[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 byOGDEN, 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 anexamination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells usthat Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound ofcourse to provide us with something better and truer instead; underpenalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of ourbirthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he couldpersuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had provedto the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all menprofessing 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 toscoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not floatme across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, theymust give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, andvenerate, and trust. 

A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned uponsome of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want ofsomething for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, apoor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. At any rate, havinggrown tired of pelting the Church with the dirtballs of Voltaire andPaine, they begin to acknowledge that it is, after all, an institution;and that the Bible is an influential book, both popular and useful inits 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 haveprepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that theworldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must bevery hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positivestatements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of theBible, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come. Neverthelesseach discoverer or constructor presents his system to the world withgreat confidence, large claims to superior benevolence, vast pretensionsto learning and science, and no little cant about duty and piety. Wonderful to tell, some of them are very fond of clothing theirungodliness 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 scientificlectures, in which the science is made the medium of conveying theInfidelity. Scientific books, novels, magazines, daily newspapers, andcommon school books, are all enlisted in the work. The disciples ofInfidelity 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 usehis influence to poison his associates. 

These systems are well adapted to the depraved tastes of the age. Thebusiness man, whose whole soul is set on money-making and spending, isright glad to meet the Secularist, who will prove to him on scientificprinciples, that a man is much profited by gaining the whole world, evenat the risk of his soul, if he has such a thing. The young andill-instructed professor of Christianity, whose longings for forbiddenjoys are strong, has a natural kindliness toward nationalism, whichbefogs the serene light of God's holy law, and gives the directing powerto his own inner liking. The sentimental young lady, who would recoilfrom the grossness of the Deist, is attracted by the poetry ofPantheism. Infidelity has had, in consequence, a degree of success verylittle suspected by simple-minded pastors and parents, and which isoften discovered too late for remedy. 

This book is written to expose the _folly_ of some of these novelsystems of Infidelity--leaving others to show their wickedness. It maysurprise some who would glory in being esteemed fiends, to learn thatthey are only fools. If they should be awakened now to a sense of theabsurdities which they cherish as philosophy, it might save them fromawaking another day to the shame and everlasting contempt of theuniverse. 

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 tohear. Leaving the sleeping dogs to lie, I have noticed only such as Ihave known to bark and bite in my own neighborhood, and know to be rifehere in the West. They are stated, as nearly as possible, in the wordsin which I have heard them in public debate, or in private conversationwith gentlemen of Infidel principles. I have made no references tobooks or writers on that side, save to such as I am assured were thesources of their sentiments. In such cases I have named and quoted theauthors. Where no such quotations are noticed it will be understood thatI am responsible for the fairness with which I have represented theopinions which are examined. It is not my design to fight men of straw. 

Every historical or scientific fact adduced in support of the argumentshere used is confirmed by reference to the proper authority. But it hasnot been deemed needful to crowd the pages with references to the worksof Christian apologists. The Christian scholar does not need suchreferences; while to those for whose benefit I write, their names carryno authority, and their arguments are generally quite unknown. One greatobject of my labor will be gained if I shall succeed in awaking thespirit of inquiry among my readers, to such an extent as to load them toa prayerful and patient perusal of several of the works named on thenext page. They have heard only one side of the question, and will besurprised at their own ignorance of matters which they ought to haveknown. 

Books on the Evidences are not generally circulated. Ministers perhapshave some volumes in their libraries; but in a hundred houses, it wouldbe hard to find half a dozen containing as many as would give aninquiring youth a fair view of the historical evidences of the truth ofthe 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 soundteaching as will stop the mouths of gainsayers. I have been assured byskeptical gentlemen, who in the early part of their lives had attendedchurch regularly for twenty-two years, that during all that time theyhad never heard a single discourse on the Evidences. Moreover, theprotean forms of Infidelity are so various, and many of its presentpositions so novel, that books or discourses prepared only twenty yearsago miss the mark; and rather expose to the charge of misrepresentation, than produce conviction. New books on Infidelity are needed for everygeneration. 

The lectures expanded into this volume were delivered in Cincinnati, in1858. Replying to different, and discordant systems of error, whose onlybond is opposition to the gospel, they are necessarily somewhatdisconnected. No attempt was made to mold them into a suit of royalarmor, but merely to select a few smooth pebbles from the brook oftruth, which any Christian lad might sling at the giant defiers of thearmies of the living God. Having proved acceptable for this purpose, anda steadily increasing demand for repeated editions wearing out theoriginal plates, the author has been requested by British and Americanpublishers to revise the work in the light of the recent discoveries ofscience. This he has attempted; with what success the reader will judge. Conscious of its many defects, yet grateful to God for the good which hehas done to many souls by its instrumentality, the author again commendsthe book to the Father of Lights, praying him to use it as a mirror toflash such a ray of light into many dark souls as may lead them into thelight 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 ofbooks on the Evidences of Christianity, subjoins a list of those easilyaccessible in the West. It is not supposed that any one inquirer willread all these; but it is well to read more than one, since the evidenceis 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 maybe able to procure another. There are many other works on the Evidenceson 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 andCourse 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_, LordLyttleton. 

_Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection ofJesus 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 aboutin making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know whatis 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 strangerquestion: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There arepersons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with alie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and theearth. " Whereas, say they, "We know that matter is eternal, and theworld is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earthare eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator. "

But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we donot 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 assertionis this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturallyindestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but itis all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but itis all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form asmuch 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 lastfor a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousandyears past!

The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It isnot agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturallyindestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them cantell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake tosay is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, amongthese, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can besubjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at thesurface of the globe. "[1] The very utmost which any man can assert inthis matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. Hecan say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, hemay reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert thatmatter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a childshould try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and, failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existedfrom eternity, because I am unable to destroy it. "

But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, andimpossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrablerefutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science. The principleof the argument is so plain that a child of four years old canunderstand it. It is simply this, that all substances in heaven andearth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can beeternal. 

We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter iseternal, how does that account for the formation of this world? What isthis matter you speak of? This world consists not of a philosophicalabstraction 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, orsulphur, or clay, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did theothers come from? Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with itsgravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into apail of water? Or are they all eternal? Have we fifty-seven eternalbeings? Are they all eternal in their present combinations? or is itonly the single elements that are eternal? You see that yourhypothesis--that matter is eternal--gives me no light on the formationof this world, which is not a shapeless mass of a philosophicalabstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building, composed of a great variety of matters. Was it so from eternity? No manwho was ever in a quarry, or a gravel pit, will say so, much less onewho has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. Do you assert theeternity of the fifty-seven single substances, either separate orcombined in some other way than we now find them in the rocks, andrivers, and atmosphere of the earth? Then how came they to get togetherat all, and particularly how did they put themselves in their presentshapes?

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

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

No conviction of the human mind is more certain than the belief thatevery combination of matter proves the existence of a combiner, thatevery 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 fastenedtogether by a nail, or two bricks cemented with mortar, or the sole ofan old pegged boot, all the atheists in the world could not convince youthat those two laths, or those two bricks, or those two bits of leatherexisted in such a combination from all eternity. If any wise philosophertried to persuade you that for anything you could tell they might havebeen always so, you would reply, "No, sir! You can't cram such stuffdown my throat. Even a child's common sense shows him that those twolaths were not always so nailed together; that those two bricks were notalways so placed, one on the top of the other; and that those two piecesof old sole leather were not always pegged together in the sole of aboot. " 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 iscompound. Chemists speak of simple substances, or elements of matter, and it is well enough to separate the elements of things in ourthoughts, for the sake of distinct consideration, and to speak of theproperties of pure oxygen, or of pure hydrogen, or of pure carbon, or ofpure gold, or of pure iron, or of pure silver. But then we should alwaysremember that there is nothing pure in the world, that there is no suchthing in nature as any substance consisting only of a single element, pure and uncombined with others. Just as your gold eagle is not puregold, but alloyed with copper, everything in nature is alloyed. Everything in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in thewaters under the earth, is compound. The air you breathe, simple as itseems, is composed of three gases, and is besides full of what Huxleycalls "a stirabout" of millions of seeds of animalculę and motes of dustvisible in the sunbeam. That hydrant water you are about to swallow is arich aquarium full of all manner of monsters, which the oxy-hydrogenmicroscope will exhibit to your terrified gaze, devouring each otheralive. Should you get rid of them by evaporating your water, yourchemist will tell you that still your pure water must be a compound ofoxygen and hydrogen. There is no help for it. 

Many years ago some astronomers fancied they had found clouds, ornebulę, of gas, quite simple and uncompounded with anything else, agreat many millions of miles away in the sky. They were so very far awaythat they thought nobody would ever be able to fly so far to bottle up aspecimen of that gas and bring it back here to earth and analyze it, tofind out whether it was pure and simple, or compound. So they felt quitesafe in affirming that there was the genuine, simple, homogeneous gas, in the nebulę, with which Almighty God had nothing whatever to do, butwhich had first made itself and then had condensed into our presentworld. But unfortunately for this brilliant discovery the spectroscopeopened windows into the nebulę, and showed very plainly that they wereon fire; and fire is a compound; it can not burn without fuel andsomething to support the combustion; so that settled the allegedsimplicity of the nebulę. It is now demonstrated, therefore, that everyknown substance existing in nature is a compound, and therefore can notbe eternal. And the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. Nonumber of finite existences can be eternal. The universe, then, can notbe eternal. 

Suppose, however, that, for the sake of argument, we should grant ouratheistic world-builder his materials, away off beyond the rings ofSaturn, or the orbit of Uranus (since he seems to like to have hisquarries a good way off from his building), would he be any nearer thecompletion of his world-making? As Cornwallis declared that the conquestof India resolved itself ultimately into a question of bullocks, theprime consideration in the construction of the world, after you have gotyour materials, is that of transportation. When one beholds the threegreat stones in the temple of Baalbec, each weighing eleven hundredtons, 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 buildersmove those immense stones, and raise them to their places?" And when webehold the quarry out of which these stones were taken, and all theother quarries of the world, and all the everlasting mountains, and thewhole of this solid earth, and boundless sea, brought, as our theoristsaffirm, from far beyond the orbit of the most distant planet, we raisethe question of transportation, and demand some account of the wagon andteam which hauled them to their places. We can not get rid of thenecessity for transportation by evaporating the building stones intogas, for a world of gas weighs just as many tons as the world made outof it. Before we can make a world we must have _power_; but we can neverget power out of the world to build itself. The atheists' world is onlya great machine. The first law of mechanics is that action and reactionare equal; consequently machinery can never create power. You will neverlift yourself by pulling at your boot-straps; much less can a machinelift and carry itself. 

It is no matter how big you make the wheels of your machine, as big asthe 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 createpower than a little machine as small as a lady's watch. Nor does it makethe least difference in respect to making power, of what materials yourperpetual motion peddler makes his machine--whether of a skein of silkon a reel in a bottle, or of steel and zinc electro magnets running upondiamond points, or whether he melts up his steel, and zinc, and diamondsinto red hot fire mist; it is still only a machine, made of thesematerials, as destitute of power as the smaller machines made out of it. The atheists' universe is only a big machine, and no machine can createpower, no more than a paving stone. 

It has been, however, proposed to manufacture power by the law ofgravitation, according to which all bodies attract each other, directlyin proportion to their mass, and inversely as the square of theirdistances. This law appears to prevail as far as our observation extendsthrough space; and our world builders affirm that it must have operatedeternally, and that not only were the separate parts of our earth thusdrawn together, but that all the orbs of heaven were caused to revolveunder its influence. 

Suppose, however, we grant that matter was eternal, and the force ofgravitation eternally operating upon it, would that sufficiently accountfor the building up of even our own little planetary system? By nomeans. 

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 allmotion had long since ceased. There must be some power of resistance togravitation, and nicely balanced against it, a centrifugal force--nomatter whether you call it heat, light, or electricity, or by any othername--from which balance of power the movements of the universe areregulated. But here again we arrive at the same conclusion from thebalance of power to which we were before driven by the combination ofmatter--regulated power proclaims a regulator, a governor. Powerbelongeth unto God. 

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

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

Suppose we grant this gassy supposition, that the world millions of agesago existed as a cloud of atoms, does that bring us any nearer theobject of getting rid of a Creator than before? The atoms must bematerial, if a material world is to be made from them; and so they mustbe 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 thepaving stones he intends to make out of them. Each bit of the pavingstone, no matter how small you break it, remains just as incapable ofmaking itself, or moving itself, as was the whole stone composed of allthese bits. So we are landed back again at the sublime question, _Didthe paving stones make themselves, and move themselves?_

Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as avast cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time, cooled down intogranite, and the granite, by dint of earthquakes, got broken up on thesurface, and washed with rain into clay and soil, whence plants sprangup of their own accord, and the plants gradually grew into animals ofvarious kinds, and some of the animals grew into monkeys, and finallythe monkeys into men. The fire mist they stoutly affirm to have existedfrom eternity. They do not allege that they remember that (and yet asthey themselves are, as they say, composed body and soul of this eternalfire mist, they ought to remember), but only that there are certaincomets which occasionally come within fifty or sixty millions of milesof this earth, which they suppose may be composed of the fire mist whichthey _suppose_ this world is made of. A solid basis, truly, on which tobuild a world! A cloud in the sky, fifty million of miles away, maypossibly be fire mist, may possibly cool down and condense into a solidglobe; therefore, this fire mist is eternal, and had no need of aCreator; and our world, and all other worlds, may possibly have beenlike it; therefore, they also were never created by Almighty God. Suchis the atheist's ground of faith. The thinnest vapor or the merestsupposition will suffice to risk his eternal salvation upon; providedonly it contradicts the Bible and gets rid of God. We can not avoidasking with as much gravity as we can command, Where did the mist comefrom? Did the mist make itself? Where did the fire come from? Did itkindle of its own accord? Who put the fire and mist together? Was it redhot enough from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any coolernow? How could an eternal red heat cool down? If it existed as a red hotfire mist from eternity, until our atheist began to observe it beginningto cool, why should it ever begin to cool at all, and why begin to cooljust then? Fill it as full of electricity, magnetism and odyle as youplease; do these afford any _reason_ for its very extraordinary conduct?The utmost they do is to show you _how_ such a change took place, butthey neither tell you _where the original matter came from_, nor _whyits form was changed_. Change is an effect, and every effect requires acause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they saythere was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in themist 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 thefire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on thepropriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, andresolve to settle down into orderly, well-behaved suns and planets? Inthe division of the property, _what became of the mind_? Did it go tothe sun, or to the moon, or to the pole star, or to this earth? Or, wasit clipped up into little pieces and divided among the stars inproportion to their respective magnitudes; so that the sun may have, say the hundredth part of an idea, and the moon a faint perception ofit? Did the fire mist's mind die under this cruel clipping anddissecting process; or is it of the nature of a polypus, each piecealive and growing up to perfection in its own way? Has each of theplanets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as thisearth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately onthe little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the hostof heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, whoburned 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 chemistscall it. And it is supposed that the universe was all once in a state ofsolution, in primeval oceans, and that the mingling of the waters ofthese oceans caused them to deposit the various salts and earths whichform the worlds in the form of mud, which afterward hardened into rock, or vegetated into trees and men. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated thatthere is no need for the Creator if--if--if--we only had somebody tomake 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 monkeyand the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it werefully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of gettingrid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the futureplants and monkeys, and men's bodies and souls, in itself originally, orit had not. If it had not, where did it get them? If it had all the lifeand intelligence in the universe in itself, it was a very extraordinarykind of God. We shall call it the _mud-god_. Our atheists then believein a god of muddy body and intelligent mind. But if they denyintelligence to the mud, then we are back to our original difficulty, with a large appendix, viz: _The paving stones made themselves first andall atheists afterward. _

The whole theory of development is utterly false in its firstprinciples. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no manhas ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life. There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or anyother, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ orseed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has asingle instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Everybeast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and hasdone so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmlyestablished than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nortransmutation of species. _ It is true there is a regular gradation ofthe various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the stepsof a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused bytransmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower stepchanging 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 anacting agent, an object designed in the action, means to attain it, andauthoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Arethe 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 ofcause 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 toaccount for. How came the world to be under law without a lawgiver?Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistentwith the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, bea designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets, can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thingelse, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable wayof accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other ofthese two: Either an intelligent being created the world, or--_thepaving stones made themselves_. 

"Here are two hypotheses, of which the oldest is admitted to offer afull and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There canbe 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 oureyes; of course, science can not _verify_ it, neither can it verify anyother theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept thefact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there isnothing for us but the _eternity of matter_, for evolution itself has toface the very same difficulty when asked to account for its primal germ. It is surely more conceivable that God created the first matter out ofnothing, than that nothing evolved something out of itself, by animminent law of its nature. This point, however, our scientific men aresadly given to shirking. They profess in general not to hold theeternity of matter, but they have nothing to suggest for its origin. They accept it as the starting point of evolution, and decline tospeculate on its cause. This, as Dr. Christlieb observes of Bauer'skindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without abeginning--everything is already extant'. We may as well start withspecies, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyondthe fact. The evolutionist is bound to answer whether the process iseternal, 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 nothingleft to dispute. It is puerile to except to the _frequency_ of creativeacts on the ordinary hypothesis of specific origin, because it is freelyopen to science to reduce the several 'kinds' to the lowest _minimum_ itcan experimentally establish. Moreover--besides the utter inconsequenceof such purely relative ideas as _often_ and _rare_--it is far morereasonable that an eternal, personal author of creation should watchover his work to shape and diversify it at his pleasure, than that, after a single act, he should relapse into _inertia_ like the HinduBrahmin. To concentrate the whole evidence of design in one originalact, ages upon ages ago, with no opening for after interference, undermines belief in a personal designer, simply because it leaves himnothing to do. "[4]

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

We shall first observe the mechanical skill displayed in the formationof the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them, for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances alreadyobserved by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance ofall, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I hold in my handa box made of several pieces of wood glued together, and covered on theoutside with leather. Inside it is lined with cotton, and the cotton hasa lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended toprotect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that themaker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood, the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness andelasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning andweaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the dangeragainst which this box would protect it--ten entirely distinct branchesof knowledge, which every child who should pick up such a box in thestreet would unhesitatingly ascribe to its maker. Now, the box in whichthe 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 onlycanvas, and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while thebrow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dustand rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, likea thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a manearns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter theeye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say thatelectricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a littlebracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavityof the eye to any such cause. 

Let us next look at the shape of the eye. You observe it is nearly roundin its section across, and rather oval in its other direction, and thecavity it lies in is shaped exactly to fit it. Now there are eyes in theworld angular and triangular, and even square; and as you may readilysuppose, the creatures which have them can not move them; to compensatefor such inconvenience, some of them, as the common fly, have severalhundred. But, unless our heads were as large as sugar hogsheads, wecould not be so furnished, and we must either have movable eyes or seeonly in one direction. Accordingly, the Contriver of the eye has hung itwith a hinge. Now there are various kinds of hinges, moving in onedirection, and the Maker of the eye might have made a hinge on which theeye would move up and down, or he might have given us a hinge that wouldbend right and left, in which case we should have been able merely tosquint a little in two directions. But to enable one to see in everydirection, there is only one kind of hinge that would answer thepurpose--the ball and socket joint--and the Former of the eye has hungit with such a hinge, retaining it in its place partly by the projectionof 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. Mostof you have seen a ship, and know the way the yards are moved, andturned, and squared by ropes and pulleys. The rigging of the eye, thoughnot 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 itup when you have done; one to pull it to the right, and another to theleft; there is one fastened to the eyeball in two places, and gearedthrough a pulley which will make it move in any direction, as when weroll 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 areeach 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 gentlemandescribed by Dr. Nieuwentyt, who was obliged to pull up his eyelasheswith his fingers whenever he wanted to see. There is, too, anotheradmirable piece of forethought and skill displayed by the Former of theeye, in providing a liquid to wash it, and a sponge to wipe it with, anda waste pipe, through the bone of the nose, to carry off the tears whichhave been used in washing and moistening the eye. Now what absurdity tosay that a law of nature, say gravity, or electricity, or magnetism hassuch knowledge of the principles of mechanics as the eye proclaims itsFormer to have--that it could make a choice among multitudes of shapesof eyes and kinds of joints, and this choice the very best for ourconvenience; and that having known and chosen, it could havemanufactured the various parts of this complicated machine. Such amachine requires an intelligent manufacturer; and yet we have only asyet been looking at the dead eye, paying no regard to sight at all. Evena blind man's eye prove an intelligent Creator. 

Let us now turn our thoughts to the instrument of sight. The optic nerveis 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, ithad been brought out to the front, and that reflections from objects hadfallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have been exposedto injury from every floating particle of dust, and you would alwayshave felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald when the skinpeels off, and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to the air. Thetender points of the fibers of the optic nerve, too, would soon becomeblunted and broken, and the eye, of course, useless. How, then, is thenerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it werecovered with skin, as the other nerves are, you could not see throughit. For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knewno substance, at once hard and transparent, which could answer thedouble purpose of protection and vision. And to this day they know nonehard enough for protection, clear enough for vision, and elastic enoughto resume its form after a blow. But men did the best they could, andput a round piece of brittle but transparent glass in a ring of toughermetal for the protection of the hands of a watch; and he who firstinvented the watch crystal thought he had made a discovery. Now, observein the eye, that forward part is the watch glass; the cornea, made of asubstance at once hard, transparent and elastic--which man has neverbeen able to imitate--set into the sclerotica, that white, muscular coatwhich 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 mighthave had it brought up to the glass without any interposing lenses orhumors, as, in fact, is nearly the case with some crustacea. We can notwell imagine all the inconveniences of such an eye to us. If we couldsee distinctly at all, we could not see much farther or wider than thebreadth of the end of the nerve at once. Our sight would then be verylike that faculty of perceiving colors by the points of the fingers, which some persons are said to possess. In that case, seeing would onlybe a nicer kind of groping, and our eyes would be more convenientlyfixed on the points of our fingers; or, as with many insects, on theends of long antennae. Such a form of eye is precisely suited to thewants of an animal which has not an idea beyond its food, which has nobusiness with any object too large for its mouth, and whose greatconcern is to stick to a rock and catch whatever animalculę the waterfloats within the grasp of its feelers. But for a being whoseintercourse should be with all the works of God, and whose chief end insuch 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 offield combined with length of range, are obtained by placing the opticnerve at the back of the eye, and interposing several lenses, throughwhich objects are observed. By this arrangement a visual angle issecured, and all objects lying within it are distinctly visible at thesame time. This faculty of perceiving several objects at the same timeis a special property of sight which tends greatly to enlarge ourconceptions of the knowledge of Him who gave it. A man who never saw canhave no idea of it. He can not taste two separate tastes at once, norsmell two distinct smells at once; nor feel more than one object witheach hand at once; and if he hears several sounds at the same time, theyeither flow into each other, making a harmony, or confuse him with theirdiscord. Yet we are all conscious that we see a vast variety ofdistinct and separate objects at one glance of our eyes. I think it ismanifest that the Former of such an eye not only intended its owner toobserve such a vast variety of objects, but from the capacity of his ownsight 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 ofrange for the purpose of life. The thousand inconveniences which theshort-sighted man so painfully feels are obvious to all. Yet it may tendto reconcile such to their lot to know that thousands of the liveliestand merriest of God's creatures can not see an inch before them. Smallbirds and insects, which feed on very minute insects, need eyes likemicroscopes to find them; while the eagle and the fish hawk, which soarup till they are almost out of sight, can distinctly see the hare or theherring a mile below them, and so must have eyes like telescopes. We, too, need to observe minute objects very closely, as when we read fineprint, or when a lady threads a fine needle at microscope range; but, ifconfined to that range, we could not see our friends across the room, orfind our way to the next street. Again, in traveling we need to seeobjects miles away, and at night we see the stars millions of milesaway; but then, if confined to the long range, we should be strangers athome, and never get within a mile of any acquaintance. Now, how tocombine these two powers, of seeing near objects and distant ones withthe 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 collectthe rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called thefocus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, orpocket 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 objectconsiderably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we seenothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from it, which were nearlyparallel while it was at a distance, are no longer so when it comesnear, but scatter in all directions, and those which fall on the lensare collected at a point much nearer to the lens than before, and theeye-glass must be pushed forward to that focus. Accordingly, you knowthat the spy-glass is made to slide back and forward, and the telescopehas a screw to lengthen or shorten the tube according to the distance ofthe objects observed. Another way of meeting the case would be by takingout the lens, and putting in one of less magnifying power, a flatterlens, for the nearer object. Now, at first sight, it would seem a veryinconvenient thing to have eyes drawing out and in several inches likespy-glasses, and still more inconvenient to have twenty or thirty pairsof eyes, and to need to take out our eyes, and put in a new set twentytimes a day. The ingenuity of man has been at work hundreds of years todiscover some other method of adapting an optical instrument to long andshort range, but without success. Now, the Former of the eye knew theproperties of light and the properties of lenses before the first eyewas made; he knew the mode of adjusting them for any distance, from thethousands of millions of miles between the eye and the star, to thehalf-inch distance of the mote in the sunbeam; and he had not onlyavailed himself of both the principles which opticians discovered, buthas executed his work with an infinite perfection which bungling men mayadmire, but can never imitate. The sclerotic coat of the eye, and thechoroid which lies next it are full of muscles which, by theircontraction, both press back the crystalline lens nearer the retina, andalso flatten it; the vitreous humor, in which the crystalline lens lies, a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, givingway behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power ofrefraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or themicroscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly, we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, withthat perfect compound microscope and telescope invented by the Former ofthe human eye. Surely, in giving us an instrument so admirably fittedfor observing the lofty grandeur of the heavens and the lowlier beautiesof the earth, he meant to allure us to the discovery of the perfectionsof the great Designer and Former of all these wondrous works. 

But there is another contrivance in the eye, adapted to lead us furtherto the consideration of the extent of the knowledge of its power. We areplaced in a world of variable lights, of day and night, and of all thevariations between light and darkness. We can not see in the full blazeof light, nor yet in utter darkness. Had the eye been formed to bearonly the noonday glare, we had been half blind in the afternoon, andwholly 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 inthe atmosphere may be in some measure compensated, as we know, byregulating the quantity admitted to our houses--shutting up the windows. When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms, we haverecourse to various clumsy contrivances; paper blinds, perpetuallytearing, sunblind rollers that will not roll, venetian blindscontinually in need of mending, awnings blowing away with every storm, or shutters, which shut up and leave us in entire darkness. Aself-acting window, which shall expand with the opening of light in themornings and evenings, and close up of its own accord as the lightincreases toward noon, has never been manufactured by man. But theFormer of the eye took note of the necessities and conveniences of thecase, and besides giving a pair of shutters to close up when we go tosleep, he has given the most admirable sunblinds ever invented. Thenerve 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, orblack 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 elasticrings, which, when left to themselves, contract the opening; and anotherset at right angles to them, like the spokes of a wheel, pulling theinner edge of the iris in all directions to the outside. In fact it isnot so much a sunblind, as a self-acting window, opening and closing theaperture according to our need of light, and doing this soinstantaneously that we are not sensible of the process. 

It is self-evident that the Maker of such an eye was acquainted with theproperties of light, and the alternations of night and day, as well aswith the mechanical contrivances for adjusting the eye to these variablecircumstances. He has given us an eye capable of seeking knowledge amongpartial darkness, and of availing itself for this purpose of imperfectlight; an apt symbol of our mental constitution and moral situation in aworld 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 inthe eye? It seems as if the crystalline lens and the optic nerve weresufficient for the purpose of sight, with the cornea simply to protectthem. What is the use of the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor?

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

This difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he neverdiscovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would obviateit. But M. Dolland, an optician, reflecting that the very samedifficulty must have presented itself to the Maker of the eye, determined to ascertain how he had obviated it. He found that the Makerof the eye had a knowledge of the fact that different substances havedifferent powers of refracting or bending the rays of light which passthrough them, and that liquids have generally a different power ofrefraction from solids. For instance, if you put a straight stick inwater, 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 itwill not seem so much bent. He further discovered that oil of cassia hada different power of refraction from water, and the white of an eggstill a different power. He discovered also that the first lens of theeye, the aqueous humor, is very like water; that the crystalline lens isa firm jelly, and that the vitreous humor is about the consistency ofthe white of an egg. The combination of these three lenses, of differentpowers of refraction, secures the correction of their separate errors. He could not make telescope lenses of jelly, nor water; therefore, hecould not make a perfect achromatic telescope, but he learned the lessonof mutual compensations of difficulties which the Maker of the eyeteaches the reflecting anatomist, and procuring flint and crown glass ofdifferent degrees of refraction, he arranged them in the achromatic lensso as nearly to remedy the defect. 

I think that you will at once admit that Dolland's attempt to remedy theevils of confused sight in the telescope indicated a desire to obtain aprecise and correct view of the objects; and that his success inconstructing an instrument, nearly perfect, for the use of astronomers, gave evidence that he himself had a clear idea of that perfect andaccurate vision which he thus attempted to bestow on them. Shall we thenimagine any inaccuracy in the sight of Him, who not only desired, butexecuted and bestowed on us, an instrument so perfectly adapted to theimperfections of this lower world, and whose very imperfections are thematerials from which he produces clear and perfect vision? No! in God'seye there are no chromatic refractions of passions, or prejudice, orparty feeling, or self-love. He sees no reflected or refracted light. OFather 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 thestructure 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 hisOmniscience, yet I may conclude that every perfection of the power ofsight he has given me existed previously in him. Has he endowed me, apoor puny mortal, the permanent tenant of only two yards of earth, withan eye capable of ranging over earth's broad plains and lofty mountains, of traversing her beauteous lakes and lovely rivers, of scanning hercrowded cities, and inspecting all their curious productions, andspecially delighting to investigate the bodily forms of men, and theirmental characters displayed on the printed page? Has he given me theprinciple of curiosity, without which such an endowment were useless?Then most undoubtedly he has Himself both the desire to observe all theworks of his hands, and the power to gratify that desire. The Former ofthe eye must of necessity be the great Observer. 

Wheresoever an eye is found of his handiwork, and wheresoever sight ispreserved by his skill, let the owner of such an instrument know that ifhe 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, itis not impossible for God to behold more. If he has given us an eye tolook from earth to heaven, then his eye sees from heaven to earth. If Ican see accurately, God's inspection is much more impartial. And if hehas given me the power of adjusting my imperfect vision to the varyinglights and shades of this changing scene, let me not dream for a momentthat he is destitute of a corresponding power of investigatingdifficulties, and penetrating darknesses, and bringing to light hiddenworks 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 allthings 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. WhenI 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 myungodly companions, God's eye was upon me. In the darkness and solitudeof night, God's eye was upon me. And God's eye is on me now, and willfollow 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 bebelieved by any save the inmates of a lunatic asylum, had not thewriter, and hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, seen a lecturerperform the ordinary experiment of producing colored precipitates bymixing colorless solutions, as a demonstration of the self-acting powersof matter. Common sense, being a gift of God, is righteously withdrawnfrom 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 wisdomin 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 thatchapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr. Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show howall the species of living things can evolve, not only their eyes, buttheir legs and wings and lungs, and every part of them, from a littlebit of primeval life stuff, called protoplasm, by the influence ofNatural Selection. Mr. Darwin owns that the formation of an eye israther a tough job for a little pin point germ of protoplasm; but he hasno doubt that it has been done, and he writes several books to show ushow. We propose to look into this self-evolving process, as he and hisbrother evolutionists describe their theory. 

It is necessary, right here at the outset, to distinguish the theory ofthe evolutionists from the great fact of evolution. Almighty God createdthe 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 isthus God's great object lesson for men and angels to learn. But learningis a process, gradual, slow, from one step to another. Therefore theobject lesson must not be precipitated all in a heap upon the infantileintellects of the learners, but unfolded by degrees. Geologists assureus that so it was in the past; that first the lifeless strata weredeposited; next, light was evolved; afterward, fishes, and marinereptiles, and birds; then came the carboniferous or plant era; afterwardthe mammalia; last of all man. You observe here an ascending scale ofcreation, beginning with first principles and simple forms, andascending to the most complicated; a series of experiments in God'sgreat lecture-room, illustrative of the various steps of the evolutionof the divine idea. But six thousand years before geology was born Mosesdescribed this same evolution of creation, in the first chapter ofGenesis. As he could not have learned it from any science known in hisday, God Himself must have shown it to him. 

The divine idea is still in process of evolution for our instruction. Webehold it in the continual formation of new strata by the destruction ofthe 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 oakfrom the acorn; in the development of the insect germ into thecaterpillar, and the butterfly; in the hatching of the egg into thechicken; and in the growth of the infant into the man. We observe also adivine development of society, an advance of civilization, aprovidential guidance of history, and a fall and disorder among mankind, with a process of redemption, medical, educational, political andreligious, for the human race. The whole process, therefore, of thecreation, natural history, and moral government of the world, is thedevelopment of a divine idea, according to a divine plan, by the director mediate efficacy of divine power, for the accomplishment of thedivine purpose as revealed to us in the divine word, the HolyScriptures. Galen taught that the study of physiology was a divine hymn. This divine development is to be clearly and sharply distinguished fromthe atheistic theory of evolution. They differ in the followingparticulars:

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

2. The divine development begins in the beginning, with God, creatingthe heavens and the earth; but the theory of atheistic evolution has nobeginning, 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 apurpose; the atheistic theory of evolution denies plan, purpose, adaptation and final cause. 

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

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

In this chapter we discuss only the theory of atheistic evolution. Inthe discussion of all questions affecting human life it is advantageousto trace them to their origin, and to follow them out to their practicalresults. Thus we get a clear view of the whole subject, and are enabledto assign to it its proper influence. It is also a great benefit to themass of mankind to conduct such discussions in plain language, and totranslate the roundabout phrases, and the Latinized words of scientificmen, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects ofdiscussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put thewhole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in anutshell, 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 lessoffensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, andsay your forefathers were apes?

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

For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys ashis junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnasticancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If itwere 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 atwenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as itspins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as themonkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent tothis proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, andhere is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishyforefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must havebeen aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that ourlungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float. These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of timemust have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, oreven still more lowly organized. "[7]

That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by anymeans to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfisharistocracy are descended from a race of squirts--the squirts which youpicked up on the shore and squeezed, when you were a boy, dischargingthese primitive Babcock Extinguishers upon your playfellows, irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestorof the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance ofinfallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "Theyhardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida ofHuxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but theyhave recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms. Their larvę somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power ofswimming freely about. * * * We should thus be justified in believingthat, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existedresembling in many respects the larvę of our present Ascidians, whichdiverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in developmentand producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to thecrown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to thevertebrata. "[8] Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, andthat of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plainEnglish, makes them a race of squirts. 

The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants aswell as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, fromthe very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that allkinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs orspores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simplegave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr. Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that analogywould lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistentlyand boldly follow up the stream to its fountain, and allege a singleprimeval living seed as the origin of all living things, and that thismust have been a microscopic animalcule, or plant spore, of the verylowest order, which, multiplying its kind, gave birth to improved andenlarged offspring; and they, in their turn, grew, and multiplied, anddifferentiated into varieties; and so, in the course of endless ages, the poorer sorts perishing and the better sorts prospering, the worldbecame filled with its existing populations, without any new creativeacts of God, and without any particular providential care over the newspecies. 

The particular process according to which this multiplication andimprovement took place, Mr. Darwin calls Natural Selection. Everycreature tends to increase and multiply; and the very slowest breederswould soon fill the earth, were their multiplication not checked byhunger, 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; someof the same brood are better fitted to escape enemies, or to fight thebattle of life, than others. These will survive, while the weak onesperish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They willtransmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whateversuperiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on insuccessive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quantity to thestock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stockincrease the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breedersof race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In thisway varieties from the same family will grow into different species. And, as only those differences which are beneficial to the animal arepreserved, they will grow into improved species; and, as variations ofall sorts take place, so all sorts of varieties and species arise inprocess of time. All will thus tend to perfect themselves according tothe laws of nature, and without any special oversight or care of God, orof anybody but Natural Selection; which Mr. Darwin takes special care todescribe as an unintelligent selector. He defines the nature whichselects to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws, " andthese laws are "the sequences of events as ascertained by us. " Heridicules the idea of God's special endowment of the fantail pigeon withadditional 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 admitthat the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided inorder, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetryand vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for thebelief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the samegeneral laws which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection ofthe most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, wereintentionally and specially guided. "[9] This, then, is the granddistinctive difference of Mr. Darwin's mode of producing the variousanimals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are notdesigned nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of amethod of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. Thefailures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is nointentional or special guidance of God in the business. And the businessincludes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation ofthe first four or five germs down to the last formation of humansociety. God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world'slife, including all human affairs. This is not exactly atheism intheory, but practically it amounts to much the same thing. 

