Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/62

 reasoned their way to conclusions about God that harmonized with what they were taught in the Schools; but the God they arrived at was the god of rationalism and not the God of Revelation.

They will say to the orthodox man, "You and I go by different pathways, but we both arrive at the same God." But this is eternally impossible! For there is only one pathway leading to the true God, and that is not followed by reasoning one's way out of a shattered faith, but first by believing one's way out of darkness into light, and then by believing steadily on in that divinely imparted faith which always shatters the reasonings and conclusions of the rationalists.

To be a believer in the Word puts rationalism out of business, for no one can reason himself into the acceptance of truth he already believes. And on the other hand, to be a rationalist regarding the Word puts faith out of business, for faith is the acceptance of the bare Word of God without further evidence, and the rationalizer is compelled to reject that attitude toward the Word so that he may have the way left open to reason his way to what he is willing to accept as evidence. This is why so many of those students who sit in the classes of the rationalists in our colleges and seminaries lose their faith. Rationalism makes Scriptural faith impossible. Rationalizing and believing, when the Bible is in question, are mutually exclusive.

The reason for this is not that the facts of Scripture contradict each other, and certainly not that these facts are one thing to faith and another thing to reason. The antagonism does not arise over the facts