Man’s judgment at variance with God’s

Man’s judgment at variance with God’s There is an obtuseness and impenetrability that attach to the mind of man respecting the character of moral obligation that prove absolutely invincible to all his powers of meditation and research. This inability is of a moral, not of a natural kind, having its origin not in his natural constitution, but in his adventitious circumstances. The powers of the human mind receive a wrong direction. Reason turns renegade, and to escape a hated conclusion flings itself incontinently into the arms of delusion. It is thus that the stoutest intellect becomes the most impregnable. Numberless are the subterfuges, speculative as well as practical, that are continually held in play by the human mind in order to elude the embarrassment of its untoward circumstances; for there is no middle road to peace once the soul has begun to grapple with the momentous investigation. This obliquity of mind, that likes not to retain the knowledge of God, is the true and only source of all the difficulty that attaches to the reception of religious truth. Truth of this description lies no way more remote from our apprehension than any truth of natural science, till it begins to molest us with the sense of moral obligation, and to make its demands on our acquiescence in the form of duty. Men have not generally disputed much about what is virtue, their approbation of it being required only in the form of encomium. They willingly unite in applauding exemplary specimens of justice, disinterestedness, and generosity, and in the condemnation of their contraries . . . Our consciences ought not to sit so easy under the sins of our country, or even of mankind. That character in man which separates betwixt him and his Maker, and provokes the Divine judgment, also renders the Divine proceeding in judgment more obscure and unintelligible to him. Conclusion: See the indubitable equity, harmony, and consistency of the Divine administration in judgment. (H. Grey, M. A.)