It is this excommunication of God's agency from the management of theworld, and especially from human affairs, by Mr. Darwin's method, whichhas so commended his books to the ungodly world. There is a generalagreement among this class of writers, that Mr. Darwin has destroyed thebasis of the argument for the being of God from design as displayed inthe adaptations of birds and beasts to their conditions. Mr. Huxley saysthat "when he first read Mr. Darwin's book, what struck him mostforcibly was the conviction that teleology, as commonly understood, hadreceived its death blow at Mr. Darwin's hands. "[10] "For the notion thatevery organism has been created as it is, and launched straight at apurpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which mayfairly be termed a method of trial and error. Organisms varyincessantly; of these variations the few meet with surroundingconditions which suit them and thrive; the many are unsuited and becomeextinguished. * * * For the teleologist (the Christian) an organismexists, 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 itis the only one which has been able to persist in the conditions inwhich it was found. * * * If we apprehend the spirit of the Origin ofSpecies rightly, then nothing can be more entirely and absolutelyopposed to teleology, as it is commonly understood, than the Darwiniantheory. "[11] Prof. Haeckel argues to the same purpose that Darwin'stheory leads inevitably to Atheism and Materialism. Dr. Buchner says ofDarwin's theory, "It is the most thoroughly naturalistic that can beimagined, and far more atheistic than that of his decried predecessor, Lamarck. " Carl Vogt also commends it because "It turns the Creator, andhis occasional intervention in the revolution of the earth and in theproduction of species, without any hesitation out of doors, inasmuch asit does not leave the smallest room for the agency of such a Being. Thefirst living germ being granted, out of it the creation develops itselfprogressively by Natural Selection, through all the geologic periods ofour planet, by the simple law of descent. No new species arise bycreation, and none perishes by annihilation; the natural cause ofthings, the process of evolution of all organisms, and of the earthitself, is of itself sufficient for the production of all we see. Thusman is not a special creation, produced in a different way, and distinctfrom other animals, endowed with an individual soul, and animated by thebreath of God; on the contrary, man is only the highest product of theprogressive evolution of animal life, springing from the group of apesnext below him. "[12]

Whether, therefore, Mr. Darwin himself intends his theory to beatheistic or not, it has had the misfortune to be so viewed by thegreater number of its supporters; and, accordingly, it is this view ofit which we shall keep prominent in the following discussion. Mr. Darwindoes undoubtedly intend his theory to be antagonistic to the Bibleaccount 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 thistheory is that it is a very queer notion for any Christian man toinvent. We are naturally curious to know how a man, educated in aChristian country, could have fallen into it. But it is, in fact, no newdiscovery, but an old heathen superstition. Some four hundred yearsbefore Christ, when the world had almost wholly apostatized intoidolatry, Democritus, among the Greeks, became offended with the vulgarheathen gods, and set himself to invent a plan of the world withoutthem. From Eastern travelers the Greeks knew that the Brahmins, inIndia, had a theory of the world developing itself from a primeval egg. He set himself to refine upon it, and imagined virtually the NebularHypothesis. He said that all matter consisted of very small atoms, dancing about in all directions, from all eternity, and which at lasthappened 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, sooriginally it produced all manner of animals. They worshiped it as agod, and called it Mot, or Mud. Anaximander took up the theory andcarried it out in true Darwinian style, alleging that the first mensprang from the ground watered by the sea, and that they had spines likesea urchins; evidently deriving them from the Radiates. Lucretius stillfurther developed the theory in a poem in six books. The spread ofChristianity, however, hindered the spread of the doctrine, as Mr. Tyndall feelingly laments, until the Saracens overspread the East, whensome 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, theanti-Christian form of science went down again. 

The dogma of the transmutation of species reappeared, however, in theRomish Church in a religious form; the old heathenism, which had neverbeen wholly banished from the minds of men, thus reasserting itself. About the tenth century some began to teach that the bread of thecommunion of the Lord's Supper was transubstantiated, and the wine also, into the body, and blood, and soul, and divinity of our Lord JesusChrist. This is probably the most complete transmutation of specieswhich has ever been imagined or described. The evolution of bread intoDeity is only equaled by Mr. Tyndall's endowment of matter with all thepotencies of life and thought; a miracle differing from the popishtransubstantiation only in the element of time, but in its essentialnature equally supernatural. The dogma excited great discussion forcenturies, and produced as many theories of transubstantiation as we nowobserve of evolution, keeping philosophic minds and pens busy till thedawn of modern science after the Reformation. 

La Place threw out the Nebular Hypothesis, which is substantiallyDemocritus' concourse of atoms, only La Place endeavored to substitutecircular motions under the law of gravitation, instead of Democritus'chance arrangement, as a sufficient cause for the formation and motionsof planets. Herschel's discovery of the nebulę was hastily laid hold ofby a number of writers, and notably by the author of the Vestiges ofCreation, as furnishing the primeval matter necessary for world-making;and till the spectroscopic discoveries of the composite nature ofgaseous nebulę, they were claimed as specimens of worlds in process offormation. La Place supposed his nebulous matter to be gas in a state ofwhite-heat combustion, compared with which the heat of the hottest firewould be a cool bath. In no other way could he dissipate the world'ssubstance into sufficient thinness for his vortices. But Spencer sawthat this tremendous heat would be fatal to all forms of life, andespecially to sensitive beings; and Tyndall shows us that this originalmatter must have had all the potencies of life and sensation, and apotency of sensation means being able to feel. Now the worst fatethreatened against sinners in the Bible is a place in the lake burningwith fire and brimstone, which burns at 500° Fahrenheit; but thetemperature of the original fire-mist was a thousand times hotter. Someof these scientists call such a fate as the Bible threatens against thewicked, cruel. But here is a hell manufactured by the evolutionistsinfinitely worse than that of the Bible; for the hell of the Bible isonly for the wicked, but the evolutionists' hell is indiscriminately forall, saints and sinners, and all sorts of creatures, innocent as babesunborn of any crime; yet they, or, which is the same thing, the mattercontaining all the potency of their sensations, that is their power offeeling, were born in this hell, and kept in it from all eternity, untilit 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 coldto begin with, and to heat it up by condensation and pressure to aboutthe temperature of molten iron; which was still an uncomfortably warmlodging for Mr. Tyndall's potencies of sensation for some millions ofyears. The division of opinion about the original nebulę, however, stillprevails; some evolutionists of the old-fashioned order still takingtheir nebulę hot, while others, with Spencer, prefer it cold, with stardust. 

As to the Spontaneous Generation of life, there has been less progressof opinion, though great variety has been exhibited. Ovid and Virgildescribe the way in which a carcass produces bees. It was generallybelieved that putrid meat produced the maggots, till the blow-flies werediscovered laying their eggs. Then it was alleged that the entozoa, theworms 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, wasself-produced, so man was originated by the primeval slime. So alsoProfessor Vogt, and M. Tremaux develop their animals from the land, andthe latter accounts for their various qualities from the variousqualities of their respective birthplaces, the crop being conditioned bythe soil. But Mr. Darwin derives all his organisms from the sea. Electricity in its galvanic form was for a while the agent to fire theearthly or marine mud with the vital spark; and Mr. Crosse's experimentswere supposed instances of the creation of acarii or mites in thebattery bath, until it was found that the bath contained eggs and theelectricity only hatched them. Some English evolutionists still adhereto the theory of Spontaneous Generation, but the leading Germans denyany instance of it being known. Huxley denies that any case of it hasbeen established as now practicable; but supposes that if we could havebeen present at the beginning of the world, when all the elements wereyoung and vigorous, we should have seen the chemical elements of theearth and air combining to form living beings, by the mere powers oftheir nature. If that were the fact, it would be a fact unique andunparalleled, utterly out of the course of nature, and so as contrary tothe theory of evolution as if these living beings had been inspired withlife by Almighty God. 

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

As to the history of the progress of the germs of plants and animalsthus produced, we find still greater diversities of opinion, not only asto details, but as to principles. Each inventor has added to, oraltered, the original idea of evolution, until it has been burdened withmore improvements and new patents than the sewing machine; only theevolutionary improvements bid fair to improve the theory out ofexistence. We have seen M. Tremaux, with the autochthonic Athenians, deriving the powers of improvement of plants and animals from theirnative soils. Lamarck on the contrary, inspired all his plants andanimals--fungi and frogs, and elephants and apes--with the desire ofgetting on in the world and improving their limbs by exercise; so thegreyhound grew slim and fleet by running; the giraffe's neck elongatedby reaching up to the branches of the trees on which it browsed, and theduck acquired web feet by swimming. Others attributed the evolution ofdifferences to external conditions. The negro became black by exposureto the tropical sun; the arctic hare received its coat of thick whitefur from the cold climate, and the buffalo and camel their humps of fatfrom the sterility of their pastures at certain seasons, and theconsequent need of a reserved store of fat for food for the rest of thebody. Mr. Darwin's doctrine of Natural Selection refuses Lamarck'snotion 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 rangewhere good pastures make fat animals for a season or two. An innatepower of accidental variation to a very small amount, and the slow butconstant adding up of profitable variations during countlessgenerations, with the killing off of the unimproved breeds by NaturalSelection, is his patent populator and improver. But this theory is tooslow for the nineteenth century, and so neither Huxley, nor Parsons, norMivart, nor even Wallace, accepts the doctrine as Darwin propounds it. It is, in fact, already becoming unpopular among scientific men. Lyellproposed the origination of new species by leaps; as we see greatgeniuses 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 speciesfrom a prolongation of the period of gestation. But Hyatt and Copederive them from quite the contrary process--accelerated development ofgestation. MM. Ferris and Kolliker derive them from parthenogenesis, amode 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 theinfluence of Natural Selection, from the time he acquired a soul. Mr. Wallace, rejecting the action of one Supreme Intelligence for everythingbut the origin of universal forces and laws, "Contemplates thepossibility that the development of the essentially human portions ofman's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directinginfluence of some higher intelligent beings acting through natural anduniversal laws;"[13] _i. E. _, the gods of the old heathen nations. Andso after twenty-two centuries wandering over the world, we have got backto where Democritus started from--to pure old heathenism. 

After such a history of the theory of evolution, and in presence of suchcontradictory presentations by its advocates, I need scarcely say thatit is by no means an established scientific principle, were it not forthe insolent manner in which some of them assert it as scientificallydemonstrated; and denounce the Bible doctrine of creation as meresuperstition, "A feather bed of respectable and respected tradition, "and warn off Christians from any attempt to investigate theories ofcosmogony; and overbear the ignorant by the array of the names of men ofscience who give their sanction to some phase of the theory. But let itbe borne in mind that no well-established scientific principle, nodemonstrated law, exhibits such contradictory and conflicting phases asthose we have just witnessed. The laws of gravitation, or of chemicalaffinity, 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, asutterly unscientific, and have recorded their opposition, and thereasons for it. Sir John Herschel and Sir Wm. Thompson, amongastronomers, have proclaimed its antagonism to the facts of physicalastronomy. No new facts subversive of the foundations of faith in God asrecognized in the universe by Bacon, Newton, Boyle, Descartes, Leibnitz, Pascal, Paley and Bell, have been discovered by such scientists asWhewell, Sedgwick, Brewster, Faraday, Hugh Miller, or our Americangeologists, Dawson, Hitchcock, and Dana. Nor have the deliberate andexpanded demonstrations of its unscientific character by the latelamented Agassiz been ever fairly met, much less overturned. I refer tothese honored names for the benefit of that large class who must taketheir science upon faith in some scientific prophet or apostle, indefault of any possibility of personal investigation of the facts. Indeed, to the great majority, even of so-called scientific men, theirscience must be founded upon faith in the dogma of some scientific popeand council. And to such it may be reassuring, amidst the evolutionists'cries of Science! Science! to know that a great many of the greatestscientists, in spite of all these confused assertions, do still believein Almighty God, do call their souls their own, and hope when they dieto go to heaven. 

As a specimen of the contempt in which this theory is held by theprinces 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 feelmore and more the danger of stretching inferences from a fewobservations to a wide field. I see that the younger generation amongnaturalists are at this moment falling into the mistake of makingassertions and presenting views as scientific principles which are noteven based upon real observation. I think it is time that some positiveremonstrance be made against that tendency. The manner in which theevolution theory in zoology is treated would lead those who are notspecial zoologists to suppose that observations have been made by whichit can be inferred that there is in nature such a thing as change amongorganized beings actually taking place. _There is no such thing onrecord. _ It is shifting the ground from one field of observation toanother to make this statement, and when the assertions go so far as toexclude from the domain of science those who will not be dragged intothis mire of mere assertion, then it is time to protest. 

"He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific groundsbecause he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those whomaintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few originalprogenitors. Other supporters of the transmutation doctrine assume thatthey can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certaindegrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality andcondition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved. They assume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve whatexists now. That is begging the question at the outset; for if thesefirst prototypes contained the principle of evolution, we should knowsomething about them from observation, and it should be shown that thereare such organized beings as are capable of evolution. 

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

It is to be acknowledged, however, that many scientists areevolutionists. Mr. Darwin is not alone in his belief. If he were, itwould not be worth while to spend time in examining it. Quite a numberof scientific men have fallen into it, and lecture and writecommendations of it; and it has become quite popular among a certainclass who do not like to accept the Bible doctrine that God created man, with its necessary consequence that the creature ought to obey hisCreator; 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 endproperly fitted to it. It takes a piece out of the middle of theuniverse from the management of God, but it leaves the beginning and theend totally unaccounted for; telling us neither whence came the firstgerms, nor whither tends the final fully developed angel. Mr. Darwin, though he calls one of his works, the Origin of Species, really avoidsthe question of origin. He admits the miracle of the creation of thefour or five original germs of life, which, according to theevolutionists, is as unscientific as if he admitted four or fivehundred. They desire to escape the operation of God altogether. Moreover, he gives no account of the origin of the law of heredity, bywhich each being produces its like; nor yet of the origin of the powerof 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 thatevolutionists are displeased. If they admit God at the beginning of theworld they see plainly that there is no possibility of getting rid ofhim afterward. Messrs. Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall, Buchner, Haeckel andVogt combine their forces accordingly to evolve the world as we find itwithout God's intervention. 

Mr. Huxley, perceiving that to make either man, or monkey, or nomad, youmust have materials, kindly brings a little pitcher of protoplasm, whichhe 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 animaltissues are made up mostly of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen; andas the materials of which all living beings are built are the sameoriginally, 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 teacups, and porcelain vases of the great world building are built. Wedon't need to begin with monkeys, nor fish, or pollywogs, now to developinto men, for we go down to the very bottom, since we have the stuffthey all are made of, namely, protoplasm. Still this clay needs a potterto mold and bake it. 

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

Yet, after all this marvelous endowment of matter with all potency, wehave not got quite back to the beginning. For still the questions arise, Where did this almighty matter come from? Who endowed it with thesewonderful potencies? And how does it happen to work so well, in suchorderly and regular evolution of star dust, suns, planets, pollywogs, monkeys, men and maggots, in eternal cycles, ever advancing higher anddoing better and better for the race, though poorly enough, it appears, for the miserable individuals? Here Buchner, Vogt, Spencer and othermaterialists come in and perfect that which was lacking; showing how thestar dust made itself, and how the paving stones made themselves, andare under no obligations to any Creator but themselves. Matter and forceare all they need, and endless time in which to work, and they willaccount for the universe without any Creator at all. Everything andevery person must be just as it is, according to the regular operationof 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 howsociety, and morals, and religion have been excogitated by the apes outof their meditations in the forests. It is a fearful and wonderfulaccount they give us of the origin of marriage from the battles of thebaboons, of the rights of property established by terrible fights forgroves of good chestnuts, of the beginnings of morals from the instinctsof brutes, and of the dawnings of religion, or rather of superstition, from the dreams of these animals; the result of the whole being thatcivilization, and society, and law, and order, and religion, are allsimply the evolution of the instincts of the brutes, and that there isno 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, " intothe eternal sleep of death. 

It thus appears that there is an orderly succession and attemptedadjustment of one part of the doctrine of evolution to another, and thatall the various workers are cooperating toward one grand result. It istrue they differ widely in their professed religious creeds andpolitical partialities. Mr. Darwin avows his belief in a Creator. Mr. Huxley votes on the London School Board for the introduction of theBible into the public schools. Mr. Spencer is willing to allow theexistence of some great unknowable mystery. Some of the French andGerman evolutionists dispense with any reference to God, as anunnecessary hypothesis. Others oppose the idea of God altogether, asinimical to progress. M. Comte proposed a worship of humanity. M. Strauss would worship the universe. But with all this variety ofuniform, and armor, and tactics, the evolutionists are all soldiers ofthe same army, and are all fighting the same great battle, for thebrutal origin of man, and his independence of God. From whichindependence of God, and brutal origin of mankind, result veryimportant consequences. For the belief of this notion necessarilydestroys all faith in the Bible, and in the Christianity which itreveals, and revolutionizes the basis of the civilization founded uponit, 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 theAll-seeing Judge of all the earth, who will reward every man accordingto his works. For all practical purposes it makes no great differencewhether a man denies that there is any God at all, or admits that thereis some kind of a god who created the world millions of years ago, andjust set it a spinning to work out its destiny as best it might, butnever after concerned himself about it, or its people, and never will;for nobody will ever trouble his head about a god who never troubles hishead about him. 

Most of the evolutionists are zealous advocates of their system. Thesepropagandists have had such a degree of success in attracting publicattention, in inspiring a large proportion of the secular press, besidesscientific journals, as advocates of their notions, and in obtainingentrance for them into the common school books, put into the hands ofour children, and into massive quartos published by State legislatureswith the money of Christian people, and in the prevalent corruption ofpublic morals and breach of private trusts necessarily resulting fromthe evolution of these principles, that we are compelled, inself-defense, to examine the doctrine of evolution. It is all very wellfor Mr. Tyndall to warn off everybody, but evolutionists, from anyinvestigations into cosmogony; about which he owns that they know verylittle 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 meantimehave 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 havetaxes to pay, increasing every year, and public plunderers to prosecuteand whose ballots may be asked one of these days for the substitution ofthe communes of the original apes, and the Red Republic for these UnitedStates, all upon the alleged scientific proof for the truth of thedoctrine of evolution, and the consequent abolishment ofChristianity--common people, I maintain, by whose money and votes thisdogma is to be established, will not be debarred from asking the why andthe 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 ownmind from the Alps to Belfast, and who doubt whether God made themwhenever they are dyspeptic, to stand up before the public demandingthat we shut our eyes and open our mouths, and swallow everypreposterous notion they think proper to proclaim as science, to thedestruction of our faith in the God who made us, of our respect for ourbrethren 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 suchwide-reaching revolutions, they ought to be prepared to furnish the mostirrefragable proofs of its truth, and of its obligation and authority. We should be able to establish it beyond all controversy as based on aseries of facts which take their place historically in the line of theinductive sciences; about which all men of science are agreed, as allastronomers, for instance, are agreed about gravitation; and we shouldbe able to show that each of the alleged consequences flows inevitablyand logically from these established facts. Ignorance, hypothesis, assumption of facts, sophisms, begging the question, and the like, arewholly impertinent in any such discussion. Were they even tolerable inthe field of metaphysical discussion, they must, by the rules of thePositive Philosophy itself, banishing all but ascertained facts from thehalls of science, be excluded from this discussion of an alleged generallaw of nature. But when we enter on the examination of the dogma ofevolution, we find its parentage among ignoble superstitions; itsfundamental 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 closelyat the theory of evolution, as presented by any of its prominentatheistical advocates is, _its illogical and incoherent structure_. Thewriter contradicts himself. The various parts of the theory do not hangtogether. The alleged facts do not sustain the conclusions deduced fromthem. Mr. Darwin's books especially abound in the most intolerableassumptions of principles and facts, not only without proof, but in theface of unanswered and unanswerable objections. And the theory isuseless for the purpose of its proposal. All this is utterly at variancewith the method of true science. None but a mind debauched by bigotedattachment to a preconceived theory could overlook these fatal defectsin the system. Indeed both Darwin and Huxley admit that acceptance ofthe evidence must be preceded by belief in the principle of evolution. It is marvelous that any properly educated student of mental scienceshould accept a theory so incoherent, in which the rents are scarcelyheld together by the patches. We can only exhibit a few specimens of themultitude 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 ofthe very things necessary for him to know before he can construct amethod of creation, and unable to explain to us what he sets out toexplain. He confesses himself ignorant of the origin and laws ofinheritance, by which his whole system hangs together; of the commonancestors from which he alleges all creatures are derived; of the lawsof correlation of parts, though these are indispensable to development;of the reasons of the extinction of species, which is the greatbusiness, the very trade of his great agent, Natural Selection. He hasno knowledge of the duration of past ages, though that duration is anessential element of his calculations. The spontaneous variations ofplants and animals are the very mainspring of his machine; but he tellsus he knows nothing of the laws governing them; nor has he anyinformation about the creation of the primordial forms, nor about thedate of beginning, or rate of progress. [15] All which are necessary tobe known in order to the formation of a correct theory. Again and again, when confronted with facts which his theory can not explain, he takesrefuge in confessions of ignorance. When he meets facts which flatlycontradict his theory of the imperceptible beneficial acquirement oforgans, or of properties by inheritance--such as the sterility ofhybrids, 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 isimpossible to conceive_ by what steps these wondrous organs have beenproduced. " When asked for the missing links between existing species, herefers us to the undiscovered fossiliferous strata below the Silurian. So Sir C. Lyell refers us for a view of the apes, which developed thefirst men, to the unexplored geological regions of Central Africa! AndRev. Baden Powell refers us, for the missing links of the chain ofdevelopment, to "that enormous period of which we are, from theconditions, _precluded from knowing any thing whatever_. " And as to theOrigin of Species, the very thing the title of his book proclaims, andhow the original germs varied into the four or five primeval forms, andthese into the next, he says: "_Our ignorance of the laws of variationis profound!_" And that is science!

The Christian acknowledges his ignorance of the method of creation; buthe presents a sufficient cause for the existence of the facts. Theevolutionist ridicules the Bible account of creation asincomprehensible, and then he gives us an account which he himself ownsto be incomprehensible, and which we, besides, perceive to be absurd. Heproposes to explain to us the origin of species, and locates it in thegeological strata of an unexplored continent, and in those remote agesof which by the conditions _we are precluded from knowing any thingwhatever_! Objecting to the idea of the God of the Bible, as aself-existent, infinite, intelligent, omnipotent, good Spirit, becauseof its unthinkability, Messrs. Spencer, Tyndall, and the rest assure usof the eternal self existence of an intelligent cloud of gas, endowedwith all promises and potencies, of life and thought, as a simple andintelligible substitute! Belief in God Almighty is only superstition, but faith in Mr. Tyndall's gas-god is science. Mr. Spencer honestlylands in the unknowable. Well, then, what science have we gained of themysteries of our origin?

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

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

Mr. Wallace gives us a specimen of this logical incoherence affecting ifpossible still more deeply the foundations of philosophic faith. [16] Heheads his paragraph _Matter is Force_, and goes on to argue that matteris essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularlyunderstood, does not exist. Then in a couple of pages he goes on toargue "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, ifit means anything, means the interposition of natural law between thewill of the one Supreme Intelligence and the universe. And on thistheory 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 spacepermit, from almost every advocate of evolution. 

Our space permits the exhibition of but a single instance of theinherent incoherency of the theory. There is nothing in which all theatheistic evolutionists are more emphatic than in the exclusion ofdesign from the universe. All their arguments and sneers are leveledagainst the idea, that the adaptations of Nature were designed orintended by an intelligent mind; and the theory of evolution is welcomedchiefly because it enables them to give some account of the order of theworld, without any acknowledgment of a providence guiding it to some endor purpose. But yet all these same evolutionists proclaim progress asthe great law of Nature, and expend themselves with wonderful eloquencein 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 ofprogress involves design, and that the fact of progress assertsprovidence. Nor is there any escape by alleging necessity of Nature, which is merely endowing the designer of progress with omnipotence aswell as omniscience. 

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

Here is a great effect--a universe in solution, with all the chemicalconstituents of our globe and solar system floating in it, and all theirlaws of chemical affinity and proportion, and all their electricalattractions and repulsions, in full operation (else we would never get auniverse to thicken down out of it); and besides, all the potencies ofvegetable and animal life, and all the great powers of the human mind, in a rather vaporous condition, it is true, but still allthere--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 theBritish Empire, and the rest of mankind--all boiled up into Mr. Tyndall's potencies, but all there in potency, just as truly as theyever were here in fact. Well! here is a great effect just asimperatively demanding a great First Cause as the world afterward formedout of it. These substances did not make themselves then, any more thanthe resulting persons or paving stones make themselves now, and they didnot endow themselves with these potencies, nor calculate and establishthese laws of chemical combination in exact proportion, nor determinescientifically the laws of gravitation and electricity and light andheat, before they came into being; which must have all been establishedbefore a single particle of the star dust could begin to cool, or toapproach another. The very first idea of matter or of force we can formdemands law, and law is merely another name for the divine order ofNature. Whatever foundation for Natural Religion, for faith in God asthe Creator and Governor of the world, is afforded by the existing orderof the world, it is in no degree logically weakened (though it may bepractically) by viewing that order as reached by a process of evolution, since that process also must have been designed, planned, adapted to itspurpose, and divinely superintended. 

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

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

He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, page48); that the instincts of animals are developed (page 38); thatlanguage was developed (page 53); that there is a wider interval betweenthe lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus beggingthe question of man's brutality (page 34); that the savage is theoriginal state of man (page 63); that parental instincts are the resultof Natural Selection, after owning utter ignorance of their origin (page77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy(page 82); the heredity of moral tastes (page 98); that the standard ofmorality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (page99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (page 116); that there have beenthousands of generations (page 125); that breeds have the character ofspecies (Origin of Species, page 411); that rudimentary organs areinherited abortions (page 424); that there are four or five originalprogenitors, and distant evidence of only one (page 425); he assumesdescent to prove his geology (page 428); and perpetual progress towardperfection (pages 59, 140, 176, 428), in the face of his own facts ofretrogression. 

Then look at the outrageous character of the assumption that beneficialvariations may be added up indefinitely, that is, to infinity. Because agymnast can leap over two horses, can his son leap over three? and hisson over four? and his son over five? and can we in time breed a man whowill leap to the moon? And yet the whole theory is based uponforgetfulness of the maxim, that there is a limit to all things, and ofthe fact, that in creatures of flesh and blood this limit is very soonreached. 

Look again at the utterly erroneous assumption that the tendency of thestruggle for life is to improve the combatants; an assumptioncontradicted by the whole history of famine, war, pauperism, anddisease, among brutes and men. Were the survivors of the Irish famine of1847, or those of the Persian, or Bengali famines improved by theirstruggle for life? It is true the fittest survived; but that was all;they were miserably emaciated and demoralized. Were the peasantry ofEurope improved by the wars of the French Revolution? On the contrary, though the fittest survived, France was obliged to lower the recruitingstandard three inches. In all cases the struggle for life injures allconcerned. 

And yet upon these two fundamental assumptions the theory is built; ofwhich that of the indefinite accumulation of small profitable variationsis outrageously impossible and absurd; and the other, of the improvementof breeds by starvation and hardships, is contrary to all observationand experience! Take away these two assumptions, and the whole theory ofthe 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 thenatural standard, or near to it, by destroying the weakest; but at thesame time it weakens the strongest also. Were there no other objection, this one would be fatal, that Mr. Darwin assigns an elevating power to adepressing agency, and asserts war, famine, hardship, and disease as hisholy angels perfecting progress. 

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

2. This theory, it should be remembered, is _merely a theory_, _a merenotion_, _a hypothesis_. It is not even alleged that it is based uponfacts actually discovered. The alleged facts of the cooling of thenebulę, the chemical origin of life upon our globe, and the developmentof the original Ascidian into the fish, and that into the monkey, and ofthe monkey into the man, never were witnessed by anybody, nor could theybe 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 ofa fact of science upon which he, or anybody else, might build a system. Nor are the modern assertors of evolution able to establish a singleinstance of the chemical origin of life at the present day; thoughthousands of experiments have been made attempting that exploit, byEnglish, French, and German chemists during the last forty years. Norhas a single case of the transmutation of species ever been observed inwild animals or plants; nor has any change of species been produced intame ones by domestication or culture. No naturalist has seen acommunity of apes in the process of improvement toward manhood; nor hasany philologist described the first attempts of the monkeys toward thearticulation of language, or the manufacture of clothing, unless weexcept Mr. Lemuel Gulliver's interesting account of the Yahoos. It mustbe 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 greatlyto be desired that some scientific evolutionists should thoroughlyexplore those regions, investigate the manners and customs of the Yahooswith the enthusiasm of a true Darwinian, and minutely describe thoseinteresting features which would enable us to decide whether they aremonkeys progressing to manhood, or men brutalizing into apehood; butwhich Mr. Gulliver's lack of scientific enthusiasm for evolutionprevented him from closely examining. But until the scientific standingof Mr. Gulliver's Yahoos is determined, the theory of evolution must beassigned to the mountains of speculations, big with expectation, butwhich yet await the birth of their first fact. 

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

But the facts of domestication are most emphatic in refusing toacknowledge any change of species of the most carefully bred animals. The efforts of breeders have been exerted for thousands of years uponthe dog, the ox, the goat, the sheep, and the ass, the horse, and thecamel, among animals; and upon the goose, the duck, and the pigeon, andfor a shorter time, but still for two thousand years, upon the commonbarn-door poultry. Farmers in all lands, since the deluge, have usedtheir best exertions to improve the cereals, the fruit trees, the vines, and root crops, and vegetables, and the result has been some valuablemodifications of size, shape, flavor, and fertility; but in no casewhatever has any change of species been effected. All the efforts ofbreeders have not succeeded in making the horse specifically differentfrom the noble animal described in the Book of Job four thousand yearsago. The sheep has not become a goat, nor the goat a sheep, by all thepains of all the shepherds since the days of Abel. The ass displays notthe least tendency to become a horse, nor the goat to become a cow. Mr. Darwin makes great capital out of pigeons, enumerating all the varietiesowned by fanciers, and showing how the Indian emperors bred them athousand years before Christ. But it is strange that he does not seethat this makes against his theory; since in all that time this mostvariable of birds has never been transmuted into any other species. Thepigeon 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. Darwinrelies greatly upon supposed variations from some one assumed ancestralpair of dogs, into the greyhound, mastiff, terrier, and lapdog. Butgranting all these unproven variations, no instance is alleged of a dogever 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 differentfrom those called by the same names in ancient times as to be reallydifferent 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 variousplants, birds, and animals, from three to four thousand years old, aswell as of man, the most domestic animal of the whole. These paintingsand sculptures assure us that in all those millenniums domestication hasnot produced the slightest change in the races of animals, plants, ormen. 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, recognizablelikenesses of eminent living Jewish merchants, in London and NewOrleans. The old Pharaohs of the monuments can be matched for face andfigure any day in the bazars of Cairo. The greyhound of the tombs is thesame variety now used for coursing hares in the desert. The camel, theass, and the Arab, and Assyrian breeds of horses, have not been at allimproved in forty centuries. Even Mr. Darwin's favorite pigeons wouldseem to have ceased to vary; for the carrier-pigeons let loose bySesostris, to carry the news of his coronation to all the cities ofEgypt, do not differ a feather from the modern Egyptian carrier-pigeons. The various wild animals, and many of the plants, are represented onthese monuments in great variety. Among these I have noted the lotus, the papyrus, the leek, the palm, wheat, barley, and millet; thecrocodile, the frog, the crane, the flamingo, the ibis, the goose, theowl, the ostrich, the peacock; and of beasts the now famous ancestralape, Ptolemy's tame lion, the leopard, the gazelle, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, and the wild boar, and many others. But there is not theleast perceptible change in the corresponding species now inhabitingEgypt and the desert. 

We can go further than the mere external appearance; for we can actuallydissect specimens of the various animals, and thus satisfy ourselveswhether any physiological change, amounting to a transmutation ofspecies, has occurred, or was in progress; and the investigation hasbeen conducted by no less a physiologist and zoologist than Cuvier, whose authority in such matters no naturalist will dispute. And this iswhat he says: "It might seem as if the ancient Egyptians had beeninspired by nature, for the purpose of transmitting to after ages amonument of her natural history. That strange and whimsical people, byembalming with so much care the brutes which were the objects of theirstupid adoration, have left us in their sacred grottoes cabinets ofzoology almost complete. Climate has conspired with art to preserve thebodies from corruption, and we can now assure ourselves with our owneyes what was the state of a good number of species three thousand yearsago. * * * I have endeavored to collect all the ancient documentsrespecting the forms of animals, and there are none equal to thosefurnished by the Egyptians, both in regard to their antiquity andabundance. I have examined with the greatest care the engraved figuresof quadrupeds and birds upon the obelisks brought from Egypt to ancientRome; and all these figures, one with another, have a perfectresemblance to their intended objects, such as they still are in ourdays. My learned friend, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, convinced me of theimportance of this research, and carefully collected in the tombs andtemples of Upper and Lower Egypt as many mummies of animals as he couldprocure. He has brought home the mummies of cats, ibises, birds of prey, dogs, crocodiles, and the head of a bull. After the most attentive anddetailed examination, not the smallest difference is to be perceivedbetween these animals and those of the same species which we now see, any more than between human mummies and skeletons of men of the presentday. "[17]

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

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

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

Geologists are generally agreed that the first Florida Coral Reef is atleast 30, 000 years old; but Agassiz asserts, uncontradicted, that theinsect which built it has not altered in the least in that period, andhe says regarding it: "These facts furnish evidence, as direct as we canobtain in any branch of physical inquiry, that some at least of thespecies of animals now existing have been in existence 30, 000 years, andhave not undergone the slightest change in that period. " But we can gostill further back, and demonstrate the permanence of vegetablestructure. Hugh Miller says: "The oak, the birch, the hazel, the Scotchfir, all lived, I repeat, in what is now Britain, ere the last greatdepression 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. Cuvierframed an argument for the fixity of species on the fact that the birdsand beasts of the catacombs were identical in every respect with theanimals of the same kind that live now. But what, it has been asked, isa brief period of 3, 000 years, when compared with the geologic ages? Orhow could any such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? Itis, however, to no such narrow basis that we can refer in the case ofthese woods. All human history is comprised in the nearer corner of theimmense period they measure out; and yet from their first appearance increation till now, they have not altered a single fiber. And such onthis point is the invariable testimony of Paleontologic science, testimony so invariable that no great Paleontologist was ever yet anasserter of the Development Hypothesis. "[18] To the same purpose let ushear Huxley's testimony, since no one will suspect him of undue respectfor Moses: "Obviously if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known arecoeval with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us anyjust conception of the earliest fauna and flora, the insignificantamount of modification which can be demonstrated to have taken place inany one group of animals and plants, is quite incompatible with thehypothesis that all living forms are the results of a process ofnecessary progressive development entirely comprised within the timerepresented by the fossiliferous rocks. "[19]

We are fully warranted, then, in alleging, that no such transmutation ofspecies is known to science, as an existing fact, or as having everoccurred. 

As to the supposition on which the evolutionists fall back, that such amiracle might have happened thousands of millions of years before theformation of the lowest rocks known to us, we might well decline thediscussion 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 empoweredto say positively, No! There is no such length of time for you, Mr. Darwin, on this little globe at least. This rotating world had abeginning; so had our moon; and our sun, too, began to burn one day. Andthere are data of the revolution of these bodies, and of the secularcooling of the earth, and of the gradual combustion of the sun, and ofthe retardation of the earth's motions, from which Sir Wm. Thompson (inhis Treatise on Geological Time) calculates, that our earth has not beenin a fit state for plants and animals for more than a hundred millionsof years; and he demonstrates the absurdity of the demand for unlimitedtime, as contradictory to the facts of physical astronomy. Hence we denythe possibility of evolution in the infinite ages of the past. Therenever were any such ages on this world of ours. 

