The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith, by 
Robert Patterson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith
       Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity

Author: Robert Patterson

Release Date: October 17, 2006 [EBook #19566]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FABLES OF INFIDELITY AND ***




Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel, Michael
Zeug, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of
public domain works from the University of Michigan Digital
Libraries.)






[Illustration: Robert Patterson]




FABLES OF INFIDELITY

AND

FACTS OF FAITH:

BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCES OF INFIDELITY.


BY

REV. ROBERT PATTERSON, D. D.


REVISED AND ENLARGED.


CINCINNATI:
WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY.


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by

WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.


Stereotyped by
OGDEN, CAMPBELL & CO.,
176 Elm St., Cincinnati.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.
                                             PAGE.
  Did the World Make Itself?                     7

Eternity of Matter.
Disproved by its Composite Nature.
Disproved by its Motion.
Evolution only a big Perpetual Motion Humbug.
Work of a Designer in the structure of the Eye.
The Eye-Maker sees over a wide Field and far.
The Eye-Maker sees Perfectly.


CHAPTER II.

  Was Your Mother a Monkey?                     34

The Divine Fact of Evolution Quite Different from the Atheistic Theory.
State the Question Sharply--Why?
Darwin's Answer.
The Ancestral Monkey, Fish, Squirt.
Natural Selection.
Intended to Exclude God.

1. _The History of the Theory._

Indian; Phoenician; Greek; Popish; La Place's Theory; The Vestiges of
    Creation.
Herbert Spencer's Contradictory Theory.
The Evolutionists' Hell.
Spontaneous Generation--two Theories; the Conflicting Theories of
    Progress; Tremaux; Lamarck; the Climatal; Darwin's; Huxley's;
    Parson's; Mivart's; Hyatt's; Cope's; Wallace's; the Gods; Denounced
    by the Princes of Science.
Agassiz's Deliverance Against it.
Imperfection of the Theory Eked out.
Huxley's Protoplasm.
Tyndall's Potency of Life in Matter.
Buchner's Matter and Force.
Lubbock's Origin of Civilization.
Consequences of the Brutal Origin of Man.
Propagandism of Atheism.

2. _The Theory Illogical and Incoherent._

Darwin Admits Insufficiency of Proof.
Useless as an Explanation of Nature.
Self-Contradictory; _e. g._, Protoplasm.
Wallace's Self-Contradictions.
Incoherency of the Denial of Design with the Assertion of Progress.
Failure of Alleged Facts to Sustain the Theory.
Does not Account for the Origin of Anything.
Wild Assumptions Made by Darwin.
Erroneous Assumption of the Tendency of Natural Selection to Improve
    Breeds.
Assumption of Infinite Possibility of Progress in Finite Creatures.

3. _An Unfounded Theory._

No Evidence of the Facts Possible.
None Ever Alleged, save Gulliver's.
Domestication Disproves Transmutation--Horses; Pigeons; Dogs.
The Egyptian Monuments.
The Mummied Animals.
The Geological Record.
The Limits of Geological Time.

4. _Embryology._

Testimony of Scientists:
    1. Embryology Only Analogical.
    2. Embryos _not_ all Alike.
    3. Four Distinct Plans of Structure.
    4. Germs Always True to the Breed.

5. _Gradations of Species._

Lamarck's Statement.
Birth Descent not Inferable from Gradation.
No such Imperceptible Blending in Nature.
The Fact of the Present Existence of Distinct Species.
Sterility of Hybrids.
Geological Species Distinct.
The Intermediate Forms not Found.
The Gradation Does not Begin with the Lowest Forms.
Four Kingdoms from the Beginning.
The New Species Began with the Giants.
The Gaps Fatal to the Theory.
The Abyss Between Death and Life.
The Gulf Between the Plant and the Animal.
The Gaps Between Species Which will not Breed Together.
The Gaps Between Air Breathers and Water Breathers, &c.
The Great Gulf Between the Brute and the Man.
Natural Selection Could not Have Deprived a Monkey of Hair.
Nor Have Given a Human Brain.
The Brain-Worker Contravenes Natural Selection at Every Step.
Civilization the Contradiction of Natural Selection.
Morality and Religion the Direct Contraries of Natural Selection.
Tendency Immoral, Degrading, and Atheistic.


CHAPTER III.

  Is God Everybody, and Everybody God?          91

Pantheism Described.
An Antiquated Hindooism.
A Jesuitical Atheism.
Grossly Immoral.
A Practical Atheism.


CHAPTER IV.

  Have We Any Need of the Bible?               112

Civilization and the Bible.
Revelation Not Impossible.
The Mythical Theory.
The Inner Light.
Many Ignorant of God.
Heathen Morality--Plato's.
Infidel Morality--Paine's.


CHAPTER V.

  Who Wrote the New Testament?                 147

The Bible Not Just Like Any Other Book.
Two Modes of Investigation.
Did the Council of Nice Make the Bible?
The Mythical Theory.
The Evidence of Celsus.
The Fragment Hypothesis.
The Bank Signature Book.
Could the New Testament be Corrupted?


CHAPTER VI.

  Is the Gospel Fact or Fable?                 169

The Nature of Historical Evidence; Letters; Monuments.
Contemporary Letters of Peter, Pliny and John.
Prove the Existence of Churches.
And Their Worship, Holiness, and Sufferings.


CHAPTER VII.

  Can We Believe Christ and His Apostles?      190

The Gospel a Unit; Must Take or Refuse it All.
Apostles' Testimony Circumstantial.
Witnesses Numerous and Independent.
Confirm Their Testimony with Their Blood.


CHAPTER VIII.

  Prophecy,                                    210

Political--Napoleon's--Wrong.
Presidential Candidates.
Draper's Dogma of Youth and Decrepitude of Nations.
Statesmen Prophets.
General Claim for All Genius.
Instances of Secular Prediction:
    Cayotte's of the French Revolution.
    The Oracles of Apollo.
    Vettius Valens' Twelve Vultures.
    Spencer's of the Disruption of the American Union.
    Saint Malachi's Prophecies.
    Mohammed's Prophecies.
    Seneca's of the Discovery of America.
    Dante's of the Reformation.
    Plato's of Shakespeare.
Symbolical Language of Prophecy.
Anybody may Predict Downfall of Nations.
An Awful Truth if it be True.
But Bible Predictions Circumstantial--Egypt; Babylon; Nineveh; Judea.
Predict Life and Resurrection.
The Arabs; Jews; Seven Churches; Messiah.


CHAPTER IX.

  Moses and the Prophets,                      266

God the Author of the Bible.
Every Other Book Inspired?
Connection of Bible History and Morality.
Hume's Sophism. Miracles Being Violations of Laws of Nature, Contrary to
    an Unalterable Experience.
No Testimony can Reach to the Supernatural.
Records of Facts Not Judged by Your Notions.
Rationalistic Explanation of the Miracles.
Bible Account of Creation Unscientific.
Antiquity of Man.
The Anachronisms of the Pentateuch.
Bishop Colenso's Blunders:
    The Universality of the Deluge.
    Joshua Causing the Sun to Stand Still.
    Cain's Wife.
    Increase of Jacob's Family in Egypt.
    The Number of the First-Born.
    The Fourth Generation.
    The Bishop's Blunders in Camp Life.
    Sterility of the Wilderness.
    Population of the Promised Land.
Modern Discoveries in Bible Lands.
Egyptian Monuments of Joseph.
Assyrian Ethnology and Genesis, Chaps. x. and xi.
Sennacherib's Conquest of Palestine.
Belshazzar's Kingship.
The Moabitic Inscriptions, and Omri and Ahab.
The Samaritan Pentateuch.
The Character of the Books--Austere.
Variety of Writers and Unity of Plan.
Contained the Surveys, and the Laws of the Nation.
Introduced New and Republican Usages.
Moses' Law in Advance of Modern Social Science.
Testimony of the Jewish Nation.
Testimony of Christ.
The Lost Books.
The Law Abolished by the Gospel.
The Imperfect Morality of Old Testament.
Polygamy, Slavery, and Divorce.
The Education of the World a Gradual Process.
The Imprecations of Scripture.


CHAPTER X.

  Infidelity Among the Stars,                  335

Scientific Objections to the Bible.
The Infinity and Self-Existence of the Universe.
Disproved by
    Its Evident Limits.
    Its Composite Materials.
    Its Steady Loss of Heat.
Buffon's Explosion of Planets.
The Nebular Theories.
The Fiction of Homogeneous Matter.
The Contradictory Theories.
The Perpetual Motion Machine.
Contrary to Facts of Astronomy.
Contradicted by Astronomers.
Impossibility of any Cosmogony.


CHAPTER XI.

  Daylight Before Sunrise,                     378

Infidel Objections to Genesis.
The Hindoo Chronology.
The Egyptian Chronology.
The Bible Age of the Earth.
The Solid Firmament.
Light Before the Sun.


CHAPTER XII.

  Telescopic Views of Scripture,               423

The Source of the Water of the Deluge.
The Stars Fighting Against Sisera.
The Astronomers of the Great Pyramid.
The Grand Motion of the Sun.
The Formation of Dew.
The Multitude of the Stars.
The Descent of the Heavenly City.


CHAPTER XIII.

  Science or Faith?                            466

Must Faith Fade Before Science?
Scientists as Partial as Other People.
Have no Such Certainty as is Claimed.

1. _Mathematical Errors._

The Infinite Half Inch, Etc.
The Doctrine of Chances.
No Mathematical Figures in Nature.
The French Metric System.
The Lowell Turbine Wheel.

2. _Errors of Astronomy._

Kant's Predictions; Le Verrier's.
Herschel's Enumeration of Errors.
Sun's Distance; Other Measurements.
The Moon's Structure and Influence.
La Place's Proposed Improvement.
The Sun's Structure, Heat, Etc.
The Sizes, Distances, and Densities of the Planets.
Errors About the Nebulę.
Errors About Comets.
The Cosmical Ether.
The Cold of Infinite Space.
From This Chaos Springs the Theory of Development.

3. _Errors of Geology._

No _Fact_ of Geology Anti-Biblical.
All Anti-Biblical Theories Based on an _If_.
No Geological Measure of _Time_.
All Calculations of Time by Geologists, which Have Been Tested, Have
    Proved Erroneous--the Danish Bogs; the Swiss Lake Villager; Horner's
    Nile Pottery; the Raised Beaches of Scotland; Lyell's Blunder in the
    Delta of the Mississippi; Sir Wm. Thompson's Exposure of the
    Absurdity of the Evolutionists' Demands for Time.
Conflicting Geological Theories--the Wernerian, Huttonian, and Diluvian
    Theories; the Catastrophists and Progressionists; Eleven Theories of
    Earthquakes; Nine Theories of Mountains; False Geology of America;
    Scotland Kicked About Too.

4. _Errors of Zoology._

Lamarck's Vestiges; Tremaux; Darwin's Contradictions; Huxley; Mivart,
    and Wallace.
Blunders of the French Academy, Denouncing Quinine, Vaccination,
    Lightning Rods, and Steam Engines.
Uncertainty of Science Increases in Human Concerns.
Second-hand Science Founded on Somebody's Say So.

5. _All Science Founded on Faith._

Reason Also Based on Faith.
This Life Depends on Faith.
We Demand Truths of which Science is Ignorant.
All Our Chief Concerns in the Domain of Faith.
Religion the Most Experimental of the Sciences.
The Only Science which can Make You Happy.
Try for Yourself.




PREFACE.


This is not so much a volume upon the Evidences of Christianity, as an
examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us
that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of
course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under
penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our
birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could
persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved
to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men
professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow?
Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to
scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float
me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they
must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and
venerate, and trust.

A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned upon
some of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want of
something for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, a
poor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. At any rate, having
grown tired of pelting the Church with the dirtballs of Voltaire and
Paine, they begin to acknowledge that it is, after all, an institution;
and that the Bible is an influential book, both popular and useful in
its way. Mankind, it seems, will have a Church and a Bible of some sort;
why not go to work and make a Church and a Bible of their own?
Accordingly they have gone to work, and in a very short time have
prepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that the
worldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must be
very hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positive
statements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of the
Bible, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come. Nevertheless
each discoverer or constructor presents his system to the world with
great confidence, large claims to superior benevolence, vast pretensions
to learning and science, and no little cant about duty and piety.
Wonderful to tell, some of them are very fond of clothing their
ungodliness in the language of Scripture.

No pains are spared to secure the wide spread of these notions.
Prominent Infidels are invited to deliver courses of scientific
lectures, in which the science is made the medium of conveying the
Infidelity. Scientific books, novels, magazines, daily newspapers, and
common school books, are all enlisted in the work. The disciples of
Infidelity are numerous and zealous. It would be hard to find a factory,
boarding-house, steamboat or hotel where twelve persons are employed,
without an Infidel; and harder still to find an Infidel who will not use
his influence to poison his associates.

These systems are well adapted to the depraved tastes of the age. The
business man, whose whole soul is set on money-making and spending, is
right glad to meet the Secularist, who will prove to him on scientific
principles, that a man is much profited by gaining the whole world, even
at the risk of his soul, if he has such a thing. The young and
ill-instructed professor of Christianity, whose longings for forbidden
joys are strong, has a natural kindliness toward nationalism, which
befogs the serene light of God's holy law, and gives the directing power
to his own inner liking. The sentimental young lady, who would recoil
from the grossness of the Deist, is attracted by the poetry of
Pantheism. Infidelity has had, in consequence, a degree of success very
little suspected by simple-minded pastors and parents, and which is
often discovered too late for remedy.

This book is written to expose the _folly_ of some of these novel
systems of Infidelity--leaving others to show their wickedness. It may
surprise some who would glory in being esteemed fiends, to learn that
they are only fools. If they should be awakened now to a sense of the
absurdities which they cherish as philosophy, it might save them from
awaking another day to the shame and everlasting contempt of the
universe.

I have not taken up all the cavils of Infidelity. Their name is Legion.
Nor have I troubled my readers with any which they are not likely to
hear. Leaving the sleeping dogs to lie, I have noticed only such as I
have known to bark and bite in my own neighborhood, and know to be rife
here in the West. They are stated, as nearly as possible, in the words
in which I have heard them in public debate, or in private conversation
with gentlemen of Infidel principles. I have made no references to
books or writers on that side, save to such as I am assured were the
sources of their sentiments. In such cases I have named and quoted the
authors. Where no such quotations are noticed it will be understood that
I am responsible for the fairness with which I have represented the
opinions which are examined. It is not my design to fight men of straw.

Every historical or scientific fact adduced in support of the arguments
here used is confirmed by reference to the proper authority. But it has
not been deemed needful to crowd the pages with references to the works
of Christian apologists. The Christian scholar does not need such
references; while to those for whose benefit I write, their names carry
no authority, and their arguments are generally quite unknown. One great
object of my labor will be gained if I shall succeed in awaking the
spirit of inquiry among my readers, to such an extent as to load them to
a prayerful and patient perusal of several of the works named on the
next page. They have heard only one side of the question, and will be
surprised at their own ignorance of matters which they ought to have
known.

Books on the Evidences are not generally circulated. Ministers perhaps
have some volumes in their libraries; but in a hundred houses, it would
be hard to find half a dozen containing as many as would give an
inquiring youth a fair view of the historical evidences of the truth of
the gospel. Nor, where they are to be found, are they generally read.
Being deemed heavy reading, the magazine, or the newspaper is preferred.
Ministers do not in general devote enough of their time to such sound
teaching as will stop the mouths of gainsayers. I have been assured by
skeptical gentlemen, who in the early part of their lives had attended
church regularly for twenty-two years, that during all that time they
had never heard a single discourse on the Evidences. Moreover, the
protean forms of Infidelity are so various, and many of its present
positions so novel, that books or discourses prepared only twenty years
ago miss the mark; and rather expose to the charge of misrepresentation,
than produce conviction. New books on Infidelity are needed for every
generation.

The lectures expanded into this volume were delivered in Cincinnati, in
1858. Replying to different, and discordant systems of error, whose only
bond is opposition to the gospel, they are necessarily somewhat
disconnected. No attempt was made to mold them into a suit of royal
armor, but merely to select a few smooth pebbles from the brook of
truth, which any Christian lad might sling at the giant defiers of the
armies of the living God. Having proved acceptable for this purpose, and
a steadily increasing demand for repeated editions wearing out the
original plates, the author has been requested by British and American
publishers to revise the work in the light of the recent discoveries of
science. This he has attempted; with what success the reader will judge.
Conscious of its many defects, yet grateful to God for the good which he
has done to many souls by its instrumentality, the author again commends
the book to the Father of Lights, praying him to use it as a mirror to
flash such a ray of light into many dark souls as may lead them into the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 1875.

       *       *       *       *       *

The author having been repeatedly asked by inquirers for the names of
books on the Evidences of Christianity, subjoins a list of those easily
accessible in the West. It is not supposed that any one inquirer will
read all these; but it is well to read more than one, since the evidence
is cumulative, and it is impossible for any writer to present the whole.
Having a list of several works, the inquirer who can not obtain one may
be able to procure another. There are many other works on the Evidences
on the shelves of all our principal booksellers.

_Modern Atheism_, by James Buchanan, LL. D.

_Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation_, by James McCosh, LL. D.,
and George Dickie, M. D.

_Religion and Geology_, Edward Hitchcock, LL. D.

_The Architecture of the Heavens_, J. P. Nichol, LL. D.

_The Christian Philosopher_, Thomas Dick, LL. D.

_Natural Theology_, William Paley, D. D.

_The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature_, Joseph Butler, D. C. L.

_The Bridgewater Treatises_, Whewell, Chalmers, Kidd, &c.

_The Comprehensive Commentary_, William Jenks, D. D.

_The Cause and Cure of Infidelity_, Rev. David Nelson.

_A View of the Evidences of Christianity_, William Paley, D. D.

_The Eclipse of Faith_, ascribed to Henry Rogers.

_The Restoration of Belief_, ascribed to Isaac Taylor.

_Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity_, University of Virginia.

_The Divine Authority of the Old and New Testaments Asserted_, J.
Leland, D. D.

_The Bible Commentary._

_An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters to Thomas Paine_, R.
Watson.

_A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion_, S. Jenyns.

_A Letter to G. West, Esq., on the Conversion of St. Paul_, Lord
Lyttleton.

_Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ_, Gilbert West, Esq.

_Difficulties of Infidelity_, Faber.

_Dissertations on the Prophecies_, Thos. Newton, D. D.

_An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scriptures_, T. H. Horne,
Vol. I.

_The Evidences of Christianity_, Charles Petit McIlvaine, D. D.

_Rawlinson's Historical Evidences._

_Modern Skepticism_, by Joseph Barker.

_Haley's Discrepancies of the Bible_, W. G. Holmes, Chicago.

_The Superhuman Origin of the Bible_, Rogers.

_Christianity and Positivism_, McCosh.

_The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural_, McCosh.

_Aids to Faith_, Appleton & Co.

_Modern Skepticism_, Randolph & Son.

_Modern Doubt_, Christlieb.

_Alexander's Evidences of Christianity._




CHAPTER I.

DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?

     _Understand, ye brutish among the people;
     And, ye fools, when will ye be wise?
     He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
     He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
     He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not correct?
     He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?_--PSALM xciv. 8, 9.


Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about
in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what
is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not?
Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger
question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are
persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a
lie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." Whereas, say they, "We know that matter is eternal, and the
world is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earth
are eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator."

But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we do
not know any such thing, and must be allowed to ask, How do _you_ know?
As you are not eternal, we can not take it on your word.

The only reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion
is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally
indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it
is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it
is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as
much as you please, but you can not destroy the substance of anything.
Wherefore, as matter is indestructible, it must be eternal."

Profound reasoning! Here is a brick fresh from the kiln. It will last
for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousand
years past!

The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It is
not agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturally
indestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them can
tell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake to
say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among
these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be
subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the
surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in
this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He
can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he
may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that
matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child
should try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and,
failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existed
from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."

But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, and
impossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrable
refutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science. The principle
of the argument is so plain that a child of four years old can
understand it. It is simply this, that all substances in heaven and
earth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can be
eternal.

We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter is
eternal, how does that account for the formation of this world? What is
this matter you speak of? This world consists not of a philosophical
abstraction called matter, nor yet of one substance known by that name,
but of a great variety of material substances, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon,
sulphur, iron, aluminum, and some fifty others already discovered.[2]
Now, which of these is the eterna-matter you speak of? Is it iron, or
sulphur, or clay, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did the
others come from? Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with its
gravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into a
pail of water? Or are they all eternal? Have we fifty-seven eternal
beings? Are they all eternal in their present combinations? or is it
only the single elements that are eternal? You see that your
hypothesis--that matter is eternal--gives me no light on the formation
of this world, which is not a shapeless mass of a philosophical
abstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building,
composed of a great variety of matters. Was it so from eternity? No man
who was ever in a quarry, or a gravel pit, will say so, much less one
who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. Do you assert the
eternity of the fifty-seven single substances, either separate or
combined in some other way than we now find them in the rocks, and
rivers, and atmosphere of the earth? Then how came they to get together
at all, and particularly how did they put themselves in their present
shapes?

Each of them is a piece of matter of which _inertia_ is a primary and
inseparable property. Matter _of itself_ can not begin to move, or
assume a quiescent state after being put in motion.

Will you tell us that the fifty-seven primary elements danced about till
the air, and sea, and earth, somehow jumbled themselves together into
the present shape of this glorious and beautiful world, with all its
regularity of day and night, and summer and winter, with all its
beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its variety of birds, and
beasts, and fishes? To bring the matter down to the level of the
intellect of the most stupid pantheist, tell us in plain English, _Did
the paving stones make themselves?_ For the paving stones are _made_ out
of a dozen different chemical constituents, and each one is built up
more ingeniously than the house you live in. _Now, did the paving stones
make themselves?_

No conviction of the human mind is more certain than the belief that
every combination of matter proves the existence of a combiner, that
every house has had a builder, and that every machine has had a maker.
No matter how simple the combination, if it be only two laths fastened
together by a nail, or two bricks cemented with mortar, or the sole of
an old pegged boot, all the atheists in the world could not convince you
that those two laths, or those two bricks, or those two bits of leather
existed in such a combination from all eternity. If any wise philosopher
tried to persuade you that for anything you could tell they might have
been always so, you would reply, "No, sir! You can't cram such stuff
down my throat. Even a child's common sense shows him that those two
laths were not always so nailed together; that those two bricks were not
always so placed, one on the top of the other; and that those two pieces
of old sole leather were not always pegged together in the sole of a
boot." There is no conviction more irresistible than our belief that
_no compound can possibly be eternal_.

But the universe is the greatest of all compounds. Everything in it is
compound. Chemists speak of simple substances, or elements of matter,
and it is well enough to separate the elements of things in our
thoughts, for the sake of distinct consideration, and to speak of the
properties of pure oxygen, or of pure hydrogen, or of pure carbon, or of
pure gold, or of pure iron, or of pure silver. But then we should always
remember that there is nothing pure in the world, that there is no such
thing in nature as any substance consisting only of a single element,
pure and uncombined with others. Just as your gold eagle is not pure
gold, but alloyed with copper, everything in nature is alloyed.
Everything in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in the
waters under the earth, is compound. The air you breathe, simple as it
seems, is composed of three gases, and is besides full of what Huxley
calls "a stirabout" of millions of seeds of animalculę and motes of dust
visible in the sunbeam. That hydrant water you are about to swallow is a
rich aquarium full of all manner of monsters, which the oxy-hydrogen
microscope will exhibit to your terrified gaze, devouring each other
alive. Should you get rid of them by evaporating your water, your
chemist will tell you that still your pure water must be a compound of
oxygen and hydrogen. There is no help for it.

Many years ago some astronomers fancied they had found clouds, or
nebulę, of gas, quite simple and uncompounded with anything else, a
great many millions of miles away in the sky. They were so very far away
that they thought nobody would ever be able to fly so far to bottle up a
specimen of that gas and bring it back here to earth and analyze it, to
find out whether it was pure and simple, or compound. So they felt quite
safe in affirming that there was the genuine, simple, homogeneous gas,
in the nebulę, with which Almighty God had nothing whatever to do, but
which had first made itself and then had condensed into our present
world. But unfortunately for this brilliant discovery the spectroscope
opened windows into the nebulę, and showed very plainly that they were
on fire; and fire is a compound; it can not burn without fuel and
something to support the combustion; so that settled the alleged
simplicity of the nebulę. It is now demonstrated, therefore, that every
known substance existing in nature is a compound, and therefore can not
be eternal. And the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. No
number of finite existences can be eternal. The universe, then, can not
be eternal.

Suppose, however, that, for the sake of argument, we should grant our
atheistic world-builder his materials, away off beyond the rings of
Saturn, or the orbit of Uranus (since he seems to like to have his
quarries a good way off from his building), would he be any nearer the
completion of his world-making? As Cornwallis declared that the conquest
of India resolved itself ultimately into a question of bullocks, the
prime consideration in the construction of the world, after you have got
your materials, is that of transportation. When one beholds the three
great stones in the temple of Baalbec, each weighing eleven hundred
tons, built into the wall twenty feet high, and a fourth in the quarry,
a mile away, nearly ready for removal, he asks, "How did the builders
move those immense stones, and raise them to their places?" And when we
behold the quarry out of which these stones were taken, and all the
other quarries of the world, and all the everlasting mountains, and the
whole of this solid earth, and boundless sea, brought, as our theorists
affirm, from far beyond the orbit of the most distant planet, we raise
the question of transportation, and demand some account of the wagon and
team which hauled them to their places. We can not get rid of the
necessity for transportation by evaporating the building stones into
gas, for a world of gas weighs just as many tons as the world made out
of it. Before we can make a world we must have _power_; but we can never
get power out of the world to build itself. The atheists' world is only
a great machine. The first law of mechanics is that action and reaction
are equal; consequently machinery can never create power. You will never
lift yourself by pulling at your boot-straps; much less can a machine
lift and carry itself.

It is no matter how big you make the wheels of your machine, as big as
the orbits of the planets if you like, still it is only a machine,
unless it has a mind in it; and your big machine can no more create
power than a little machine as small as a lady's watch. Nor does it make
the least difference in respect to making power, of what materials your
perpetual motion peddler makes his machine--whether of a skein of silk
on a reel in a bottle, or of steel and zinc electro magnets running upon
diamond points, or whether he melts up his steel, and zinc, and diamonds
into red hot fire mist; it is still only a machine, made of these
materials, as destitute of power as the smaller machines made out of it.
The atheists' universe is only a big machine, and no machine can create
power, no more than a paving stone.

It has been, however, proposed to manufacture power by the law of
gravitation, according to which all bodies attract each other, directly
in proportion to their mass, and inversely as the square of their
distances. This law appears to prevail as far as our observation extends
through space; and our world builders affirm that it must have operated
eternally, and that not only were the separate parts of our earth thus
drawn together, but that all the orbs of heaven were caused to revolve
under its influence.

Suppose, however, we grant that matter was eternal, and the force of
gravitation eternally operating upon it, would that sufficiently account
for the building up of even our own little planetary system? By no
means.

The unresisted force of gravitation would, in far less than an eternity,
draw all things together toward the center of gravity of the universe.
We should not have separate stars, and suns, and planets, and moons,
revolving in orderly orbits, but one vast mass of matter, in which all
motion had long since ceased. There must be some power of resistance to
gravitation, and nicely balanced against it, a centrifugal force--no
matter whether you call it heat, light, or electricity, or by any other
name--from which balance of power the movements of the universe are
regulated. But here again we arrive at the same conclusion from the
balance of power to which we were before driven by the combination of
matter--regulated power proclaims a regulator, a governor. Power
belongeth unto God.

In world-building we need not only a quarry of materials, and power for
transportation, but a head to plan their arrangement. For, as ten
thousand loads of brick and stone dumped down higgledy piggledy will not
build a house, neither will ten thousand millions of materials poured
into a chaos make a world like this earth, arranged in order and beauty.
It is grossly absurd to imagine that the inanimate materials of the
earth arranged themselves in their present orderly structure.

Absurd as it seems to every man of common sense, there are persons
claiming to be philosophers who not only assert that they did, but will
tell you how they did it. One class of them think they have found it out
by supposing every thing in the universe reduced to very fine powder,
consisting of very small grains, which they call atoms; or, if that is
not fine enough, into gas, of which it is supposed the particles are too
fine to be perceived; and then by different arrangements of these atoms,
according to the laws of attraction and electricity, the various
elements of the world were made, and arranged in its present form.

Suppose we grant this gassy supposition, that the world millions of ages
ago existed as a cloud of atoms, does that bring us any nearer the
object of getting rid of a Creator than before? The atoms must be
material, if a material world is to be made from them; and so they must
be extended; each one of them must have length, breadth and thickness.
The atheist, then, has only multiplied his difficulties a million times,
by pounding up the world into atoms, which are only little bits of the
paving stones he intends to make out of them. Each bit of the paving
stone, no matter how small you break it, remains just as incapable of
making itself, or moving itself, as was the whole stone composed of all
these bits. So we are landed back again at the sublime question, _Did
the paving stones make themselves, and move themselves?_

Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a
vast cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time, cooled down into
granite, and the granite, by dint of earthquakes, got broken up on the
surface, and washed with rain into clay and soil, whence plants sprang
up of their own accord, and the plants gradually grew into animals of
various kinds, and some of the animals grew into monkeys, and finally
the monkeys into men. The fire mist they stoutly affirm to have existed
from eternity. They do not allege that they remember that (and yet as
they themselves are, as they say, composed body and soul of this eternal
fire mist, they ought to remember), but only that there are certain
comets which occasionally come within fifty or sixty millions of miles
of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of the fire mist which
they _suppose_ this world is made of. A solid basis, truly, on which to
build a world! A cloud in the sky, fifty million of miles away, may
possibly be fire mist, may possibly cool down and condense into a solid
globe; therefore, this fire mist is eternal, and had no need of a
Creator; and our world, and all other worlds, may possibly have been
like it; therefore, they also were never created by Almighty God. Such
is the atheist's ground of faith. The thinnest vapor or the merest
supposition will suffice to risk his eternal salvation upon; provided
only it contradicts the Bible and gets rid of God. We can not avoid
asking with as much gravity as we can command, Where did the mist come
from? Did the mist make itself? Where did the fire come from? Did it
kindle of its own accord? Who put the fire and mist together? Was it red
hot enough from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler
now? How could an eternal red heat cool down? If it existed as a red hot
fire mist from eternity, until our atheist began to observe it beginning
to cool, why should it ever begin to cool at all, and why begin to cool
just then? Fill it as full of electricity, magnetism and odyle as you
please; do these afford any _reason_ for its very extraordinary conduct?
The utmost they do is to show you _how_ such a change took place, but
they neither tell you _where the original matter came from_, nor _why
its form was changed_. Change is an effect, and every effect requires a
cause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say
there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in the
mist itself. Had it a mind, and a will, and a perception of propriety?
Did the mist become sensible of the lightness of its behavior, and the
fire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on the
propriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, and
resolve to settle down into orderly, well-behaved suns and planets? In
the division of the property, _what became of the mind_? Did it go to
the sun, or to the moon, or to the pole star, or to this earth? Or, was
it clipped up into little pieces and divided among the stars in
proportion to their respective magnitudes; so that the sun may have,
say the hundredth part of an idea, and the moon a faint perception of
it? Did the fire mist's mind die under this cruel clipping and
dissecting process; or is it of the nature of a polypus, each piece
alive and growing up to perfection in its own way? Has each of the
planets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as this
earth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately on
the little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the host
of heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, who
burned their children alive, in honor of the sun, on Sun-days?

An aqueous solution of this difficulty of getting rid of Almighty God,
is frequently proposed. It is known that certain chemical solutions,
when mixed together, deposit a sediment, or precipitate, as chemists
call it. And it is supposed that the universe was all once in a state of
solution, in primeval oceans, and that the mingling of the waters of
these oceans caused them to deposit the various salts and earths which
form the worlds in the form of mud, which afterward hardened into rock,
or vegetated into trees and men. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that
there is no need for the Creator if--if--if--we only had somebody to
make these primeval oceans--and somebody to mix them together![3]

The development theory of the production of the human race from the mud,
through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey
and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were
fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting
rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the future
plants and monkeys, and men's bodies and souls, in itself originally, or
it had not. If it had not, where did it get them? If it had all the life
and intelligence in the universe in itself, it was a very extraordinary
kind of God. We shall call it the _mud-god_. Our atheists then believe
in a god of muddy body and intelligent mind. But if they deny
intelligence to the mud, then we are back to our original difficulty,
with a large appendix, viz: _The paving stones made themselves first and
all atheists afterward._

The whole theory of development is utterly false in its first
principles. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no man
has ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life.
There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or any
other, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ or
seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a
single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Every
beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has
done so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly
established than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nor
transmutation of species._ It is true there is a regular gradation of
the various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the steps
of a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused by
transmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower step
changing itself into all the upper ones.

To refer the origin of the world to the laws of nature is absurd. Law,
as Johnson defines it, is a rule of action. It necessarily requires an
acting agent, an object designed in the action, means to attain it, and
authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Are
the laws of nature laws given by some supposed intelligent being,
worshiped by the heathen of old, and by the atheists of modern times,
under that name? Or do they signify the orderly and regular sequence of
cause and effect, which is so manifest in the course of all events? If,
as atheists say, the latter, this is the very thing we want them to
account for. How came the world to be under law without a lawgiver?
Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistent
with the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, be
a designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets,
can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thing
else, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable way
of accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other of
these two: Either an intelligent being created the world, or--_the
paving stones made themselves_.

"Here are two hypotheses, of which the oldest is admitted to offer a
full and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There can
be no better cause for any given formation than that God created it so.
Men of science, however, allege that creation (out of nothing) is
'scientifically inconceivable;' but this is only throwing dust in our
eyes; of course, science can not _verify_ it, neither can it verify any
other theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept the
fact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there is
nothing for us but the _eternity of matter_, for evolution itself has to
face the very same difficulty when asked to account for its primal germ.
It is surely more conceivable that God created the first matter out of
nothing, than that nothing evolved something out of itself, by an
imminent law of its nature. This point, however, our scientific men are
sadly given to shirking. They profess in general not to hold the
eternity of matter, but they have nothing to suggest for its origin.
They accept it as the starting point of evolution, and decline to
speculate on its cause. This, as Dr. Christlieb observes of Bauer's
kindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without a
beginning--everything is already extant'. We may as well start with
species, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyond
the fact. The evolutionist is bound to answer whether the process is
eternal, or how it began to be. Either it had a beginning or it had not;
if it had, creation out of nothing is conceded, and there is nothing
left to dispute. It is puerile to except to the _frequency_ of creative
acts on the ordinary hypothesis of specific origin, because it is freely
open to science to reduce the several 'kinds' to the lowest _minimum_ it
can experimentally establish. Moreover--besides the utter inconsequence
of such purely relative ideas as _often_ and _rare_--it is far more
reasonable that an eternal, personal author of creation should watch
over his work to shape and diversify it at his pleasure, than that,
after a single act, he should relapse into _inertia_ like the Hindu
Brahmin. To concentrate the whole evidence of design in one original
act, ages upon ages ago, with no opening for after interference,
undermines belief in a personal designer, simply because it leaves him
nothing to do."[4]

Leaving these brutish among the people who assert the latter, to the
enjoyment of their folly, let us ascertain what we can know of the great
Creator of the heavens and the earth. God refers the atheists of the
Psalmist's days to their own bodies for proofs of his intelligence, to
their own minds for proofs of his personality, and to their own
observation of the judgments of his providence against evil-doers for
proofs of his moral government. Our text ascribes for him perception and
intelligence: _He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that
formed the eye, shall he not see?_ It does not say, he has an eye or an
ear, but that he has the knowledge we acquire by those organs. And the
argument is from the designed organ to the designing maker of it, and is
perfectly irresistible. A blind god could not make a seeing man. Let us
look for a little at a few of the many marks of design in this organ to
which God thus refers us.

We shall first observe the mechanical skill displayed in the formation
of the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them,
for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances already
observed by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance of
all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I hold in my hand
a box made of several pieces of wood glued together, and covered on the
outside with leather. Inside it is lined with cotton, and the cotton has
a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to
protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the
maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood,
the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and
elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and
weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger
against which this box would protect it--ten entirely distinct branches
of knowledge, which every child who should pick up such a box in the
street would unhesitatingly ascribe to its maker. Now, the box in which
the eye is placed is composed of seven bones glued together internally,
and covered with skin on the outside, lined with the softest fat,
enveloped in a tissue compared with which the finest silk is only
canvas, and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while the
brow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dust
and rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, like
a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man
earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the
eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that
electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a little
bracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavity
of the eye to any such cause.

Let us next look at the shape of the eye. You observe it is nearly round
in its section across, and rather oval in its other direction, and the
cavity it lies in is shaped exactly to fit it. Now there are eyes in the
world angular and triangular, and even square; and as you may readily
suppose, the creatures which have them can not move them; to compensate
for such inconvenience, some of them, as the common fly, have several
hundred. But, unless our heads were as large as sugar hogsheads, we
could not be so furnished, and we must either have movable eyes or see
only in one direction. Accordingly, the Contriver of the eye has hung it
with a hinge. Now there are various kinds of hinges, moving in one
direction, and the Maker of the eye might have made a hinge on which the
eye would move up and down, or he might have given us a hinge that would
bend right and left, in which case we should have been able merely to
squint a little in two directions. But to enable one to see in every
direction, there is only one kind of hinge that would answer the
purpose--the ball and socket joint--and the Former of the eye has hung
it with such a hinge, retaining it in its place partly by the projection
of the bones of the face, and partly by the muscles and the optic nerve,
which is about as thick as a candlewick, and as tough as leather. Most
of you have seen a ship, and know the way the yards are moved, and
turned, and squared by ropes and pulleys. The rigging of the eye, though
not so large, is fully as curious. There is a tackle, called a muscle,
to pull it down when you want to look down; another tackle to pull it
up when you have done; one to pull it to the right, and another to the
left; there is one fastened to the eyeball in two places, and geared
through a pulley which will make it move in any direction, as when we
roll our eyes; and the sixth, fastened to the under side of the eye,
keeps it steady when we do not need to move it. Then the eyelids are
each provided with appropriate gearing, and need to have it durable too,
for it is used thirty thousand times a day; in fact every time we wink.
If God had neglected to place these little cords to pull up the eyelash,
we should all have been in the condition of the unfortunate gentleman
described by Dr. Nieuwentyt, who was obliged to pull up his eyelashes
with his fingers whenever he wanted to see. There is, too, another
admirable piece of forethought and skill displayed by the Former of the
eye, in providing a liquid to wash it, and a sponge to wipe it with, and
a waste pipe, through the bone of the nose, to carry off the tears which
have been used in washing and moistening the eye. Now what absurdity to
say that a law of nature, say gravity, or electricity, or magnetism has
such knowledge of the principles of mechanics as the eye proclaims its
Former to have--that it could make a choice among multitudes of shapes
of eyes and kinds of joints, and this choice the very best for our
convenience; and that having known and chosen, it could have
manufactured the various parts of this complicated machine. Such a
machine requires an intelligent manufacturer; and yet we have only as
yet been looking at the dead eye, paying no regard to sight at all. Even
a blind man's eye prove an intelligent Creator.

Let us now turn our thoughts to the instrument of sight. The optic nerve
is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose,
instead of being where you observe it, at the back part of the eye, it
had been brought out to the front, and that reflections from objects had
fallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have been exposed
to injury from every floating particle of dust, and you would always
have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald when the skin
peels off, and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to the air. The
tender points of the fibers of the optic nerve, too, would soon become
blunted and broken, and the eye, of course, useless. How, then, is the
nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were
covered with skin, as the other nerves are, you could not see through
it. For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knew
no substance, at once hard and transparent, which could answer the
double purpose of protection and vision. And to this day they know none
hard enough for protection, clear enough for vision, and elastic enough
to resume its form after a blow. But men did the best they could, and
put a round piece of brittle but transparent glass in a ring of tougher
metal for the protection of the hands of a watch; and he who first
invented the watch crystal thought he had made a discovery. Now, observe
in the eye, that forward part is the watch glass; the cornea, made of a
substance at once hard, transparent and elastic--which man has never
been able to imitate--set into the sclerotica, that white, muscular coat
which constitutes the white of your eye, acts as a frame for the cornea,
and answers another important purpose, as we shall presently see.

[Illustration: Structure of the Human Eye]

But, supposing the end of the nerve protected by the glass, we might
have had it brought up to the glass without any interposing lenses or
humors, as, in fact, is nearly the case with some crustacea. We can not
well imagine all the inconveniences of such an eye to us. If we could
see distinctly at all, we could not see much farther or wider than the
breadth of the end of the nerve at once. Our sight would then be very
like that faculty of perceiving colors by the points of the fingers,
which some persons are said to possess. In that case, seeing would only
be a nicer kind of groping, and our eyes would be more conveniently
fixed on the points of our fingers; or, as with many insects, on the
ends of long antennae. Such a form of eye is precisely suited to the
wants of an animal which has not an idea beyond its food, which has no
business with any object too large for its mouth, and whose great
concern is to stick to a rock and catch whatever animalculę the water
floats within the grasp of its feelers. But for a being whose
intercourse should be with all the works of God, and whose chief end in
such intercourse should be to behold the Creator reflected in his works,
it was manifestly necessary to have a wider and larger range of vision;
and, therefore, a different form of eye. Both these objects, breadth of
field combined with length of range, are obtained by placing the optic
nerve at the back of the eye, and interposing several lenses, through
which objects are observed. By this arrangement a visual angle is
secured, and all objects lying within it are distinctly visible at the
same time. This faculty of perceiving several objects at the same time
is a special property of sight which tends greatly to enlarge our
conceptions of the knowledge of Him who gave it. A man who never saw can
have no idea of it. He can not taste two separate tastes at once, nor
smell two distinct smells at once; nor feel more than one object with
each hand at once; and if he hears several sounds at the same time, they
either flow into each other, making a harmony, or confuse him with their
discord. Yet we are all conscious that we see a vast variety of
distinct and separate objects at one glance of our eyes. I think it is
manifest that the Former of such an eye not only intended its owner to
observe such a vast variety of objects, but from the capacity of his own
sight to infer the vastly wider range of vision of Him who gave it.

