By Darren Brooker

This week’s excerpt from Horatius Bonar is taken from a little known work entitled Man: His Religion and His World written in 1851. In it, Bonar makes the clear distinction between the two types of religion in the world: the one true faith that comes from the revelation of God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ and His word, and all the false religions that derive themselves from the opinions of sinful man. Apart from revelation, man is incapable of discovering anything about God. Apart from revelation all men everywhere would be condemned and die in their sin. But God, in His mercy and love, chose to reveal Himself to some. It his His grace alone that saves, and the vanity and pride of men that condemns.

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bonarstand.jpgIn truth, the formation of a religion has been generally looked upon as a sort of art; and a body of men, accordingly, have been always set apart for the purpose of constructing one. Man’s desire has always been to have a hand in the construction of his religion, to prescribe to himself how he ought to worship God, and to dictate to God how He ought to be worshipped. What religion is, and how it ought to be carried on, are points which man has undertaken to settle by his own wisdom, and to regulate by his own devices. But it is very evident that, both as to what God is, and how He is to be approached, or whether He will permit Himself to be approached at all, man can know nothing, and determine nothing. God only can make known these things. Man’s opinions upon them are mere vanity, and the offspring of pride. They are certain to be wrong; for the points are so far above man’s vision, and so inaccessible, that he must miserably misconceive them. He knows little of himself, and nothing of God; so that it is not even within the limits of possibility that he can be right.

Yet there is nothing almost of which man is so tenacious, as his right of thinking for himself (as he calls it) in matters of religion. In so far as this means merely that his fellow-men have no right to think for him, or to prescribe a religion for him, he is right. But in so far as he is claiming for himself a right of forming opinions independent of God, he is wrong—awfully wrong. Man has no right to think for himself apart from God, or independent of the Revelation of God. God’s declarations are to be received in unquestioning simplicity. What we are to believe, what we are to do, how we are to worship, are not matters of opinion or speculation: they are truths—truths not reasoned out or demonstrated by man, but dictated by God, and coming to us, therefore, with a certainty which man cannot add to or improve, and which no strength of mathematical demonstration can surpass.

This thinking for one’s self independently of God and His Revelation, is not merely an evil, but a sin. Nay, it is a sin of more than common darkness—it is so audacious, so contemptuous towards God. It places man on a level with God, or at least sets Divine truth and human opinion on the same footing. It strips the former of all innate authority, while it gives to the latter an authority to which it has no claim.

It makes man the teacher, not the listener or the learner. If it does not call good evil, and evil good; if it does not put light for darkness, and darkness for light, it at least claims the right of saying what is evil and what is good—what is light and what is darkness. It is another development of the old temptation, “Ye shall he as gods, knowing good and evil.” …There can be no authority save that which is infallible and Divine, that is, God speaking to us directly in His Word.

-Taken from Man: His Religion and His World, 1851, Part I, Chapter 1, The Life and Works of Horatius Bonar.