This brings to my mind the statement by an evangelical preacher, that “whatever you know how to do the best, the Lord knows how to do better.” That statement resulted in the conversion of an infidel, for there was one in the congregation who was an artisan, a watchmaker, a clockmaker, and he heard it. Sometime after that he had an ancient clock brought to him for repair, an old heirloom in a nobleman’s family. It was of a very ancient and complicated construction, and it was beyond his knowledge; he could not see what was the matter with it and what to do to set it right. He studied on it and looked at it for a long time, and finally that word came back to him that, “whatever you know how to do best, the Lord knows how to do better.” That man knew how to repair watches and clocks better than he knew how to do anything else, but here was something beyond him. The Spirit of the Lord moved him to put that statement to proof. He kneeled down and prayed that the Lord would show him how to repair that clock, and the Lord did show him, and he found out that the Lord could teach a man in a minute more than he could learn in a lifetime of study without the Lord. I tell you there is something wonderful about the Lord; and inasmuch as there is something wonderful about the Lord, there is something wonderful about His Book. It has in it a secret, a knack, if you please, a certain flavor, a certain thing that is not found in any other book that has ever been written, and can not be found in any other book that was ever written; for it does not simply tell you the thing itself (that is a small affair), but it lets you into the secret of the thing, and of all things. Now, which would you rather have, even in this world, a certain long time spent in gathering facts together, in learning independent, isolated statements of fact, in observing, even with your own eyes, a certain number of facts, or in starting with the truth, the key, which will explain all those things—with the only thing which will let you into the secret of them all? Why, you would admit that, if a man has the light and the truth to start with, he knows where he is going; he has his eyes open, and he knows how to use what he gets, and he knows its place in the economy of God. This secret of things is the thing that scientists are searching for. They do not care so much about the mere fact for its own sake; they know that that is not real, ultimate knowledge; but they are striving to find out the cause of things; yet even Christian men will not start with the Bible, because the Bible has the reputation of being “unscientific.” They want to find out truth for themselves, instead of being told it, and in that way they will never come to it. And why?—Because whoever knows must study as a little child, and a little child does not learn anything except by being told. It is told a thing, and then, unless it has been lied to, and has found out that people do not tell the truth, it believes and knows. A little child naturally believes; and if nobody ever lied to it, if it never saw deceit, it would believe everything it was told, and would know everything. Did you ever see anything more delightful than the positive assurance of a child who has been told something by its parents or some other person in whom it has confidence? The child knows that thing; it has not the slightest doubt about it, but it actually knows it. Now there is that peculiarity about the Bible that, when you learn a thing from it, you know it, and you know that you know it. You know it just as you know the difference between bread and a cake of clay.GCB April 14, 1903, page 198.6

Now, why is it that a person can know the secret of things,—the truth which scientific men all over the world, and from the earliest ages, have been seeking to discover,—only by being told?—Because there is nothing worth knowing except that which is true. You can make that statement stronger yet,—there is nothing that can be known except that which is true. (Amen.) Because the man who knows the thing that is not so does not know anything. Why?—Because there is nothing to know. It is just the same as with the man who is deceived by the juggler. He sees certain things done. Does he really see them done?—No; for there is nothing done. Some of the Indian jugglers, you know, are wonderfully skillful. They will make a plant grow and bear fruit right before a man’s eyes. They will throw a rope up in the air, and it will hold, and a boy will climb it out of sight, and the people will see it just as plainly as you see me. but on one occasion some men were present with a photographic apparatus, and you know the Bible says that that which doth make manifest is light, and they let the sun tell the story. They exposed the sensitized plate, but there was nothing on it. The jugglers could deceive the eyesight, but they could not deceive the sun; they could not deceive the light. Now we are to see light in God’s light, and not in the sparks of our own kindling, not in the fire that flashes from our own eyes. That is not light.GCB April 14, 1903, page 198.7

Now, when you turn the light of God upon a supposed thing, it lets us know whether the thing is there, or whether it is not there. Now, just as a man can not see a thing that has no form or existence, the thing that is not truth can not be known, although a man may think he knows it. How much has the man got who has seen all that jugglery? How much has he seen after all?—Nothing. He may have seen a great number of illusions of that kind, but what has he really seen after all?—Nothing. So put it in the form of statements, or laws, if you please, as men dignify them. A man knows a great mass of them, but they are not so, and so he has nothing. This law that is enunciated is not true; the men who enunciate it know it is not true, because they themselves know that in ten years from now, if they live and observe, they will have discovered facts and phenomena enough to have made it entirely obsolete; and yet they will discuss that law, and talk about it, and build upon it, with just as grave faces, with just as solemn an air, as though they knew it were true, although they know that it is not true.GCB April 14, 1903, page 198.8

The truth, I say, is not only the only thing that is worth knowing, but the only thing that can be known; for he who knows what is not true, does not know anything, so far as that is concerned. And the only way that the truth can be known is by revelation. Now, God gives us the advantage, if we will take it. He says that those people who keep His commandments (you will read it in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy) shall be the head, and not the tail; and He has given to us in this book, if we will learn it, the key by which we can become the head of all nations. We must be that, not for our sakes, that we may be glorified, but that He may be glorified; and if we get the wisdom in the right way, and use it in the right way, He will be glorified, and we shall not, because it is no credit to a man to know a thing that he sees put before his face. When we learn simply by seeing as God sees; when we anoint our eyes with the eye-salve, so that we may see; when we learn simply by looking upon God and His work that He spreads out before us, we have nothing to boast of. We did not dig it out, and boasting is excluded, because no man can dig out truth. It is simply revealed from God.GCB April 14, 1903, page 199.1

Now, when a man starts with a knowledge of the truth, do you not see that he has, by a long way, the advantage of the man who does not start with such knowledge? Here is a man who has a vast fund of facts and phenomena at his disposal, and here is another who has no fund, but he has the key of knowledge, he has the knowledge of the truth, he knows the reason, the cause, of everything. How long will it be before, other things being equal, this man who starts in handicapped, as it were, that is, behind the other one, will be ahead of the other one in his knowledge of facts?—Not long, if he is diligent; and the fundamental truth that he has will be an incentive to diligence. He can gather facts, and appropriate them, because everything he sees he has a place to put it; that will hold it, and he can learn ten times as fast as the other one can. That was demonstrated in the case of Daniel and his three fellows, who, starting with a knowledge of God, learned ten times more than anybody else in the same time. May God help us to get in right lines and on a solid foundation.GCB April 14, 1903, page 199.2

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON PLANS

Report of Southern Missionary Society