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Mr. Chairman, gentlemen. I thank you for your kind words, sir, of welcome. It is a great pleasure for me to come forth from the fastnesses of Queens to address such, uh, select and illustrious company. As to your remarks about my being an Englishman, I must to confess to a certain disadvantage there, at least today. In England today, in some quarters, there has been an immoderate shortage of seats, though I see you have plenty of seats here. I trust yours is comfortable and is not marginal. I am to speak to you, and I want to put my cards at once on the table and be fair to you, eh, and explain the attitude and vantage point from which I propose to enter these lectures.
I propose to speak as a Christian. Albeit I shall be fair, as fair as I can be, to views of those with whom I cannot agree, but I shall be in these lectures speaking as a confirmed Christian. Nevertheless, let me point out that the subjects we shall be discussing are subjects which all people, if they have any thought about them at all, must sooner or later discuss, whether they be Christians or not Christians. For instance, we discussed tonight whether man is a res- irresponsible accident or a responsible creature.
Whether we, uh, are Christians or have ever become Christians or not, it is a matter of exceedingly important social significance, whether we decide that man is a irresponsible accident or a responsible creature. What we shall do with mods and rockers, for instance, is a que- is a question which will make us ponder very seriously whether a man is an irresponsible accident who cannot fairly be called into account for his actions, or whether he is a responsible creature. And the second subject we shall discuss next week, whether our world is ours by permanent freehold or expiring lease.
To say the least, this is an interesting matter, whether we be Christians or not Christians. To know, if there is any knowing, whether our earth is likely to continue uninterruptedly and indefinitely, or whether we may expect our world one of these days to blow up or freeze us all out of existence. This is a matter presumably of some interest, even if we are not Christian and are not interested remotely in religion at all. But as I say, I wish to come at these things from the Christian point of view, and I shall be stating the Christian viewpoint as I understand it, and devoting a considerable amount of time to dealing with arguments that have been brought against the Christian viewpoint, and which many people nowadays feel somehow have triumphed conclusively over the Christian viewpoint.
My general attempt will be to show that these arguments are not anywhere near so conclusive or weighty as they might have seemed. If, uh, I seem to you to spend too much time on that, and I fail to spend time positively proving that Christianity is correct, then I must plead shortage of time. I'm quite aware that to disprove arguments against Christianity is not necessarily to prove Christianity is true. But, um, if you wish me to do more, then I can only suggest that you, uh, invite me back again to give another series of lectures, which may be devoted purely and simply to the positive side of proving Christianity is true.
Now, the question that I have set for our consideration this evening really hides two questions within it. Is man an irresponsible accident or a responsible creature? Is really two questions. The first is, is man an accident or is he a creature? Let us put the option to ourselves. Was our origin like this? That one day in a remote past, the atomic, uh, parts of this material universe suddenly, by some accident, swerved and met together.
Some of them stuck together, and then coming adrift again, reformed their combinations, until at last shapes were formed and creatures were formed. All of it by accident, without any forethought, without any plan, and therefore without any significance. A complete accident. Is our existence to be accounted for like that? With all its implications, and this above all, that if it came by accident without forethought and without plan, it might well be ended equally capriciously, without any thought and plan.
That is a view that has seriously been put forward, not in modern times, but quite in ancient times. The Em- Empedocles and Lu- Lucretius and many of the Epicurean philosophers held a view of life that was substantially that, that human life found its origin together with the rest of the universe in the accidental swerve of the component atoms, without forethought, and certainly without the direction of any God. That when those atoms come adrift again, that is the end of all, that they come adrift sheerly by accident. I say that is a view that has been held.
I don't propose to stay here and enlarge on the implications, on the meaninglessness of life, if that's how life came about, on the sheer mockery of that sense of purpose that we all of us have within us. But I pass to the other, uh, the the alternative that I have put. Is life an accident, or is life a thing created by God? Created by an absolute creator, created thoughtfully, purposefully, and therefore meaningfully.
