abounds in disharmonies, too; in imperfections and accidents; in cruelties and sufferings--in irregularities--as well as in grand designs--which hardly comport with the character of an alleged Omnipotent, Omniscient and all-good God, who either would not, or could not forestall their intrusions." And furthermore; conceding a supposed Deity to have originated and endowed Nature's laws with their potent energies in their genesis, might He still not have abandoned the universe to the vicissitudes of a purblind fate, or to the fickleness of man's free will? If mankind cannot positively assure itself that its individual members, and every one of the myriads of creatures 'in the heavens above, in the ear...