Besides the breadth of the field of vision, we also require length of
range for the purpose of life. The thousand inconveniences which the
short-sighted man so painfully feels are obvious to all. Yet it may tend
to reconcile such to their lot to know that thousands of the liveliest
and merriest of God's creatures can not see an inch before them. Small
birds and insects, which feed on very minute insects, need eyes like
microscopes to find them; while the eagle and the fish hawk, which soar
up till they are almost out of sight, can distinctly see the hare or the
herring a mile below them, and so must have eyes like telescopes. We,
too, need to observe minute objects very closely, as when we read fine
print, or when a lady threads a fine needle at microscope range; but, if
confined to that range, we could not see our friends across the room, or
find our way to the next street. Again, in traveling we need to see
objects miles away, and at night we see the stars millions of miles
away; but then, if confined to the long range, we should be strangers at
home, and never get within a mile of any acquaintance. Now, how to
combine these two powers, of seeing near objects and distant ones with
the same eye, is the problem which the Maker of the eye had to solve.
Let us look how man tried to solve it. A magnifying lens will collect
the rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called the
focus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, or
pocket spy-glass, and look through the eye-hole and the concave lens,
properly adjusted, in front of it, we shall see the image of the object
considerably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we see
nothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from it, which were nearly
parallel while it was at a distance, are no longer so when it comes
near, but scatter in all directions, and those which fall on the lens
are collected at a point much nearer to the lens than before, and the
eye-glass must be pushed forward to that focus. Accordingly, you know
that the spy-glass is made to slide back and forward, and the telescope
has a screw to lengthen or shorten the tube according to the distance of
the objects observed. Another way of meeting the case would be by taking
out the lens, and putting in one of less magnifying power, a flatter
lens, for the nearer object. Now, at first sight, it would seem a very
inconvenient thing to have eyes drawing out and in several inches like
spy-glasses, and still more inconvenient to have twenty or thirty pairs
of eyes, and to need to take out our eyes, and put in a new set twenty
times a day. The ingenuity of man has been at work hundreds of years to
discover some other method of adapting an optical instrument to long and
short range, but without success. Now, the Former of the eye knew the
properties of light and the properties of lenses before the first eye
was made; he knew the mode of adjusting them for any distance, from the
thousands of millions of miles between the eye and the star, to the
half-inch distance of the mote in the sunbeam; and he had not only
availed himself of both the principles which opticians discovered, but
has executed his work with an infinite perfection which bungling men may
admire, but can never imitate. The sclerotic coat of the eye, and the
choroid which lies next it are full of muscles which, by their
contraction, both press back the crystalline lens nearer the retina, and
also flatten it; the vitreous humor, in which the crystalline lens lies,
a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, giving
way behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power of
refraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or the
microscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly,
we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, with
that perfect compound microscope and telescope invented by the Former of
the human eye. Surely, in giving us an instrument so admirably fitted
for observing the lofty grandeur of the heavens and the lowlier beauties
of the earth, he meant to allure us to the discovery of the perfections
of the great Designer and Former of all these wondrous works.

But there is another contrivance in the eye, adapted to lead us further
to the consideration of the extent of the knowledge of its power. We are
placed in a world of variable lights, of day and night, and of all the
variations between light and darkness. We can not see in the full blaze
of light, nor yet in utter darkness. Had the eye been formed to bear
only the noonday glare, we had been half blind in the afternoon, and
wholly so in the evening. If the eye were formed so as to see at night,
we had been helpless as owls in the day. But the variations of light in
the atmosphere may be in some measure compensated, as we know, by
regulating the quantity admitted to our houses--shutting up the windows.
When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms, we have
recourse to various clumsy contrivances; paper blinds, perpetually
tearing, sunblind rollers that will not roll, venetian blinds
continually in need of mending, awnings blowing away with every storm,
or shutters, which shut up and leave us in entire darkness. A
self-acting window, which shall expand with the opening of light in the
mornings and evenings, and close up of its own accord as the light
increases toward noon, has never been manufactured by man. But the
Former of the eye took note of the necessities and conveniences of the
case, and besides giving a pair of shutters to close up when we go to
sleep, he has given the most admirable sunblinds ever invented. The
nerve of the eye at the back of its chamber can not see without light,
and its light comes through the little round window called the pupil, or
black of the eye--which is simply a hole in the iris, or colored part.
Now this iris is formed of two sets of muscles: one set of elastic
rings, which, when left to themselves, contract the opening; and another
set at right angles to them, like the spokes of a wheel, pulling the
inner edge of the iris in all directions to the outside. In fact it is
not so much a sunblind, as a self-acting window, opening and closing the
aperture according to our need of light, and doing this so
instantaneously that we are not sensible of the process.

It is self-evident that the Maker of such an eye was acquainted with the
properties of light, and the alternations of night and day, as well as
with the mechanical contrivances for adjusting the eye to these variable
circumstances. He has given us an eye capable of seeking knowledge among
partial darkness, and of availing itself for this purpose of imperfect
light; an apt symbol of our mental constitution and moral situation in a
world where good and evil, light and darkness, mix and alternate.

Perhaps some one is ready to ask, What is the use of so many lenses in
the eye? It seems as if the crystalline lens and the optic nerve were
sufficient for the purpose of sight, with the cornea simply to protect
them. What is the use of the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor?

Light, when refracted through the lens, becomes separated into its
component colors--red, yellow, green, blue, and violet; and the greater
the magnifying power of the lens, and the brighter the object viewed,
the greater the dispersion of the rays. So that if the crystalline lens
of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object bluish in
the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges; or, in vulgar
language, we should see starlight.

This difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never
discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would obviate
it. But M. Dolland, an optician, reflecting that the very same
difficulty must have presented itself to the Maker of the eye,
determined to ascertain how he had obviated it. He found that the Maker
of the eye had a knowledge of the fact that different substances have
different powers of refracting or bending the rays of light which pass
through them, and that liquids have generally a different power of
refraction from solids. For instance, if you put a straight stick in
water, the part under water will seem bent at a considerable angle,
while if you put the stick through a little hole in a pane of glass it
will not seem so much bent. He further discovered that oil of cassia had
a different power of refraction from water, and the white of an egg
still a different power. He discovered also that the first lens of the
eye, the aqueous humor, is very like water; that the crystalline lens is
a firm jelly, and that the vitreous humor is about the consistency of
the white of an egg. The combination of these three lenses, of different
powers of refraction, secures the correction of their separate errors.
He could not make telescope lenses of jelly, nor water; therefore, he
could not make a perfect achromatic telescope, but he learned the lesson
of mutual compensations of difficulties which the Maker of the eye
teaches the reflecting anatomist, and procuring flint and crown glass of
different degrees of refraction, he arranged them in the achromatic lens
so as nearly to remedy the defect.

I think that you will at once admit that Dolland's attempt to remedy the
evils of confused sight in the telescope indicated a desire to obtain a
precise and correct view of the objects; and that his success in
constructing an instrument, nearly perfect, for the use of astronomers,
gave evidence that he himself had a clear idea of that perfect and
accurate vision which he thus attempted to bestow on them. Shall we then
imagine any inaccuracy in the sight of Him, who not only desired, but
executed and bestowed on us, an instrument so perfectly adapted to the
imperfections of this lower world, and whose very imperfections are the
materials from which he produces clear and perfect vision? No! in God's
eye there are no chromatic refractions of passions, or prejudice, or
party feeling, or self-love. He sees no reflected or refracted light. O
Father of Light! with whom is no variableness, or shadow of turning,
open our eyes to behold Thee clearly!

Our text thus leads us to a knowledge of God's character, from the
structure of the bodies he has given us. He that formed my eye sees.
Though my feeble vision is by no means a standard or limit for his
Omniscience, yet I may conclude that every perfection of the power of
sight he has given me existed previously in him. Has he endowed me, a
poor puny mortal, the permanent tenant of only two yards of earth, with
an eye capable of ranging over earth's broad plains and lofty mountains,
of traversing her beauteous lakes and lovely rivers, of scanning her
crowded cities, and inspecting all their curious productions, and
specially delighting to investigate the bodily forms of men, and their
mental characters displayed on the printed page? Has he given me the
principle of curiosity, without which such an endowment were useless?
Then most undoubtedly he has Himself both the desire to observe all the
works of his hands, and the power to gratify that desire. The Former of
the eye must of necessity be the great Observer.

Wheresoever an eye is found of his handiwork, and wheresoever sight is
preserved by his skill, let the owner of such an instrument know that if
he can see, God can, and as surely as he sees, God does.

If it is possible for us to behold many objects distinctly at once, it
is not impossible for God to behold more. If he has given us an eye to
look from earth to heaven, then his eye sees from heaven to earth. If I
can see accurately, God's inspection is much more impartial. And if he
has given me the power of adjusting my imperfect vision to the varying
lights and shades of this changing scene, let me not dream for a moment
that he is destitute of a corresponding power of investigating
difficulties, and penetrating darknesses, and bringing to light hidden
works and secret things. God is light. In him is no darkness at all.
Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all
things are naked and opened to the eyes of him with whom I have to do.
He has seen all my past life--my faults, my follies, and my crimes. When
I thought myself in darkness and privacy, God's eye was upon me there.
In the turmoil of business, God's eye was upon me. In the crowd of my
ungodly companions, God's eye was upon me. In the darkness and solitude
of night, God's eye was upon me. And God's eye is on me now, and will
follow me from this house, and will watch me and observe all my actions,
on--on--on--while God lives, and wheresoever God's creation extends.

     "O God, Thou has searched and known me;
     Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising;
     Thou understandest my thoughts afar off.
     Thou compassest my path and my lying down,
     And art acquainted with all my ways
     For there is not a word in my tongue,
     But, lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.
     Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
     Such knowledge is too wonderful for me!
     It is high, I can not attain unto it;
     Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
     And whither shall I flee from thy presence?
     If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there,
     If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there!
     If I take the wings of the morning,
     And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
     Even there shall thy hand lead me,
     And thy right hand shall hold me.
     If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,'
     Even the night shall be light about me;
     Yea the darkness hideth not from thee,
     But the night shineth as the day,
     The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reid's Chemistry, II. § 37.

[2] Johnson's Turner's Chemistry, § 341.

[3] It might be supposed that such a theory is too palpably absurd to be
believed by any save the inmates of a lunatic asylum, had not the
writer, and hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, seen a lecturer
perform the ordinary experiment of producing colored precipitates by
mixing colorless solutions, as a demonstration of the self-acting powers
of matter. Common sense, being a gift of God, is righteously withdrawn
from those who deny him.

[4] John Bull.




CHAPTER II.

WAS YOUR MOTHER A MONKEY?


In the previous chapter we saw the evidences of God's skill and wisdom
in the adaptations of nature, fitting the organs of animals for hearing,
walking, and eating, and especially in the structure of the human eye.
This has long been owned by candid minds as an unanswerable argument,
demonstrating the being of God by the works of his hands. But since that
chapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr.
Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show how
all the species of living things can evolve, not only their eyes, but
their legs and wings and lungs, and every part of them, from a little
bit of primeval life stuff, called protoplasm, by the influence of
Natural Selection. Mr. Darwin owns that the formation of an eye is
rather a tough job for a little pin point germ of protoplasm; but he has
no doubt that it has been done, and he writes several books to show us
how. We propose to look into this self-evolving process, as he and his
brother evolutionists describe their theory.

It is necessary, right here at the outset, to distinguish the theory of
the evolutionists from the great fact of evolution. Almighty God created
the world, not only for his own pleasure, but also for his own glory,
that men and angels might learn to know him by his works. Creation is
thus God's great object lesson for men and angels to learn. But learning
is a process, gradual, slow, from one step to another. Therefore the
object lesson must not be precipitated all in a heap upon the infantile
intellects of the learners, but unfolded by degrees. Geologists assure
us that so it was in the past; that first the lifeless strata were
deposited; next, light was evolved; afterward, fishes, and marine
reptiles, and birds; then came the carboniferous or plant era; afterward
the mammalia; last of all man. You observe here an ascending scale of
creation, beginning with first principles and simple forms, and
ascending to the most complicated; a series of experiments in God's
great lecture-room, illustrative of the various steps of the evolution
of the divine idea. But six thousand years before geology was born Moses
described this same evolution of creation, in the first chapter of
Genesis. As he could not have learned it from any science known in his
day, God Himself must have shown it to him.

The divine idea is still in process of evolution for our instruction. We
behold it in the continual formation of new strata by the destruction of
the old; in the chemical combinations of the elements of the air, sea,
and earth; in the evolution of the grass from the seed, and of the oak
from the acorn; in the development of the insect germ into the
caterpillar, and the butterfly; in the hatching of the egg into the
chicken; and in the growth of the infant into the man. We observe also a
divine development of society, an advance of civilization, a
providential guidance of history, and a fall and disorder among mankind,
with a process of redemption, medical, educational, political and
religious, for the human race. The whole process, therefore, of the
creation, natural history, and moral government of the world, is the
development of a divine idea, according to a divine plan, by the direct
or mediate efficacy of divine power, for the accomplishment of the
divine purpose as revealed to us in the divine word, the Holy
Scriptures. Galen taught that the study of physiology was a divine hymn.
This divine development is to be clearly and sharply distinguished from
the atheistic theory of evolution. They differ in the following
particulars:

1. The divine development of the world is a great fact; the theory of
atheistic evolution is only a baseless theory, a fiction.

2. The divine development begins in the beginning, with God, creating
the heavens and the earth; but the theory of atheistic evolution has no
beginning, asserting the eternal existence of a changing world.

3. The divine development is the unfolding of an intelligent plan,
showing the adaptation of means to ends for the accomplishment of a
purpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose,
adaptation and final cause.

4. The divine development is conducted, and continually reinforced by
the will of the Omnipotent God; the atheistic development evolves only
the forces of matter.

5. The divine development has a moral character, and terminates in the
highest holiness and happiness of all obedient men and angels; but the
atheistic development contemplates and promises only the evolution of
animal instinct and passions, the eternal death of the individual, and,
for the universe, only purposeless cycles of progress, and catastrophies
of ruin.

In this chapter we discuss only the theory of atheistic evolution. In
the discussion of all questions affecting human life it is advantageous
to trace them to their origin, and to follow them out to their practical
results. Thus we get a clear view of the whole subject, and are enabled
to assign to it its proper influence. It is also a great benefit to the
mass of mankind to conduct such discussions in plain language, and to
translate the roundabout phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific
men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of
discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the
whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a
nutshell, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter,
"Was your mother a monkey?"

What a question!

Well, then, your grandmother? her grandmother? or does it seem less
offensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, and
say your forefathers were apes?

That is exactly what Mr. Darwin says when we translate his scientific
language into the vulgar tongue: "The early progenitors of man were no
doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were
pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a
tail having the proper muscles. The foot, judging from the condition of
the great toe in the foetus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors,
no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm
forest-clad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which
served them as formidable weapons."[5] This ancient form "if seen by a
naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey.
And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the CATARHINE
or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the
conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have
been properly thus designated."[6] So here you have your genealogy, name
and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable
pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length,
but not, it may be said, of noble quality. * * * Unless we willfully
close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately
recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble
organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our
feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature,
however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous
structure and properties."[A] There are people, however, who do not grow
enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is
no accounting for taste in such matters!

For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as
his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic
ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it
were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon,
or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a
twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it
spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the
monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to
this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and
here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy
forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have
been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our
lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float.
These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time
must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or
even still more lowly organized."[7]

That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any
means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish
aristocracy are descended from a race of squirts--the squirts which you
picked up on the shore and squeezed, when you were a boy, discharging
these primitive Babcock Extinguishers upon your playfellows,
irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestor
of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of
infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They
hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack,
with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of
Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they
have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms.
Their larvę somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of
swimming freely about. * * * We should thus be justified in believing
that, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existed
resembling in many respects the larvę of our present Ascidians, which
diverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in development
and producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the
crown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to the
vertebrata."[8] Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, and
that of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plain
English, makes them a race of squirts.

The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants as
well as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, from
the very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that all
kinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs or
spores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simple
gave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr.
Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that analogy
would lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistently
and boldly follow up the stream to its fountain, and allege a single
primeval living seed as the origin of all living things, and that this
must have been a microscopic animalcule, or plant spore, of the very
lowest order, which, multiplying its kind, gave birth to improved and
enlarged offspring; and they, in their turn, grew, and multiplied, and
differentiated into varieties; and so, in the course of endless ages,
the poorer sorts perishing and the better sorts prospering, the world
became filled with its existing populations, without any new creative
acts of God, and without any particular providential care over the new
species.

The particular process according to which this multiplication and
improvement took place, Mr. Darwin calls Natural Selection. Every
creature tends to increase and multiply; and the very slowest breeders
would soon fill the earth, were their multiplication not checked by
hunger, by the attacks of enemies, and by the struggle for existence.
But all are not born alike strong, or swift, or of the same color; some
of the same brood are better fitted to escape enemies, or to fight the
battle of life, than others. These will survive, while the weak ones
perish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They will
transmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whatever
superiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on in
successive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quantity to the
stock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stock
increase the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breeders
of race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In this
way varieties from the same family will grow into different species.
And, as only those differences which are beneficial to the animal are
preserved, they will grow into improved species; and, as variations of
all sorts take place, so all sorts of varieties and species arise in
process of time. All will thus tend to perfect themselves according to
the laws of nature, and without any special oversight or care of God, or
of anybody but Natural Selection; which Mr. Darwin takes special care to
describe as an unintelligent selector. He defines the nature which
selects to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws," and
these laws are "the sequences of events as ascertained by us." He
ridicules the idea of God's special endowment of the fantail pigeon with
additional feathers, or of the bull dog's jaws with strength, and says,
"But if we give up the principle in the one case, if we do not admit
that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in
order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry
and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for the
belief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the same
general laws which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of
the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were
intentionally and specially guided."[9] This, then, is the grand
distinctive difference of Mr. Darwin's mode of producing the various
animals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are not
designed nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of a
method of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. The
failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no
intentional or special guidance of God in the business. And the business
includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of
the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human
society. God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world's
life, including all human affairs. This is not exactly atheism in
theory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing.

It is this excommunication of God's agency from the management of the
world, and especially from human affairs, by Mr. Darwin's method, which
has so commended his books to the ungodly world. There is a general
agreement among this class of writers, that Mr. Darwin has destroyed the
basis of the argument for the being of God from design as displayed in
the adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions. Mr. Huxley says
that "when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, what struck him most
forcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, had
received its death blow at Mr. Darwin's hands."[10] "For the notion that
every organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at a
purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may
fairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms vary
incessantly; of these variations the few meet with surrounding
conditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and become
extinguished. * * * For the teleologist (the Christian) an organism
exists, because it was made for the conditions in which it was found.
For the Darwinian an organism exists, because out of many of its kind it
is the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in
which it was found. * * * If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin of
Species rightly, then nothing can be more entirely and absolutely
opposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwinian
theory."[11] Prof. Haeckel argues to the same purpose that Darwin's
theory leads inevitably to Atheism and Materialism. Dr. Buchner says of
Darwin's theory, "It is the most thoroughly naturalistic that can be
imagined, and far more atheistic than that of his decried predecessor,
Lamarck." Carl Vogt also commends it because "It turns the Creator, and
his occasional intervention in the revolution of the earth and in the
production of species, without any hesitation out of doors, inasmuch as
it does not leave the smallest room for the agency of such a Being. The
first living germ being granted, out of it the creation develops itself
progressively by Natural Selection, through all the geologic periods of
our planet, by the simple law of descent. No new species arise by
creation, and none perishes by annihilation; the natural cause of
things, the process of evolution of all organisms, and of the earth
itself, is of itself sufficient for the production of all we see. Thus
man is not a special creation, produced in a different way, and distinct
from other animals, endowed with an individual soul, and animated by the
breath of God; on the contrary, man is only the highest product of the
progressive evolution of animal life, springing from the group of apes
next below him."[12]

Whether, therefore, Mr. Darwin himself intends his theory to be
atheistic or not, it has had the misfortune to be so viewed by the
greater number of its supporters; and, accordingly, it is this view of
it which we shall keep prominent in the following discussion. Mr. Darwin
does undoubtedly intend his theory to be antagonistic to the Bible
account of creation and providence, and an improvement upon it; and,
whether atheistic or not, it is undoubtedly anti-Christian.


_I. The History of the Theory._

The first thing which strikes a common person on first hearing this
theory is that it is a very queer notion for any Christian man to
invent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in a
Christian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no new
discovery, but an old heathen superstition. Some four hundred years
before Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized into
idolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgar
heathen gods, and set himself to invent a plan of the world without
them. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, in
India, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg.
He set himself to refine upon it, and imagined virtually the Nebular
Hypothesis. He said that all matter consisted of very small atoms,
dancing about in all directions, from all eternity, and which at last
happened into the various forms of the present world.

The ancient Phoenicians held a theory that all life was from the sea;
and that, as the wet mud produces all sorts of herbs in spring now, so
originally it produced all manner of animals. They worshiped it as a
god, and called it Mot, or Mud. Anaximander took up the theory and
carried it out in true Darwinian style, alleging that the first men
sprang from the ground watered by the sea, and that they had spines like
sea urchins; evidently deriving them from the Radiates. Lucretius still
further developed the theory in a poem in six books. The spread of
Christianity, however, hindered the spread of the doctrine, as Mr.
Tyndall feelingly laments, until the Saracens overspread the East, when
some of them, it seems, favored it. But it seems to be an unlucky dogma,
since, with the downfall of the power of the false prophet, the
anti-Christian form of science went down again.

The dogma of the transmutation of species reappeared, however, in the
Romish Church in a religious form; the old heathenism, which had never
been wholly banished from the minds of men, thus reasserting itself.
About the tenth century some began to teach that the bread of the
communion of the Lord's Supper was transubstantiated, and the wine also,
into the body, and blood, and soul, and divinity of our Lord Jesus
Christ. This is probably the most complete transmutation of species
which has ever been imagined or described. The evolution of bread into
Deity is only equaled by Mr. Tyndall's endowment of matter with all the
potencies of life and thought; a miracle differing from the popish
transubstantiation only in the element of time, but in its essential
nature equally supernatural. The dogma excited great discussion for
centuries, and produced as many theories of transubstantiation as we now
observe of evolution, keeping philosophic minds and pens busy till the
dawn of modern science after the Reformation.

La Place threw out the Nebular Hypothesis, which is substantially
Democritus' concourse of atoms, only La Place endeavored to substitute
circular motions under the law of gravitation, instead of Democritus'
chance arrangement, as a sufficient cause for the formation and motions
of planets. Herschel's discovery of the nebulę was hastily laid hold of
by a number of writers, and notably by the author of the Vestiges of
Creation, as furnishing the primeval matter necessary for world-making;
and till the spectroscopic discoveries of the composite nature of
gaseous nebulę, they were claimed as specimens of worlds in process of
formation. La Place supposed his nebulous matter to be gas in a state of
white-heat combustion, compared with which the heat of the hottest fire
would be a cool bath. In no other way could he dissipate the world's
substance into sufficient thinness for his vortices. But Spencer saw
that this tremendous heat would be fatal to all forms of life, and
especially to sensitive beings; and Tyndall shows us that this original
matter must have had all the potencies of life and sensation, and a
potency of sensation means being able to feel. Now the worst fate
threatened against sinners in the Bible is a place in the lake burning
with fire and brimstone, which burns at 500° Fahrenheit; but the
temperature of the original fire-mist was a thousand times hotter. Some
of these scientists call such a fate as the Bible threatens against the
wicked, cruel. But here is a hell manufactured by the evolutionists
infinitely worse than that of the Bible; for the hell of the Bible is
only for the wicked, but the evolutionists' hell is indiscriminately for
all, saints and sinners, and all sorts of creatures, innocent as babes
unborn of any crime; yet they, or, which is the same thing, the matter
containing all the potency of their sensations, that is their power of
feeling, were born in this hell, and kept in it from all eternity, until
it pleased the evolutionists to begin to cool it down a little. However,
it was rather scientific than benevolent reasons which induced Mr.
Spencer to reverse the order of procedure, and make his star dust cold
to begin with, and to heat it up by condensation and pressure to about
the temperature of molten iron; which was still an uncomfortably warm
lodging for Mr. Tyndall's potencies of sensation for some millions of
years. The division of opinion about the original nebulę, however, still
prevails; some evolutionists of the old-fashioned order still taking
their nebulę hot, while others, with Spencer, prefer it cold, with star
dust.

As to the Spontaneous Generation of life, there has been less progress
of opinion, though great variety has been exhibited. Ovid and Virgil
describe the way in which a carcass produces bees. It was generally
believed that putrid meat produced the maggots, till the blow-flies were
discovered laying their eggs. Then it was alleged that the entozoa, the
worms found in the bodies of animals, were self-produced, without eggs,
until the microscope discovered that one could lay 60,000 eggs. Strauss,
however, adhered to the idea that as the tapeworm, as he supposed, was
self-produced, so man was originated by the primeval slime. So also
Professor Vogt, and M. Tremaux develop their animals from the land, and
the latter accounts for their various qualities from the various
qualities of their respective birthplaces, the crop being conditioned by
the soil. But Mr. Darwin derives all his organisms from the sea.
Electricity in its galvanic form was for a while the agent to fire the
earthly or marine mud with the vital spark; and Mr. Crosse's experiments
were supposed instances of the creation of acarii or mites in the
battery bath, until it was found that the bath contained eggs and the
electricity only hatched them. Some English evolutionists still adhere
to the theory of Spontaneous Generation, but the leading Germans deny
any instance of it being known. Huxley denies that any case of it has
been established as now practicable; but supposes that if we could have
been present at the beginning of the world, when all the elements were
young and vigorous, we should have seen the chemical elements of the
earth and air combining to form living beings, by the mere powers of
their nature. If that were the fact, it would be a fact unique and
unparalleled, utterly out of the course of nature, and so as contrary to
the theory of evolution as if these living beings had been inspired with
life by Almighty God.

So the theory here again is divided. Two utterly irreconcilable ideas of
the origin of life claim our belief--the theories of Biogenesis, and of
Abiogenesis, the one says all life is from the egg, and has always been
so; and so we have an eternal begetting of finite creatures; the other
alleges the spontaneous beginning of plants and animals; a fact, if it
be a fact, as unparalleled as creation, and far more miraculous.

As to the history of the progress of the germs of plants and animals
thus produced, we find still greater diversities of opinion, not only as
to details, but as to principles. Each inventor has added to, or
altered, the original idea of evolution, until it has been burdened with
more improvements and new patents than the sewing machine; only the
evolutionary improvements bid fair to improve the theory out of
existence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians,
deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from their
native soils. Lamarck on the contrary, inspired all his plants and
animals--fungi and frogs, and elephants and apes--with the desire of
getting on in the world and improving their limbs by exercise; so the
greyhound grew slim and fleet by running; the giraffe's neck elongated
by reaching up to the branches of the trees on which it browsed, and the
duck acquired web feet by swimming. Others attributed the evolution of
differences to external conditions. The negro became black by exposure
to the tropical sun; the arctic hare received its coat of thick white
fur from the cold climate, and the buffalo and camel their humps of fat
from the sterility of their pastures at certain seasons, and the
consequent need of a reserved store of fat for food for the rest of the
body. Mr. Darwin's doctrine of Natural Selection refuses Lamarck's
notion of any conscious attempt of the plant or animal at improvement;
and equally denies the power of external nature to improve anything,
except by killing off poor specimens, save in that very limited range
where good pastures make fat animals for a season or two. An innate
power of accidental variation to a very small amount, and the slow but
constant adding up of profitable variations during countless
generations, with the killing off of the unimproved breeds by Natural
Selection, is his patent populator and improver. But this theory is too
slow for the nineteenth century, and so neither Huxley, nor Parsons, nor
Mivart, nor even Wallace, accepts the doctrine as Darwin propounds it.
It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyell
proposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see great
geniuses born of commonplace parents; and Huxley supports that opinion,
and Parsons, Owen and Mivart coincide in this inexplicable explanation.
The author of the Vestiges of Creation accounts for improved species
from a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Cope
derive them from quite the contrary process--accelerated development of
gestation. MM. Ferris and Kolliker derive them from parthenogenesis, a
mode of genesis of which our world offers no example whatever.

The origin of man, with all his mental powers and religious aspirations,
is the great difficulty. Mr. Mivart excludes man wholly from the
influence of Natural Selection, from the time he acquired a soul. Mr.
Wallace, rejecting the action of one Supreme Intelligence for everything
but the origin of universal forces and laws, "Contemplates the
possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of
man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing
influence of some higher intelligent beings acting through natural and
universal laws;"[13] _i. e._, the gods of the old heathen nations. And
so after twenty-two centuries wandering over the world, we have got back
to where Democritus started from--to pure old heathenism.

After such a history of the theory of evolution, and in presence of such
contradictory presentations by its advocates, I need scarcely say that
it is by no means an established scientific principle, were it not for
the insolent manner in which some of them assert it as scientifically
demonstrated; and denounce the Bible doctrine of creation as mere
superstition, "A feather bed of respectable and respected tradition,"
and warn off Christians from any attempt to investigate theories of
cosmogony; and overbear the ignorant by the array of the names of men of
science who give their sanction to some phase of the theory. But let it
be borne in mind that no well-established scientific principle, no
demonstrated law, exhibits such contradictory and conflicting phases as
those we have just witnessed. The laws of gravitation, or of chemical
affinity, for instance, offer no such contradictions of their adherents;
because they are founded on facts, while evolution is a mere notion,
founded on ignorance and error, as we shall presently see. Accordingly,
by far the greater number of the greatest scientists oppose it, as
utterly unscientific, and have recorded their opposition, and the
reasons for it. Sir John Herschel and Sir Wm. Thompson, among
astronomers, have proclaimed its antagonism to the facts of physical
astronomy. No new facts subversive of the foundations of faith in God as
recognized in the universe by Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Descartes, Leibnitz,
Pascal, Paley and Bell, have been discovered by such scientists as
Whewell, Sedgwick, Brewster, Faraday, Hugh Miller, or our American
geologists, Dawson, Hitchcock, and Dana. Nor have the deliberate and
expanded demonstrations of its unscientific character by the late
lamented Agassiz been ever fairly met, much less overturned. I refer to
these honored names for the benefit of that large class who must take
their science upon faith in some scientific prophet or apostle, in
default of any possibility of personal investigation of the facts.
Indeed, to the great majority, even of so-called scientific men, their
science must be founded upon faith in the dogma of some scientific pope
and council. And to such it may be reassuring, amidst the evolutionists'
cries of Science! Science! to know that a great many of the greatest
scientists, in spite of all these confused assertions, do still believe
in Almighty God, do call their souls their own, and hope when they die
to go to heaven.

As a specimen of the contempt in which this theory is held by the
princes of science, read the following extract of an address by Agassiz,
at a recent meeting of the Academy of Science:[14]

"As I grow older in the ranks of science," said the professor, "I feel
more and more the danger of stretching inferences from a few
observations to a wide field. I see that the younger generation among
naturalists are at this moment falling into the mistake of making
assertions and presenting views as scientific principles which are not
even based upon real observation. I think it is time that some positive
remonstrance be made against that tendency. The manner in which the
evolution theory in zoology is treated would lead those who are not
special zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by which
it can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change among
organized beings actually taking place. _There is no such thing on
record._ It is shifting the ground from one field of observation to
another to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as to
exclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged into
this mire of mere assertion, then it is time to protest.

"He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific grounds
because he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those who
maintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few original
progenitors. Other supporters of the transmutation doctrine assume that
they can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certain
degrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality and
condition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved.
They assume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve what
exists now. That is begging the question at the outset; for if these
first prototypes contained the principle of evolution, we should know
something about them from observation, and it should be shown that there
are such organized beings as are capable of evolution.

"I ask, Whence came these properties? If this power and capacity of
change is not inherent to the first progenitors, then I ask, Whence
came the impulses by which those progenitors which have not this power
of change in themselves acquire them? What is the power by which they
are started in directions which are not determined by their primitive
nature? From the total silence of the supporters of the transmutation
theory on these and other points, _he did not think it worth their while
to take the slightest notice of this doctrine of evolution in his
scientific considerations_. He acknowledged what the evolutionists had
done incidentally in scientific research; none had done more than Mr.
Darwin. He believed he had been injured woefully by his adherents. He
was a far better man than most of his school made him."

It is to be acknowledged, however, that many scientists are
evolutionists. Mr. Darwin is not alone in his belief. If he were, it
would not be worth while to spend time in examining it. Quite a number
of scientific men have fallen into it, and lecture and write
commendations of it; and it has become quite popular among a certain
class who do not like to accept the Bible doctrine that God created man,
with its necessary consequence that the creature ought to obey his
Creator; and they have proceeded to patch it out into completeness--for,
as you observe, it is a little defective; like its own primeval squirt,
it lacks a head and a tail--it has neither a beginning nor an end
properly fitted to it. It takes a piece out of the middle of the
universe from the management of God, but it leaves the beginning and the
end totally unaccounted for; telling us neither whence came the first
germs, nor whither tends the final fully developed angel. Mr. Darwin,
though he calls one of his works, the Origin of Species, really avoids
the question of origin. He admits the miracle of the creation of the
four or five original germs of life, which, according to the
evolutionists, is as unscientific as if he admitted four or five
hundred. They desire to escape the operation of God altogether.
Moreover, he gives no account of the origin of the law of heredity, by
which each being produces its like; nor yet of the origin of the power
of variation, according to which profitable variations occur. Here,
then, is still a field in which God reigns. But it is specially with Mr.
Darwin's admission of the Creator to bestow the origin of life that
evolutionists are displeased. If they admit God at the beginning of the
world they see plainly that there is no possibility of getting rid of
him afterward. Messrs. Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, Buchner, Haeckel and
Vogt combine their forces accordingly to evolve the world as we find it
without God's intervention.

Mr. Huxley, perceiving that to make either man, or monkey, or nomad, you
must have materials, kindly brings a little pitcher of protoplasm, which
he calls the physical basis of life. It is the meat our Cęsar feeds on,
and indeed, for that matter, all living things. All vegetable and animal
tissues are made up mostly of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen; and
as the materials of which all living beings are built are the same
originally, and are simply these chemical substances with a little iron,
salt and lime, with their properties, he will have it that all life,
including man's life and thought, is merely a development of protoplasm.
This is the clay out of which all the various bricks, and tiles, and tea
cups, and porcelain vases of the great world building are built. We
don't need to begin with monkeys, nor fish, or pollywogs, now to develop
into men, for we go down to the very bottom, since we have the stuff
they all are made of, namely, protoplasm. Still this clay needs a potter
to mold and bake it.

The difficulty about the protoplasm is that it must be _alive_. You can
not get a living pollywog, no more than a living elephant, out of dead
protoplasm. Mr. Huxley shows very well that all protoplasm consists of
the same materials; in fact, that all flesh is grass, as the Scripture
says. The difficulty is how to convert the grass into flesh, unless by
some animal eating it; or to convert the nitrogen, carbon and water into
grass or grain, or any other form of protein or protoplasm, without the
previous action of some plant. In short, how are we to make the chemical
materials live? Here Mr. Tyndall comes in and endows the matter of the
universe with life, and with all the potency of producing bodies and
souls. In his famous Belfast Address he says: "Abandoning all disguise,
the confession that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong
the vision backward, beyond the boundary of the experimental evidence,
and discern in this matter, which we in our ignorance, and
notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto
covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and
quality of life."

Yet, after all this marvelous endowment of matter with all potency, we
have not got quite back to the beginning. For still the questions arise,
Where did this almighty matter come from? Who endowed it with these
wonderful potencies? And how does it happen to work so well, in such
orderly and regular evolution of star dust, suns, planets, pollywogs,
monkeys, men and maggots, in eternal cycles, ever advancing higher and
doing better and better for the race, though poorly enough, it appears,
for the miserable individuals? Here Buchner, Vogt, Spencer and other
materialists come in and perfect that which was lacking; showing how the
star dust made itself, and how the paving stones made themselves, and
are under no obligations to any Creator but themselves. Matter and force
are all they need, and endless time in which to work, and they will
account for the universe without any Creator at all. Everything and
every person must be just as it is, according to the regular operation
of the laws of Nature.

As Buchner, Vogt and Spencer have given the system a head, Lubbock,
Evans and others have supplied it with a tail, and demonstrated how
society, and morals, and religion have been excogitated by the apes out
of their meditations in the forests. It is a fearful and wonderful
account they give us of the origin of marriage from the battles of the
baboons, of the rights of property established by terrible fights for
groves of good chestnuts, of the beginnings of morals from the instincts
of brutes, and of the dawnings of religion, or rather of superstition,
from the dreams of these animals; the result of the whole being that
civilization, and society, and law, and order, and religion, are all
simply the evolution of the instincts of the brutes, and that there is
no necessity for invoking any supernatural interference to produce them.
The termination of the whole, as far as you and I are concerned, is that
"We shall fade away as the faint cloud melts into the blue ether," into
the eternal sleep of death.

It thus appears that there is an orderly succession and attempted
adjustment of one part of the doctrine of evolution to another, and that
all the various workers are cooperating toward one grand result. It is
true they differ widely in their professed religious creeds and
political partialities. Mr. Darwin avows his belief in a Creator. Mr.
Huxley votes on the London School Board for the introduction of the
Bible into the public schools. Mr. Spencer is willing to allow the
existence of some great unknowable mystery. Some of the French and
German evolutionists dispense with any reference to God, as an
unnecessary hypothesis. Others oppose the idea of God altogether, as
inimical to progress. M. Comte proposed a worship of humanity. M.
Strauss would worship the universe. But with all this variety of
uniform, and armor, and tactics, the evolutionists are all soldiers of
the same army, and are all fighting the same great battle, for the
brutal origin of man, and his independence of God. From which
independence of God, and brutal origin of mankind, result very
important consequences. For the belief of this notion necessarily
destroys all faith in the Bible, and in the Christianity which it
reveals, and revolutionizes the basis of the civilization founded upon
it, and all the laws protecting life, property, marriage and religion;
which laws are based upon the belief of mankind in the dignity of man,
the sacredness of human life, and the sanction of morality by the
All-seeing Judge of all the earth, who will reward every man according
to his works. For all practical purposes it makes no great difference
whether a man denies that there is any God at all, or admits that there
is some kind of a god who created the world millions of years ago, and
just set it a spinning to work out its destiny as best it might, but
never after concerned himself about it, or its people, and never will;
for nobody will ever trouble his head about a god who never troubles his
head about him.

Most of the evolutionists are zealous advocates of their system. These
propagandists have had such a degree of success in attracting public
attention, in inspiring a large proportion of the secular press, besides
scientific journals, as advocates of their notions, and in obtaining
entrance for them into the common school books, put into the hands of
our children, and into massive quartos published by State legislatures
with the money of Christian people, and in the prevalent corruption of
public morals and breach of private trusts necessarily resulting from
the evolution of these principles, that we are compelled, in
self-defense, to examine the doctrine of evolution. It is all very well
for Mr. Tyndall to warn off everybody, but evolutionists, from any
investigations into cosmogony; about which he owns that they know very
little now, and will not know much for some millions of years to come.
But common people, who will not live so long, but who in the meantime
have to live and make money, and save it, who have children to rear,
and houses which they do not want burned over their heads, who have
taxes to pay, increasing every year, and public plunderers to prosecute
and whose ballots may be asked one of these days for the substitution of
the communes of the original apes, and the Red Republic for these United
States, all upon the alleged scientific proof for the truth of the
doctrine of evolution, and the consequent abolishment of
Christianity--common people, I maintain, by whose money and votes this
dogma is to be established, will not be debarred from asking the why and
the wherefore, neither by Mr. Tyndall, nor by any other scientific pope.
It is a little too late in the day for men who do not know their own
mind from the Alps to Belfast, and who doubt whether God made them
whenever they are dyspeptic, to stand up before the public demanding
that we shut our eyes and open our mouths, and swallow every
preposterous notion they think proper to proclaim as science, to the
destruction of our faith in the God who made us, of our respect for our
brethren of mankind, and of our hope of heaven.


_II. The Illogical Structure of the Theory._

When men come before the world with a dogma freighted with such
wide-reaching revolutions, they ought to be prepared to furnish the most
irrefragable proofs of its truth, and of its obligation and authority.
We should be able to establish it beyond all controversy as based on a
series of facts which take their place historically in the line of the
inductive sciences; about which all men of science are agreed, as all
astronomers, for instance, are agreed about gravitation; and we should
be able to show that each of the alleged consequences flows inevitably
and logically from these established facts. Ignorance, hypothesis,
assumption of facts, sophisms, begging the question, and the like, are
wholly impertinent in any such discussion. Were they even tolerable in
the field of metaphysical discussion, they must, by the rules of the
Positive Philosophy itself, banishing all but ascertained facts from the
halls of science, be excluded from this discussion of an alleged general
law of nature. But when we enter on the examination of the dogma of
evolution, we find its parentage among ignoble superstitions; its
fundamental facts still lie in the darkness of ignorance and assumption;
and its reasoning is illogical and absurd.

The most prominent feature which arrests our notice as we look closely
at the theory of evolution, as presented by any of its prominent
atheistical advocates is, _its illogical and incoherent structure_. The
writer contradicts himself. The various parts of the theory do not hang
together. The alleged facts do not sustain the conclusions deduced from
them. Mr. Darwin's books especially abound in the most intolerable
assumptions of principles and facts, not only without proof, but in the
face of unanswered and unanswerable objections. And the theory is
useless for the purpose of its proposal. All this is utterly at variance
with the method of true science. None but a mind debauched by bigoted
attachment to a preconceived theory could overlook these fatal defects
in the system. Indeed both Darwin and Huxley admit that acceptance of
the evidence must be preceded by belief in the principle of evolution.
It is marvelous that any properly educated student of mental science
should accept a theory so incoherent, in which the rents are scarcely
held together by the patches. We can only exhibit a few specimens of the
multitude of these fatal inconsistencies and deficiencies.

The theory is useless as an explanation of the arcana of Nature. Mr.
Darwin is, by his own acknowledgment, a very ignorant man--ignorant of
the very things necessary for him to know before he can construct a
method of creation, and unable to explain to us what he sets out to
explain. He confesses himself ignorant of the origin and laws of
inheritance, by which his whole system hangs together; of the common
ancestors from which he alleges all creatures are derived; of the laws
of correlation of parts, though these are indispensable to development;
of the reasons of the extinction of species, which is the great
business, the very trade of his great agent, Natural Selection. He has
no knowledge of the duration of past ages, though that duration is an
essential element of his calculations. The spontaneous variations of
plants and animals are the very mainspring of his machine; but he tells
us he knows nothing of the laws governing them; nor has he any
information about the creation of the primordial forms, nor about the
date of beginning, or rate of progress.[15] All which are necessary to
be known in order to the formation of a correct theory. Again and again,
when confronted with facts which his theory can not explain, he takes
refuge in confessions of ignorance. When he meets facts which flatly
contradict his theory of the imperceptible beneficial acquirement of
organs, or of properties by inheritance--such as the sterility of
hybrids, the instincts of neuter bees, the battery of the electric eel,
the human eye, and the eye of the cuttle-fish, he owns that "_it is
impossible to conceive_ by what steps these wondrous organs have been
produced." When asked for the missing links between existing species, he
refers us to the undiscovered fossiliferous strata below the Silurian.
So Sir C. Lyell refers us for a view of the apes, which developed the
first men, to the unexplored geological regions of Central Africa! And
Rev. Baden Powell refers us, for the missing links of the chain of
development, to "that enormous period of which we are, from the
conditions, _precluded from knowing any thing whatever_." And as to the
Origin of Species, the very thing the title of his book proclaims, and
how the original germs varied into the four or five primeval forms, and
these into the next, he says: "_Our ignorance of the laws of variation
is profound!_" And that is science!

The Christian acknowledges his ignorance of the method of creation; but
he presents a sufficient cause for the existence of the facts. The
evolutionist ridicules the Bible account of creation as
incomprehensible, and then he gives us an account which he himself owns
to be incomprehensible, and which we, besides, perceive to be absurd. He
proposes to explain to us the origin of species, and locates it in the
geological strata of an unexplored continent, and in those remote ages
of which by the conditions _we are precluded from knowing any thing
whatever_! Objecting to the idea of the God of the Bible, as a
self-existent, infinite, intelligent, omnipotent, good Spirit, because
of its unthinkability, Messrs. Spencer, Tyndall, and the rest assure us
of the eternal self existence of an intelligent cloud of gas, endowed
with all promises and potencies, of life and thought, as a simple and
intelligible substitute! Belief in God Almighty is only superstition,
but faith in Mr. Tyndall's gas-god is science. Mr. Spencer honestly
lands in the unknowable. Well, then, what science have we gained of the
mysteries of our origin?