The deepest meaning of life being that life is related to and exists for its creator, who being eternal, gives life eternal significance. That then is the one question, is life an accident, or is it a creature? Then we have asked a second question, is life, is man a responsible being or an irresponsible? I mean by responsible this, is man a being who has a real choice, a real power of choosing between this and that action, with a very real will that can determine to act in this or that way, and with a very real sense of purpose that knows how to choose and will to act for a very deliberate
purpose in the future. Responsible, therefore, because when it is all over, the man may be fairly brought to account for his action and either praised for or blamed for doing what he has done, because at the moment when he chose to do, he was a free agent, freely choosing between this and that, and therefore responsible for his choice and all that has followed. Is man a responsible being? Or is he irresponsible?
Is his feeling of choice, his idea that he has a will and can initiate action, his sense of foresight and purpose, are they all illusions? Are they merely the effect of a chance coming together of the chemical constituents of his body and brain, over which he has no real control at all, but makes his choice to buy an orange instead of an apple, to marry this woman or that woman, to start business or to close it, simply because by chance they came together without his control and beyond his power to alter certain chemical constituents in his body and brain.
When we ponder that, uh, question, we shall see that if we can answer that one, we shall have gone a long way to answering the first one. For if I am a responsible being, it will prove impossible for me to think that I came about by an accident. If I am an irresponsible being, then it could be, theoretically, that I came about by an accident. It could be that I was made by a creator, but that he made me like a piece of mechanism, without will, without choice, helplessly to do what he made me to do.
A motor car is something like that, in spite of all your experiences on cold mornings when the thing won't start and you want it to start, or when it won't stop and you want it to stop. Really, it is an irresponsible thing, and you have no business kicking it if it won't start. No business really blaming the thing if it won't start, and I may assure you it will take no notice of you if you do blame it. Man could theoretically be an irresponsible creature of God, but if he is a responsible being, I think we shall agree that it would be impossible for us to imagine a responsible being coming as the result of an accident.
To whom would he be responsible anyway? And if his very choice was an accident, who will hold him responsible? Let alone the underlying consideration, how can deliberate deliberation and purpose and responsibility emerge out of nowhere. Rem- emerge from a substratum that is completely accidental, devoid of thought itself, and devoid of responsibility itself.
So then I propose to deal with the thing in that order, and to discuss mainly this evening whether it is our opinion that man is a responsible being, or whether he is an irresponsible one. I'd next to make the point that when we come to consider this matter seriously, most of us find ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we do like to conceive of ourselves as responsible beings. And yet there are moments when most of us wish we were not responsible beings.
I want to elaborate that because these considerations do and will play a considerable part in the decision we come to. And to be honest, men, we must face the fact that we do have biases in this direction and the other. Lest we are deceived by our bias into wishful thinking and imagine that that wishful thinking is the result of logic. We do have biases for which we must make due allowance. I have a bias, I have already told you, I'm speaking as a Christian.
But I'm going to submit that we all have a bias. A bias one day in the direction of wishing that we were and in thinking that we are responsible creatures. And at other occasions, a very strong desire to wish that we were not responsible creatures. To start off with, most days of the week and most hours of the day, we do behave on the unconscious supposition that we are responsible. Most of us give that impression as we go about our daily business, anyway. And most of us run our business on that presupposition.
What would you think of a Prime Minister who got in by making certain promises? And when in two years time he had completely failed to fulfill those promises and instead done something completely different, and you called him to book and asked him why he had not fulfilled those promises. I say, what would you think of a Prime Minister who turned around and said, but, uh, my good sir, I'm not to blame for that. The promise I made was merely by chance. The chemicals came into my brain that way around that morning, and I made the promise. Since that morning, the chemicals have changed themselves. I can't help how the chemicals change themselves.