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

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

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

2. It is not true that "the original substratum or material is in everyinstance alike, " nor that the "primordial cell is in every instance thesame, " whether of the "lichen or the man;"[21] nor as others allege, "that chemical reagents detect no differences between them. " Chemicalreagents are very clumsy instruments for the analysis of living beings, and their properties and powers; which are the antagonists of chemicalreactions. Nevertheless, heat is a well-known chemical agent, and theapplication of heat to a fertilized, and to an unfertilized, germdevelops a whole world of difference between them. The one becomes achicken, the other an addled egg. Moreover, the application of differentdegrees of heat to different germs produces the most various reactions. The germs of trout are speedily killed by the moderate temperature of65° Fahrenheit, while the germs of most animalculę and plants developrapidly at that temperature. Such instances might be multiplied, butthese 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, andat 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 todevelop only according to its own proper method. There is no moreconfusion of germs, or embryos, than of plants or animals. 

4. No instance has ever been known of a germ producing an animal, orplant, of another species, by any process of stopping short of ripening, or undue prolongation of it. Every seed breeds true to its kind, or notat all, or produces a deformity. Embryology utterly refuses the notionof the transmutation of species. 

Mr. Darwin's various references to rudimentary organs, like the bones ofa hand in the flipper of the whale, or the teats of male animals, andthe like, can hardly be called arguments. He tries to account for themand fails; acknowledging ignorance of the laws of heredity. Some of themhe will have to be young organs in process of evolution, others organsaborted for want of exercise. In this category he ought to place thetail which he ought to have inherited from his ancestors, as he isgreatly exercised to know what became of it. But it is evident that hisattempts to build arguments on such things, and to account foroccasional variations by atarism, are in contradiction to hisprinciples. Most of the known instances of the origination of permanentvarieties were not the result of infinitesimal improvements, but weresudden and complete at once. The Japan peacocks, the short-leggedsheep, the porcupine man and his family, and the six-fingered men, werenot at all the results of a slow process of evolution; on the contrary, they were born so, complete at once, in utter contradiction of thetheory. 

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 andanimals_. Not but that there are many other arguments adduced, but theyare of too technical a character to be intelligible to any butzoologists, and of too little weight to demand consideration after theleading arguments are overturned. But this argument from gradation, though logically unsound, is plausibly specious, and therefore demandsnotice. 

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 naturalobjects assembled together, the more do we discover proofs thateverything passes by insensible shades into something else; that eventhe more remarkable differences are evanescent, and that nature has forthe most part left us nothing at our disposal for establishingdistinctions, save trifling, and in some respects puerileparticularities. We find that many genera among plants and animals areof such an extent, in consequence of the number of species referred tothem, that the study and determination of these last have become almostimpracticable. When the species are arranged in a series, and placednear to each other, with a due regard to their natural affinities, theyeach differ in so minute a degree from those next adjoining, that theyalmost melt into each other, and are in a manner confounded together. Ifwe see isolated species, we may presume the absence of some more closelyconnected, and which have not yet been discovered. Already there aregenera, and even entire orders, nay, whole classes which present thisstate of things. " He then goes on to present, "as a guide toconjecture, " what his successors now assert as a fact: "In the firstplace, if we examine the whole series of known animals, from oneextremity to the other, when they are arranged in the order of theirnatural relations, we find that we may pass progressively, or at leastwith very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of morecompound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of theirorganization increases, the number and dignity of their facultiesincrease also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scaleof being is apparent. Secondly, it appears, from geologicalobservations, that plants and animals of more simple organizationexisted on the globe before the appearance of those of more compoundstructure, and the latter were successively formed at more modernperiods, each new race being more fully developed than the most perfectof the preceding one. "[22]

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

The idea of birth descent can not be logically connected with that ofgradation; especially with a gradation upward. Were the order of naturesuch as Lamarck describes, how could any man logically infer the birthdescent of each of its classes from the next below? Here is anironmonger's sample card of wood screws, beginning with thoseone-quarter of an inch long, and proceeding by gradations ofone-sixteenth of an inch to those of four inches. Does the gradationshow that the little ones begot the big ones? It may be said the woodscrews do not beget progeny. Well, here is a hill containingtwenty-three potatoes, weighing from half an ounce to half a pound, andquite regularly graded. Did the small potatoes beget the big ones? Theinference of birth descent from gradation is utterly illogical, and of apiece with the incoherency which we have seen in the other parts of thetheory. It never could be inferred from the facts stated, even didnature correspond to Lamarck's description. 

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

In the first place there is no such imperceptible blending and shadingoff of species as the description would imply, obliterating alldistinctions of species, and rendering it impossible even for anaturalist to distinguish one species from another. Since the time ofLamarck, structure and physiology have been more studied than mereexternal appearances; so that from a tooth or bone Cuvier or Agassizcould reconstruct an animal, and indicate its internal organization, aswell as its form and habits. But even in Lamarck's days, and even to themost uneducated, there was no such imperceptible shading and blending asthe theory requires. It is well to look here at its requirements, forthey are not fully presented by its friends. Mr. Darwin gives us adiagram exhibiting the variation of an original species into a score orso of varieties, ending in distinct species. But this is very far, indeed, below the necessities of the case. The horse hair worm lays8, 000, 000 of eggs; and the primeval germ, whatever it was, could hardlybe less fertile, since fertility increases with simplicity of structure. But, taking 8, 000, 000 to begin with, here were as many varieties; sinceno two of them, or of any creature, could be exactly alike. The nextgeneration would give 8, 000, 000 times as many varieties, and so on tillNatural Selection began to thin off the feeble. But here we have, instead of a few well-marked varieties, an infinite multitude ofimperceptible variations, rendering classification impossible. And asall these were only varieties of the same breed, they would breedtogether, and thus still more confuse the complexity, and renderdistinction of species impossible. For, in spite of all Mr. Darwin hasto say about the extinction of the weaker varieties, the fact is, theyare not at all extinguished, but keep their ground as well as the higherclasses, or perhaps better. And if a snail, or a worm, can contrive tolive now in an unimproved condition, why should its improving cousin dieoff? Did its improvement kill it? And so of improving mollusks, andwell-doing radiates, and aspiring rabbits, and all the rest. The worldought to be so full of them that no man could sort them off intospecies, 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 evento the poor animals themselves, and by their instincts made known to allmankind. 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 ofspecies, by rendering the hybrid offspring of different species sterile, or only capable of breeding back to the pure blood. Innumerable attemptshave been made by fraud and force to procure cross breeds of differentspecies of plants and animals, but always with the same result--theextinction 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 mingledifferent species, as the horse and the ass, though so similar, alwaysproduces sterile offspring. It is impossible to conceive any form inwhich the Creator could more emphatically protest against the attempt toconfuse the distinctions of species He established. 

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

When Mr. Darwin retreats into the geologic ages, and confessing that hisprinciple has ceased to be operative now in our world, and refers us tothem for such evolution of one species from another, he abandons thefundamental principle of his school--the uniformity of nature--and fallsback on Christian ground the necessity for supernatural origins. Hevirtually admits the death or superannuation of Natural Selection, sinceit has retired from the business of species-making. 

But when we go back to those old geologic ages, we find that specieswere then not only as distinct as now, but that the distinctions wereeven bolder and more visible. Many of them have ceased to exist, butthey have left their shells, their petrified casts, and their bones, bywhich we can see that they stood apart in well-defined groups, withoutany such blending and confusion as the evolution theory asserts. Overthree thousand species are already classified. Between every two of themthere ought to be, on Mr. Darwin's showing, a hundred intermediatevariations at the least; and between some of the more widely separatedforms there ought to be thousands of intermediate varieties; as forinstance between the bear and the whale; and a still greater numberbetween the mollusk with its external shell, and the vertebrate with itsinternal skeleton. And we ought to find these intermediate forms closelyconnected with their parents and their children. For intermediate formsin another continent could not be the connecting links between themollusks and vertebrates of a distant country, say of England. In thesame strata in which we find the two ends of the chain, and lyingbetween the two ends of the chain, we ought to find the connectinglinks. And we ought to find a hundred connecting links for everyspecimen of distinct species, since Mr. Darwin alleges that they musthave lived and died somewhere; and we have seen they must have lived anddied right there where they were born, and where they begot theirprogeny. The geological strata ought to be full of connecting links. 

But when we come to look for them they are not there. Geology knowsnothing about them. It has plenty of distinct, well-definedspecies--trilobites, and ammonites, and echinoderms, palms, ferns, firs, and mosses, all sorts of quadrupeds from a mouse to a mastodon, and alljust as clean-cut and well-defined as the species of existing animals. Mr. Darwin can not find his connecting links between the species, whichought to have been a hundred times more plentiful than the species theyconnected. These connecting links are missing links. He ought to be ableto overwhelm his opponents, and bury them under mountains of the bonesof intermediate species. But all his friends can do is to suggest abouthalf a dozen, while he needs three hundred thousand. He can not pay halfa cent on the dollar. In his grief he turns round and abuses thedefectiveness of the geological record, which he says he could neverhave suspected of being so defective but for this failure to meet hisdrafts. But he need not blame the geological record for not preservingbones of animals which never lived. Geology says there never was anysuch confusion of species as evolution asserts. 

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

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

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

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

The first great gap is the abyss between death and life. No human powercan cross it. How could the chemical actions of dead matter infusevitality into the first germ, or bud of a plant? For chemical actionsare the antagonists of life, and constantly laboring to destroy theliving organism, and finally they succeed. There is no process ofevolution known to man which can carry evolution across this abyss. Buttill evolution crosses this gulf it can not even begin to operate. Thisfirst 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 theanimal; for all animal life is sustained by another sort of food thanthat which feeds the vegetable. The vegetable feeds solely on chemical, unorganized matters; the animal solely on matter organized, on someplant, or on some other animal which feeds on plants. No animal can liveon the food of plants. Here then is another gap which can not be bridgedover, nor crossed; for the plant in process of conversion into an animalis in process of starvation, and when the process is about to becompleted, it will end like the miser's horse, whose master diminishedhis oats Darwinianly, a single grain a day, until he had brought him tolive on just one grain per day, when, alas! the victim of the experimentdied. 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 notbreed together. There ought to be no such species on the theory; or, ifthere are, there ought to be a multitude of intervening varieties toningdown the interval; for instance, between the horse and the cow, andbetween the sheep and the hog. All the ingenuity of all theevolutionists has been tasked in vain to produce any instance of theconfusion of two such species, or of the production of a new truespecies by the intermixture of blood. But they might just as well try toconvert iron into gold, or sulphur into carbon. In fact, evolution isthe modern physiological form of the old chemical superstition, alchemy, substituting for the transmutation of metals the problem of thetransmutation of animals. 

It were endless to attempt to exhibit the impossibilities of crossingthe gaps between the water-breathing fish and the air-breathing animal;between the flying-bird and the quadruped; between instinct andeducation; between brute selfishness and maternal affection; between thehabits of the solitary and those of the gregarious, and those of thecolonial insects and animals. No one of these is accounted forsatisfactorily by the theory of evolution. But space forbids theattempt. 

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

The gulf between man's body and that of any brute is marked along thewhole line, from the solid basis of the feet, enabling him to standerect, look upward and behold the stars; along the line of the stiffbackbone, maintaining the dignified posture; to the hands, on whichtreatises have been written, displaying their wonderful superiority overthose of all other creatures, and enabling man to do what no otheranimal has done, to fill the world with his handiworks, and alter thevery face of nature with his ax, and spade, and steam engine. His tongueand organs of articulate speech alone, were there no othercharacteristic, proclaim him different from all other animals; none ofthose resembling him in outward form making the slightest attemptstoward articulate language or being able to do so. 

Man alone, of all the animals, possesses no natural covering, but isexposed naked to the inclemency of the elements. What little hair hepossesses is chiefly on the breast, where it is of little use as acovering, and on the head, which in other animals is never betterprotected than the body. Mr. Darwin alleges that the first men werehairy, like apes. Well, how did they lose their hair? Not by NaturalSelection, which only perpetuates _profitable_ variations; but the lossof hair to an ape would be as unprofitable as the loss of your clothesto you. Not by Sexual Selection, for there is not the slightest evidencethat nudity was ever popular in apedom. We have undoubted evidence, inthe two bone needles found with the bones of the man of Mentone, thatthe primeval men were naked, and complete proof that Natural Selectioncould not effect such a disadvantageous change had they been hairy. Here, then, we have an _inferiority_ to other animals in the animalstructure, strangely at variance with the general superiority, and onlyto 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 cangauge the strength of Ulysses by his bow, and the bulk of the giant bythe staff of his spear, which was like a weaver's beam. The brain of thelargest ape is about thirty two cubic inches. The brains of the wildestAustralians are more than double that capacity. They measure fromseventy-five inches to ninety. Europeans' brains measure from ninety toone hundred inches. There are instances of Esquimaux measuring overninety. Even the brain of an idiot is double the size of that of theorang-otang. But how did man get this extraordinary development ofbrain, far beyond his necessities? For the cave man of Mentone, whohunted the bison, had as good a head as Bismarck. Natural Selectioncould not develop an ape's brain in advance of his necessities. But herewe have a prophetic structure; man's head developed far in advance ofhis necessities. Here is a power at work superior to Natural Selection. 

With such an instrument man has gone to work and supplied hisdeficiencies. Inferior to many animals in strength and speed, he hasmanufactured weapons, and subdued them all, asserting himself as thelord of creation, conquering even the mighty mastodon, and piercing thehuge Caledonian whale with his reindeer harpoon. He has remedied hiswant of hair by the manufacture of clothing from the spoils of hisvictims. He has rendered himself independent of the weather by theshelter of his house. He has ceased to be dependent on the spontaneousfruits of the forest by the cultivation of the soil, and so has become acosmopolite, confined to no province of creation. He has constructedships, and provisioned them for long voyages, and visited, and colonizedevery coast of Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. He hasformed civilized societies with laws, government, and religion. He hasleveled roads, navigated rivers, tunneled mountains, dug navigablecanals, constructed steamboats, built railroads, invented electrictelegraphs, and steam printing presses; and generally he has developedideas of society, nationality, and of the universal brotherhood of man, not only not possible under the laws of Natural Selection, but in themost direct contrariety to those laws, which work only for the benefitof the individual. Never under those laws could any great community ofanimals be formed, never could they obtain the notion of representativegovernment, never combine their powers for any national enterprise, norcould the most hairy and muscular-tailed of Mr. Darwin's ancestorssecure subscribers sufficient to warrant him in starting even a countynewspaper. 

But it is in the moral sense which enables man to distinguish right fromwrong, the conscience, which forbids and reproves the unbridledindulgence of the animal appetites, that we observe the granddistinction between man and the brute. There is nothing in the writingsof evolutionists more pitiable than their attempts to degrade conscienceinto a mere gregarious instinct, an outcome of utility to the tribe, andto pleasurable sensations, resulting from the exercise of the socialinstincts. It would appear that these writers had so sophisticated theirown 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 NaturalSelection. That is the law of the sharpest tooth, and the longest claws, and the biggest bull; the Napoleonic theology, whose god is always onthe side of the strongest battalions; the law of the perdition of theweak, and the survival of the strongest. In obedience to its laws thebirds forsake their parents as soon as they can shift for themselves;the herd tramples down the wounded deer; the wolves devour their woundedbrothers; the queen bee puts her sisters to death, and the neuterssacrifice all the males of the hive. In obedience to the laws of NaturalSelection, the males fight for the most attractive females, and keep asmany as they can, and form societies on that basis. 

But man has a sense of justice, and mercy, and gratitude, and love. Hereis an animal who knows he ought to tell truth, and do right, and honorhis parents, and respect and love his brethren. Whether he always doeshis duty or not, he feels and owns he ought to do it. Justice, andmercy, and the fear of God, are not at all the attributes of brutes, andnever could have been produced by the evolution of their instincts. Noanimal possesses any knowledge of God, nor practices any form ofreligious worship. Religion, then, could not be the evolution of whathas 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 theunintelligent operation of the powers of nature. We have seen that thereare as many contradictory applications of the theory as there areadvocates of it; that in any shape it is incoherent, illogical, andabsurd; that it is destitute of any support from facts; that the allegedanalogy of embryology fails to give it countenance; that the order ofnature in its gradations is contradictory of the theory; that it utterlyfails to account for the origin of life, for the distinctness of thefour classes of the animal kingdom, for the distinctness of specieswhich refuse to breed together, for the absence of the intermediateforms necessary to the theory; and, above all, that it can give nosatisfactory account of man's bodily, mental, and moral superiority toall other animals, nor for his possession of a knowledge of God. 

Its tendency, moreover, is inevitably to degrade man, to destroy thatsense of his dignity which is the principal security of human life, toobliterate a belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, andin the existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and so topromote the disorganization of society, and the degradation of men tothe level of brutes, living only under the laws of their brutalinstincts. 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'spersonality, and calls some imaginary soul of the world, or the worlditself, by his name. While Pantheists are fully agreed upon thepropriety of getting rid of a God who could note their conduct, and callthem to account for it hereafter, and who would claim to exercise anyauthority over them here, they are by no means agreed, either in India, Germany, or America, as to what they shall call by his name. Publicopinion necessitates them to say they believe in a God, but almost everyone has his own private opinion as to what it is. We shall speak of itas we hear it pronounced from the lips of its prophets, here, as well asin the writings of its expounders, in Europe, and Asia. Some of themdeclare, that it is some absolutely unknown cause of all the phenomenaof the universe, and others, that it is the universe itself. A largeclass speak of it as the great soul of the world, while the morematerialistic regard it as the world itself, body and soul; the soulbeing the sum of all the imponderable forces, such as gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, vegetable and animal life, andespecially the mesmeric influence, of which many of them regardintellect as a modification; and the body being the sum of all theponderable substances, such as air, water, earth, minerals, vegetables, and bodies of animals and men. This creed is popularly expressed in thesentence so often heard, "God is everything, and everything is God. " Butthis vast generalization of all things into the higher unity--thisexalting of monkeys, men, snails, and paving stones to the same level ofdivinity--by no means meets the views of the more unphilosophical andaspiring gods and goddesses, for the very reason that it is soimpartial. To deify a man and his cat by the same process is not much ofa distinction to the former; and of what advantage is it to be made agod, if he does not thereby obtain some distinction? This levelingapotheosis is generally confined to the German Pantheists; their moreambitious American brethren ascribe the contented humility which acceptsit to the continual influence of the fumes of tobacco and lager beer. 

Man is the great deity of the other class. Renan boldly says: "Formyself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superiorto that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself onlyin humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only asan abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself inform. "[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for peoplewho 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, intheir view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "Theuniversal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heedsthe waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my headbathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mereegotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate throughme. I am part or particle of God. " "I stand here to say, 'Let us worshipthe mighty and transcendent soul. '" "God attains to self-consciousnessonly in the human soul. " "Honor yourself. " "Reverence your ownindividuality. " "The soul of man is the highest intelligence in theuniverse. " Such are the dogmas which, under the name of Philosophy, arepoured forth oracularly, unsupported by reason or argument, by theprophets of the new dispensation--the last and highest achievement ofthe human intellect. 

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

1. _Pantheism is an Antiquated Heresy. _--It has rotted and putrefiedamong the worshipers of cats, and monkeys, and holy bulls, and bits ofsticks and stones, on the banks of the Ganges, for more than twothousand years; yet it is now hooked up out of its dunghill, and hawkedabout among Christian people, as a prime new discovery of modernphilosophy for getting rid of Almighty God. As the Hindoo Shasters areundoubtedly the sources from which French, German, and Americanphilosophers have borrowed their dogmas, and as they have not had timeto take the whole system, we shall edify the public by a view of thissublime theology as exhibited in the writings of the Pantheisticphilosophers of India, as follows:

"When existing in the temporary imperfect state of _Sagun_, Brahm (thePantheist deity) wills to manifest the universe. For this purpose heputs forth his omnipotent energy, which is variously styled in thedifferent systems now under review. He puts forth his energy for what?For the effecting of a creation out of nothing? 'No, ' says one of theShasters, but to '_produce from his own divine substance a multiformuniverse_. ' By the spontaneous exertion of this energy he sends forth, from his own divine substance, a countless host of essences, likeinnumerable sparks issuing from the blazing fire, or myriads of raysfrom the resplendent sun. These detached portions of Brahm--theseseparated divine essences--soon become individuated systems, destined, in time, to occupy different forms prepared for their reception; whetherthese 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, andattributes that characterize that state, though predominating in verydifferent degrees and proportions; either according to their respectivecapacities, or the retributive awards of an eternal ordination. Amongothers it is specially noted, that as Brahm at that time had awakenedinto a consciousness of his own existence, there does inhere in eachseparated 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 propernature--its divine origin, and ultimate destiny. It ignorantly regardsitself as an inferior entity, instead of knowing itself to be what ittruly is, a consubstantial, though it may be an infinitesimally minuteportion of the great whole, a universal spirit. 

"Each individual soul being thus a portion of Brahm, even as a spark isof fire, it is again and again declared that the relation between themis not that of master and servant, ruler and ruled, but that of wholeand part! The soul is pronounced to be eternal _a parte ante_; initself it has had no beginning or birth, though its separateindividuality originated in time. It is eternal _a parte post_; it willhave no end--no death; though its separate individuality will terminatein time. Its manifestation in time is not a creation; it is an effluencefrom the eternal fount of spirit. Its disappearance from the stage oftime is not an extinction of essence--a reduction to nonentity; it isonly a refluence into its original source. As an emanation from thesupreme, eternal spirit, it is from everlasting to everlasting. Neithercan it be said to be of finite dimensions; on the contrary, says thesacred oracle, 'being identified with the Supreme Brahm, it participatesin his infinity. '

"After having enumerated all the elementary principles, atoms, andqualities successively evolved from Brahm, one of the sacred writingsstates, that though each of these had distinct powers, yet they existedseparate and disunited, without order or harmonious adaptation of parts;that until they were duly combined together, it was impossible toproduce this universe, or animated beings; and that therefore it wasrequisite to adopt other means than fortuitous chance for giving them anappropriate combination, and symmetrical arrangement. The Supreme, accordingly, produced an egg, in which the elementary principles mightbe deposited, and nurtured into maturity. " "All the primary atoms, qualities, and principles--the seeds of future worlds--that had beenevolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together, anddeposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them, entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahm; andthen he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, a wholeyear of the creation, or four thousand three hundred millions of solaryears! During this amazing period, the wondrous egg floated like abubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing in size, and blazingrefulgent as a thousand suns. At length the Supreme, who dwelt therein, burst the shell of the stupendous egg, and issued forth under a newform, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Alongwith him there issued forth another form, huge and measureless. Whatcould that be? All the elementary principles having now been matured, and disposed into an endless variety of orderly collocations, andcombined into one harmonious whole, they darted into visiblemanifestation under the form of the present glorious universe! Auniverse now finished, and ready made, with its entire apparatus, ofearth, sun, moon, and stars. What, then, is this multiform universe? Itis but a harmoniously arranged expansion of primordial principles andqualities. And whence are these? Educed or evolved from the divinesubstance of Brahm. Hence it is that the universe is so constantlyspoken of, even by mythologists, as a manifested form of Brahm himself, the supreme, invisible spirit. Hence, too, under the notion that it isthe manifestation of a being who may assume every variety of corporealform, is the universe often personified, or described as if itsdifferent parts were only the different members of a person, ofprodigious magnitude, in human form. It is declared that the hairs ofhis body are the trees of the forest; of his head, the clouds; of hisbeard, the lightning. His breath is the circling atmosphere; his voice, the thunder; his eyes, the sun and moon; his veins, the rivers; hisnails, the rocks; his bones, the lofty mountains![25]

"The substantial fabrics of all worlds having now been framed and fittedup as the destined abodes of different orders of being, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, the question next arises, How or by whom wereproduced the various organized forms which these orders of being weredesigned to animate? Though hosts of subtle essences or souls flowedforth from Brahm, all of these remain inactive till united to some formof materialism. From this necessity the gods themselves are notexempted. While the souls of men, and other inferior spirits, must beencased in tabernacles fashioned out of the grosser elements, the soulsof the gods, and all other superior spirits, must be made to inhabitmaterial forms, composed of one or other of the infinitely attenuatedand invisible rudimental atoms that spring direct from the principle ofconsciousness. 

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

There now, reader, you have the original of the Development Theory, withVestiges of Creation enough to make half a dozen new infidelcosmogonies, besides the genuine original of Pantheism, from its nativesoil. Our western Pantheists will doubtless reverence their venerableprogenitors; and, should the remainder of the family find their wayhere in a year or two, via Germany, the public will be better preparedto give a fitting reception to such distinguished visitors, includingtheir suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cowdung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning ofchildren, and other Pantheistic Philosophies, from the banks of theGanges. What an outrage of decency for such men to call themselvesphilosophers and Christians!

The relationship of American Pantheism with that of India isunblushingly acknowledged by the recent Pantheistic writers: "Whenancient sages came to believe in the absolute goodness, justice, love, and wisdom of the deity, or providence, they fell into that peace whichneeded nothing, feared nothing, and therefore worshiped nothing. Nothingto blame, nothing to praise; the perfect whole became one greatdivinity. It was so in Magadha and Benares; it is so in Concord andBoston. "[27]

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

But the very perfection of Jesuitism is reached, when Pantheists professtheir high respect for the Christian religion. They do not generallyspeak of it as a superstition, though some of the vulgar sort do; nor dothey decry its mysteries, as Deists are in the habit of doing; nor, asSocinians, and Unitarians, and Rationalists, do they attempt to reduceit to a mere code of morals. They grant it to be the highest developmentof humanity yet reached by the majority of the human race. The brute, the savage, the polytheistic idolater, the star worshiper, themonotheist, the Christian, are all, in their scheme, so many successivedevelopments of humanity in its upward progress. There is only one stephigher than Christianity, and that is Pantheism. Well knowing thatChristianity is diametrically opposed to their falsehoods, and that theBible, everywhere, teaches that the natural progress of man has everbeen down from a state of holiness to idolatry and barbarism, they haveyet the hardihood to profess respect for it, as a system of concealedPantheism, and to clothe their abominations in Scripture language. Theyspeak, for instance, of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that hassurmounted every idea of a personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us, and his love perfected in us, " when they believe that he dwells asreally in every creature: in that hog, for instance. Then they willreadily acknowledge that the Bible is inspired. They _can accept_--thatis the phrase--they can accept the Book which denounces death upon thosefools who, "professing themselves to be wise, change the truth of Godinto 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, acat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, ashapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does notstay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis atonce. " Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired--a God inspiredBook--inasmuch as _every_ product of the human mind is a development ofDeity. The Bible, then, when we have the matter fully explained, isquite on a level with Gulliver's Travels, or Emerson's Address to aSenior Class of Divinity. 

There is nothing, however, in this vast system of monstrosities, whichfills the soul of a Christian with such loathing and detestation, as tohear Pantheists profess their veneration for the Lord Jesus, and claimhim as a teacher of Pantheism. If there is one object which they detestwith all their hearts, it is the Judge of the quick and dead, and thevengeance which he shall take upon them that know not God, and obey notthe gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them withfury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know thatthe Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living andthe dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their gravesshall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto theresurrection of damnation;" and that the very last sentence of hispublic discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away intoeverlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal. " When theydrop 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. Butwhen it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them intothe deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes themodel man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highestperfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed ofpowers 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 andnature in the Man of Nazareth. "[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheismare ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yetrespect 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 ofthe teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, theydare 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 incarnateshimself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of hisworld. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Throughme God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see theewhen thou also thinkest as I now think. ' Because the indwelling SupremeSpirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers thisperversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury. " Yes, truly, thedivine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, anddenied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do thedeeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born offornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If Godwere your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came fromGod; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understandmy 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 murdererfrom the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is notruth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own; for heis a liar, and the father of it. "

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

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

But this is not all. Again and again have we listened with astonishmentto men, declaring that there was no moral law--no standard of right andwrong, 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 ahusband of inferior intellectuality, or unsuitable emotions, wascommitting adultery; that private property is a legalized robbery; andthat when a citizen becomes mentally or physically unfit for thebusiness of life, he confers the highest obligation on society, andperforms the highest duty to himself, by committing suicide, and thusreturning to the great ocean of being!

We might think that confusion of right and wrong could not be worseconfounded than this; yet there is a blacker darkness still. _Thedistinction between good and evil is absolutely denied. _ The HindooPantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and Godcan not offend against himself; there is no sin--it is all_maya_--delusion. So the American and English school tells us it livesonly in the obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in anotherway we are not skilled in. "[32] So says the author of "RepresentativeMen. " "Evil, " according to old philosophers, "is good in the making;that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. Itis not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is thelast profanation. " "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion inthe sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though inbrothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good andtrue. "[33]

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

If these were only the ravings of lunatics, or the dreamings ofphilosophers, we should never have hunted them from their hiding-placesto scare your visions; but these doctrines are weekly propounded in yourown city, and throughout our land, from platform and press, to thousandsof your children and their school-teachers, of your work, men and yourlawgivers, to your wives and daughters. Again and again have our earsbeen confounded in the squares of New York, and the streets ofPhiladelphia, and the market-places of Cincinnati, by the boisterouscry, _What is sin? There is no sin. It is all an old story. _ Let men whofear no God, but who have lives, and wives, and property to lose, lookto it, and say if they act wisely in giving their influence to a systemwhich lands in such consequences. Let them devise some religion for thepeople which will preserve the rights of man, while giving license totrample upon the rights of God; or, failing in the effort, let themacknowledge that the enemy of God is, and of necessity must be, the foeof all that constitutes the happiness of man. Impiety and immorality arewedded in heaven's decree, and man can not sunder them. 

4. _Pantheism is Virtually Atheism. _--It may scarce seem needful tomultiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composedof the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, orcombination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by anyintelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or like bricks andmortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finiteintelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highestintelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does thesoul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have gotjust to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, forminds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, theheavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, orNewton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws. " _Establish_these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands ofyears before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the soulsof Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is muchdispleased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept, in which the children are to be taught to worship idols, the youth tobelieve in one God, if they can, after such a training in infancy, andthe full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultantof all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universalperfectioning of the world, _not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, theanimals_. "[34] Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quitephilosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and thereforerefuse worship altogether. "Work is worship, " constitutes their liturgy. "As soon as the man is as one with God, he will not beg. He will thensee prayer in all action. "[35] "Labor wide as earth has its summit inheaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweatof the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newtonmeditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms, up to that agony of bloody sweat, which all men haveaccounted divine! Oh, brother, if this is not worship, then I say, themore pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discoveredunder God's sky. " "No man has worked, or can work, exceptreligiously. "[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 thethousands who are now, publicly, upon God's holy Sabbath, workingreligiously upon the bridge that is to span the river, or lessostentatiously in their shops and workrooms throughout the city. Withina circle of three miles' radius of the spot you now occupy, one hundredthousand 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 didnot intend it. It is not to be thanked for benefits. It, the sum of allthe intelligence of the universe, can not be collected from the sevenspheres to receive any such acknowledgment. It can not deviate from itsfated course of proceeding; therefore, says the Pantheist, why should Ipray? It neither sees his conduct, nor cares for it; and he denies anyright to call him to account. It did not create him, does not governhim, 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 believesnot in any God. 

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

1. _Reason declares it. _ The world did not make itself. The soul of mandid not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must havehad an intelligent Creator, who is God. God is known by his works to bedistinct 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 sumof all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Letan architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not thebuilder. The maker is always distinct from, and superior to, the thingmade. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our Maker, then, isdistinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe;therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all hiscreatures. 

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

3. _Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser thanourselves. _ The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in theuniverse. It can not know the mode of its own operation on the body itinhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may knowmuch about what does not concern him, and about things over which he hasno control; but it is the will of God that his pride should feel thecurb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests areconcerned, that so he may be compelled to acknowledge that God isgreater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distantplanets a thousand years hence, but he can not tell where himself shallbe next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of thetides, which he can not control, but can not tell how his own pulseshall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as hisknowledge of the laws by which God governs the world increases, hisconviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiserhead and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned andadministered them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as themystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he cannot explain, and beyond which he can not penetrate, he hears the voiceof 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. _ Thedistinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of thedistinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, orindividuals who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrongwithout any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Eventhose who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do infact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion. Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man isconscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his ownconduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right orwrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind hasacknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, asdistinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man isdestitute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodnessand wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a willful lie, youare sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting theerror, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. Whenone who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make anyacknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of gratitude, and insultsand abuses the friend who succored him, we are conscious, not merely ofthe facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingratitude, as acrime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believethat he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right andwrong, does himself know such a distinction; and that he who implantedthis feeling of approval of right, and condemnation of wrong, in us, does himself approve the right, and condemn the wrong. And as we canform no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea thatapprobation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and thatdisapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed--inother words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to bepunished--so we are constrained to trace such a connection from ourminds 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 afeeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomesconscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, and we may sear theconscience, that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but lightand darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact whichconscience reveals to us, that we sin against God, that we know theright, and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of God'sdisapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinctfrom 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 everysorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected withsin--as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace andhappiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body--is atype 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'spunishments. _ Once God swept the human race from earth with a flood ofwater, because the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Again, hetestified his displeasure against the ungodly sinners of Sodom andGomorrah, by consuming their cities with fire from heaven, and leavingthe 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 thedestruction of ungodly nations. No learning, commerce, arms, territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against thesword of God's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's historyfor an instance. Egypt, Canaan, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. Where are they now? Tyre had ships, colonies, and commerce; Rome anempire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, andliberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures ofearth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did thesesecure them against the moral government of God?

No! God's law sways the universe; that law which, with the brazenfetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime andpunishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all ungodly nations, irresistibly forcing them down--down--down the road to ruin. The vainimagination that refuses to glorify God as God, leads to darkness ofheart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfishgratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then militarytyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, andthe sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl themdown from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against eachother, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks ofnations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save some shiveredpotsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were theenemies of God. 

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

A day of retribution, reader, comes to you, as an individual. Neitheryour insignificance nor your unbelief can hide you from his eye, nor canyour puny arm shield you from his righteous judgment. His hand shallfind out his enemies. Oh, fly from the wrath to come! "Seek the Lordwhile he may be found. " He is not far from every one of us. His breathis in our nostrils. His Word is in our hands. "Whosoever shall call onthe 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 everynation--Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Chinese--can meet upon commonground. 

[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 acourse of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that Godcreated the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquerhis 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 theslightest difference in the facts themselves. God is, and heaven is, andhell is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things ornot. It makes no sort of difference in the beetling cliff and swollenflood that sweeps below it, that the drunken man declares there is nodanger, and, refusing the proffered lantern, gallops on toward it in thedarkness of the night. But when the mangled corpse is washed ashore, every one sees how foolish this man was, to be so confident in hisignorance as to refuse the lantern, which would have shown him hisdanger, and guided him to the bridge where he might have crossed insafety. Some of the facts of religion lie at the evening end of life'sjourney; the darkness of death's night hides them from mortal eye; andliving men might guide their steps the better by asking counsel of onewho knows the way. If they get along no better by their own counsel inthe next world than most of them do in this, they will have small causeto bless their teacher. Who can tell that ignorance, and wickedness, andwretchedness are not as tightly tied together in the world to come, aswe see them here?