Of the self-contradictions of evolutionists, we have an instance in
Huxley's treatment of the fundamental fact of his system--protoplasm.
The grand question is: How does the protoplasm become alive? In his
famous lecture on the subject, Physical Basis of Life, he argues
throughout, that life is a property of protoplasm; that protoplasm owes
its properties to the nature and arrangement of its molecules; that
there is no more need to infer or allege a faculty called vitality, to
account for the production of these various properties of the
protoplasm from its chemical constituents, than to infer a power called
aquosity, to account for the generation of water from oxygen and
hydrogen; and that our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes
in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.
Briefly, our minds are manufactured by our bodies. But in his more
recent work, the Classification of Animals, 1869, without any retraction
of his previous error, or acknowledgment that he has changed his mind,
he flatly contradicts his Physical Basis, accepting and indorsing "the
well-founded doctrine that life is the cause and not the consequence of
organization."

A still more ridiculous incoherency of the same sort is displayed in the
logical department of Huxley's Physical Basis of Life; where, after
trying to persuade us to put our feet on the ladder which leads in the
reverse direction from Jacob's, and to descend with him into the slough
of materialism, and affirming that "our thoughts are the expression of
molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our
other vital phenomena;" he goes on to say, that he does not believe in
materialism. And he tries to vindicate himself by asserting that "we
know nothing about the composition of any body whatever as it is." And
this after deducing our thoughts from the molecular changes of the
protoplasm! A pretty story truly, and an impudent one! Here is a man who
will tell you all about how your body made your soul out of protoplasm,
and in the next page acknowledges that he knows nothing about the
composition of either the body or soul as it is! And yet this man will
mock the believers in the Bible as "smothering their minds under a
respectable feather bed of tradition," because they hesitate to shut
their eyes, and swallow his contradictions.

Mr. Wallace gives us a specimen of this logical incoherence affecting if
possible still more deeply the foundations of philosophic faith.[16] He
heads his paragraph _Matter is Force_, and goes on to argue that matter
is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly
understood, does not exist. Then in a couple of pages he goes on to
argue "that the whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually
_is_, the will of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme Intelligence."
But the whole tenor of his book is thus demolished; since evolution, if
it means anything, means the interposition of natural law between the
will of the one Supreme Intelligence and the universe. And on this
theory Mr. Wallace's criticisms on Mr. Darwin and others are impious,
being criticisms upon parts of the will of the one Supreme Intelligence.

Similar instances of self-contradiction could be given, did space
permit, from almost every advocate of evolution.

Our space permits the exhibition of but a single instance of the
inherent incoherency of the theory. There is nothing in which all the
atheistic evolutionists are more emphatic than in the exclusion of
design from the universe. All their arguments and sneers are leveled
against the idea, that the adaptations of Nature were designed or
intended by an intelligent mind; and the theory of evolution is welcomed
chiefly because it enables them to give some account of the order of the
world, without any acknowledgment of a providence guiding it to some end
or purpose. But yet all these same evolutionists proclaim progress as
the great law of Nature, and expend themselves with wonderful eloquence
in tracing the progress of nebulę into worlds, and of worms into men.
They glory in progress of the past, and prophesy progress in the future,
apparently in the most childish unconsciousness, that the very idea of
progress involves design, and that the fact of progress asserts
providence. Nor is there any escape by alleging necessity of Nature,
which is merely endowing the designer of progress with omnipotence as
well as omniscience.

The illogical character of the theory is still further manifested by the
failure of its alleged facts to sustain the consequences deduced from
them. Suppose all the facts alleged by the atheistic evolutionists were
granted, how would they do away with the evidence of the being and
government of God? as they loudly allege they do. Let it be granted that
all men grew up from monkeys, and the monkeys from worms, and all worms
grew from invisible animalculę, and that the animalculę flashed into
life by the chemical contact of the materials of the protoplasm, and
that the protoplasm was a natural crop of the cooling globe, and that
the cooling globe condensed itself out of fire mist or nebulę or star
dust, I demand to know how does all that enable me to get rid of the law
of causation? It is a necessary law of my nature to believe that every
effect demands an adequate cause. It is equally a law of my nature to
believe that every compound, or composite substance, is an effect, that
the compound did not compound itself.

Here is a great effect--a universe in solution, with all the chemical
constituents of our globe and solar system floating in it, and all their
laws of chemical affinity and proportion, and all their electrical
attractions and repulsions, in full operation (else we would never get a
universe to thicken down out of it); and besides, all the potencies of
vegetable and animal life, and all the great powers of the human mind,
in a rather vaporous condition, it is true, but still all
there--Socrates, Seneca and Solomon, Moses, Solon and Blackstone, Homer,
Milton and Shakespeare, Demosthenes, Cicero and Daniel Webster, Watt,
Stephenson, Fulton and Morse, popes, puritans and evolutionists,
universities and newspapers and congresses, the United States and the
British Empire, and the rest of mankind--all boiled up into Mr.
Tyndall's potencies, but all there in potency, just as truly as they
ever were here in fact. Well! here is a great effect just as
imperatively demanding a great First Cause as the world afterward formed
out of it. These substances did not make themselves then, any more than
the resulting persons or paving stones make themselves now, and they did
not endow themselves with these potencies, nor calculate and establish
these laws of chemical combination in exact proportion, nor determine
scientifically the laws of gravitation and electricity and light and
heat, before they came into being; which must have all been established
before a single particle of the star dust could begin to cool, or to
approach another. The very first idea of matter or of force we can form
demands law, and law is merely another name for the divine order of
Nature. Whatever foundation for Natural Religion, for faith in God as
the Creator and Governor of the world, is afforded by the existing order
of the world, it is in no degree logically weakened (though it may be
practically) by viewing that order as reached by a process of evolution,
since that process also must have been designed, planned, adapted to its
purpose, and divinely superintended.

Accordingly, we find that many philosophers, and some divines,
acknowledge a process of the evolution of God's great idea, and adore
him for the growth alike of forests and firmaments, regarding evolution,
thus conditioned, as profoundly religious. St. Augustine, and St. Thomas
Aquinas, of old, and many modern speculators, have assented to the
theory of evolution as perfectly consistent with belief in God, as its
Author. It is utterly illogical to allege that evolution has banished
final causes. Grant it all its facts, and these facts proclaim God.

It is evident, however, that evolutionists are not confident of the
ability of the facts which they are able to allege to sustain their
theory, since they are perpetually postulating assumptions necessary to
their argument, but which are utterly unproved, and incapable of proof.
Mr. Darwin is the most notorious offender against inductive science in
this respect. I have now before me a list of eighty-six assumptions of
this sort in the Origin of Species alone. Those in his other works are
too numerous to mention. He continually mistakes his own assertions, or
even his own mere conjectures, for proof, and refers back to them, and
builds further assumptions upon them accordingly; and he assumes facts
unproven and incapable of proof; and principles which he must know are
denied by his opponents. We can only take a few instances at random.

He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, page
48); that the instincts of animals are developed (page 38); that
language was developed (page 53); that there is a wider interval between
the lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus begging
the question of man's brutality (page 34); that the savage is the
original state of man (page 63); that parental instincts are the result
of Natural Selection, after owning utter ignorance of their origin (page
77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy
(page 82); the heredity of moral tastes (page 98); that the standard of
morality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (page
99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (page 116); that there have been
thousands of generations (page 125); that breeds have the character of
species (Origin of Species, page 411); that rudimentary organs are
inherited abortions (page 424); that there are four or five original
progenitors, and distant evidence of only one (page 425); he assumes
descent to prove his geology (page 428); and perpetual progress toward
perfection (pages 59, 140, 176, 428), in the face of his own facts of
retrogression.

Then look at the outrageous character of the assumption that beneficial
variations may be added up indefinitely, that is, to infinity. Because a
gymnast can leap over two horses, can his son leap over three? and his
son over four? and his son over five? and can we in time breed a man who
will leap to the moon? And yet the whole theory is based upon
forgetfulness of the maxim, that there is a limit to all things, and of
the fact, that in creatures of flesh and blood this limit is very soon
reached.

Look again at the utterly erroneous assumption that the tendency of the
struggle for life is to improve the combatants; an assumption
contradicted by the whole history of famine, war, pauperism, and
disease, among brutes and men. Were the survivors of the Irish famine of
1847, or those of the Persian, or Bengali famines improved by their
struggle for life? It is true the fittest survived; but that was all;
they were miserably emaciated and demoralized. Were the peasantry of
Europe improved by the wars of the French Revolution? On the contrary,
though the fittest survived, France was obliged to lower the recruiting
standard three inches. In all cases the struggle for life injures all
concerned.

And yet upon these two fundamental assumptions the theory is built; of
which that of the indefinite accumulation of small profitable variations
is outrageously impossible and absurd; and the other, of the improvement
of breeds by starvation and hardships, is contrary to all observation
and experience! Take away these two assumptions, and the whole theory of
the gradual improvement of plants and animals by such agency vanishes.
There is no such power of indefinite improvement by Natural Selection,
as Mr. Darwin asserts. The utmost it can do is to keep breeds up to the
natural standard, or near to it, by destroying the weakest; but at the
same time it weakens the strongest also. Were there no other objection,
this one would be fatal, that Mr. Darwin assigns an elevating power to a
depressing agency, and asserts war, famine, hardship, and disease as his
holy angels perfecting progress.

Mr. Darwin presents the most preposterous assumptions with such coolness
and apparent unconsciousness of their utter improbability to his
readers, and with such an entire ignoring of the necessity of any
further attestation than his own _ipse dixit_, as to warrant serious
suspicions of his sanity. Take, for instance, his bear and whale story.
Hearne reports having seen in the Arctic regions a bear swimming in the
water for hours, with his mouth wide open, catching flies; and Mr.
Darwin says if the supply of flies were constant (where the winter lasts
eight months of the year 40° below zero) _he can see no difficulty in
the production at length of an animal as monstrous as a whale_! M.
Comte's disciples never suspected their master's sanity till he invented
a religion for them.

2. This theory, it should be remembered, is _merely a theory_, _a mere
notion_, _a hypothesis_. It is not even alleged that it is based upon
facts actually discovered. The alleged facts of the cooling of the
nebulę, the chemical origin of life upon our globe, and the development
of the original Ascidian into the fish, and that into the monkey, and of
the monkey into the man, never were witnessed by anybody, nor could they
be witnessed. La Place was honest enough to call his part of the theory,
The Nebular _Hypothesis_. He had no idea of claiming for it the rank of
a fact of science upon which he, or anybody else, might build a system.
Nor are the modern assertors of evolution able to establish a single
instance of the chemical origin of life at the present day; though
thousands of experiments have been made attempting that exploit, by
English, French, and German chemists during the last forty years. Nor
has a single case of the transmutation of species ever been observed in
wild animals or plants; nor has any change of species been produced in
tame ones by domestication or culture. No naturalist has seen a
community of apes in the process of improvement toward manhood; nor has
any philologist described the first attempts of the monkeys toward the
articulation of language, or the manufacture of clothing, unless we
except Mr. Lemuel Gulliver's interesting account of the Yahoos. It must
be acknowledged that the animals described by that accurate observer,
and graphic describer, approach more nearly to those required by Mr.
Darwin's theory than any ever seen before, or since. Hence it is greatly
to be desired that some scientific evolutionists should thoroughly
explore those regions, investigate the manners and customs of the Yahoos
with the enthusiasm of a true Darwinian, and minutely describe those
interesting features which would enable us to decide whether they are
monkeys progressing to manhood, or men brutalizing into apehood; but
which Mr. Gulliver's lack of scientific enthusiasm for evolution
prevented him from closely examining. But until the scientific standing
of Mr. Gulliver's Yahoos is determined, the theory of evolution must be
assigned to the mountains of speculations, big with expectation, but
which yet await the birth of their first fact.

Mr. Darwin indeed alleges the results of domestication upon animals and
plants, as producing permanent varieties as different in appearance as
many which are ranked by naturalists as different species, and he
alleges that Natural Selection carries on a similar process of
improvement among wild animals and plants.

But the facts of domestication are most emphatic in refusing to
acknowledge any change of species of the most carefully bred animals.
The efforts of breeders have been exerted for thousands of years upon
the dog, the ox, the goat, the sheep, and the ass, the horse, and the
camel, among animals; and upon the goose, the duck, and the pigeon, and
for a shorter time, but still for two thousand years, upon the common
barn-door poultry. Farmers in all lands, since the deluge, have used
their best exertions to improve the cereals, the fruit trees, the vines,
and root crops, and vegetables, and the result has been some valuable
modifications of size, shape, flavor, and fertility; but in no case
whatever has any change of species been effected. All the efforts of
breeders have not succeeded in making the horse specifically different
from the noble animal described in the Book of Job four thousand years
ago. The sheep has not become a goat, nor the goat a sheep, by all the
pains of all the shepherds since the days of Abel. The ass displays not
the least tendency to become a horse, nor the goat to become a cow. Mr.
Darwin makes great capital out of pigeons, enumerating all the varieties
owned by fanciers, and showing how the Indian emperors bred them a
thousand years before Christ. But it is strange that he does not see
that this makes against his theory; since in all that time this most
variable of birds has never been transmuted into any other species. The
pigeon has never been changed into a crow, or a magpie, or a woodpecker,
or a chicken; has never, in fact, become anything else than a pigeon.
Dogs are also somewhat variable in their varieties, and Mr. Darwin
relies greatly upon supposed variations from some one assumed ancestral
pair of dogs, into the greyhound, mastiff, terrier, and lapdog. But
granting all these unproven variations, no instance is alleged of a dog
ever becoming a cat or a lion by any care or culture.

It will not do to allege, that, for anything we know to the contrary,
our present breeds of domestic animals and plants may be so different
from those called by the same names in ancient times as to be really
different species.

We do know many things to the contrary. In the tombs of the Egyptians,
and the sculptures of the Assyrians, we have pictures of the various
plants, birds, and animals, from three to four thousand years old, as
well as of man, the most domestic animal of the whole. These paintings
and sculptures assure us that in all those millenniums domestication has
not produced the slightest change in the races of animals, plants, or
men. The Ethiopian has not changed his skin, nor the leopard his spots.
The negro was then the same black-skinned, woolly-headed, flat-nosed,
thick-lipped, long-heeled person he is to-day, as pompous, good-humored,
and fond of finery. The Assyrian statues are good, recognizable
likenesses of eminent living Jewish merchants, in London and New
Orleans. The old Pharaohs of the monuments can be matched for face and
figure any day in the bazars of Cairo. The greyhound of the tombs is the
same variety now used for coursing hares in the desert. The camel, the
ass, and the Arab, and Assyrian breeds of horses, have not been at all
improved in forty centuries. Even Mr. Darwin's favorite pigeons would
seem to have ceased to vary; for the carrier-pigeons let loose by
Sesostris, to carry the news of his coronation to all the cities of
Egypt, do not differ a feather from the modern Egyptian carrier-pigeons.
The various wild animals, and many of the plants, are represented on
these monuments in great variety. Among these I have noted the lotus,
the papyrus, the leek, the palm, wheat, barley, and millet; the
crocodile, the frog, the crane, the flamingo, the ibis, the goose, the
owl, the ostrich, the peacock; and of beasts the now famous ancestral
ape, Ptolemy's tame lion, the leopard, the gazelle, the hippopotamus,
the giraffe, and the wild boar, and many others. But there is not the
least perceptible change in the corresponding species now inhabiting
Egypt and the desert.

We can go further than the mere external appearance; for we can actually
dissect specimens of the various animals, and thus satisfy ourselves
whether any physiological change, amounting to a transmutation of
species, has occurred, or was in progress; and the investigation has
been conducted by no less a physiologist and zoologist than Cuvier,
whose authority in such matters no naturalist will dispute. And this is
what he says: "It might seem as if the ancient Egyptians had been
inspired by nature, for the purpose of transmitting to after ages a
monument of her natural history. That strange and whimsical people, by
embalming with so much care the brutes which were the objects of their
stupid adoration, have left us in their sacred grottoes cabinets of
zoology almost complete. Climate has conspired with art to preserve the
bodies from corruption, and we can now assure ourselves with our own
eyes what was the state of a good number of species three thousand years
ago. * * * I have endeavored to collect all the ancient documents
respecting the forms of animals, and there are none equal to those
furnished by the Egyptians, both in regard to their antiquity and
abundance. I have examined with the greatest care the engraved figures
of quadrupeds and birds upon the obelisks brought from Egypt to ancient
Rome; and all these figures, one with another, have a perfect
resemblance to their intended objects, such as they still are in our
days. My learned friend, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, convinced me of the
importance of this research, and carefully collected in the tombs and
temples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he could
procure. He has brought home the mummies of cats, ibises, birds of prey,
dogs, crocodiles, and the head of a bull. After the most attentive and
detailed examination, not the smallest difference is to be perceived
between these animals and those of the same species which we now see,
any more than between human mummies and skeletons of men of the present
day."[17]

There is then not the first fact, or appearance of a fact, to be adduced
in proof of the change of species either by domestication, or Natural
Selection, or any other process known to man. That any such evolution of
any animal, or plant, into one of another species ever occurred, is a
mere empty notion, in support of which no facts can be adduced. All the
animals and plants of which we know anything have remained unchanged
since the beginning of man's observation of them. The theory endeavors
to account for a change which never happened. It is a mere empty dream,
unworthy of a serious consideration by any mind imbued with the first
principle of inductive science--namely, that all science is the orderly
knowledge of facts; and whose first rule is, _first ascertain your
facts_.

But it is urged, that though such a change has not occurred during the
brief period of human history, it may have been practicable in the
lengthened periods revealed by geology, and while the forces of nature
were more vigorous during the youth of our planet. This, in fact, is the
grand resource of the modern evolutionists--the almost infinite periods
and possibilities of geology.

We refuse, however, to follow Mr. Powell into those unexplored realms of
the infinite past and discuss the possibilities of ages, of which "by
the conditions we can not know anything whatever." We will go as far as
the geological strata furnish us with any facts, any evidences of life,
any traces of plants or animals of which corresponding species still
exist, and will unhesitatingly affirm, on the authority of the most
eminent geologists, that such geological representatives of existing
species furnish no evidence whatever of evolution into higher forms. On
the contrary, we shall show that many species have existed without the
slightest change for many thousands, aye, and millions of years,
sufficiently long to establish the fact of the permanence of species
during the geologic ages known to man.

Geologists are generally agreed that the first Florida Coral Reef is at
least 30,000 years old; but Agassiz asserts, uncontradicted, that the
insect which built it has not altered in the least in that period, and
he says regarding it: "These facts furnish evidence, as direct as we can
obtain in any branch of physical inquiry, that some at least of the
species of animals now existing have been in existence 30,000 years, and
have not undergone the slightest change in that period." But we can go
still further back, and demonstrate the permanence of vegetable
structure. Hugh Miller says: "The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotch
fir, all lived, I repeat, in what is now Britain, ere the last great
depression of the land. The gigantic northern elephant and rhinoceros,
extinct for untold ages, forced their way through the tangled branches;
and the British tiger and hyena harbored in their thickets. Cuvier
framed an argument for the fixity of species on the fact that the birds
and beasts of the catacombs were identical in every respect with the
animals of the same kind that live now. But what, it has been asked, is
a brief period of 3,000 years, when compared with the geologic ages? Or
how could any such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? It
is, however, to no such narrow basis that we can refer in the case of
these woods. All human history is comprised in the nearer corner of the
immense period they measure out; and yet from their first appearance in
creation till now, they have not altered a single fiber. And such on
this point is the invariable testimony of Paleontologic science,
testimony so invariable that no great Paleontologist was ever yet an
asserter of the Development Hypothesis."[18] To the same purpose let us
hear Huxley's testimony, since no one will suspect him of undue respect
for Moses: "Obviously if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are
coeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any
just conception of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificant
amount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place in
any one group of animals and plants, is quite incompatible with the
hypothesis that all living forms are the results of a process of
necessary progressive development entirely comprised within the time
represented by the fossiliferous rocks."[19]

We are fully warranted, then, in alleging, that no such transmutation of
species is known to science, as an existing fact, or as having ever
occurred.

As to the supposition on which the evolutionists fall back, that such a
miracle might have happened thousands of millions of years before the
formation of the lowest rocks known to us, we might well decline the
discussion of may-be's as facts of science.

But there is a positive denial of unimaginable periods of time for Mr.
Darwin's evolution to try its blundering experiments. We are empowered
to say positively, No! There is no such length of time for you, Mr.
Darwin, on this little globe at least. This rotating world had a
beginning; so had our moon; and our sun, too, began to burn one day. And
there are data of the revolution of these bodies, and of the secular
cooling of the earth, and of the gradual combustion of the sun, and of
the retardation of the earth's motions, from which Sir Wm. Thompson (in
his Treatise on Geological Time) calculates, that our earth has not been
in a fit state for plants and animals for more than a hundred millions
of years; and he demonstrates the absurdity of the demand for unlimited
time, as contradictory to the facts of physical astronomy. Hence we deny
the possibility of evolution in the infinite ages of the past. There
never were any such ages on this world of ours.

4. Failing to find facts, evolutionists fall back upon analogies, and
support their hypothesis by the supposed analogy of the _growth of the
embryos of all plants and animals from germs alleged to be originally
perfectly similar_--simple protoplasm cells, which by subsequent
evolution, differentiate themselves as widely as the moss from the man.

The subject is too obscure for popular discussion. I can only announce
the results of the latest and most authoritative researches.[20]

1. Analogy is a very unsafe guide here, because the differences between
the limited life of the individual, and the alleged unlimited life of
the race, are precisely those of which we have no analogy.

2. It is not true that "the original substratum or material is in every
instance alike," nor that the "primordial cell is in every instance the
same," whether of the "lichen or the man;"[21] nor as others allege,
"that chemical reagents detect no differences between them." Chemical
reagents are very clumsy instruments for the analysis of living beings,
and their properties and powers; which are the antagonists of chemical
reactions. Nevertheless, heat is a well-known chemical agent, and the
application of heat to a fertilized, and to an unfertilized, germ
develops a whole world of difference between them. The one becomes a
chicken, the other an addled egg. Moreover, the application of different
degrees of heat to different germs produces the most various reactions.
The germs of trout are speedily killed by the moderate temperature of
65° Fahrenheit, while the germs of most animalculę and plants develop
rapidly at that temperature. Such instances might be multiplied, but
these are sufficient to contradict the rash assertion of sameness,
because a hasty observer did not take pains to discover differences.

3. There are four distinct plans of structure in the animal kingdom, and
at least three, perhaps more, in the vegetable kingdom; and every germ,
from the first instant when its evolution can be seen at all, is seen to
develop only according to its own proper method. There is no more
confusion of germs, or embryos, than of plants or animals.

4. No instance has ever been known of a germ producing an animal, or
plant, of another species, by any process of stopping short of ripening,
or undue prolongation of it. Every seed breeds true to its kind, or not
at all, or produces a deformity. Embryology utterly refuses the notion
of the transmutation of species.

Mr. Darwin's various references to rudimentary organs, like the bones of
a hand in the flipper of the whale, or the teats of male animals, and
the like, can hardly be called arguments. He tries to account for them
and fails; acknowledging ignorance of the laws of heredity. Some of them
he will have to be young organs in process of evolution, others organs
aborted for want of exercise. In this category he ought to place the
tail which he ought to have inherited from his ancestors, as he is
greatly exercised to know what became of it. But it is evident that his
attempts to build arguments on such things, and to account for
occasional variations by atarism, are in contradiction to his
principles. Most of the known instances of the origination of permanent
varieties were not the result of infinitesimal improvements, but were
sudden and complete at once. The Japan peacocks, the short-legged
sheep, the porcupine man and his family, and the six-fingered men, were
not at all the results of a slow process of evolution; on the contrary,
they were born so, complete at once, in utter contradiction of the
theory.

5. The only other line of argument, which has any show of probability,
is that based upon _the gradations of the various orders of plants and
animals_. Not but that there are many other arguments adduced, but they
are of too technical a character to be intelligible to any but
zoologists, and of too little weight to demand consideration after the
leading arguments are overturned. But this argument from gradation,
though logically unsound, is plausibly specious, and therefore demands
notice.

By far the ablest exhibition of this argument is that made by Lamarck,
and we give it as he presents it: "The greater the abundance of natural
objects assembled together, the more do we discover proofs that
everything passes by insensible shades into something else; that even
the more remarkable differences are evanescent, and that nature has for
the most part left us nothing at our disposal for establishing
distinctions, save trifling, and in some respects puerile
particularities. We find that many genera among plants and animals are
of such an extent, in consequence of the number of species referred to
them, that the study and determination of these last have become almost
impracticable. When the species are arranged in a series, and placed
near to each other, with a due regard to their natural affinities, they
each differ in so minute a degree from those next adjoining, that they
almost melt into each other, and are in a manner confounded together. If
we see isolated species, we may presume the absence of some more closely
connected, and which have not yet been discovered. Already there are
genera, and even entire orders, nay, whole classes which present this
state of things." He then goes on to present, "as a guide to
conjecture," what his successors now assert as a fact: "In the first
place, if we examine the whole series of known animals, from one
extremity to the other, when they are arranged in the order of their
natural relations, we find that we may pass progressively, or at least
with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of more
compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their
organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties
increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale
of being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geological
observations, that plants and animals of more simple organization
existed on the globe before the appearance of those of more compound
structure, and the latter were successively formed at more modern
periods, each new race being more fully developed than the most perfect
of the preceding one."[22]

From this gradation of nature, thus stated, the evolutionists go on to
infer genealogy, the birth descent of the larger from the smaller, and
of the more complex from the simpler forms, as the only scientific
explanation. But it is by no means the only scientific explanation of
the order of nature. The best naturalists, from Moses to Agassiz, have
regarded the order of nature as the development of the divine idea, have
prosecuted their researches on that view, and have regarded that as a
sufficient and scientific explanation of the gradation of plants and
animals, as they actually exist.

The idea of birth descent can not be logically connected with that of
gradation; especially with a gradation upward. Were the order of nature
such as Lamarck describes, how could any man logically infer the birth
descent of each of its classes from the next below? Here is an
ironmonger's sample card of wood screws, beginning with those
one-quarter of an inch long, and proceeding by gradations of
one-sixteenth of an inch to those of four inches. Does the gradation
show that the little ones begot the big ones? It may be said the wood
screws do not beget progeny. Well, here is a hill containing
twenty-three potatoes, weighing from half an ounce to half a pound, and
quite regularly graded. Did the small potatoes beget the big ones? The
inference of birth descent from gradation is utterly illogical, and of a
piece with the incoherency which we have seen in the other parts of the
theory. It never could be inferred from the facts stated, even did
nature correspond to Lamarck's description.

But nature does not correspond to Lamarck's description. That
description corresponded moderately, perhaps, to the science of his day,
which was based chiefly upon external resemblances; but no scientific
naturalist of the present day would accept it as a correct statement of
the facts revealed by modern science.

In the first place there is no such imperceptible blending and shading
off of species as the description would imply, obliterating all
distinctions of species, and rendering it impossible even for a
naturalist to distinguish one species from another. Since the time of
Lamarck, structure and physiology have been more studied than mere
external appearances; so that from a tooth or bone Cuvier or Agassiz
could reconstruct an animal, and indicate its internal organization, as
well as its form and habits. But even in Lamarck's days, and even to the
most uneducated, there was no such imperceptible shading and blending as
the theory requires. It is well to look here at its requirements, for
they are not fully presented by its friends. Mr. Darwin gives us a
diagram exhibiting the variation of an original species into a score or
so of varieties, ending in distinct species. But this is very far,
indeed, below the necessities of the case. The horse hair worm lays
8,000,000 of eggs; and the primeval germ, whatever it was, could hardly
be less fertile, since fertility increases with simplicity of structure.
But, taking 8,000,000 to begin with, here were as many varieties; since
no two of them, or of any creature, could be exactly alike. The next
generation would give 8,000,000 times as many varieties, and so on till
Natural Selection began to thin off the feeble. But here we have,
instead of a few well-marked varieties, an infinite multitude of
imperceptible variations, rendering classification impossible. And as
all these were only varieties of the same breed, they would breed
together, and thus still more confuse the complexity, and render
distinction of species impossible. For, in spite of all Mr. Darwin has
to say about the extinction of the weaker varieties, the fact is, they
are not at all extinguished, but keep their ground as well as the higher
classes, or perhaps better. And if a snail, or a worm, can contrive to
live now in an unimproved condition, why should its improving cousin die
off? Did its improvement kill it? And so of improving mollusks, and
well-doing radiates, and aspiring rabbits, and all the rest. The world
ought to be so full of them that no man could sort them off into
species, or tell which was fish, which was flesh, and which red herring;
and no pork packer could distinguish hog from dog.

But instead of any such horrible confusion of a world full of mongrels,
we discover a clear and well defined distinction of species, known even
to the poor animals themselves, and by their instincts made known to all
mankind. The Creator, who created all creatures after their kind,
implanted in them an instinct of breeding only with their own species;
and placed a bar in the way of man's vain attempts to work confusion of
species, by rendering the hybrid offspring of different species sterile,
or only capable of breeding back to the pure blood. Innumerable attempts
have been made by fraud and force to procure cross breeds of different
species of plants and animals, but always with the same result--the
extinction of the progeny of the hybrid, unless bred back to nature.
While a mingling of various breeds of the same species--horses, sheep,
or cattle--generally increases fertility, the attempt to mingle
different species, as the horse and the ass, though so similar, always
produces sterile offspring. It is impossible to conceive any form in
which the Creator could more emphatically protest against the attempt to
confuse the distinctions of species He established.

God has fixed a barrier against the mixture or confusion of species by
cross breeding, by ordaining the sterility of hybrids. Mr. Darwin labors
in vain to explain away this great fact. It can not be explained into
conformity with the evolution theory; for in that theory all species are
only breeds or varieties of one species, and ought to increase their
fertility by cross breeding. With all scientific naturalists, as with
all people of common sense, this proves that species have a distinct
existence in nature, and that the Creator has ordained the continuance
of their distinct existence; which is the denial of evolution.

When Mr. Darwin retreats into the geologic ages, and confessing that his
principle has ceased to be operative now in our world, and refers us to
them for such evolution of one species from another, he abandons the
fundamental principle of his school--the uniformity of nature--and falls
back on Christian ground the necessity for supernatural origins. He
virtually admits the death or superannuation of Natural Selection, since
it has retired from the business of species-making.

But when we go back to those old geologic ages, we find that species
were then not only as distinct as now, but that the distinctions were
even bolder and more visible. Many of them have ceased to exist, but
they have left their shells, their petrified casts, and their bones, by
which we can see that they stood apart in well-defined groups, without
any such blending and confusion as the evolution theory asserts. Over
three thousand species are already classified. Between every two of them
there ought to be, on Mr. Darwin's showing, a hundred intermediate
variations at the least; and between some of the more widely separated
forms there ought to be thousands of intermediate varieties; as for
instance between the bear and the whale; and a still greater number
between the mollusk with its external shell, and the vertebrate with its
internal skeleton. And we ought to find these intermediate forms closely
connected with their parents and their children. For intermediate forms
in another continent could not be the connecting links between the
mollusks and vertebrates of a distant country, say of England. In the
same strata in which we find the two ends of the chain, and lying
between the two ends of the chain, we ought to find the connecting
links. And we ought to find a hundred connecting links for every
specimen of distinct species, since Mr. Darwin alleges that they must
have lived and died somewhere; and we have seen they must have lived and
died right there where they were born, and where they begot their
progeny. The geological strata ought to be full of connecting links.

But when we come to look for them they are not there. Geology knows
nothing about them. It has plenty of distinct, well-defined
species--trilobites, and ammonites, and echinoderms, palms, ferns, firs,
and mosses, all sorts of quadrupeds from a mouse to a mastodon, and all
just as clean-cut and well-defined as the species of existing animals.
Mr. Darwin can not find his connecting links between the species, which
ought to have been a hundred times more plentiful than the species they
connected. These connecting links are missing links. He ought to be able
to overwhelm his opponents, and bury them under mountains of the bones
of intermediate species. But all his friends can do is to suggest about
half a dozen, while he needs three hundred thousand. He can not pay half
a cent on the dollar. In his grief he turns round and abuses the
defectiveness of the geological record, which he says he could never
have suspected of being so defective but for this failure to meet his
drafts. But he need not blame the geological record for not preserving
bones of animals which never lived. Geology says there never was any
such confusion of species as evolution asserts.

But not only does the general structure of the web of nature present a
clearly striped pattern, instead of the mottled gray of the
theory--neither the beginning, nor the middle, nor the end is like what
the evolution theory would produce.

The gradation does not begin, as the theory asserts and demands, with
the monads. On the contrary, we find that there are four kingdoms of
animal life--in an ascending scale--the radiate, or starfish; the
mollusk or oyster; the articulate, or insect; and the vertebrate, or
animals with backbones. Now the evolution ought to have begun at the
bottom, with the radiate, the coral, and the starfish; it should have
gone upward, the coral developing into the oyster, and the oyster into
the lobster, and the lobster into the salmon, and so on. But instead of
that we discover, away down in the Silurian strata, at the very
beginning of life, _all the four kingdoms_--the radiates, the mollusks,
the articulates, and the fish! Evidently, then, there was no such
beginning of the world as evolutionists suppose.

Then as we work upward along the line of march, and of the development
of the divine idea, we observe that when new species were introduced,
they did not work up slowly from small and weak beginnings; beginning
with dwarfs and growing up to giants; but, on the contrary, the giants
head the column. The geological books are full of them--sharks forty
feet long, frogs as big as oxen, ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus of
fabulous proportions--were not their skeletons preserved--pterodactyles,
or bats, as big as a dog, the mastodon giganteus, beside which an
ordinary modern elephant is like a Shetland pony beside a dray horse,
ferns as big as oak trees, and mosses eighteen inches in diameter, shell
fish of the nautilus order the size of dinner plates, and crustaceans,
cousins to the lobster, three feet long. And all this at the very first
start in life of these respective families, and in overwhelming
multitudes. That was no age of small beginnings, and small progressive
improvements. On the contrary, these old families, like some other old
families, seem to have rather lost rank, and bulk, and influence; at
least their modern representatives cut no such figure in the world as
their predecessors.

As we proceed along the line we meet gaps which slay the theory of
genealogical descent altogether. A gap is fatal to it. If a family dies
out, that is the end of it. You can not resuscitate it after a few
centuries, and go on with that breed; much less can you pick up a breed
quite different, and attach it to your old genealogy. But in the line of
evolution we meet these fatal gaps; and no evolutionist has bridged
them, because they can not possibly be bridged.

The first great gap is the abyss between death and life. No human power
can cross it. How could the chemical actions of dead matter infuse
vitality into the first germ, or bud of a plant? For chemical actions
are the antagonists of life, and constantly laboring to destroy the
living organism, and finally they succeed. There is no process of
evolution known to man which can carry evolution across this abyss. But
till evolution crosses this gulf it can not even begin to operate. This
first abyss is its grave.

But, supposing life begun in the plant first, as the theory requires,
there is another gap between the life of the plant and that of the
animal; for all animal life is sustained by another sort of food than
that which feeds the vegetable. The vegetable feeds solely on chemical,
unorganized matters; the animal solely on matter organized, on some
plant, or on some other animal which feeds on plants. No animal can live
on the food of plants. Here then is another gap which can not be bridged
over, nor crossed; for the plant in process of conversion into an animal
is in process of starvation, and when the process is about to be
completed, it will end like the miser's horse, whose master diminished
his oats Darwinianly, a single grain a day, until he had brought him to
live on just one grain per day, when, alas! the victim of the experiment
died. And so ends evolution experiment No. 2.

Then we come on a multitude of gaps, breaks in the uniformity of nature,
called for by the evolutionists, between the species which will not
breed together. There ought to be no such species on the theory; or, if
there are, there ought to be a multitude of intervening varieties toning
down the interval; for instance, between the horse and the cow, and
between the sheep and the hog. All the ingenuity of all the
evolutionists has been tasked in vain to produce any instance of the
confusion of two such species, or of the production of a new true
species by the intermixture of blood. But they might just as well try to
convert iron into gold, or sulphur into carbon. In fact, evolution is
the modern physiological form of the old chemical superstition, alchemy,
substituting for the transmutation of metals the problem of the
transmutation of animals.

It were endless to attempt to exhibit the impossibilities of crossing
the gaps between the water-breathing fish and the air-breathing animal;
between the flying-bird and the quadruped; between instinct and
education; between brute selfishness and maternal affection; between the
habits of the solitary and those of the gregarious, and those of the
colonial insects and animals. No one of these is accounted for
satisfactorily by the theory of evolution. But space forbids the
attempt.

We only cite one other gulf which the theory can not cross: the gulf
between the brute and the man. We should rather say the three gulfs; for
between man's body and that of the brute there is a gap which Natural
Selection can not cross; another between man's intellectual powers and
those of brutes; and the third, and widest of all, between his
conscience and their brutal appetites.

The gulf between man's body and that of any brute is marked along the
whole line, from the solid basis of the feet, enabling him to stand
erect, look upward and behold the stars; along the line of the stiff
backbone, maintaining the dignified posture; to the hands, on which
treatises have been written, displaying their wonderful superiority over
those of all other creatures, and enabling man to do what no other
animal has done, to fill the world with his handiworks, and alter the
very face of nature with his ax, and spade, and steam engine. His tongue
and organs of articulate speech alone, were there no other
characteristic, proclaim him different from all other animals; none of
those resembling him in outward form making the slightest attempts
toward articulate language or being able to do so.

Man alone, of all the animals, possesses no natural covering, but is
exposed naked to the inclemency of the elements. What little hair he
possesses is chiefly on the breast, where it is of little use as a
covering, and on the head, which in other animals is never better
protected than the body. Mr. Darwin alleges that the first men were
hairy, like apes. Well, how did they lose their hair? Not by Natural
Selection, which only perpetuates _profitable_ variations; but the loss
of hair to an ape would be as unprofitable as the loss of your clothes
to you. Not by Sexual Selection, for there is not the slightest evidence
that nudity was ever popular in apedom. We have undoubted evidence, in
the two bone needles found with the bones of the man of Mentone, that
the primeval men were naked, and complete proof that Natural Selection
could not effect such a disadvantageous change had they been hairy.
Here, then, we have an _inferiority_ to other animals in the animal
structure, strangely at variance with the general superiority, and only
to be accounted for as an educational provision.

But chiefly in the human head does the great outward distinction appear.
The brain is the great instrument with which the mind works. You can
gauge the strength of Ulysses by his bow, and the bulk of the giant by
the staff of his spear, which was like a weaver's beam. The brain of the
largest ape is about thirty two cubic inches. The brains of the wildest
Australians are more than double that capacity. They measure from
seventy-five inches to ninety. Europeans' brains measure from ninety to
one hundred inches. There are instances of Esquimaux measuring over
ninety. Even the brain of an idiot is double the size of that of the
orang-otang. But how did man get this extraordinary development of
brain, far beyond his necessities? For the cave man of Mentone, who
hunted the bison, had as good a head as Bismarck. Natural Selection
could not develop an ape's brain in advance of his necessities. But here
we have a prophetic structure; man's head developed far in advance of
his necessities. Here is a power at work superior to Natural Selection.

With such an instrument man has gone to work and supplied his
deficiencies. Inferior to many animals in strength and speed, he has
manufactured weapons, and subdued them all, asserting himself as the
lord of creation, conquering even the mighty mastodon, and piercing the
huge Caledonian whale with his reindeer harpoon. He has remedied his
want of hair by the manufacture of clothing from the spoils of his
victims. He has rendered himself independent of the weather by the
shelter of his house. He has ceased to be dependent on the spontaneous
fruits of the forest by the cultivation of the soil, and so has become a
cosmopolite, confined to no province of creation. He has constructed
ships, and provisioned them for long voyages, and visited, and colonized
every coast of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. He has
formed civilized societies with laws, government, and religion. He has
leveled roads, navigated rivers, tunneled mountains, dug navigable
canals, constructed steamboats, built railroads, invented electric
telegraphs, and steam printing presses; and generally he has developed
ideas of society, nationality, and of the universal brotherhood of man,
not only not possible under the laws of Natural Selection, but in the
most direct contrariety to those laws, which work only for the benefit
of the individual. Never under those laws could any great community of
animals be formed, never could they obtain the notion of representative
government, never combine their powers for any national enterprise, nor
could the most hairy and muscular-tailed of Mr. Darwin's ancestors
secure subscribers sufficient to warrant him in starting even a county
newspaper.

But it is in the moral sense which enables man to distinguish right from
wrong, the conscience, which forbids and reproves the unbridled
indulgence of the animal appetites, that we observe the grand
distinction between man and the brute. There is nothing in the writings
of evolutionists more pitiable than their attempts to degrade conscience
into a mere gregarious instinct, an outcome of utility to the tribe, and
to pleasurable sensations, resulting from the exercise of the social
instincts. It would appear that these writers had so sophisticated their
own minds that they have ceased to understand the fundamental,
world-wide difference between right and gain, between duty and pleasure.
"Do justice, though the heavens fall," could never be evolved by Natural
Selection. That is the law of the sharpest tooth, and the longest claws,
and the biggest bull; the Napoleonic theology, whose god is always on
the side of the strongest battalions; the law of the perdition of the
weak, and the survival of the strongest. In obedience to its laws the
birds forsake their parents as soon as they can shift for themselves;
the herd tramples down the wounded deer; the wolves devour their wounded
brothers; the queen bee puts her sisters to death, and the neuters
sacrifice all the males of the hive. In obedience to the laws of Natural
Selection, the males fight for the most attractive females, and keep as
many as they can, and form societies on that basis.

But man has a sense of justice, and mercy, and gratitude, and love. Here
is an animal who knows he ought to tell truth, and do right, and honor
his parents, and respect and love his brethren. Whether he always does
his duty or not, he feels and owns he ought to do it. Justice, and
mercy, and the fear of God, are not at all the attributes of brutes, and
never could have been produced by the evolution of their instincts. No
animal possesses any knowledge of God, nor practices any form of
religious worship. Religion, then, could not be the evolution of what
has no existence.

We have now considered the theory of the atheistical evolution of man,
and of all plants and animals from one primeval germ, by the
unintelligent operation of the powers of nature. We have seen that there
are as many contradictory applications of the theory as there are
advocates of it; that in any shape it is incoherent, illogical, and
absurd; that it is destitute of any support from facts; that the alleged
analogy of embryology fails to give it countenance; that the order of
nature in its gradations is contradictory of the theory; that it utterly
fails to account for the origin of life, for the distinctness of the
four classes of the animal kingdom, for the distinctness of species
which refuse to breed together, for the absence of the intermediate
forms necessary to the theory; and, above all, that it can give no
satisfactory account of man's bodily, mental, and moral superiority to
all other animals, nor for his possession of a knowledge of God.

Its tendency, moreover, is inevitably to degrade man, to destroy that
sense of his dignity which is the principal security of human life, to
obliterate a belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, and
in the existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and so to
promote the disorganization of society, and the degradation of men to
the level of brutes, living only under the laws of their brutal
instincts. For all these reasons we reject the theory as unscientific,
absurd, degrading to man, and offensive to the God who made him.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] The Descent of Man, p. 198, American Edition.

[6] The Descent of Man, p. 191, Am. Ed.

[7] Descent of Man, p. 199, Am. Ed.

[8] Descent of Man, 197, Am. Ed.

[9] The Variations of Animals, etc., Vol. II. page 515.

[10] Lay Sermons, p. 30.

[11] Lay Sermons, 303.

[12] Cited by Hodge in "What is Darwinism?" Page 73, etc.

[13] Natural Selection, 372 A., Am. Ed.

[14] From the _Presbyterian_, December 7, 1872.

[15] Origin of Species, 4, 10, 127, 9, 97, 100, 409, 410, 415, 423.
Descent of Man, 192, 204, and II.--15, 257.

[16] Natural Selection, p. 365. Am. Ed.