Therefore, I can't help not fulfilling that promise. You mustn't blame me. Scarce think he would get your vote at the next election, unless somehow he could persuade you that that was a sound answer, and anyway, your vote was quite a chance thing that happened to be made because the chemicals in your brain happened to be that way round that morning. And it's not only prime ministers that we expect to be responsible, we expect the erring boy to be responsible too. We'll betide him and his wage packet if he neglects his responsibility.
And then, what is more, we do not only act this way, act on the supposition that we are responsible, but we like it. The man who's just, um, reached the green from the tee with his golf ball and come pretty near the hole with the flag in, won't be too kind if you suggest that that's not to his credit at all. That's nothing to do with his judgment. If it is to do with his judgment, his judgment is merely the result of certain chemicals in his brain happening to come together just then. Nor would the successful businessman easily part with the credit that he is in fact responsible by choice, by willpower, by careful fore- forethought and planning, that he has thus built himself up a business.
Even in our games, we do like to feel that we're responsible. In Tokyo at the moment, men and women strive for fame and glory. Which glory would all disappear if they were not responsible creatures. If, after all, there was no choice, no self-control, no decisions to discipline themselves, no judgment in what they do, for which they personally can be praised and given credit because, um, it's quite beyond their power to control.
It is but an accident. Then the glory goes, and it's rather a grim and pathetic spectacle that we would have at Tokyo at the moment. Certainly, in giving them medals, we act most absurdly. You might as well give a medal to a pin that jumped quicker than the other pins towards the magnet for getting there first, as to give a medal to an athlete if he is not a responsible being with a will and a choice and a power of judgment for which he is personally responsible.
I think we would all admit that if we had to come to the conclusion that man is not a responsible being, something of the something of value, of dignity, of real worth would go out of our concept of man. But then there are times, I say, when we do, or many people do, wish they were not responsible beings. For this reason, that if our sense of choice is real, if our will is free, if we must be held for choosing and initiating action and continuing in it, then some of us have a record in the past that is not, uh, over worthy of credit.
We sense within ourselves deep levels of selfishness... in which we have, to which we have given way, knowingly failed to act according to the standards that we regard ourselves as right. We have all been conscious of acting out of expediency, against what the inner voice of conscience tells us is just and right.
And if it is that we are responsible because a creator made us so, and we are responsible to him. Then on times we have to face the unhappy fact that we do not love and sometimes do not care about that creator, that we show an alarming indifference to him. All that may be while remaining within the set bounds of social decency. And if we could persuade ourselves that we are not responsible, but we were overborne in these, uh, unworthy actions and attitudes by forces that we could not control, then perhaps we should feel a bit more comfortable, not only in the present, but for the future.
Now I say again, I mentioned that to indicate at the outset that there are very powerful emotional reasons working down within us that do not leave us merely to ice cold, disinterested reason as we come to make our decisions. We ought to allow for our bias. So let us come to the decision. Let's face the evidence. And yet, I can't help feeling somehow or other that the very proposal to face a question, to sift evidence, and to come to a conclusion answers the question before we begin.
For if we are but accidents and not responsible, if our sense of choice is only an empty phenomenon that has no ground in fact. Then we are fools, facing any question. Or if we face it, we must be prepared at the end, when we have come to our decision, to tell ourselves that that decision is utterly worthless. Because it was arrived at by a chance collocation of the chemistry of our brain.
Or by emotions over which we have no control and among which we have no real choice, that are our absolute masters and against whom there is no appeal. The very fact that we proceed and face a question and sift the evidence seems to me to have given the conclusion away to start with, that we do regard ourselves as responsible beings with power of choice and decision and will. And we shall take, we shall need the very strongest evidence to prove it to ourselves other.
I confess to you immediately that I shall not be extra good at making the evidence on the other si- side sound very strong. Simply because I do not believe the conclusions that have been urged. I do regard the evidence as being inadequate. I will do my best, however, to give a fair account of certain leading arguments that have been put forward against the view that man is a responsible creature and not an irresponsible accident. Only, let me repeat that I start as a Christian, and that the Christian view of things, as far as I know it, is this: that the question whether man is a responsible creature with choice and will and forethought is a question which the human heart answers intuitively and knows intuitively.
