Discovery and Revelation

There is a great difference between what is called a discovery and a revelation. A discovery is something that man makes, and tliat man can mend; a revelation is something that God gives, and that God alone can add to. Columbus discovered America; but a child in a Sunday-school knows more about America in the year 1873 than Columbus knew some three centuries ago, when he first discovered it. What one man discovers, another may further explore, and a third greatly enlarge; but when God makes a revelation, it comes from a height to which created wing cannot soar, and it deals with things that the human mind cannot penetrate; and therefore we must and ought to rejoice to accept it, just as it is handed down to us from heaven in all its completeness: we cannot add to it. The joyful sound is not a discovery which man has struck out as the result of investigation, but a revelation which God has made known in His sovereign grace. We now receive it just as God at first gave it.—Cumming