It is, so to speak, a crucial
experiment, by which the truth of the Scripture theory is verified. The
difficulty in all ages about a standard of morality has been--How can we
fix it? Even if we agree that man's goodness ought to be the counterpart
of God's goodness, we know that in practice it is not, as mankind has
differed in all ages and countries about what is right and wrong. The
Hindoo thinks it right to burn widows, wrong to eat animal food; and
between such extremes there are numberless minor differences. Hardly any
act is conceivable which has not been thought by some man, somewhere,
somehow, morally right or morally wrong. If all that we can do is, to
choose out those instances of morality which seem to us most right, and
impute them to God, shall we not have an ever-shifting, probably a merely
conventional standard of right and wrong? And worse--shall we not be
always in danger of deifying our own superstitions--perhaps our own
vices: of making a God in our own image, because we cannot know that God
in whose image we are made? Most true, unless "we believe rightly the
incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ," "perfect God and perfect man.
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