Solomon was a knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteemof most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keepit. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and actingon them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of coursesuch a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. Hisships coasted the shores of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan;and the overland mail caravans from India and China drew up in thedepots he built for them in the heart of the desert. He knew thewell-doing people with whom trade was profitable, and the savages whocould only send apes and peacocks. He was a philosopher as well as atrader, and could not help being deeply impressed with _the great fact_, that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Somewere enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flourishing; others werenaked 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 inChaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and some others, God had revealed his willto certain persons for the benefit of their neighbors. He did sogenerally by opening the eyes of these prophets to see future events, and the great facts of the unseen world, and by giving them messages ofwarning and instruction to the nations. From this mode of revelation, byopening the prophets eyes to see realities invisible to others, theywere called seers, and the revelations they were commissioned to makewere called visions; and revelation from God was called, in general, vision. Solomon was struck with the fact that some nations were thusfavored by God, and other nations were not. The question would naturallyarise, 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 werefavored with these revelations were the civilized, enterprising, andcomparatively prosperous nations. In proportion to the amount of divinerevelation they had, and their obedience to it, they prospered. Thenations that had no revelation from God were the idolatrous savages, whowere sinking down to the level of brutes, and perishing off the face ofthe earth. He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb:"Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth thelaw, happy is he. "

Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was inSolomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when menattributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But the world is toowise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew andChristian religions like all others have their myths. " "The fact is, thepure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during thewhole of their political existence. " "When, therefore, we meet with anaccount of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly statedor implied that they were produced immediately by God himself (such asdivine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by humanbeings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc. ), such an account is so far to be considered not historical. " "Indeed, nojust notion of the true nature of history is possible without aperception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and ofthe impossibility of miracles. "[38] A narrative is to be deemedmythical, 1st. "When it proceeds from an age in which there were nowritten records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When itpresents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reachof experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d. When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolicallanguage. "[39] So also a host of others, who pass for biblicalexpositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernaturalevents are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles areimpossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. Arevelation from God to man is a supernatural event, and supernaturalevents are impossible; therefore, a revelation from God is impossible. But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laiddown the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from God isimpossible, 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_ thatmiracles 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 mentake for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside, as unworthyof serious examination, the most authentic records of history, simplybecause they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy; and at thecredulity with which their followers swallow this arrogant dogmatism, asif it were self-evident truth. Let us look at it for a moment. Otherreligions have their myths, or fables, therefore, the Hebrew andChristian records are fables, says the Rationalist. Profundity of logic!Counterfeit bank bills are common, therefore none are genuine. "The factis, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews, " _i. E. _, Moses and the prophets were all liars. That is the fact, you maytake my word for it. "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature ofhistory is possible without a perception of the inviolability of thechain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles" whichtranslated into plain words is simply this: No man can understandhistory who believes in God Almighty. "A narrative is to be deemedfabulous when it proceeds from an age in which there were no writtenrecords, " such, for instance, as any account of the creation of thefirst man--for no event could possibly happen unless there was a scribethere to write it. Or, of the fall of man--we do not know that Adam wasable to write, and no man can tell truth unless he writes a history. "Anarrative is to be deemed fabulous when it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as eventsconnected with the spiritual world. " Is it not self-evident that you andI have had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoevertells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrativedeals 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 theinhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other historyof wonderful occurrence--it is of course a myth. Does not every one knowthat nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historiantrouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolicallanguage, " as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson, Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, thepicture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptianhieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good serviceagainst the Bible--it must be at once rejected, without furtherexamination, as mythological and unworthy of any credit whatever. Thuswe are conclusively rid forever of the Bible, for sure enough it iscouched in symbolical language. Blessed deliverance to the world! Butthen, alas! this great deliverance is accompanied with several littleinconveniences. All poetry, three-fourths of the world's history, andthe largest part of its philosophy, is couched in symbolical language, and especially the whole of the science of metaphysics, from whichthese very learned writers have deduced such edifying conclusions, is, from the beginning to the end, nothing but a symbolical application ofthe 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 therest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed intheir native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, byFichte, Schelling, or Hegel, or "worshiping in the great cathedral ofthe immensities, " "with their heads uplifted into infinite space, " or"lying on the plane of their own consciousness, " in the writings ofCarlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, forthey "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, andStrauss have pronounced every thing couched in symbolical language to bemythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety abouthistory, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and themultiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched insymbolical language. "

Such is the sort of trash that passes for profound philosophy when onceit is made unintelligible, and such are the canons of interpretationwith which men calling themselves philosophers and Christians sit downto investigate the claims of the Bible as a revelation from God. If theywould speak out their true sentiments, they would say, "There can not beany revelation from God, because there is no God. " But they could notcall themselves professors of Christian colleges, and pastors ofChristian churches, and reap the emoluments of such situations, if theywould honestly avow their Atheism. Besides, the world would see tooplainly the drift of their teaching; therefore it is cloaked under aprofession of belief in God, the Creator, who however is to becarefully prevented from ever showing himself again in the world he hasmade. 

No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible. Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradictioncould be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the generalbelief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in asupernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. Thecreation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterlybeyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach ofour 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 forever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolishedby the discoveries of geology. These discoveries established the factrecorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present formthere were several distinct and successive interpositions ofsupernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations ofdifferent species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, theytell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animalscould not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age couldnot live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earthexisted for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This beingthe case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of Godabove the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can eithercreate a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind intoanother, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a gooseinto 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 sucha change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The mostdistinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no suchchange of one animal into another ever took place; much less that anyanimal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensivesurvey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that thespecies now living are not mere varieties of the species which arelost. " And Agassiz says, "I have the conviction that species have beencreated successively, at distinct intervals. "[40] Revelations of God'sspecial interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written byhis own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlastinggranite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptilesstart forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeatedsupernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinctsupernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience ofman is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that thechain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the veryfoundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomenaproduced immediately by God himself--the phenomena of the creation oflife--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelationis not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full ofsupernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because itrecords miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are asastonishing as any recorded in the Bible. 

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

The claims of a divine teacher are as unceremoniously rejected as thoseof a divine revelation. "If it depends on Jesus it is not eternallytrue, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all, " saysParker. As if eternally true, and sufficiently known, were just the samething; or as if because vaccination would always have prevented thesmallpox, the world is under no obligation to Jenner for informing us ofthe fact. In the same tone Emerson despises instruction: "It is notinstruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. Whathe 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 saysParker, "Christianity is dependent on no outside authority. We verifyits eternal truth in our soul. "[43] His aim is "to separate religionfrom whatever is finite--Church, book, person--and let it rest on itsabsolute truth. "[44] "It bows to no idols, neither the Church, nor theBible, nor yet Jesus, but God only; its Redeemer is within; itssalvation within; its heaven and its oracle of God. "[45] The wholestrain of this school of writers and their disciples is one ofdepreciation of external revelation, and of exaltation of the innerlight which every man is supposed to carry within him. Religion is "noMorrison'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 andspiritual truth is impossible, that God reveals himself within us andnot without us, and that a revelation of all moral and religious truthnecessary for us to know is to be obtained by _insight_, or gazing intothe 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, oras Parker felicitously expresses it, "on his word, or as his second, behe who he may, I can accept nothing. "

Now, we are tempted to ask, Who are these wonderful prodigies, soincapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement welearn, that some forty odd years ago they made their appearance amongmankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to know theirown names, or where they came from, and were actually dependent on anexternal revelation, from their nurses, for sense enough to find theirmothers' breasts. And as they grew a little larger, they obtained thepower of speaking articulate sounds by external revelation, hearing andimitating the sounds made by others. Further, upon a memorable day, they had a "book revelation" made to them, in the shape of a pennyprimer, and were initiated into the mysteries of A, B, C, by "theinstructions of another, be he who he may. " There was absolutely not theleast "insight, " or "spiritual faculty, " or "self-consciousness" in oneof them, by which they then could, or ever to this hour did, "find truewithin them" any sort of necessary connection between the signs, c, a, t--d, o, g--and the sounds _cat_, _dog_, or any other sounds representedby any other letters of the alphabet. Faith in the word of theirteachers is absolutely the sole foundation and only source of theirability 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 intelligibleword he speaks or writes. 

There is living on Martha's Vineyard an old man who has never been offthe island, and the extent of his knowledge is bounded by the confinesof his home. He has been told of a war between the North and South, butas he had never heard the din of battle, nor seen any soldiers, heconsidered it a hoax. He is utterly unable to read, and is ignorant tothe last degree. A good story is told of his first and only day atschool. He was quite a lad when a lady came to the district, where hisfather lived, to teach school. He was sent, and as the teacher wasclassifying the school, he was called upon in turn and interrogated asto his studies. Of course he had to say he had never been to school, andknew none of his letters. The schoolmistress gave him a seat on one sideuntil she had finished the preliminary examination of the rest of thescholars. She then called him to her and drew on the blackboard theletter A, and told him what it was, and asked him to remember how itlooked. 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 toschool 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 senthome as incorrigible. 

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

But the knowledge of letters is not half of their indebtedness toexternal revelation. For they will not deny that a Fiji cannibal hasjust the same "insight, " "spiritual faculty, " "mighty and transcendentsoul, " "self-consciousness, " or any other name by which they may dignifyour 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 thelimbs of women and children? The inner nature of the cannibal and of theRationalist is the same--whence comes the difference of character andconduct? And the inner light, too, is the same; for they assure us that"inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is coextensive with the race. " Isit not, after all, mere external revelation, in the shape ofeducation--aye, moral and religious teaching that makes the wholedifference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother?

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

In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of thegreater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longedfor some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire byrunning after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consultingwitches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, andlistening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to nosect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common asGod, "[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact veryunaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well leadthese writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity, namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of externalrevelations, 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 ownconsciousness. " Surely, such a universal craving after an externalrevelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders itprobable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency. Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided nosupply?

The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and thebrutes presents itself right at this point. God guides animals by directrevelation--by their instincts; but having given man reason, and freewill, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon theindirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. Forall 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 thefollowing of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted toeducation, not to inspiration. All analogy then induces the belief thatreligion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of humanteachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual. 

But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold onmatter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally allneeded material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold onGod, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all neededspiritual things. " That we have both bodily senses and spiritualfaculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the otherobtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it iswith mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter inwhich religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me toreceive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from mywindow a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to layhold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has notobtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truthwhich 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, forher starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom God gave bodilysenses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by hisdrunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his familyto utter destitution of all needed material things. From one cause oranother, I find multitudes here in poverty and destitution, notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, thatthere is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvationin Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and miseryand destitution in London; which, if true, completely overturns thisbeautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodilysenses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food andclothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual facultiesalso, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things. 

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

Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sortacknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretendedoracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. Wenever find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light ofnature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is onlyamidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers canstand up and declare that they have no need of God's teaching. Had suchmen lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed ofspiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting analtar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown God. _" One of the wisestof the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to nocertainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorablewords, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth forus, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward God andtoward man. " The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning theeternity of matter occupies a conspicuous place in the creed of Americanheathens, had no such confidence in the sufficiency of his own powers ofdiscovering religious truth. "We can not know of ourselves what petitionwill be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay to him; but it isnecessary 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 thingsman can not know by his own nature_. "[49] Whether this want of arevelation from God was real, or merely imaginary, will appear by abrief 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. Itis admitted by Rationalists that the spiritual faculties are designed tolay hold on God. It has been proved in the previous chapter, and it willbe admitted by all but Atheists, that God is an Intelligent Being. Andfurther it has been proved that God is not everything and everybody, but distinct from and supreme over all his works. Besides, in thiscountry at least, there will not be much difference of opinion as to thepropriety of a rational being adoring a brute, or a log of wood, or alump of stone. It will be allowed that such stupidity shows bothignorance and folly. Now let us inquire into the knowledge of Godpossessed by the people who have no vision. 

The Chaldeans, the most ancient people of whom we have any account, andwho had among them the immediate descendants of Noah, and whatevertraditions of Noah's prophecies they preserved, were probably the bestinstructed of the heathen. Yet we find that they gave up the worship ofGod, adored the sun, and moon, and stars of heaven, and in process oftime degenerated still further, and worshiped dumb idols. From this rockwe were hewn; the common names of the days of the week, and especiallyof the first day of the week, will forever keep up a testimony to thenecessity of that revelation which delivered our forefathers and us fromburning our children upon the devil's altars on Sun-days. 

The Egyptians were reputed the most learned of mankind, and Egypt wasconsidered the cradle of the arts and sciences. In her existingmonuments, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and tomb paintings, we havepresented to us the materials for forming a more correct opinion of thereligion and life of the Egyptians than of any other ancient people; andthe investigation of these monuments is still adding to our information. Infidel writers and lecturers have not hesitated to allege that Mosesmerely taught the Israelites the religion of Egypt; and some have hadthe hardihood to allege that the ten commandments are found written onthe pyramids, as an argument against the necessity of a revelation. Ifthe statement were true, it would by no means prove the conclusion. Egypt was favored with divine revelations to several of her kings, andenjoyed occasional visits from, or the permanent teachings of, suchprophets as Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, for four hundred years; afact quite sufficient to account for her superiority to other heathennations, as well as for the existence of some traces of true religion onher monuments. But the alleged fact is a falsehood. Some good moralprecepts are found on the Egyptian monuments, but the ten commandmentsare not there. It may be charitably supposed that those who allege thecontrary never learned the ten commandments, or have forgotten them, else they would have remembered that the first commandment is, "Thoushalt 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 thatthe second is, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, " etc. , and would have paused before alleging that these commands were engravedon the very temples of idols, and by the priests of the birds, andbeasts, and images of creeping things which they adored. It is verydoubtful if they believed in the existence of one supreme God, as mostof 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 isfully proved by Wilkinson. [50] On the contrary, the monuments confirmthe satirical sketch of the poet, [51] as to the "monsters mad Egyptworshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog. This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores acrocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with abite. " Cruel wars were waged between different towns, as Plutarch tellsus, because the people of Cynopolis would eat a fish held sacred by thecitizens of Latopolis. Bulls, and dogs, and cats, and rats, andreptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learnedEgyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of theirgods, 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. Solow had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul, " been degradedthat there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshipinghis own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a revelation fromhim. 

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

It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in thedays of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longerpossible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred andfifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties, ""insight, " and "the religious sentiment, " worshiping three hundred andthirty 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, orunder the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of theworld, " Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol, with its frightfully grim and distorted visage, so justly styled theMoloch of the East, sitting enthroned amid thousands of massivesculptures, the representative emblems of that cruelty and vice whichconstitute the very essence of his worship; when you think of thecountless multitudes that annually congregate there, from all parts ofIndia, many of them measuring the whole distance of their wearypilgrimage with their own bodies; when you think of the merit-earningassiduities constantly practiced by crowds of devotees and religiousmendicants, around the holy city, some remaining all day with their headon the ground, and their feet in the air; others with their bodiesentirely covered with earth; some cramming their eyes with mud, andtheir 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 offire on his breast, a third enveloped in a network of ropes; when, besides these self-inflicted torments, you think of the frightful amountof involuntary suffering and wretchedness arising from the exhaustion oftoilsome pilgrimages, the cravings of famine, and the scourgings ofpestilence; when you think of the day of the high festival--how thehorrid king is dragged forth from his temple, and mounted on his loftycar, in the presence of hundreds of thousands, that cause the very earthto shake with shouts of 'Victory to Juggernath, our Lord;' how theofficiating 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 whichthe vast multitude at intervals respond, not in the strains of tunefulmelody, but in loud yells of approbation, united with a kind of hissingapplause; when you think of the carnage that ensues, in the name ofsacred offering--how, as the ponderous machine rolls on, grating harshthunder, one and another of the more enthusiastic devotees throwthemselves beneath the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, theinfatuated victims of hellish superstition; when you think of thenumerous Golgothas that bestud the neighboring plain, where the dogs, jackals and vultures seem to live on human prey; and of those bleak andbarren sands that are forever whitened with the skulls and bones ofdeluded pilgrims which lie bleaching in the sun, "[53] you will be ableto see an awful force of meaning in the words of our text, and torealize more fully the necessity of a revelation from God, for thepreservation of animal life to man. Literally, where there is no visionthe people _perish_. Man doth not live by bread only, but by every wordwhich proceedeth from the mouth of God. 

Take one other illustration of ignorance of God in the minds of thosewho close their eyes against the light of revelation--the heathen ofEurope and America, possessing that inspiration which is wide as theworld, looking abroad upon all the glorious works of the great Creator, and declaring there is no God. On the other hand, we have men, possessedof this same inspiration, deifying everything, and outrunning even theHindoos in the multitude of their divinities, declaring that everystick, and stone, and serpent, and snail that crawls on the earth isGod, and making professions of holding spiritual communings with themall. To crown the monument of folly, the chief of the PositivePhilosophy comes forth with a revelation from his spiritual faculties, in which by way of improving on the proverb "both are best, " and ofbeing sure of the truth, he unites Atheism, and Pantheism, andIdolatry--teaches his child to worship idols, the youth to believe inone God, and himself and other full-grown men to adore the "resultant ofall the forces capable of voluntarily contributing to the perfectioningof the universe, _not forgetting his worthy friends, the animals_. " Tosuch darkness are men justly condemned who shut their eyes against thelight of God's revelation. Where there is no vision the people perishintellectually. He who turns away his ears from the truth must be turnedunto fables. "Hear ye and give ear, be not proud, for the Lord hathspoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness, andbefore your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look forlight, 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 nocertainty regarding the most important of all his interests, the destinyof his immortal soul. _ He knows well--for every sickness, and sorrow, and calamity declares it, and quick returning troubles will not allowhim to forget--that the Ruler of the world is offended with him; andconscience tells him why. The sense of guilt is common to the humanrace. 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 pangsof remorse for my sins? Will misery follow me forever, as I see and feelthat it does here? Or shall my soul exist under God's frowns, or perishunder his just sentence, even as my body perishes? Does the grave hideforever all that I loved? Have they ceased to be? Shall we ever meetagain? Or must I say, "Farewell, farewell! An eternal farewell!" And ina few days myself also cease to be? The only answer Reason givesis--solemn silence. 

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

The multitude had but two ideas on the subject. Either their ghostswould wander eternally in the land of shadows, or else they would passinto a succession of other bodies, of animals or men. From the nakednessand desolation of unclothed spirit, and the possibility which thisnotion held out of some close contact with a holy and just judge, thesoul shrank back to the hope of the metempsychosis, and hoped rather todwell in the body of a brute, than be utterly unclothed and mingle withspirits. This is the delusion cherished by the people of India and manyother lands to this day. How unsatisfactory to the dying sinner thisuncertainty. "Tell me, " said a wealthy Hindoo, who had given all hiswealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that they mightobtain pardon for his sins, "Tell me what will become of my soul when Idie?" "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 dyingman, "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-importantsubject as the heathen of India. They have every variety of oracles, andconjectures, and suppositions about the other world; but for theirguesses they offer no proof. When they give us their oracles as if theywere known truths, we are compelled to ask, How do you know? The onlything in which they are agreed among themselves is in denying theresurrection of the body; a point which they gathered from their heathenclassics. A poor, empty, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obligedto fly over the world at the sigh of any silly sewing girl, or thebidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist ofWashington, or Newton, in the scheme of one class of Bible rejectors. Toobtain rest from such a doom, others fly to the eternal tomb, and informus that the soul is simply an acting of the brain, and when the brainceases to act, the soul ceases also. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrowwe die. But even this hog philosophy is reasonable, compared with thedogma 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 agrim-faced Calmuck who worshiped the great god of storms--many a Grecianpeasant who did homage to Phoebus Apollo when the sun rose or wentdown--many a savage, his hands smeared all over with humansacrifice--shall sit down with Moses and Jesus in the kingdom ofGod. "[56] To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when itrejects the Bible. 

Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel. Where there isno vision, hope perishes. The only plausible creed for him who rejectsit is the eternal tomb, and the heart-chilling inscription: "Death is aneternal sleep!"

_Without a revelation from God, men are as ignorant how to live, as howto die. _ They have no rule of life having either truth or authority todirect them. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, of the purity of whose blood weare so proud, trusted to their magical incantations for the cure ofdiseases, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lostproperty, for uncharming cattle and the prevention of casualties. Oneday was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, wasbaleful to sow seed. One day was favorable to the commencement ofbusiness, another to let blood, and others wore a forbidding aspect tothese and other things. On this day they were to buy, on a second tosell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If a child was bornon 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 rejectthe Bible are fully as superstitious. Astrologers, and Mediums, andClairvoyants, in multitudes, find a profitable trade among them; and oneprominent anti-Bible lecturer will cure you of any disease you have, ifyou will only inclose, in a letter, a lock of hair from the righttemple, and--a--five dollar bill. 

The precepts of even the wisest men, and the laws of the best regulatedStates, commanded or approved of vice. In Babylon prostitution wascompulsory on every female. The Carthaginian law required humansacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage, two hundred children, ofthe most noble families, were murdered by the command of the senate, andthree hundred citizens voluntarily sacrificed themselves to Saturn. [58]The laws of Sparta required theft, and the murder of unhealthychildren. Those of ancient Rome allowed parents the power of killingtheir children, if they pleased. At Athens, the capital of heathenliterature and philosophy, it was enacted "that infants which appearedto be maimed should either be killed or exposed. "[59]

Plato, dissatisfied with the constitution, made a scheme of one muchbetter, which he has left us in his Republic. In this great advance ofsociety, this heathen millennium, we find that there was to be acommunity 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. Andthe young children were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "thatthe young whelps might early scent carnage, and be inured to slaughter. "

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

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

Recently some daily papers and broad-church preachers have taken to thecanonization of heathen saints; they denounce vigorously the bigotry ofany who will not open to them the gates of heaven, or who will, ingeneral, deny salvation to good heathens. But we do not deny salvationto good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybodywho is good. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, hethat feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor arewe about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or intoit either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct ofmen held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in theirclassics, by heathens like themselves, and recommended now by Christianclergymen, as fitter for the kingdom of God, than bad Christians; whichlast may be very true, and so much the worse for the bad Christians. Butthe question is not to be thus decided by comparisons, or bygeneralities; we must have specified individual heathen saints. When, however, we come to look for them, these saints and heroes prove to beonly fit for the penitentiary, according to the laws of any of ourStates; and were they living now, and behaving themselves according totheir accustomed habits, the best of them would be fortunate if they gotthere before they were tarred and feathered by an outraged public. Socrates, Seneca, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, form the stockspecimens trotted out of the stables of heathen morality, for theadmiration and reverence of Christians in this nineteenth century. Butit has been well remarked of Socrates, that no American lady would livewith him a year without applying for a divorce, and getting it, too, upon very sufficient grounds. Seneca, who wrote so beautifully uponmorals, was an adulterer; and, moreover, prostituted his pen to write adefense of a man who murdered his mother. And Marcus Aurelius directedthe murder of thousands of innocent men and women, causing young ladiesto be stripped naked and torn to pieces by wild beasts, in the publicamphitheater, and others to be roasted alive in red-hot iron chairs, forno other offense but that they avowed themselves Christians. Such arethese boasted saints and heroes of heathendom. 

What, then, must the lives of the vulgar have been? In the very heightof Roman civilization, Trajan caused ten thousand men to hew each otherto pieces for the amusement of the Roman people; and noble ladiesfeasted their eyes on the spectacle. In the Augustan age, when theinvincible armies of Rome gave law to half the world, fathers were inthe habit of mutilating their sons rather than see them subjected to theslavery and terrible despotism of their officers. What, then, must thestate of the people of the vanquished countries have been? Wholeprovinces were frequently given over to fire and sword by generals notreputed inhuman; and such was the progress of war and anarchy, and theirnever-failing accompaniments, famine and pestilence, that, in the reignof Gallienus, large cities were left utterly desolate, the public roadsbecame unsafe from immense packs of wolves, _and it was computed thatone-half of the human race perished_. This was just before thetoleration of Christianity. God would allow the wisest and bravest ofmankind to try the experiment of neglecting his gospel and livingwithout his revelation, until all mankind might be convinced that such acourse is suicidal to nations. "Where there is no vision, the peopleperish. "

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

The family is the basis of the commonwealth. Destroy family confidenceand family government, and you destroy society, subvert civilgovernment, and bring destruction on the human race. Mankind are sogenerally agreed on this subject, that adultery, even among heathens, isregarded and punished as a crime. The whole school of Infidel writersand anti-Bible lecturers, male and female, apologize for, and vindicatethis crime. Lord Herbert, the first of the English Deists, taught thatthe indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than the thirstoccasioned by the dropsy, or the drowsiness produced by lethargy. Mr. Hobbes asserted that every man has a right to all things, and maylawfully get them if he can. Bolingbroke taught that man is merely asuperior animal, which is just the modern development theory, and thathis chief end is to gratify the appetites and inclinations of the flesh. Hume, whose argument against miracles is so frequently in the mouths ofAmerican Infidels, taught that adultery must be practiced, if men wouldobtain all the advantages of life, and that if practiced frequently, itwould by degrees come to be thought no crime at all--a prediction astrue as Holy Writ; the fulfillment of which hundreds of the citizens ofCincinnati can attest, who have heard a lecturer publicly denounce theBible as an immoral book, and in the same address declare that if awoman was married to a man, in her opinion of inferior development, itwas her duty to leave him and live with another. This duty is by nomeans 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 vicein a moral sense. Rousseau, a liar, a thief, and a debauched profligate, according to his own printed "Confessions, " held the same high opinionof the inner light as our American Spiritualists. "_I have only toconsult myself_, " said he, "_concerning what I do. All that I feel to beright, is right. _"[60]

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

On this lawless principle these men acted. Take, for example, the chiefsaint on the calendar of American Infidelity, whose birthday is annuallycelebrated by a festival in this city, and in whose honor hundreds ofmen, who would like to be reputed decent citizens, parade the streets ofCincinnati in solemn procession--Thomas Paine--the author of "The Age ofReason, " as his character is depicted by one who was his helper in thework 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 alady who saw Paine on his dying-bed. She informs us that Paine'sphysician 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 theirhouse, 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 aboutthe streets, from whom the children always fled in terror. On enteringhis room she found him stretched on his miserable bed. His visage waslean and haggard, and wore the expression of great agony. He expressedhimself without reserve as to his fears of death, and repeatedly calledon the name of Jesus, begging for mercy. The scene was appalling, and sodeeply engraven on her mind, that nothing could obliterateit. "--_Philadelphia Presbyterian_, March 17, 1857. 

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

In the East these facts are so notorious that even Infidels disownallegiance or attachment to Paine, if they wish to be consideredrespectable. Some of the severest denunciations against him, which weever heard, have been from Infidels. Indeed this is more than plain fromthe very fact of all the Infidels having forsaken Paine on hisdeath-bed. Who was his doctor? A Christian. Who was his nurse? AChristian? 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, whoattended Voltaire on his death-bed, was: That to see all the furies ofOrestes, one only had to be present at the death of Voltaire. ("_Pourvoir toutes les furies d'Oreste, il n'y avait qu'a se trouver a la mortde Voltaire. _") "Such a spectacle, " he adds, "would benefit the young, who are in danger of losing the precious helps of religion. " TheMarechal de Richelieu, too, was so terrified at what he saw that he leftthe bedside of Voltaire, declaring that "the sight was too horrible forendurance. "[62]

And these are the saints, and apostles, and heroes of Infidelity, towhose memories Infidels make orations and festivals, and whose writingsare reprinted in scores of editions, not only over Christendom, buteven 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 animmoral Book, and blaspheme the God of the Bible as too unholy to bereverenced or adored! "But, beloved, remember ye the words which werespoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how that theytold you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk aftertheir own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. " In the Free Love Institute about to beestablished in our vicinity, we shall have the full development of thesefilthy principles and practices. 

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

Once in modern times, the rejectors of the Bible had opportunity to trythe experiment of ruling a people on a large scale, and giving the worlda specimen of an Infidel Republic. You have heard one of them hereexpress his admiration of that government, and declare his intention topresent a public vindication of it. Of course, as soon as practicable, that which they admire they will imitate, and the scenes of Paris andLyons will be re-enacted in Louisville and Cincinnati. Our Bibles willbe collected and burned on a dung-heap. Death will be declared aneternal sleep. God will be declared a fiction. Religious worship will berenounced; the Sabbath abolished; and a prostitute, crowned withgarlands, will receive the adorations of the mayors and councilmen ofCincinnati and Newport. The reign of terror will commence. Theguillotine shall take its place on the Fifth Street Market place. Proscription will follow proscription. Women will denounce theirhusbands, and children their parents, as bad citizens, and lead them tothe ax; and well-dressed ladies, filled with savage ferocity, will seizethe mangled bodies of their murdered countrymen between their teeth. TheLicking will be choked with the bodies of men, and the Ohio dyed withtheir blood; and those whose infancy has sheltered them from the fire ofthe rabble soldiery will be bayoneted as they cling to the knees oftheir destroyers. [64] The common doom of man commuted for the violenceof the sword, the bayonet, the sucking boat, and the guillotine, theknell of the nation tolled, and the world summoned to its execution andfuneral, will need no preacher to expound the text, _Where there is novision, 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'sPenikese 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 thereport 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, whereample 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 aprevious chapter we found one of these to be, that people destitute of arevelation 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 showthat there are people in the world, who have decent clothing andcomfortable houses, who work well-tilled farms and sub-soil plows, andreaping machinery, who yoke powerful streams to the mill wheel, andharness the iron horse to the market wagon, who career their floatingpalaces up the opposing floods, line their coasts with flocks ofwhite-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 churchesin all their towns, and schools in every village, who make theirblacksmiths more learned than the priests of Egypt, their Sabbathscholars wiser than the philosophers of Greece, and even the criminalsin their jails more decent characters than the sages, heroes, and godsof the lands without the Bible; and that these people are the people whopossess a Book, which they think contains a revelation from God, teaching them how to live well; which Book they call the Bible. This isthe book about which we make our present inquiry, Who wrote it?

The fact being utterly undeniable, that these blessings are found amongthe people who possess the Bible, and only among them, we at once, andsummarily, dismiss the arrogant falsehood presented to prevent anyinquiry about the Book, namely, that "Christianity is just like anyother superstition, and its sacred books like the impositions ofChinese, Indian, or Mohammedan impostors. They, too, are religious, andhave their sacred books, which they believe to be divine. " A profoundgeneralization indeed! Is a peach-tree just like a horse-chestnut, or ascrub-oak, or a honey-locust? They are all trees, and have leaves onthem. 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 itis too absurd to begin any discussion with these learned Thebans of therelative merits of the Bible as compared with the Vedas, and the ChineseClassics, of which they have never read a single page. Let them stick towhat they pretend to know. 

The Bible is a great fact in the world's history, known alike to theprince and the peasant, the simple and the sage. It is perused withpleasure by the child, and pondered with patience by the philosopher. Its psalms are caroled on the school green, cheer the chamber ofsickness, and are chanted by the mother over her cradle, by the orphanover the tomb. Here, thousands of miles away from the land of its birth, in a world undiscovered for centuries after it was finished, in alanguage unknown alike at Athens and Jerusalem, it rules as lovingly andas powerfully as in its native soil. To show that its power is notderived from race or clime, it converts the Sandwich Islands into acivilized nation, and transforms the New Zealand cannibal into a Britishshipowner, the Indian warrior into an American editor, and the Negroslave into the President of a free African Republic. It has inspired theCaffirs of Africa to build telegraphs, and to print associated pressdispatches in their newspapers; while the Zulus, one of whom would haveconverted Bishop Colenso from Christianity, if he had been a Christian, are importing steel plows by hundreds every year. It has captured theenemy's fortresses, and turned his guns. Lord Chesterfield's parlor, where an infidel club met to sneer at religion, is now a vestry, wherethe prayers of the penitent are offered to Christ. Gibbon's house, atLake Lemon, is now a hotel; one room of which is devoted to the sale ofBibles. Voltaire's printing press, from which he issued his infideltracts, has been appropriated to printing the Word of God. [65] It doesnot look as if it had finished its course and ceased from its triumphs. Translated into the hundred and fifty languages spoken by nine hundredmillions of men, carried by ten thousand heralds to every corner of theglobe, sustained by the cheerful contributions and fervent prayers ofhundreds of thousands of ardent disciples, it is still going forthconquering and to conquer. Is there any other book so generally read, sogreatly loved, so zealously propagated, so widely diffused, so uniformin its results, and so powerful and blessed in its influences? Do youknow 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 anddistinct, and separate from all other authorship; and with an increasedemphasis comes our question, Who wrote it?

With all these palpable facts in view, to come to the examination ofthis question as if we knew nothing about them, or as if knowing themwell, we cared nothing at all about them, and were determined to denythem their natural influence in begetting within us a very strongpresumption in favor of its divine origin, were to declare that ourheads and hearts were alike closed against light and love. But to enteron this inquiry into the origin of the Book which has produced suchresults, with a preconceived opinion that it must be a forgery, and animposition, the fruit of a depraved heart, and a lying tongue, impliesso much home-born deceit that, till the heart capable of such aprejudice be completely changed, no reasoning can have any solid fulcrumof truth or goodness to rest on. It is sheer folly to talk of one'sbeing wholly unprejudiced in such an inquiry. No man ever was, or couldbe so. As his sympathies are toward goodness and virtue, and thehappiness of mankind, or toward pride and deceit, and selfishness andsavageness, so will his prejudices be for or against the Bible. 

On looking at the Bible, we find it composed of a number of separatetreatises, written by different writers, at various times; some partsfifteen hundred years before the others. We find, also, that it treatsof the very beginning of the world, before man was made, and of othermatters of which we have no other authentic history to compare with it. Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a thousandplaces with the affairs of the Roman Empire, of which we have severalcredible histories. Now, there are two modes of investigation open tous, the dogmatic and the inductive. We may take either. We may constructfor ourselves, from the most flimsy suppositions, a metaphysicalballoon, inflated with self-conceit into the rotundity of a cosmogony, according to which, in our opinion, the world should have been made, andwe may paint it over with the figures of the various animals and noblesavages which ought to have sprung up out of its fornea, and we maystripe its history to suit our notions of the progress of such a world, and soaring high into the clouds, after a little preliminary amusementin 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'smountains, say Ararat, and take a survey of the Bible process ofworld-making. Finding that the Creator of the world had to make hismaterials--a business in which no other world-maker ever didengage--and, further, that God's plan of making it by no meanscorresponds to our patent process and that the article is not at alllike what we intend to produce when we go into the business, and that itdoes not work according to our expectations, we can denounce the wholeas a very mean affair, and the Book which describes it as not worthreading. If one wants some new subject for merriment, and does not mindmaking a fool of himself, and is not to be terrified by old-fashionednotions about God Almighty, and is perfectly confident that God can tellhim nothing that he does not know better already, and merely wants tosee whether he is not trying to pass off old fables upon wide-awakepeople for facts--this dogmatic plan will suit him. 

On the other hand, if one is tolerably convinced that he does not knoweverything, not much of the world he lives in, less of its history, andnothing at all about the best way of making it, and that when it needsmending it will not be sent to his workshop; that he knows nothing aboutwhat happened before he was born unless what other people tell him, andthat, though men do err, yet all men are not liars, that all theblessings of education, civilization, law and liberty, from the pennyprimer to the Constitution of the United States, came to him solelythrough the channel of abundant, reliable testimony; that the only wayin which he can ever know anything beyond his eyesight with certainty, is to gather testimony about it, and compare the evidence, and inquireinto the character of the witnesses; that when one has done so, hebecomes so satisfied of the truth of the report that he would ratherrisk his life upon it than upon the certainty of any mathematicalproblem, or of any scientific truth, whatever--that ninety-nine out ofevery hundred citizens of the United States are a thousand times morecertain that the Yankees whipped the British in 1776, declared theColonies free and independent States, and made Washington President, than they ever will be that all bodies attract each other directly astheir mass, and inversely as the squares of their distances, that thesum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right angles, or thatthe earth is nearer the sun in winter than in summer--and that certaintyabout the Bible history is just as attainable, and just as reliable, ascertainty about American history, if he will seek it in the sameway--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, howto live well, and how to die with a firm and joyful hope of aresurrection to life eternal, and what part of it is easiest to proveeither true or false--then he will take the inductive mode. He willbegin at the present time, and trace the history up to the times inwhich the Book was written. He will ascertain what he can about thatpart of it which was last written--the New Testament--and begin withthat part of it which lies nearest him--the Epistles. 

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

This is my plan of investigation; one thing at a time, and the nearestfirst. 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 isworthy of credit, if the only book which contains it be a religiousnovel of the third or fourth century. We dismiss then the questions ofthe inspiration, or even the truth of the New Testament, till we haveascertained its authors. We take up the Book, and find that it purportsto be a relation of the planting of the Church of Christ, of its lawsand 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 amongall Christians that the Book was composed then, and by these persons. Wewant to know why they think so? In short, is it a genuine book, ormerely a collection of myths with the apostles' names appended to themby some lying monks? Is it a fact, or a forgery?