[17] Theory of the Earth, 123.

[18] Testimony of the Rocks, 77.

[19] Address at Annual Meeting of the Geological Society, 1862.

[20] Agassiz's Methods of Study.

[21] Draper's Human Physiology, 506.

[22] Lyell's Principles of Geology, Book III., Chapter 33.




CHAPTER III.

IS GOD EVERYBODY, AND EVERYBODY GOD?


Pantheism is that perversion of reason and language which denies God's
personality, and calls some imaginary soul of the world, or the world
itself, by his name. While Pantheists are fully agreed upon the
propriety of getting rid of a God who could note their conduct, and call
them to account for it hereafter, and who would claim to exercise any
authority over them here, they are by no means agreed, either in India,
Germany, or America, as to what they shall call by his name. Public
opinion necessitates them to say they believe in a God, but almost every
one has his own private opinion as to what it is. We shall speak of it
as we hear it pronounced from the lips of its prophets, here, as well as
in the writings of its expounders, in Europe, and Asia. Some of them
declare, that it is some absolutely unknown cause of all the phenomena
of the universe, and others, that it is the universe itself. A large
class speak of it as the great soul of the world, while the more
materialistic regard it as the world itself, body and soul; the soul
being the sum of all the imponderable forces, such as gravitation, heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, vegetable and animal life, and
especially the mesmeric influence, of which many of them regard
intellect as a modification; and the body being the sum of all the
ponderable substances, such as air, water, earth, minerals, vegetables,
and bodies of animals and men. This creed is popularly expressed in the
sentence so often heard, "God is everything, and everything is God." But
this vast generalization of all things into the higher unity--this
exalting of monkeys, men, snails, and paving stones to the same level of
divinity--by no means meets the views of the more unphilosophical and
aspiring gods and goddesses, for the very reason that it is so
impartial. To deify a man and his cat by the same process is not much of
a distinction to the former; and of what advantage is it to be made a
god, if he does not thereby obtain some distinction? This leveling
apotheosis is generally confined to the German Pantheists; their more
ambitious American brethren ascribe the contented humility which accepts
it to the continual influence of the fumes of tobacco and lager beer.

Man is the great deity of the other class. Renan boldly says: "For
myself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superior
to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only
in humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only as
an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in
form."[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for people
who believe everything God, supposed to be superior to the rest of him,
they go off into great rhapsodies of adoration of their own souls.

"The doctrine of the soul--first _soul_, and second _soul_, and evermore
_soul_"[24]--is the doctrine which is to regenerate the world. God, in
their view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "The
universal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heeds
the waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my head
bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mere
egotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate through
me. I am part or particle of God." "I stand here to say, 'Let us worship
the mighty and transcendent soul.'" "God attains to self-consciousness
only in the human soul." "Honor yourself." "Reverence your own
individuality." "The soul of man is the highest intelligence in the
universe." Such are the dogmas which, under the name of Philosophy, are
poured forth oracularly, unsupported by reason or argument, by the
prophets of the new dispensation--the last and highest achievement of
the human intellect.

It is very unfortunate, however, for the honor of the prophets of the
nineteenth century, that this profound discovery was invented, and
illustrated, patented, and peddled, by the Hindoos, among the people of
India, two thousand years before the divinity had struggled into self
consciousness in the mighty and transcendent souls of Schelling, Hegel,
and Strauss, of Atkinson, Parker, or Emerson. We mean to show in this
lecture, that it is an _Antiquated, Hypocritical, Demoralizing Atheism_.

1. _Pantheism is an Antiquated Heresy._--It has rotted and putrefied
among the worshipers of cats, and monkeys, and holy bulls, and bits of
sticks and stones, on the banks of the Ganges, for more than two
thousand years; yet it is now hooked up out of its dunghill, and hawked
about among Christian people, as a prime new discovery of modern
philosophy for getting rid of Almighty God. As the Hindoo Shasters are
undoubtedly the sources from which French, German, and American
philosophers have borrowed their dogmas, and as they have not had time
to take the whole system, we shall edify the public by a view of this
sublime theology as exhibited in the writings of the Pantheistic
philosophers of India, as follows:

"When existing in the temporary imperfect state of _Sagun_, Brahm (the
Pantheist deity) wills to manifest the universe. For this purpose he
puts forth his omnipotent energy, which is variously styled in the
different systems now under review. He puts forth his energy for what?
For the effecting of a creation out of nothing? 'No,' says one of the
Shasters, but to '_produce from his own divine substance a multiform
universe_.' By the spontaneous exertion of this energy he sends forth,
from his own divine substance, a countless host of essences, like
innumerable sparks issuing from the blazing fire, or myriads of rays
from the resplendent sun. These detached portions of Brahm--these
separated divine essences--soon become individuated systems, destined,
in time, to occupy different forms prepared for their reception; whether
these be fixed or movable, animate or inanimate, forms of gods or men,
forms of animal, vegetable, or mineral existences.

"Having been separated from Brahm in his imperfect state of _Sagun_,
they carry along with them a share of those principles, qualities, and
attributes that characterize that state, though predominating in very
different degrees and proportions; either according to their respective
capacities, or the retributive awards of an eternal ordination. Among
others it is specially noted, that as Brahm at that time had awakened
into a consciousness of his own existence, there does inhere in each
separated soul a notion, or a conviction, of its own _distinct_,
independent, individual existence. Laboring under this delusive notion,
or conviction, the soul has lost the knowledge of its own proper
nature--its divine origin, and ultimate destiny. It ignorantly regards
itself as an inferior entity, instead of knowing itself to be what it
truly is, a consubstantial, though it may be an infinitesimally minute
portion of the great whole, a universal spirit.

"Each individual soul being thus a portion of Brahm, even as a spark is
of fire, it is again and again declared that the relation between them
is not that of master and servant, ruler and ruled, but that of whole
and part! The soul is pronounced to be eternal _a parte ante_; in
itself it has had no beginning or birth, though its separate
individuality originated in time. It is eternal _a parte post_; it will
have no end--no death; though its separate individuality will terminate
in time. Its manifestation in time is not a creation; it is an effluence
from the eternal fount of spirit. Its disappearance from the stage of
time is not an extinction of essence--a reduction to nonentity; it is
only a refluence into its original source. As an emanation from the
supreme, eternal spirit, it is from everlasting to everlasting. Neither
can it be said to be of finite dimensions; on the contrary, says the
sacred oracle, 'being identified with the Supreme Brahm, it participates
in his infinity.'

"After having enumerated all the elementary principles, atoms, and
qualities successively evolved from Brahm, one of the sacred writings
states, that though each of these had distinct powers, yet they existed
separate and disunited, without order or harmonious adaptation of parts;
that until they were duly combined together, it was impossible to
produce this universe, or animated beings; and that therefore it was
requisite to adopt other means than fortuitous chance for giving them an
appropriate combination, and symmetrical arrangement. The Supreme,
accordingly, produced an egg, in which the elementary principles might
be deposited, and nurtured into maturity." "All the primary atoms,
qualities, and principles--the seeds of future worlds--that had been
evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together, and
deposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them,
entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahm; and
then he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, a whole
year of the creation, or four thousand three hundred millions of solar
years! During this amazing period, the wondrous egg floated like a
bubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing in size, and blazing
refulgent as a thousand suns. At length the Supreme, who dwelt therein,
burst the shell of the stupendous egg, and issued forth under a new
form, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along
with him there issued forth another form, huge and measureless. What
could that be? All the elementary principles having now been matured,
and disposed into an endless variety of orderly collocations, and
combined into one harmonious whole, they darted into visible
manifestation under the form of the present glorious universe! A
universe now finished, and ready made, with its entire apparatus, of
earth, sun, moon, and stars. What, then, is this multiform universe? It
is but a harmoniously arranged expansion of primordial principles and
qualities. And whence are these? Educed or evolved from the divine
substance of Brahm. Hence it is that the universe is so constantly
spoken of, even by mythologists, as a manifested form of Brahm himself,
the supreme, invisible spirit. Hence, too, under the notion that it is
the manifestation of a being who may assume every variety of corporeal
form, is the universe often personified, or described as if its
different parts were only the different members of a person, of
prodigious magnitude, in human form. It is declared that the hairs of
his body are the trees of the forest; of his head, the clouds; of his
beard, the lightning. His breath is the circling atmosphere; his voice,
the thunder; his eyes, the sun and moon; his veins, the rivers; his
nails, the rocks; his bones, the lofty mountains![25]

"The substantial fabrics of all worlds having now been framed and fitted
up as the destined abodes of different orders of being, celestial,
terrestrial, and infernal, the question next arises, How or by whom were
produced the various organized forms which these orders of being were
designed to animate? Though hosts of subtle essences or souls flowed
forth from Brahm, all of these remain inactive till united to some form
of materialism. From this necessity the gods themselves are not
exempted. While the souls of men, and other inferior spirits, must be
encased in tabernacles fashioned out of the grosser elements, the souls
of the gods, and all other superior spirits, must be made to inhabit
material forms, composed of one or other of the infinitely attenuated
and invisible rudimental atoms that spring direct from the principle of
consciousness.

"Interminable as are the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and
extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is
the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing
than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all.
Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated
beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time
he is said to have performed a long and severe course of ascetic
devotions, to enable him to accomplish his wish; but in vain; at
another, inflamed by anger and passion at his repeated failures, he sat
down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as
his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so
loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time,
after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his
thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his
side. But enough of such monstrous legends."[26]

There now, reader, you have the original of the Development Theory, with
Vestiges of Creation enough to make half a dozen new infidel
cosmogonies, besides the genuine original of Pantheism, from its native
soil. Our western Pantheists will doubtless reverence their venerable
progenitors; and, should the remainder of the family find their way
here in a year or two, via Germany, the public will be better prepared
to give a fitting reception to such distinguished visitors, including
their suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cow
dung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning of
children, and other Pantheistic Philosophies, from the banks of the
Ganges. What an outrage of decency for such men to call themselves
philosophers and Christians!

The relationship of American Pantheism with that of India is
unblushingly acknowledged by the recent Pantheistic writers: "When
ancient sages came to believe in the absolute goodness, justice, love,
and wisdom of the deity, or providence, they fell into that peace which
needed nothing, feared nothing, and therefore worshiped nothing. Nothing
to blame, nothing to praise; the perfect whole became one great
divinity. It was so in Magadha and Benares; it is so in Concord and
Boston."[27]

2. _Pantheism is a System of Deception and Hypocrisy._--Has any man a
right to pervert the English language, by fixing new meanings to words,
entirely different from and contrary to those in common use? If he knows
the meaning of the words he uses, and uses them to convey a contrary
meaning, he is a deceiver. The name God, used as a proper name, in the
English tongue, means "the Supreme Being; Jehovah; the Eternal and
Infinite Spirit, the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe."[28] If,
then, a man says he believes in God, but when forced to explain what he
means by that name, says he means steam, heat, electricity, galvanism,
magnetism, mesmeric force, odyle, animal life, the soul of man, or the
sum of all the intelligences in the universe, he is a deceiver, and vain
talker, abusing language to conceal his impiety. Pantheism is simply
Jesuitical Atheism. Willing to dethrone Jehovah, but unable and
unwilling to place any other being in his stead, as Creator and Ruler of
the universe, yet conscious that mankind will never embrace open
Atheism, Pantheists profess to believe in God, only that they may steal
his name to cloak their Atheism. We, in common with all who believe in
God, demand, that, as their divinity is, by their own confession,
essentially different from God, they shall use a different word to
describe it. Let them call it Brahm, as their brethren in India do, or
any other name not appropriated to any existing being in heaven or
earth, or under the earth; and let them cease to profane religion, and
insult common sense, by affixing the holy name of the Supreme to their
thousand-headed monster.

But the very perfection of Jesuitism is reached, when Pantheists profess
their high respect for the Christian religion. They do not generally
speak of it as a superstition, though some of the vulgar sort do; nor do
they decry its mysteries, as Deists are in the habit of doing; nor, as
Socinians, and Unitarians, and Rationalists, do they attempt to reduce
it to a mere code of morals. They grant it to be the highest development
of humanity yet reached by the majority of the human race. The brute,
the savage, the polytheistic idolater, the star worshiper, the
monotheist, the Christian, are all, in their scheme, so many successive
developments of humanity in its upward progress. There is only one step
higher than Christianity, and that is Pantheism. Well knowing that
Christianity is diametrically opposed to their falsehoods, and that the
Bible, everywhere, teaches that the natural progress of man has ever
been down from a state of holiness to idolatry and barbarism, they have
yet the hardihood to profess respect for it, as a system of concealed
Pantheism, and to clothe their abominations in Scripture language. They
speak, for instance, of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that has
surmounted every idea of a personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us,
and his love perfected in us," when they believe that he dwells as
really in every creature: in that hog, for instance. Then they will
readily acknowledge that the Bible is inspired. They _can accept_--that
is the phrase--they can accept the Book which denounces death upon those
fools who, "professing themselves to be wise, change the truth of God
into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator,"
as merely a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves man to
"erect everything into a God, provided it is none: sun, moon, stars, a
cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a
shapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does not
stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis at
once." Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired--a God inspired
Book--inasmuch as _every_ product of the human mind is a development of
Deity. The Bible, then, when we have the matter fully explained, is
quite on a level with Gulliver's Travels, or Emerson's Address to a
Senior Class of Divinity.

There is nothing, however, in this vast system of monstrosities, which
fills the soul of a Christian with such loathing and detestation, as to
hear Pantheists profess their veneration for the Lord Jesus, and claim
him as a teacher of Pantheism. If there is one object which they detest
with all their hearts, it is the Judge of the quick and dead, and the
vengeance which he shall take upon them that know not God, and obey not
the gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them with
fury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know that
the Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living and
the dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation;" and that the very last sentence of his
public discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away into
everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." When they
drop the mask for a moment, they can accuse apostles and disciples with
"dwelling with noxious exaggeration about the _person_ of Christ."[29]
Christ, as revealed in the gospel, they hate with a perfect hatred. But
when it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them into
the deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes the
model man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highest
perfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed of
powers of generalization far in advance of the age in which he lived.
They can listen to and honor one of the best expounders of God and
nature in the Man of Nazareth."[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheism
are ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yet
respect his name, may be seduced to receive them. Of him who declared,
"Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies," they have the hardihood to declare,
"He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul; alone, in all history,
he estimated the greatness of man." Calculating upon that ignorance of
the teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, they
dare to represent the only begotten Son of God as teaching Pantheism:
"One man was true to what is in you and me; he saw that God incarnates
himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his
world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through
me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee
when thou also thinkest as I now think.' Because the indwelling Supreme
Spirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this
perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons,
and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury." Yes, truly, the
divine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, and
denied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do the
deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of
fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God
were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from
God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand
my speech? Even because ye can not hear my word. Ye are of your father,
the devil; and the works of your father ye will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own; for he
is a liar, and the father of it."

Let Pantheists, then, cease to wind their serpent coils around
Christianity, and to defile the Bible with their filthy lickings. The
Lord Jesus will not suffer such persons to bear even a true testimony to
him, and his followers will not permit them to ascribe their falsehoods
to him, without reproof. Let them stand out and avow themselves the
enemies of Christ and his gospel, as they are, and cease their
abominable pretenses of giving to the world the ultimate development of
Christianity. What concord hath Christ with Belial?

3. _Pantheism is a System of Immorality._--It loosens all the sanctions
of moral law. If there is anything upon which all Pantheists are agreed,
it is in the denial of the resurrection, the judgment, and the future
punishment of the wicked. Their whole system, in all its range, from
Spiritualism to Phrenology, is expressly invented to get rid of God's
moral government. If man is the highest intelligence in the universe, to
whom should he render an account of his conduct? Or who would have any
right to call him to account? Then, if we are developments of deity,
deity can not offend against itself. Further, if our development, both
of body and mind, be the inevitable result of the laws of nature--of our
organization and our position--man is but the creature of circumstances,
and, therefore, as is abundantly argued, can not be made responsible for
laws and their results, over which he has no control. "I am what I am. I
can not alter my will, or be other than what I am, and can not deserve
either reward or punishment."[31] Before hundreds of the citizens of
Cincinnati, a lecturer publicly denied the right of either God or man to
invade his individuality, by taking vengeance upon him for any crime
whatever. Thousands, who are not yet Pantheists, are so far infected
with the poison that they utterly deny any right of vindictive
punishment to God or man.

But this is not all. Again and again have we listened with astonishment
to men, declaring that there was no moral law--no standard of right and
wrong, but the will of the community. Of course it was quite natural,
after such a declaration, to assert that a wife who should remain with a
husband of inferior intellectuality, or unsuitable emotions, was
committing adultery; that private property is a legalized robbery; and
that when a citizen becomes mentally or physically unfit for the
business of life, he confers the highest obligation on society, and
performs the highest duty to himself, by committing suicide, and thus
returning to the great ocean of being!

We might think that confusion of right and wrong could not be worse
confounded than this; yet there is a blacker darkness still. _The
distinction between good and evil is absolutely denied._ The Hindoo
Pantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and God
can not offend against himself; there is no sin--it is all
_maya_--delusion. So the American and English school tells us it lives
only in the obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in another
way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative
Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making;
that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It
is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the
last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in
the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in
brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and
true."[33]

Emerson, in a lecture in Cincinnati, is reported by the editor of _The
Central Herald_, as saying in his hearing: "To say that the majority of
men are wicked, is only to say that they are young." "Every man is
indebted to his vices--virtues grow out of them as a thrifty and
fruitful plant grows out of manure." "There is hope even for the
reprobate, and the ruffian, in the fullness of time."

If these were only the ravings of lunatics, or the dreamings of
philosophers, we should never have hunted them from their hiding-places
to scare your visions; but these doctrines are weekly propounded in your
own city, and throughout our land, from platform and press, to thousands
of your children and their school-teachers, of your work, men and your
lawgivers, to your wives and daughters. Again and again have our ears
been confounded in the squares of New York, and the streets of
Philadelphia, and the market-places of Cincinnati, by the boisterous
cry, _What is sin? There is no sin. It is all an old story._ Let men who
fear no God, but who have lives, and wives, and property to lose, look
to it, and say if they act wisely in giving their influence to a system
which lands in such consequences. Let them devise some religion for the
people which will preserve the rights of man, while giving license to
trample upon the rights of God; or, failing in the effort, let them
acknowledge that the enemy of God is, and of necessity must be, the foe
of all that constitutes the happiness of man. Impiety and immorality are
wedded in heaven's decree, and man can not sunder them.

4. _Pantheism is Virtually Atheism._--It may scarce seem needful to
multiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composed
of the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, or
combination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by any
intelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or like bricks and
mortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finite
intelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highest
intelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does the
soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got
just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, for
minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the
heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or
Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." _Establish_
these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands of
years before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the souls
of Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is much
displeased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept,
in which the children are to be taught to worship idols, the youth to
believe in one God, if they can, after such a training in infancy, and
the full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultant
of all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universal
perfectioning of the world, _not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, the
animals_."[34] Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quite
philosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and therefore
refuse worship altogether. "Work is worship," constitutes their liturgy.
"As soon as the man is as one with God, he will not beg. He will then
see prayer in all action."[35] "Labor wide as earth has its summit in
heaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat
of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton
meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms,
martyrdoms, up to that agony of bloody sweat, which all men have
accounted divine! Oh, brother, if this is not worship, then I say, the
more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered
under God's sky." "No man has worked, or can work, except
religiously."[36] "Adieu, O Church! Thy road is that way, mine is this.
In God's name, adieu!"[37]

Such is the theory. How faithfully acted out, you can learn from the
thousands who are now, publicly, upon God's holy Sabbath, working
religiously upon the bridge that is to span the river, or less
ostentatiously in their shops and workrooms throughout the city. Within
a circle of three miles' radius of the spot you now occupy, one hundred
thousand intelligent beings in this Christian city worship no God.

The abstraction, which the Pantheist calls God, is no object of worship.
It is not to be loved. If it does good, it could not help it, and did
not intend it. It is not to be thanked for benefits. It, the sum of all
the intelligence of the universe, can not be collected from the seven
spheres to receive any such acknowledgment. It can not deviate from its
fated course of proceeding; therefore, says the Pantheist, why should I
pray? It neither sees his conduct, nor cares for it; and he denies any
right to call him to account. It did not create him, does not govern
him, will not judge him, can not punish him. It is no object of love,
fear, worship, or obedience. It is no god. He is an Atheist. He believes
not in any God.

HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD. He is distinct from, and
supreme over all his works. He now rules, and will hereafter judge all
intelligent creatures, and will render to every one according to his
works.

1. _Reason declares it._ The world did not make itself. The soul of man
did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must have
had an intelligent Creator, who is God. God is known by his works to be
distinct from them, and superior to them. The work is not the workman.
The house is not the builder. The watch is not the watchmaker. The sum
of all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Let
an architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not the
builder. The maker is always distinct from, and superior to, the thing
made. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our Maker, then, is
distinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe;
therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all his
creatures.

2. _Our consciousness confirms it._ If a blind god could not make a
seeing man, a god destitute of the principle of self-consciousness (if
such an abuse of language may be tolerated for a moment) could not
impart to man the conviction, _I am_,--the ineradicable belief that I am
not the world, nor any other person; much less, everybody; but that I am
a person, possessed of powers of knowing, thinking, liking and
disliking, judging, approving of right, and disapproving of wrong, and
choosing and willing my conduct. My Maker has at least as much common
sense as he has given me. He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not
know?

3. _Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser than
ourselves._ The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the
universe. It can not know the mode of its own operation on the body it
inhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may know
much about what does not concern him, and about things over which he has
no control; but it is the will of God that his pride should feel the
curb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests are
concerned, that so he may be compelled to acknowledge that God is
greater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distant
planets a thousand years hence, but he can not tell where himself shall
be next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of the
tides, which he can not control, but can not tell how his own pulse
shall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as his
knowledge of the laws by which God governs the world increases, his
conviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiser
head and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned and
administered them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as the
mystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he can
not explain, and beyond which he can not penetrate, he hears the voice
of God therein, demanding him to acknowledge his impotence.

     "Where is the way where light dwelleth,
     And as for darkness, what is the place thereof?
     Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades,
     Or loose the bands of Orion?
     Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons?
     Or canst thou guide Arcturus, with his sons?
     Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
     Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
     Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds,
     That abundance of waters may cover thee?
     Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go
     And say unto thee, 'Here we are?'"

4. _Our consciences convince us that God is a Moral Governor._ The
distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the
distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or
individuals who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrong
without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even
those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in
fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion.
Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is
conscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his own
conduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right or
wrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind has
acknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, as
distinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man is
destitute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodness
and wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a willful lie, you
are sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting the
error, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. When
one who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make any
acknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of gratitude, and insults
and abuses the friend who succored him, we are conscious, not merely of
the facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingratitude, as a
crime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believe
that he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right and
wrong, does himself know such a distinction; and that he who implanted
this feeling of approval of right, and condemnation of wrong, in us,
does himself approve the right, and condemn the wrong. And as we can
form no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea that
approbation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and that
disapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed--in
other words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to be
punished--so we are constrained to trace such a connection from our
minds to the mind of him who framed them. This conviction is God's law,
written in our hearts. When we do wrong, we become conscious of a
feeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomes
conscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, and we may sear the
conscience, that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but light
and darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact which
conscience reveals to us, that we sin against God, that we know the
right, and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of God's
disapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinct
from God, but separate from him--that we oppose our wills against his.
And every pang of remorse is a premonition of God's judgment, and every
sorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected with
sin--as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace and
happiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body--is a
type and teaching of the curse which he has denounced against sin.

5. _The World's History is the record of man's crimes, and God's
punishments._ Once God swept the human race from earth with a flood of
water, because the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Again, he
testified his displeasure against the ungodly sinners of Sodom and
Gomorrah, by consuming their cities with fire from heaven, and leaving
the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to all ungodly sinners,
to the end of time.

By the ordinary course of his providence, he has ever secured the
destruction of ungodly nations. No learning, commerce, arms,
territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against the
sword of God's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's history
for an instance. Egypt, Canaan, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome.
Where are they now? Tyre had ships, colonies, and commerce; Rome an
empire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, and
liberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures of
earth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did these
secure them against the moral government of God?

No! God's law sways the universe; that law which, with the brazen
fetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime and
punishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all ungodly nations,
irresistibly forcing them down--down--down the road to ruin. The vain
imagination that refuses to glorify God as God, leads to darkness of
heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfish
gratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury,
licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military
tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and
the sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl them
down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against each
other, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of
nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save some shivered
potsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were the
enemies of God.

Oh, America, take warning ere it be too late! God rules the nations. "He
that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct you?"

A day of retribution, reader, comes to you, as an individual. Neither
your insignificance nor your unbelief can hide you from his eye, nor can
your puny arm shield you from his righteous judgment. His hand shall
find out his enemies. Oh, fly from the wrath to come! "Seek the Lord
while he may be found." He is not far from every one of us. His breath
is in our nostrils. His Word is in our hands. "Whosoever shall call on
the name of the Lord shall be saved."


FOOTNOTES:

[23] Cited in Pressense's _Jesus Christ, His Life and Times_. Page 10.

[24] Emerson.

[25] Duff's India, pages 99-114.

[26] Duff's India, page 119.

[27] Man's Origin and Destiny, 293.

[28] Webster's Dictionary.

[29] Emerson's Address to a Senior Class in Divinity.

[30] Hennell's Christian Theism, which shows how Theists of every
nation--Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Chinese--can meet upon common
ground.

[31] Atkinson's Letters, page 190.

[32] Festus, page 48.

[33] Swedenborg, or the Mystic (quoted by Pierson, 41), p. 68.

[34] Politique Positive, Vol. II. page 60.

[35] Emerson.

[36] Carlyle--Past and Present.

[37] Carlyle--Life of Sterling.




CHAPTER IV.

HAVE WE ANY NEED OF THE BIBLE?


Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a
course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that God
created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer
his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known.
Our knowledge of these facts, or our ignorance of them, makes not the
slightest difference in the facts themselves. God is, and heaven is, and
hell is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things or
not. It makes no sort of difference in the beetling cliff and swollen
flood that sweeps below it, that the drunken man declares there is no
danger, and, refusing the proffered lantern, gallops on toward it in the
darkness of the night. But when the mangled corpse is washed ashore,
every one sees how foolish this man was, to be so confident in his
ignorance as to refuse the lantern, which would have shown him his
danger, and guided him to the bridge where he might have crossed in
safety. Some of the facts of religion lie at the evening end of life's
journey; the darkness of death's night hides them from mortal eye; and
living men might guide their steps the better by asking counsel of one
who knows the way. If they get along no better by their own counsel in
the next world than most of them do in this, they will have small cause
to bless their teacher. Who can tell that ignorance, and wickedness, and
wretchedness are not as tightly tied together in the world to come, as
we see them here?

Solomon was a knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteem
of most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keep
it. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting
on them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of course
such a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. His
ships coasted the shores of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan;
and the overland mail caravans from India and China drew up in the
depots he built for them in the heart of the desert. He knew the
well-doing people with whom trade was profitable, and the savages who
could only send apes and peacocks. He was a philosopher as well as a
trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with _the great fact_,
that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Some
were enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flourishing; others were
naked savages, living in ignorance, poverty, vice, and starvation,
perpetually murdering one another, and dying out of the earth.

Solomon noticed _another great fact_. In his own country, and in
Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and some others, God had revealed his will
to certain persons for the benefit of their neighbors. He did so
generally by opening the eyes of these prophets to see future events,
and the great facts of the unseen world, and by giving them messages of
warning and instruction to the nations. From this mode of revelation, by
opening the prophets eyes to see realities invisible to others, they
were called seers, and the revelations they were commissioned to make
were called visions; and revelation from God was called, in general,
vision. Solomon was struck with the fact that some nations were thus
favored by God, and other nations were not. The question would naturally
arise, What difference does it make, or does it make any difference,
whether men have any revelation of God's will or not?

Solomon was led to observe a _third great fact_. The nations which were
favored with these revelations were the civilized, enterprising, and
comparatively prosperous nations. In proportion to the amount of divine
revelation they had, and their obedience to it, they prospered. The
nations that had no revelation from God were the idolatrous savages, who
were sinking down to the level of brutes, and perishing off the face of
the earth. He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb:
"Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the
law, happy is he."

Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in
Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men
attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But the world is too
wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew and
Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the
pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the
whole of their political existence." "When, therefore, we meet with an
account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated
or implied that they were produced immediately by God himself (such as
divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human
beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.),
such an account is so far to be considered not historical." "Indeed, no
just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a
perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of
the impossibility of miracles."[38] A narrative is to be deemed
mythical, 1st. "When it proceeds from an age in which there were no
written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When it
presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach
of experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d.
When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolical
language."[39] So also a host of others, who pass for biblical
expositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernatural
events are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles are
impossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. A
revelation from God to man is a supernatural event, and supernatural
events are impossible; therefore, a revelation from God is impossible.
But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laid
down the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from God is
impossible, as to argue it from such premises; for it is just as easy to
_say_, that a revelation from God is impossible, as to _say_ that
miracles are impossible; and as for _proof_ of either one or the other,
we must just take their word for it.

One can not help being amazed at the cool impudence with which these men
take for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside, as unworthy
of serious examination, the most authentic records of history, simply
because they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy; and at the
credulity with which their followers swallow this arrogant dogmatism, as
if it were self-evident truth. Let us look at it for a moment. Other
religions have their myths, or fables, therefore, the Hebrew and
Christian records are fables, says the Rationalist. Profundity of logic!
Counterfeit bank bills are common, therefore none are genuine. "The fact
is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews," _i.
e._, Moses and the prophets were all liars. That is the fact, you may
take my word for it. "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of
history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the
chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles" which
translated into plain words is simply this: No man can understand
history who believes in God Almighty. "A narrative is to be deemed
fabulous when it proceeds from an age in which there were no written
records," such, for instance, as any account of the creation of the
first man--for no event could possibly happen unless there was a scribe
there to write it. Or, of the fall of man--we do not know that Adam was
able to write, and no man can tell truth unless he writes a history. "A
narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it presents, as historical,
accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as events
connected with the spiritual world." Is it not self-evident that you and
I have had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoever
tells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrative
deals in the marvelous," such as Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand,
Herodotus' History, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
dealing as it does in such marvelous accounts as the death of half the
inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history
of wonderful occurrence--it is of course a myth. Does not every one know
that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian
trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical
language," as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson,
Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the
picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good service
against the Bible--it must be at once rejected, without further
examination, as mythological and unworthy of any credit whatever. Thus
we are conclusively rid forever of the Bible, for sure enough it is
couched in symbolical language. Blessed deliverance to the world! But
then, alas! this great deliverance is accompanied with several little
inconveniences. All poetry, three-fourths of the world's history, and
the largest part of its philosophy, is couched in symbolical language,
and especially the whole of the science of metaphysics, from which
these very learned writers have deduced such edifying conclusions, is,
from the beginning to the end, nothing but a symbolical application of
the terms which describe material objects, to the phenomena of mind.
Alas! we must forever relinquish "the absolute," and "the infinite," and
"the conditioned," with all their "affinities and potencies," up to
"higher unity," and "the rhythm of universal existence," and all the
rest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed in
their native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, by
Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, or "worshiping in the great cathedral of
the immensities," "with their heads uplifted into infinite space," or
"lying on the plane of their own consciousness," in the writings of
Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, for
they "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, and
Strauss have pronounced every thing couched in symbolical language to be
mythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety about
history, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and the
multiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched in
symbolical language."

Such is the sort of trash that passes for profound philosophy when once
it is made unintelligible, and such are the canons of interpretation
with which men calling themselves philosophers and Christians sit down
to investigate the claims of the Bible as a revelation from God. If they
would speak out their true sentiments, they would say, "There can not be
any revelation from God, because there is no God." But they could not
call themselves professors of Christian colleges, and pastors of
Christian churches, and reap the emoluments of such situations, if they
would honestly avow their Atheism. Besides, the world would see too
plainly the drift of their teaching; therefore it is cloaked under a
profession of belief in God, the Creator, who however is to be
carefully prevented from ever showing himself again in the world he has
made.

No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible.
Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradiction
could be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the general
belief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in a
supernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. The
creation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterly
beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of
our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred.
Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented.

The vain notion that God, having created the world at first, left it for
ever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolished
by the discoveries of geology. These discoveries established the fact
recorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present form
there were several distinct and successive interpositions of
supernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations of
different species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, they
tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals
could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could
not live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earth
existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This being
the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of God
above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either
create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into
another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose
into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man.
Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such
a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The most
distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such
change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any
animal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensive
survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the
species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are
lost." And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have been
created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of God's
special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by
his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting
granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles
start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated
supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made.
Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct
supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of
man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the
chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very
foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena
produced immediately by God himself--the phenomena of the creation of
life--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation
is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of
supernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because it
records miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are as
astonishing as any recorded in the Bible.

The Rationalist next assures us, however, that any external revelation
from God to man is _useless_, because man is wise enough without it. The
vulgar exposition of this sentiment is familiar to every reader. "You
need not begin to preach Bible to me. I know my duty well enough without
the Bible." The more educated attempt to reason the matter after this
fashion: "Miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and
veracity of God, if we do not know these qualities in him without a
miracle."[41] We may remark, in passing, that there are some other
attributes of God besides goodness and veracity--holiness and justice
for instance--which are proved by miracles. "Can thunder from the
thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries, make God's laws more
godlike to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now, and do
not need the thunder and the terror any longer. Perhaps I am above being
frightened. Perhaps it is not fear but reverence that shall now lead me!
Revelation! Inspirations! And thy own god-created soul, dost thou not
call that a revelation?"[42] It is manifest, however, that if Mr.
Carlyle needs not the Sinai thunder to assure him that the law given on
Sinai was from God, there were then, and are now, many who do, and some
of his own sect who doubt in spite of it. If he is above the weakness of
fearing God, all the world is not so.

The claims of a divine teacher are as unceremoniously rejected as those
of a divine revelation. "If it depends on Jesus it is not eternally
true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all," says
Parker. As if eternally true, and sufficiently known, were just the same
thing; or as if because vaccination would always have prevented the
smallpox, the world is under no obligation to Jenner for informing us of
the fact. In the same tone Emerson despises instruction: "It is not
instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What
he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word,
or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Again says
Parker, "Christianity is dependent on no outside authority. We verify
its eternal truth in our soul."[43] His aim is "to separate religion
from whatever is finite--Church, book, person--and let it rest on its
absolute truth."[44] "It bows to no idols, neither the Church, nor the
Bible, nor yet Jesus, but God only; its Redeemer is within; its
salvation within; its heaven and its oracle of God."[45] The whole
strain of this school of writers and their disciples is one of
depreciation of external revelation, and of exaltation of the inner
light which every man is supposed to carry within him. Religion is "no
Morrison's pill from without," but a "clearing of the inner light," a
"reawakening of our own selves from within."[46] So Mr. Newman[47]
abundantly argues that an authoritative book revelation of moral and
spiritual truth is impossible, that God reveals himself within us and
not without us, and that a revelation of all moral and religious truth
necessary for us to know is to be obtained by _insight_, or gazing into
the depths of our own consciousness. The sum of the whole business is,
that neither God nor man can reveal any religious truth to our minds, or
as Parker felicitously expresses it, "on his word, or as his second, be
he who he may, I can accept nothing."

Now, we are tempted to ask, Who are these wonderful prodigies, so
incapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement we
learn, that some forty odd years ago they made their appearance among
mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to know their
own names, or where they came from, and were actually dependent on an
external revelation, from their nurses, for sense enough to find their
mothers' breasts. And as they grew a little larger, they obtained the
power of speaking articulate sounds by external revelation, hearing and
imitating the sounds made by others. Further, upon a memorable day,
they had a "book revelation" made to them, in the shape of a penny
primer, and were initiated into the mysteries of A, B, C, by "the
instructions of another, be he who he may." There was absolutely not the
least "insight," or "spiritual faculty," or "self-consciousness" in one
of them, by which they then could, or ever to this hour did, "find true
within them" any sort of necessary connection between the signs, c, a,
t--d, o, g--and the sounds _cat_, _dog_, or any other sounds represented
by any other letters of the alphabet. Faith in the word of their
teachers is absolutely the sole foundation and only source of their
ability to read and write. On "the word of another, and as his second,
be he who he may," every one of them has accepted every intelligible
word he speaks or writes.

There is living on Martha's Vineyard an old man who has never been off
the island, and the extent of his knowledge is bounded by the confines
of his home. He has been told of a war between the North and South, but
as he had never heard the din of battle, nor seen any soldiers, he
considered it a hoax. He is utterly unable to read, and is ignorant to
the last degree. A good story is told of his first and only day at
school. He was quite a lad when a lady came to the district, where his
father lived, to teach school. He was sent, and as the teacher was
classifying the school, he was called upon in turn and interrogated as
to his studies. Of course he had to say he had never been to school, and
knew none of his letters. The schoolmistress gave him a seat on one side
until she had finished the preliminary examination of the rest of the
scholars. She then called him to her and drew on the blackboard the
letter A, and told him what it was, and asked him to remember how it
looked. He looked at it a moment, and then inquired:

"H-h-how do you know it's A?"

The teacher replied that when she was a little girl she had been to
school to an old gentleman, who told her so.

The boy eyed the A for a moment and then asked:

"H-h-how do you know but he l-l-lied?"

The teacher could not get over this obstacle, and the poor boy was sent
home as incorrigible.

Mr. Emerson, and the whole school of those who despise instruction, had
better appoint this man their prophet of the inner light, and endow
Martha's Vineyard as the Penikese of skepticism.

But the knowledge of letters is not half of their indebtedness to
external revelation. For they will not deny that a Fiji cannibal has
just the same "insight," "spiritual faculty," "mighty and transcendent
soul," "self-consciousness," or any other name by which they may dignify
our common humanity, which they themselves possess. How does it happen,
then, that these writers are not assembled around the cannibal's oven,
smearing their faces with the blood, and feasting themselves on the
limbs of women and children? The inner nature of the cannibal and of the
Rationalist is the same--whence comes the difference of character and
conduct? And the inner light, too, is the same; for they assure us that
"inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is coextensive with the race." Is
it not, after all, mere external revelation, in the shape of
education--aye, moral and religious teaching that makes the whole
difference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother?

These gentlemen not only acknowledge, but try to repay their obligations
to external revelation. As it is impossible for God to give the world a
book revelation of moral and religious truth, they modestly propose to
come to his assistance, it being quite possible for some men to do what
is impossible for God. Accordingly, we have a book revelation of moral
and religious truth, from one, in his treatise on "The Soul," an
"external revelation" from another, in his "Discourse Concerning
Religion," a "Morrison's pill from the outside," from a third, in his
"Past and Present," and "announcements" from a fourth, which assuredly
the great mass of mankind never "found true within them," else his
orations and publications had not been needed to convert them. It is to
be understood, then, that an "external revelation," or a "book
revelation" of spiritual truth is impossible, only when it comes from
God, but that these gentlemen have proved it quite possible for
themselves to deliver one.

In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the
greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed
for some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire by
running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting
witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and
listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no
sect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common as
God,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very
unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead
these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity,
namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external
revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans,
and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith,"
while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own
consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external
revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it
probable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency.
Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided no
supply?

The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the
brutes presents itself right at this point. God guides animals by direct
revelation--by their instincts; but having given man reason, and free
will, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon the
indirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. For
all that we know of history, geography, politics, mechanics,
agriculture, poetry, philosophy, or any of the common business of life,
from the baking of a loaf of bread, or the sewing of a shirt, to the
following of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted to
education, not to inspiration. All analogy then induces the belief that
religion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of human
teachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual.

But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold on
matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally all
needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on
God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed
spiritual things." That we have both bodily senses and spiritual
faculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the other
obtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it is
with mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter in
which religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me to
receive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from my
window a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to lay
hold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has not
obtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truth
which lies emphatically in the plane of her own consciousness, it is,
that she is in great need of a cord of wood, and a barrel of flour, for
her starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom God gave bodily
senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by his
drunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his family
to utter destitution of all needed material things. From one cause or
another, I find multitudes here in poverty and destitution,
notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, that
there is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvation
in Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and misery
and destitution in London; which, if true, completely overturns this
beautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodily
senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and
clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties
also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things.

The second part of the theory is as baseless as the first. All men have
spiritual faculties, and have not obtained by them all needed spiritual
things. They have not in their own opinion, and surely they are
competent judges of "what lies wholly in the plane of their own
consciousness." In proof of the fact that mankind have not, in their own
opinion, obtained all needed spiritual things by the use of their
spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal
to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian.
Every one of these appeals to revelations from God. Every lawgiver of
note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos,
Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the
recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these
relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "_it is certain that
men did believe and think them true_." If mankind has found the supply
of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in
this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance
of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of
the need of physicians?

Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sort
acknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretended
oracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. We
never find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light of
nature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is only
amidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers can
stand up and declare that they have no need of God's teaching. Had such
men lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed of
spiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting an
altar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown God._" One of the wisest
of the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to no
certainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable
words, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth for
us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward God and
toward man." The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning the
eternity of matter occupies a conspicuous place in the creed of American
heathens, had no such confidence in the sufficiency of his own powers of
discovering religious truth. "We can not know of ourselves what petition
will be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay to him; but it is
necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven to instruct us."
"Oh how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further declares that
"_this lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us the things
man can not know by his own nature_."[49] Whether this want of a
revelation from God was real, or merely imaginary, will appear by a
brief review of the opinions and practices of those who never enjoyed,
and of those who reject the light of God's revelation.

_They knew not God._ If there is any article of religion fundamental,
and indispensable to its very existence, it is the knowledge of God. It
is admitted by Rationalists that the spiritual faculties are designed to
lay hold on God. It has been proved in the previous chapter, and it will
be admitted by all but Atheists, that God is an Intelligent Being. And
further it has been proved that God is not everything and everybody,
but distinct from and supreme over all his works. Besides, in this
country at least, there will not be much difference of opinion as to the
propriety of a rational being adoring a brute, or a log of wood, or a
lump of stone. It will be allowed that such stupidity shows both
ignorance and folly. Now let us inquire into the knowledge of God
possessed by the people who have no vision.

The Chaldeans, the most ancient people of whom we have any account, and
who had among them the immediate descendants of Noah, and whatever
traditions of Noah's prophecies they preserved, were probably the best
instructed of the heathen. Yet we find that they gave up the worship of
God, adored the sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, and in process of
time degenerated still further, and worshiped dumb idols. From this rock
we were hewn; the common names of the days of the week, and especially
of the first day of the week, will forever keep up a testimony to the
necessity of that revelation which delivered our forefathers and us from
burning our children upon the devil's altars on Sun-days.

