03.000. Forward
FOREWORD The difference between principles and rules is radical. Rules can be made, and therefore broken. Principles cannot be made, and can not be broken. Rules are things of time.
Principles are matters of eternity. Rules are accidental. Principles are essential. In this series of lectures on Christian Principles my desire is to interpret those matters that obtain, subconsciously at least, in the thinking of all Christian souls, and of which it may be affirmed that the measure in which they do obtain, and the measure in which they are the master things of the life, is the measure in which Christianity is a living experience, and exerts a living influence. The historic facts and fundamental doc trines of the Christian faith will be taken for granted, and the lectures will consist of statements of the principal principles of life and service resulting there from. The authority to which these studies appeal is revelation; the things that God has said to man through His Word; the things which He has spoken in time past to the fathers by the prophets in divers places and divers portions, and the things He has said finally and perfectly in these latter days through His Son.
Revelation is the declaration of things undiscoverable by investigation, but which harmonize finally with the things so discoverable.
Speculation is unscientific, and not to be trusted in the search after truth. Investigation is a privilege and a duty. “ The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children,” and the measure of our ability to discover the secret things is the measure in which we have the right to enquire. But after all our enquiry, and all our investigation, there are still secret things, and out of the midst of these God has spoken to men, so much as it is necessary for them to know, and which they could not have discovered along the line of their own investigation.
I repeat, therefore, that investigation is both a privilege and a duty. On the way it often halts, but honestly persisted in is always in harmony with revelation. There is no ascertained and absolutely established fact of science out of harmony with the revelation of the Bible. Of course that statement needs this qualification; we must be perfectly sure that we are dealing with established facts, and not with hypotheses, and we must be perfectly sure that we are dealing with the Bible, and not with some private interpretation of it. But wherever there is careful and honest investigation, even though it halt by the way, and has to wait, at last the truth discovered harmonizes with the truth revealed.
We have to do in this series of lectures, not with the things which men have discovered by investigation, but with the things which God has revealed to us, for Christianity is supremely. Foreword a revelation; with the things discovered in so far as they harmonize with the things revealed, but with things revealed for the correction and interpretation of the things discovered.