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

Before that time, the four Gospels were always bound in one volume andcalled "The Gospel. " The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistlesuniversally and undoubtedly known to be written by Paul, to the churchesof Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, andto Philemon, a well-known resident of that city, and those to Timothyand Titus, missionaries of world-wide celebrity, the First GeneralEpistle of Peter, and the First General Epistle of John, which were atonce widely circulated to check prevailing heresies--were bound inanother volume and called "The Apostle. " The Epistle to the Hebrews, being general, and anonymous, _i. E. _, not bearing the name of anyparticular church, or person, to whom anybody who merely looked at itcould refer for proof of its genuineness, as in the case of the otherEpistles--was not so soon known by the European churches to be writtenby Paul. The General Epistles of James, Jude, and the Second GeneralEpistle of Peter, lying under the same difficulty, and besides beingvery disagreeable to easy-going Christians, from their sharp rebukes ofhypocrisy, and the Second and Third Epistles of John, from theirbrevity, and the Revelation of John, being one of the last written ofall the books of the New Testament, and the most mysterious--were not sogenerally known beyond the churches where the originals were deposited, until the other two collections had been formed. They were accordinglykept as separate books, and sometimes bound up in a third volume ofapostolical writings. Besides these, at the time of the Council ofLaodicea, 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. TheCouncil of Laodicea did, what many learned men had done before them; itinvestigated the evidence upon which any of these books was attributedto an apostle; and finding evidence to satisfy them, that the Gospelwritten by Luke had the sanction of the Apostle Paul, that the Gospel ofMark was revised by the Apostle Peter, that the Epistle to the Hebrewswas written by Paul, and the other Epistles by John, Jude, James, andPeter, respectively, and not finding evidence to satisfy them about theRevelation of John, they expressed their opinion, and the grounds of it, for the information of the world. [66] Into these reasons we willhereafter inquire, for our faith in Holy Scripture does not rest ontheir canons. We are not now asking what they _thought_, but what they_did_; and we find that they did criticise certain books, reported to bewritten by the apostles of Jesus Christ some three hundred years before, approve some, and reject others as spurious, and publish a list of thosethey thought genuine. Infidels admit this, and on the strength of itlong asserted that the Council of Laodicea made the New Testament. Atlength they became ashamed of the stupid absurdity of alleging that mencould criticise the claims, and catalogue the names of books before theywere written; and they now shift back the writing--or the authenticationof the New Testament--for they are not quite sure which, though themajority incline to the former--to the Emperor Constantine, and theCouncil of Nice which met in the year 325. Why they have fixed on theCouncil of Nice is more than I can tell. They might as well say theCouncil of Trent, or the Westminster Assembly, either of which had justas much to do with the Canon of Scripture. However, on some vaguehearsay that the Council of Nice and the Emperor Constantine made theBible, hundreds in this city are now risking the salvation of theirsouls. 

We have in this assertion, nevertheless, as many facts admitted as willserve our present purpose. There did exist, then, undeniably, in theyear 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; sufficientlypowerful to secure his success, notwithstanding the desperate strugglesof the heathen party; and sufficiently religious, or if you likesuperstitious, to make it politic for an emperor and his politicians togive up the senate, the court, the camp, the chase, and the theater, and weary themselves with long prayers, and longer speeches, ofpreachers about Bible religion. Now that is certainly a remarkable fact, and all the more remarkable if we inquire, How came it so? For thesemen, preachers, prince, and people, were brought up to worship Jupiterand the thirty thousand gods of Olympus, after the heathen fashion, andto leave the care of religion to heathen priests, who never troubledtheir heads about books or doctrines after they had offered theirsacrifices. In all the records of the world there is no instance of ageneral council of heathen priests to settle the religion of theirpeople. How happens it then that the human race has of a sudden waked upto such a strange sense of the folly of idolatry and the value ofreligion? The Council of Nice, and the Emperor Constantine, and hiscounselors, making a Bible is a proof of a wonderful revolution in theworld's religion; a phenomenon far more surprising than if theSecretaries of State, and the Senate, and President Grant should leavethe Capital to post off to London, to attend the meetings of a MethodistConference, assembled to make a hymn book. Now what is the cause of thisremarkable conversion of prince, priests, and people? How did they allget religion? How did they get it so suddenly? How did they get so muchof it?

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

If we inquire, however, of the parties attending that Council, what thestate of the case is, we shall learn that they believed--whether trulyor erroneously we are not now inquiring--but they believed, that ateacher sent from God, had appeared in Palestine two hundred and ninetyyears before, and had taught this religion which they had embraced; hadperformed wonderful miracles, such as opening the eyes of the blind, healing lepers, and raising the dead; that he had been put to death bythe Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, had risen again from the dead, hadspoken to hundreds of people, and had gone out and in among them for sixweeks after his resurrection; that he had ascended up through the air, to heaven, in the sight of numbers of witnesses, and had promised thathe would come again in the clouds of heaven, to raise the dead, and tojudge every man according to his works; that before he went away heappointed twelve of his intimate companions to teach his religion to theworld, giving them power to work miracles in proof of their divinecommission, 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 werepersuaded to give up idolatry and its filthiness, and to professChristianity and its holiness, and to brave the fury of the heathen mob, and the vengeance of the Roman law; that a difference of opinion havingarisen among them as to whether this teacher was an angel from heaven, or God, whether they should pray and sing psalms to Him, as Athanasiusand his party believed, or only give Him some lesser honor as Arius andhis party believed, and this difference making all the differencebetween idolatry on the one hand, and impiety on the other, and soinvolving their everlasting salvation or damnation, they had embracedthe first opportunity after the cessation of persecution, and theaccession of the first Christian Emperor, to assemble three hundred andeighteen of their most learned clergymen, of both sides, and from allcountries between Spain and Persia, to discuss these solemn questions;and that, through the whole of the discussions, both sides appealed tothe writings of the apostles, as being then well known, and ofunquestioned authority with every one who held the Christian name. Thesefacts, 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 ofNice well known to the whole world; and the Council, so far from_giving_ any authority to them, _bowing to theirs_--both Arian andOrthodox with one consent acknowledging that the whole Christian worldreceived them as the writings of the apostles of Christ. There werevenerable men of fourscore and ten at that Council; if these books hadbeen first introduced in their lifetime, they must have known it. Therewere men there whose parents had heard the Scriptures read in churchfrom 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 oneor other of the disputants would have exposed the novelty of itsintroduction, from his own information. The Council of Nice, then, didnot make the New Testament. It was a book well known, ancient, and ofundoubted authority among all Christians, ages before that Council. _Theexistence of the New Testament Scriptures, then, ages before the Councilof Nice, is a great fact. _

We next take up the assertions, propounded with a show of learning, thatthe books of the New Testament, and especially the Gospels, were not inuse, and were not known till the third century; that they are not theproductions of contemporary writers; that the alleged ocular testimonyor proximity in point of time of the sacred historians to the eventsrecorded is mere assumption, originating in the titles which Biblicalbooks bear in our canon; that we stand here (in the gospel history), upon purely mythical and poetical ground; and that the Gospels andEpistles are a gradually formed collection of myths, having little or nohistoric reality. So Strauss, Eichorn, De Wette, and their discipleshere, attempt to set aside the New Testament. In plain English, it is acollection of forgeries. 

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

The aspect and character of the gospel narrative are totally unlikethose of mythologies. Hear the verdict of one who confessedly stands atthe head of the roll of oriental historians: "In no single respect--ifwe except the fact that it is miraculous--has that story a mythicalcharacter. It is a single story, told without variations; whereas mythsare fluctuating and multiform: it is blended inextricably with the civilhistory of the times, which it everywhere reports with extraordinaryaccuracy; whereas myths distort or supersede civil history: it is fullof prosaic detail, which myths studiously eschew: it abounds withpractical instruction of the simplest and purest kind; whereas mythsteach by allegory. Even in its miraculous element it stands to someextent in contrast with all mythologies, where the marvelous has ever apredominant character of grotesqueness which is absent from NewTestament 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, whoevidently deal with facts, not with fancies, and are employed inrelating a history, not in developing an idea. They write that 'we mayknow the certainty of the things which are most surely believed' intheir day. They 'bear record of what they have seen and heard. ' I knownot how stronger words could have been used to prevent the notion ofthat plastic, growing myth which Strauss conceives to have been inapostolic times. "[69]

The character of Christ exhibited in the Gospels is the contrary of thatof the heroes of mythology; as contrary as holiness is to sin. Theinvention of such a character by any man, or by the wisest set of menwho ever lived, would have been a miracle nearly as great as theexistence of such a person. When the character of Christ was presentedto the wisest men of the Greeks, and Romans, and Hebrews, so far fromadmiring him as a hero, they crucified him as an impostor, andpersecuted the preachers of his gospel. There was nothing mythical inthe ten persecutions; these at least were hard historical facts. Everyline of examination of time, place, and circumstances proves thefalsehood of the mythical theory, and establishes the truth of thegospel history. 

The authenticity of the gospel history, and of the Apostolic Epistles isconfirmed by the testimony of their enemies. It is a well-authenticatedand 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 Testamentshould be lost. If Paine quotes the New Testament to ridicule it, no mancan deny that such a book was in existence at the time he wrote. If hetakes the pains to write a book to confute it, it is self-evident thatit is in circulation, and possessed of influence. So Celsus' attempt toreply to the Gospels, and his quotations from them, are conclusiveproofs that these books were generally circulated and believed, and heldto be of authority at the time he wrote. Further, he shows everydisposition to present every argument which could possibly damage theChristian cause. In fact, our modern Infidels have done little more thanserve up his old objections. Now nothing could have served his purposebetter than to prove that the records of the history of Christ wereforgeries of a late date. This would have saved him all further trouble, and settled the fate of Christianity conclusively. He had everyopportunity of ascertaining the fact, living, as he did, so near thetimes and scenes of the gospel history, and surrounded by heretics andfalse Christians, who would gladly have given him every information. Buthe never once intimates the least suspicion of such a thing--neverquestions the Gospels as books of history--nor denies the miraclesrecorded in them, but attributes them to magic. [70] Here, then, we havetestimony as acceptable to an Infidel as that of Strauss or Voltaire--infact, utterly undeniable by any man of common sense--that the NewTestament was well known and generally received by Christians asauthoritative, when Celsus wrote his reply to it, in the end of thesecond century. If it was a forgery, it was undoubtedly a forgery of oldstanding, if he could not detect it. 

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

The only remaining conceivable cavil against the genuineness of thebooks of the New Testament is: "That they bear internal evidence ofbeing collections of fragments written by different persons--and areprobably merely traditions committed to writing by various unknownwriters, and afterward collected and issued to the churches under thenames of the apostles, for the sake of greater authority. " This theorybeing received as gospel by several learned men, has furnished matterfor lengthy discussions as to the sources of the four Gospels. Translated into English, it amounts to this, that Brown, Smith, andJones wrote out a number of essays and anecdotes, and persuaded thechurches of Ephesus, Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and the rest, toreceive them as the writings of their ministers, who had lived foryears, or were then living, among them; and on the strength of thatnotion of their being the writings of the apostles, to govern theirwhole lives by these essays, and lay down their lives and peril theirsouls' salvation on the truth of these anecdotes. As though they couldnot tell whether such documents were forgeries or not!

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

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

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

The churches to which the Epistles were written, and to which theGospels were delivered, consisted largely of business men, of merchantsand traders, tent makers and coppersmiths, city chamberlains, andofficers of Cęsar's household, and the like. Does any one think such mencould not tell the handwriting of their minister, who had lived amongthem for years; or that men who were risking their lives for theinstructions he wrote them, would care less about the genuineness of thedocuments, than you do about the genuineness of a ten dollar check? I amnot as long in this city as Paul was in Ephesus, nor one fourth of thetime that John lived there, yet I defy all the advocates of the mythicaltheory of Germany, and all their disciples here, to write a myth half aslong as this essay, and impose it on the elders and members of my churchas my writing. Let it only be presented in manuscript to thecongregation--there was no printing in Paul's days--and in five minutesa dozen members of the church will detect the forgery, even if I shouldhold my peace. And were I to leave on a mission to China or India, andwrite letters to the church, would any of these business men, who haveseen my writing, have the least hesitation in recognizing it again? Doyou think anybody could forge a letter as from me, and impose it onthem? What an absurdity, then, to suppose that anybody could write agospel or epistle, and get all the members of a large church to believethat an Apostle wrote it. The first Christians, then, were absolutelycertain that the documents which they received as apostolic, werereally so. The Church of Rome could attest the Epistle to them, and theGospels of Mark and Luke written there. The Church of Ephesus couldattest the Epistle to them, and the Gospel, and Letters, and Revelationof John written there. And so on of all the other churches; and theseveritable autographs were long preserved. Says Tertullian, who wasordained A. D. 192: "Well, if you be willing to exercise your curiosityprofitably in the business of your salvation, visit the apostolicalchurches in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside--inwhich their authentic letters themselves are recited (apud quę _ipsęauthenticę literę_ eorum recitantur), sounding forth the voice andrepresenting 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 ifyou are near to Italy, you have Rome. " There can not be the least doubtabout the preservation of documents for a far longer time than from Paulto Tertullian--one hundred and fifty years. I hold in my hand a Bible, the family Bible of the Gibsons--printed in 1599--two hundred andfifty-seven years old, in perfect preservation; and we have manuscriptsof the Scriptures twelve to fourteen hundred years old, like theSinaitic Codex, perfectly legible. 

They were moreover directed to be publicly read in the churches, andthey were publicly read every Lord's day. Is it credible that animpostor would direct his forgery to be publicly read? If the epistlewas publicly read during Paul's lifetime, that public reading in thehearing of the men who could so easily disprove its genuineness, wasconclusive proof to all who heard it, that they knew it to be thegenuine writing of the Apostle. The primitive churches then hadconclusive proof of the genuineness of the Apostolic Epistles andGospels. 

The only difficulty which now remains is the objection that they mighthave been corrupted by alterations and interpolations by monks, in latertimes. We have two securities against such corruptions, in the way thesedocuments were given, and the nature of their contents. They were sacredheirlooms, and they were public documents. Could you, or could any man, have permission to alter the original copy of Washington's FarewellAddress? Would not the man who should attempt such sacrilege be torn ina thousand pieces? But Washington will never be an object of suchveneration as John, nor will his Farewell Address ever compare inimportance with Paul's Farewell Letter to the Philippians. Besides, these Gospels and Letters were public documents, containing the recordsof laws, in obedience to which men are daily crossing theirinclinations, enduring the mockery of their neighbors, losing theirmoney, and endangering their lives. They contained the proofs andpromises of that religious faith in God and hope of heaven, for the sakeof which they suffered such things. Is it credible that they would allowthem to be altered and corrupted? You might far more rationally talk ofaltering the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of theUnited States. Translated into different languages--transported intoBritain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Carthage, Egypt, Parthia, Persia, India, and China--committed to memory by children, andquoted in the writings of Christian authors of the first threecenturies, to such an extent, that we can gather the whole of the NewTestament, except twenty-six verses, from their writings--appealed to asauthority by heretics and orthodox in controversy--and publicly read inthe hearing of tens of hundreds of thousands every Sabbath day inworship--we are a thousand times more certain that the New Testament hasnot been corrupted, than we are that the Declaration of Independence isgenuine. 

On this ground then we plant ourselves. The whole story of a late andgradual formation of the New Testament, or, in plain English, of itsforgery, stands out as an unmitigated falsehood in the eyes of every mancapable of writing his own name. The first churches could not bedeceived with forgeries for apostolic writings. Nor could they, if theywould, allow these writings to be corrupted. Be they true or false, factor fiction, the books of the New Testament are the words of the Apostlesof our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the next chapter we will inquireinto the truth of their story. 

FOOTNOTES:

[65] The Family Christian Almanac for 1859, p. 57, American TractSociety, 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 fourthvolume of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History; abstracts ofthem, with ample references, in Mosheim and Neander's EcclesiasticalHistories, 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 werenot forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century--that theshopkeepers, silversmiths, tent-makers, coppersmiths, tanners, physicians, senators, town councilors, officers of customs, citytreasurers, and nobles of Cęsar's household, in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria, could no more be imposed upon in thematter of documents, attested by the well-known signatures of theirbeloved ministers, than you could by forged letters or sermonspurporting to come from your own pastor--and that the documents whichthey believed to contain the directory of their lives, and the charterof that salvation which they valued more than their lives, which theyread in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in theirwritings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into manylanguages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, theyneither would, nor could, corrupt or falsify. 

The genuineness of the copies of the New Testament, which we nowpossess, is abundantly proved by the comparison of over two thousandmanuscripts, from all parts of the world; scrutinized during a period ofnearly a hundred years, by the most critical scholars, so accuratelythat the variations of such things as would correspond to the crossingof a t, or the dotting of an i, in English, have been carefullyenumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny hasbeen merely the suggestion of a score of unimportant alterations in thereceived text of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine versesof the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the historyof manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies ofTerence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand timesthe New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousandvariations found in these six manuscripts, or an average of fivethousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. Theaverage number of variations in the manuscripts of the New Testamentexamined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialitiesalready noticed. 

We are, then, by the special providence of God, now as undoubtedly inpossession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by thecompanions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution ofthe United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These arehistoric documents, of well-established genuineness and antiquity, whichwe now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness. 

There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporarywriters, especially by those who have themselves been actively engagedin 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 TenThousand, Cęsar's Gallic War, and the Dispatches of the Duke ofWellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yetsome suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders andhistorians might have kept back some important events which would havedimmed their reputation with posterity, or might have colored those theyhave related, so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related inmemoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance todetect 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 themanners and customs of a people, we become as absolutely convinced ofthe truth of the narrative thus confirmed by these silent witnesses asif we had seen the events described. No man who visits the disinterredcity of Pompeii, and sees the pavements marked by the wheel ruts, hasany doubt that the Romans used wheeled carriages. When he sees thecourt-yards adorned with mosaic figures, and the walls with paintings ofthe gods, and of the manners of the people who worshiped them, he isprofoundly impressed with the conviction that they excelled in the finearts, and in the coarse vices of heathenism. When he visits theColiseum, that vast ruin declares that the wealth of an empire, oncedevoted to the gratification of the most savage passions, has beendiverted into some other channel. When he visits the catacombs, andreads long lines of heathen epitaphs, with their despairing symbols ofbroken columns, extinguished torches, and their heart-breaking"Farewell! an eternal farewell!" and then turns to the monuments of onlytwo centuries later, and reads, "He sleeps in the Lord, " "He waits theresurrection to life eternal, " recording the hopes of whole generationsof survivors, he can not doubt the truth of the written records of theconversion of the Roman Empire. 

There is, moreover, another kind of contemporary history not soconnected and regular as the formal diary or journal, which does noteven propose to relate history at all, but is for that very reasonentirely removed from the suspicion of giving a coloring to it; which, at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the mostconvincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes ofhistorians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of aname, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion, flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporarycorrespondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laidbefore us, we are enabled to look right into them, and see their truecharacter. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupidtyrant, James, displayed in his own letters. Thus Voltaire recordshimself an adulterer, and begs his friend, D'Alembert, to lie for him;his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of thegreat American herald of the Age of Reason exhibits him drinking a quartof brandy daily at his friend's expense, and refusing to pay his billfor boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondencethe vail is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true manstands out in his native dignity, and the gilding is rubbed off thehypocrite. Give the world their letters, and let the grave silence theplaudits and the clamors which deafened the generation among whom theylived, and no man will hesitate whether or not to pronounce Hume asensualist, or Washington the noblest work of God--an honest man. 

If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of thewitnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events, written by persons of various degrees of education, and of differentoccupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, actingindependently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusionsto, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they areall interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesignedagreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all theseundesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of personswhose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of ourcorrespondents, and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them, they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our beliefbecomes conviction which can not be overturned by any sophistry, thatthese things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts ofJames' flight, and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobitefriends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements of theEnglish historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters whichJames himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England, does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 didactually occur?

When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence oftestimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern, and the changes effected for the public weal, the people have ever sinceobserved, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and publicrejoicings, the anniversaries of the principal events of thatRevolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard thethanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, thefacts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, andtake their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. Webecome at once conscious that this is a practical question--a great factwhich concerns us--that the whole of the law and government of a vastempire has felt its impress--that our ancestors and ourselves have beenmolded under its influence, and that the religion of Europe and America, under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among thepeople of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nationsof the saved, has been secured by that Revolution. We could scarcelyknow whether most to pity or contemn the man who should labor topersuade us that such a Revolution had never occurred, or that thefacts had been essentially misrepresented. 

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

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

From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians andphilosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with theEpistles and of the apostles; and both those heathen--the celebratedletter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well-established history of Tacitus;both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most skeptical to be abovesuspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who do not takethe trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of theChristian religion is more accurate than that of those whose lives weredevoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as muchweight to the assertions of persons, who, by their own showing, torturedand murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing thename of Christ, as to those of these martyrs, whose characters theyacknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with thelast and highest attestation of sincerity--their blood. Consideredmerely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or testsof truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always bepreferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, andhate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class towhom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For theirsakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of allattestations--the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite inattesting 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 characterfor truthfulness of our letter writers and historians. If we find thattheir general historic narrative is contradicted by that of othercredible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that, in all essential matters of public notoriety, they are supported by theconcurred testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of themiracles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes becamefriends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness astrue. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to theapostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts ofThessalonica; and how they turned to God from idols, to serve theliving and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raisedfrom 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, consulin the third year of Trajan, A. D. 100, was exceedingly desirous to addto his other honors that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecratedan augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on hisestates; was, in A. D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces ofPontus and Bithynia[73]--a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along theshores of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the provinceanciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira, and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reachedhis province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus; where John hadlived for many years, and indited his letters, A. D. 96, scarcely tenyears before. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered throughPontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the samemountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea; whence, inearlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priestsof Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to thesetting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came theheralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "_LeabharEoin_"[74] which tells their children of him in whom is the life and thelight of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem duringthe crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed thedarkness, and the earthquake, and had heard the rumors of what had cometo pass in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with thecurious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their ownmother tongues, of the wonderful works of God. The remainder of thestory of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, John, andPliny. 

 "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, atone reading, the First General Epistle of Peter, the First GeneralEpistle of John, and the Seven Epistles to the Churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea--onlyabout as much matter as four pages of _Harper's Magazine_, or half apage of the _Commercial_--that he may be able to do the same justice tothe apostles as to the governor. He will thus be able to see the forceof the various allusions to the numbers, doctrines, morals, persecutions, and perseverance of the Christians, contained in thoseletters; the object which I have in view being, to establish theirauthenticity by proving the truthfulness of their allusions to thesethings. If you think this too much trouble, please lay down the book, and dismiss the consideration of religion from your thoughts. If theletters of the apostles are not worth a careful reading, it is of noconsequence whether they are true or false. 

1. These letters take for granted, that the fact of the existence oflarge numbers of Christians, organized into churches, and meetingregularly for religious worship, at the close of the first century, is amatter of public notoriety to the world. Here, in countries eighthundred miles distant from its birthplace, in the lifetime of those whohad seen its founder crucified, we find Christians scattered overPontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia--churches in sevenprovincial cities, the sect well known to Pliny, before he left Italy, as a proscribed and persecuted religion, the professors of which werecustomarily brought before courts for trial and punishment--though hehad not himself been present at such trials--and now so numerous in hisprovinces, 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 weresuspended, and their temples forsaken. The existence, then, of churchesof Christ, consisting of vast numbers of converted heathens, at theclose of the first century, is in no wise mythological or dubious. It isan established historical fact. The Epistles of the apostles standconfirmed by the Epistles of the governor and the emperor. 

2. The second great fact presented in the Epistles, and confirmed by theletters of the governor and the emperor, is, that the worship of theChristian Church then was essentially the same which it is now. We findthese Christians of the first century commemorating the death andresurrection of Christ, and rendering divine honors to him; the "statedday" on which they assembled for worship, and the "common meal, " are asplain a description of the "disciples coming together upon the first dayof 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 asacrament, "not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never tofalsify their word, or deny a pledge committed to them, " find theircounterpart in every well-regulated church at this day. 

The articles of the Christian faith, then, are not the "gradualaccretions of centuries, " nor is the "redemptive idea, as attaching toChrist, a dogma of the post-Augustine period. " The churches of thefirst century commemorated the death and resurrection of Jesus, as thatof a divine person, "singing the hymn to him as a God, " which theirdescendants 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 beevaded, How did these apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens tobelieve their repeated assertions of the death, resurrection, and gloryof Jesus? In the space of three octavo pages, Peter refers to thesefacts eighteen times. John, in like manner, repeatedly affirms them. TheChristian religion consists in the belief of these facts, and a lifecorresponding to them. Now, how did the apostles persuade suchmultitudes of heathens to believe a report so wonderful, profess areligion so novel, renounce the gods they had worshiped from theirchildhood, 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 bothsexes, performing all the sacred rites with gracefulness; religiousdances, illuminations, concerts of the sweetest music, perfumes of therarest fragrance, " and other more licentious enjoyments, inseparablefrom heathen worship. How did they persuade them to exchange all thisfor the assembly before daybreak, the frugal common meal, the psalm toChrist, and the commemoration of the death of a crucified malefactor? Ifwe add, that they commemorated his resurrection, by observing the Lord'sday, the question comes up, How did they come to believe that he wasrisen from the dead? Could a few despised strangers, or a few citizensif you will, persuade such a community, purely by natural means, tobelieve such a report, to care whether the Syrian Jew died or rose, orto commemorate weekly, by a solemn religious service, either his deathor resurrection? It is evident they believed what they commemorated. Howdid they come to do so?

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

3. A mere theory of a new religion, unconnected with practice, may beeasily received by those who care little about any, so long as it bringsno suffering or inconvenience. But the religion of these Christians was, as you see, a practical religion. If their new worship required a greatdeparture from the worship of their childhood, their Christian moralsrequired a still greater departure from their former mode of life. Ineed not remind you of the moral codes of Socrates, Plato, andAristides, who taught that lying, thieving, adultery, and murder werelawful; nor how much worse than the theory of the best of the heathenwere the lives of the worst; nor how unpopular to persons so educatedwould be such teaching as this--"Forasmuch then as Christ hath sufferedfor us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind: for he thathath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin: that he no longershould live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, butto the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to havewrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominableidolatries; wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them tothe same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: who shall give account tohim that is ready to judge the living and the dead. " "Lay aside allmalice, and guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings. ""Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not. Whosoever sinneth hath notseen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you. Hethat doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He thatcommitteth sin is of the devil. " So sharp, and stern, and strictlyvirtuous is apostolic religion, as displayed in these letters. Is itpossible then that these converted heathens did really even approachthis standard of morality? Did this gospel of Christ actually produceany such reformation of their lives?

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

The morality of the Epistles, then, was not a merely a fine theory, butan actual rule of life. The moral codes of the apostles were received asactually binding on the members of the churches of the first century. Inthis all-important matter of the rule of a good life--the fruits bywhich the tree is known--the integrity, authority, and success of theapostles, in turning licentious heathens into moral Christians, isauthenticated by the unwilling testimony of their persecutors. TheEpistles of the apostles stand confirmed, as to their ethics, by theletters of Trajan and Pliny. 

4. The only other fact to which I call your attention, from among themultitude alluded to in these letters, is the cost at which theseconverts from heathenism embraced this new religion. Every one whorenounced heathenism, and professed the name of Christ, knew very wellthat he must suffer for it. "Beloved, think it not strange concerningthe fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thinghappened unto you, but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ'ssufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad withexceeding joy;" this was the welcome of the Bithynian convert into theChurch of Christ. Persecution by fire and sword was then the common lotof the Church. "I have never been present at any trials of theChristians, " says the governor. Such trials were well known to him itseems. He was not sure whether he should murder all who ever had bornethe name of Christ, or only those who proved themselves to be really hisdisciples, by refusing to revile him, and return to idolatry; and themerciful emperor commands him to spare the apostates. Above twenty yearsbefore--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 bemade manifest they were not of us; for if they had been of us, theywould no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that it mightbe made manifest that they were not all of us. " So it seems Plinythought: "They all worshiped your image, and other statues of the gods;these also reviled Christ. None of which things, as is said, they whoare really Christians can by any means be compelled to do. " What thesemeans were he tells us: "I put the question to them, whether they wereChristians. Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated thequestion a second and a third time, threatening, also, to punish themwith death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished. "What is very remarkable, it was, it seems, "usual in such cases, for thecrime to spread itself, even whilst under persecution. " In the face ofsuch dangers, these heathen would still profess faith in Christ, andwhen they might have saved their lives by reviling him, refused to doso. From the published rescript of the emperor, approving of Pliny'scourse, and condemning to death all who were convicted of being reallyChristians; from the public circulars of the apostles, warning them of"fiery trials, " "Satan casting some of them into prison, " and exhortingthem to "be faithful unto death;" and from such comments on these as thetorture and public execution of aged women as well as men--the terms ofdiscipleship were well known to the whole world. Yet we see that in theface of all this, "great numbers of persons, of both sexes, and of allages, and of every rank, " in Pliny's opinion, were so steadfast in theirfaith, that "they were in great danger of suffering. "

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

These four great facts of the later Epistles, being thus establishedbeyond dispute, in pursuance of our plan, we ascend the stream ofhistory some forty years, to the time of the earlier Epistles, when Paullay in the Prętorian prison, and his faithful companion, Luke, wrote thecontinuation of his narrative of the things most surely believed amongthe Christians; when "apostles were made as the filth of the world, andthe offscouring of all things;" and Christians "were made a gazing stockboth by reproaches and afflictions;" "were brought before kings andrulers, and hated of all nations for Christ's name sake;" "endured agreat fight of afflictions;" were "for his sake killed all the day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter;" "were made a spectacle to theworld, to angels, and to men. " We remove the field of our investigationfrom a remote province of Asia, to one equally remote from Judea, andfar more unfavorable for the growth of the religion of a crucified Jew, to the proud capital of the world, imperial Rome. The time shall beshortly after the burning of the city, in A. D. 64, and during theraging of the first of those systematic, imperial, and savagepersecutions through which the Church of Christ waded, in the bloodyfootsteps of her Lord, to world-wide influence, and undying fame. Ourhistorian shall be the well-known Tacitus; and the single extract fromhis history, one of which the infidel Gibbon says:[77] "The mostskeptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this importantfact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. " I shallnot insert quotations from Paul or Luke; that were merely to transcribelarge portions of the Epistles and Gospels, which whoever will notcarefully peruse, disqualifies himself for forming a judgment of theirveracity. The confirmation of the four facts already established, ofthe existence, worship, morals, and sufferings of the disciples ofChrist; and these facts as well known within thirty years after hisdeath, will sufficiently appear by the perusal of the followingtestimony of Tacitus. [78]

After relating the burning of the city, and Nero's attempt to transferthe 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 Testamentand read the contemporary history--Acts xxii. To the end of thebook--and the letters of Paul from Rome, to Philemon, Titus, theEphesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Second to Timothy, writtenwhen the aged prisoner was ready to be offered, and the time of hisdeparture, amidst such scenes and sufferings, was at hand. Then formyour own opinion as to the origin and nature of that faith in Jesuswhich enabled him to say: "None of these things move me, neither count Imy life dear unto me, that I may finish my course with joy, and thetestimony which I have received of the Lord Jesus. " "I know in whom Ihave believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which Ihave committed to him against that day. "

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

1. That without the power of force, or the help of governments, and inspite of them, the apostles did convert vast multitudes of idolatersfrom a senseless worship of stocks and stones, to the worship of the oneliving and true God; a thing never done by the preachers of any otherreligion before or since. 

2. That without the help of power or civil law, and solely by moral andspiritual means, they did persuade multitudes of licentious heathens togive up their vices, and obey the pure precepts of the moralitycontained in their Epistles; a thing never done by the preachers of anyother religion before or since. 

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

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

It is a fact, then, indisputably proven by history, that the NewTestament does teach a religion which can enlighten men's minds, reformtheir lives, give peace to their consciences, and enable them to meetdeath with a joyful hope of life eternal. It has done these things intimes 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 asit has done in others. Like causes ever produce like effects. Jesuswaits to deliver you from your sins, to fill you with joy and peace inbelieving, 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 knowme, 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. Theysuffered for their faith in the true God, the Messiah to come, and aresurrection 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 NewTestament; that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, andfaith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and thatmultitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief ofthe testimony of these men. They testified that Jesus Christ did manywonderful miracles, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead;that they saw, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed withhim for forty days after his resurrection; that he ascended up to heavenin their sight; that he sent them to tell the world that he will comeagain in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge theliving and the dead; that he who believes these things and is baptizedshall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is theirstatement. The question is, Can we believe them?

1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that itstands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothingin the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central factof Christianity--that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from thedead--stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priestsof Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophetsof Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted toimitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christianity is to denyit. 

There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religionever producing the same effects. We demand an instance of men destituteof wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying, lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous mensimply by prayer and preaching. When the Infidel tells us of the rapidspread of Mohammedanism and Mormonism--impostures which enlist disciplesby promising free license to lust, robbery, and murder, and retain themby the terror of the scimeter and the rifle ball; which reduce mankindto the most abject servitude, and womanhood to the most debasingconcubinage; which have turned the fairest regions of the earth to awilderness, and under whose blighting influence commerce, arts, science, industry, comfort, and the human race itself, have withered away--hesimply insults our common sense, by ignoring the difference betweenbackgoing vice and ongoing virtue; or acknowledges that he knows aslittle about Mohammedanism, as he does about Christianity. The gospelstands alone in its doctrines, singular in its operation, unequaled inits success. 

2. The next important point for consideration is, that the Christianitypreached by Christ and his apostles is a whole--a single system, whichwe must either take or leave--believe entirely, or entirely reject it asan imposture. There is no middle ground for you to occupy. It is alltrue, or all false. For instance, you can not take one of Paul'sEpistles and say, "this is true, " and take another of the same man'sletters, containing the very same religion, and say, "this is false. " Ifyou accept the very briefest of Paul's Letters, that to Philemon, containing only thirteen sentences on private business, you accepteleven distinct assertions of the authority, grace, love, and divinityof our Lord. Nor can you say you will accept Peter's Letters and rejectPaul's; for you will find the very same facts asserted by the one as bythe other; and moreover, Peter indorses "all the epistles of our belovedbrother Paul" as on the same pedestal of authority with the otherScriptures. You can not say, "I will accept the letters and reject thehistory, " for the letters have no meaning without the history. They arefounded upon it, and assume or allege its facts on every page. Were thegospels lost, we could collect a good account of the birth, teaching, death, resurrection, ascension, and almighty power of the Lord Christfrom Paul's Epistles; and these letters are just as confident inalleging the miraculous part of the history as the gospels themselves. Neither can you gain any advantage by saying, "I accept the gospels, butreject the letters, " for there is not a doctrine of the New Testamentwhich is not taught in the very first of them, the Gospel by Matthew. Further, the gospels contain the most solemn authentication of thecommissions 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 hethat receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me"--"Whosoever will notreceive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house orcity, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shallbe more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day ofjudgment, than for that city. "

It is, if possible, more absurd to attempt to dissect the morality ofthe gospel from its history, and to say, "We are willing to receive theChristian code of morals as a very excellent rule of life, and to regardJesus as a rare example of almost superhuman virtue, but we mustconsider the narrative of supernatural events interwoven with it asmythological, " _i. E. _, false. Which is much the same as to say, "Wewill be very happy to receive your friend if he will only cut his headoff. " Of what possible use would the Christian code of morals be withoutthe authority of Christ, the lawgiver? If he possessed no divineauthority, what right has he to control your inclination or mine? And ifhe will never return to inquire whether men obey or disobey his law, whowill regard it? Do you suppose the world will be turned upside down, andreformed, by a little good advice? Nay, verily, the world has had trialof that vanity long enough. "We must all appear before the judgment seatof 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, andthere is nothing left for you to accept. There is no political economynor worldly morality in it. It is wholly the history of a supernaturalperson, and every precept of his morality comes with a divine sanction. Further, you know nothing of either his life or his morality but fromthe gospel history, and if the record of the miracles which occupythree-fourths of the gospels be false, what reason have you to give anycredit to the remainder? For, as the German commentator, De Wette, wellsays, "The only means of acquaintance with a history is the narrative wepossess concerning it, and beyond that narrative the interpreter can notgo. In these Bible records, the narrative reports to us only asupernatural course of events, which we must either receive or reject. If we reject the narrative, we know nothing at all about the event, andwe are not justified in allowing ourselves to invent a natural course ofevents of which the narrative is totally silent. " So, you see, you cannot make a Christ to suit your taste, but must just take the Christ ofthe gospel, or reject him. 

