Now the Bible rises here indefinitely above anything that mere natural science can describe.  But can the ultimate “Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness” and unselfishness, of whose presence in environment science assures us, be ever better described than by these words concerning the “Father of our spirits?”

And an infinitely wise, good, and loving being will have fixed modes of working; for “with him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  Thus only can man trust and know him.  The old Stoic philosopher tells us “everything has two handles, and can be carried by one of them, but not by the other.”  So with God’s laws.  Many seem to look upon them as a hindrance and limitation to him in carrying out his righteous and loving will toward man.  But they are really the modes or means of his working, which he uses with such regularity and consistency that we can always rely upon them and him.  The pure river of the water of life proceedeth from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

If I am lying ill waiting anxiously for the physician I can think of this great city as a mass of blocks of houses separating him from me.  But the houses have been arranged in blocks so as to leave free streets, along which he can travel the more quickly.  And God’s laws are not blocks, but thoroughfares, planned that the angels of his mercy may fly swiftly to our aid.  We are prone to forget that these laws are expressly made for your and my benefit, as well as that of all beings, that we may be righteous and unselfish.  And this is one ground of the apostle’s faith that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”  And in the Apocalypse the earth helps the woman.  It must be so.

But what if you or I try to block the thoroughfare?  What would happen to us if we tried to stop bare-handed the current of a huge dynamo, or to hold back the torrent of Niagara?  Nothing but death can result.  And what if I stem myself against the “river of the water of life, proceeding from the throne of God,” and try to turn it aside or hold it back from men perishing of thirst?  And that is just what sin is, even if done carelessly or thoughtlessly; for men have no right to be careless and thoughtless about some things.  “The wages of sin is death;” physical death for breaking physical law, and spiritual death for breaking spiritual law.  How can it be otherwise?  The wages are fairly earned.  The hardest doctrine for a scientific man to believe is that there can be any forgiveness of such sin as the heedless, ungrateful breaking of such wise and beneficent laws of a loving Father.  And yet my earthly father has had to forgive me a host of times during my boyhood.  Perhaps I can hope the same from God; I take his word for it.