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What It Is Like to See the Glory of God 153
divine reality of Scripture. I recommend a slow and careful reading. The
phraseology is complex, but it is not unintelligible; and it repays what
you put into it.
The being of God is evident by the Scriptures, and the Scriptures
themselves are an evidence of their own divine authority, after the
same manner as the existence of a human thinking being is evident
by the motions, behavior and speech of a body of a human form
and contexture, or that that body is animated by a rational mind.
For we know this no otherwise than by the consistency, harmony
and concurrence of the train of actions and sounds, and their agreement
to all that we can suppose to be in a rational mind. These are
a clear evidence of an understanding and design that is the original
of those actions.
So there is that wondrous universal harmony and consent and
concurrence in the aim and drift [of the Scriptures], such an universal
appearance of a wonderful glorious design, such stamps everywhere
of exalted and divine wisdom, majesty and holiness in matter,
manner, contexture and aim; that the evidence is the same that the
Scriptures are the word and work of a divine mind, to one that is
thoroughly acquainted with them, as ’tis that the words and actions
of an understanding man are from a rational mind, to one that has
of a long time been his familiar acquaintance. 3
Most of us overlook the wonders that surround us. Not Edwards.
It is a wonder that we can watch a human body move (eyes, lips, forehead,
shoulders), listen to human vocal cords make sounds, and follow
the interplay of these motions and sounds with the surrounding people
and things, and—from all of this physical, sensory data—draw the wellgrounded
conviction that somehow connected with this physical body
of motion and sound is a human thinking being—a rational soul.
We can’t see a soul, or personhood, or personality, or rationality. So
how do we know there is more than body? Edwards says, “The consistency,
harmony and concurrence of the train of actions and sounds”
agree with “all that we can suppose to be in a rational mind.” Most
of the time, we do not consciously make an inference from what we
3
Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies” (Entries Nos. a-z, 1-500), vol. 13, The Works of Jonathan Edwards,
ed. Thomas Schafer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 410–11 (Miscellany 333).