If you reject the testimony of Christ and his apostles as false, and sayyou can not believe them in matters of fact, how can you respect theirmorality? Of all the absurdities of modern Infidelity, the respectfullanguage generally used by its advocates in speaking of Christ and hisapostles is the most inconsistent. He claimed to be a Divine Person, andprofessed to work miracles. The Infidel says he was not a Divine Person, and wrought no miracles. The consequence is unavoidable--such apretender is a blasphemous impostor. And yet they speak of him as a"model man, " an "exemplar of every virtue. " What! an impostor a modelman? A blasphemer and liar an exemplar of every virtue? Is that theInfidel's notion of virtue? Why, the devils were more consistent intheir commendations of his character, "We know thee who thou art, THEHOLY ONE OF GOD. " Let our modern enemies of Christ learn consistencyfrom their ancient allies. We have also learned from our Master torefuse all hypocritical, half-way professions of respect for hischaracter and teachings from those whose business is to prove him adeceiver, and whose object in speaking respectfully of such a One canonly be to gain a larger audience, and a readier entrance for theirblasphemy among his professed disciples. From every man who professesrespect for Christ's character, and for the morality which he and hisapostles taught, we demand a straightforward answer to the questions:"When he declared himself the Son of God, the Judge of the living andthe dead, did he tell the truth, or did he lie? When he promised toattest 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 isno 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 thesethings, or they have manufactured a series of falsehoods. How can webelieve anything from persons so habituated to lying as the narrators ofthe mighty works of Jesus must be, if those mighty works never wereperformed? How can we accept their code of morals if we refuse tobelieve them when they speak of matters of fact? Is it possible torespect men as moral teachers, whom we have convicted of forging storiesof miracles that never occurred, and confederating together to impose alying superstition on the world? For this is plainly the very point andcenter of the question about the truth of the Bible, and I am anxiousyou should see it clearly. A fair statement of this question is half theargument. The question then is simply this, Was Jesus really the DivinePerson he claimed to be, or was he a blasphemous impostor? When theapostles unitedly and solemnly testified that they had seen him after hewas risen from the dead, that they ate and drank with him, that theirhands 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 werethey a confederated band of liars? There is no reason for any othersupposition. They could not possibly be deceived themselves in thematters they relate. They knew perfectly whether they were true or not. We are not talking about matters of dogma, about which there might beroom for difference of opinion, but about matters of fact--about whatmen say they saw, and heard, and felt--about which no man of commonsense could possibly be mistaken. "That which we have seen with oureyes, which we have heard, which we have looked upon, and our hands havehandled of the Word of life * * * that which we have seen and hearddeclare we unto you. " Such is their language. We must either take it astruth, or reject it as falsehood. It is utter nonsense to talk of theintense subjectivity of the Jewish mind, and the belief of the apostlesthat the Messiah would do wonders when he came, and the powerfulimpressions produced by the teaching of Jesus on their minds. We are nottalking about impressions on their minds, but about impressions producedon their eyes, and ears, and hands. Did these men tell the truth whenthey told the world that they did eat and drink with Jesus after he rosefrom 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 bevery well posted up in the matters of names, dates, places, manners andcustoms, else he will contradict some well-known facts, and so exposehis forgery to the world. Therefore writers of forgeries avoid all suchthings as much as possible, and as surely as they venture onspecifications of that sort they are detected. A man who is conscious ofwriting a book of falsehoods does not begin on this wise: "Now in thefifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cęsar, Pontius Pilate beingGovernor of Judea, and Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brotherPhilip Tetrarch of Iturea and of the regions of Trachonitis, andLysanias Tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being high priests, theWord of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. "Here in one sentence are twenty historical, geographical, political, andgenealogical references, every one of which we can confirm by referencesto secular historians. The enemies of the Lord have utterly failed intheir attempts to disprove one out of the hundreds of such statements inthe New Testament. The only instance of any _public political event_recorded in the gospel, said not to be confirmed by the fragments ofsecular history we possess, is Luke's account of a census of the RomanEmpire, ordered by Augustus Cęsar. Were it so that Luke stood alone inhis mention of this, surely his credit as a historian would be as goodfor this fact, as the credit of Tacitus, when he states matters of whichSuetonius makes no mention, or of Pliny, when he relates things notrecorded by Tacitus. But we can account for the want of corroborativehistory in this instance, when we know that all the history of DionCassius, from the consulships of Antistius and Balbus to those ofMessala and Cinna--that is, for five years before and five years afterthe 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 hislexicon upon the word _apographe_, says, "that Augustus sent twentyselect men into all the provinces of the empire to take a census, bothof men and property, and commanded that a just proportion of the lattershould be brought into the imperial treasury. And this was the firstcensus. "

To object to the gospel history, that everything contained in it of thedoings of Christ and his apostles in Judea, is not recorded by thehistorians of Greece and Italy, is much the same as to say that thereare a multitude of facts recorded in D'Aubigne's History of theReformation in Germany, of which Hume and Macaulay make no mention intheir histories of England. How should they?--treating of differentcountries, and for the most part of different periods, and writing civiland not church history? Does anybody go to Macaulay to look for thehistory of the Westminster Assembly, or to Bancroft for an account ofthe Great Revival in New England? Or is the veracity of Baillie, orEdwards suspected, because political history does not concern itselfmuch about religion? It is enough that not a single statement of thegospel 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 aChristian, became a heathen, and used all his ingenuity to overturn thereligion of Christ--expressly admitting the principal miracles recordedin the gospel. But I attach no such importance to the testimony of thisclass 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 testimonyto the facts of the life and death of Christ needs any confirmation fromsuch witnesses. We have such overwhelming evidence of the sincerity andtruth of the witnesses chosen by God to bear testimony to theresurrection of Christ, as we never can have of the credibility of anysecular historian whatever. 

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

4. Of no other series of events of ancient history do we possess thesame number of records by contemporary historians, as of the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We have four directsystematic memoirs of him by four of his companions; and we have acollection of letters by four others, in which the events of the memoirsare continually referred to. At the mouth of two or three witnesses anyman's property and life will be disposed of in a court of justice, buthere we have the testimony of eight eye-witnesses of the facts theyrelate, and they refer to five hundred other persons, the greater partof whom were then alive, who had also seen and heard Christ after hisresurrection. These eight persons give us their separate and independentstatements of those things they deemed worthy of record in the life anddeath of Christ, and of the sayings and doings of several of his friendsand enemies. Now every person knows that it is impossible to make twocrooked boughs tally, or two false witnesses agree. You never saw twolying reports of any considerable number of transactions agree, unlessthe one was copied from the other. 

It is evident that the gospels were not copied from each other, for theyoften relate different events, and when they relate the same occurrence, each man relates those parts of it which he saw himself, and whichimpressed him most. Yet the utmost ingenuity of infidelity has utterlyfailed to make them contradict each other in any particular. Here areeight witnesses to the truth of the same story, four of whom in theirletters make occasional allusions to the facts of the history as beingperfectly well known, and therefore needing only to be alluded to, yetthese cursory references fit into the history with every mark oftruthfulness. Does the history of Matthew, written at Jerusalem, tell usthat Jesus took Peter, and James, and John up into a high mountainapart, and was transfigured before them? Peter, in his letter, writtenfrom Babylon, says, "We were eye-witnesses of his majesty. We were withhim in the holy mount. "--2 Peter ii. 10. If the history tells how Paulwas beaten and cast into prison at Philippi, and his feet made fast inthe stocks, and that, nevertheless, he manfully defended his birthrightas a Roman citizen, and made the tyrannical magistrates humblethemselves, and apologize for their illegal conduct, we find Paulhimself, in a letter to a neighboring church, appealing to theirknowledge of the facts, "that after we had suffered before, and wereshamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi, we were bold in our Godto speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention. For ourexhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile. Forneither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloakfor covetousness. "--1 Thessalonians ii. 2. Hundreds of such undesignedcoincidences may be found in the New Testament, confirming the veracityof the several historians and letter writers, and giving that impressionof the naturalness and truth of the story, which can neither bedescribed nor disputed. The reader who desires to prosecute thisinteresting branch of the evidences of Christianity will find an amplecollection of these coincidences in Paley's Horę Paulinę. 

This agreement of independent writers is the more remarkable, as thewriters were persons of very various degrees of education, of differentprofessions and ranks of life, born in different countries, and writingfrom various places in Italy, Greece, Palestine, and Assyria, withoutany communication with each other. Matthew was an officer of customs inGalilee; Mark a Hebrew citizen of Jerusalem; Luke a Greek physician ofAntioch; James and John owned and sailed a fishing smack on LakeTiberias; Jude left his thirty-nine acres of land, worth nine thousanddenarii, to be farmed by his children when he went forth to preach thegospel; and college-bred Paul carried his sturdy independence in hisbreast, and his sail needles in his pocket, and dictated epistles, andcut out marquees and lug-sails in the tent factory of Aquila, Paul &Co. , at Corinth. Several of his letters were written in a dungeon inRome; the last of Peter's is dated at Babylon; Matthew's Gospel waspenned at Jerusalem, and John's Gospel and Epistles were written atEphesus. The agreement of eight such witnesses, of such differentpursuits, and so scattered over the world, in the relation of the samestory, in all its leading particulars, together with their variety ofstyle and manner, and their various relations of minor incidents, yetwithout a single contradiction, are most convincing proofs that they alltell truth. Nothing but truth could be thus told without contradiction. 

The fact that some considerable difficulties and many minor obscuritiesin these brief though pregnant narratives, prevent the combination ofeight accounts so independent in their sources, and various in theirstyle, and design, and auditors, into a flowing historical novel, ahomogeneous mass, rounded and squared to our ideas of mathematicalprecision, is only an additional proof of their truth to nature, whichabhors mathematical, as much as truth does rhetorical figures. Like thevariety of expression used by American, German, French, and Polishwitnesses in our courts of justice, testifying the same facts in theirnative idioms, though in English words, the apparent discrepancy, butactual harmony, becomes the most decisive test of the absence of anycollusion, and consequently of the verity of the facts which suchvarious witnesses unite in testifying. Especially will any such apparentdiscrepancy resolve itself into our own unskillfulness or ignorance, when we remember that the mists of ages, and the drapery of a strangelanguage, and world-wide removal of residence, and the turning of theworld upside down by the progress of Christian civilization, and ourconsequent ignorance of the thousand little details of every-day life, well known to the writer and his immediate readers, and of the force ofexpressive idioms, perfectly familiar to them--have rendered us not nearso capable of detecting inaccuracies, as those contemporary writers andopponents, who allowed them--if they existed--to pass unchallenged. Likethose antique coins, whose rust-dimmed and abbreviated inscriptionsexercise the patience and historic lore of the antiquarian, thoughneither are needed to declare the precious material, this very rust ofantiquity, through which his patience has penetrated, becomes one of theinimitable marks of historic verity. Every year throws some new light ontexts difficult to us from our ignorance of those manners, customs, names, and places, which Infidel malice and Christian piety havecombined to explore; and from the ruins of Nineveh and the sepulchers ofEgypt we receive unlooked-for testimonies to the minute accuracy of thepenmen of the Bible. 

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

The boldness of their manner, however, of telling their story, islittle, compared with the boldness of the design which they had in viewin telling it; which was nothing less than to convert the world. Now theidea of proselyting other nations to a new religion was absolutelyunknown to the world at that time. The Greeks and Romans never dreamedof any such thing. They would sometimes add a new god to their oldPantheon, but the idea of turning a nation to the worship of new deitieswas 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 fellowfrom the earth, for it is not fit that he should live. " And this new andstrange idea, of conquering the world for a crucified man, is taken upby a few private citizens, who resolve to overturn the craft by whichpriests have their wealth, and to bring the kingdoms of the world tobecome the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 

Impostors would never have appealed to their power of working miraclesas the apostles did; nor could enthusiasts have done so without instantexposure. It is remarkable, that while in addressing those who believedtheir divine commission, they rarely allude to it (fourteen of theepistles make no allusion to apostolic miracles), but dwell on a subjectof far greater importance--a holy life--they never hesitate to confronta Simon Magus, or a schismatical church at Corinth, or a persecutinghigh 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 thatbelieve not;" and this is true of all other miracles. This marks thedifference between real miracles and those of pretenders; who havenever attempted to establish a new religion by them, or to convertunbelievers hostile to their claims and able to examine them, withoutimmediate exposure. But you never heard of an impostor standing upbefore the tribunal of his judges and alleging the miraculous cure of awell-known public beggar, lame from his mother's womb, whom they hadseen at the church gate every Sabbath for forty years, and bringing theman into court after such a fashion as this, "If we this day be examinedof the good deed done unto the impotent man, by what means he is madewhole, be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, thatby the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom Godraised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand before you whole. "Such an appeal was unanswerable. "Beholding the man that was healedstanding with them, they could say nothing against it. " Nay, they werecompelled to acknowledge "that indeed a notable miracle hath been doneby them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem--we can not denyit. "--Acts iv. 

The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention of theenemy. The scribes, and priests, emperors, and philosophers of the firstcenturies, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, wereunable to do so. The persecutors and apostates, whose malice against theChurch knew no bounds, never dared to utter a charge of deceptionagainst the apostles. Why, then, you ask, did they not all becomeChristians? 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 wouldnot turn from their sins if all the dead in Spring Grove Cemetery wouldrise to-morrow to warn them from hell. God does not intend to force anyman to become a Christian. He just gives evidence enough to try you, whether you will deal honestly and fairly with your own soul and yourGod, and if you are determined to hate Christ and his holy religion, youshall never want a plausible excuse for unbelief; as it is written, "Unto them which are disobedient, Christ is a stone of stumbling and arock of offense. " These ancient enemies of Christ acknowledged thereality of his miracles, but attributed them to magical power, or thehelp of Satan. The Jews said that he had acquired the power of miraclesby learning to pronounce the incommunicable name of God. Modern Infidelsdeny all his miracles save the greatest--the turning of men from theirsins. They can not deny that; they can not ascribe it to the power ofSatan or of magic, for they do not believe in either; but they follow asnearly in the footsteps of their fathers as possible, when they tell usthat multitudes of men, in every age, and in every land, have beenturned from falsehood to truth by the belief of a lie, and from vice tovirtue by the example of an impostor!

6. But the strongest proof of the truth of the facts of the gospel isthe existence, the labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves. Nobody denies that such men lived, and preached, and were persecuted onaccount of their preaching that Jesus died and rose again. Now, if thiswas a falsehood, what motive had they to tell it? It was verydispleasing to their rulers who had crucified him, and who had everyinclination to give them the same treatment. To preach another king, oneJesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire uponthem. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecianphilosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor couldany plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the paganpriesthood, 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 mostdegraded wretch, who perishes by the hand of the hangman is not socontemptible in our eyes, as the crucified malefactor was in the eyes ofthe Roman people; nor could anything more disagreeable to the Jewishnation be invented than the declaration, that the Gentiles should becomepartakers of the kingdom of God. What then should induce any man in hissenses to provoke such an opposition to a new religion, and to make itso contemptible and disagreeable to those whom he sought to convert, ifhe were manufacturing a lie to gain power and popularity?

The religion they preached was not adapted to please sensual men, nor toallow its preachers in sensual gratifications. "Our exhortation, " saysPaul--and every reader of the New Testament knows that he saystruth--"Our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor ofguile. " Infidels admit that they preached a pure morality. But it is along time since men learned the proverb, "Physician, heal thyself. ""Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou thatsayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thouthat 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 toconfederate together for the propagation of falsehood--the design ofmaking money by it. But their new religion made no provision for anysuch thing. One of their first acts was to desire the church to electdeacons who might manage its money matters, and allow them to givethemselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Twenty-fiveyears after that they could appeal to the world that "Even to thispresent hour, we" (the Apostles) "both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place, and labor workingwith our hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:we are counted as the filth of the world, and the offscouring of allthings to this day. " Their book opens with the story of their Master'sbirth in a stable, with the manger for his cradle, and one of its lastpictures is that of his venerable apostle chained in a dungeon, andbegging his friend to bring his old cloak from Troas, and to do hisdiligence to come before winter. 

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

The last and most convincing testimony which any man can give to thetruth of a statement of fact is to suffer rather than deny it. Many havewondered why God allowed his dear servants to suffer so much persecutionin the first ages of the Church. One principal reason was to give futureages an irresistible proof of the sincerity and faithfulness of thewitnesses for Christ. The apostles lived lives of persecution andsuffering for the name of Jesus; sufferings which they might haveavoided 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 seenand heard. " One who had no personal acquaintance with Jesus, and whosefirst interview with him was while he was breathing out threatening andslaughter against the disciples of the Lord, is converted and called tobe an apostle; and behold the prospect Jesus presents to him, "I willshow him _how great things he must suffer for my name_. " "The Holy Ghosttestifieth, " says Paul, "that in every city bonds and afflictions abideme. Yet none of these things move me. " That at least was a trueprophecy. "Seven times, " says Clement, "he was in bonds, he was whipt, he was stoned; he preached both in the East and West, leaving behind himthe glorious report of his faith, and so having taught the whole worldrighteousness, and for that end traveled even to the utmost bounds ofthe West, he at last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and went to his holy place, having become a most eminent pattern ofpatience to all ages. "[80] Hear his own appeal to those who envied hisauthority in the church, "Are they ministers of Christ, I am more: inlabors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons morefrequent, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times received I fortystripes 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, inperils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in thecity, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils amongfalse brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, inhunger 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 tothe truth the apostles gave. Save the aged disciple, who, after tormentsworse than death, survived to address the persecuted church as, "Yourcompanion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of JesusChrist, " they all suffered martyrdom for the truth of the gospelhistory. 

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 deathand resurrection of Jesus, because they had read them in a creed, butbecause they had seen them with their own eyes; that they lived holylives of toil, and hardship, and poverty, and suffering, in preachingthese facts to the world; and that they died painful and shameful deathsas martyrs for their truth. You admit these things. Then I demand ofyou, "What more could either God or man do to convince you of theirtruthfulness?"

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

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

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. " Soprophesied the most sagacious of modern politicians, by the inspirationof genius, calculating the prospects of the future by the light of hispast experience. This prediction of Napoleon's is a very fair specimenof the oracles of human sagacity; which always overlooks the moststupendous facts--such as the conversion of an empire--and the commonestexperiences--such as the birth of a brace of conflicting twins from thewomb of the Rachel of revolution, when history happens to predict thefailure of the self-elected conquering savior. Man learns to believewhatever he fondly desires, to expect what he believes, and to predictwhat he expects. His predictions are the mirrors which photograph hisown moods of mind, rather than views through a telescope directed to thedistant cloud-capped mountains of futurity. 

But it is confidently asserted that the science of party politics issimply the exercise of the gift of prophetic vision on the theater ofcivil life; and that a sagacious politician is, within his own sphere, aprophet. He applies the conditions of the past, so far as he knows them, to the calculation of the future. His success proves his sagacity, nothis supernatural inspiration. Why should religious predictions beattributed to a different power?

For the very simple and satisfactory reason, that the great majority ofthe calculations of party politicians are failures, while thepredictions of the Bible are verified by the event. Name a dozen leadersof American politics during the last half century, and you name half ascore of disappointed presidential candidates, whose unfinishedmonuments prevent the kindly green sward of oblivion from vailing theirdisappointments, and check the prayer of the passing pilgrim that theymay rest in peace; while of the last half dozen who have occupied thepresidential chair, and guided the destinies of the most progressivehalf of the world, not a single man had been suggested by the politicalleaders even ten years before his election. No wonder politicians becomeshy of prediction. 

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

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

It is wonderful how rashly men will risk their reputation for commonsense on the sound of a plausible analogy, which, even were it valid, would not justify the inference drawn from it. For, suppose that therewere as fixed laws of national as of individual life, can any manpredict 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 asthat of the individual?

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

Others give a still wider range to prophetic inspiration. They tell usthat all genius is prophetic, inasmuch as it grasps general laws, universal in their range, and unvariable in their operation, theapplication of which to particular events constitutes prediction. TheHebrew prophets were sagacious observers of human nature, and made veryshrewd calculations of the future progress of events by a carefulinduction of the invariable laws of nature from the history of the past. But there was nothing supernatural in that. Every poet, philosopher, andstatesman is more or less of a prophet. Indeed foresight, like insight, is common to all men: a superior degree of this common possessionconstitutes the prophet. Men of profound insight, or of extensiveforesight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignoranceascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensiveobservation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the samesource the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, ofthe Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild, Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, somein paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect andfallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished by the advent ofa master, while occasional less perfect attempts and shrewd guesses keepthe fires of ambition alive in the human breast. 

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

We are told by men who could not read one of Apollo's oracles to savetheir lives, nor recite one of Isaiah's prophecies to save their souls, that Apollo's oracles, no less than Isaiah's, were inspired. Could suchpersons be prevailed upon to read carefully any single prophetic book ofScripture, with the historic facts to which it refers, or even thebriefest abridgment of these facts, such as that contained in TheComprehensive Commentary, they would not thus expose their ignorancealike 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 theinspiration of God even a Balaam becomes honest, and the leprosy ofNaaman marks the sordid Gehazi and his seed forever. 

The oracles of the heathen are always immoral in their tendency. Fromthe first spiritual communication through the serpent medium in the treeof knowledge, down to the last spiritual marriage rapped out by theoracle, they are all in favor of pride, ambition, lying, lust, andmurder. The oracles of God begin with a prohibition of curiosity, pride, covetousness, and theft: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shaltsurely 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 tothe tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city; forwithout are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, andidolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. "

This last mark--falsehood--belongs to all heathen oracles, from thefirst utterance by the serpent, down to the last response rapped out bythe medium. Take any one heathen oracle of which we have any definiteaccount--and the number is very small--and you will find that, if it isnot "as equivocal as Apollo, " _it is false_. 

For instance, Dean Stanley very confidently refers to certain heathenoracles, "the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, could not bedenied without a perversion of all history. Such was the foreshadowingof the twelve centuries of Roman dominion, by the legend of theapparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was so understood400 years before its accomplishment. " Comparing the propheticpredictions with such fables, he says: "_It is not that they are moreexact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than thatof the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire. "[81]

The oracle thus exalted to a level with the predictions of our Lord andhis apostles is quoted by Censorinus, [82] A. D. 238, from Varro, whodied 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 thefounding of the city of Romulus and the twelve vultures, since the Romanpeople had passed 120 years safe, it would reach 1, 200. "

Dean Stanley misquotes the oracle, and does injustice to the old heathenprophet. He spake no word whatever about _dominion_; all he daredconjecture for his city was _safety_. Even that is put in a highlyhypothetical mood. The augury begins with an "if, " regarding theapocryphal story of Romulus and the twelve vultures. But whether thefable of the vultures be true or not, the augury of twelve centuries ofsafety deduced from it is undeniably false, whether it refers to thematerial city, or to the political constitution then established. Thecity then built was burnt by Brennus, the Gaul. Its successor was takenand plundered by Alaric, in A. D. 410; again by Genseric, and theVandals, in 455; and again by the Ostrogoths, in 546. Thus the materialcity was repeatedly taken and destroyed during the twelve centuriessucceeding its founding. If the augury referred to the duration of thepolitical constitution then instituted, every school-boy knows that halfa dozen revolutions falsified the prediction. If, however, it be allegedthat it referred to the ultimate fate of the city of Rome, that itshould cease to exist after twelve centuries, it is self-evidentlyfalse; for now, after the lapse of twenty-six centuries, Rome is larger, its people more numerous, and its territory wider than it was forcenturies after Romulus saw the twelve vultures. Thus God "frustrateththe tokens of the liars. " Yet men who have read Roman history, andwhose business it is to read their Bibles, continue to cite VettiusValens as a prophet, and to compare his false auguries with thepredictions of the Scriptures of truth!

This is only one of a number of such secular predictions confidentlycited by the learned Dean as having been as minute and specific as thoseof Scripture, and undeniably fulfilled. But a scholar of his own churchhas examined his references and alleged facts, and the result is, thatnot a single instance remains of the fulfillment of any definiteprediction given by the original writers; and where the transcriber andthe Dean have helped them out to a more definite prediction, it hasproved a false prophecy, as in the case of Sterling's and Spence'sprediction of the year of the disruption of the Union of the UnitedStates. Dr. Pusey summarizes this discussion in his work on Daniel (p. 637), from which we extract and condense the following paragraphs onthis subject:

"Dean Stanley produces a certain number of alleged predictions insecular history, as counterparts of the predictions of _the politicalevents_ of their own, and the surrounding nations, " in the Hebrewprophets, _i. E. _ (in religious language), "of God's judgments upon bothfor their sins against himself and their fellow-men. " He says, "Everyone knows instances, both in ancient and modern times, of predictionswhich have been uttered, and fulfilled, in regard to events of thiskind. Sometimes such predictions have been the results of politicalforesight. Many instances will occur to students of history. Even withinour own memory the great catastrophe of the disruption of the UnitedStates of America _was foretold, even with the exact date, several yearsbeforehand_. Sometimes there has been an anticipation of some futureepoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent philosophers and poets; as forexample the intimation of the discovery of America by Seneca; or ofShakespeare by Plato; or the Reformation by Dante. Sometimes the resulthas been produced by the power of divination, granted in someinexplicable manner to ordinary men. Of such a kind were many of theancient oracles, the fulfillment of which, according to Cicero, couldnot be denied without a perversion of history. Such was theforeshadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman dominion by the legend ofthe apparition of the twelve vultures to Romulus, which was sounderstood 400 years before its actual accomplishment. Such, but withless certainty, was the traditional prediction of the conquest ofConstantinople by the Mussulmans; the alleged predictions by ArchbishopMalachi, whether composed in the eleventh or sixteenth centuries, of theseries of popes down to the present time; not to speak of the well-knowninstances which are recorded both in French and English history. Butthere are several points which at once place the prophetic predictionson a different level from any of these. _It is not that they are moreexact in particulars of time and place_; none can be more so than thatof the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire; and our Lord himself hasexcluded the precise knowledge of times and seasons from the widest andhighest range of prophetic vision. " (Jewish Church, 463. The Bible: itsForm and Substance, pages 80, 82. )

"It might safely be admitted, " says Dr. Pusey, "that the outwardpredictions of time and place are of the body, rather than of the soulof prophecy, yet as indications that he revealed himself, who alonecould know long before what he willed to bring to pass by hisProvidence, the predictions of the Hebrew prophets are not to beparalleled by any human history. 

"Definite predictions of the Hebrew prophets have been instanced above. Dr. Stanley's instances of secular fulfillment are unhappy. " He thenproceeds 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 greatcatastrophe of the disruption of the United States _at the end_ of thefour years, says that no wise man would predict anything even withinthose four years. "It appears to me that amid so many elements ofuncertainty as to the future, both from the excited state of men's mindsin the States themselves, and the complication of surroundingcircumstances, no wise man would venture to foretell the probable issueof American affairs during the next four years. " (On the American Union, page 14. ) And this was written amid all the heavings which preceded thebursting of the volcano. It followed, after statesmen had, one afteranother, seen the elements of that disruption. The probability of theseverance of the North and South has been a speculation to which theolder of us have long been familiar. And now [1864] who would venture topredict the time of the close of that sad war? (First edition. ) Now[1865] that it has come to an end Americans taunt Europeans with theirwant of foresight in their anticipations as to its issue. The _Times_correspondent retorts as to false anticipations of Americans--(1) thatthe issue would not interfere with slavery; (2) that there would beseparation without bloodshed; (3) that the war would last only someninety days; (4) that the United States would break up into fragments(Northern); (5) they contemplated that the interests of trade wouldsuffice for the harmony of North and South when separated, etc. , etc. June 6, 1865. Europeans almost universally anticipated the success ofthe South. So little did the human sagacity of men really sagacious, with intimate knowledge of the strength of the different parties, theirnumbers, 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 carriedon almost under their eyes. And these men would have us to suppose thatHebrew prophets, living in the center of a small people, could, withmere human knowledge, foretell with absolute certainty the overthrow offlourishing 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 forthe immediate purpose for which they were "forged by the partisans ofthe Cardinal Simoncelli, one of the candidates for the tiara, who wasdesignated by the words 'de antiquitate orbis, ' because he was ofOrvieto, in Latin, 'orbs vetus. '" (Biog. Unv'l v. Wion. ) Menestrierpublished a refutation of the pretended prophecies of S. Malachi, Paris, 1689, written with much solidity. Don Feijoo also refuted thesepretended prophecies in his _Teatro Critico_. The Noveau DictionnaireHistorique, by MM. Chaudon and Delaudine, speaks of the "errors andanachronisms with which this impertinent list swarms. " "Theforgetfulness of common sense makes itself felt in a few pages. Thosewho have set themselves to explain these too noted insipidities, alwaysfind 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 absurdinterpreters, for that pope had in his coat of arms bees, which sucklilies 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 falseprophet, Mohammed. 

"In the mosque of Sultan Mohammed the Second, " says V. Hammer, "whichwas finished A. D. 1469, there stands, to the right of the main door, ona marble slab, on an azure field, in gold raised characters, thetradition of the prophet relating to Constantinople. 'They _willconquer_ Constantinople; and blessed the prince, blessed the army whichshall fulfill this. '" (Constant v. D. Bosporos I. 393. ) Or (as herenders more exactly in Gesch d. Osm. Reich, p. 523), "the best princeis he who conquers it, and the best army, his army. " This tradition, being above eight centuries after Mohammed, has, of course, no value. Itreappears 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 cityof the Cęsar are forgiven. '" Ockley referring only vaguely to Bokhari, who, early in the third century, after Mohammed selected 7, 000traditions which he held to be genuine, out of some 267, 000, I appliedto my friend, M. Reinaud, professor of Arabic at Paris, and member ofthe Institute, not doubting that with his large knowledge he would beable to point out to me the passage in the _Sahih_. This, with hiswell-known kindness, he has done, amid his many labors. It puts an endto all questions about prophecy. The passage is this: As Omm Heram hasrelated to us that she heard the prophet say, "The first army of mypeople which shall war by sea will acquire merits with God, Omm Heramsaid, 'I said, O Apostle of God, I will be among them. ' He said, 'Thoushalt be among them. ' Then the prophet said, 'The first army of mypeople which shall attack the city of the Cęsar, their sins shall beforgiven them. ' Then I said, 'I will be with them, O Apostle of God. ' Hesaid, 'No!'" M. Reinaud adds, "There is no question but that Mohammedconceived the idea of the invasion of the Roman Empire, and of thekingdom of Persia by his disciples. He himself shortly before his deathtried his strength against the Roman forces in Syria. But the passagedoes not say what Ockley makes him say. It does not say thatConstantinople would be taken. "

The other prophecy referred to by Von Hammer is as follows: "Have youheard of a city of which one side is land, the two others sea? Theysaid, 'Yea, O Apostle of God. ' He said, 'The last hour will not comewithout its being conquered by 70, 000 sons of Isaac. When they come toit they will not fight against it with weapons and engines of war, butwith the word, There is no god but God, and God is great!' Then will oneside of the sea walls fall; and at the second time the second; and atthe third time the wall on the land side; and they will enter in withgladness. "

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

IV. The legend of Romulus and the vultures, and the falsehood of theprediction 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 undoubtedknowledge of its existence by the ancient Egyptians, and by Plato, Proclus, Marcellus, Ammianus, Marcellinus, Diodorus, Aristotle, andPlutarch; whose assertions influenced Columbus to undertake the searchfor it. Nothing could be more certain than that such a continent wouldbe rediscovered. But in the only indication which Seneca gives us of itslocation he erred; for Thule is still the utmost land northward, no newcontinent having been discovered, nor remaining to be discovered, towardthe North Pole. 

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

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

VIII. "Those best read in Dante are at a loss to find in him any traceof a prediction of the Reformation. Dante, with his firm faith in allRoman doctrine, could not have imagined or anticipated such a disruptionas Luther's. Dean Stanley corrects an unimportant misprint or two in thesecond edition of his book, on the ground of the above statements. Hedoes not even attempt to supply a passage from Dante. I have looked forone in vain. "

Yet such a collection of errors, absurdities, falsehoods, and imposturesis gravely presented, in this nineteenth century, by a learnedclergyman, as comparable in regard to exact fulfillment with the oraclesof God. 

It is not intended here to discuss the question of the continuance ofprophetic powers in the Church. If, as many believe, the promise in Joelii. 28--"It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, that yoursons and your daughters shall prophesy, " etc. --is a promise not yetexhausted, predictions given by the Holy Spirit may have been giventhrough Christians in former times, and may still be given. But if suchbe the fact, these are not secular predictions; but spiritual andsupernatural, and of the same class with those of Scripture; they aretherefore not to be cited by Rationalists as examples of secularprediction. 

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

The objection proceeds on a total mistake of the nature and design ofprophecy, which is not to unvail the future for the gratification ofyour curiosity, but to give you direction in your present duty;precisely the reverse of the oracles referred to, which proposed to telltheir votaries what should happen, but rarely condescended to directthem how to behave themselves so that things might happen well. Thelarger part of the prophecies of Scripture is taken up with directionsto men how to regulate their conduct, rather than with information howGod means to regulate his. There is just as much of the latter as issufficient 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 therighteous that it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit ofhis doings. " "Woe to the wicked; it shall be ill with him, for thereward of his hands shall be given him. " Whenever a vision relates towhat God will do in the distant future, it is dark and mysterious; butwhenever any directions are given necessary for our immediate duty, thenthe "vision is written and made plain on tables, _that he may run thatreadeth it_. " The possessors of a clearly engrossed title-deed havesurely no reason to complain that the president has chosen that his sealappended to it shall consist of a device, which, by reason of its beinghard to read, and harder to imitate, secures both himself and themagainst forgery. The double meaning of some prophecies is a doublecheck. So far from resembling the equivocations of heathen oracles, bytaking either of two opposite events for a fulfillment, they requireboth of two corresponding ones; and some prophecies, like a master key, open several successive events, and thus show that the same mind plannedboth locks and key. When the prediction is fulfilled all mysteryvanishes, 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 seeanything that it concerns him to know. But the man who thinks that itconcerns him so much to know what God will do with the world a hundredyears after he is dead, that unless the prophecies of the Bible are allmade 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 itis written, "None of the wicked shall understand. "

As to the objection taken from the symbolical language of prophecy, andwhich seems to a number of our modern critics so weighty that theyremove to the purely mythologic ground everything "couched in symbolicallanguage, " and account nothing to be prediction unless "literal historywritten in advance"--I would merely ask, How is it possible to revealheavenly things to earth-born men but by earthly figures? Do you know asingle word in your own, or any other language to express a spiritualstate, 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 ofspeech--a symbol. Nay, is there a letter in your own, or in any otheralphabet, that was not originally a picture of something? I demand toknow in what way God or man could teach you to know anything you havenever seen, but by either showing you a picture of it, or telling youwhat it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the onlypossible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to ourminds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be givenliterally, in the style of history written in advance, he simplyrequires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gatherclear and definite ideas from the significant hieroglyphics ofsymbolical language, but the literalities of history written in advancewould be worse to decipher than the arrow-headed inscriptions ofNineveh. 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 ofChrist, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexedCalifornia. " "In the year of Christ--what new Olympiad may be that?" hewould say. "The United States of course means the States of the AchęnLeague, but on what shore of the Euxine may Mexico and California befound?" What information could Aristotle gather from the record that, "In 1857, the Transatlantic Telegraph was in operation?" Could all theaugurs in the seven-hilled city have expounded to Julius Cęsar thefamous dispatch, if intercepted in prophetic vision, "Sebastopol wasevacuated last night, after enduring for three days an infernal fire ofshot and shell?" Nay, to diminish the vista to even two or threecenturies, what could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole WestminsterAssembly, have made of a prophetic vision of a single newspaperparagraph of history written in advance, to inform them that, "Threecompanies 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, inthe face of a full gale from the S. W. ?" Why, the intelligible part ofthis single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and theunintelligible part more absurd, than all the mysterious symbols of theApocalypse. 

