The world and its God

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1908. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIII THE CONDITIONS OF FAITH THE pursuit by the natural man of first one and then another of the many forms which unreality takes, and the willingness to be deceived, which the man himself recognizes even while he yields to it, are evidences of his lost condition. Until he comes under the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, man will avoid meeting the truth that he has lost fellowship with God. Yet his very willingness to hear of something improbable, and to invest it with attributes of reality, is a perpetual witness to the conscious lack of something which is outside all worldly experiences, which the world knows nothing of, and which the natural man knows nothing of; for " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are Spiritually Discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14). The readiness of the mind of man to accord to falsehood that acceptance which, in a clear and unfallen mental state, would be accorded only to truth, may be seen in the prevalence throughout the whole world of idolatry, superstition, and false religion. The heathen world, embracing more than two-thirds of the living human beings, is completely under the sway of falsehood and darkness. But the so-called civilized peoples exhibit precisely the same tendencies. Keligious, medical, aud other quacks flourish in the centres of highest intelligence, and it is safe to say that no man is free from the inherited tendency to give heed and credence to the improbable and untrue. And when men are not thus occupied, as were the Athenians, who "spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing," they fall into the mental occupation of "exercising the imagination." Whatever that faculty may have...