The Egyptians were reputed the most learned of mankind, and Egypt was
considered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existing
monuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we have
presented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of the
religion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; and
the investigation of these monuments is still adding to our information.
Infidel writers and lecturers have not hesitated to allege that Moses
merely taught the Israelites the religion of Egypt; and some have had
the hardihood to allege that the ten commandments are found written on
the pyramids, as an argument against the necessity of a revelation. If
the statement were true, it would by no means prove the conclusion.
Egypt was favored with divine revelations to several of her kings, and
enjoyed occasional visits from, or the permanent teachings of, such
prophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; a
fact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathen
nations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion on
her monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moral
precepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandments
are not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege the
contrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them,
else they would have remembered that the first commandment is, "Thou
shalt have no other gods before me;" and that Pharaoh indignantly asks,
"Who is Jehovah that I should obey his voice? I know not God:" and that
the second is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image," etc.,
and would have paused before alleging that these commands were engraved
on the very temples of idols, and by the priests of the birds, and
beasts, and images of creeping things which they adored. It is very
doubtful if they believed in the existence of one supreme God, as most
of the heathen did; but if they did, "they did not under any form,
symbol, or hieroglyphic, represent the idea of the unity of God," as is
fully proved by Wilkinson.[50] On the contrary, the monuments confirm
the satirical sketch of the poet,[51] as to the "monsters mad Egypt
worshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog.
This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores a
crocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with a
bite." Cruel wars were waged between different towns, as Plutarch tells
us, because the people of Cynopolis would eat a fish held sacred by the
citizens of Latopolis. Bulls, and dogs, and cats, and rats, and
reptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learned
Egyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of their
gods, a cat, was put to death for sacrilege.[52] Whenever a dog died,
every person in the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So
low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded
that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping
his own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a revelation from
him.

The Greeks, from their early intercourse with Egypt, borrowed from them
most of their religion; but by later connections with the Hebrews, about
the time of Aristotle and Alexander, they gathered a few grains of truth
to throw into the heap of error. After the translation of the Scriptures
into Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, any of their
philosophers who desired might easily have learned the knowledge of the
true God. But before this period we find little or no sense or truth in
their religion. And the same remarks will apply to the Romans. Their
gods were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had
thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and
diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was
an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard,
Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too
horrible to be mentioned. Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate
ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most sacred
mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities,
were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the
preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them.

It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the
days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer
possible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and
fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties,"
"insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and
thirty millions of gods, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers,
and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents,
beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or
under the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of the
world," Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol,
with its frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled the
Moloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of massive
sculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice which
constitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of the
countless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts of
India, many of them measuring the whole distance of their weary
pilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earning
assiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religious
mendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their head
on the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodies
entirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, and
their mouths with straw, while others lie extended in a puddle of water;
here one man lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of
fire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when,
besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amount
of involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion of
toilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings of
pestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how the
horrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his lofty
car, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earth
to shake with shouts of 'Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;' how the
officiating high priest, stationed in front of the elevated idol,
commences the public service by a loathsome pantomimic exhibition,
accompanied with the utterance of filthy, blasphemous songs, to which
the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tuneful
melody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissing
applause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name of
sacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harsh
thunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throw
themselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the
infatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of the
numerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs,
jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak and
barren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of
deluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun,"[53] you will be able
to see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and to
realize more fully the necessity of a revelation from God, for the
preservation of animal life to man. Literally, where there is no vision
the people _perish_. Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
which proceedeth from the mouth of God.

Take one other illustration of ignorance of God in the minds of those
who close their eyes against the light of revelation--the heathen of
Europe and America, possessing that inspiration which is wide as the
world, looking abroad upon all the glorious works of the great Creator,
and declaring there is no God. On the other hand, we have men, possessed
of this same inspiration, deifying everything, and outrunning even the
Hindoos in the multitude of their divinities, declaring that every
stick, and stone, and serpent, and snail that crawls on the earth is
God, and making professions of holding spiritual communings with them
all. To crown the monument of folly, the chief of the Positive
Philosophy comes forth with a revelation from his spiritual faculties,
in which by way of improving on the proverb "both are best," and of
being sure of the truth, he unites Atheism, and Pantheism, and
Idolatry--teaches his child to worship idols, the youth to believe in
one God, and himself and other full-grown men to adore the "resultant of
all the forces capable of voluntarily contributing to the perfectioning
of the universe, _not forgetting his worthy friends, the animals_." To
such darkness are men justly condemned who shut their eyes against the
light of God's revelation. Where there is no vision the people perish
intellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turned
unto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hath
spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, and
before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for
light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness."

_Without a revelation from God, the mind of man can attain to no
certainty regarding the most important of all his interests, the destiny
of his immortal soul._ He knows well--for every sickness, and sorrow,
and calamity declares it, and quick returning troubles will not allow
him to forget--that the Ruler of the world is offended with him; and
conscience tells him why. The sense of guilt is common to the human
race. This is, indeed, "the inspiration which knows no sect, no country,
no religion, no age; which is as wide as humanity." Reason asks herself,
Will God be always thus angry with me? Shall I always feel these pangs
of remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feel
that it does here? Or shall my soul exist under God's frowns, or perish
under his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hide
forever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meet
again? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And in
a few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason gives
is--solemn silence.

The wisest of men could not tell. Who has not dropped a tear over the
dying words of Socrates, "I am going out of the world, and you are to
continue in it, but which of us has the better part is a secret to every
one but God." Cicero contended for the immortality of the soul against
the multitudes of philosophers who denied it in his day; yet, after
recounting their various opinions, he is obliged to say, "Which of these
is true, God alone knows; and which is most probable, a very great
question."[54] And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says:
"Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by
these great men."[55]

The multitude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghosts
would wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would pass
into a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakedness
and desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which this
notion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, the
soul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather to
dwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle with
spirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and many
other lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner this
uncertainty. "Tell me," said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all his
wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they might
obtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when I
die?" "Your soul will go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?"
"It will pass into the body of the divine peacock." "And after that?"
"It will pass into a flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying
man, "where will it go last of all?" Where will it go last of all? Aye,
that is the question Reason can not answer.

The rejectors of the Bible here are as uncertain on this all-important
subject as the heathen of India. They have every variety of oracles, and
conjectures, and suppositions about the other world; but for their
guesses they offer no proof. When they give us their oracles as if they
were known truths, we are compelled to ask, How do you know? The only
thing in which they are agreed among themselves is in denying the
resurrection of the body; a point which they gathered from their heathen
classics. A poor, empty, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged
to fly over the world at the sigh of any silly sewing girl, or the
bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of
Washington, or Newton, in the scheme of one class of Bible rejectors. To
obtain rest from such a doom, others fly to the eternal tomb, and inform
us that the soul is simply an acting of the brain, and when the brain
ceases to act, the soul ceases also. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die. But even this hog philosophy is reasonable, compared with the
dogma of the large majority, that a man may blaspheme, swear, lie,
steal, murder, and commit adultery, and go straight to heaven--that
"many a swarthy Indian who bowed down to wood and stone--many a
grim-faced Calmuck who worshiped the great god of storms--many a Grecian
peasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or went
down--many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human
sacrifice--shall sit down with Moses and Jesus in the kingdom of
God."[56] To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it
rejects the Bible.

Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Where there is
no vision, hope perishes. The only plausible creed for him who rejects
it is the eternal tomb, and the heart-chilling inscription: "Death is an
eternal sleep!"

_Without a revelation from God, men are as ignorant how to live, as how
to die._ They have no rule of life having either truth or authority to
direct them. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the purity of whose blood we
are so proud, trusted to their magical incantations for the cure of
diseases, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lost
property, for uncharming cattle and the prevention of casualties. One
day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was
baleful to sow seed. One day was favorable to the commencement of
business, another to let blood, and others wore a forbidding aspect to
these and other things. On this day they were to buy, on a second to
sell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If a child was born
on such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly;
if on another, it would perish early.[57] Their descendants who reject
the Bible are fully as superstitious. Astrologers, and Mediums, and
Clairvoyants, in multitudes, find a profitable trade among them; and one
prominent anti-Bible lecturer will cure you of any disease you have, if
you will only inclose, in a letter, a lock of hair from the right
temple, and--a--five dollar bill.

The precepts of even the wisest men, and the laws of the best regulated
States, commanded or approved of vice. In Babylon prostitution was
compulsory on every female. The Carthaginian law required human
sacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage, two hundred children, of
the most noble families, were murdered by the command of the senate, and
three hundred citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves to Saturn.[58]
The laws of Sparta required theft, and the murder of unhealthy
children. Those of ancient Rome allowed parents the power of killing
their children, if they pleased. At Athens, the capital of heathen
literature and philosophy, it was enacted "that infants which appeared
to be maimed should either be killed or exposed."[59]

Plato, dissatisfied with the constitution, made a scheme of one much
better, which he has left us in his Republic. In this great advance of
society, this heathen millennium, we find that there was to be a
community of women and of property, just as among our modern heathens.
Women's rights were to be maintained by having the women trained to war.
Children were still to be murdered, if convenience called for it. And
the young children were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that
the young whelps might early scent carnage, and be inured to slaughter."

The teachings of all these philosophers were immoral. He may lie, says
Plato, who knows how to do it. Pride and the love of popular applause
were esteemed the best motives to virtue. Profane swearing was commanded
by the example of all their best writers and moralists. Oaths are
frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. The gratification of the
sensual appetites was openly taught. Aristippus taught that a wise man
might steal and commit adultery when he could. Unnatural crimes were
vindicated. The last dread crime--suicide--was pleaded for by Cicero and
Seneca as the mark of a hero; and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus, and
Cassius, carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they
might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.

The daily lives of these wisest of the heathen corresponded to their
teachings, so far at least as vice was concerned. The most notorious
vices, and even unnatural crimes, were practiced by them. The reader of
the classics does not need to be reminded that such vices are lauded in
the poems of Ovid, and Horace, and Virgil; that the poets were rewarded
and honored for songs which would not be tolerated for a moment in the
vilest theater of New York.

Recently some daily papers and broad-church preachers have taken to the
canonization of heathen saints; they denounce vigorously the bigotry of
any who will not open to them the gates of heaven, or who will, in
general, deny salvation to good heathens. But we do not deny salvation
to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody
who is good. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor are
we about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into
it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of
men held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in their
classics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christian
clergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of God, than bad Christians; which
last may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians. But
the question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or by
generalities; we must have specified individual heathen saints. When,
however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to be
only fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of our
States; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according to
their accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they got
there before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public.
Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stock
specimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for the
admiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century. But
it has been well remarked of Socrates, that no American lady would live
with him a year without applying for a divorce, and getting it, too,
upon very sufficient grounds. Seneca, who wrote so beautifully upon
morals, was an adulterer; and, moreover, prostituted his pen to write a
defense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directed
the murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladies
to be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the public
amphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, for
no other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such are
these boasted saints and heroes of heathendom.

What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very height
of Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each other
to pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladies
feasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when the
invincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were in
the habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to the
slavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must the
state of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Whole
provinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals not
reputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and their
never-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reign
of Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roads
became unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed that
one-half of the human race perished_. This was just before the
toleration of Christianity. God would allow the wisest and bravest of
mankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and living
without his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such a
course is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the people
perish."

A brief reference to the codes of morals which the modern opposers of
the Bible would substitute for it in Christian lands shall conclude our
proof of the necessity of such a revelation of God's law to man, as
shall guide his life to peace and happiness.

The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidence
and family government, and you destroy society, subvert civil
government, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are so
generally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, is
regarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writers
and anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicate
this crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught that
the indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirst
occasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr.
Hobbes asserted that every man has a right to all things, and may
lawfully get them if he can. Bolingbroke taught that man is merely a
superior animal, which is just the modern development theory, and that
his chief end is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh.
Hume, whose argument against miracles is so frequently in the mouths of
American Infidels, taught that adultery must be practiced, if men would
obtain all the advantages of life, and that if practiced frequently, it
would by degrees come to be thought no crime at all--a prediction as
true as Holy Writ; the fulfillment of which hundreds of the citizens of
Cincinnati can attest, who have heard a lecturer publicly denounce the
Bible as an immoral book, and in the same address declare that if a
woman was married to a man, in her opinion of inferior development, it
was her duty to leave him and live with another. This duty is by no
means neglected, as the numerous divorces, spiritual marriages,
separations, and elopements among this class of persons, testify.
Voltaire held that it was not agreeable to policy to regard it as a vice
in a moral sense. Rousseau, a liar, a thief, and a debauched profligate,
according to his own printed "Confessions," held the same high opinion
of the inner light as our American Spiritualists. "_I have only to
consult myself_," said he, "_concerning what I do. All that I feel to be
right, is right._"[60]

In fact, the purport of this inner light doctrine is exactly as Rousseau
expressed it, and amounts simply to this, _Do what you like._

On this lawless principle these men acted. Take, for example, the chief
saint on the calendar of American Infidelity, whose birthday is annually
celebrated by a festival in this city, and in whose honor hundreds of
men, who would like to be reputed decent citizens, parade the streets of
Cincinnati in solemn procession--Thomas Paine--the author of "The Age of
Reason," as his character is depicted by one who was his helper in the
work of blaspheming God and seducing men, and whose testimony,
therefore, in the eyes of an Infidel, is unimpeachable--William Carver.

     "MR. THOMAS PAINE: I received your letter, dated the 25th
     ult., in answer to mine, dated November 21, and after minutely
     examining its contents, I found that you had taken to the
     pitiful subterfuge of _lying_ for your defense. You say that
     you paid me four dollars per week for your board and lodging,
     during the time you were with me, prior to the first of June
     last; which was the day that I went up, by your order, to
     bring you to York, from New Rochelle. It is fortunate for me
     that I have a living evidence that saw you give me five
     guineas, and no more, in my shop, at your departure at that
     time; but you said you would have given me more, but that you
     had no more with you at present. You say, also, that you found
     your own liquors during the time you boarded with me; but you
     should have said, 'I found only a small part of the liquor I
     drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John
     Fellows, which was a demi-john of brandy, containing four
     gallons,' and this did not serve you three weeks. This can be
     proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I
     hold truth as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that
     you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during
     the different times you boarded with me; the demi-john above
     mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick.
     Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper." * * *
     "I have often wondered that a French woman and three children
     should leave France and all their connections, to follow
     Thomas Paine to America. Suppose I were to go to my native
     country, England, and take another man's wife and three
     children of his, and leave my wife and children in this
     country, what would be the natural conclusion in the minds of
     the people, but that there was some criminal connection
     between the woman and myself?"[61]

The death of this man was horrible.

The Philadelphia _Presbyterian_ says: "There is now in Philadelphia a
lady who saw Paine on his dying-bed. She informs us that Paine's
physician also attended her father's family in the city of New York,
where in her youth she resided, and that on one occasion whilst at their
house, he proposed to her to accompany him to the Infidel's dwelling,
which she did. It was a miserable hovel in what was then Raisin Street.
She had often seen Paine before, a drunken profligate, wandering about
the streets, from whom the children always fled in terror. On entering
his room she found him stretched on his miserable bed. His visage was
lean and haggard, and wore the expression of great agony. He expressed
himself without reserve as to his fears of death, and repeatedly called
on the name of Jesus, begging for mercy. The scene was appalling, and so
deeply engraven on her mind, that nothing could obliterate
it."--_Philadelphia Presbyterian_, March 17, 1857.

The physician's statement has been common, many years, and corresponds
with the above. So do Grant Thorburn's representations agree with both.
And the piece published by Rev. Jas. Inglis in his "Waymarks in the
Wilderness," which has proved so distasteful to the Paineites here,
substantially agrees with all the others. It is only the truthfulness of
it which is so offensive. It may be of interest to state, that the
facts therein named are the recollections of old Dr. McClay, a Baptist
minister of known power and veracity. The fact of Paine's miserable, and
cowardly, and man-forsaken end is too true. Let no one be foolhardy
enough to follow them, rejecting to do it, a fourfold cord of strong
testimony; nay, we may add, a stronger cord of fivefold testimony, as
Paine's nurse testifies like the rest.

In the East these facts are so notorious that even Infidels disown
allegiance or attachment to Paine, if they wish to be considered
respectable. Some of the severest denunciations against him, which we
ever heard, have been from Infidels. Indeed this is more than plain from
the very fact of all the Infidels having forsaken Paine on his
death-bed. Who was his doctor? A Christian. Who was his nurse? A
Christian? Who were his most constant visitors and sympathizers?
Thorburn, McClay, etc., Christians. They went, for mercy's sake;
Infidels, having no "bowels of mercies," kept away. Carver, Jefferson,
etc., were far from him in his extreme hour.

The testimony of Mons. Tronchin, a Protestant physician from Geneva, who
attended Voltaire on his death-bed, was: That to see all the furies of
Orestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. ("_Pour
voir toutes les furies d'Oreste, il n'y avait qu'a se trouver a la mort
de Voltaire._") "Such a spectacle," he adds, "would benefit the young,
who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion." The
Marechal de Richelieu, too, was so terrified at what he saw that he left
the bedside of Voltaire, declaring that "the sight was too horrible for
endurance."[62]

And these are the saints, and apostles, and heroes of Infidelity, to
whose memories Infidels make orations and festivals, and whose writings
are reprinted in scores of editions, not only over Christendom, but
even in India, to teach mankind how to live and how to die!

Such are the lives and deaths of those who denounce the Bible as an
immoral Book, and blaspheme the God of the Bible as too unholy to be
reverenced or adored! "But, beloved, remember ye the words which were
spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that they
told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after
their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual,
having not the Spirit." In the Free Love Institute about to be
established in our vicinity, we shall have the full development of these
filthy principles and practices.

Let fathers and husbands look to this matter. Especially let ungodly men
set to work and devise some law of man capable of binding those who
renounce the law of God, and with it all human authority. For there can
be no law of man, unless there is a revealed law of God. "What right,"
says the Pantheist, the Fourierist, the Spiritualist, the Atheist, "what
right have you to command me? Right and wrong are only matters of
feeling, and your feelings are no rule to me. The will of the majority
is only the law of might, and if I can evade it, or overcome it, my will
is as good as theirs. Oaths are only an idle superstition; there is no
judge, no judgment, no punishment for the false swearer." Take away the
moral sanction of law, and the sacredness of oaths, and what basis have
you left for any government, save the point of the bayonet? Take away
the revealed law of God, and you leave not a vestige of any authority to
any human law. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," said the
immortal framers of the basis of the American Confederation, "that all
men are created equal; that they are _endowed by their Creator_ with
certain unalienable rights." It was well said. The rights of God are the
only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern
statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth--that
religion is the only basis of social order--in words as trenchant as the
guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, "the
mystery of incarnation which I perceive in religion, but the mystery of
social order. It attaches to heaven an idea of equality which prevents
the rich from being massacred by the poor."[63]

Once in modern times, the rejectors of the Bible had opportunity to try
the experiment of ruling a people on a large scale, and giving the world
a specimen of an Infidel Republic. You have heard one of them here
express his admiration of that government, and declare his intention to
present a public vindication of it. Of course, as soon as practicable,
that which they admire they will imitate, and the scenes of Paris and
Lyons will be re-enacted in Louisville and Cincinnati. Our Bibles will
be collected and burned on a dung-heap. Death will be declared an
eternal sleep. God will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will be
renounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prostitute, crowned with
garlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen of
Cincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. The
guillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place.
Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce their
husbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them to
the ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will seize
the mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. The
Licking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed with
their blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire of
the rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees of
their destroyers.[64] The common doom of man commuted for the violence
of the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, the
knell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution and
funeral, will need no preacher to expound the text, _Where there is no
vision, the people perish._


FOOTNOTES:

[38] Strauss' Life of Jesus, 64, 74, 87.

[39] Bauer's Hebrew Mythology.

[40] See Pearson on Infidelity, page 93, 40th edition; and Agassiz's
Penikese lectures.

[41] Newman's Phases of Faith, 157.

[42] Carlyle's Past and Present, 307.

[43] Discourse on Religion, p. 209.

[44] Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 312.

[45] Ib. p. 37.

[46] The Soul, p. 342.

[47] Ib. p. 359.

[48] Parker's Discourses, 171, 33.

[49] Plato. Republic. Books IV. and VI., and Alcibiades II.

[50] Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians, Second Series, Vol. II.
page 176, et passim.

[51] Juvenal, Satire XV.

[52] Diodorus Siculus, Book I.

[53] Duff's India, page 222.

[54] Tusc. Quęst. lib. 1.

[55] Seneca, Ep. 102.

[56] Parker's Discourse, 83.

[57] Turner's Anglo-Saxons, b. vii. chap. 13.

[58] Diodorus Siculus, b. xx. chap. 14.

[59] Aristotle, Polit. lib. vii. chap. 17.

[60] Horne's Introduction of the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 25.

[61] Printed repeatedly in New York newspapers, and given entire in the
report of the discussion between Dr. Berg and Mr. Barker. W. S. Young,
Philadelphia, 1854.

[62] _The Occident_, 20th August, 1874, San Francisco.

[63] Ardeches' Life of Napoleon I. 222.

[64] Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures, Vol. I. page 26, where
ample references to contemporary French writers are given.




CHAPTER V.

WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT?

     "The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token
     in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus
     Christ be with you all. Amen."--2 Thess. iii. 17.


Religion rests not on dogmas, but on a number of great facts. In a
previous chapter we found one of these to be, that people destitute of a
revelation of God's will ever have been, and now are, ignorant,
miserable, and wicked. If it were at all needful, we might go on to show
that there are people in the world, who have decent clothing and
comfortable houses, who work well-tilled farms and sub-soil plows, and
reaping machinery, who yoke powerful streams to the mill wheel, and
harness the iron horse to the market wagon, who career their floating
palaces up the opposing floods, line their coasts with flocks of
white-winged schooners, and show their flags on every coast of earth,
who invent and make everything that man will buy, from the brass button,
dear to the barbarian, to the folio of the philosopher, erect churches
in all their towns, and schools in every village, who make their
blacksmiths more learned than the priests of Egypt, their Sabbath
scholars wiser than the philosophers of Greece, and even the criminals
in their jails more decent characters than the sages, heroes, and gods
of the lands without the Bible; and that these people are the people who
possess a Book, which they think contains a revelation from God,
teaching them how to live well; which Book they call the Bible. This is
the book about which we make our present inquiry, Who wrote it?

The fact being utterly undeniable, that these blessings are found among
the people who possess the Bible, and only among them, we at once, and
summarily, dismiss the arrogant falsehood presented to prevent any
inquiry about the Book, namely, that "Christianity is just like any
other superstition, and its sacred books like the impositions of
Chinese, Indian, or Mohammedan impostors. They, too, are religious, and
have their sacred books, which they believe to be divine." A profound
generalization indeed! Is a peach-tree just like a horse-chestnut, or a
scrub-oak, or a honey-locust? They are all trees, and have leaves on
them. The Bible is just as like the Yi King, or the Vedas, or the Koran,
as a Christian American is like a Chinaman, a Turk, or a Hindoo. But it
is too absurd to begin any discussion with these learned Thebans of the
relative merits of the Bible as compared with the Vedas, and the Chinese
Classics, of which they have never read a single page. Let them stick to
what they pretend to know.

The Bible is a great fact in the world's history, known alike to the
prince and the peasant, the simple and the sage. It is perused with
pleasure by the child, and pondered with patience by the philosopher.
Its psalms are caroled on the school green, cheer the chamber of
sickness, and are chanted by the mother over her cradle, by the orphan
over the tomb. Here, thousands of miles away from the land of its birth,
in a world undiscovered for centuries after it was finished, in a
language unknown alike at Athens and Jerusalem, it rules as lovingly and
as powerfully as in its native soil. To show that its power is not
derived from race or clime, it converts the Sandwich Islands into a
civilized nation, and transforms the New Zealand cannibal into a British
shipowner, the Indian warrior into an American editor, and the Negro
slave into the President of a free African Republic. It has inspired the
Caffirs of Africa to build telegraphs, and to print associated press
dispatches in their newspapers; while the Zulus, one of whom would have
converted Bishop Colenso from Christianity, if he had been a Christian,
are importing steel plows by hundreds every year. It has captured the
enemy's fortresses, and turned his guns. Lord Chesterfield's parlor,
where an infidel club met to sneer at religion, is now a vestry, where
the prayers of the penitent are offered to Christ. Gibbon's house, at
Lake Lemon, is now a hotel; one room of which is devoted to the sale of
Bibles. Voltaire's printing press, from which he issued his infidel
tracts, has been appropriated to printing the Word of God.[65] It does
not look as if it had finished its course and ceased from its triumphs.
Translated into the hundred and fifty languages spoken by nine hundred
millions of men, carried by ten thousand heralds to every corner of the
globe, sustained by the cheerful contributions and fervent prayers of
hundreds of thousands of ardent disciples, it is still going forth
conquering and to conquer. Is there any other book so generally read, so
greatly loved, so zealously propagated, so widely diffused, so uniform
in its results, and so powerful and blessed in its influences? Do you
know any? If you can not name any book, no, nor any thousand books,
which in these respects equal the Bible--then it stands out clear and
distinct, and separate from all other authorship; and with an increased
emphasis comes our question, Who wrote it?

With all these palpable facts in view, to come to the examination of
this question as if we knew nothing about them, or as if knowing them
well, we cared nothing at all about them, and were determined to deny
them their natural influence in begetting within us a very strong
presumption in favor of its divine origin, were to declare that our
heads and hearts were alike closed against light and love. But to enter
on this inquiry into the origin of the Book which has produced such
results, with a preconceived opinion that it must be a forgery, and an
imposition, the fruit of a depraved heart, and a lying tongue, implies
so much home-born deceit that, till the heart capable of such a
prejudice be completely changed, no reasoning can have any solid fulcrum
of truth or goodness to rest on. It is sheer folly to talk of one's
being wholly unprejudiced in such an inquiry. No man ever was, or could
be so. As his sympathies are toward goodness and virtue, and the
happiness of mankind, or toward pride and deceit, and selfishness and
savageness, so will his prejudices be for or against the Bible.

On looking at the Bible, we find it composed of a number of separate
treatises, written by different writers, at various times; some parts
fifteen hundred years before the others. We find, also, that it treats
of the very beginning of the world, before man was made, and of other
matters of which we have no other authentic history to compare with it.
Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a thousand
places with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have several
credible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open to
us, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may construct
for ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysical
balloon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony,
according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, and
we may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noble
savages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, and we may
stripe its history to suit our notions of the progress of such a world,
and soaring high into the clouds, after a little preliminary amusement
in the discovery of eternal red-hot fire-mists, and condensing comets,
and so forth, we may come down upon the summit of some of this earth's
mountains, say Ararat, and take a survey of the Bible process of
world-making. Finding that the Creator of the world had to make his
materials--a business in which no other world-maker ever did
engage--and, further, that God's plan of making it by no means
corresponds to our patent process and that the article is not at all
like what we intend to produce when we go into the business, and that it
does not work according to our expectations, we can denounce the whole
as a very mean affair, and the Book which describes it as not worth
reading. If one wants some new subject for merriment, and does not mind
making a fool of himself, and is not to be terrified by old-fashioned
notions about God Almighty, and is perfectly confident that God can tell
him nothing that he does not know better already, and merely wants to
see whether he is not trying to pass off old fables upon wide-awake
people for facts--this dogmatic plan will suit him.

On the other hand, if one is tolerably convinced that he does not know
everything, not much of the world he lives in, less of its history, and
nothing at all about the best way of making it, and that when it needs
mending it will not be sent to his workshop; that he knows nothing about
what happened before he was born unless what other people tell him, and
that, though men do err, yet all men are not liars, that all the
blessings of education, civilization, law and liberty, from the penny
primer to the Constitution of the United States, came to him solely
through the channel of abundant, reliable testimony; that the only way
in which he can ever know anything beyond his eyesight with certainty,
is to gather testimony about it, and compare the evidence, and inquire
into the character of the witnesses; that when one has done so, he
becomes so satisfied of the truth of the report that he would rather
risk his life upon it than upon the certainty of any mathematical
problem, or of any scientific truth, whatever--that ninety-nine out of
every hundred citizens of the United States are a thousand times more
certain that the Yankees whipped the British in 1776, declared the
Colonies free and independent States, and made Washington President,
than they ever will be that all bodies attract each other directly as
their mass, and inversely as the squares of their distances, that the
sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles, or that
the earth is nearer the sun in winter than in summer--and that certainty
about the Bible history is just as attainable, and just as reliable, as
certainty about American history, if he will seek it in the same
way--and if he is really desirous to know how this Book was written,
which alone in the world teaches men how to obtain peace with God, how
to live well, and how to die with a firm and joyful hope of a
resurrection to life eternal, and what part of it is easiest to prove
either true or false--then he will take the inductive mode. He will
begin at the present time, and trace the history up to the times in
which the Book was written. He will ascertain what he can about that
part of it which was last written--the New Testament--and begin with
that part of it which lies nearest him--the Epistles.

By the comparison of the documents themselves, with all kinds of history
and monuments which throw light on the period, he will try to ascertain
whether they are genuine or not. And from one well-ascertained position
he will proceed to another, until he has traversed the whole ground of
the genuineness of the writings, the truth of the story, and the divine
authority of the doctrine.

This is my plan of investigation; one thing at a time, and the nearest
first. It is not worth while to inquire whether it be inspired by God,
if it be really a forgery of impostors; nor whether the gospel story is
worthy of credit, if the only book which contains it be a religious
novel of the third or fourth century. We dismiss then the questions of
the inspiration, or even the truth of the New Testament, till we have
ascertained its authors. We take up the Book, and find that it purports
to be a relation of the planting of the Church of Christ, of its laws
and ordinances, and of the life, death and resurrection of its Founder,
written by eight of his companions, at various periods and places,
toward the close of the first century. There is a general opinion among
all Christians that the Book was composed then, and by these persons. We
want to know why they think so? In short, is it a genuine book, or
merely a collection of myths with the apostles' names appended to them
by some lying monks? Is it a fact, or a forgery?

In any historical inquiry, we want some fixed point of time from which
to take our departure; and in this case we want to know if there is any
period of antiquity in which undeniably this Book was in existence, and
received as genuine by Christian societies. For I will not suppose my
readers as ignorant as some of those Infidels who allege that it was
made by the Bible Society. It used to be the fashion with those of them
who pretended to learning, to affirm that it was made by the Council of
Laodicea, in A. D. 364; because, in order to guard the churches against
spurious epistles and gospels, that Council published a list of those
which the apostles did actually write, which thenceforth were generally
bound in one volume.

Before that time, the four Gospels were always bound in one volume and
called "The Gospel." The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles
universally and undoubtedly known to be written by Paul, to the churches
of Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and
to Philemon, a well-known resident of that city, and those to Timothy
and Titus, missionaries of world-wide celebrity, the First General
Epistle of Peter, and the First General Epistle of John, which were at
once widely circulated to check prevailing heresies--were bound in
another volume and called "The Apostle." The Epistle to the Hebrews,
being general, and anonymous, _i. e._, not bearing the name of any
particular church, or person, to whom anybody who merely looked at it
could refer for proof of its genuineness, as in the case of the other
Epistles--was not so soon known by the European churches to be written
by Paul. The General Epistles of James, Jude, and the Second General
Epistle of Peter, lying under the same difficulty, and besides being
very disagreeable to easy-going Christians, from their sharp rebukes of
hypocrisy, and the Second and Third Epistles of John, from their
brevity, and the Revelation of John, being one of the last written of
all the books of the New Testament, and the most mysterious--were not so
generally known beyond the churches where the originals were deposited,
until the other two collections had been formed. They were accordingly
kept as separate books, and sometimes bound up in a third volume of
apostolical writings. Besides these, at the time of the Council of
Laodicea, and for a long time before, other books, written by Barnabas,
Clement, Polycarp, and other companions and disciples of the apostles,
and forged gospels and epistles attributed by heretics to the apostles,
were circulated through the churches, and read by Christians. The
Council of Laodicea did, what many learned men had done before them; it
investigated the evidence upon which any of these books was attributed
to an apostle; and finding evidence to satisfy them, that the Gospel
written by Luke had the sanction of the Apostle Paul, that the Gospel of
Mark was revised by the Apostle Peter, that the Epistle to the Hebrews
was written by Paul, and the other Epistles by John, Jude, James, and
Peter, respectively, and not finding evidence to satisfy them about the
Revelation of John, they expressed their opinion, and the grounds of it,
for the information of the world.[66] Into these reasons we will
hereafter inquire, for our faith in Holy Scripture does not rest on
their canons. We are not now asking what they _thought_, but what they
_did_; and we find that they did criticise certain books, reported to be
written by the apostles of Jesus Christ some three hundred years before,
approve some, and reject others as spurious, and publish a list of those
they thought genuine. Infidels admit this, and on the strength of it
long asserted that the Council of Laodicea made the New Testament. At
length they became ashamed of the stupid absurdity of alleging that men
could criticise the claims, and catalogue the names of books before they
were written; and they now shift back the writing--or the authentication
of the New Testament--for they are not quite sure which, though the
majority incline to the former--to the Emperor Constantine, and the
Council of Nice which met in the year 325. Why they have fixed on the
Council of Nice is more than I can tell. They might as well say the
Council of Trent, or the Westminster Assembly, either of which had just
as much to do with the Canon of Scripture. However, on some vague
hearsay that the Council of Nice and the Emperor Constantine made the
Bible, hundreds in this city are now risking the salvation of their
souls.

We have in this assertion, nevertheless, as many facts admitted as will
serve our present purpose. There did exist, then, undeniably, in the
year 325, large numbers of Christian churches in the Roman Empire,
sufficiently numerous to make it politic, in the opinion of Infidels,
for a candidate for the empire to profess Christianity; sufficiently
powerful to secure his success, notwithstanding the desperate struggles
of the heathen party; and sufficiently religious, or if you like
superstitious, to make it politic for an emperor and his politicians to
give up the senate, the court, the camp, the chase, and the theater,
and weary themselves with long prayers, and longer speeches, of
preachers about Bible religion. Now that is certainly a remarkable fact,
and all the more remarkable if we inquire, How came it so? For these
men, preachers, prince, and people, were brought up to worship Jupiter
and the thirty thousand gods of Olympus, after the heathen fashion, and
to leave the care of religion to heathen priests, who never troubled
their heads about books or doctrines after they had offered their
sacrifices. In all the records of the world there is no instance of a
general council of heathen priests to settle the religion of their
people. How happens it then that the human race has of a sudden waked up
to such a strange sense of the folly of idolatry and the value of
religion? The Council of Nice, and the Emperor Constantine, and his
counselors, making a Bible is a proof of a wonderful revolution in the
world's religion; a phenomenon far more surprising than if the
Secretaries of State, and the Senate, and President Grant should leave
the Capital to post off to London, to attend the meetings of a Methodist
Conference, assembled to make a hymn book. Now what is the cause of this
remarkable conversion of prince, priests, and people? How did they all
get religion? How did they get it so suddenly? How did they get so much
of it?

The Infidel gives no answer, except to tell us[67] that the austerity,
purity, and zeal of the first Christians, their good discipline, their
belief in the resurrection of the body and the general judgment, and
their persuasion that Christ and his apostles wrought miracles, had made
a great many converts. This is just as if I inquired how a great fire
originated, and you should tell me that it burned fast because it was
very hot. What I want to know is, how it happened that these licentious
Greeks, and Romans, and Asiatics, became austere and pure; how these
frivolous philosophers suddenly became so zealous about religion; what
implanted the belief of the resurrection of the body and of the judgment
to come in the skeptical minds of these heathen scoffers; and how did
the pagans of Italy, Egypt, Spain, Germany, Britain, come to believe in
the miracles of one who lived hundreds of years before, and thousands of
miles away, or to care a straw whether the written accounts of them were
true or false? According to the Infidel account, the Council of Nice,
and the Emperor Constantine's Bible-making, is a most extraordinary
business--a phenomenon without any natural cause, and they will allow no
supernatural--a greater miracle than any recorded in the Bible.

If we inquire, however, of the parties attending that Council, what the
state of the case is, we shall learn that they believed--whether truly
or erroneously we are not now inquiring--but they believed, that a
teacher sent from God, had appeared in Palestine two hundred and ninety
years before, and had taught this religion which they had embraced; had
performed wonderful miracles, such as opening the eyes of the blind,
healing lepers, and raising the dead; that he had been put to death by
the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, had risen again from the dead, had
spoken to hundreds of people, and had gone out and in among them for six
weeks after his resurrection; that he had ascended up through the air,
to heaven, in the sight of numbers of witnesses, and had promised that
he would come again in the clouds of heaven, to raise the dead, and to
judge every man according to his works; that before he went away he
appointed twelve of his intimate companions to teach his religion to the
world, giving them power to work miracles in proof of their divine
commission, and requiring mankind to hear them as they would hear him;
that they and their followers did so, in spite of persecutions,
sufferings, and death, with so much success, that immense numbers were
persuaded to give up idolatry and its filthiness, and to profess
Christianity and its holiness, and to brave the fury of the heathen mob,
and the vengeance of the Roman law; that a difference of opinion having
arisen among them as to whether this teacher was an angel from heaven,
or God, whether they should pray and sing psalms to Him, as Athanasius
and his party believed, or only give Him some lesser honor as Arius and
his party believed, and this difference making all the difference
between idolatry on the one hand, and impiety on the other, and so
involving their everlasting salvation or damnation, they had embraced
the first opportunity after the cessation of persecution, and the
accession of the first Christian Emperor, to assemble three hundred and
eighteen of their most learned clergymen, of both sides, and from all
countries between Spain and Persia, to discuss these solemn questions;
and that, through the whole of the discussions, both sides appealed to
the writings of the apostles, as being then well known, and of
unquestioned authority with every one who held the Christian name. These
facts, being utterly indisputable, are acknowledged by all persons,
Infidel or Christian, at all acquainted with history.[68]

Here, then, we have the books of the New Testament at the Council of
Nice well known to the whole world; and the Council, so far from
_giving_ any authority to them, _bowing to theirs_--both Arian and
Orthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian world
received them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There were
venerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books had
been first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. There
were men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in church
from their childhood, and so could not be imposed upon with a new Bible.
The New Testament could not be less than three generations old, else one
or other of the disputants would have exposed the novelty of its
introduction, from his own information. The Council of Nice, then, did
not make the New Testament. It was a book well known, ancient, and of
undoubted authority among all Christians, ages before that Council. _The
existence of the New Testament Scriptures, then, ages before the Council
of Nice, is a great fact._

We next take up the assertions, propounded with a show of learning, that
the books of the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, were not in
use, and were not known till the third century; that they are not the
productions of contemporary writers; that the alleged ocular testimony
or proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the events
recorded is mere assumption, originating in the titles which Biblical
books bear in our canon; that we stand here (in the gospel history),
upon purely mythical and poetical ground; and that the Gospels and
Epistles are a gradually formed collection of myths, having little or no
historic reality. So Strauss, Eichorn, De Wette, and their disciples
here, attempt to set aside the New Testament. In plain English, it is a
collection of forgeries.

These assertions are absurd. In the hundred years between the death of
the apostles, and the beginning of the third century, there was not time
to form a mythology. The times of Trajan's persecution, and that of the
philosophic Aurelius, and the busy bustling age of Severus, were not the
times for such a business. Bigoted Jews would not, and could not, have
made such a character as Jesus of Nazareth; and the philosophers of that
day, Celsus and Porphyry, for instance, hated it when presented to them
as heartily as either Strauss or Paine. There were not wanting thousands
of enemies, able and willing, to expose such a forgery.

The aspect and character of the gospel narrative are totally unlike
those of mythologies. Hear the verdict of one who confessedly stands at
the head of the roll of oriental historians: "In no single respect--if
we except the fact that it is miraculous--has that story a mythical
character. It is a single story, told without variations; whereas myths
are fluctuating and multiform: it is blended inextricably with the civil
history of the times, which it everywhere reports with extraordinary
accuracy; whereas myths distort or supersede civil history: it is full
of prosaic detail, which myths studiously eschew: it abounds with
practical instruction of the simplest and purest kind; whereas myths
teach by allegory. Even in its miraculous element it stands to some
extent in contrast with all mythologies, where the marvelous has ever a
predominant character of grotesqueness which is absent from New
Testament miracles. (This Strauss himself admits, _Leben Jesu_, 1-67.)
Simple earnestness, fidelity, painstaking accuracy, pure love of truth,
are the most patent characteristics of the New Testament writers, who
evidently deal with facts, not with fancies, and are employed in
relating a history, not in developing an idea. They write that 'we may
know the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' in
their day. They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard.' I know
not how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion of
that plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been in
apostolic times."[69]

The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of that
of the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin. The
invention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of men
who ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as the
existence of such a person. When the character of Christ was presented
to the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far from
admiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, and
persecuted the preachers of his gospel. There was nothing mythical in
the ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts. Every
line of examination of time, place, and circumstances proves the
falsehood of the mythical theory, and establishes the truth of the
gospel history.

The authenticity of the gospel history, and of the Apostolic Epistles is
confirmed by the testimony of their enemies. It is a well-authenticated
and undeniable fact, that, in the close of the second century, Celsus,
an Epicurean philosopher, wrote a work against Christianity, entitled,
"The Word of Truth," in which he quotes passages from the New Testament,
and so many of them, that from the fragments of his work which remain,
we could gather all the principal facts of the birth, teaching,
miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if the New Testament
should be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no man
can deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If he
takes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident that
it is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt to
reply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusive
proofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and held
to be of authority at the time he wrote. Further, he shows every
disposition to present every argument which could possibly damage the
Christian cause. In fact, our modern Infidels have done little more than
serve up his old objections. Now nothing could have served his purpose
better than to prove that the records of the history of Christ were
forgeries of a late date. This would have saved him all further trouble,
and settled the fate of Christianity conclusively. He had every
opportunity of ascertaining the fact, living, as he did, so near the
times and scenes of the gospel history, and surrounded by heretics and
false Christians, who would gladly have given him every information. But
he never once intimates the least suspicion of such a thing--never
questions the Gospels as books of history--nor denies the miracles
recorded in them, but attributes them to magic.[70] Here, then, we have
testimony as acceptable to an Infidel as that of Strauss or Voltaire--in
fact, utterly undeniable by any man of common sense--that the New
Testament was well known and generally received by Christians as
authoritative, when Celsus wrote his reply to it, in the end of the
second century. If it was a forgery, it was undoubtedly a forgery of old
standing, if he could not detect it.

But we will go back a step farther, and prove the antiquity of the New
Testament by the testimony of another enemy, two generations older than
Celsus. The celebrated heretic, Marcion, lived in the beginning of the
second century, when he had the best opportunity of discovering a
forgery in the writings of the New Testament, if any such existed; he
was excommunicated by the Church, and being greatly enraged thereat, had
every disposition to say the worst he could about it. He traveled all
the way from Sinope on the Black Sea, to Rome, and through Galatia,
Bithynia, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, the countries where the
apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote, but never found
any one to suggest the idea of a forgery to him. He affirmed that the
Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James and Peter,
and the whole of the Old Testament, were books only for Jews, and
published a new and altered edition of the Gospel of Luke, and ten
Epistles of Paul, for the use of his sect.[71] We have thus the most
undoubted evidence, even the testimony of an enemy, that these books
were in existence, and generally received as apostolical and
authoritative by Christians, at the beginning of the second century, or
within twenty years of the last of the apostles, and by the churches to
which they had preached and written.

The only remaining conceivable cavil against the genuineness of the
books of the New Testament is: "That they bear internal evidence of
being collections of fragments written by different persons--and are
probably merely traditions committed to writing by various unknown
writers, and afterward collected and issued to the churches under the
names of the apostles, for the sake of greater authority." This theory
being received as gospel by several learned men, has furnished matter
for lengthy discussions as to the sources of the four Gospels.
Translated into English, it amounts to this, that Brown, Smith, and
Jones wrote out a number of essays and anecdotes, and persuaded the
churches of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and the rest, to
receive them as the writings of their ministers, who had lived for
years, or were then living, among them; and on the strength of that
notion of their being the writings of the apostles, to govern their
whole lives by these essays, and lay down their lives and peril their
souls' salvation on the truth of these anecdotes. As though they could
not tell whether such documents were forgeries or not!

It is almost incredible how ignorant dreaming book-worms are of the
common business of life. Most of my readers will laugh at the idea of a
serious answer to such a quibble. Nevertheless, for the sake of those
whose inexperience may be abused by the authority of learned names, I
will show them that the primitive Christians, supposing them able to
read, could know whether their ministers did really write the books and
letters which they received from them.

