The Liberator (newspaper)/September 18, 1857/Information Wanted
The Liberator.
Information Wanted.
How far, probably, does God act upon the advice which men disinterestedly give him (for their own purposes) in relation to his management of the world?
A writer in the Old Testament[1] informs us that Jehovah once confided to Moses a plan which he had formed in relation to the children of Israel; that Moses, seeing certain disadvantages in that plan, remonstrated against it; and that Jehovah, thereupon, repented of his original purpose, and took a different course.
Teachers of religion must often find the question coming practically before them for decision, whether they will maintain the perfect wisdom and justice of God, or the correct information of some one of the forty or fifty writers of the Old and New Testaments, when these two come in conflict.
They must sometimes also be asked whether God will probably comply with requests that may be made to Him at the present day, for more or less rain or sunshine than he has originally decided to provide, when the farmers of a particular locality think that He is giving them too much or too little.
It appears by the Honolulu Friend, that a similar question has lately been considered among the missionaries at the Sandwich Islands. After the subsidence of a volcanic eruption, which for a long time had threatened the people of one of those islands, the Rev. T Coan, of Hilo, read an essay before the ‘Hawaiian Evangelical Association,’ with the following title: ‘Is it proper to hold up the idea before the Hawaiians, that the lava-flow toward Hilo ceased in answer to prayer?’
It is certainly important that those who assume to teach Christianity to the heathen should make it clear to them, not only that the true God is wise and good, but that he is so wise and so good as not to need guidance or suggestion from His creatures in either of these departments; and, further, that, if heat and cold, sun, wind and rain, should be modified at the request of every farmer’s minister who thought a change desirable, we should probably have more variable weather than at present, with a much less perfect accomplishment of the general welfare.—C. K. W.