That there is not really any need of logic and cunning argument to establish the fact. The Christian view is that God has made man and put within man his law written on his heart. That man does have values. Maybe those values have become perverted, but that he does have values. That intuitively he knows are bigger than himself and originate outside himself. That he has a choice that can choose on the basis of those values, and that he has a will to initiate action according to his distinction, according to his decision, and that he has a conscience that willy-nilly will act as arbiter and tell him whether his choice and action have been according to his God-given laws or not.
That is the Christian view, as far as I understand it from the Bible. That a man knows these things intuitively and shows he knows them by his daily behavior and by his daily, um, uh, expressions. The very fact that one man accuses another man of doing something wrong shows not only that man number one who does the accusing has values, but he expects man number two to acknowledge those values, because there's no sense in accusing him. The very fact a man excuses his behavior shows that he has certain standards within and feels obliged to render excuse when he falls below those standards, which all would make nonsense if he didn't at the same time believe that other people hold those standards, and that those standards are meaningful.
That is the Bible view, and a view of which I am convinced. There is, I want to say, more evidence for the existence of God, for the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, than intuitive knowledge. But on this matter, whether man is responsible or irresponsible. The Bible's view is that man knows intuitively he is responsible. I therefore want to make that point and deal with the arguments that have come up against it.
Not necessarily spending overmuch time trying to prove that the Christian view is right. Merely trying to show that what man knows intuitively is right and cannot be overturned by adequate reasons to the contrary. Now, there are three avenues of attack on this view. I want to deal with some of the arguments from each one of them. The view has been attacked from the point of view of physical evolution.
It has been attacked on the ground of certain metaphysical theories, and it has been attacked on the ground of psychological observation. The case from physical evolution is, uh, very well known. It would be easier to answer if all the evolutionists held the same viewpoint. It is a common fallacy, of course, expected of the man in the street nowadays, that he will believe that evolution has been proved and that evolution is a very nice, coherent doctrine in which all scientists agree. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth.
It is itself acknowledgedly, acknowledgedly a theory. It hasn't been proved, and over this theory, not all scientists, not all evolutionists agree. There are different sorts of evolutionists. There are the completely atheistic evolutionists, like the Russian version, who must hold that matter is eternal, that there is no God outside it, and that all we see around us has come to be by the process of evolution, without any guiding hand or thought. They are the in the strongest position for arguing against the fact that man is a responsible creature.
But that argument is inadequate, in my way of thinking, for this very simple reason. Thereas they can adduce some evidence of a sort for making us think that matter, once it was here, has evolved, they have no answer whatsoever to the query, where did matter come from? To believe that it came from nowhere is purely and simply a leap in the dark, an act of sheer faith to say that matter has always existed and is eternal.
Now, if a man likes to take that leap of faith, I as a Christian regret it, but I have to acknowledge to him that I believe that the world was made by the word of God on the same principle, I believe it by faith. But I would protest most loudly if he tries to tell me that whereas I believe in a creator and a creation by faith, and he believes evolution on the grounds of science, for he does nothing of the sort, he believes it on the grounds simply of wishful thinking of faith. In fact, a lot of the evidence goes against him.
The second law of thermodynamics, for instance, tells us that whereas energy is conserved, nevertheless, energy is constantly descending from the more organized form where it is readily available to a form in which it is not so organized and not so readily available, which gives the impression that this universe is running down, that somehow by intervention from the outside it was wound up and is gradually unwinding. It, uh, is such an important observation that the scientists themselves have designated it by a law, second law of thermodynamics.
To believe atheistic evolution, you are to say that that law does not apply. And you have to say that the law doesn't apply simply for the reason that you don't want it to apply anymore, because you want to believe that matter has gradually gone on progressing out of nothing into existence and up into constantly higher and higher, more intricate forms. To argue as some do, that, uh, continuous creation will account for our world going on, is again not to come anywhere near answering the difficulties.