If you go into the Citizens' Bank, you will find a large folio volume
lying on the counter, and on looking at it you will see that it is
filled with men's names, in their own handwriting, and that no two of
them are exactly alike. Every person who has any business to transact
with the bank is requested to write his name in the book; and when his
check comes afterward for payment, the clerk can tell at a glance if the
signature is the same as that of which he has a single specimen. If
there has been no opportunity for him to become personally acquainted
with the bank, as in case of a foreigner newly arrived, he brings
letters of introduction from some well-known mutual friend, or is
accompanied by some respectable citizen, who attests his identity.
Business men have no difficulty whatever in ascertaining the genuineness
of documents. It is only when people want to dispute Holy Scripture that
they give up common sense.

Holy Scripture was known to be the genuine writing of the apostles, just
in the same way as any other writing was known to be genuine; only the
churches who received the writings of the apostles had ten thousand
times better security against forgery than any bank in the Union. In one
of the first letters Paul writes to the churches--the second letter to
the Thessalonians--to whom he had been preaching only a few weeks
before, sent from Athens, distant only some two days' journey, full of
allusions to their affairs, commands how to conduct themselves in the
business of their workshops, as well as in the devotions of the church,
and explanations of some misunderstood parts of a former letter sent by
the hand of a mutual friend--he formally gives them his signature, for
the purpose of future reference, and comparison of any document which
might purport to come from him, with that specimen of his autograph. He
gives not the name merely, but his apostolic benediction also, in his
own handwriting: _The salutation of me Paul with mine own hand, which is
the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all. Amen._ It shows the heart of an apostle of
Christ; but what concerns the present question is the remark, which
every business man will in a moment appreciate, how immensely the
addition of these two lines adds to the security against forgery. It is
a very hard thing to forge a signature, but give a business man two
lines of any man's writing besides that, and he is perfectly secure
against imposition.[72]

The churches to which the Epistles were written, and to which the
Gospels were delivered, consisted largely of business men, of merchants
and traders, tent makers and coppersmiths, city chamberlains, and
officers of Cęsar's household, and the like. Does any one think such men
could not tell the handwriting of their minister, who had lived among
them for years; or that men who were risking their lives for the
instructions he wrote them, would care less about the genuineness of the
documents, than you do about the genuineness of a ten dollar check? I am
not as long in this city as Paul was in Ephesus, nor one fourth of the
time that John lived there, yet I defy all the advocates of the mythical
theory of Germany, and all their disciples here, to write a myth half as
long as this essay, and impose it on the elders and members of my church
as my writing. Let it only be presented in manuscript to the
congregation--there was no printing in Paul's days--and in five minutes
a dozen members of the church will detect the forgery, even if I should
hold my peace. And were I to leave on a mission to China or India, and
write letters to the church, would any of these business men, who have
seen my writing, have the least hesitation in recognizing it again? Do
you think anybody could forge a letter as from me, and impose it on
them? What an absurdity, then, to suppose that anybody could write a
gospel or epistle, and get all the members of a large church to believe
that an Apostle wrote it. The first Christians, then, were absolutely
certain that the documents which they received as apostolic, were
really so. The Church of Rome could attest the Epistle to them, and the
Gospels of Mark and Luke written there. The Church of Ephesus could
attest the Epistle to them, and the Gospel, and Letters, and Revelation
of John written there. And so on of all the other churches; and these
veritable autographs were long preserved. Says Tertullian, who was
ordained A. D. 192: "Well, if you be willing to exercise your curiosity
profitably in the business of your salvation, visit the apostolical
churches in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside--in
which their authentic letters themselves are recited (apud quę _ipsę
authenticę literę_ eorum recitantur), sounding forth the voice and
representing the countenance of each one of them. Is Achaia near you,
you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi,
you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus; but if
you are near to Italy, you have Rome." There can not be the least doubt
about the preservation of documents for a far longer time than from Paul
to Tertullian--one hundred and fifty years. I hold in my hand a Bible,
the family Bible of the Gibsons--printed in 1599--two hundred and
fifty-seven years old, in perfect preservation; and we have manuscripts
of the Scriptures twelve to fourteen hundred years old, like the
Sinaitic Codex, perfectly legible.

They were moreover directed to be publicly read in the churches, and
they were publicly read every Lord's day. Is it credible that an
impostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistle
was publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in the
hearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, was
conclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be the
genuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then had
conclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles and
Gospels.

The only difficulty which now remains is the objection that they might
have been corrupted by alterations and interpolations by monks, in later
times. We have two securities against such corruptions, in the way these
documents were given, and the nature of their contents. They were sacred
heirlooms, and they were public documents. Could you, or could any man,
have permission to alter the original copy of Washington's Farewell
Address? Would not the man who should attempt such sacrilege be torn in
a thousand pieces? But Washington will never be an object of such
veneration as John, nor will his Farewell Address ever compare in
importance with Paul's Farewell Letter to the Philippians. Besides,
these Gospels and Letters were public documents, containing the records
of laws, in obedience to which men are daily crossing their
inclinations, enduring the mockery of their neighbors, losing their
money, and endangering their lives. They contained the proofs and
promises of that religious faith in God and hope of heaven, for the sake
of which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allow
them to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk of
altering the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the
United States. Translated into different languages--transported into
Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt,
Parthia, Persia, India, and China--committed to memory by children, and
quoted in the writings of Christian authors of the first three
centuries, to such an extent, that we can gather the whole of the New
Testament, except twenty-six verses, from their writings--appealed to as
authority by heretics and orthodox in controversy--and publicly read in
the hearing of tens of hundreds of thousands every Sabbath day in
worship--we are a thousand times more certain that the New Testament has
not been corrupted, than we are that the Declaration of Independence is
genuine.

On this ground then we plant ourselves. The whole story of a late and
gradual formation of the New Testament, or, in plain English, of its
forgery, stands out as an unmitigated falsehood in the eyes of every man
capable of writing his own name. The first churches could not be
deceived with forgeries for apostolic writings. Nor could they, if they
would, allow these writings to be corrupted. Be they true or false, fact
or fiction, the books of the New Testament are the words of the Apostles
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next chapter we will inquire
into the truth of their story.


FOOTNOTES:

[65] The Family Christian Almanac for 1859, p. 57, American Tract
Society, New York.

[66] Acta Concitia, sub voce Laodicea, Canon iv. Lardner vi. p. 368.

[67] Gibbon's Decline and Fall, II. p. 267.

[68] The original authorities may be found collected in the fourth
volume of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History; abstracts of
them, with ample references, in Mosheim and Neander's Ecclesiastical
Histories, and in Stanley's Eastern Church.

[69] Rawlinson's _Historical Evidences_, page 227.

[70] Origen Contra Celsum, passim.

[71] Lardner, Vol. IX. page 358.

[72] In fact, some persons were trying to impose a letter, "as from us,"
containing declarations, that the day of Christ was upon them.




CHAPTER VI.

IS THE GOSPEL FACT OR FABLE?

     "For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we
     had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols, to serve
     the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven,
     whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us
     from the wrath to come."--1 Thess. i. 9, 10.


In the last chapter we ascertained that the Gospels and Epistles were
not forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century--that the
shopkeepers, silversmiths, tent-makers, coppersmiths, tanners,
physicians, senators, town councilors, officers of customs, city
treasurers, and nobles of Cęsar's household, in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus,
Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria, could no more be imposed upon in the
matter of documents, attested by the well-known signatures of their
beloved ministers, than you could by forged letters or sermons
purporting to come from your own pastor--and that the documents which
they believed to contain the directory of their lives, and the charter
of that salvation which they valued more than their lives, which they
read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their
writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into many
languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they
neither would, nor could, corrupt or falsify.

The genuineness of the copies of the New Testament, which we now
possess, is abundantly proved by the comparison of over two thousand
manuscripts, from all parts of the world; scrutinized during a period of
nearly a hundred years, by the most critical scholars, so accurately
that the variations of such things as would correspond to the crossing
of a t, or the dotting of an i, in English, have been carefully
enumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny has
been merely the suggestion of a score of unimportant alterations in the
received text of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses
of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history
of manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies of
Terence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand times
the New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousand
variations found in these six manuscripts, or an average of five
thousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. The
average number of variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament
examined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialities
already noticed.

We are, then, by the special providence of God, now as undoubtedly in
possession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by the
companions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution of
the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These are
historic documents, of well-established genuineness and antiquity, which
we now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness.

There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporary
writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively engaged
in the events which they relate. Such history never loses its interest,
nor does the lapse of ages, in the least degree, impair its credibility.
While the documents can be preserved, Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten
Thousand, Cęsar's Gallic War, and the Dispatches of the Duke of
Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet
some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and
historians might have kept back some important events which would have
dimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those they
have related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in
memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to
detect a falsehood, we never entertain the least suspicion.

If, to this be added, the correspondence of monuments, architecture,
painting, statuary, coins, heraldry, and a thousand changes in the
manners and customs of a people, we become as absolutely convinced of
the truth of the narrative thus confirmed by these silent witnesses as
if we had seen the events described. No man who visits the disinterred
city of Pompeii, and sees the pavements marked by the wheel ruts, has
any doubt that the Romans used wheeled carriages. When he sees the
court-yards adorned with mosaic figures, and the walls with paintings of
the gods, and of the manners of the people who worshiped them, he is
profoundly impressed with the conviction that they excelled in the fine
arts, and in the coarse vices of heathenism. When he visits the
Coliseum, that vast ruin declares that the wealth of an empire, once
devoted to the gratification of the most savage passions, has been
diverted into some other channel. When he visits the catacombs, and
reads long lines of heathen epitaphs, with their despairing symbols of
broken columns, extinguished torches, and their heart-breaking
"Farewell! an eternal farewell!" and then turns to the monuments of only
two centuries later, and reads, "He sleeps in the Lord," "He waits the
resurrection to life eternal," recording the hopes of whole generations
of survivors, he can not doubt the truth of the written records of the
conversion of the Roman Empire.

There is, moreover, another kind of contemporary history not so
connected and regular as the formal diary or journal, which does not
even propose to relate history at all, but is for that very reason
entirely removed from the suspicion of giving a coloring to it; which,
at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the most
convincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes of
historians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of a
name, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion,
flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporary
correspondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid
before us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their true
character. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupid
tyrant, James, displayed in his own letters. Thus Voltaire records
himself an adulterer, and begs his friend, D'Alembert, to lie for him;
his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of the
great American herald of the Age of Reason exhibits him drinking a quart
of brandy daily at his friend's expense, and refusing to pay his bill
for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondence
the vail is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true man
stands out in his native dignity, and the gilding is rubbed off the
hypocrite. Give the world their letters, and let the grave silence the
plaudits and the clamors which deafened the generation among whom they
lived, and no man will hesitate whether or not to pronounce Hume a
sensualist, or Washington the noblest work of God--an honest man.

If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of the
witnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events,
written by persons of various degrees of education, and of different
occupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, acting
independently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusions
to, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they are
all interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesigned
agreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all these
undesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of persons
whose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of our
correspondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them,
they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief
becomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, that
these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of
James' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite
friends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements of the
English historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters which
James himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England,
does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 did
actually occur?

When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence of
testimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern,
and the changes effected for the public weal, the people have ever since
observed, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and public
rejoicings, the anniversaries of the principal events of that
Revolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard the
thanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, the
facts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, and
take their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. We
become at once conscious that this is a practical question--a great fact
which concerns us--that the whole of the law and government of a vast
empire has felt its impress--that our ancestors and ourselves have been
molded under its influence, and that the religion of Europe and America,
under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among the
people of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nations
of the saved, has been secured by that Revolution. We could scarcely
know whether most to pity or contemn the man who should labor to
persuade us that such a Revolution had never occurred, or that the
facts had been essentially misrepresented.

Now it is precisely on this kind of evidence that we believe the great
facts of the Christian Revolution. We have contemporary histories,
formal and informal; letters, public and private, from the principal
agents in it, and opposers of it, dispersed from Babylon to Rome, and
addressed to Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Asiatics, written by physicians,
fishermen, proconsuls, emperors, and apostles. We have miles of
monuments, paintings, statuary, cabinets of coins, and all the heraldry
of Christendom. And these great facts stand out more prominently on the
theater of the world's business as effecting changes on our laws and
lives, and their introduction as authenticated by public commemorations,
more solemn and more numerous than those resulting from the English or
the American Revolution. Our main difficulty lies in selecting, from the
vast mass of materials, a portion sufficiently distinct and manageable
to be handled in a single essay.

We shall be guided by the motto already announced as the rule of
inductive research. One thing at a time; and the nearest first. The
Epistles, being nearer our own times than the Gospels, claim our first
notice, and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of
sacred history, the letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of
Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from
imperial Rome.

From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and
philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish,
Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the
Epistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen--the celebrated
letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus;
both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be above
suspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not take
the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the
Christian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives were
devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much
weight to the assertions of persons, who, by their own showing, tortured
and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the
name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters they
acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the
last and highest attestation of sincerity--their blood. Considered
merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests
of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be
preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and
hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to
whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke,
and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their
sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all
attestations--the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in
attesting must be accepted as true.

The facts which we shall thus establish are not, in the first instance,
those called miraculous. We are now ascertaining the general character
for truthfulness of our letter writers and historians. If we find that
their general historic narrative is contradicted by that of other
credible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that,
in all essential matters of public notoriety, they are supported by the
concurred testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of the
miracles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes became
friends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness as
true. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to the
apostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts of
Thessalonica; and how they turned to God from idols, to serve the
living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised
from the dead--even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come.
Pliny wrote forty years later.

Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61, was prętor under Domitian, consul
in the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100, was exceedingly desirous to add
to his other honors that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecrated
an augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on his
estates; was, in A. D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces of
Pontus and Bithynia[73]--a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along the
shores of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the province
anciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira,
and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reached
his province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus; where John had
lived for many years, and indited his letters, A. D. 96, scarcely ten
years before. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered through
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same
mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, in
earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priests
of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the
setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the
heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "_Leabhar
Eoin_"[74] which tells their children of him in whom is the life and the
light of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem during
the crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed the
darkness, and the earthquake, and had heard the rumors of what had come
to pass in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with the
curious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their own
mother tongues, of the wonderful works of God. The remainder of the
story of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, John, and
Pliny.

     "Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, wisheth health and
     happiness:[75]

     "It is my constant custom, Sire, to refer myself to you in all
     matters concerning which I have any doubt. For who can better
     direct me when I hesitate, or instruct me when I am ignorant?

     "I have never been present at any trials of Christians, so
     that I know not well what is the subject matter of punishment,
     or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either.
     Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether any
     difference ought to be made upon account of age, or whether
     the young and tender, and the full grown and robust, ought to
     be treated all alike; whether repentance should entitle to
     pardon, or whether all who have once been Christians ought to
     be punished, though they are now no longer so; whether the
     name itself, although no crimes be detected, or crimes only
     belonging to the name ought to be punished.

     "In the meantime, I have taken this course with all who have
     been brought before me, and have been accused as Christians. I
     have put the question to them, whether they were Christians.
     Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the
     question a second and a third time, threatening also to punish
     them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be
     punished; for it was no doubt with me, whatever might be the
     nature of their opinion, that contumacy and inflexible
     obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same
     infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have
     noted down to be sent to the city.

     "In a short time the crime spreading itself, even whilst under
     persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people
     came in my way. An information was presented to me, without
     mentioning the author, containing the names of many persons,
     who, upon examination, denied that they were Christians, or
     had even been so; who repeated after me an invocation of the
     gods, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to your
     image, which, for that purpose, I have caused to be brought
     and set before them, together with the statues of the deities.
     Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ. None of which
     things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any
     means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper
     to discharge.

     "Others were named by an informer, who at first confessed
     themselves Christians, and afterward denied it. The rest said
     they had been Christians, but had left them; some three years
     ago, some longer, and one or more above twenty years. They all
     worshiped your image, and the statues of the gods; these also
     reviled Christ. They affirmed that the whole of their fault or
     error lay in this: that they were wont to meet together, on a
     stated day, before it was light, and sing among themselves
     alternately, a hymn to Christ as a God, and bind themselves by
     a sacrament, not to the commission of any wickedness, but not
     to be guilty of theft, or robbery, or adultery; never to
     falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them,
     when called upon to return it. When these things were
     performed, it was their custom to separate, and then to come
     together again to a meal, which they ate in common, without
     any disorder; but this they had forborne since the publication
     of my edict, by which, according to your command, I prohibited
     assemblies. After receiving this account, I judged it the more
     necessary to examine two maid servants, which were called
     ministers, by torture. But I have discovered nothing besides a
     bad and excessive superstition.

     "Suspending, therefore, all judicial proceedings, I have
     recourse to you for advice; for it has appeared to me a matter
     highly deserving consideration, especially upon account of the
     great number of persons who are in danger of suffering. For
     many of all ages, and every rank, of both sexes likewise, are
     accused, and will be accused. Nor has the contagion of this
     superstition seized cities only, but the lesser towns also,
     and the open country. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it may
     be restrained and arrested. It is certain that the temples,
     which were almost forsaken, begin to be frequented. And the
     sacred solemnities, after a long intermission, are revived.
     Victims, likewise, are everywhere brought up, whereas, for
     some time, there were few purchasers. Whence, it is easy to
     imagine, what numbers of men might be reclaimed, if pardon
     were granted to those who shall repent."

                 *       *       *       *       *

     "Trajan to Pliny, wisheth health and happiness:[76]

     "You have taken the right course, my Pliny, in your
     proceedings with those who have been brought before you as
     Christians; for it is impossible to establish any one rule
     that shall hold universally. They are not to be sought after.
     If any are brought before you, and are convicted, they ought
     to be punished. However, he that denies his being a Christian,
     and makes it evident in fact, that is, by supplicating to our
     gods, though he be suspected to have been so formerly, let him
     be pardoned upon repentance. But in no case, of any crime
     whatever, may a bill of information be received without being
     signed by him who presents it, for that would be a dangerous
     precedent, and unworthy of my government."

I must request my reader now to procure a New Testament, and read, at
one reading, the First General Epistle of Peter, the First General
Epistle of John, and the Seven Epistles to the Churches in Ephesus,
Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea--only
about as much matter as four pages of _Harper's Magazine_, or half a
page of the _Commercial_--that he may be able to do the same justice to
the apostles as to the governor. He will thus be able to see the force
of the various allusions to the numbers, doctrines, morals,
persecutions, and perseverance of the Christians, contained in those
letters; the object which I have in view being, to establish their
authenticity by proving the truthfulness of their allusions to these
things. If you think this too much trouble, please lay down the book,
and dismiss the consideration of religion from your thoughts. If the
letters of the apostles are not worth a careful reading, it is of no
consequence whether they are true or false.

1. These letters take for granted, that the fact of the existence of
large numbers of Christians, organized into churches, and meeting
regularly for religious worship, at the close of the first century, is a
matter of public notoriety to the world. Here, in countries eight
hundred miles distant from its birthplace, in the lifetime of those who
had seen its founder crucified, we find Christians scattered over
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia--churches in seven
provincial cities, the sect well known to Pliny, before he left Italy,
as a proscribed and persecuted religion, the professors of which were
customarily brought before courts for trial and punishment--though he
had not himself been present at such trials--and now so numerous in his
provinces, that a great number of persons, of both sexes, young and old,
of all ranks, natives and Roman citizens, professed Christianity.
Others, influenced by their example and instruction, renounced idolatry;
victims were not led to sacrifice; the sacred rites of the gods were
suspended, and their temples forsaken. The existence, then, of churches
of Christ, consisting of vast numbers of converted heathens, at the
close of the first century, is in no wise mythological or dubious. It is
an established historical fact. The Epistles of the apostles stand
confirmed by the Epistles of the governor and the emperor.

2. The second great fact presented in the Epistles, and confirmed by the
letters of the governor and the emperor, is, that the worship of the
Christian Church then was essentially the same which it is now. We find
these Christians of the first century commemorating the death and
resurrection of Christ, and rendering divine honors to him; the "stated
day" on which they assembled for worship, and the "common meal," are as
plain a description of the "disciples coming together upon the first day
of the week, to break bread," as a heathen could give in few words.
Their terms of communion too, to which they pledged their members by a
sacrament, "not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to
falsify their word, or deny a pledge committed to them," find their
counterpart in every well-regulated church at this day.

The articles of the Christian faith, then, are not the "gradual
accretions of centuries," nor is the "redemptive idea, as attaching to
Christ, a dogma of the post-Augustine period." The churches of the
first century commemorated the death and resurrection of Jesus, as that
of a divine person, "singing the hymn to him as a God," which their
descendants sing at this day around his table:

     "Forever and forever is, O God, thy throne of might,
     The scepter of thy kingdom is a scepter that is right,
     Thou lovest right, and hatest ill; for God, thy God, Most High,
     Above thy fellows hath with th' oil of joy anointed thee."

And the question will force itself upon our minds, and can not be
evaded, How did these apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens to
believe their repeated assertions of the death, resurrection, and glory
of Jesus? In the space of three octavo pages, Peter refers to these
facts eighteen times. John, in like manner, repeatedly affirms them. The
Christian religion consists in the belief of these facts, and a life
corresponding to them. Now, how did the apostles persuade such
multitudes of heathens to believe a report so wonderful, profess a
religion so novel, renounce the gods they had worshiped from their
childhood, and all the ceremonies of an attractive, sensual religion;
"temples of splendid architecture, statues of exquisite sculpture,
priests and victims superbly adorned, attendant beauteous youth of both
sexes, performing all the sacred rites with gracefulness; religious
dances, illuminations, concerts of the sweetest music, perfumes of the
rarest fragrance," and other more licentious enjoyments, inseparable
from heathen worship. How did they persuade them to exchange all this
for the assembly before daybreak, the frugal common meal, the psalm to
Christ, and the commemoration of the death of a crucified malefactor? If
we add, that they commemorated his resurrection, by observing the Lord's
day, the question comes up, How did they come to believe that he was
risen from the dead? Could a few despised strangers, or a few citizens
if you will, persuade such a community, purely by natural means, to
believe such a report, to care whether the Syrian Jew died or rose, or
to commemorate weekly, by a solemn religious service, either his death
or resurrection? It is evident they believed what they commemorated. How
did they come to do so?

But whether we can answer the question or not, the fact stands out as
indisputable, that not merely the writers of the Epistles and Gospels,
and a few enthusiasts, but an immense multitude of all ages, of both
sexes, and of every rank--the whole membership of the primitive
churches--did believe in the death, resurrection, and glory of the Lord
Jesus, and did render to him divine worship. The second great fact,
affirmed in the Epistles, stands confirmed by the testimony of the
heathen governor, and of the Roman emperor.

3. A mere theory of a new religion, unconnected with practice, may be
easily received by those who care little about any, so long as it brings
no suffering or inconvenience. But the religion of these Christians was,
as you see, a practical religion. If their new worship required a great
departure from the worship of their childhood, their Christian morals
required a still greater departure from their former mode of life. I
need not remind you of the moral codes of Socrates, Plato, and
Aristides, who taught that lying, thieving, adultery, and murder were
lawful; nor how much worse than the theory of the best of the heathen
were the lives of the worst; nor how unpopular to persons so educated
would be such teaching as this--"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered
for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind: for he that
hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin: that he no longer
should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but
to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have
wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness,
lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable
idolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to
the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account to
him that is ready to judge the living and the dead." "Lay aside all
malice, and guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings."
"Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth hath not
seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you. He
that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that
committeth sin is of the devil." So sharp, and stern, and strictly
virtuous is apostolic religion, as displayed in these letters. Is it
possible then that these converted heathens did really even approach
this standard of morality? Did this gospel of Christ actually produce
any such reformation of their lives?

You have the testimony of apostates, eager to save their lives by giving
such information as they knew would be acceptable to the persecutor; you
have the testimony of the two aged deaconesses, under torture; you have
the unwilling, but yet express, testimony of their torturer and
murderer, that all his cruel ingenuity could discover nothing worse than
an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy. What, then, does this
philosophic inspector of entrails, and adorer of idols, call an
excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy? Why, they bound
themselves by the most solemn religious services, not to be guilty of
theft, robbery, or adultery; not to falsify their word, nor deny a
pledge committed to them; and when some senseless blocks of brass were
carried on men's shoulders, into the court-house, to represent a mortal
man, they would not adore them, nor pray to them; no, not though this
philosopher compiled the liturgy, and set the example. For this refusal,
and this alone, he ordered them away to death. Doubtless they heard, in
their hearts, the well-known words, "Let none of you suffer as a
murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other
men's matters. But if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be
ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf."

The morality of the Epistles, then, was not a merely a fine theory, but
an actual rule of life. The moral codes of the apostles were received as
actually binding on the members of the churches of the first century. In
this all-important matter of the rule of a good life--the fruits by
which the tree is known--the integrity, authority, and success of the
apostles, in turning licentious heathens into moral Christians, is
authenticated by the unwilling testimony of their persecutors. The
Epistles of the apostles stand confirmed, as to their ethics, by the
letters of Trajan and Pliny.

4. The only other fact to which I call your attention, from among the
multitude alluded to in these letters, is the cost at which these
converts from heathenism embraced this new religion. Every one who
renounced heathenism, and professed the name of Christ, knew very well
that he must suffer for it. "Beloved, think it not strange concerning
the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing
happened unto you, but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's
sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad with
exceeding joy;" this was the welcome of the Bithynian convert into the
Church of Christ. Persecution by fire and sword was then the common lot
of the Church. "I have never been present at any trials of the
Christians," says the governor. Such trials were well known to him it
seems. He was not sure whether he should murder all who ever had borne
the name of Christ, or only those who proved themselves to be really his
disciples, by refusing to revile him, and return to idolatry; and the
merciful emperor commands him to spare the apostates. Above twenty years
before--in A. D. 86--there were apostates from the persecuted religion.
In A. D. 90, John had written, "they went out from us, that it might be
made manifest they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they
would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that it might
be made manifest that they were not all of us." So it seems Pliny
thought: "They all worshiped your image, and other statues of the gods;
these also reviled Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who
are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do." What these
means were he tells us: "I put the question to them, whether they were
Christians. Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the
question a second and a third time, threatening, also, to punish them
with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished."
What is very remarkable, it was, it seems, "usual in such cases, for the
crime to spread itself, even whilst under persecution." In the face of
such dangers, these heathen would still profess faith in Christ, and
when they might have saved their lives by reviling him, refused to do
so. From the published rescript of the emperor, approving of Pliny's
course, and condemning to death all who were convicted of being really
Christians; from the public circulars of the apostles, warning them of
"fiery trials," "Satan casting some of them into prison," and exhorting
them to "be faithful unto death;" and from such comments on these as the
torture and public execution of aged women as well as men--the terms of
discipleship were well known to the whole world. Yet we see that in the
face of all this, "great numbers of persons, of both sexes, and of all
ages, and of every rank," in Pliny's opinion, were so steadfast in their
faith, that "they were in great danger of suffering."

Here, then, is another well-attested fact, in which the testimony of the
apostles stands confirmed by the signatures of the Bithynian governor,
and the Roman emperor--a fact which stands forth clear, prominent, most
undoubted, without the smallest trace of anything mythological or misty
about it--that, in A. D. 106, great numbers of converted heathens did
suffer exile, torture, and death itself, rather than renounce Christ;
and that it was well known that the Christian faith enabled its
professor to overcome the world.

These four great facts of the later Epistles, being thus established
beyond dispute, in pursuance of our plan, we ascend the stream of
history some forty years, to the time of the earlier Epistles, when Paul
lay in the Prętorian prison, and his faithful companion, Luke, wrote the
continuation of his narrative of the things most surely believed among
the Christians; when "apostles were made as the filth of the world, and
the offscouring of all things;" and Christians "were made a gazing stock
both by reproaches and afflictions;" "were brought before kings and
rulers, and hated of all nations for Christ's name sake;" "endured a
great fight of afflictions;" were "for his sake killed all the day long,
and accounted as sheep for the slaughter;" "were made a spectacle to the
world, to angels, and to men." We remove the field of our investigation
from a remote province of Asia, to one equally remote from Judea, and
far more unfavorable for the growth of the religion of a crucified Jew,
to the proud capital of the world, imperial Rome. The time shall be
shortly after the burning of the city, in A. D. 64, and during the
raging of the first of those systematic, imperial, and savage
persecutions through which the Church of Christ waded, in the bloody
footsteps of her Lord, to world-wide influence, and undying fame. Our
historian shall be the well-known Tacitus; and the single extract from
his history, one of which the infidel Gibbon says:[77] "The most
skeptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this important
fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus." I shall
not insert quotations from Paul or Luke; that were merely to transcribe
large portions of the Epistles and Gospels, which whoever will not
carefully peruse, disqualifies himself for forming a judgment of their
veracity. The confirmation of the four facts already established, of
the existence, worship, morals, and sufferings of the disciples of
Christ; and these facts as well known within thirty years after his
death, will sufficiently appear by the perusal of the following
testimony of Tacitus.[78]

After relating the burning of the city, and Nero's attempt to transfer
the odium of it to the sect "commonly known by the name of Christians,"
he says:

     "The author of that name was Christ, who, in the reign of
     Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal, under the
     procurator, Pontius Pilate. But this pestilent superstition,
     checked for a while, broke out afresh, and spread not only
     over Judea, where the evil originated, but also in Rome, where
     all that is evil on the earth finds its way, and is practiced.
     At first, those only were apprehended who confessed themselves
     of that sect; afterward, _a vast multitude_ discovered by
     them; all of whom were condemned, not so much for the crime of
     burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. Their
     executions were so contrived, as to expose them to derision
     and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild
     beasts, that they might be torn to pieces by dogs; some were
     crucified; while others, having been daubed over with
     combustible materials, were set up for lights in the night
     time, and thus burned to death. For these spectacles Nero gave
     his own gardens, and, at the same time, exhibited there the
     diversions of the circus; sometimes standing in the crowd as a
     spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; and, at other times,
     driving a chariot himself; until at length these men, though
     really criminal, and deserving of exemplary punishment, began
     to be commiserated, as people who were destroyed, not out of
     regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty
     of one man."

We add no comment on this remarkable passage. Take up your New Testament
and read the contemporary history--Acts xxii. to the end of the
book--and the letters of Paul from Rome, to Philemon, Titus, the
Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Second to Timothy, written
when the aged prisoner was ready to be offered, and the time of his
departure, amidst such scenes and sufferings, was at hand. Then form
your own opinion as to the origin and nature of that faith in Jesus
which enabled him to say: "None of these things move me, neither count I
my life dear unto me, that I may finish my course with joy, and the
testimony which I have received of the Lord Jesus." "I know in whom I
have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I
have committed to him against that day."

Whatever may be your opinion of the apostle's hope for the future, you
must acknowledge that we have ascertained, beyond contradiction, these
four facts of the past:

1. That without the power of force, or the help of governments, and in
spite of them, the apostles did convert vast multitudes of idolaters
from a senseless worship of stocks and stones, to the worship of the one
living and true God; a thing never done by the preachers of any other
religion before or since.

2. That without the help of power or civil law, and solely by moral and
spiritual means, they did persuade multitudes of licentious heathens to
give up their vices, and obey the pure precepts of the morality
contained in their Epistles; a thing never done by the preachers of any
other religion before or since.

3. That these converts were so firmly persuaded of the truth of their
new religion, that, with the choice of life and worldly honor, or a
death of infamy and torture before them, multitudes deliberately chose
to suffer torture and death rather than renounce the belief in one God,
obedience to his laws, and the hope of eternal life through Jesus
Christ, which they had learned from the sermons and letters of these
apostles; a thing never done by the professors of any other religion
before or since.[79]

4. The faith which produced such an illumination of their minds; which
caused such a blessed change in their lives; which filled them with joy
and hope, and enabled them even to despise torture and death, was
briefly this: "That Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third
day, according to the Scriptures; that he ascended up into heaven, and
will come again to judge the world, and reward every man according to
his works; and that whosoever believes these things in his heart, and
confesses them with his mouth, shall be saved; and he that believeth
them not shall be damned."

It is a fact, then, indisputably proven by history, that the New
Testament does teach a religion which can enlighten men's minds, reform
their lives, give peace to their consciences, and enable them to meet
death with a joyful hope of life eternal. It has done these things in
times past, and is doing them now. These are its undoubted fruits.
Reader, this faith may be yours. It will work the same results in you as
it has done in others. Like causes ever produce like effects. Jesus
waits to deliver you from your sins, to fill you with joy and peace in
believing, and make you abound in hope, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
He has promised, if you will ask it, "I will give them a heart to know
me, that I am the Lord."


FOOTNOTES:

[73] Lardner VII. page 18, _et seq._

[74] Pronounced Laar Owen--John's Book.

[75] Lib. X. Ep. 97, Lardner VII. 22.

[76] Lib. X. Ep. 98, Lardner VII. 24.

[77] Decline and Fall, Vol. II. page 407.

[78] Lib. XV. chap. 44.

[79] The sufferings of the Jews, under Antiochus, are no exception. They
suffered for their faith in the true God, the Messiah to come, and a
resurrection to life eternal.




CHAPTER VII.

CAN WE BELIEVE CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES?

     "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which
     we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
     hands have handled of the Word of life * * * that which we
     have seen and heard declare we unto you."--1 John i. 1.


We have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New
Testament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and
faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that
multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief of
the testimony of these men. They testified that Jesus Christ did many
wonderful miracles, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead;
that they saw, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed with
him for forty days after his resurrection; that he ascended up to heaven
in their sight; that he sent them to tell the world that he will come
again in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge the
living and the dead; that he who believes these things and is baptized
shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is their
statement. The question is, Can we believe them?

1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that it
stands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothing
in the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact
of Christianity--that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the
dead--stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests
of Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophets
of Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted to
imitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christianity is to deny
it.

There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion
ever producing the same effects. We demand an instance of men destitute
of wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying,
lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous men
simply by prayer and preaching. When the Infidel tells us of the rapid
spread of Mohammedanism and Mormonism--impostures which enlist disciples
by promising free license to lust, robbery, and murder, and retain them
by the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankind
to the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasing
concubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to a
wilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science,
industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away--he
simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference between
backgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows as
little about Mohammedanism, as he does about Christianity. The gospel
stands alone in its doctrines, singular in its operation, unequaled in
its success.

2. The next important point for consideration is, that the Christianity
preached by Christ and his apostles is a whole--a single system, which
we must either take or leave--believe entirely, or entirely reject it as
an imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is all
true, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul's
Epistles and say, "this is true," and take another of the same man's
letters, containing the very same religion, and say, "this is false." If
you accept the very briefest of Paul's Letters, that to Philemon,
containing only thirteen sentences on private business, you accept
eleven distinct assertions of the authority, grace, love, and divinity
of our Lord. Nor can you say you will accept Peter's Letters and reject
Paul's; for you will find the very same facts asserted by the one as by
the other; and moreover, Peter indorses "all the epistles of our beloved
brother Paul" as on the same pedestal of authority with the other
Scriptures. You can not say, "I will accept the letters and reject the
history," for the letters have no meaning without the history. They are
founded upon it, and assume or allege its facts on every page. Were the
gospels lost, we could collect a good account of the birth, teaching,
death, resurrection, ascension, and almighty power of the Lord Christ
from Paul's Epistles; and these letters are just as confident in
alleging the miraculous part of the history as the gospels themselves.
Neither can you gain any advantage by saying, "I accept the gospels, but
reject the letters," for there is not a doctrine of the New Testament
which is not taught in the very first of them, the Gospel by Matthew.
Further, the gospels contain the most solemn authentication of the
commissions of the apostles, so that whoever rejects their teaching,
brings upon himself guilt equal to that of rejecting Christ himself.
"Lo, I am with you alway"--"He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he
that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me"--"Whosoever will not
receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or
city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of
judgment, than for that city."

It is, if possible, more absurd to attempt to dissect the morality of
the gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive the
Christian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regard
Jesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we must
consider the narrative of supernatural events interwoven with it as
mythological," _i. e._, false. Which is much the same as to say, "We
will be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his head
off." Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals be without
the authority of Christ, the lawgiver? If he possessed no divine
authority, what right has he to control your inclination or mine? And if
he will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, who
will regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, and
reformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trial
of that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seat
of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body,
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing,
therefore, _the terrors of the Lord_, we persuade men."

Take away the miraculous and supernatural from the gospel history, and
there is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economy
nor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernatural
person, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction.
Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but from
the gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupy
three-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give any
credit to the remainder? For, as the German commentator, De Wette, well
says, "The only means of acquaintance with a history is the narrative we
possess concerning it, and beyond that narrative the interpreter can not
go. In these Bible records, the narrative reports to us only a
supernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject.
If we reject the narrative, we know nothing at all about the event, and
we are not justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course of
events of which the narrative is totally silent." So, you see, you can
not make a Christ to suit your taste, but must just take the Christ of
the gospel, or reject him.

If you reject the testimony of Christ and his apostles as false, and say
you can not believe them in matters of fact, how can you respect their
morality? Of all the absurdities of modern Infidelity, the respectful
language generally used by its advocates in speaking of Christ and his
apostles is the most inconsistent. He claimed to be a Divine Person, and
professed to work miracles. The Infidel says he was not a Divine Person,
and wrought no miracles. The consequence is unavoidable--such a
pretender is a blasphemous impostor. And yet they speak of him as a
"model man," an "exemplar of every virtue." What! an impostor a model
man? A blasphemer and liar an exemplar of every virtue? Is that the
Infidel's notion of virtue? Why, the devils were more consistent in
their commendations of his character, "We know thee who thou art, THE
HOLY ONE OF GOD." Let our modern enemies of Christ learn consistency
from their ancient allies. We have also learned from our Master to
refuse all hypocritical, half-way professions of respect for his
character and teachings from those whose business is to prove him a
deceiver, and whose object in speaking respectfully of such a One can
only be to gain a larger audience, and a readier entrance for their
blasphemy among his professed disciples. From every man who professes
respect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and his
apostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions:
"When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living and
the dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie? When he promised to
attest his divine commission by rising from the dead on the third day,
had he any such power, or did he only mean to play a juggling imposture?
Is Jesus the Christ the Son of the Living God, or a deceiver?" There is
no middle ground. He that is not with him is against him.

The case is just the same with regard to the witnesses of his miracles,
death, and resurrection. They either give a true relation of these
things, or they have manufactured a series of falsehoods. How can we
believe anything from persons so habituated to lying as the narrators of
the mighty works of Jesus must be, if those mighty works never were
performed? How can we accept their code of morals if we refuse to
believe them when they speak of matters of fact? Is it possible to
respect men as moral teachers, whom we have convicted of forging stories
of miracles that never occurred, and confederating together to impose a
lying superstition on the world? For this is plainly the very point and
center of the question about the truth of the Bible, and I am anxious
you should see it clearly. A fair statement of this question is half the
argument. The question then is simply this, Was Jesus really the Divine
Person he claimed to be, or was he a blasphemous impostor? When the
apostles unitedly and solemnly testified that they had seen him after he
was risen from the dead, that they ate and drank with him, that their
hands had handled his body, that they conversed with him for forty days,
and that they saw him go up to heaven, did they tell the truth or were
they a confederated band of liars? There is no reason for any other
supposition. They could not possibly be deceived themselves in the
matters they relate. They knew perfectly whether they were true or not.
We are not talking about matters of dogma, about which there might be
room for difference of opinion, but about matters of fact--about what
men say they saw, and heard, and felt--about which no man of common
sense could possibly be mistaken. "That which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have heard, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you." Such is their language. We must either take it as
truth, or reject it as falsehood. It is utter nonsense to talk of the
intense subjectivity of the Jewish mind, and the belief of the apostles
that the Messiah would do wonders when he came, and the powerful
impressions produced by the teaching of Jesus on their minds. We are not
talking about impressions on their minds, but about impressions produced
on their eyes, and ears, and hands. Did these men tell the truth when
they told the world that they did eat and drink with Jesus after he rose
from the dead, or did they lie? That is the question.

3. It is a hard matter to lie well. A liar has need of a good memory,
else he will contradict himself before he writes far. And he needs to be
very well posted up in the matters of names, dates, places, manners and
customs, else he will contradict some well-known facts, and so expose
his forgery to the world. Therefore writers of forgeries avoid all such
things as much as possible, and as surely as they venture on
specifications of that sort they are detected. A man who is conscious of
writing a book of falsehoods does not begin on this wise: "Now in the
fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cęsar, Pontius Pilate being
Governor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother
Philip Tetrarch of Iturea and of the regions of Trachonitis, and
Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being high priests, the
Word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness."
Here in one sentence are twenty historical, geographical, political, and
genealogical references, every one of which we can confirm by references
to secular historians. The enemies of the Lord have utterly failed in
their attempts to disprove one out of the hundreds of such statements in
the New Testament. The only instance of any _public political event_
recorded in the gospel, said not to be confirmed by the fragments of
secular history we possess, is Luke's account of a census of the Roman
Empire, ordered by Augustus Cęsar. Were it so that Luke stood alone in
his mention of this, surely his credit as a historian would be as good
for this fact, as the credit of Tacitus, when he states matters of which
Suetonius makes no mention, or of Pliny, when he relates things not
recorded by Tacitus. But we can account for the want of corroborative
history in this instance, when we know that all the history of Dion
Cassius, from the consulships of Antistius and Balbus to those of
Messala and Cinna--that is, for five years before and five years after
the birth of Christ--is lost; as also Livy's history of the same period.
It is certain that some one did record the fact, for Suidas, in his
lexicon upon the word _apographe_, says, "that Augustus sent twenty
select men into all the provinces of the empire to take a census, both
of men and property, and commanded that a just proportion of the latter
should be brought into the imperial treasury. And this was the first
census."

To object to the gospel history, that everything contained in it of the
doings of Christ and his apostles in Judea, is not recorded by the
historians of Greece and Italy, is much the same as to say that there
are a multitude of facts recorded in D'Aubigne's History of the
Reformation in Germany, of which Hume and Macaulay make no mention in
their histories of England. How should they?--treating of different
countries, and for the most part of different periods, and writing civil
and not church history? Does anybody go to Macaulay to look for the
history of the Westminster Assembly, or to Bancroft for an account of
the Great Revival in New England? Or is the veracity of Baillie, or
Edwards suspected, because political history does not concern itself
much about religion? It is enough that not a single statement of the
gospel history has ever been disproved.

I might give you quotations from the enemies of the Christian faith,
from Josephus the Jew, and Celsus, and Porphyry, heathen philosophers,
and from the Emperor Julian, the apostate--who, having been raised a
Christian, became a heathen, and used all his ingenuity to overturn the
religion of Christ--expressly admitting the principal miracles recorded
in the gospel. But I attach no such importance to the testimony of this
class of persons as to suppose that it should be placed, for one moment,
on a level with the testimony of the apostles, or that their testimony
to the facts of the life and death of Christ needs any confirmation from
such witnesses. We have such overwhelming evidence of the sincerity and
truth of the witnesses chosen by God to bear testimony to the
resurrection of Christ, as we never can have of the credibility of any
secular historian whatever.

You will remember that these are the writers whose accounts of the
existence, the faith and worship, the numbers and morals of the
Christian Church, we have seen so strikingly confirmed by their enemies;
and we now inquire, Can we believe the other part of their history to be
as true? These are the men who taught the heathen a pure Christian
morality, one principal article of which was, "Lie not one to another,
seeing ye have put off the old man with his deeds"--"All liars shall
have their portion in the lake that burneth with fire and
brimstone"--and we are to inquire if they themselves lied; lied
publicly, lied repeatedly, if the very business of their lives was to
propagate falsehood, and if they died with a lie in their right hands.
You will remember that we proved conclusively that the belief of the
death and resurrection of Jesus did turn immense multitudes of wicked
men to a life of virtue, and now we are to inquire if the belief of a
lie produced this blessed result, and whether, if so, there be any such
thing as truth in the world, or any use in it?

