The Maintenance of the Truth as Revealed

The maintenance of the full revealed truth is the only true testimony; or means of restoration in failure. This is the point which I propose to dwell on for a little; and the principle which I desire to authenticate is this; that man knows nothing of God but. from His own revelation of Himself; that, according as this revelation was enunciated, so was the servant of God bound to adhere to the terms of it, and that whenever he failed to maintain those terms accurately, he so far failed to secure his own blessing, and still more, he thereby ignored his ability or title to declare the true God; for he was behind the revelation.
That the maintenance of the full revelation should be the grand and necessary means of restoration, is plain and fitting, so to speak, when we consider the nature of man’s alienation from God. Having at the serpent’s suggestion, believed a lie, and acted on it, he was deceived into an entire misapprehension of God. He did not deny God’s existence, but he accepted from Satan a false idea of Him: knowing His power, but distrusting His intentions towards man.
Hence, the natural mind is at enmity against God; there is really no knowledge of the true God. The fall while it enlarged the human mind, did so at the expense of its previous knowledge of God, and it would have to be deprived of much of its present power of comprehension if it were possible for it to return of itself to a condition in which it could simply trust in God, in a word to a state of innocence, which is impossible, for we are born in another state of nature. The more the human mind is exercised to attain a knowledge of the true God, the more is it made cognizant of its estrangement from Him, in the very state of its nature; for the very power which exercises it is Owing to the act which corrupted it with respect to Him. The greatest philosopher, after the most intense study, only produced a system, which, while it admitted man’s need, declared that the true God was not apprehended. They attributed to the Supreme Being the best attributes which they found active in man’s nature; but they did not discover, and could not, the nature of God in His love to man, because their own minds denied it.