21. Human judgment must not pass its
sentence upon God. Our nature is not such that it can lift itself
by its own forces to the contemplation of heavenly things. We
must learn from God what we are to think of God; we have no source of
knowledge but Himself. You may be as carefully trained as you
will in secular philosophy; you may have lived a life of
righteousness. All this will contribute to your mental
satisfaction, but it will not help you to know God. Moses was
adopted as the son of the queen, and instructed in all the wisdom of
the Egyptians; he had, moreover, out of loyalty to his race avenged the
wrong of the Hebrew by slaying the Egyptian This act is used as
the evidence of Moses’ righteousness.,
and yet he knew not the God Who had blessed his fathers. For when
he left Egypt through fear of the discovery of his deed, and was living
as a shepherd in the land of Midian, he saw a fire in the bush, and the
bush unconsumed. Then it was that he heard the voice of God, and
asked His name, and learned His nature. Of all this he could have
known nothing except through God Himself. And we, in like manner,
must confine ourselves, in whatever we say of God, to the terms in
which He has spoken to our understanding concerning Himself.