The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it istoo 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'sglorious symbols, and Solomon's terse proverbs, will be recited andadmired, ages after the foggy abstractions of mystified metaphysicianshave vanished from the earth. The Thirst of Passion, the Cup ofPleasure, the Fountain of the Water of Life, the Blood of Murder, theRod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire of Wrath, the Balance ofRighteousness, the Sword of Justice, the Wheels of Providence, theConservative Mountains, the Raging Seas of Anarchy, and the Golden, Brazen, and Iron Ages, will reflect their images in truth's mirror, andphotograph their lessons on memory's tablet, while the mists of the"positive philosophy, " "the absolute, " and "the conditioned, " float pastunheeded, to the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are theglorious embodiments of living truths, while man's philosophicabstractions are the melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense. 

The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctlyintelligible _after_ the fulfillment, as we shall presently see;sufficiently obscure to baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Hadthey been so written as to be fully intelligible beforehand, they musthave interfered with man's free agency, by causing their ownfulfillment. They hide the future sufficiently to make man feel hisignorance; they reveal enough to encourage faith in the God who rulesfuturity. 

The revelation of future events, however, is not the principal design ofthe prophecies of the Bible; they bear witness to God's powerful presentinfluence over the world now. For God's prophecy is not merely hisforetelling something which will certainly happen at some future time, but over which he has no control--as an astronomer foretells an eclipseof the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is hisrevealing of a part of his plan of this world's affairs, to show thatGod, and not man, is the sovereign of this world. For this purpose hetells beforehand the actions which wicked men, of their own free will, will commit, contrary to his law, and the measures he will take tothwart their designs, and fulfill his own. Nay, he declares he will somanage matters that, without their knowledge, and even contrary to theirintentions, heathen armies, and infidel scoffers shall serve hispurposes, and show his power; while yet they are as perfectly voluntaryin all their movements as if they, and not God, governed the world. Every fulfilled prophecy thus becomes an instance and evidence of asupernatural government; and is, to a thinking mind, a greater miraclethan casting mountains into the sea. The style of prophecy correspondsto this design. It is not by any means apologetic, or supplicating;but, on the contrary, majestic, convincing, and terrifying to theungodly. 

 "_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; andare driven to every possible denial of the fact, and evasion of theargument drawn from it. They feel instinctively that Bible propheciesare far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every humanbeing on earth with the power of predicting the future than allow theGod of heaven that power of ruling the present which these propheciesassert. Hence the attempt to admit their predictive truth, and yet denytheir divine authority, by ascribing them to human sagacity. 

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

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

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

But, alas! it seems it was a false analogy, an ill-observed fact, adelusion; the course of nature is all the other way. The tendency of allperishing things is not to perfection, but to perdition; and it needs noinspiration 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 intoTurks, Moors, and Egyptians. Here is a fact of awful omen. Death reignsin this world of ours; death moral, social, political, and physical, hasever trampled upon man, proud man, learned man, civilized man, over allthe plans of man, over every man, and over every association of men, even the largest, the widest, the mightiest. And now the Infidel, havingtaken away our hope of help from heaven, comes with the serpent's hiss, and fiendish sneer, to taunt the perishing world with this miserabletruism--that the tendency of everything on earth is to perdition, andthat it needs no inspiration to tell it. Truly it does not. Were thatall the prophets of God had to tell us--as it is all the prophets ofInfidelity can prophecy--we had as little need for the one as for theother. Earthquake and hurricane, volcano and valley flood, autumn frostsand winter blasts, fever, consumption, war, and pestilence, thegrave-yard and the charnel-house, the Parthenon and the Pyramids, thesilent cities of Colorado, and the buried palaces of Assyria, unite toattest this awful doom. 

But what reason has the skeptic to believe that this invariable law ofnature shall ever be repealed, and this inevitable progress of allthings to perdition be arrested? Why may not men be as selfish, andfilthy, and grasping, and murderous in the other world, as they are inthis? Why may not the course of nature be as fatal to the sinner'sprosperity there as it is here? Why may not the progress of the proudempires and spheres of futurity be such as the skeptic declares theprogress of the past to have been, so invariably toward dissolution anddeath, 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 hasstemmed this all-destroying torrent of ruin; or acknowledge that all youcan promise the nations of the world to come, from your experience ofthe invariable laws of nature, is _perdition, endless perdition_. 

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

_Now the predictions of the Bible are predictions of unexampleddesolations, and unparalleled ruin of empires. _ The desolation of anyextensive region of the earth, or the overthrow of any great nation, wasan event absolutely unknown to the world when the prophets of the Biblebegan to utter their predictions; unless the skeptic will allow thetruth of the Bible record of the prediction and execution of thedeluge, and the destruction of Sodom. War and conquest had indeed causedsome provinces to change masters; one nation had made maraudinginvasions on others, and carried off cattle and slaves; but the resultof the greatest military operation of which we have any record, at thecommencement of the prophetic era--the conquest of Palestine by theIsraelites--so far from desolating the region, or exterminating thepeople, had been merely to increase its productiveness, and to drive itsformer occupants to new settlements, where at that era they were fullyable to cope with their former conquerors. Whatever the experience ofthirty centuries may have since taught the nations concerning thecertainty of the connection between national crime and national ruin, along-suffering God had not then given any such signal examples of it, asthose of which he gave warning by the prophets. 

The course of the nations and cities founded after the deluge had beenregularly onward and prosperous, and they were just rising to thematurity of their power and splendor when Jonah, Micah, Hosea, andIsaiah, began to pronounce their sentences. They denounced desolationand solitude against nations more populous than this continent, one ofwhose cities enumerated more citizens than some of our proudcommonwealths, and displayed buildings, a sight of whose crumbling ruinsis deemed sufficient recompense for the perils of a journey of sixthousand miles. The hundred churches of Cincinnati could all have beenconveniently arranged in the basement of the temple of Belus; on thefirst floor our hundred thousand non-church-going citizens might haveassembled to listen to a lecture on spiritualism from some eloquentChaldean soothsayer; and the remaining seven stories would have stillbeen open for the accommodation of the natives of the original QueenCity. Every product of earth was trafficked in the markets of Tyre; asingle Jewish house imported annually more gold than all the banks ofthis continent possess; and the whole coinage of the United States since1793 would want a hundred millions of dollars of the value of the goldenfurniture of a single temple in Babylon. In fact, in the suburbs ofBabylon or Nineveh, Washington or Cincinnati would have beeninsignificant villages; and the stone-fronted brick palaces of Broadwayand the Fifth Avenue would make passable stables and haylofts for themansions of Thebes or Petra. 

So far, therefore, from being the teaching of experience, there wasnothing more utterly unexampled and unparalleled than the completedesolation of any nation at the time the prophets of Israel predictedsuch things. If the world has grown wiser since regarding the declineand fall of empires, it has gathered the best part of its sagacity fromthe prophecies. 

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

But on the other hand, the colonization of the world by the descendantsof Japhet was as particularly predicted by Noah as the degradation ofthe Canaanites; and this can not be called a prediction of destruction, but rather of great prosperity: "God shall enlarge Japhet. " Everyemigrant ship which discharges its cargo at New York, and every newprairie farm in America, and every sheep ranch in Australia, and everynew cattle kraal in South Africa fulfills the prediction: "He shalldwell in the tents of Shem. " The various Greek, Roman, English, andRussian 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 ofnatural decline and extinction to all the nations of the world, which, if they were merely the exposition of a universal _natural_ law ofnational death, they would be; nor yet the application of any suchnatural and inevitable law to some particular nation, denouncing itsdestruction, without any specification of time, manner, instrument, orcause of its infliction. They are all the applications of _morallaw_--sentences pronounced on account of national wickedness. In everycase the prophecy charges the crimes, and specifies the punishment, selected by the Judge of all the earth. The nations selected as examplesof divine justice are as various as their sentences are different;covering a space as long as from Eastport to San Francisco, and climesas various as those between Canada and Cuba; peopled by men of everyshade of color and degree of capacity, from the negro servant ofservants, to the builders of the Coliseum, and the Pyramids. Theyminutely describe, in their own expressive symbols, the nations yetunfounded, and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgmentsof the Lord. They predict the futures of over thirty States, _no two ofwhich are alike_; each prediction embracing a large number of minuteparticulars, any one of which was utterly beyond the range of humansagacity. 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, andmanner of his execution, and the name of the sheriff who will executethe sentence, is plainly beyond the skill of man. Such is the characterof Bible predictions. Zedekiah's sentence was thus pronounced; and thus, too, the sentences of nations doomed to ruin for their crimes arerecorded in the Bible, that men may know that the mouth of the Lord hathspoken them. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New Yorkshould be overturned, and become a little fishing village, and that herstones and timber, and her very dust, should be scraped off and throwninto the East River; that Philadelphia should become a swamp, and neverbe inhabited, from generation to generation; that Columbus should bedeserted, and become a hog-pen; that Louisville should become a dry, barren desert; and New Orleans be utterly consumed with fire, and neverbe built again; that learning should depart from Boston, and notravelers ever pass through it any more; that New England should becomethe basest of the nations, and no native American ever be President ofthe Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savagetribes; and that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for athousand years; but that God would preserve Pittsburg in the midst ofdestruction--and if all these things should come to pass, would any mandare 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 ofconnected predictions, covering the destiny of the nations of the world, and extending from the dawn of history to the end of time, by presentingtwo or three instances of the fulfillment of specific predictions, wouldbe something like exhibiting a fragment of a column as a monument of theskill of the architect of a temple; yet, as such a fragment may excitethe curiosity of the traveler to visit the structure whence it wastaken, I shall present two or three prophecies in which specificpredictions are given, concerning the _geographical, political, social, and religious condition_ of three of the great nations ofantiquity--_Egypt, Judea, and Babylon_--the fulfillment of which isspread over the surface of empires and the ruins of cities, patent toall travelers at the present hour, and abundantly attested in manyvolumes. [84]

Could human sagacity have calculated that Egypt--the most defensiblecountry in the world, bounded on the south by inaccessible mountains, onthe 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 todrown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile; whichhad not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests fora thousand years past, whose victorious king, Apries, had just sent anexpedition against Cyprus, besieged and taken Gaza and Sidon, vanquishedthe Tyrians by sea, mastered Phoenicia and Palestine, and boasted thatnot even a god could deprive him of his possessions--Egypt, which hadgiven arts, sciences, and idolatry to half the world, and which had notrisen to the full height of its world-wide fame, or the extent of itsinfluence for twenty-five years after the prediction[85]--that Egyptshould be invaded, conquered, spoiled, become a prey to strangers andevermore to strangers, never have a native prince, sink into barbarism, renounce idolatry, and become famous for her desolations? Yet the Biblepredictions are specific on all these matters: "_I will make the riversdry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make theland waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I theLord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy theidols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph; and there shallbe no more a prince of the land of Egypt. _"[86]

Let Infidels read the fulfillment of these predictions, as described byInfidels: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuriesago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fieldssuccessively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, theGreeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartarsdistinguished by the name of the Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchasedas slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power andselected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary; they are replaced by slavesbrought from their original country. "[87] Says Gibbon: "A more unjustand absurd constitution can not be devised than that which condemns thenatives of the country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrarydominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egyptabout five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Bahariteand Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar andCircassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs, haveever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants. "[88]Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by theTurks, and the present ruler (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It isneedless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither thenominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow imagesto appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day'stravel forty dry water-courses will be crossed in the Delta; andwater-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls wereblockaded by Greek and Roman navies. 

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

The objector perhaps will allege in extenuation the modern improvementsnow in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on theNile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar and cottonplantations. 

But if these were as evident tokens of progress in Egypt, as they wouldbe in America, they would not in the least invalidate the facts of thepast degradation of Egypt for centuries. But these speculations of theKhedive are of no advantage to the people; rather, on the contrary, dothey afford him additional opportunities of exacting forced labor fromthe 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 thepalace, men, and women, and little boys, and girls, like those of ourSabbath-schools, scooping up the stinking mud and water with theirhands, into baskets, carrying them on their heads up the steep bank, beaten with long sticks by the taskmasters to hasten their steps; whilesteam dredges lay unused within sight. Egypt is still the basest of thenations. 

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

Let us note now a distinct and totally different judgment pronouncedagainst the transgressors of another land. Pre-eminent in inflictingdestruction on others, her retribution was to be extreme. Degradationand slavery were to be the portion of the learned Egyptians, but utterextinction is the doom of mighty Babylon. It is written in the Bibleconcerning the land where the farmer was accustomed to reap twohundred-fold: "_Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleththe sickle in the time of harvest. * * * Every purpose of the Lord shallbe performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolationwithout an inhabitant. * * * Behold the hindermost of the nations shallbe a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. * * * Because of the wrath ofthe Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be whollydesolate. _"[91]

Proofs in abundance of the fulfillment of these predictions presentthemselves in every volume of travels in Assyria and Chaldea. "Thosesplendid accounts of the Babylonian lands yielding crops of grain of twoand three hundred fold, compared with the modern face of the country, afford a remarkable proof of the _singular desolation_ to which it hasbeen subjected. The canals at present can only be traced by theirdecayed banks. The soil of this desert consists of a hard clay, mixedwith mud, which at noon becomes so heated with the sun's rays, that Ifound it too hot to walk over it with any degree of comfort. "[92] "Thatit was at some former period in a far different state is evident fromthe number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected;and the quantity of heaps of earth, covered with fragments of brick andbroken tiles, which are seen in every direction--the indisputable tracesof former cultivation. "[93] "The abundance of the country has vanishedas clean away as if the besom of desolation had swept it from north tosouth; the whole land, from the outskirts of Babylon to the fartheststretch of sight, lying a melancholy waste. _Not a habitable spotappears for countless miles. _"[94]

As the desolation of the country was to be extraordinary, so thedesolation of the city of Babylon was to be remarkable. When the prophetwrote, its walls had been raised to the height of three hundred andfifty feet, and made broad enough for six chariots to drive upon themabreast. From its hundred brazen gates issued the armies which trampledunder foot the liberties of mankind, and presented their lives to thenod of a despot, who slew whom he would, and whom he would allowed tolive. Twenty years' provisions were collected within its walls, and theworld would not believe that an enemy could enter its gates. Nevertheless, the prophets of God pronounced against it a doom ofdestruction as extraordinary as the pride and wickedness which procuredit. Tyre, the London of Asia, was to _become a place for the spreadingof nets_, [95] and the Infidel Volney tells us its commerce had declinedto _a trifling fishery_; but even that implies some few residentinhabitants. Rabbah, of Ammon, was to become _a stable for camels and acouching place for flocks_. [96] Lord Lindsay reports that "he could notsleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep, that the dung ofcamels covers the ruins of its palaces, and that the only building leftentire in its Acropolis is used as a sheepfold. "[97] Yet sheepfoldsimply that the tents of their Arab owners are near, and that some humanbeings would occasionally reside near its ruins. But desolation, solitude, and utter abandonment to the wild beasts of the desert is thespecific and clearly predicted doom of the world's proud capital. Themost expressive symbols are selected from the desert to portray itsdesertion. 

"_Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees'excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shallnever be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation togeneration: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shallthe shepherds make their fold there: but wild beasts of the desert shalllie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owlsshall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts ofthe islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in theirpleasant palaces. _"[98]

Every traveler attests the fulfillment of this strange prediction. "Itis a tenantless and desolate metropolis, " says Mignon; who, thoughfully armed, and attended by six Arabs, could not induce them by anyreward to pass the night among its ruins, from the apprehension of evilspirits. So completely fulfilled is the prophecy, "_The Arabian shallnot pitch his tent there. _" The same voice which called camels andflocks to the palaces of Rabbah, summoned a very different class oftenants for the palaces of Babylon. Rabbah was to be a sheepfold, Babylon a menagerie of wild beasts; a very specific difference, and veryimprobable. One of the later Persian kings, however, after it wasdestroyed and deserted, repaired its walls, converted it into a vasthunting-ground, and stocked it with all manner of wild beasts; and tothis day the apes of the Spice Islands, and the lions of the Africandeserts, meet in its palaces, and howl their testimony to the truth ofGod's Word. Sir R. K. Porter saw two majestic lions in the Mujelibe (theruins of the palace), and Fraser thus describes the chambers of fallenBabylon: "There were dens of wild beasts in various places, and Mr. Richperceived in some a strong smell, like that of a lion. Bones of sheepand other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats andowls. "

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

But the scoffer's contradiction is a fact. God can cause the mostdiscordant agencies to agree in effecting his purpose. Babylon isalternately an overflowed swamp, from the inundations of the obstructedEuphrates, and an arid desert, under the scorching rays of an Easternsun. Says Mignon: "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in variousplaces. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates great partof 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 onthe western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert. "[101]

Another, and widely different agent, to be employed in the destructionof the great center of tyranny and idolatry, is thus specifically anddefinitely indicated in the prediction: "_Behold, I am against thee, Odestroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: andI 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 astone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations; but thou shalt bedesolate forever, saith the Lord. _"[102]

"There is one fact, " says Fraser, "in connection with the mostremarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod), which we can not dismisswithout a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended theBirs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work scattered onthe summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall stillstanding. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all theruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire isevident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many ofthe masses. Yet how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect couldhave been applied at such a height from the ground is unaccountable. They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, andmust have fallen from some much more lofty position, for the structurewhich still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally tohave formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally cannot have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and toproduce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevationwould have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on. Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful actionof electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed, fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, thecourses of bricks are still visible, identifying them with the standingpile above, but so hardened by the power of heat, that it is almostimpossible to break off the smallest piece; and, though porous intexture, and full of air-holes and cavities, like other bricks, theyrequire, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the samemachinery as is used to dress the hardest pebbles. "[103]

The doom of Nineveh, the great rival and predecessor of Babylon, wasalso predicted as the result of two apparently contradictoryagencies--an overrunning flood and a consuming fire. But both theseantagonistic elements conspired to devour her. The river, with anoverrunning flood, swept away a large portion of the walls. Thebesiegers entered through the breach, and set the city on fire. Thecharcoal, burnt beans, and slabs of half-calcined alabaster, in theBritish Museum, demonstrate the fulfillment of the prediction. 

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

It is superfluous to adduce proof of the undeniable and acknowledgedfulfillment of these predictions, but as an example of the way in whichGod causes scoffers to fulfill the prophecies, let us again hear Volney:"I journeyed in the empire of the Ottomans, and traversed the provinceswhich were formerly the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria. I enumerated thekingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundredflourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. Whathas become of so many productions of the hand of man? What has become ofthose ages of abundance and of life? _Great God! from whence proceedsuch melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of thesecountries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed?_ Whyis not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated? A mysteriousGod exercises his incomprehensible judgments. He has doubtlesspronounced a secret malediction against the earth. He has struck with acurse the present race of men in revenge of past generations. "[107] Themalediction is no secret to any who will read the twenty ninth chapterof Deuteronomy; nor is the avenging of the quarrel of God's covenantconfined to the sins of past generations. The philosopher who wouldunderstand the fates of cities and empires should read the prophecies. 

The Word of God specifies no less distinctly and definitely the destinyof the Jewish than of the Babylonian capital, but fixes on a widelydifferent kind of destruction. Babylon was never to be built again, butdevoted to solitude; busy Tyre to become a place for spreading nets; thecaravans, which once brought the wealth of India through Petra, were tocease, and the doom was to "cut off him that passeth by and him thatreturneth. " But Jerusalem, it was predicted, should long feel themiseries of a multitude of oppressors, should never enjoy the luxury ofa 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 allparts of the earth do at this day. 

So minute and specific are the predictions of Scripture, that the fateof particular buildings is accurately defined. One temple to the livingGod, and only one, raised its walls in this world, which he had made forhis worship. Its frequenters perverted it from its proper use of leadingthem to confess their sinfulness, to seek pardon through the promisedSavior to whom its ceremonies pointed, and to learn to be holy, as theGod of that temple was holy. They hoped that the holiness of the placewould screen them in the indulgence of pride, formality, and wickedness. The temple of the Lord, instead of the Lord of the temple, was theobject of their veneration. But the doom went forth. "_Therefore foryour sakes shall Zion be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall becomeas heaps, and the mountain of the house like the high places of theforest. _" History has preserved, and the Jews to this day curse the nameof the soldier, Terentius Rufus, who plowed up the foundations of thetemple. It long continued in this state. But the Emperor Julian theApostate conceived the idea of falsifying the prediction of Jesus, "_Behold your house is left unto you desolate_, "[109] and sent hisfriend Alypius, with a Roman army, and abundant treasure, to rebuild it. The Jews flocked from all parts to assist in the work. Spades andpickaxes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich, and therubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. But they wereobliged to desist from the attempt, for "horrible balls of fire breakingout from the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the placeinaccessible to the scorched workmen, and the element driving them to adistance from time to time, the enterprise was dropped. "[110] Such isthe testimony of a heathen, confirmed by Jews and Christians. Theinclosures of the mosque of Omar, forbidding them all access to the spoton which it stood, leave it desolate to the Jews to this day. I haveseen them (in 1872) kissing a few large stones, supposed to belong toits foundations or sub-structures, from the outside; for which miserableprivilege they were obliged to pay their oppressors. On approaching thespot from the Zion gate, right across Mount Zion to the temple ruins, our way lay through a plowed field of young barley, and gardens ofcauliflowers hedged with enormous rows of cactus. To this day Zion isplowed as a field. 

4. No sane man can believe that such minute and accurate predictions ofvarious and improbable events could be the result of human calculations;yet there is another feature of the Bible prophesies still fartherremoved beyond the reach of human sagacity, and that is, remarkable andunaccountable _preservation amidst the general ruin_. If, as skepticsallege, destruction is the natural and inevitable doom, thenpreservation is supernatural and miraculous--a miracle of divine powercontrolling nature; and its prediction is a miracle of divine wisdom. Now the prophecies of the Bible contain several very definite, andwidely different predictions of the preservation of people and citiesfrom the general destruction. We shall refer in this case also to thoseof whose fulfillment there can be no manner of doubt, for the facts arepalpable and undeniable at the present day. 

The prediction of the character and fate of the Arabs stands out aremarkable contrast to the predictions of the destruction of thesurrounding nations. Of their ancestor, Ishmael, it was predicted: "Hewill be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man'shand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all hisbrethren. "[111] The nomad and warlike habits of the sons of Ishmael arehere distinctly predicted; and the singular anomaly which exempts themalone, of all the people of the earth, from the law, "They that take thesword, shall perish by the sword. " The unconquered Arab laughs alike atthe Persian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and French invaders of his deserts, levies tribute on all who enter his territory, and dwells to-day, a freeman, 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, thepeople shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among thenations. _"[112] In apparent contradiction to this separation, he furtherthreatened to punish them for their sins, by dispersing them over theworld: "_I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a swordafter you. _"[113] "_For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house ofIsrael among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shallnot the last grain fall upon the earth. _"[114] It was furtherthreatened, as if to make sure of their national destruction: "_Andamong these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole ofthy foot have rest: but the Lord shall give thee there a tremblingheart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hangin doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shall havenone assurance of thy life. _"[115] Contrary to all appearances, and inspite of all this dispersion and persecution, it is predicted thatIsrael shall still exist as a nation, and be restored to the favor ofGod, and that prosperity which ever accompanies it: "_And yet for allthat, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast themaway, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to breakmy covenant with them: for I am the Lord their God. _"[116]

Here are four distinct predictions, of national peculiarity, universaldispersion, grievous oppression, and remarkable preservation. Thefulfillment is obvious, and undeniable. You need no commentary toexplain it. Go into any clothing-store on Western Row, or into thesynagogue in Broadway, and you will see it. The Infidel is sorelyperplexed to give any account of this great phenomenon. How does ithappen that this singular people is dispersed over all the earth, andyet distinct and unamalgamated with any other? How does it happen thatfor eighteen hundred years they have resisted all the influences ofnature, and all the customs of society, and all the powers ofpersecution, driving them toward amalgamation, and irresistible in allother instances? In the face of the power of the Chinese Empire, inspite of the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, amid the chaos ofAfrican nationalities, and the fusion of American democracy, in theplains of Australia, and in the streets of San Francisco, the religion, customs, and physiognomy of the children of Israel are as distinct thisday as they were three thousand years ago, when Moses wrote them in thePentateuch, and Shishak painted them on the tombs of Medinet Abou. Howdoes the Infidel account for it? It will not do to allege the favoritestory about purity of blood and Caucasian race; for the question is, Howdoes it happen that this people, and this people alone, have kept theblood pure; while all other races are so mingled that no other race canbe found pure on earth? Besides, lest any should suppose such a causesufficient for their preservation, another nation, descended from thesame father and the same mother--the children of Jacob's twinbrother--has utterly perished, and there is not any remaining of thehouse of Esau. 

Human sagacity, with all the facts before its face, can not give anyrational account of the causes of this anomaly. It can not tell to-daywhy this people exists separate from, and scattered through all nations, from Kamschatka to New Zealand; how, then, could it foretell, threethousand years ago, this singular exception to all the laws of nationalexistence? While the sun and moon endure, the nation of Israel shallexist as God's witness to God's word, an undeniable proof that the mouthof 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 ofthe desolations of war, the cities have been burned and the buildingsdestroyed. There is no shelter for man or beast in the mounds of rubbishwhich cover the ruined cities of Assyria. Where the buildings have notbeen destroyed, or have been rebuilt, they have again been inhabited; aswe 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 goforth "till the cities should be wasted without inhabitant, and thehouses without man, and the land be left utterly desolate. " But for along 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 ofBashan; where, in a territory of about thirty miles by twenty, sixtycities still remain standing to attest the wonderful fertility of thesoil and industry of the people. "And though the vast majority of themare deserted, _they are not ruined_. * * * Many of the houses in theancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if only finished yesterday. Thewalls are sound, the roofs unbroken, the doors, and even the windowshutters in their places. "[117] From two hundred to five hundred houseshave been found perfect in some of these cities; and from the roof ofthe Castle of Salcah, Dr. Porter counted thirty towns and villagesdotting the plain, many of them perfect as when first built; "yet formore than five centuries there has not been an inhabitant in one ofthem. " So sure is every word of God. 

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

The seven churches of seven of the most considerable cities of Asiawere then, as the churches of Christ still are, the salt of the earth. Ten righteous men would have averted God's judgments from Sodom. Jesuspronounced the sentences of these churches seventeen hundred and sixtyyears ago, and the present condition of the cities attests the divineauthority of the record containing them. They are various and specific. Three were to be utterly destroyed. Against two no special threateningis denounced. To the remaining two promises of life and blessing aregiven. 

Ephesus, famous for its magnificence, the busy avenue of travel, theseat of the temple of Diana, long the residence of an apostle, andafterward of Christian bishops--"one of the eyes of Asia"--as it stoodfirst on the roll of cities, first receives the doom of abusedprivileges: "_I will remove thy candlestick out of its place, unlessthou repent. _"

Says Gibbon: "The captivity and ruin of the seven churches of Asia wasconsummated (by the Ottomans) A. D. 1312; and the barbarous lords ofIonia and Lydia still trample on the monuments of classic and Christianantiquity. In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall ofthe first angel, and the extinction of the first candlestick of theRevelation. _The desolation is complete_, and the temple of Diana or thechurch of Mary will equally elude the search of the curioustraveler. "[118]

Since Gibbon's day the foundations of the temple have been discoveredtwelve to fourteen feet below the soil; but no church of Christ remainsto illuminate the minds of the few squalid and lazy dwellers in thevillage of Aisayalouk. One cobbler's stall represented the wholemanufacturing industry of Ephesus; and four boys playing a game likedrafts, with pebbles, in front of it seemed the only public likely topatronize its theater, as I took note of its people and theiroccupations, in 1872. Then leaving the storks in their nests, on thetop of the ruined arches of its great aqueduct, to proceed toward theruins of the great theater, we tried in vain to procure horses or assesfor the ladies; found the only road so filled with water from the recentrains as to be impassable, and were fain to plunge on foot through theplowed fields till we reached the elevation on which it was erected. Here we surveyed its rock-hewn seats, capable of accommodating anaudience larger than that of all the theaters of New York; but there wasno longer a voice to cry, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The sea hasforsaken the harbor, which is now a pestilential morass. We passedthrough the ruins of the custom-house, now miles inland, and found asingle Turkish soldier on guard. The peasants who cultivate some partsof the plain come from distant villages, and fever, filth, and beggaryreign in Ephesus. 

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

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

A Lydian capitalist once deposited in the vaults of Sardis more speciethan is now in circulation in this whole continent. But Jesus said, "_Thou hast a name that thou livest and art dead. If, therefore, thoushalt not watch, I will come upon thee as a thief, and thou shalt notknow 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 Sardisdies soon, and avoid the spot. " Arundell, in his account of his visit tothe seven churches, says: "If I were asked what impresses the mind moststrongly on beholding Sardis, I should say, its indescribable_solitude_, like the darkness of Egypt, that could be felt. So deep thesolitude of the spot, once the lady of kingdoms, produces a feeling ofdesolate abandonment in the mind which can never be forgotten. " Connectthis 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 aroundand ask, Where are the churches? Where are the Christians of Sardis? Thetumuli beyond the Hermus reply, '_All dead!_'--suffering the inflictionof the threatened judgment of God for the abuse of their privileges. Letthe unbeliever, then, be asked, Is there no truth in prophecy?--noreality in religion?"

Only twenty-seven miles north of this desolate metropolis, themanufactories of Thyatira dispatch weekly to Smyrna, cloths, as famousover Asia for the brilliancy and durability of their hues as those whichLydia displayed to the admiration of the ladies of Philippi. Twothousand two hundred Greek Christians, two hundred Armenian, and aProtestant Church under the care of the missionaries of the AmericanBoard of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, assemble every Sabbath tocommemorate the resurrection of Him who said to the church of Thyatira:"_I will put upon you no other burden; but that which ye have alreadyhold fast till I come. _"

The fragrant citron (_Bergamot_) still flourishes around the birthplaceof Galen; but the ruins of the famous library of 200, 000 manuscripts arefar less durable memorials of the city of booksellers than thosebeautifully dressed skins, which, taking their name (_Pergamena_) fromthe place of their manufacture, will preserve the name and fame ofPergamos as long as parchment can preserve man's memorials, or God'spredictions. Though famous for fragrance, physic, and philosophy, Pergamos was infamous for idolatry, licentiousness, and persecution; yetstill endeared to Jesus as the scene of the martyrdom of faithfulAntipas, and the dwelling-place of a hidden church; and widely differentsentences are recorded against those opposite classes. The publicmemorials are to perish, but the hidden word to endure. "The fanes ofJupiter and Diana, and Venus and Esculapius (worshiped under the symbolof a live snake), were prostrate in the dust, and where they had notbeen carried away by the Turks to cut up into tombstones or pounded intomortar, the Corinthian columns and the Ionic, the splendid capitals, thecornices and the pediments, all in the highest ornament, were thrown inunsightly heaps, "[119] is the comment on the threatening of Jesus, "_Iwill fight against them_--the idolaters--_with the sword of my mouth_. "The 3, 000 Greek and 300 Armenian Christians, and even the 10, 000 Turkishinhabitants of the modern Pergamos, have received hundreds of copies ofthe promise, "_To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hiddenmanna, and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new namewritten, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it. _" Butwhether the hidden church of Pergamos shine forth or not, Gibbon wasinaccurate in stating, in the face of facts, that "the god of Mohammedwithout a rival is invoked in the mosques of Pergamos and Thyatira. "God's providence is as discriminating as his prophecy, though unbeliefmay overlook both. 

We have noted here instances of the prediction of remarkable destructionto Sardis, Ephesus, and Laodicea; of continued existence to Pergamos andThyatira; let us now note a prediction of remarkable escape andpreservation from the universal doom. If it requires no inspiration toprophecy destruction--the universal fate of humanity, according to theInfidel--surely it requires more than human skill to say that any cityshall escape this universal fate, and more than human power to avertthis destruction. Of Philadelphia, but twenty-five miles distant fromthe ruins of Sardis, Jesus said, and the Bible records the prophecy: "_Iknow thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no mancan shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, andhast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue ofSatan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I willmake them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I haveloved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will alsokeep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all theworld, 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 thatovercometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall gono more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the nameof the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out ofheaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. _"

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

In the pages of this eloquent writer it would be hard to discoveranother instance of unqualified hearty commendation of soldiers orsufferers for Christianity and liberty, such as Gibbon here bestows onPhiladelphia's valiant sons. But it was written, "_I will make them comeand worship before thy feet_, " and the skeptic and scoffer must fulfillthe word of Jesus; even as the unbelieving Mohammedan also does, when hewrites upon it the modern name, Allah Sehr--_The City of God. _ _Amajestic solitary pillar_, of high antiquity, arrests the eye of thetraveler, and reminds the worshipers in the six modern churches ofPhiladelphia 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, theresurrection of a fallen city is more utterly beyond man's vision. Inthe Bible, however, tribulation and recovery were foretold to Smyrna:"_Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devilshall cast some of you into prison that ye may be tried; and ye shallhave tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will givethee a crown of life. _" "The populousness of Smyrna is owing to theforeign trade of the Franks and Armenians, " says the scoffer. No matterto what it is owing, he who dictated the Bible foresaw it, and made nomistake in foretelling it. Says Arundell: This, the other eye of Asia, is still a very flourishing commercial city, one of the very first inthe present Turkish empire in wealth and population, containing 130, 000inhabitants. The continued importance of Smyrna may be estimated fromthe 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 ancientfame and present importance, are rapidly giving way to palaces of stonerising in all directions; and, probably, ere many years have passed, themodern town may not unworthily represent the ancient city, which theancients delighted to call the crown of Ionia. Commercial activity andarchitectural beauty, however, are but a small part of the gloriousdestiny of the community to which Jesus says, "I will give thee a crownof life. "

Mark Twain suggests that the prophecy refers to the church, rather thanto the city; but forgets to remind us that the Church of Christ is wellrepresented and crowned with life in Smyrna. God's predictions regardthe vital part of communities, the spiritual forces; these, vigorous andoutspreading, secure the material progress. Close the Bible House, printing presses, and schools of America, and real estate would not beworth much more than in Asia. The Lord Christ rules this world. Hisblessing has revived both the church and the city of Smyrna, accordingto his promise. In 1872 I found its harbor busy with coasting craft andocean steamers, and its railroad doing a brisk business. Smyrna is alive 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 andAmerican missionaries proclaim salvation to its citizens. From itsprinting presses thousands of copies of the Word of Life issue to allthe various populations of the Turkish Empire. A living Church of Christin Smyrna holds forth, for the acceptance of the dying nations aroundher, that crown of life promised and granted by the Word of God, not toher 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 isthe Word of Life_. It is the only word which promises life, the onlyword which bestows it on fallen humanity. Recognizing no inevitable lawof destruction but the sentence of God, no invariable law of naturesuperior to the counsel of Jehovah, nor any progress of events which hisAlmighty arm can not arrest and reverse, it points a despairing world tosin as the cause of all destruction, to Satan as the author of sin, toungodly men in league with him as the foes of God and man, and to Christpledged to perpetual warfare with such until the last enemy bedestroyed. This word of prophecy tells us, that the battle-fieldsMessiah has won are earnests of that great victory; points to thecolumns which he has preserved erect amid scenes of ruin, as assurancesthat he is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him;goes to the graveyards where fallen Smyrnas, idolatrous Saxons, debasedSandwich Islanders, and cannibal New Zealanders have buried the image ofthe living God, and in Jesus' name proclaims, "_I am the resurrectionand the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall helive_;" and, amid the very ruins of destroyed cities, and the crumblingheaps of their perished memorials, beholds the assurances that Satan'srule of ruin shall not be perpetual, anticipates the day when the courseof sin and misery shall be reversed, and teaches Adam's sons to face thefoe, 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 invariableexperience of death and destruction, and from the vain sparks of thymisgiving hopes of an ungodly eternity to come less miserable than thepast, and lift thine eyes to this heavenly sunrising on the darkmountain tops of futurity, the like of which thou didst never dream ofin all thy Pantheistic reveries. Search over all the religions of theworld--the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the arrow-headed inscriptions ofAssyria, the classic mythologies of graceful Greece and iron Rome, themonstrous shasters of thine Indian Pundits, or the more chaotic cloudsof thy German philosophies--in none of them wilt thou ever find thisdivine thought, _an end of destructions--a perpetual end_. Cycles ofruin and renovation, and of renovation and ruin, vast cycles, if youwill, but evermore ending in dire catastrophies to gods and men--aneverlasting succession of death and destructions--is the fearful vistawhich all the religions of man, and thine own irreligion, present to thyterrified 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 thename of the Lord to tell thee, that "God so loved the world that he gavehis only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him _should notperish, but have everlasting life_;" and I demand of thee that thouacknowledge this promise of life everlasting to be the word of thatliving God, and to show cause, if any thou hast, why thou dostrelinquish thy birthright, and spurn the gift of everlasting life whichis in Christ Jesus our Lord?

