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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
minds, Satan brings his sophistry to bear upon them and entangles
them in the meshes of unbelief. If these doubting ones will come into
close connection with God, He will make His purposes clear to their
understanding.
Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The carnal mind cannot
comprehend these mysteries. If questioners and doubters continue to
follow the great deceiver, the impressions and convictions of God’s
Spirit will grow less and less, the promptings of Satan more frequent,
until the mind will fully submit to his control. Then that which appears
to these bewildered minds as foolishness will be the power of God,
and that which God regards as foolishness will be to them the strength
of wisdom.
One of the great evils which has attended the quest of knowl-
edge, the investigations of science, is that those who engage in these
researches too often lose sight of the divine character of pure and
unadulterated religion. The worldly-wise have attempted to explain
upon scientific principles the influence of the Spirit of God upon the
heart. The least advance in this direction will lead the soul into the
mazes of skepticism. The religion of the Bible is simply the mystery
of godliness; no human mind can fully understand it, and it is utterly
incomprehensible to the unregenerate heart.
The Son of God compared the operations of the Holy Spirit to
the wind, which “bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.”
Again, we read in the Sacred Record that the world’s Redeemer re-
joiced in spirit and said: “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
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and hast revealed them unto babes.”
The Saviour rejoiced that the plan of salvation is such that those
who are wise in their own estimation, who are puffed up by the teach-
ings of vain philosophy, cannot see the beauty, power, and hidden
mystery of the gospel. But to all those who are of a humble heart, who
have a teachable, honest, childlike desire to know and do the will of
their heavenly Father, His word is revealed as the power of God to
their salvation. The operation of the Spirit of God is foolishness to the
unrenewed man. The apostle Paul says: “But if our gospel be hid, it is
hid to them that are lost: in whom the God of this world hath blinded