Witnesses for God and against him.
On the side of God, witnesses for him, assertors of his existence, his unity, his omnipotence, his providential direction of human affairs, are—
II. HIS CHURCH IN ALL AGES, WHETHER JEWISH OR CHRISTIAN.
1. It was the object of God, in calling the Israelites and tasking them his "peculiar people," to secure the result that he should not be "left without witness" (Acts 14:17). Monotheists from the first, the children of Israel stood up for ages a light in a dark world, giving a clear and unmistakable testimony for God, asserting him to be One, intelligent, possessed of will, the Creator of the world and of man, omnipotent, omniscient. "This august doctrine began with them; and they have been its witnesses and confessors, even to torture and death'. From the time of the old empire in Egypt to the present day, a uniform consistent witness has been borne by all orthodox Jews to these great and fundamental truths, the necessary bases of all true religion, the only safeguards for the continuance among men of law, order, or morality.
2. The Christian Church is at one on all these points with the Jewish Church, and bears the same testimony for God, only with additions to it. Christianity teaches that within the Unity of the Divine Substance there is a Trinity of Persons. Christianity maintains that the most essential attribute of the Divinity is love (1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:16). Christianity has much to tell of the Second and Third Persons of the Trinity, of which Judaism knows nothing. Thus, at the present day, it forms a second witness for God, and gives a wider, fuller, and deeper testimony.
II. THE LORD CHRIST HIMSELF. "Ye are my witnesses,… and my Servant whom I have chosen" (Isaiah 43:10). The Lord Jesus witnessed for God in many ways; and his utterances, placed on record by the evangelists, are testimonies of inestimable value, infallibly declaring to us the true nature of God. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16); "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved" (John 3:17); "God is true" (John 3:33); "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24); "The Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them" (John 5:21); "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23); "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name, he will give it you" (John 16:23). Or, to take another class of utterances, "God clotheth the grass of the field" (Matthew 6:30); God "sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matthew 5:45); "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17). The witness of the Son to the Father is far beyond the witness of men, and is inexpressibly touching, being pervaded by a spirit of such tender love and reverence as we shall vainly seek for elsewhere.
III. THE FATHER IN HIS OWN PERSON. In the present chapter of Isaiah, Jehovah, while citing as witnesses the Jewish Church, and his Servant, i.e. Christ (verse 10), goes on to bear his own testimony to his own greatness and unapproachableness. "I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am Jehovah; and beside me there is no Saviour … Yea, before the day was, I am he; there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall reverse it?" (verses 10-13). And does not the Father bear the same testimony to himself in the soul of each of us.? Is the general recognition of something high and holy external to us, "making for righteousness," anything but the Father speaking in us and bearing witness of himself in our heart of hearts? Has he not thus spoken always to all the teachable ones of his myriads upon myriads of human creatures, besides providing external testimony, making himself also an internal witness to his own Being?
Witnesses against God are, unfortunately, also many, as appears by the present passage. Among them may be mentioned—
I. THE IDOLATROUS, OR IN ANY WAY IRRELIGIOUS, NATIONS AND PEOPLES. Idolatry is either a negation of God or an utter misrepresentation and degradation of him. Polytheism is in a certain sense atheism, since a "god," limited and conditioned by a host of other gods, is in very truth no "God" at all. And the gods of idolaters had rarely such a character as enlightened Christians would willingly assign even to a low grade of angels. The "nations" of Isaiah's time, and of later ages, "because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge," had been given over by him to" a reprobate mind," and had lost the power of forming in their minds the conception of a pure, holy, all-perfect, spiritual existence. When such a conception was presented to them, they ]'ejected it, preferring their own familiar ideas of gods more nearly on a level with themselves to so transcendental a Being.
II. THE SCEPTICAL THINKERS AND PHILOSOPHERS EVERYWHERE. At all times there have been "fools" who have "said in their hearts," or even proclaimed to the world at large, "There is no God" (Psalms 14:1). Democritus, as early as b.c. 440, and Leucippus still earlier, taught that the universe had come into being without the help of a God, by evolution from lifeless and shameless matter. Practical atheism was as ancient in China as the time of Confucius. Soi-disant philosophers have been in every age among the most forward to witness against the Being from whom they derive their whole power to speak, think, or act. In the present day, atheism, though still bold and blatant in some places, for the most part bates its breath, and modestly shrouds itself under the agnostic veil.
III. THE PRACTICALLY IRRELIGIOUS AMONG THE NOMINAL SERVANTS OF GOD. The witnesses against God whose testimony is most dishonouring to him, and at the same time most injurious to mankind, are the unworthy professors of belief in him. To confess God with the lips while denying him in the life, is to do him the greatest disservice that is possible. It is to cast a doubt upon the value of all the human testimony borne in his favour, since who shall say how much of it is insincere? It is to insult God by a mock acknowledgment, a lip-service, in which the heart has no part. It is to admit his claim to allegiance and to cast off our allegiance in the same breath. The Christian religion would, it is probable, have, long ere this, overspread the world, had it not been for the vicious lives of professing Christians. The testimony of their acts takes away all its force from the testimony of their words, and changes them from witnesses for God into most persuasive witnesses against him.