4. Of no other series of events of ancient history do we possess the
same number of records by contemporary historians, as of the life,
death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We have four direct
systematic memoirs of him by four of his companions; and we have a
collection of letters by four others, in which the events of the memoirs
are continually referred to. At the mouth of two or three witnesses any
man's property and life will be disposed of in a court of justice, but
here we have the testimony of eight eye-witnesses of the facts they
relate, and they refer to five hundred other persons, the greater part
of whom were then alive, who had also seen and heard Christ after his
resurrection. These eight persons give us their separate and independent
statements of those things they deemed worthy of record in the life and
death of Christ, and of the sayings and doings of several of his friends
and enemies. Now every person knows that it is impossible to make two
crooked boughs tally, or two false witnesses agree. You never saw two
lying reports of any considerable number of transactions agree, unless
the one was copied from the other.

It is evident that the gospels were not copied from each other, for they
often relate different events, and when they relate the same occurrence,
each man relates those parts of it which he saw himself, and which
impressed him most. Yet the utmost ingenuity of infidelity has utterly
failed to make them contradict each other in any particular. Here are
eight witnesses to the truth of the same story, four of whom in their
letters make occasional allusions to the facts of the history as being
perfectly well known, and therefore needing only to be alluded to, yet
these cursory references fit into the history with every mark of
truthfulness. Does the history of Matthew, written at Jerusalem, tell us
that Jesus took Peter, and James, and John up into a high mountain
apart, and was transfigured before them? Peter, in his letter, written
from Babylon, says, "We were eye-witnesses of his majesty. We were with
him in the holy mount."--2 Peter ii. 10. If the history tells how Paul
was beaten and cast into prison at Philippi, and his feet made fast in
the stocks, and that, nevertheless, he manfully defended his birthright
as a Roman citizen, and made the tyrannical magistrates humble
themselves, and apologize for their illegal conduct, we find Paul
himself, in a letter to a neighboring church, appealing to their
knowledge of the facts, "that after we had suffered before, and were
shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God
to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For our
exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. For
neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak
for covetousness."--1 Thessalonians ii. 2. Hundreds of such undesigned
coincidences may be found in the New Testament, confirming the veracity
of the several historians and letter writers, and giving that impression
of the naturalness and truth of the story, which can neither be
described nor disputed. The reader who desires to prosecute this
interesting branch of the evidences of Christianity will find an ample
collection of these coincidences in Paley's Horę Paulinę.

This agreement of independent writers is the more remarkable, as the
writers were persons of very various degrees of education, of different
professions and ranks of life, born in different countries, and writing
from various places in Italy, Greece, Palestine, and Assyria, without
any communication with each other. Matthew was an officer of customs in
Galilee; Mark a Hebrew citizen of Jerusalem; Luke a Greek physician of
Antioch; James and John owned and sailed a fishing smack on Lake
Tiberias; Jude left his thirty-nine acres of land, worth nine thousand
denarii, to be farmed by his children when he went forth to preach the
gospel; and college-bred Paul carried his sturdy independence in his
breast, and his sail needles in his pocket, and dictated epistles, and
cut out marquees and lug-sails in the tent factory of Aquila, Paul &
Co., at Corinth. Several of his letters were written in a dungeon in
Rome; the last of Peter's is dated at Babylon; Matthew's Gospel was
penned at Jerusalem, and John's Gospel and Epistles were written at
Ephesus. The agreement of eight such witnesses, of such different
pursuits, and so scattered over the world, in the relation of the same
story, in all its leading particulars, together with their variety of
style and manner, and their various relations of minor incidents, yet
without a single contradiction, are most convincing proofs that they all
tell truth. Nothing but truth could be thus told without contradiction.

The fact that some considerable difficulties and many minor obscurities
in these brief though pregnant narratives, prevent the combination of
eight accounts so independent in their sources, and various in their
style, and design, and auditors, into a flowing historical novel, a
homogeneous mass, rounded and squared to our ideas of mathematical
precision, is only an additional proof of their truth to nature, which
abhors mathematical, as much as truth does rhetorical figures. Like the
variety of expression used by American, German, French, and Polish
witnesses in our courts of justice, testifying the same facts in their
native idioms, though in English words, the apparent discrepancy, but
actual harmony, becomes the most decisive test of the absence of any
collusion, and consequently of the verity of the facts which such
various witnesses unite in testifying. Especially will any such apparent
discrepancy resolve itself into our own unskillfulness or ignorance,
when we remember that the mists of ages, and the drapery of a strange
language, and world-wide removal of residence, and the turning of the
world upside down by the progress of Christian civilization, and our
consequent ignorance of the thousand little details of every-day life,
well known to the writer and his immediate readers, and of the force of
expressive idioms, perfectly familiar to them--have rendered us not near
so capable of detecting inaccuracies, as those contemporary writers and
opponents, who allowed them--if they existed--to pass unchallenged. Like
those antique coins, whose rust-dimmed and abbreviated inscriptions
exercise the patience and historic lore of the antiquarian, though
neither are needed to declare the precious material, this very rust of
antiquity, through which his patience has penetrated, becomes one of the
inimitable marks of historic verity. Every year throws some new light on
texts difficult to us from our ignorance of those manners, customs,
names, and places, which Infidel malice and Christian piety have
combined to explore; and from the ruins of Nineveh and the sepulchers of
Egypt we receive unlooked-for testimonies to the minute accuracy of the
penmen of the Bible.

5. The manner in which the apostles published their testimony to the
world bears every mark of truthfulness. Deception and forgery skulk, and
try to spread themselves at first in holes and corners, but he that
doeth truth cometh to the light. Had the apostles been conscious of
falsehood, would they have dared to assert that Jesus was risen from the
dead in the very streets of the city where he was crucified? in the
temple, the most public place of resort of the Jews who saw him
crucified? and to the teeth of the very men who put him to death? If
conscious of falsehood, would they have dared, before the chief priests,
and the council, and all the senate of Israel, to assert that "The God
of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him
hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to
give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins. And we are his
witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Ghost which God hath
given to them that obey him."--Acts v. 30. Would Paul, had he been
conscious that he was relating falsehood, have dared to appeal to the
judge, before whom he was on trial for his life, as to one who knew the
notoriety of these facts, "For the king knoweth of these things, before
whom also I speak freely; for I am persuaded that none of these things
are hidden from him: for this thing was not done in a corner."--Acts
xxvi. 26. Would such appeals have been suffered to pass uncontradicted
had the statements of the apostles been false?

The boldness of their manner, however, of telling their story, is
little, compared with the boldness of the design which they had in view
in telling it; which was nothing less than to convert the world. Now the
idea of proselyting other nations to a new religion was absolutely
unknown to the world at that time. The Greeks and Romans never dreamed
of any such thing. They would sometimes add a new god to their old
Pantheon, but the idea of turning a nation to the worship of new deities
was never before heard of. The Jews were so indignant at the project,
that when Paul hinted it to them, they cried, "Away with such a fellow
from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." And this new and
strange idea, of conquering the world for a crucified man, is taken up
by a few private citizens, who resolve to overturn the craft by which
priests have their wealth, and to bring the kingdoms of the world to
become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

Impostors would never have appealed to their power of working miracles
as the apostles did; nor could enthusiasts have done so without instant
exposure. It is remarkable, that while in addressing those who believed
their divine commission, they rarely allude to it (fourteen of the
epistles make no allusion to apostolic miracles), but dwell on a subject
of far greater importance--a holy life--they never hesitate to confront
a Simon Magus, or a schismatical church at Corinth, or a persecuting
high priest and sanhedrim with this power of the Holy Ghost. "Tongues,"
says Paul, "are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that
believe not;" and this is true of all other miracles. This marks the
difference between real miracles and those of pretenders; who have
never attempted to establish a new religion by them, or to convert
unbelievers hostile to their claims and able to examine them, without
immediate exposure. But you never heard of an impostor standing up
before the tribunal of his judges and alleging the miraculous cure of a
well-known public beggar, lame from his mother's womb, whom they had
seen at the church gate every Sabbath for forty years, and bringing the
man into court after such a fashion as this, "If we this day be examined
of the good deed done unto the impotent man, by what means he is made
whole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that
by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God
raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand before you whole."
Such an appeal was unanswerable. "Beholding the man that was healed
standing with them, they could say nothing against it." Nay, they were
compelled to acknowledge "that indeed a notable miracle hath been done
by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem--we can not deny
it."--Acts iv.

The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention of the
enemy. The scribes, and priests, emperors, and philosophers of the first
centuries, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were
unable to do so. The persecutors and apostates, whose malice against the
Church knew no bounds, never dared to utter a charge of deception
against the apostles. Why, then, you ask, did they not all become
Christians? Because miracles can not convert any man against his will.
Christianity is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of Christ,
and a life of holiness. There are many readers of this book who would
not turn from their sins if all the dead in Spring Grove Cemetery would
rise to-morrow to warn them from hell. God does not intend to force any
man to become a Christian. He just gives evidence enough to try you,
whether you will deal honestly and fairly with your own soul and your
God, and if you are determined to hate Christ and his holy religion, you
shall never want a plausible excuse for unbelief; as it is written,
"Unto them which are disobedient, Christ is a stone of stumbling and a
rock of offense." These ancient enemies of Christ acknowledged the
reality of his miracles, but attributed them to magical power, or the
help of Satan. The Jews said that he had acquired the power of miracles
by learning to pronounce the incommunicable name of God. Modern Infidels
deny all his miracles save the greatest--the turning of men from their
sins. They can not deny that; they can not ascribe it to the power of
Satan or of magic, for they do not believe in either; but they follow as
nearly in the footsteps of their fathers as possible, when they tell us
that multitudes of men, in every age, and in every land, have been
turned from falsehood to truth by the belief of a lie, and from vice to
virtue by the example of an impostor!

6. But the strongest proof of the truth of the facts of the gospel is
the existence, the labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves.
Nobody denies that such men lived, and preached, and were persecuted on
account of their preaching that Jesus died and rose again. Now, if this
was a falsehood, what motive had they to tell it? It was very
displeasing to their rulers who had crucified him, and who had every
inclination to give them the same treatment. To preach another king, one
Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon
them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian
philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could
any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan
priesthood, than to denounce the craft by which they had their wealth,
and to preach that they are no gods which are made by hands. The most
degraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman is not so
contemptible in our eyes, as the crucified malefactor was in the eyes of
the Roman people; nor could anything more disagreeable to the Jewish
nation be invented than the declaration, that the Gentiles should become
partakers of the kingdom of God. What then should induce any man in his
senses to provoke such an opposition to a new religion, and to make it
so contemptible and disagreeable to those whom he sought to convert, if
he were manufacturing a lie to gain power and popularity?

The religion they preached was not adapted to please sensual men, nor to
allow its preachers in sensual gratifications. "Our exhortation," says
Paul--and every reader of the New Testament knows that he says
truth--"Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor of
guile." Infidels admit that they preached a pure morality. But it is a
long time since men learned the proverb, "Physician, heal thyself."
"Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that
sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou
that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" It could not, then,
be to obtain license for lust that these men preached holiness.

There is only one other conceivable motive which should induce men to
confederate together for the propagation of falsehood--the design of
making money by it. But their new religion made no provision for any
such thing. One of their first acts was to desire the church to elect
deacons who might manage its money matters, and allow them to give
themselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Twenty-five
years after that they could appeal to the world that "Even to this
present hour, we" (the Apostles) "both hunger and thirst, and are naked,
and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labor working
with our hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
we are counted as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of all
things to this day." Their book opens with the story of their Master's
birth in a stable, with the manger for his cradle, and one of its last
pictures is that of his venerable apostle chained in a dungeon, and
begging his friend to bring his old cloak from Troas, and to do his
diligence to come before winter.

Unpopular, pure, and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how
could it have had preachers? They at least believed it.

The last and most convincing testimony which any man can give to the
truth of a statement of fact is to suffer rather than deny it. Many have
wondered why God allowed his dear servants to suffer so much persecution
in the first ages of the Church. One principal reason was to give future
ages an irresistible proof of the sincerity and faithfulness of the
witnesses for Christ. The apostles lived lives of persecution and
suffering for the name of Jesus; sufferings which they might have
avoided if they had only abstained from preaching any more in this name.
But, said they, "We can not but speak of the things which we have seen
and heard." One who had no personal acquaintance with Jesus, and whose
first interview with him was while he was breathing out threatening and
slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, is converted and called to
be an apostle; and behold the prospect Jesus presents to him, "I will
show him _how great things he must suffer for my name_." "The Holy Ghost
testifieth," says Paul, "that in every city bonds and afflictions abide
me. Yet none of these things move me." That at least was a true
prophecy. "Seven times," says Clement, "he was in bonds, he was whipt,
he was stoned; he preached both in the East and West, leaving behind him
the glorious report of his faith, and so having taught the whole world
righteousness, and for that end traveled even to the utmost bounds of
the West, he at last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors,
and went to his holy place, having become a most eminent pattern of
patience to all ages."[80] Hear his own appeal to those who envied his
authority in the church, "Are they ministers of Christ, I am more: in
labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more
frequent, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times received I forty
stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned,
thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep:
in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in
perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the
city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among
false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in
hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness."--1 Corinthians ii. 23.

Man can give no higher proof of his veracity, than a life such as this,
unless it is to seal it with his blood; and this crowning testimony to
the truth the apostles gave. Save the aged disciple, who, after torments
worse than death, survived to address the persecuted church as, "Your
companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus
Christ," they all suffered martyrdom for the truth of the gospel
history.

Let me again remind you that the gospel is not a collection of dogmas,
but a relation of facts; that these twelve men did not preach the death
and resurrection of Jesus, because they had read them in a creed, but
because they had seen them with their own eyes; that they lived holy
lives of toil, and hardship, and poverty, and suffering, in preaching
these facts to the world; and that they died painful and shameful deaths
as martyrs for their truth. You admit these things. Then I demand of
you, "What more could either God or man do to convince you of their
truthfulness?"

The faithful and true witness himself has given you this last,
undeniable test of veracity. With the certainty of an ignominious death
before him, he solemnly swears to the truth of this fact, and dies for
it. "And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of
God? Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said. Hereafter ye shall see the
Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds
of heaven."

Unbeliever, are you prepared to meet him there, and prove him a perjured
impostor?


FOOTNOTES:

[80] Wake's Trans. of Clement, Ep. ad Cor. v.




CHAPTER VIII.

PROPHECY.


"In fifty years all Europe will be either Cossack, or Republican." So
prophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspiration
of genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of his
past experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimen
of the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the most
stupendous facts--such as the conversion of an empire--and the commonest
experiences--such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from the
womb of the Rachel of revolution, when history happens to predict the
failure of the self-elected conquering savior. Man learns to believe
whatever he fondly desires, to expect what he believes, and to predict
what he expects. His predictions are the mirrors which photograph his
own moods of mind, rather than views through a telescope directed to the
distant cloud-capped mountains of futurity.

But it is confidently asserted that the science of party politics is
simply the exercise of the gift of prophetic vision on the theater of
civil life; and that a sagacious politician is, within his own sphere, a
prophet. He applies the conditions of the past, so far as he knows them,
to the calculation of the future. His success proves his sagacity, not
his supernatural inspiration. Why should religious predictions be
attributed to a different power?

For the very simple and satisfactory reason, that the great majority of
the calculations of party politicians are failures, while the
predictions of the Bible are verified by the event. Name a dozen leaders
of American politics during the last half century, and you name half a
score of disappointed presidential candidates, whose unfinished
monuments prevent the kindly green sward of oblivion from vailing their
disappointments, and check the prayer of the passing pilgrim that they
may rest in peace; while of the last half dozen who have occupied the
presidential chair, and guided the destinies of the most progressive
half of the world, not a single man had been suggested by the political
leaders even ten years before his election. No wonder politicians become
shy of prediction.

But it is alleged, that while on a field so contracted as to become the
arena of mere personal partialities it is confessedly difficult to
predict the future, on the wider field of the world's great interests,
the well-known uniformity of human passions and interests render their
results calculable to the sagacious statesman.

Thus Draper argues, that nations, like the individuals composing them,
have fixed periods of growth, manhood, decay, decrepitude, and
death--more or less rapid, according to the stock and situation. Those
who accept that dogma argue that all that is necessary in order to
predict the fate of a nation is a correct calculation of its present
age; whether of childhood, manhood, or senility.

It is wonderful how rashly men will risk their reputation for common
sense on the sound of a plausible analogy, which, even were it valid,
would not justify the inference drawn from it. For, suppose that there
were as fixed laws of national as of individual life, can any man
predict the period of the life of any individual, much less his destiny?
May not the life of the nation be as liable to accidents and diseases as
that of the individual?

But the claim has been actually made, that the skillful statesman, or
philosophic observer, is able to foresee, and foretell, even such
accidents. Dean Stanley quotes Mill as suggesting an ordinary sign of
statesmanship in modern times: "To have made predictions often verified
by the event, seldom or never falsified by it."

Others give a still wider range to prophetic inspiration. They tell us
that all genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws,
universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, the
application of which to particular events constitutes prediction. The
Hebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made very
shrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a careful
induction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past.
But there was nothing supernatural in that. Every poet, philosopher, and
statesman is more or less of a prophet. Indeed foresight, like insight,
is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possession
constitutes the prophet. Men of profound insight, or of extensive
foresight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignorance
ascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensive
observation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the same
source the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, of
the Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild,
Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, some
in paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect and
fallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished by the advent of
a master, while occasional less perfect attempts and shrewd guesses keep
the fires of ambition alive in the human breast.

But if this were a correct account of the case we should have our best
prophets as the result of our widest observations of nature and history;
the best should come last. The prophets of this nineteenth century
should be far ahead of Moses in prophetic foresight, standing as they do
on the summit of the observatory built by the experience of forty
centuries. Whereas, as a matter of fact, the world knows nothing about
these modern prophets, or their predictions. The instances alleged by
Rationalists are contemptibly trivial when compared with the Bible
predictions. Contrast, for instance, Cayotte's alleged prediction, that
the fate of Charles would befall Louis XVI., and that the rabble would
fill Paris with anarchy--with Daniel's grand historic outline of the
four great empires; or with our Savior's detailed prediction of the
siege of Jerusalem. Cayotte's guess commanded no respect, even while the
coming event cast its shadow before it; nor did he profess to utter it
in the name of the Great Disposer of all events as the seal and
authentication of a revelation of moral duty to man; and so it was of no
value to those threatened by the calamity. But our Lord's predictions
were so authoritative in their tone, and so definite in their details,
that they enabled his disciples to escape the impending destruction at
that time; and their fulfillment has furnished a decisive proof of his
divine foresight to all generations.

We are told by men who could not read one of Apollo's oracles to save
their lives, nor recite one of Isaiah's prophecies to save their souls,
that Apollo's oracles, no less than Isaiah's, were inspired. Could such
persons be prevailed upon to read carefully any single prophetic book of
Scripture, with the historic facts to which it refers, or even the
briefest abridgment of these facts, such as that contained in The
Comprehensive Commentary, they would not thus expose their ignorance
alike of heathen and Christian oracles.

The differences between them are too numerous to be easily enumerated.
The oracles of the heathen are always sources of gain to their prophets.
The ancient Pythoness must have a hecatomb, the writing medium a dollar,
and the modern Pythoness of the platform a dime. But under the
inspiration of God even a Balaam becomes honest, and the leprosy of
Naaman marks the sordid Gehazi and his seed forever.

The oracles of the heathen are always immoral in their tendency. From
the first spiritual communication through the serpent medium in the tree
of knowledge, down to the last spiritual marriage rapped out by the
oracle, they are all in favor of pride, ambition, lying, lust, and
murder. The oracles of God begin with a prohibition of curiosity, pride,
covetousness, and theft: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die." And they are uniformly of the same tenor, forbidding,
reproving, threatening vice, and encouraging virtue, down to the last:
"Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to
the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; for
without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and
idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

This last mark--falsehood--belongs to all heathen oracles, from the
first utterance by the serpent, down to the last response rapped out by
the medium. Take any one heathen oracle of which we have any definite
account--and the number is very small--and you will find that, if it is
not "as equivocal as Apollo," _it is false_.

For instance, Dean Stanley very confidently refers to certain heathen
oracles, "the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not be
denied without a perversion of all history. Such was the foreshadowing
of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion, by the legend of the
apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood
400 years before its accomplishment." Comparing the prophetic
predictions with such fables, he says: "_It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire."[81]

The oracle thus exalted to a level with the predictions of our Lord and
his apostles is quoted by Censorinus,[82] A. D. 238, from Varro, who
died B. C. 28. Varro stated that he had heard Vettius, no common augur,
of great genius in disputing, a match with any of the most learned, say,
"If it was so, as the historians related, as to the auguries of the
founding of the city of Romulus and the twelve vultures, since the Roman
people had passed 120 years safe, it would reach 1,200."

Dean Stanley misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathen
prophet. He spake no word whatever about _dominion_; all he dared
conjecture for his city was _safety_. Even that is put in a highly
hypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if," regarding the
apocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether the
fable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries of
safety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to the
material city, or to the political constitution then established. The
city then built was burnt by Brennus, the Gaul. Its successor was taken
and plundered by Alaric, in A. D. 410; again by Genseric, and the
Vandals, in 455; and again by the Ostrogoths, in 546. Thus the material
city was repeatedly taken and destroyed during the twelve centuries
succeeding its founding. If the augury referred to the duration of the
political constitution then instituted, every school-boy knows that half
a dozen revolutions falsified the prediction. If, however, it be alleged
that it referred to the ultimate fate of the city of Rome, that it
should cease to exist after twelve centuries, it is self-evidently
false; for now, after the lapse of twenty-six centuries, Rome is larger,
its people more numerous, and its territory wider than it was for
centuries after Romulus saw the twelve vultures. Thus God "frustrateth
the tokens of the liars." Yet men who have read Roman history, and
whose business it is to read their Bibles, continue to cite Vettius
Valens as a prophet, and to compare his false auguries with the
predictions of the Scriptures of truth!

This is only one of a number of such secular predictions confidently
cited by the learned Dean as having been as minute and specific as those
of Scripture, and undeniably fulfilled. But a scholar of his own church
has examined his references and alleged facts, and the result is, that
not a single instance remains of the fulfillment of any definite
prediction given by the original writers; and where the transcriber and
the Dean have helped them out to a more definite prediction, it has
proved a false prophecy, as in the case of Sterling's and Spence's
prediction of the year of the disruption of the Union of the United
States. Dr. Pusey summarizes this discussion in his work on Daniel (p.
637), from which we extract and condense the following paragraphs on
this subject:

"Dean Stanley produces a certain number of alleged predictions in
secular history, as counterparts of the predictions of _the political
events_ of their own, and the surrounding nations," in the Hebrew
prophets, _i. e._ (in religious language), "of God's judgments upon both
for their sins against himself and their fellow-men." He says, "Every
one knows instances, both in ancient and modern times, of predictions
which have been uttered, and fulfilled, in regard to events of this
kind. Sometimes such predictions have been the results of political
foresight. Many instances will occur to students of history. Even within
our own memory the great catastrophe of the disruption of the United
States of America _was foretold, even with the exact date, several years
beforehand_. Sometimes there has been an anticipation of some future
epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as for
example the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or of
Shakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the result
has been produced by the power of divination, granted in some
inexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of the
ancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could
not be denied without a perversion of history. Such was the
foreshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend of
the apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so
understood 400 years before its actual accomplishment. Such, but with
less certainty, was the traditional prediction of the conquest of
Constantinople by the Mussulmans; the alleged predictions by Archbishop
Malachi, whether composed in the eleventh or sixteenth centuries, of the
series of popes down to the present time; not to speak of the well-known
instances which are recorded both in French and English history. But
there are several points which at once place the prophetic predictions
on a different level from any of these. _It is not that they are more
exact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than that
of the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire; and our Lord himself has
excluded the precise knowledge of times and seasons from the widest and
highest range of prophetic vision." (Jewish Church, 463. The Bible: its
Form and Substance, pages 80, 82.)

"It might safely be admitted," says Dr. Pusey, "that the outward
predictions of time and place are of the body, rather than of the soul
of prophecy, yet as indications that he revealed himself, who alone
could know long before what he willed to bring to pass by his
Providence, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets are not to be
paralleled by any human history.

"Definite predictions of the Hebrew prophets have been instanced above.
Dr. Stanley's instances of secular fulfillment are unhappy." He then
proceeds to examine in their turn the political, poetic, Popish,
Mohammedan, and heathen oracles quoted by Dean Stanley.


_I. The Political Predictions._

Sterling, as quoted by Mr. Spence, so far from predicting the great
catastrophe of the disruption of the United States _at the end_ of the
four years, says that no wise man would predict anything even within
those four years. "It appears to me that amid so many elements of
uncertainty as to the future, both from the excited state of men's minds
in the States themselves, and the complication of surrounding
circumstances, no wise man would venture to foretell the probable issue
of American affairs during the next four years." (On the American Union,
page 14.) And this was written amid all the heavings which preceded the
bursting of the volcano. It followed, after statesmen had, one after
another, seen the elements of that disruption. The probability of the
severance of the North and South has been a speculation to which the
older of us have long been familiar. And now [1864] who would venture to
predict the time of the close of that sad war? (First edition.) Now
[1865] that it has come to an end Americans taunt Europeans with their
want of foresight in their anticipations as to its issue. The _Times_
correspondent retorts as to false anticipations of Americans--(1) that
the issue would not interfere with slavery; (2) that there would be
separation without bloodshed; (3) that the war would last only some
ninety days; (4) that the United States would break up into fragments
(Northern); (5) they contemplated that the interests of trade would
suffice for the harmony of North and South when separated, etc., etc.
June 6, 1865. Europeans almost universally anticipated the success of
the South. So little did the human sagacity of men really sagacious,
with intimate knowledge of the strength of the different parties, their
numbers, resources, and all the calculations as to modern warfare,
enable them to anticipate within half a year the result of a war, which,
through the vivid description of it, and clear knowledge, was carried
on almost under their eyes. And these men would have us to suppose that
Hebrew prophets, living in the center of a small people, could, with
mere human knowledge, foretell with absolute certainty the overthrow of
flourishing empires, when at the acme of their power!


_II. The So-called Prophecies of S. Malachi._

These have long been recognized to be a forgery, unmeaning except for
the immediate purpose for which they were "forged by the partisans of
the Cardinal Simoncelli, one of the candidates for the tiara, who was
designated by the words 'de antiquitate orbis,' because he was of
Orvieto, in Latin, 'orbs vetus.'" (Biog. Unv'l v. Wion.) Menestrier
published a refutation of the pretended prophecies of S. Malachi, Paris,
1689, written with much solidity. Don Feijoo also refuted these
pretended prophecies in his _Teatro Critico_. The Noveau Dictionnaire
Historique, by MM. Chaudon and Delaudine, speaks of the "errors and
anachronisms with which this impertinent list swarms." "The
forgetfulness of common sense makes itself felt in a few pages. Those
who have set themselves to explain these too noted insipidities, always
find some allusion, forced or probable, in the country, name, arms,
birth, talents of the popes, the cardinalatory dignities they had borne,
etc.; _e. g._, the prophecy which related to Urban the Eighth was,
_Lilium et Rosę_." It was fulfilled to the very letter, say these absurd
interpreters, for that pope had in his coat of arms bees, which suck
lilies and roses. (Art. Malachi and Wion.)


III. Dr. Pusey proceeds to examine the process by which a prediction of
_the conquest of Constantinople_ has been manufactured for the false
prophet, Mohammed.

"In the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Second," says V. Hammer, "which
was finished A. D. 1469, there stands, to the right of the main door, on
a marble slab, on an azure field, in gold raised characters, the
tradition of the prophet relating to Constantinople. 'They _will
conquer_ Constantinople; and blessed the prince, blessed the army which
shall fulfill this.'" (Constant v. d. Bosporos I. 393.) Or (as he
renders more exactly in Gesch d. Osm. Reich, p. 523), "the best prince
is he who conquers it, and the best army, his army." This tradition,
being above eight centuries after Mohammed, has, of course, no value. It
reappears in a different form in Ockley, the conquest being presupposed,
rather than prophesied. Ockley says (History of Saracens, II. 128),
"Mohammed having said, 'The sins of the first army which takes the city
of the Cęsar are forgiven.'" Ockley referring only vaguely to Bokhari,
who, early in the third century, after Mohammed selected 7,000
traditions which he held to be genuine, out of some 267,000, I applied
to my friend, M. Reinaud, professor of Arabic at Paris, and member of
the Institute, not doubting that with his large knowledge he would be
able to point out to me the passage in the _Sahih_. This, with his
well-known kindness, he has done, amid his many labors. It puts an end
to all questions about prophecy. The passage is this: As Omm Heram has
related to us that she heard the prophet say, "The first army of my
people which shall war by sea will acquire merits with God, Omm Heram
said, 'I said, O Apostle of God, I will be among them.' He said, 'Thou
shalt be among them.' Then the prophet said, 'The first army of my
people which shall attack the city of the Cęsar, their sins shall be
forgiven them.' Then I said, 'I will be with them, O Apostle of God.' He
said, 'No!'" M. Reinaud adds, "There is no question but that Mohammed
conceived the idea of the invasion of the Roman Empire, and of the
kingdom of Persia by his disciples. He himself shortly before his death
tried his strength against the Roman forces in Syria. But the passage
does not say what Ockley makes him say. It does not say that
Constantinople would be taken."

The other prophecy referred to by Von Hammer is as follows: "Have you
heard of a city of which one side is land, the two others sea? They
said, 'Yea, O Apostle of God.' He said, 'The last hour will not come
without its being conquered by 70,000 sons of Isaac. When they come to
it they will not fight against it with weapons and engines of war, but
with the word, There is no god but God, and God is great!' Then will one
side of the sea walls fall; and at the second time the second; and at
the third time the wall on the land side; and they will enter in with
gladness."

The framer of this prophesy expected the walls of Constantinople to fall
like those of Jericho, which he must have had in mind. He expected it to
fall before Arabs, "sons of Isaac," not before Turks. * * * Yet,
contrary to the expectation, and the prophecy, it did fall before the
Turks, after having been seven times besieged by the Arabs, and four
times by the Turks; by whom it was taken A. D. 1453. The framer of the
prediction anticipated that the representatives of the followers of the
prophet would be Arabs to some indefinite period, near the last hour; he
expected a miraculous destruction of Constantinople; it was besieged
seven times by those before whose war-cry he expected it to fall. It did
not fall before those before whom he said it would fall; it fell in an
ordinary way, not in that predicted; it was besieged in the way in which
he said it would not be besieged; lastly, it fell, but its walls fell
not. _Every detail of the prediction is contrary to the fact._ As for
the mere capture, it befalls all great cities in turn; so that a
prediction of the capture of any great city would be the safest of all
prophecies. But the prediction did not anticipate, what is now certain,
that as soon as Christian jealousies permit, before the end of the
world, it will be wrested from its captors.


IV. The legend of Romulus and the vultures, and the falsehood of the
prediction based upon it, have been exposed on a previous page.


V. In regard to Seneca's alleged prediction of the discovery of America,
it was exceedingly vague; and was wholly based on the undoubted
knowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato,
Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, and
Plutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake the search
for it. Nothing could be more certain than that such a continent would
be rediscovered. But in the only indication which Seneca gives us of its
location he erred; for Thule is still the utmost land northward, no new
continent having been discovered, nor remaining to be discovered, toward
the North Pole.


VI. As to the heathen oracles we have already spoken enough.


VII. "The anticipation of Shakespeare by Plato amounts to this, that he
makes Socrates compel his friends to admit, 'that it belongs to the same
man, how to compose comedy and tragedy, and that he who is by skill a
composer of tragedies is also a composer of comedies.' (Sympos fin.)
* * * But it is mere confusion to speak of this as _anticipation_. Plato
does not say that there would be any greater combination of the two
talents than there had been; he does not even say that the highest
excellence in one involved excellence in the other; he simply says that
the two faculties belonged to the same mind. According to his maxims, if
true, it would be rather marvelous that they were not more frequently
combined than that they were remarkably in one mind."


VIII. "Those best read in Dante are at a loss to find in him any trace
of a prediction of the Reformation. Dante, with his firm faith in all
Roman doctrine, could not have imagined or anticipated such a disruption
as Luther's. Dean Stanley corrects an unimportant misprint or two in the
second edition of his book, on the ground of the above statements. He
does not even attempt to supply a passage from Dante. I have looked for
one in vain."

Yet such a collection of errors, absurdities, falsehoods, and impostures
is gravely presented, in this nineteenth century, by a learned
clergyman, as comparable in regard to exact fulfillment with the oracles
of God.

It is not intended here to discuss the question of the continuance of
prophetic powers in the Church. If, as many believe, the promise in Joel
ii. 28--"It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy," etc.--is a promise not yet
exhausted, predictions given by the Holy Spirit may have been given
through Christians in former times, and may still be given. But if such
be the fact, these are not secular predictions; but spiritual and
supernatural, and of the same class with those of Scripture; they are
therefore not to be cited by Rationalists as examples of secular
prediction.

But it is objected that "the prophecies of Scripture are as obscure as
the oracles; are all wrapped up in symbolical language; that many of
them have a double meaning; that no two interpreters are agreed as to
the meaning of the unfulfilled predictions; and that no man can
certainly foretell any future event by means of them."

The objection proceeds on a total mistake of the nature and design of
prophecy, which is not to unvail the future for the gratification of
your curiosity, but to give you direction in your present duty;
precisely the reverse of the oracles referred to, which proposed to tell
their votaries what should happen, but rarely condescended to direct
them how to behave themselves so that things might happen well. The
larger part of the prophecies of Scripture is taken up with directions
to men how to regulate their conduct, rather than with information how
God means to regulate his. There is just as much of the latter as is
sufficient to show us that the God who gave the Bible governs the world,
and even that always urges the same moral lesson: "Say ye to the
righteous that it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit of
his doings." "Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, for the
reward of his hands shall be given him." Whenever a vision relates to
what God will do in the distant future, it is dark and mysterious; but
whenever any directions are given necessary for our immediate duty, then
the "vision is written and made plain on tables, _that he may run that
readeth it_." The possessors of a clearly engrossed title-deed have
surely no reason to complain that the president has chosen that his seal
appended to it shall consist of a device, which, by reason of its being
hard to read, and harder to imitate, secures both himself and them
against forgery. The double meaning of some prophecies is a double
check. So far from resembling the equivocations of heathen oracles, by
taking either of two opposite events for a fulfillment, they require
both of two corresponding ones; and some prophecies, like a master key,
open several successive events, and thus show that the same mind planned
both locks and key. When the prediction is fulfilled all mystery
vanishes, and men see plainly that thus it was written; that is to say,
men who look; for the man who will not open his eyes will never see
anything that it concerns him to know. But the man who thinks that it
concerns him so much to know what God will do with the world a hundred
years after he is dead, that unless the prophecies of the Bible are all
made plain to him, he will neither read God's word, nor obey his law,
may go on his own way. We expound no mysteries to such persons; for it
is written, "None of the wicked shall understand."

As to the objection taken from the symbolical language of prophecy, and
which seems to a number of our modern critics so weighty that they
remove to the purely mythologic ground everything "couched in symbolical
language," and account nothing to be prediction unless "literal history
written in advance"--I would merely ask, How is it possible to reveal
heavenly things to earth-born men but by earthly figures? Do you know a
single word in your own, or any other language to express a spiritual
state, or mental operation, that is not the name of some material state,
or physical operation, used symbolically? Heart, soul, spirit, idea,
memory, imagination, inclination, etc., every one of them a figure of
speech--a symbol. Nay, is there a letter in your own, or in any other
alphabet, that was not originally a picture of something? I demand to
know in what way God or man could teach you to know anything you have
never seen, but by either showing you a picture of it, or telling you
what it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the only
possible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to our
minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given
literally, in the style of history written in advance, he simply
requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather
clear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics of
symbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advance
would be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions of
Nineveh. Just imagine to yourself Alexander the Great reading Guizot,
instead of Daniel; or Hildreth, as being less mysterious than Ezekiel;
and meeting, for instance, such a record as this: "In the year of
Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed
California." "In the year of Christ--what new Olympiad may be that?" he
would say. "The United States of course means the States of the Achęn
League, but on what shore of the Euxine may Mexico and California be
found?" What information could Aristotle gather from the record that,
"In 1857, the Transatlantic Telegraph was in operation?" Could all the
augurs in the seven-hilled city have expounded to Julius Cęsar the
famous dispatch, if intercepted in prophetic vision, "Sebastopol was
evacuated last night, after enduring for three days an infernal fire of
shot and shell?" Nay, to diminish the vista to even two or three
centuries, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole Westminster
Assembly, have made of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper
paragraph of history written in advance, to inform them that, "Three
companies of dragoons came down last night from Berwick to Southampton,
by a special train, traveling 54-1/2 miles an hour, including stoppages,
and embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon, in
the face of a full gale from the S. W.?" Why, the intelligible part of
this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the
unintelligible part more absurd, than all the mysterious symbols of the
Apocalypse.

The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it is
too late in the day for our reformers to propose new laws of thought,
and forms of speech, to the human race. David's prophetic lyrics,
Christ's graphic parables, Isaiah's celestial anthems, Ezekiel's
glorious symbols, and Solomon's terse proverbs, will be recited and
admired, ages after the foggy abstractions of mystified metaphysicians
have vanished from the earth. The Thirst of Passion, the Cup of
Pleasure, the Fountain of the Water of Life, the Blood of Murder, the
Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance of
Righteousness, the Sword of Justice, the Wheels of Providence, the
Conservative Mountains, the Raging Seas of Anarchy, and the Golden,
Brazen, and Iron Ages, will reflect their images in truth's mirror, and
photograph their lessons on memory's tablet, while the mists of the
"positive philosophy," "the absolute," and "the conditioned," float past
unheeded, to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the
glorious embodiments of living truths, while man's philosophic
abstractions are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense.

The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly
intelligible _after_ the fulfillment, as we shall presently see;
sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had
they been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they must
have interfered with man's free agency, by causing their own
fulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel his
ignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rules
futurity.

The revelation of future events, however, is not the principal design of
the prophecies of the Bible; they bear witness to God's powerful present
influence over the world now. For God's prophecy is not merely his
foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time,
but over which he has no control--as an astronomer foretells an eclipse
of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is his
revealing of a part of his plan of this world's affairs, to show that
God, and not man, is the sovereign of this world. For this purpose he
tells beforehand the actions which wicked men, of their own free will,
will commit, contrary to his law, and the measures he will take to
thwart their designs, and fulfill his own. Nay, he declares he will so
manage matters that, without their knowledge, and even contrary to their
intentions, heathen armies, and infidel scoffers shall serve his
purposes, and show his power; while yet they are as perfectly voluntary
in all their movements as if they, and not God, governed the world.
Every fulfilled prophecy thus becomes an instance and evidence of a
supernatural government; and is, to a thinking mind, a greater miracle
than casting mountains into the sea. The style of prophecy corresponds
to this design. It is not by any means apologetic, or supplicating;
but, on the contrary, majestic, convincing, and terrifying to the
ungodly.

     "_Remember this and show yourselves men.
     Bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.
     For I am God, and there is none else.
     I am God, and there is none like me.
     Declaring the end from the beginning,
     And from, ancient times the things that are not yet done,
     Saying_, 'MY COUNSEL SHALL STAND, AND I WILL DO ALL MY PLEASURE.'"[83]

Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in his word; and
are driven to every possible denial of the fact, and evasion of the
argument drawn from it. They feel instinctively that Bible prophecies
are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human
being on earth with the power of predicting the future than allow the
God of heaven that power of ruling the present which these prophecies
assert. Hence the attempt to admit their predictive truth, and yet deny
their divine authority, by ascribing them to human sagacity.

Transatlantic steam navigation has produced a remarkable change in the
tone of Infidel writers and speakers in regard to the prophecies of the
Bible. You could not converse long with an Infidel on this subject, a
few years ago, until he would assure you, with all confidence, that the
prophecies were all written after their fulfillment, and so were not
prophecies at all. But now that travelers of all classes, scoffers,
sailors, and doctors in divinity, scientific expeditions, and
correspondents of daily papers, have flooded the world with undeniable
attestations that many of them are receiving their fulfillment at this
day, none but the most grossly ignorant and stupid attempt to deny that
the prophecies of the Bible were written thousands of years since, and
that many of them have since been accomplished; and that so many have
been fulfilled that their accomplishment can not be ascribed to chance.
But the force of the argument for the divine inspiration of the prophets
is met by the assertion, that there is nothing supernatural in prophecy,
and that it is only one form of the inspiration of genius applying the
general laws of nature.

Calculating securely on that profound ignorance of the Bible which
characterizes their followers, modern writers inform them that "none of
the prophets ever uttered any distinct, definite, unambiguous prediction
of any future event which has since taken place, which a man without a
miracle could not equally well predict." It is alleged that the
prophecies, in predicting the overthrow of the nations of antiquity,
predicted nothing beyond the ken of human sagacity, enlightened by a
careful study of the experience of the past, and the invariable laws of
nature; that it requires no inspiration to foretell the decay of
perishing things; that the invariable progress of all things, empires as
well as individuals, is first upward, through a period of youthful vigor
and energy, then onward through a period of ripe maturity, and then
downward, through a gradual decay, and final dissolution, to the
inevitable grave. The world's history is but a history of the decline
and fall of nations.

1. Now, if this be true, it is an awful truth for the Infidel, for _it
sweeps away the last vestige of a foundation of his hope for eternity_.
The only reason any unbeliever in Revelation could ever give, or that
modern Rationalists do give, for their hope of a happy eternity, is the
analogy of nature--the alleged constant progress of all things toward
perfection in this world. It is an awkward truth that individually we
must die, and the worms crawl over us; but then the wretched fate of the
individual was to be compensated by the glorious progress of the race
onward and ever onward and upward; from the fungus to the frog, and from
the frog to the monkey, from the monkey to the man, from the noble
savage wild in woods, to the pastoral tribe, thence to the empire and
the federal republic, and finally to the reign of individual and
passional attraction, and union with the sum of all the intelligences of
the universe, through a constant progress toward infinite perfection.

But, alas! it seems it was a false analogy, an ill-observed fact, a
delusion; the course of nature is all the other way. The tendency of all
perishing things is not to perfection, but to perdition; and it needs no
inspiration to tell that man's loftiest towers, and strongest cities,
and proudest empires will come to ruin; or that the most polished,
powerful, and populous nations of antiquity will dwindle down into
Turks, Moors, and Egyptians. Here is a fact of awful omen. Death reigns
in this world of ours; death moral, social, political, and physical, has
ever trampled upon man, proud man, learned man, civilized man, over all
the plans of man, over every man, and over every association of men,
even the largest, the widest, the mightiest. And now the Infidel, having
taken away our hope of help from heaven, comes with the serpent's hiss,
and fiendish sneer, to taunt the perishing world with this miserable
truism--that the tendency of everything on earth is to perdition, and
that it needs no inspiration to tell it. Truly it does not. Were that
all the prophets of God had to tell us--as it is all the prophets of
Infidelity can prophecy--we had as little need for the one as for the
other. Earthquake and hurricane, volcano and valley flood, autumn frosts
and winter blasts, fever, consumption, war, and pestilence, the
grave-yard and the charnel-house, the Parthenon and the Pyramids, the
silent cities of Colorado, and the buried palaces of Assyria, unite to
attest this awful doom.

