"MacDONALD, George - Faith, the Proof of the Unseen" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

prevails now that has not passed through my own mind as a thing to be
encountered and understood and settled. It is natural that we should doubt, with
such cries especially on all sides of us, and the intellect so much more awake
than ever it was before, and indeed the conscience not more asleep than before;
and with one on this side and one on that side crying out, "I have reached, I
have seen, and I have found no God." Settle this with yourselves to begin with.
Not all the intellect or metaphysics of the world could prove that there is no
God, and not all the intellect in the world could prove that there is a God. If
you could prove that there is a God, that would imply that you could go all
around Him, and buttress up his being with your human argument that He should
exist. As soon might a child on his mother's bosom, looking up into his mother's
face, write a treatise on what a woman was and what a mother was.
But do not think that God is angry with you because you find it hard to believe.
It is not so; that is not like God; God is all that you can honestly wish Him to
be, and infinitely more; He is not angry with you for that. And He knows
perfectly well what the scientific man calls truth--although you will observe
that he is always constantly, and everywhere changing his theories--that what
the scientific man calls truth is simply an impossibility with regard to God;
And God knows it. Your brain, the symbol of your intellect, cannot, concerning
Him, if He exists, receive that kind of proof which you have when you read a
proposition of Euclid. It commends itself to your mind and your understanding.
You say, "So it is, and it cannot be otherwise." But you cannot receive that
kind of; there is no such proof with regard to the Mighty God. And therefore I
say if you doubt the existence of the living God, He is not angry with you for
that. But I am speaking of those who would fain believe if they could, I ask
you, have you been trying the things not seen? Have you been proving them? This
is what God puts in your hands. He says, " I tell you I Am. You act upon that;
for I know that your conscience moves you to it; you act upon that and you will
find whether I Am or not, and what I Am." Do you see? Faith in its true sense
does not belong to the intellect alone, nor to the intellect first, but to the
conscience, to the will, and that man is a faithful man who says "I cannot prove
that there is a God, but, O God, if Thou hearest me anywhere, help me to do Thy
will." There is faith, "Do this," and he does it. It is o, friends, that is
faith; it is doing that thing which you, let me say, even only suppose to be the
will of God; for if you are wrong, and do it because you think it is His will,
He will set you right. It is the turning of the eye to the light; it is the
sending of the feet into the path that is required, putting the hands to do the
things which the conscience says ought to be done. You will notice that all this
chapter from which I have taken the text is a list of people that did things.
Some of them were made kings, and some of them were sawn asunder for it; but it
was all for faith, and nothing but faith. There was a truth; there was a live
truth; a truth that had welled through and called the knowledge of truth up in
us, nay, called up in us the very possibility of feeling truth; and according to
this law these men walked through all the world, and all the worlds together set
themselves against them, and in the name of the original vital law of the
universe-- namely, the living God--they walked right on and met their fate. Yes;
victory and the participation of the Divine nature, that was their faith.
Therefore, friends, the practical thing is just this, and it is the one lesson
that we have to learn, that whatever our doubts or difficulties, we must do the
thing we know in order to learn the thing we do not know; but whether we learn