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acceptance with God can be obtained: therefore they cannot satisfy man's needs. They may
order men to perform pilgrimages, to keep fasts, to offer sacrifices: but since none of
these things purifies the heart or makes God known, they still leave those who practise
them wandering far from the Father's home.
4. The change of heart and life which obedience to the Gospel
(البشارة) produces in the
true Christian is a proof that it has come from God. This change is first inward and then
outward, and it is so great that it is fitly described as a new and spiritual birth (John
iii. 3, 5), brought about by the agency of God's Holy Spirit.
5. In the Bible it is evident that those Attributes of the Almighty which man needs to
know, and is capable of comprehending in some measure, are revealed. God's moral
Attributes of Holiness, Love, Mercy, Justice are clearly taught, as well as those which
prove Him to be One, Eternal, Almighty, All-Wise, the Creator and Preserver of the
Universe. We are taught in the Holy Scriptures that He has revealed Himself in the Lord
Jesus Christ, who went about doing good, who never cast out anyone who came to Him for
pardon and help, who was without sin, and yet showed kindness and mercy to sinners, who
denounced hypocrisy and declared the future punishment of the impenitent, though He laid
down His own life to save us from sin and its terrible consequences. The Bible therefore
does not only tell us about God, it shows Him to us in such a manner that
all may see Him if they will. In so doing, it teaches us how hateful to God's Nature all
sin is and ever must be, and that without holiness no man shall enjoy the Beatific Vision
(رُوٌيَةُ
اللهٍ) of God (Heb. xii. 14).
It is now possible for scholars to become acquainted with the literature of all ancient
and modern nations. Therefore we have learnt by study that no one of the learned men and
philosophers of ancient times ever succeeded in setting forth God as endued with the
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Holy and mighty Attributes which we have mentioned. Nor do the books of other
religions, even those which have largely borrowed from the Old Testament and the New. Such
books, even when they teach the Unity of God, fail to reveal God to men, but leave between
the Transcendent God and His feeble creatures a great gulf fixed, so that He can never
become known to them.
6. The Divine Origin of the Gospel
(الِبشارة) is clear from its spiritual teaching, which is
nobler, purer, and more sublime than that given in any other book. Attempts have been made
to deny this, and passages have been quoted from Chinese, Indian, Greek, and other
writers, which have been said to teach as high a morality as the Gospel does. But in every
instance the attempt to prove this has failed. The Lord Jesus Christ taught, for instance,
the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also
unto them" (Matt. vii. 12). In certain writings of Greek and Indian1
philosophers we find the negative form of this, bidding us not to do to others what
we should not like them to do to ourselves. But between this and the positive
beneficence commanded by Christ there is as much distance as between earth and heaven.
Confucius,2 the celebrated Chinese philosopher, gives the precept also in a
negative form more than once, but he never once gives it in the positive form. His
grandson, Kung Chih, approaches this more nearly when he says: "'In3 the
way of the superior man there are four things, to not one of which have I as yet attained:
. . . to set the example in behaving to a friend as I would require him to behave to me;
to this I have not attained." Even here there is no positive precept; he speaks of
conduct to a friend only,
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