We may suppose continuous creation, but somebody sooner or later is going to ask who does the creating, and where does the stuff come from that is constantly being created? We are back at the old problem. Where did it all come from? To which science as such has no answer. Here, faith must act. But there are other evolutionists. They tell us that evolution, according to them, is merely a means by which matter that came into being, perhaps by God's creation, has become more and more complex.
I do not grant that their evidence is adequate to prove that God has used evolution in their sense to bring about this complex universe. But of course, even if God had used that method and their claims were right, they have nothing to say against the view that man is a responsible creature, because they do admit that their process of evolution is merely a mechanism that God the Creator has used to bring the world to this present state. They leave the initial act of creation in God's hands. They have nothing to say against man being a responsible creature.
Curiously enough, both the atheistic and these theistic evolutionists imply in their theory that there has been purpose all the way along. They tell us that out external, uh, forces acting on creatures, acting on beings, I ought to say, have made those beings respond, respond and adapt themselves to their environment, and the processes of natural selection have secured that the ones that adapt themselves best survive. But where came the power to adapt oneself from.
We come back to the very awkward, inescapable question. If something hadn't put within the, in the being an ability to respond, how could have it responded? There seems to be evidence of foresight somewhere. Take the ordinary common experience of cutting a finger. When a man, working machine, feels his finger has been cut by a blade, instinctively he withdraws his hand. His, um, nervous system takes over involuntarily and removes his hand from the path of danger.
Immediately the blood starts flowing, and for a little while it flows freely, cleansing away, tending to cleanse away any germs that may have infiltrated through the wound. After a time, the blood begins to do something else and begins to congeal and seal up the cut, lest the man should go on bleeding and bleed to death. Presently, the finger starts to swell, and if it is a serious cut, swells so much that it almost puts the finger out of action, to give that finger time to rest. While nature begins to to send up extra supplies of all that's needed to conquer remaining germs and to to provide new tissue.
Presently, the uh tissue that is made and looks like a scar falls off, and underneath is left a finger that looks very much as it did before it was cut. And then all these emergency operations begin to undo themselves and recede, and presently the finger is back to normal size and is working as it was before. I'd submit to you it is exceedingly difficult to resist the conclusion that when fingers first were, fingers were already equipped with that mechanism. A mechanism there, not yet used, but there having foreseen the need in the future.
For if that business of shutting off the blood supply hadn't been already there, the man who first cut his finger would have bled to death. And if the mechanism wasn't there to send up, uh, bodies to fight the germs, the man might have been poisoned to death. How should we explain the fact that the mechanism is there, even though it's never required, even if a man never cuts himself, it's there, ready to act in case of emergency? I submit to you that not only does that make the atheistic evolutionist look rather silly, but it puts a very big difficulty in the way even of the theistic evolutionist.
And it argues design and forethought on a very big scale. And as you know, in quoting that, I have not quoted an isolated feature in the universe around us, but one feature out of ten million million features that seem to show design. I am aware, of course, that the argument from design has, uh, become old fashioned. We are told by some that the argument from design is meaningless. We are here. Our bodies work. We happen to find food. Our stomach happens to work the way it does.
Well, if it didn't, we shouldn't be here. It has just happened so, so we are here. That therefore it is useless to argue design. If things weren't like this, we shouldn't be here at all. I must say that I find that argument very difficult to follow. I confess to you, very difficult to understand, let alone follow. Of course we're here. So is that door, with a hole in the middle, with a certain shape. And when we came in, we put a key in the door. That also was a certain shape that just happened to fit. To argue where we happen to be in the room, if the the thing hadn't have fitted, we wouldn't have been in the room.
There is therefore no sense in arguing that there is some design, some forethought between the shape of that key and the lock. That sounds to be nonsense. But more than that, this business of design, this sense of forethought in creation, isn't an analogy that we bring to the situation and impose on a situation, for we observe that we ourselves are made up in large part of the same constituents as the universe around us is made up, and therefore it is exceedingly reasonable to argue that if we can purpose and design by forethought.
