PCEA

The Spirit in the moral and spiritual life of man

We noted that there was a great gulf between conscious life in animals and self-conscious life in man. The Bible tells us that this is because God made man “in His own image”. That does not refer to man’s physical appearance, since God has no physical appearance, but to his inner life, his moral and spiritual life. There we can still see the Spirit of God at work.

Conscience

By the moral life of man we mean his innate sense of right and wrong. This keeps him from descending to the level of the animal creation. Perhaps we can put it briefly by saying that man has a conscience. It is in our conscience that truth registers and consent to it may be obtained. Though conscience varies vastly in different cases, we do not believe that it is wanting in any human being, though it may be silenced and its witness snuffed out. Even those tribes whom we call “uncivilised” show that they recognise in many cases a distinction between right and wrong. Even cannibals practise their cannibalism in the dark, because in their inmost natures they know it to be wrong.

Religion

We believe that it is the Spirit of God that keeps conscience alive, and causes it to respond to right and wrong. This is also true in the spiritual sphere, in what we call religion. Religion is man’s response to the general revelation of a divine Being. While the response may, in many cases, be very defective, there would have been no general religion at all if there had not been a general revelation of God to which man’s rational and moral nature could respond. This “light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” is sustained by the Spirit of God. It is true that it can be deliberately put out of action, and man is then less than man.

Thus Natural Religion is fostered by the Spirit of God, and its spark kept alive. It is for this reason, as already suggested, that there is in man something to which the Christian religion can appeal, as it could not appeal to any animal, however intelligent it might be. Even in the case of those in whom conscience and the sense of spiritual values seem to be extinguished, that side of man’s nature can assert itself when and where it is least expected.

How much, then, do we owe to the fact that the Spirit of God has not left us alone, even when we have disowned Him and rejected His promptings? Everything, absolutely everything!