But what reason has the skeptic to believe that this invariable law of
nature shall ever be repealed, and this inevitable progress of all
things to perdition be arrested? Why may not men be as selfish, and
filthy, and grasping, and murderous in the other world, as they are in
this? Why may not the course of nature be as fatal to the sinner's
prosperity there as it is here? Why may not the progress of the proud
empires and spheres of futurity be such as the skeptic declares the
progress of the past to have been, so invariably toward dissolution and
death, that it shall need no inspiration to predict its course downward,
downward, ever downward, to endless perdition? Stand forward, skeptic,
and point the world to an instance in which an ungodly nation has
stemmed this all-destroying torrent of ruin; or acknowledge that all you
can promise the nations of the world to come, from your experience of
the invariable laws of nature, is _perdition, endless perdition_.

2. It is manifest, however, that this destruction of nations and
desolation of empires must have had a beginning some time or other.
Nations could not perish before they had grown, nor empires be destroyed
till they had accumulated; and during all this period of their growth
and vigor the experience of mankind would never lead them to predict
their ruin. The sagacious observer, beholding Babylon, Nineveh,
Damascus, and Tyre, growing and flourishing during a period of a
thousand years past, could have had no reason from such an experience to
expect anything else than a thousand years of prosperity to come.
Especially impossible is it for human sagacity, enlightened by
experience, to predict _unexampled_ desolations, destructions such as
the world had never witnessed.

_Now the predictions of the Bible are predictions of unexampled
desolations, and unparalleled ruin of empires._ The desolation of any
extensive region of the earth, or the overthrow of any great nation, was
an event absolutely unknown to the world when the prophets of the Bible
began to utter their predictions; unless the skeptic will allow the
truth of the Bible record of the prediction and execution of the
deluge, and the destruction of Sodom. War and conquest had indeed caused
some provinces to change masters; one nation had made marauding
invasions on others, and carried off cattle and slaves; but the result
of the greatest military operation of which we have any record, at the
commencement of the prophetic era--the conquest of Palestine by the
Israelites--so far from desolating the region, or exterminating the
people, had been merely to increase its productiveness, and to drive its
former occupants to new settlements, where at that era they were fully
able to cope with their former conquerors. Whatever the experience of
thirty centuries may have since taught the nations concerning the
certainty of the connection between national crime and national ruin, a
long-suffering God had not then given any such signal examples of it, as
those of which he gave warning by the prophets.

The course of the nations and cities founded after the deluge had been
regularly onward and prosperous, and they were just rising to the
maturity of their power and splendor when Jonah, Micah, Hosea, and
Isaiah, began to pronounce their sentences. They denounced desolation
and solitude against nations more populous than this continent, one of
whose cities enumerated more citizens than some of our proud
commonwealths, and displayed buildings, a sight of whose crumbling ruins
is deemed sufficient recompense for the perils of a journey of six
thousand miles. The hundred churches of Cincinnati could all have been
conveniently arranged in the basement of the temple of Belus; on the
first floor our hundred thousand non-church-going citizens might have
assembled to listen to a lecture on spiritualism from some eloquent
Chaldean soothsayer; and the remaining seven stories would have still
been open for the accommodation of the natives of the original Queen
City. Every product of earth was trafficked in the markets of Tyre; a
single Jewish house imported annually more gold than all the banks of
this continent possess; and the whole coinage of the United States since
1793 would want a hundred millions of dollars of the value of the golden
furniture of a single temple in Babylon. In fact, in the suburbs of
Babylon or Nineveh, Washington or Cincinnati would have been
insignificant villages; and the stone-fronted brick palaces of Broadway
and the Fifth Avenue would make passable stables and haylofts for the
mansions of Thebes or Petra.

So far, therefore, from being the teaching of experience, there was
nothing more utterly unexampled and unparalleled than the complete
desolation of any nation at the time the prophets of Israel predicted
such things. If the world has grown wiser since regarding the decline
and fall of empires, it has gathered the best part of its sagacity from
the prophecies.

The degradation of the seed of Ham, and the colonization of Asia by the
descendants of Japhet, were however undeniably predicted by Noah long
before any examples or experiences of such things had occurred.
Centuries after the degradation of Canaan had been predicted, his
descendants were powerful, prosperous, and colonizing the shores of the
world. But God foresaw, and compelled their ancestor to foretell, the
corruption of the blood which would reduce his descendants to be
servants of servants to their brethren; and now the ruins of their
cities, and of the people descended from Canaan, are proverbial alike in
the libraries and slave markets of the world.

But on the other hand, the colonization of the world by the descendants
of Japhet was as particularly predicted by Noah as the degradation of
the Canaanites; and this can not be called a prediction of destruction,
but rather of great prosperity: "God shall enlarge Japhet." Every
emigrant ship which discharges its cargo at New York, and every new
prairie farm in America, and every sheep ranch in Australia, and every
new cattle kraal in South Africa fulfills the prediction: "He shall
dwell in the tents of Shem." The various Greek, Roman, English, and
Russian Empires of Asia attest the truth. From the Volga to the Amour,
and from Hong Kong to Singapore, and from the Ganges to the Indus,
Japhet to-day dwells in the tents of Shem.

3. The prophecies of the Bible are not vague general denunciations of
natural decline and extinction to all the nations of the world, which,
if they were merely the exposition of a universal _natural_ law of
national death, they would be; nor yet the application of any such
natural and inevitable law to some particular nation, denouncing its
destruction, without any specification of time, manner, instrument, or
cause of its infliction. They are all the applications of _moral
law_--sentences pronounced on account of national wickedness. In every
case the prophecy charges the crimes, and specifies the punishment,
selected by the Judge of all the earth. The nations selected as examples
of divine justice are as various as their sentences are different;
covering a space as long as from Eastport to San Francisco, and climes
as various as those between Canada and Cuba; peopled by men of every
shade of color and degree of capacity, from the negro servant of
servants, to the builders of the Coliseum, and the Pyramids. They
minutely describe, in their own expressive symbols, the nations yet
unfounded, and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgments
of the Lord. They predict the futures of over thirty States, _no two of
which are alike_; each prediction embracing a large number of minute
particulars, any one of which was utterly beyond the range of human
sagacity. To predict that a man will die may require no great sagacity;
but to tell the year of his death, that he will die as a criminal,
allege the crime for which he will be sentenced, the time, place, and
manner of his execution, and the name of the sheriff who will execute
the sentence, is plainly beyond the skill of man. Such is the character
of Bible predictions. Zedekiah's sentence was thus pronounced; and thus,
too, the sentences of nations doomed to ruin for their crimes are
recorded in the Bible, that men may know that the mouth of the Lord hath
spoken them. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York
should be overturned, and become a little fishing village, and that her
stones and timber, and her very dust, should be scraped off and thrown
into the East River; that Philadelphia should become a swamp, and never
be inhabited, from generation to generation; that Columbus should be
deserted, and become a hog-pen; that Louisville should become a dry,
barren desert; and New Orleans be utterly consumed with fire, and never
be built again; that learning should depart from Boston, and no
travelers ever pass through it any more; that New England should become
the basest of the nations, and no native American ever be President of
the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savage
tribes; and that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for a
thousand years; but that God would preserve Pittsburg in the midst of
destruction--and if all these things should come to pass, would any man
dare to deny that the prophet spake not the dictates of human sagacity,
or the calculations of genius, but the words of God?

To attempt to illustrate the divine wisdom displayed in a system of
connected predictions, covering the destiny of the nations of the world,
and extending from the dawn of history to the end of time, by presenting
two or three instances of the fulfillment of specific predictions, would
be something like exhibiting a fragment of a column as a monument of the
skill of the architect of a temple; yet, as such a fragment may excite
the curiosity of the traveler to visit the structure whence it was
taken, I shall present two or three prophecies in which specific
predictions are given, concerning the _geographical, political, social,
and religious condition_ of three of the great nations of
antiquity--_Egypt, Judea, and Babylon_--the fulfillment of which is
spread over the surface of empires and the ruins of cities, patent to
all travelers at the present hour, and abundantly attested in many
volumes.[84]

Could human sagacity have calculated that Egypt--the most defensible
country in the world, bounded on the south by inaccessible mountains, on
the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless, burning desert;
able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to
drown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile; which
had not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests for
a thousand years past, whose victorious king, Apries, had just sent an
expedition against Cyprus, besieged and taken Gaza and Sidon, vanquished
the Tyrians by sea, mastered Phoenicia and Palestine, and boasted that
not even a god could deprive him of his possessions--Egypt, which had
given arts, sciences, and idolatry to half the world, and which had not
risen to the full height of its world-wide fame, or the extent of its
influence for twenty-five years after the prediction[85]--that Egypt
should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, become a prey to strangers and
evermore to strangers, never have a native prince, sink into barbarism,
renounce idolatry, and become famous for her desolations? Yet the Bible
predictions are specific on all these matters: "_I will make the rivers
dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the
land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the
Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the
idols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph; and there shall
be no more a prince of the land of Egypt._"[86]

Let Infidels read the fulfillment of these predictions, as described by
Infidels: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries
ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields
successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the
Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartars
distinguished by the name of the Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased
as slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and
selected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event,
their continuance is not less extraordinary; they are replaced by slaves
brought from their original country."[87] Says Gibbon: "A more unjust
and absurd constitution can not be devised than that which condemns the
natives of the country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary
dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt
about five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite
and Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar and
Circassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs, have
ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."[88]
Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by the
Turks, and the present ruler (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It is
needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the
nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images
to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's
travel forty dry water-courses will be crossed in the Delta; and
water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were
blockaded by Greek and Roman navies.

"_It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself
any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no
more bear rule over the nations._"[89] Every traveler will attest the
truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor
for any who will pay them five cents a day, and eager to hide the
treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. I have seen
British horses refuse to eat the meal ground from the mixture of wheat,
barley, oats, lentiles, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and
collections of filth, which forms the produce of their fields. For
poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial. Let us hear a
scoffer's testimony, however: "In Egypt there is no middle class,
neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor landholders. A universal air of
misery in all the traveler meets points out to him the rapacity of
oppression, and the distrust attendant upon slavery. The profound
ignorance of the inhabitants equally prevents them from perceiving the
causes of their evils, or applying the necessary remedies. Ignorance,
diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of
moral and physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine
troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, and bastinadoes."[90]

The objector perhaps will allege in extenuation the modern improvements
now in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on the
Nile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar and cotton
plantations.

But if these were as evident tokens of progress in Egypt, as they would
be in America, they would not in the least invalidate the facts of the
past degradation of Egypt for centuries. But these speculations of the
Khedive are of no advantage to the people; rather, on the contrary, do
they afford him additional opportunities of exacting forced labor from
the miserable peasants. I have seen the population of several villages,
forced to leave their own fields in the spring, to march down to an old,
filthy canal, near Cairo, and almost within sight of the gate of the
palace, men, and women, and little boys, and girls, like those of our
Sabbath-schools, scooping up the stinking mud and water with their
hands, into baskets, carrying them on their heads up the steep bank,
beaten with long sticks by the taskmasters to hasten their steps; while
steam dredges lay unused within sight. Egypt is still the basest of the
nations.

Here, then, we have conclusive proof of the fulfillment at this day of
four distinct, specific, and improbable Bible predictions: concerning
the country, the rulers, the religion, and the people of Egypt.

Let us note now a distinct and totally different judgment pronounced
against the transgressors of another land. Pre-eminent in inflicting
destruction on others, her retribution was to be extreme. Degradation
and slavery were to be the portion of the learned Egyptians, but utter
extinction is the doom of mighty Babylon. It is written in the Bible
concerning the land where the farmer was accustomed to reap two
hundred-fold: "_Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth
the sickle in the time of harvest. * * * Every purpose of the Lord shall
be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation
without an inhabitant. * * * Behold the hindermost of the nations shall
be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. * * * Because of the wrath of
the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly
desolate._"[91]

Proofs in abundance of the fulfillment of these predictions present
themselves in every volume of travels in Assyria and Chaldea. "Those
splendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain of two
and three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country,
afford a remarkable proof of the _singular desolation_ to which it has
been subjected. The canals at present can only be traced by their
decayed banks. The soil of this desert consists of a hard clay, mixed
with mud, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays, that I
found it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort."[92] "That
it was at some former period in a far different state is evident from
the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected;
and the quantity of heaps of earth, covered with fragments of brick and
broken tiles, which are seen in every direction--the indisputable traces
of former cultivation."[93] "The abundance of the country has vanished
as clean away as if the besom of desolation had swept it from north to
south; the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the farthest
stretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. _Not a habitable spot
appears for countless miles._"[94]

As the desolation of the country was to be extraordinary, so the
desolation of the city of Babylon was to be remarkable. When the prophet
wrote, its walls had been raised to the height of three hundred and
fifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon them
abreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampled
under foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to the
nod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would allowed to
live. Twenty years' provisions were collected within its walls, and the
world would not believe that an enemy could enter its gates.
Nevertheless, the prophets of God pronounced against it a doom of
destruction as extraordinary as the pride and wickedness which procured
it. Tyre, the London of Asia, was to _become a place for the spreading
of nets_,[95] and the Infidel Volney tells us its commerce had declined
to _a trifling fishery_; but even that implies some few resident
inhabitants. Rabbah, of Ammon, was to become _a stable for camels and a
couching place for flocks_.[96] Lord Lindsay reports that "he could not
sleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep, that the dung of
camels covers the ruins of its palaces, and that the only building left
entire in its Acropolis is used as a sheepfold."[97] Yet sheepfolds
imply that the tents of their Arab owners are near, and that some human
beings would occasionally reside near its ruins. But desolation,
solitude, and utter abandonment to the wild beasts of the desert is the
specific and clearly predicted doom of the world's proud capital. The
most expressive symbols are selected from the desert to portray its
desertion.

"_Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees'
excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall
never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to
generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall
the shepherds make their fold there: but wild beasts of the desert shall
lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls
shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of
the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their
pleasant palaces._"[98]

Every traveler attests the fulfillment of this strange prediction. "It
is a tenantless and desolate metropolis," says Mignon; who, though
fully armed, and attended by six Arabs, could not induce them by any
reward to pass the night among its ruins, from the apprehension of evil
spirits. So completely fulfilled is the prophecy, "_The Arabian shall
not pitch his tent there._" The same voice which called camels and
flocks to the palaces of Rabbah, summoned a very different class of
tenants for the palaces of Babylon. Rabbah was to be a sheepfold,
Babylon a menagerie of wild beasts; a very specific difference, and very
improbable. One of the later Persian kings, however, after it was
destroyed and deserted, repaired its walls, converted it into a vast
hunting-ground, and stocked it with all manner of wild beasts; and to
this day the apes of the Spice Islands, and the lions of the African
deserts, meet in its palaces, and howl their testimony to the truth of
God's Word. Sir R. K. Porter saw two majestic lions in the Mujelibe (the
ruins of the palace), and Fraser thus describes the chambers of fallen
Babylon: "There were dens of wild beasts in various places, and Mr. Rich
perceived in some a strong smell, like that of a lion. Bones of sheep
and other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and
owls."

Various destructions were predicted for Babylon. "_I will make it a
habitation for the bittern, and pools of water_,"[99] says one prophecy.
"_Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness_,"[100] says
another. How can such contradictions be true? says the scoffer.

But the scoffer's contradiction is a fact. God can cause the most
discordant agencies to agree in effecting his purpose. Babylon is
alternately an overflowed swamp, from the inundations of the obstructed
Euphrates, and an arid desert, under the scorching rays of an Eastern
sun. Says Mignon: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various
places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates great part
of this place is little better than a swamp." At another season it was
"a dry waste and burning plain." Even at the same period, "one part on
the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert."[101]

Another, and widely different agent, to be employed in the destruction
of the great center of tyranny and idolatry, is thus specifically and
definitely indicated in the prediction: "_Behold, I am against thee, O
destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: and
I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks,
and will make thee a burnt mountain. And they shall not take of thee a
stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt be
desolate forever, saith the Lord._"[102]

"There is one fact," says Fraser, "in connection with the most
remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod), which we can not dismiss
without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the
Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work scattered on
the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still
standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the
ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is
evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of
the masses. Yet how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could
have been applied at such a height from the ground is unaccountable.
They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and
must have fallen from some much more lofty position, for the structure
which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to
have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally can
not have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to
produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation
would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on.
Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful action
of electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed,
fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the
courses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standing
pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almost
impossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous in
texture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, they
require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same
machinery as is used to dress the hardest pebbles."[103]

The doom of Nineveh, the great rival and predecessor of Babylon, was
also predicted as the result of two apparently contradictory
agencies--an overrunning flood and a consuming fire. But both these
antagonistic elements conspired to devour her. The river, with an
overrunning flood, swept away a large portion of the walls. The
besiegers entered through the breach, and set the city on fire. The
charcoal, burnt beans, and slabs of half-calcined alabaster, in the
British Museum, demonstrate the fulfillment of the prediction.

Egypt was to be reduced to slavery and degradation. Babylonia to utter
barrenness and desolation; but a different and still more incredible
doom is pronounced in the Bible upon Judea and its people. The land was
to be emptied of its people, and remain uncultivated, retaining all its
former fertility, while the people were to be scattered over all the
earth, yet never to lose their distinct nationality, nor be amalgamated
with their neighbors: "_I will make your cities waste, and bring your
sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savor of your
sweet odors. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your
enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will
scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and
your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land
enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your
enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her
Sabbaths._"[104] "_Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and
the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord
have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst
of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and
shall be eaten: as a teil-tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in
them, when they cast their leaves._"[105] "_The generation to come, of
your children that shall rise up after you, and the stranger that shall
come from a far land, shall say, * * * Wherefore hath the Lord done thus
unto this land? What meaneth the heat of this great anger?_"[106]

It is superfluous to adduce proof of the undeniable and acknowledged
fulfillment of these predictions, but as an example of the way in which
God causes scoffers to fulfill the prophecies, let us again hear Volney:
"I journeyed in the empire of the Ottomans, and traversed the provinces
which were formerly the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria. I enumerated the
kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria,
said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred
flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What
has become of so many productions of the hand of man? What has become of
those ages of abundance and of life? _Great God! from whence proceed
such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these
countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed?_ Why
is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated? A mysterious
God exercises his incomprehensible judgments. He has doubtless
pronounced a secret malediction against the earth. He has struck with a
curse the present race of men in revenge of past generations."[107] The
malediction is no secret to any who will read the twenty ninth chapter
of Deuteronomy; nor is the avenging of the quarrel of God's covenant
confined to the sins of past generations. The philosopher who would
understand the fates of cities and empires should read the prophecies.

The Word of God specifies no less distinctly and definitely the destiny
of the Jewish than of the Babylonian capital, but fixes on a widely
different kind of destruction. Babylon was never to be built again, but
devoted to solitude; busy Tyre to become a place for spreading nets; the
caravans, which once brought the wealth of India through Petra, were to
cease, and the doom was to "cut off him that passeth by and him that
returneth." But Jerusalem, it was predicted, should long feel the
miseries of a multitude of oppressors, should never enjoy the luxury of
a solitary woe, but "_be trodden down of the Gentiles_."[108] Saracens,
Tartars, Turks, and Crusaders, Gentiles from every nation of the earth,
fulfilled the prediction of old, even as hosts of pilgrims from all
parts of the earth do at this day.

So minute and specific are the predictions of Scripture, that the fate
of particular buildings is accurately defined. One temple to the living
God, and only one, raised its walls in this world, which he had made for
his worship. Its frequenters perverted it from its proper use of leading
them to confess their sinfulness, to seek pardon through the promised
Savior to whom its ceremonies pointed, and to learn to be holy, as the
God of that temple was holy. They hoped that the holiness of the place
would screen them in the indulgence of pride, formality, and wickedness.
The temple of the Lord, instead of the Lord of the temple, was the
object of their veneration. But the doom went forth. "_Therefore for
your sakes shall Zion be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become
as heaps, and the mountain of the house like the high places of the
forest._" History has preserved, and the Jews to this day curse the name
of the soldier, Terentius Rufus, who plowed up the foundations of the
temple. It long continued in this state. But the Emperor Julian the
Apostate conceived the idea of falsifying the prediction of Jesus,
"_Behold your house is left unto you desolate_,"[109] and sent his
friend Alypius, with a Roman army, and abundant treasure, to rebuild it.
The Jews flocked from all parts to assist in the work. Spades and
pickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and the
rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. But they were
obliged to desist from the attempt, for "horrible balls of fire breaking
out from the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place
inaccessible to the scorched workmen, and the element driving them to a
distance from time to time, the enterprise was dropped."[110] Such is
the testimony of a heathen, confirmed by Jews and Christians. The
inclosures of the mosque of Omar, forbidding them all access to the spot
on which it stood, leave it desolate to the Jews to this day. I have
seen them (in 1872) kissing a few large stones, supposed to belong to
its foundations or sub-structures, from the outside; for which miserable
privilege they were obliged to pay their oppressors. On approaching the
spot from the Zion gate, right across Mount Zion to the temple ruins,
our way lay through a plowed field of young barley, and gardens of
cauliflowers hedged with enormous rows of cactus. To this day Zion is
plowed as a field.

4. No sane man can believe that such minute and accurate predictions of
various and improbable events could be the result of human calculations;
yet there is another feature of the Bible prophesies still farther
removed beyond the reach of human sagacity, and that is, remarkable and
unaccountable _preservation amidst the general ruin_. If, as skeptics
allege, destruction is the natural and inevitable doom, then
preservation is supernatural and miraculous--a miracle of divine power
controlling nature; and its prediction is a miracle of divine wisdom.
Now the prophecies of the Bible contain several very definite, and
widely different predictions of the preservation of people and cities
from the general destruction. We shall refer in this case also to those
of whose fulfillment there can be no manner of doubt, for the facts are
palpable and undeniable at the present day.

The prediction of the character and fate of the Arabs stands out a
remarkable contrast to the predictions of the destruction of the
surrounding nations. Of their ancestor, Ishmael, it was predicted: "He
will be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man's
hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his
brethren."[111] The nomad and warlike habits of the sons of Ishmael are
here distinctly predicted; and the singular anomaly which exempts them
alone, of all the people of the earth, from the law, "They that take the
sword, shall perish by the sword." The unconquered Arab laughs alike at
the Persian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and French invaders of his deserts,
levies tribute on all who enter his territory, and dwells to-day, a free
man, in the presence of all his brethren, as God foretold.

Of the Israelitish nation God predicted, that it should be a peculiar,
distinct people, separate from the other nations of the world: "_Lo, the
people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the
nations._"[112] In apparent contradiction to this separation, he further
threatened to punish them for their sins, by dispersing them over the
world: "_I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword
after you._"[113] "_For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of
Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall
not the last grain fall upon the earth._"[114] It was further
threatened, as if to make sure of their national destruction: "_And
among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of
thy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a trembling
heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang
in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shall have
none assurance of thy life._"[115] Contrary to all appearances, and in
spite of all this dispersion and persecution, it is predicted that
Israel shall still exist as a nation, and be restored to the favor of
God, and that prosperity which ever accompanies it: "_And yet for all
that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them
away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break
my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God._"[116]

Here are four distinct predictions, of national peculiarity, universal
dispersion, grievous oppression, and remarkable preservation. The
fulfillment is obvious, and undeniable. You need no commentary to
explain it. Go into any clothing-store on Western Row, or into the
synagogue in Broadway, and you will see it. The Infidel is sorely
perplexed to give any account of this great phenomenon. How does it
happen that this singular people is dispersed over all the earth, and
yet distinct and unamalgamated with any other? How does it happen that
for eighteen hundred years they have resisted all the influences of
nature, and all the customs of society, and all the powers of
persecution, driving them toward amalgamation, and irresistible in all
other instances? In the face of the power of the Chinese Empire, in
spite of the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, amid the chaos of
African nationalities, and the fusion of American democracy, in the
plains of Australia, and in the streets of San Francisco, the religion,
customs, and physiognomy of the children of Israel are as distinct this
day as they were three thousand years ago, when Moses wrote them in the
Pentateuch, and Shishak painted them on the tombs of Medinet Abou. How
does the Infidel account for it? It will not do to allege the favorite
story about purity of blood and Caucasian race; for the question is, How
does it happen that this people, and this people alone, have kept the
blood pure; while all other races are so mingled that no other race can
be found pure on earth? Besides, lest any should suppose such a cause
sufficient for their preservation, another nation, descended from the
same father and the same mother--the children of Jacob's twin
brother--has utterly perished, and there is not any remaining of the
house of Esau.

Human sagacity, with all the facts before its face, can not give any
rational account of the causes of this anomaly. It can not tell to-day
why this people exists separate from, and scattered through all nations,
from Kamschatka to New Zealand; how, then, could it foretell, three
thousand years ago, this singular exception to all the laws of national
existence? While the sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shall
exist as God's witness to God's word, an undeniable proof that the mouth
of the Lord hath spoken it.

A very peculiar feature of the desolation of Israel was the
_desolation_, but not the _destruction_ of the cities. In most cases of
the desolations of war, the cities have been burned and the buildings
destroyed. There is no shelter for man or beast in the mounds of rubbish
which cover the ruined cities of Assyria. Where the buildings have not
been destroyed, or have been rebuilt, they have again been inhabited; as
we see in the cases of Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and many others.
But on the cities of Israel it was written that God's curse should go
forth "till the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, and the
houses without man, and the land be left utterly desolate." But for a
long time the literal fulfillment of this prediction was not witnessed,
as the cities on this side the Jordan had been mostly reduced to ruins.
The richest and most populous part of the land, however, was the land of
Bashan; where, in a territory of about thirty miles by twenty, sixty
cities still remain standing to attest the wonderful fertility of the
soil and industry of the people. "And though the vast majority of them
are deserted, _they are not ruined_. * * * Many of the houses in the
ancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if only finished yesterday. The
walls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors, and even the window
shutters in their places."[117] From two hundred to five hundred houses
have been found perfect in some of these cities; and from the roof of
the Castle of Salcah, Dr. Porter counted thirty towns and villages
dotting the plain, many of them perfect as when first built; "yet for
more than five centuries there has not been an inhabitant in one of
them." So sure is every word of God.

Take another instance of preservation, so remarkable amid the
surrounding destruction, that it arrested the attention and admiration
of the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, skeptic and
scoffer though he was.

The seven churches of seven of the most considerable cities of Asia
were then, as the churches of Christ still are, the salt of the earth.
Ten righteous men would have averted God's judgments from Sodom. Jesus
pronounced the sentences of these churches seventeen hundred and sixty
years ago, and the present condition of the cities attests the divine
authority of the record containing them. They are various and specific.
Three were to be utterly destroyed. Against two no special threatening
is denounced. To the remaining two promises of life and blessing are
given.

Ephesus, famous for its magnificence, the busy avenue of travel, the
seat of the temple of Diana, long the residence of an apostle, and
afterward of Christian bishops--"one of the eyes of Asia"--as it stood
first on the roll of cities, first receives the doom of abused
privileges: "_I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unless
thou repent._"

Says Gibbon: "The captivity and ruin of the seven churches of Asia was
consummated (by the Ottomans) A. D. 1312; and the barbarous lords of
Ionia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christian
antiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of
the first angel, and the extinction of the first candlestick of the
Revelation. _The desolation is complete_, and the temple of Diana or the
church of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious
traveler."[118]

Since Gibbon's day the foundations of the temple have been discovered
twelve to fourteen feet below the soil; but no church of Christ remains
to illuminate the minds of the few squalid and lazy dwellers in the
village of Aisayalouk. One cobbler's stall represented the whole
manufacturing industry of Ephesus; and four boys playing a game like
drafts, with pebbles, in front of it seemed the only public likely to
patronize its theater, as I took note of its people and their
occupations, in 1872. Then leaving the storks in their nests, on the
top of the ruined arches of its great aqueduct, to proceed toward the
ruins of the great theater, we tried in vain to procure horses or asses
for the ladies; found the only road so filled with water from the recent
rains as to be impassable, and were fain to plunge on foot through the
plowed fields till we reached the elevation on which it was erected.
Here we surveyed its rock-hewn seats, capable of accommodating an
audience larger than that of all the theaters of New York; but there was
no longer a voice to cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The sea has
forsaken the harbor, which is now a pestilential morass. We passed
through the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found a
single Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some parts
of the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggary
reign in Ephesus.

Had the twenty thousand patrons of the drama, in the thirty-one theaters
of New York, honored the theater of Laodicea with their presence, its
polite citizens would have accommodated them all on the reserved seats,
retiring themselves to ten thousand less commodious sittings, and to two
less gigantic theaters. While yet busy in the erection of their splendid
places of public amusement, Jesus said, "_I will spew thee out of my
mouth._" "The circus, and three stately theaters of Laodicea, are
peopled with wolves and foxes," says Gibbon.

The church was spewed out of Christ's mouth, and the city too. It has
been overturned by earthquakes, and is now nothing but a series of
magnificent ruins, from which, however, ample evidence may be collected
of its former magnificence. Those of the aqueduct, the theater, and the
amphitheater, are remarkable; in the latter an inscription has been
found showing that it was in course of erection when the Lord dictated
the warning to its people. But the warning was unheeded, and now the
whole space inside the city walls is strewn with fragments of columns
and pedestals.

A Lydian capitalist once deposited in the vaults of Sardis more specie
than is now in circulation in this whole continent. But Jesus said,
"_Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. If, therefore, thou
shalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt not
know what hour I will come upon thee._"

"Sardis," says Gibbon, "is a miserable village." A later writer (Durbin)
tells us that the Turks say, "Every one who builds a house in Sardis
dies soon, and avoid the spot." Arundell, in his account of his visit to
the seven churches, says: "If I were asked what impresses the mind most
strongly on beholding Sardis, I should say, its indescribable
_solitude_, like the darkness of Egypt, that could be felt. So deep the
solitude of the spot, once the lady of kingdoms, produces a feeling of
desolate abandonment in the mind which can never be forgotten." Connect
this feeling with the message of the Apocalypse to the church of Sardis,
"Thou hast a name that thou livest, and _art dead_, and then look around
and ask, Where are the churches? Where are the Christians of Sardis? The
tumuli beyond the Hermus reply, '_All dead!_'--suffering the infliction
of the threatened judgment of God for the abuse of their privileges. Let
the unbeliever, then, be asked, Is there no truth in prophecy?--no
reality in religion?"

Only twenty-seven miles north of this desolate metropolis, the
manufactories of Thyatira dispatch weekly to Smyrna, cloths, as famous
over Asia for the brilliancy and durability of their hues as those which
Lydia displayed to the admiration of the ladies of Philippi. Two
thousand two hundred Greek Christians, two hundred Armenian, and a
Protestant Church under the care of the missionaries of the American
Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, assemble every Sabbath to
commemorate the resurrection of Him who said to the church of Thyatira:
"_I will put upon you no other burden; but that which ye have already
hold fast till I come._"

The fragrant citron (_Bergamot_) still flourishes around the birthplace
of Galen; but the ruins of the famous library of 200,000 manuscripts are
far less durable memorials of the city of booksellers than those
beautifully dressed skins, which, taking their name (_Pergamena_) from
the place of their manufacture, will preserve the name and fame of
Pergamos as long as parchment can preserve man's memorials, or God's
predictions. Though famous for fragrance, physic, and philosophy,
Pergamos was infamous for idolatry, licentiousness, and persecution; yet
still endeared to Jesus as the scene of the martyrdom of faithful
Antipas, and the dwelling-place of a hidden church; and widely different
sentences are recorded against those opposite classes. The public
memorials are to perish, but the hidden word to endure. "The fanes of
Jupiter and Diana, and Venus and Esculapius (worshiped under the symbol
of a live snake), were prostrate in the dust, and where they had not
been carried away by the Turks to cut up into tombstones or pounded into
mortar, the Corinthian columns and the Ionic, the splendid capitals, the
cornices and the pediments, all in the highest ornament, were thrown in
unsightly heaps,"[119] is the comment on the threatening of Jesus, "_I
will fight against them_--the idolaters--_with the sword of my mouth_."
The 3,000 Greek and 300 Armenian Christians, and even the 10,000 Turkish
inhabitants of the modern Pergamos, have received hundreds of copies of
the promise, "_To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden
manna, and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name
written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it._" But
whether the hidden church of Pergamos shine forth or not, Gibbon was
inaccurate in stating, in the face of facts, that "the god of Mohammed
without a rival is invoked in the mosques of Pergamos and Thyatira."
God's providence is as discriminating as his prophecy, though unbelief
may overlook both.

We have noted here instances of the prediction of remarkable destruction
to Sardis, Ephesus, and Laodicea; of continued existence to Pergamos and
Thyatira; let us now note a prediction of remarkable escape and
preservation from the universal doom. If it requires no inspiration to
prophecy destruction--the universal fate of humanity, according to the
Infidel--surely it requires more than human skill to say that any city
shall escape this universal fate, and more than human power to avert
this destruction. Of Philadelphia, but twenty-five miles distant from
the ruins of Sardis, Jesus said, and the Bible records the prophecy: "_I
know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man
can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and
hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of
Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will
make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have
loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also
keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the
world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly:
hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that
overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go
no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name
of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of
heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name._"

"Philadelphia alone," says Gibbon, "has been saved by prophecy, or
courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors,
encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant sons defended their
religion and their freedom alone for fourscore years, and at length
capitulated with the proudest of the Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies
and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect--_a column in a scene
of ruins_--a pleasing example that the paths of honor and safety may be
the same."

In the pages of this eloquent writer it would be hard to discover
another instance of unqualified hearty commendation of soldiers or
sufferers for Christianity and liberty, such as Gibbon here bestows on
Philadelphia's valiant sons. But it was written, "_I will make them come
and worship before thy feet_," and the skeptic and scoffer must fulfill
the word of Jesus; even as the unbelieving Mohammedan also does, when he
writes upon it the modern name, Allah Sehr--_The City of God._ _A
majestic solitary pillar_, of high antiquity, arrests the eye of the
traveler, and reminds the worshipers in the six modern churches of
Philadelphia of the beauty and faithfulness of the prophetic symbol.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but Jesus' word shall not pass away.

Improbable to human sagacity as this preservation must have seemed, the
resurrection of a fallen city is more utterly beyond man's vision. In
the Bible, however, tribulation and recovery were foretold to Smyrna:
"_Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil
shall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried; and ye shall
have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give
thee a crown of life._" "The populousness of Smyrna is owing to the
foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians," says the scoffer. No matter
to what it is owing, he who dictated the Bible foresaw it, and made no
mistake in foretelling it. Says Arundell: This, the other eye of Asia,
is still a very flourishing commercial city, one of the very first in
the present Turkish empire in wealth and population, containing 130,000
inhabitants. The continued importance of Smyrna may be estimated from
the fact that it is the seat of a consul from every nation in Europe.
The prosperity of Smyrna is now rather on the increase than the decline,
and the houses of painted wood, which were most unworthy of its ancient
fame and present importance, are rapidly giving way to palaces of stone
rising in all directions; and, probably, ere many years have passed, the
modern town may not unworthily represent the ancient city, which the
ancients delighted to call the crown of Ionia. Commercial activity and
architectural beauty, however, are but a small part of the glorious
destiny of the community to which Jesus says, "I will give thee a crown
of life."

Mark Twain suggests that the prophecy refers to the church, rather than
to the city; but forgets to remind us that the Church of Christ is well
represented and crowned with life in Smyrna. God's predictions regard
the vital part of communities, the spiritual forces; these, vigorous and
outspreading, secure the material progress. Close the Bible House,
printing presses, and schools of America, and real estate would not be
worth much more than in Asia. The Lord Christ rules this world. His
blessing has revived both the church and the city of Smyrna, according
to his promise. In 1872 I found its harbor busy with coasting craft and
ocean steamers, and its railroad doing a brisk business. Smyrna is a
live city.

Deliverance from the curse of sin, and communion with the Lord of Life,
alone can secure either a nation's or an individual's immortality.
Smyrna possesses the gospel of salvation. Several devoted English and
American missionaries proclaim salvation to its citizens. From its
printing presses thousands of copies of the Word of Life issue to all
the various populations of the Turkish Empire. A living Church of Christ
in Smyrna holds forth, for the acceptance of the dying nations around
her, that crown of life promised and granted by the Word of God, not to
her only, but to all who love his appearing and his kingdom.

5. This is the grand distinction of God's word of prophecy, _that it is
the Word of Life_. It is the only word which promises life, the only
word which bestows it on fallen humanity. Recognizing no inevitable law
of destruction but the sentence of God, no invariable law of nature
superior to the counsel of Jehovah, nor any progress of events which his
Almighty arm can not arrest and reverse, it points a despairing world to
sin as the cause of all destruction, to Satan as the author of sin, to
ungodly men in league with him as the foes of God and man, and to Christ
pledged to perpetual warfare with such until the last enemy be
destroyed. This word of prophecy tells us, that the battle-fields
Messiah has won are earnests of that great victory; points to the
columns which he has preserved erect amid scenes of ruin, as assurances
that he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him;
goes to the graveyards where fallen Smyrnas, idolatrous Saxons, debased
Sandwich Islanders, and cannibal New Zealanders have buried the image of
the living God, and in Jesus' name proclaims, "_I am the resurrection
and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live_;" and, amid the very ruins of destroyed cities, and the crumbling
heaps of their perished memorials, beholds the assurances that Satan's
rule of ruin shall not be perpetual, anticipates the day when the course
of sin and misery shall be reversed, and teaches Adam's sons to face the
foe, and chant forth that heaven-born note of victorious faith, "_Oh,
thou enemy! destructions are come to a perpetual end._"

Come forth, trembling skeptic, from the cave of thy dark invariable
experience of death and destruction, and from the vain sparks of thy
misgiving hopes of an ungodly eternity to come less miserable than the
past, and lift thine eyes to this heavenly sunrising on the dark
mountain tops of futurity, the like of which thou didst never dream of
in all thy Pantheistic reveries. Search over all the religions of the
world--the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the arrow-headed inscriptions of
Assyria, the classic mythologies of graceful Greece and iron Rome, the
monstrous shasters of thine Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic clouds
of thy German philosophies--in none of them wilt thou ever find this
divine thought, _an end of destructions--a perpetual end_. Cycles of
ruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if you
will, but evermore ending in dire catastrophies to gods and men--an
everlasting succession of death and destructions--is the fearful vista
which all the religions of man, and thine own irreligion, present to thy
terrified vision. But thou wast created in the image of the living God,
and durst not rest satisfied with any such prospect. Now I come in the
name of the Lord to tell thee, that "God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him _should not
perish, but have everlasting life_;" and I demand of thee that thou
acknowledge this promise of life everlasting to be the word of that
living God, and to show cause, if any thou hast, why thou dost
relinquish thy birthright, and spurn the gift of everlasting life which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord?

But, if thou hast no sufficient cause why thou shouldest choose death
rather than life, then hear, and your soul shall live, while I relate
the promise which God hath made of old to our fathers, and hath
fulfilled to us, their children, by raising up his Son, Jesus Christ,
from the dead, and sending him to bless you, by turning away every one
of you from your iniquities. For there can be no deliverance from misery
and destruction but by means of delivery from sin and Satan.

It is quite in agreement with the manner of our deliverance from any of
the evils of our fallen condition, that our deliverance from the power
of sin and Satan be effected by the agency of a deliverer. Our
ignorance is removed by the knowledge of a teacher, our sickness by the
skill of a physician, the oppressed nation hails the advent of a
patriotic leader, and oppressed humanity acknowledges the fitness and
need of a divine Deliverer, even by the ready welcome it has given to
pretenders to this character, and by the longing desire of the wisest
and best of men for a divinely commissioned Savior; a desire implanted
by the great prophecy, which stands at the portal of hope for mankind,
in the very earliest period of our history, that "_the seed of the woman
should bruise the serpent's head_," and so leave man triumphant over the
great destroyer.

The prophecies regarding the Messiah are so numerous, pointed, various,
and improbable, as to set human sagacity utterly at defiance; while they
are also connected so as to form a scheme of prophecy, which gradually
unrolls before us the advent, the ministry, the death, resurrection, and
ascension of the Lord, the progress of his gospel over all the world,
and the blessed effects it should produce on individuals, families, and
nations. It closes with a view of the second coming of Jesus to conquer
the last of his enemies, and take possession of the earth as his
inheritance. I can only lop off a twig or two from this blessed tree of
life, in the hope that the fragrance of the leaves may allure you to
take up the Bible, and eat abundantly of its life-giving promises. As I
have in the previous chapters abundantly proved the veracity of the New
Testament history, I shall now with all confidence refer to its account
of the birth, life, and death of Jesus, as illustrating the prophecies.

The time, the place, the manner of his birth, his parentage and
reception, were plainly declared, hundreds of years before he appeared.

When Herod had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born, and they said
unto him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the
prophet: _And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least
among the princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that
shall rule my people Israel._" The first verse of this chapter records
the fact, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea."

The throne of Judah was to be occupied by strangers, and the line of
native princes was to cease upon the coming of this Governor, and not
till his coming: "_The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh shall come; and unto him
shall the gathering of the people be._" On the day of his crucifixion
the rulers of the Jews made this formal and public announcement of the
fact, "We have no king but Cęsar."

He was to address a class of people whom no other religious teacher had
condescended to notice before, and very few save those sent by Him ever
since: "_The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath
anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to
bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the
opening of the prison to them that are bound._" Hear Jesus' words: "Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: The
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, _and the poor have the gospel
preached to them_. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in
me."

Yet, notwithstanding his feeding of thousands, and healing of
multitudes, and teaching of the lowest of the people, it was foretold he
should be unpopular: "_He is despised and rejected of men; a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from
him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not._" The brief records are:
"Then all the disciples forsook him and fled." "Then began Peter to
curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man." "Pilate saith unto
them, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the
passover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the
Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now
Barabbas was a robber."

All the prophets agree in predicting that for the sins of his people,
and to atone for their guilt, he should be put to death by a shameful
public execution: "_In the midst of the week Messiah shall be cut off,
but not for himself. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed. He was numbered with the
transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for
the transgressors. They pierced my hands and my feet._" The record says:
"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many." "And when they were come to the place
which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors,
one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus,
_Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do._"

The one grand unparalleled fact, one which demands the hope of dying men
for a victory over the great destroyer, and a resurrection from the
tomb--the fact that one man born of a woman died, and did not see
corruption, but rose again from the dead and went up into heaven, and
dieth no more--forms the theme of many a prophetic psalm of triumph:
"_Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thine Holy One
to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Thou wilt make me
full of joy with thy countenance. Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hast
led captivity captive._" Often did Jesus predict this prodigy before
friend and foe: "_Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, when he was
yet alive, After three days I will rise again._" The last chapters of
the gospels relate the proofs by which he convinced his incredulous
disciples that the prophecy was fulfilled: "Behold my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them
his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and
wondered, he saith unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a
piece of broiled fish, and of an honey comb. And he took it and did eat
before them; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it
behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; and
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these
things. And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarry
ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high.
And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and
blessed them. And while he was blessing them he was parted from them,
and carried up into heaven. And while they looked steadfastly toward
heaven, as he went up, behold two men stood by them in white apparel,
which said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This
same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in
like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

With your own eyes you shall see the fulfillment of this prophecy. Every
eye shall see him. The clouds of heaven shall then reveal the vision now
sketched on the page of revelation: "And I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away,
and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and
great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was
opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books, according to their works. And
the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered
up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according
to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This
is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the Book of
Life was cast into the lake of fire. And I saw a new heaven and a new
earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and
there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down from God, out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the
ta