Then what we see in the universe around us that looks very much like forethought and planning and design is the very same thing as we experience ourselves. And what is more, the whole of science proceeds on the assumption that this world is built to design. When Harvey was asked how he discovered the circulation of the blood, he replied that he noticed simply that the valves in the arteries and veins were in one particular direction, so that the blood could only flow one way down the arteries and not the other way.
He therefore supposed that there was some purpose in this arrangement. He found out, of course, there was a purpose. The blood is meant to flow one way down the va- the arteries and the other way up the veins. Supposing that this, uh, the phenomenon around had been so arranged with purpose, was the supposition that led Harvey to his discovery. It is to deny one of the basic planks of science itself, to argue there is no design in the universe around us. We may want to argue that.
It will not only be, uh, a matter of faith, but it will be taking a leap of faith against a tremendous body of evidence. And it looks like being very unscientific. I submit to you that the theories of the evolutionists are no serious argument against our intuitive knowledge that we are responsible creatures, and against the fact as proclaimed by practically all the serious religious leaders of the world, and preeminently by him who, with very good evidence, claims to be God incarnate.
I only stay a moment or two with objections that have been raised at the metaphysical level. There are current many brands of philosophy that on philosophical metaphysical, uh, considerations tell us either that we are not free agents or that there is no God, and that man is the measure of all things. There are some who tell us, as I have already hinted, that our sense of choice, of will, of responsibility is all an illusion.
That there is no world of spirit. To start the action, to make the choice, to exercise the will, to start matter going. There is nothing but matter. I submit that that is not an argument that many people hold seriously. For the simple reason that our common sense cries out against it. Let the philosopher say his last word, and we still believe that we can choose. Now, common sense rebels against the notion that it is an illusion.
But suppose it be an illusion. Then all our statements have no meaning either. For our selection that made them and our judgment that went to pronouncing them is meaningless. No more meaning, at any rate, than the picture produced by modern art, where an artist splashes a lot of paints on a canvas and then rides a bicycle over it, uh, aimlessly, and then looks around and tries to see some meaning in it. And therefore, if that is true, then your statement that we are not responsible creatures is just as meaningless as my statement that we are responsible creatures.
And your argument is as meaningless as mine. We might as well stop arguing. I have yet to see the philosopher who holds that view that dares to live up to it. So long as the philosophers don't act according to their belief in that particular, I shall not be willing to accept their philosophy. But we are told by others that man is the measure of all things, that there are no absolute values outside ourselves, no absolute being outside of ourselves. This is the view of humanism. But humanism runs into very great difficulties on the question of its values.
Why live? This is no real answer. It purports to tell us that humanism has the answer to to life, but cannot give us any real sensible values for living. It has no argument to bring, no standard to bring to bear on the question, for instance, whether mods and rockers have the best, uh, the better standard of values or not.
If there be no values outside ourselves, if there no- are no absolutes, then it is nonsense talking about being guided by the majority opinion. For suppose tomorrow the mods and rockers somehow collected a majority and tore your premises to bits. Then as a humanist, you would have to agree that this is the right thing to be done. Or else admit that though your view is in a minority, yet there's something about your view that has essential worth in itself and is not affected by the fact that you hold it, or only a few people hold it.
And when you start talking like that, you've already leaped outside man into a realm of absolute values, and therefore of man's responsibility to absolute value. There have been arguments brought against the Christian view, however, from the point of view of psychology. Psychologists dealing with mentally disturbed people have found them obsessed with feelings of guilt, have by analysis been able to trace those feelings of guilt to father fixations and such like things.
And when the unfortunate patient has been able to see with his conscious mind what has been going on underneath subconsciously, very often he finds release. All credit and all praise to psychiatrists and psychologists who so can help their fellow men. But it is a very wide step to say from that, that all feelings of guilt are the results of unhealthy emotional states, are the results of mere imaginations that have no foundation in external fact. Again, I shall not trouble long over this one because, simply, gentlemen, I do not believe that any of you seriously would entertain it.
