In the study of the word of God, great care should be exercised that reason is not allowed to usurp the place of faith.
This is one of the dangerous forms of self-exaltation, and one of the most dangerous and ruinous. The havoc wrought by it is everywhere visible in the Christian world today. It causes men to substitute their own inventions for the institutions of God, thus obliterating true faith in the minds of men, and causing the loss of that power which alone is able to keep them from falling.
This is done when man endeavors by his reason to grasp the mysteries which the word of God reveals, so as to make them comprehensible to the human mind. In this way most of the miracles of the Scripture records have been "explained away."
In truth, however, it is not the miracles that have been explained away, but that faith which should have dwelt in the minds of the ones affected by it. The word of God reveals the power of God,-the Gospel which is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes." (Romans 1:16)
And if that which shows the power of God is accepted by an individual in simple faith, without reference to his ability to comprehend it, the purpose of God in sending His word to him is fulfilled.
But if, instead of so accepting it, he goes as far as his reason will take him toward comprehending it, and then declares that what marks the limit of his reason is the meaning of the text, he frustrates God's purpose toward himself by bringing God's wisdom down to the level of the wisdom of man, and making faith of none effect. The whole value of faith lies in the fact that it brings to an individual knowledge which reason alone could never enable him to get.
It is no more necessary in the spiritual life to comprehend the mysteries that pertain to it, than it is to comprehend the mysteries revealed in nature in order to live physically. He who would refuse to eat bread until he could comprehend the process of growth in the grain from which bread is made, would never eat it at all. The person who would insist upon doing this would be justly counted a fool.
Yet many people seem to think it necessary to comprehend the mysteries that pertain to the plan of redemption in order to the successful operation of that plan in their behalf. And this very effort to comprehend the mysterious manifestations and declarations of God's power defeats its operation toward them; for since God's ways are as much higher than man's ways as the heavens are higher than the earth, (Isaiah 55:9) after man has gone as far as he can in the process of comprehending, he is still infinitely below the truth as it is known by the mind of God.
And therefore when he gives to the words of God a certain meaning which marks the limit of his power toward comprehending them, simply because he cannot understand how they can mean just what they say, he puts a meaning upon them which is infinitely below the truth which God reveals in them to man, and which He designs man to grasp by simple faith.
Man's reason is not God's reason. Man cannot always reason correctly upon physical matters, and much less can he do so in regard to things spiritual. When the mind enters the domain of spiritual truth; it must substitute faith for reason, or it will never proceed very far in the requirement of knowledge.
Faith enables us to know that which, if it were obtained by reason, would require that we be omniscient, and able to reason as well as God himself. We must view faith in the light of this truth if we would prize it at its true worth.--Present Truth, April 26, 1894.