Page:Jesus of Nazareth the story of His life simply told (1917).djvu/134

 have been pronounced impossibilities had anyone predicted them, and any genius who should have made them facts would in the Middle Ages have run the danger of being treated as a wizard for his pains.

Wise folks are becoming very wary of declaring anything impossible. It is a thought to make us humble that we are perhaps only beginning in this twentieth century to find out the possibilities of this wonderful kingdom of Nature which is beneath us. It ought to make us ready to believe that in the spiritual world which is above us, there are multitudes of things which we cannot understand. We know from the testimony of our senses that the gramophone and chloroform are facts. But very few of us could give a satisfactory explanation of these marvels; knowledge and terms would alike fail us were we to try. Nay, for the same reasons we should hardly understand the explanation of an expert, even were he to do his best to be simple and clear by the use of our own familiar words.

What wonder, then, that we cannot comprehend those spiritual things which we can neither see, nor hear, nor touch, nor reach by any of our bodily senses! Even God Himself cannot make these things perfectly clear to us now; we are too ignorant, and the words of our poor human speech are too weak to express the wonders that Angels understand perfectly, and that we shall understand some day. When God speaks to us in the Holy Scriptures He has to use our imperfect words to express His divine thought. He is like a father who in answer to his children's questions tries to put some grand astronomical fact into their childish language. We are all children now, and even the most learned must be content to say when it comes to the mysteries of faith: "I know it is so, because God has said it. I