You will not bring yourself to the view that in healthy people there is no responsibility, and that healthy people cannot be held responsible for their actions because they are merely predetermined by emotional states over which they have no control. Or that, if they do have some control, their values upon which they make their judgments are not really significant and can be explained away as hangovers from their childish impression of parental control.
If a man deliberately takes your wife or rapes your child. You may decide that the man is emotionally per- disturbed and therefore not responsible, but you will not hold the view that it doesn't matter. And when you begin to hold the view that it does matter. You are saying that there are values that are not mere hangovers from one's childhood, values that are real, rather than for for which you yourself would on occasion be willing to die.
Values which are bigger than life itself. There are some things that you would rather die than face. I therefore submit to you that, at least from the angles from which we have viewed it, there are not serious arguments against the Christian view that man is responsible. But as I close, I want to mention one feature about Christianity. We shall recur to it in subsequent lectures so that I need not elaborate it here more fully, but just to refer to it as I close.
There is a unique feature of Christianity that is relevant to mention in this connection because it has an answer to the dilemma in which we as men find ourselves. That dilemma, on the one hand, of acting as if we were responsible, but on the other hand, on times wishing we weren't responsible. That feature of Christianity is the cross and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You will all have observed that Christianity is here unique, and that its main point is not merely a message telling men to be good, but a message that God has come down to our world in the person of Jesus Christ and has suffered on a cross.
That suffering was not merely the suffering of a martyr, but was a suffering for sin. A suffering for sin that had to be undergone before God could forgive sinners. But a suffering which, on the other hand, has made it possible for God to forgive men. I say that is relevant because it does two things. Finding men who believe themselves responsible, it says, yes, men are indeed responsible, and values are absolute. They cannot just be glossed over, they must be honored, and that if humanity is to remain, to to retain its respectability and its values, those values must be honored, and they have been honored.
The sanctions of God's law, which were exerted at the cross. At the same time, for men who find it uncomfortable to face themselves because, believing themselves to be responsible, they find within themselves large areas where they have fallen below their standards, below the voice of conscience, because there rise within them feelings of guilt, because they know that they are not whole personalities, because they are conscious that they have often deliberately done things that are wrong. For men that are in that uncomfortable position, tempted to wish they weren't responsible, the cross of Christ says that God loves us, and God is prepared to accept us and himself endure all the damage and the suffering that has been involved in and caused by our sinning.
It has, I say, an answer to the dilemma. It makes it possible for a man to retain his sense of absolute value. It makes it possible for a man to face the fact that he has failed, and yet s- in the knowledge that he is accepted of God, and forgiven justly to hold up his head as a responsible human being. The fact that Christianity answers the dilemma that is deep rooted in many a human heart is a piece of evidence that is not to be brushed aside lightly.
It, after all, might be a key that fits a lot hole. And the need that we intuitively feel as responsible creatures may turn out to be a very real thing for which there is a very real answer, so perfect that the impression that the one is designed of God and the other designed of God is overwhelming. And final observation, Christian methods not only suits this dilemma, but it provides a man with the strength to do something about this business of shortcoming and falling below the responsibility he feels.
For it offers a man spiritual help through the joining of the personality of Christ alongside of that man's personality. But there we come once more to the heart of the question. Christianity diagnoses man's state as one of being a responsible creature who has fallen. It offers him salvation on the terms that he may, if he will, use that responsible choice to accept God's forgiveness and the sacrifice of Christ, and what is more, to receive within himself the spiritual power and person of Jesus Christ.
As it is possible for a man to screw down and try and stifle the intuitive sense of his responsibility, so it is possible for a man to use his will deliberately to reject the savior that Christianity offers. For Christianity says that even if a man use his free will to reject the savior that God offers, God will honor his responsibility, take no for an answer, and leave that man eternally in his ထည့်ရတော့ terrible dilemma.
