The Reason Why

by R. A. Laidlaw

(Written by the Proprietor of a Business to the Members of His Staff)

  Suppose that a man should send his young lady a diamond ring costing him five hundred dollars, and place it in a little velvet case which the jeweler threw in for nothing. Would he not think it strange if, on meeting her a few days later, she would say, "Oh, that was a lovely little velvet box you sent me. I am going to take every care of it. I promise to keep it wrapped up in a safe place so that no harm shall come to it."

   Such a thing is too ridiculous to be thought possible, yet is it not just as foolish for men and women to be spending all their time and thought on their bodies, which are but caskets containing the real self, the soul, that the Bible tells us will persist long after our bodies have crumbled to dust.

   In Revelation 6:9 we read, "I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.

   Longfellow puts it thus:

   "Tell me not in mournful numbers,

      Life is but an empty dream,

   For the soul is dead that slumbers,

      And things are not what they seem.

   Life is real, life is earnest,

      And the grave is not its goal,

   Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

      Was not spoken of the soul."

   Indeed it was not, for in Mark 8:36 our Lord Himself asks, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

   So, in Christ's estimate man's soul is something incomparably more valuable than the whole world. My purpose is, therefore, to discuss with you some of the basic things that relate to this most valuable of your possessions, your soul - for instance -

                          Is there a God?

                          Is the Bible true?

                                Is man accountable?

                                Is there Divine forgiveness?

and a number of other problems that seem to perplex many when they turn from the transient things of life to face its eternal truths. So let us consider our first problem -

            How may we know there is a God?

   As far as I myself am concerned, my most convincing reason for believing there is a God is that I know Him personally. According to 1st Thess. 5:23 I, like you, am spirit, soul and body. My spirit makes it possible for me to be God-conscious as stated in Rom. 8:16 "The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children (born ones) of God." That is, when we turn to God through accepting Christ as our Saviour, we are born of the Holy Spirit into God's family and naturally we come to know God intimately as Father.

      My soul makes me self-conscious, as seen in Psalm 13:2 where we read, "How long shall I take counsel in my soul," or, how long shall I talk things over with myself.

   This strange capacity, sometimes called "the awareness of the ego," enables us to stand off from ourselves and talk to ourselves, and, by the way, we sometimes say some pretty straight things to ourselves that we would not take from anyone else.

   And lastly, my body through its five senses makes me world conscious. If all my senses were taken away I would cease to be conscious of the material world about me in any degree whatever, exactly as when I am under an anesthetic. So when a man says to me, "How do you know there is a God?" I say to him, "How do you know there is a YOU?" "Why," he says, " I don't need myself demonstrated mathematically or philosophically; I am a self-conscious being, and therefore I know that I am." "That, my friend I reply, "is exactly how I know there is a God, being spirit as well as soul, I am God-conscious as well as self-conscious; I know God is, as surely as I know, I am."

   But further, to me the problems of unbelief in God are greater than the problems of belief. To believe that dead matter unaided produced life, that living matter produced mind, that mind produced conscience, and that the chaos of chance produced the cosmos of order as we see it in nature, to me would call not for faith, but for credulity.

   The President of the New York Scientific Society, as recorded in the "Readers' Digest," gave eight reasons why he believed there was a God. The first one was this. Take ten identical coins and mark them one to ten, place them in your pocket, and take one out, there is one chance in ten that you will get number one. Now replace it, and the chances that number two will follow number one are not one in ten, but one in one hundred, and so on, counting ten each time, so that the chances of number ten following number nine are one chance in 10,000,000,000 (ten thousand million). It seemed so unbelievable to me that I immediately took pencil and paper and very quickly discovered he was right. Try it yourself.

   That is why George Gallop, the American statistician says: "I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone - chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."

   Surely no thoughtful person would wish to base his eternal future on a "statistical monstrosity." Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." But let us consider the problem from another viewpoint.