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

It is quite in agreement with the manner of our deliverance from any ofthe evils of our fallen condition, that our deliverance from the powerof sin and Satan be effected by the agency of a deliverer. Ourignorance is removed by the knowledge of a teacher, our sickness by theskill of a physician, the oppressed nation hails the advent of apatriotic leader, and oppressed humanity acknowledges the fitness andneed of a divine Deliverer, even by the ready welcome it has given topretenders to this character, and by the longing desire of the wisestand best of men for a divinely commissioned Savior; a desire implantedby 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 womanshould bruise the serpent's head_, " and so leave man triumphant over thegreat destroyer. 

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

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

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

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

He was to address a class of people whom no other religious teacher hadcondescended to notice before, and very few save those sent by Him eversince: "_The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hathanointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me tobind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and theopening of the prison to them that are bound. _" Hear Jesus' words: "Comeunto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give yourest. Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: Theblind 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 gospelpreached to them_. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended inme. "

Yet, notwithstanding his feeding of thousands, and healing ofmultitudes, and teaching of the lowest of the people, it was foretold heshould be unpopular: "_He is despised and rejected of men; a man ofsorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces fromhim; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. _" The brief records are:"Then all the disciples forsook him and fled. " "Then began Peter tocurse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. " "Pilate saith untothem, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at thepassover: will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of theJews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. NowBarabbas 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 shamefulpublic execution: "_In the midst of the week Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself. He was wounded for our transgressions, he wasbruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;and with his stripes we are healed. He was numbered with thetransgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession forthe 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 togive his life a ransom for many. " "And when they were come to the placewhich 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 menfor a victory over the great destroyer, and a resurrection from thetomb--the fact that one man born of a woman died, and did not seecorruption, but rose again from the dead and went up into heaven, anddieth 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 Oneto see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. Thou wilt make mefull of joy with thy countenance. Thou hast ascended on high. Thou hastled captivity captive. _" Often did Jesus predict this prodigy beforefriend and foe: "_Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, when he wasyet alive, After three days I will rise again. _" The last chapters ofthe gospels relate the proofs by which he convinced his incredulousdisciples 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 andbones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed themhis hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, andwondered, he saith unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him apiece of broiled fish, and of an honey comb. And he took it and did eatbefore them; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus itbehooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; andthat repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his nameamong all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of thesethings. And behold I send the promise of my Father upon you, but tarryye 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 andblessed them. And while he was blessing them he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And while they looked steadfastly towardheaven, 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? Thissame Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come inlike manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. "

With your own eyes you shall see the fulfillment of this prophecy. Everyeye shall see him. The clouds of heaven shall then reveal the vision nowsketched on the page of revelation: "And I saw a great white throne, andHim 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 andgreat, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book wasopened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged out of thosethings which were written in the books, according to their works. Andthe sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell deliveredup the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man accordingto their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. Thisis the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the Book ofLife was cast into the lake of fire. And I saw a new heaven and a newearth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; andthere 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 herhusband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold thetabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and theyshall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be theirGod. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shallbe no more death, neither sorrow nor crying: neither shall there be anymore pain; for the former things are passed away. And he that sat uponthe throne said, _Behold, I make all things new. _ And he said unto me, WRITE, FOR THESE WORDS ARE TRUE AND FAITHFUL. "

FOOTNOTES:

[81] Jewish Church, 463, 4. The Bible, 80. 

[82] De Die Natali, c. 17, cited in Pusey on Daniel, 642. 

[83] Isaiah, chap. Xlvi. 8-11. 

[84] Newton on the Prophecies, and Keith on the Prophecies, are to befound in all respectable libraries. The former contains valuableextracts from ancient historians; the latter from the journals andengravings of travelers. 

[85] Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, I. 169. Herodotus, II. 169. 

[86] Ezekiel, chap. Xxx. 

[87] Volney's Travels, I. 74, 103. 

[88] Decline and Fall, chap. Lix. 

[89] Ezekiel, chap. Xxix. 

[90] Volney, I. 190. 

[91] Jeremiah, chaps. L. And li. 

[92] Mignon's Travels, 31. 

[93] Trans. Bombay Lit. Soc. I. 123. 

[94] Porter's Babylonia, II. 285. 

[95] Ezekiel, chap. Xxvi. 

[96] Ezekiel, chap. Xxv. 

[97] Lindsay's Travels, II. 78, 117. 

[98] Isaiah, chap. Xiii. 

[99] Isaiah, chap. Xiv. 

[100] Jeremiah, chap. Li. 

[101] Mignon, 139. 

[102] Jeremiah, chap. Li. 

[103] Fraser's Mesopotamia, page 145. 

[104] Leviticus, chap. Xxvi. 

[105] Isaiah, chap. Vi. 

[106] Deuteronomy, chap. Xxix. 

[107] Volney's Ruins of Empires, Book I. 

[108] Luke, chap. Xxi. 

[109] Micah, chap. Iii. Matthew, chap. Xxii. 

[110] Ammianus Marcellus, 23d chap. I. 

[111] Genesis, chap. Xvi. 12. 

[112] Numbers, chap. Xxiii. 

[113] Leviticus, chap. Xxvi. 

[114] Amos, chap. Ix. 

[115] Deuteronomy, chap. Xxviii. 

[116] Leviticus, chap. Xxvi. 

[117] Porter's Giant Cities of Bashan, passim. 

[118] Decline and Fall, chap. Lxiv. 

[119] Macfarlane's Seven Apocalyptic Churches. 

CHAPTER IX. 

MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 

In the foregoing chapters we have found, that we have great need ofGod's teaching; that he has sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to show us theway of life; that the gospel preached by him and his apostles has proveditself the power of God, by saving men from their sins; and that thisgospel is truly recorded in the New Testament. From these facts, alreadysettled, we proceed, according to our plan of investigation, to examinethose which may be more obscure; to examine the Old Testament by thelight of the New. 

The great majority of Jews and Christians have always believed, that theworld was in as great need of God's teaching before the coming of Christas it has been since; that God did put his words into the mouths ofcertain persons, called prophets; and that he caused them to tell themtruly to their neighbors; that he enabled these prophets to makepredictions of future events beyond the skill of man to calculate, andto do miracles which the power of man could not perform, as proofs thatthey spake the Word of God; that he caused them truly to record inwriting a great many of these revelations, and so much of the history ofthe times in which, and of the people to whom, they were given, as wasneedful for a right understanding of them; that he has so managedmatters since, as that these revelations and narratives have beenfaithfully preserved in the books of the Old Testament; that we arebound to believe these revelations to be true, not because we canotherwise demonstrate their truth, but because God, who can not lie, has declared it; and that we are bound to do the things they command, not merely because we see them to be right, but because God commands us. 

It is needful to consider the divine authority of the Old Testamentdistinctly from that of the New, not only because it is a distinctsubject in itself, and because our plan of investigation leads usbackward from the known and established fact of the divine authority ofthe New Testament to the discovery or disproof of the like character inthe Old; but because a great many persons admit, in words at least, thatChrist was a teacher sent from God, who, either in so many words, or ineffect, deny the divine authority of the Old Testament. Some of themodern Rationalists have revived the creed of the Gnostics of the firstcentury--that the Hebrew Jehovah was a being of very different characterfrom the Deity revealed by Jesus Christ. They will extol to the skiesthe world-wide benevolence, compassion and kindness of the gospel ofChrist, in contrast with the alleged national pride, bigotry, andexclusiveness of the Hebrew prophets. Others are desirous of appearingremarkably candid in bestowing on the Old Testament a liberalcommendation as a collection of religious tracts of merely human origin, and of various degrees of merit; some of them of extraordinary literaryexcellence, well suited to the infancy of the human intellect, andhighly useful in their time in raising men from fetichism and idolatryto the worship of one God; but which, containing many errors along withthis grand truth, have been set aside by the more perfect teachings ofChrist and his apostles, much in the same way as the old Ptolemaicastronomy was displaced by the discoveries of Newton. Others still arewilling to acknowledge the Old Testament as inspired, provided we willallow Shakespeare and the Koran to be inspired also. Besides all these, there are several scores of scholars anxious to conceal its nakednessunder theories of inspiration made and trimmed in a great many styles, but all cut from the same doctrine, to wit, that God revealed his trutharight to Moses and the prophets, but they went wrong in the telling ofit. Now, all these notions are refuted by the fact, that God is theAuthor of the Bible. 

When we say that God is the Author of the Bible, and that it carrieswith it a divine authority because it is the Word of God, we do not meanthat God is the Author of every saying in it, and that every sentimentrecorded in it is God's mind, any more than we mean to make D'Aubigneresponsible for every sentiment of priests, popes and monks which he hasfaithfully recorded in his History of the Reformation. On the contrary, we find, in the very beginning of the Bible, a very full expression ofthe devil's sentiments recorded in the devil's own words--_Ye shall notsurely die_--and they are not one whit less devilish and lying, thoughrecorded in the Bible, than when expounded by any modern Universalistpreacher. But we mean that it is very true that the devil was thepreacher of that first Universalist sermon: and that God thought itneedful to let mankind know the shape of the doctrine, the character ofthe preacher, and the consequences of listening to error; and thereforedirected Moses to record it truly for the information of all whom it mayconcern. So there are many other sayings of wicked men, and even of goodmen, recorded in the Bible, which are very false; but the Bible gives atrue record of them, by God's direction, that we may not be ignorant ofSatan's devices. 

Nor, when we say that God directed the prophets what to write, and howto write it, so that they did not go wrong in the writing of his word, do we mean that he also so guided every piece of their behavior, as thatthey never went wrong in doing their own actions; nor that the sins ofthe saints, recorded in the Bible, are anything the less sinful forbeing recorded there, or for being performed by men who ought to haveknown better. There is not a perfect man upon the earth, that doethgood, and sinneth not. If the Bible had left the faults of its writersundiscovered it would not have been a true history. But these verywriters of the Bible tell us their own transgressions, under thedirection of the Spirit of God; a thing writers in general are very shyabout. Moses tells us how he spake unadvisedly with his lips, and waspunished for it. David's penitential psalms record the bitter tears hewept over his transgression; tears which could not wash out the sentenceagainst the man after God's own heart--_the sword shall never departfrom thy house_. An overburdened people, a rotten court, a fallingempire, continual strife, a family of scolding women, and a foolishson--might have been considered sufficient marks of God's displeasure, without causing the wisest of men to pen, and publish to the world, sucha minute record of his madness, folly and misery, as we find inEcclesiastes. But these shipwrecked mariners were divinely directed topile up the sad memorials of their errors on the reefs where they werewrecked, as beacons of warning to all inexperienced voyagers on life'streacherous sea. The light-house is built by the same authority as thecustom-house, and is even more necessary. 

Now let us take note of the objects of our investigation. We are not insearch of the literary beauty or poetic inspiration of the Bible; but weinquire by what right does it command our obedience? Nor are we about toinquire whether, when we have tried the Bible at the tribunal of ourreason, we shall give it a diploma to commend it to the patronage ofother critics; but whether it comes to us attested by such evidence ofbeing the Word of God, that our reason shall reverently bow down beforeit as a higher authority, and seek light from it by which to judge ofall spiritual and moral matters. 

Attempts are continually made to confuse these great questions, byconcessions of the literary excellence of the Bible, on the part ofthose who deny its divine authority. For instance, one of the modernoracles of infidelity says, and his admirers incessantly repeat thegrand discovery: "The writings of the Prophets contain nothing above thereach of the human faculties. Here are noble and spirit-stirring appealsto men's conscience, patriotism, honor and religion; beautiful poeticdescriptions, odes, hymns, expressions of faith almost beyond praise. But the mark of human infirmity is on them all, and proofs or signs ofmiraculous inspiration are not found in them. "[120]

But what do the toiling millions of earth care about beautiful poeticdescriptions of a heaven and a hell that have no reality? Or what doesit signify to you or me, reader, that the Bible raises its head farabove the other cedars of earthly literature? If its top reaches not toheaven, can it make a ladder long enough to carry us there? The Biblecontains predictions beyond the reach of the human faculties, as we havefully proved. These predictions at least are from God, and have no markof human infirmity on them. 

It does not at all meet this question to grant that the Bible isinspired, just as every work of genius is inspired; nor to profess thatthey believe the Bible to be from God, just as every pure and holythought, and every good work, proceed from him. When the assertors ofthe divine authority of the Bible speak of it as inspired, they meanthat it is so as no other book is; and when they speak of it as comingfrom God, they mean that it does not come simply as a gift of God'sbounty, as the soldier's land-warrant comes from the government; butthat it comes like the laws of Congress, carrying authority with it tocommand our obedience. 

We feel no interest whatever in the discussion of an inspiration, "likeGod's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] orperhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "thesolemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired. [122] What manner of usecould the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth andholiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, ifit were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is thateverything good in any book, person or thing, is inspired? Milton andShakespeare, and Bacon and the Canticles, the Apocalypse and the Sermonon the Mount, and the Eighth Chapter of the Romans are all inspired. Howmuch inspiration they respectively contain must be gathered from theirresults. "[123]

This liberal grant of inspiration, alike to Moses and Mohammed, toChrist and to Shakespeare, is evidently a denial of divine authority toany of them. If Hamlet, and the Sermon on the Mount, and the Koran, areall of a like divine authority, or all alike without any, it is merely amatter of taste whether I worship at Niblo's or the Tabernacle, or keepa harem in my house or a prayer-meeting. Most men, however, find it hardto believe that Christ and Mohammed taught exactly the same religion, orthat the church and the theater are precisely equal and alike in theirinfluences on the heart and life; and so they reject several of theseinspired men, and cleave to the one they like best. Whereas, if thistheory be true, they ought not to act in such a disrespectful way towardany inspired man; but ought to attend the church, the theater and theharem with equal regularity, and serve God, Mammon and Belial withequal diligence. 

"Oh, " it is replied, "they are not all inspired in the same degree. Itdoes not follow that because Byron, and Shakespeare, and Paul are allinspired, that their writings will produce exactly the same results, orthat they are alike suitable for every constitution and temper. How muchinspiration they severally possess must be determined by their results. The tree is known by its fruits; and experience is the price of truth. "

But truth may be bought too dear. I am sick and need some medicine, butknow not exactly what kind, or how much to take. "Here, " says myRationalist friend, "is a whole drug store for you. Every drawer, andpot, and bottle is full of medicine. Help yourself. " But, my good sir, how am I to know what kind will suit me? There are poisons here, as wellas medicines; and I can not tell the difference between arsenic andcalomel. One of my neighbors died the other day from swallowing oxalicacid instead of Glauber's salts. Be kind enough to put the poisons onone shelf, and the medicines on the other, or, at least, to label them, so that I may know which to choose and which to refuse. "Oh, " says myRationalist friend, "this distinction between medicines and poisons isall an antiquated, vulgar prejudice. What you call poisons are reallymedicines. Medical virtue is not confined to the few specificsrecognized by the Homeopathics, the Regular Faculty, or theHydropathics, but is as extensive as the world. Everything on earth hasa medical virtue; but how much, and of what sort, must be determined byexperience. In fact, you must try for yourself whether any particulardrug will kill you, or cure you. So here is the whole drug store tobegin your cure with. " A valuable gift, truly! "In the day we eatthereof, our eyes will be opened, and we shall be as gods, knowing goodand evil. " I think, reader, you and I will let somebody else try thatexperiment. 

"Why should men throw away their common sense, and swallow everything asinspired?" says another friend of the Rationalistic school. "God hasgiven us reason to discern between good and evil, and commanded us touse it. _Prove the spirits, whether they be of God. _ _I spake as to wisemen. _ _Judge ye what I say_, is the language of Scripture. The right ofprivate judgment is the inalienable inheritance of Protestants. I am forexamining the Bible according to the principles of reason and truth. 'That only is to be regarded as true and valid which is matter ofpersonal conviction. ' The Old Testament is in many places contrary to myconvictions of truth and reason. I find that it consists of a greatvariety of treatises of various degrees of merit. Even in the same bookit presents often strange contrasts--sublime moral precepts on one page;on the next, solemn requirements of frivolous ceremonies, utterlyunworthy of God; or solemn narrations of miraculous interferences withthe established course of nature, which, taken literally, are absolutelyincredible. The judicious reader must therefore discriminate betweenthose divine precepts of morality which were infused into the minds ofthe Hebrew sages, and those Jewish prejudices which their education andcharacter inclined them to regard as equally important; and he mustdivest the narrative of facts as they actually occurred, from thenational legends and traditions which the compilers of the Pentateuchadded to adorn the history. "

This, it will be seen, at once raises another and very importantquestion, namely: By what standard are the writings of the Old Testamentto be judged? Or rather it settles the question by taking it forgranted, that every inquirer is to judge them according to his ownnotions of reason and truth. But this does not help me out of mydifficulty; for it supposes me already to possess the knowledge, andthe virtue, which a revelation from God is needed to communicate. If Iam able, by my own reason, to construct a perfect standard of morals tojudge the Bible by, what need have I for the Bible revelation? And if Ihave the right to refuse obedience to any commands I may judge frivolousor unreasonable, before I know whether they came from God or not, and ambound to obey only those which agree with my notions of right, whatauthority has the law of God? A revelation from God which should submitits truths to be judged by the ignorance, and its commands by theinclinations, of sinful men, would by that very submission declare itsworthlessness. The use of a divine revelation is either to tell us sometruth of which we are ignorant, or to enjoin some duty to which we aredisinclined. 

Besides, it is not possible to make any such dissection of the moralprecepts of the Bible, from the miraculous history which forms theirskeleton, as will leave them either truth or authority. It is themiraculous history that gives sanction to the divine morality, andwithout it the ten commandments would have no more hold on any man'sconscience than the wise saws which Poor Richard says. Take, forinstance, one of the first and most important of the Biblemoralities--the sacredness of marriage--which is wholly based upon anarrative of events utterly unparalleled; and, if judged by the usualcourse of nature, perfectly incredible. The original difference in theformation of man and woman, and God's making at first one man and onewoman, and joining them together with his blessing, constitute thereasons, and consecrate the pledge of marriage. "_For this cause shall aman leave his father and mother_--although the claims of the parentalrelation are very strong--_and cleave to his wife_--with whom it may behe has but a few weeks' acquaintance--_and they two shall be one flesh_. _What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder. _" Butif the cause had no existence, save in the brain of some antediluviannovel-writer, and God did not so unite them, the consequence is only anotion also, and any man may leave his wife whenever he likes. 

By far the most incredible narrative in the Bible is contained in thefirst verse: "_In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. _"All the other miracles recorded in it sink into familiarity comparedwith this stupendous display of the supernatural. To the believer ofthis first great miracle none of its subsequent narratives can seemincredible. But it is precisely upon this unexampled and incrediblenarrative that the whole structure of Bible morality is built. If thisextraordinary narrative be rejected as false, all the moral precepts ofthe Bible are not worth a feather. The morality of the Bible, then, stands or falls with its history of God's supernatural works among men. 

It has been argued, that no amount of testimony can authenticateaccounts of miracles; since a miracle, being a violation of the laws ofnature, is contradicted by an unalterable experience, but only supportedby fallible human testimony. 

But every step of this sophism is in error. A miracle can not be provento be any more a violation of the laws of nature, than the existence ofthe nature regulated by laws. It may be more unusual, but not moresupernatural. The restoration of life to a dead man is no greaterviolation of the laws of nature than the first bestowal of life on deadmatter. Were the resurrections as common as childbirths nobody wouldconsider them violations of the laws of nature. 

Moreover, our knowledge of the laws of nature is not based upon myexperience, or yours, but upon the testimony of our teachers; which, sofar from being uniform and invariable as to the supremacy of thecommonplace in nature, is perfectly conclusive as to the repeatedoccurrence of the miraculous. The miracles of Scripture are betterauthenticated than the facts of science. 

Scientific men talk a great deal of nonsense about the laws of nature, as if they were the only agents known in this world. But every man knowsthat he himself possesses the power to control the laws of nature, bybringing a higher law to arrest a lower; as when the power of vegetationarrests the law of gravitation, and sends the drop of rain which hadtrickled down the outside of the bark of the pine, climbing up again ahundred feet; or as when the power of animal life converts a hundredweight of grass into a leg of mutton; or as when the power of the humanintellect transforms a pound of zinc into telegrams, or a ton of niterand sulphur into death and destruction. Now if man can thus control anduse the laws of nature for human purposes, why can not the God who madehim so cunning do as much? Aye, and as much more as God is greater thanman?

But we are told that no testimony can prove that any wonderful work hasbeen wrought by God. "No testimony can reach to the supernatural;testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can onlyprove an extraordinary, and perhaps inexplicable, phenomenon oroccurrence; that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependenton the previous belief or assumption of the parties. "[124]

But when Christ said, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, thenthe kingdom of God is come unto you;" or when he said, at the grave ofLazarus, to Martha, "Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believethou shouldest see the glory of God?" can we not believe our Lord'stestimony, that he cast out devils, and raised the dead, by the directintervention of God? He appeals to his miracles as evidences of hisdivine authority: "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bearwitness of me. " "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. Butif I do though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may knowand believe that the Father is in me, and I in him. "[125] Now I demandto know whether this testimony of our Lord is not to be believed? Andwhether he does not directly claim to work miracles by the immediatepower of God? The testimony of the man whom God authenticates, byenabling him to do such miracles as those of Moses and of Christ, isconclusive as to the power by which they are wrought. So you read inExodus iii. That God commissioned Moses to work miracles as signs of hisdivine commission, and seals of his testimony recorded in the Bible. 

If we proceed now to examine the facts of this history, it is evident, that neither your reason or mine, nor our personal convictions, can beany rule of what is true and valid. The most that reason can say abouthistory is, that the story seems probable; but so does any well-writtennovel; or that it is improbable; but truth is often stranger thanfiction; and every genuine history relates wonderful events. Neitherdoes our personal knowledge enable us to tell what was the originalhistorical fact, how much was added by the Hebrew prejudices of Moses, and which are the legends with which it was afterward adorned; forneither you nor I were there to see. Nor can any two of those critics, who have undertaken to divide the facts from the fables according totheir personal convictions of what is true and valid, agree upon anycommon principle of gleaning, or in gathering in their results. And ifthey could, the crop would not be worth barn-room; for the onlyconclusion in which they seem at all likely to agree is, that the storyof creation in the beginning of the Book is a myth, like one of Ovid'sMetamorphoses; and that the prophecy of the resurrection, at the end, isanother; and that there are a great many legends in the middle. Now, ifso, why winnow such chaff?

But while the Jewish people exist as a distinct race, it is impossiblerationally to deny some extraordinary origin of their extraordinarycharacter and customs; and the Bible is the only history which pretendsto tell it. The utter failure of Rationalistic criticism to give anyrational account of the facts which must be admitted to account for theexistence of the Jews as a distinct people, is ludicrously apparent inthe attempts generally made to explain the miraculous narratives of theBible. The tree of good and evil was a poisonous plant, like the poisonoak, or the machineal tree, under which our first parents fell asleep, and dreamed about the temptation, and the fall. The shining face ofMoses was the natural effect of electricity. Zechariah's vision was thesmoke of the lamps of the golden candlestick in the temple. The wise menof the East were some peddlers who presented toys to the child Jesus;and the star which went before, their servant carrying a torch. Theangels who ministered to Christ in his temptation were a caravan bearingprovisions. The transfiguration was an electric storm. The plagues ofEgypt, the passage of the Red Sea, and the miracles of the desert, weremerely natural phenomena, dextrously used by Moses and Aaron to suittheir purpose. 

It is alleged that these enthusiastic patriots, full of thesuperstitions of an early age, which attributed all prodigies to God, and placed all heroes under his guidance, succeeded by their fieryeloquence in inspiring their captive countrymen with the love ofliberty; and had political dexterity enough to create a faction in theirfavor in the Egypt cabinet. Then taking advantage of a fortunatesuccession of calamities arising from natural causes--such as anextraordinary rising of the Nile, in consequence of which it was moredeeply colored than usual with the red mud of Nubia, and overflowed thecountry to a greater extent than usual, leaving on its retreat numerousponds, which, of course, bred swarms of frogs and gnats, and raisedmalaria, spreading various sicknesses over the land, both to man andbeast; a devastating visit of locusts, the well-known scourge of Africa;a remarkable thunder-storm, accompanied with hail, causing great havocof growing crops, as such hail-storms always do; followed by thechamsin, or dust-storm from the desert, darkening the air with clouds ofdust and sand; and by an extraordinary mortality, the natural result ofthese various causes--they persuaded the superstitious Egyptians thatthese calamities were tokens of the displeasure of the God of theHebrews, and improved the opportunity to escape, while the resources ofthe Egyptians were exhausted, and their minds confounded by thesevarious misfortunes. Leading them to that part of the Red Sea south ofSuez, where a succession of shoals stretch across from the Egyptian tothe Arabian side, they crossed safely at low water, while the Egyptianarmy perished by the rising of the tide; and the Israelites betakingthemselves to a wandering, pastoral life in the wilderness of Arabia, lived, as the Bedouins do at this day, on the milk of their flocks andthe manna which was spontaneously produced by the tamarisk trees ofSinai; where they remained until they had framed a civil and religiouscode, and whence they prosecuted their conquests in various directionsfor fifty years, until their invasion of Palestine. This is the sum ofwhat, with various modifications, Rationalist writers and preacherspresent us, as the genuine historic basis of the Mosaic narrative. 

It really does seem to have been very fortunate for the Israelites thatso many misfortunes should happen to fall upon their oppressors, all inone season, and just at the time that men of such cleverness as Mosesand Aaron were among them; and that the Egyptians should luckily haveimbibed the superstition, that all nature was under the direction of aSupreme Moral Governor, who was able and willing to wield all theelements for the punishment of oppressors. 

It was also very lucky for these poor, overworked, and oppressedslaves--the class which in all other ages and countries suffers mostfrom hard times--that they should have escaped unhurt by thesecalamities; for if they had suffered by them as well as the Egyptians, they could not have persuaded them that God favored Israel. 

Here one can not but wonder that these learned Egyptians, whose collegesof priests were planted on the banks of the Nile, and who had made theclimate, soil, and productions of their native land their constantstudy, should have been so ignorant of these natural causes of theplagues--so easily discovered nowadays by anybody who makes a summertrip to Egypt--as to be terrified into emancipating their slaves by astormy season. Just imagine to yourself a couple of abolitionistlecturers proceeding to Lexington and commanding the slaveholders ofKentucky to liberate their slaves immediately, on pain of the Ohio beingmuddy during high water, and the swamps of the river-bottom being fullof frogs and musquitoes! But this interpretation does not reach theclimax of absurdity till our Rationalist Punch, by way of signalizinghis deliverance from Egyptian bondage, makes Pharaoh and his army forgetthat the tide ebbs and flows in the Red Sea, raises the tide over ashoal faster than cavalry could gallop from it, gathers an annual cropof twenty millions of bushels of manna from the thorn-bushes of Sinai, and feeds three millions of men, women, and children for forty yearsupon purgative medicine!!!

"We must then give up the problem as insoluble; for if reason beinsufficient to give authority to the Bible, and criticism fails todiscover its truth, how are we to know that it possesses either?"

Just as you would discover the truth of any other history, or theauthority of any other law. You do not say, "The tale of the successiveswellings of the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Dan--three times in afortnight, in February, 1781, immediately after the American army hadretreated across these rivers, preventing Cornwallis and the Britishforces from crossing till the little handful of weary and famishedpatriots had escaped--savors of the marvelous and leans so much towardthe superstition of a special providence, that it must be rejected asnot historical. " You inquire if there be sufficient testimony to thefact. You do not say, "The Revised Statutes present internal evidence ofbeing a collection of political tracts by various authors, written atdifferent times, differing also in style, and of various degrees ofmerit, many of them contrary to my inmost personal convictions;therefore I can not acknowledge them as true and valid. " You simply askif this be a true copy of the laws passed by the legislature and signedby the governor? Our inquiry about the truth of the history, and theauthority of the laws of the Bible, must be of the same kind--an inquiryafter testimony. Is this Book genuine or a forgery? Is it a true historyor a lying romance? Have we any testimony on the subject?

But it is alleged that the Book contains in itself evidence of havingbeen written in an unscientific age, and in an unhistorical manner; and, particularly, that its statements of the creation of the world, and ofmankind, only six thousand years ago, are refuted by the discoveries ofgeology; which show us, that the world is many millions of years old, and that man has been on this world at least one hundred thousand years. In support of this last assertion, geologists refer to the remains ofthe lake dwellings in Switzerland; to skeletons of men found in caves, with bones of animals now extinct; to flint tools and weapons found ingravel beds, said to be of remote antiquity; to bones found deep in theMississippi bottom; and to the monuments of Egypt. 

In replying to this objection, we have first to say that we haveelsewhere, in this volume, shown that the Bible nowhere alleges thatGod created the earth only six thousand years ago, but in many placesemphatically affirms the contrary. 

In the second place, as to the antiquity of man, the Bible nowhere says, that Adam was the first human being whom God created; nor that he andhis posterity were the only intelligent beings occupying this worldbefore our tenancy of it; nor that we are even now the exclusiveoccupants. On the contrary, it makes very distinct allusions to otherraces, capable of assuming serpentine, swinish, and human bodies, and ofmeddling disastrously in earthly affairs in former times; though, as itdoes not profess to teach us truths which do not concern us, it gives usno narration of the creation or history of pre-Adamite animals or men. But there is no more ground of objection against the Bible forneglecting to give us a history of pre-Adamite men, if there were suchmen, than for neglecting to describe the pre-Adamite animals, or thecoal measures, or the nebulę, or the climate, soil, population, andpolitics of Jupiter. The Bible has one great object--to teach men how tobe holy and happy; and it can not be shown that the chronicles of thepre-Adamites, if they kept chronicles of their alleged savage state, would help us in the acquisition of holiness. 

No discoveries, then, which geologists may make of pre-Adamite races ofmen, can at all affect the credit of Moses' account of the creation ofAdam, and of the history of his family. They may fill museums, if theyplease, with their flint arrow-heads and axes, they may pile up pyramidsof stone mortars, they may perhaps some day discover an old-world bronzerailroad, and bronze-clad or copper-bottomed steamboats, they mayproduce pre-Adamic electric, aeronautic engines, and magnetic sewingmachines, or bone needles, we care not which; and we will admire them, and confess that they are very curious, and perhaps very old; butunless they can show that Adam was descended from these old-worldfolks, we have no biblical quarrel with them. Like Moses, we will letthem rest in peace. 

But we would remark, thirdly, that no such discoveries have yet beenmade. No human bone, implement, or monument, has yet been discoveredwhich can be proved to be more ancient than Adam, or nearly so ancient. There is not a single indisputable fact to show, that any of the tools, bones, or monuments; alleged in this discussion, is of any specific datewhatever, save that the Danish bogs came down to the date of the Danishinvasion of Ireland in the eleventh century; the burnt corn of the Swisslake dwellings was probably that which Julius Cęsar describes theHelvetians as burning preparatory to their invasion of Gaul; and themonuments of Egypt, for which Bunsen claimed twenty thousand years, arenow acknowledged by the best Egyptologists to reach not quite to 3000 B. C. As to the bone found at the base of the bluff at Memphis, it was notfound _in situ_, and probably was washed out of some Indian grave at thetop, and buried in the _debris_. The Abbeville skull[126] _had a freshtooth in it_, for which thirty-five thousand years was claimed, untilexamination by a competent committee exposed the deception. Where thereis a good paying demand for pre-Adamite skulls, there will always be agood supply. Dr. Dowler calculates the age of a skeleton of an Indian, found at the depth of sixteen feet in digging the gas works at NewOrleans, at fifty thousand years; while the U. S. Coast SurveyingDepartment show that the whole Delta is not more than four thousand fourhundred years old. 

These gross errors, which affront our common sense, wherever we are ableto test geological calculations, fill us with mistrust of theirallegations of evidence, which, from the nature of the case, we can nottest. 

Of this class is the discovery of human bones in caves containing thebones of cave bears, rhinocerii, mammoths, and other extinct animals. The argument is that man and these animals lived at the same time. Verywell, what time was that? There is no evidence to show that it was ahundred thousand years ago. The Siberian hunters fed their dogs on theflesh of a mammoth they found frozen in mud bluffs at the mouth of theLena, and its hair and wool are now in the museum of St. Petersburg. Dr. Warren's _mastodon giganteus_ had some bushels of pine and maple twigs, in excellent preservation, in its stomach, when exhumed in OrangeCounty, New York; and you may see for yourself the vegetable fiber foundin its teeth in his museum in Boston. [127] Does any one believe that thevegetable fiber and maple twigs have kept their shape one hundredthousand years? The mammoth found in the ditch of the Tezcucoco roadmust have fallen in after the Incas had dug that ditch. The Indians havea tradition that their fathers hunted a huge deer with a hand on hisface, which slept leaning against the trees. And there is goodgeological reason for believing that the final extinction of themammoth, the European rhinoceros, and their contemporaries, was causedby the change of climate in Northern Europe, Asia, and America, causedby the elevation of these northern lands, which has been going on sincethe tenth century, and which, about three centuries ago, closed thePolar Sea, rendering Greenland uninhabitable. The juxtaposition, then, of the bones of man and extinct animals is no proof of the remoteantiquity of either. And no proof has been made from the nature or depthof the overlying deposits. 

The shape, size, and general character of the skulls alleged to be ofsuch remote antiquity give no countenance to the theory of man's brutalorigin; which is the great thing to be gained by giving him a remoteantiquity. The Enghis skull is in no way inferior to many good modernIndian skulls; and the man of Mentone stood six feet one in his stockingsoles (if he wore stockings), having a good John Bull head between hisshoulders, with a facial angle equal to that of Generals Grant or VonMoltke; and in fact being a fine old Gallic gentleman, all of the goodold times. 

Geologists, however, lay stress on the cumulative character of theevidence they produce; owning that no single fact is conclusive, butclaiming that credence should be given to the accumulation of facts. Butno accumulation of ciphers will amount to anything. All the allegedfacts are found to be fatally defective either in authenticity ordefiniteness. No multitude of doubts can assure us of the certainty of afact or assertion. The evidence for the pre-Adamite antiquity of man isonly a gathering of facts doubtful, and wholly indeterminate, withoutany element of proof of remote antiquity. [128]

But there is a source of evidence of the most undeniable character, towhich we may appeal for a decision of the subject. The law of populationis as certain as any other law of nature; and it tends to the regularincrease of mankind. Population tends to double itself every twenty-fiveyears, as we see in the United States. In less favored countries therate is not so rapid. In Europe it doubles every fifty years; andnowhere in less than two centuries. And the result is, that if the humanrace had existed on this earth under existing laws of nature, as theevolutionists allege, for one hundred thousand years, not only must theyhave multiplied until their bones would have covered the earth, andfilled the sea, but, as Sir John Herschel shows, they would have formeda vertical column, having for its base the whole surface of the earth, and for its height three thousand six hundred and seventy-four times thesun's distance from the earth![129]

The existing population of the globe corresponds pretty well to thenatural increase of three pairs in forty centuries, which is somethingnear to the Bible chronology. The laws of population, then, inexorablyrefuse the indefinite, or even the remote antiquity of mankind, andvindicate Moses as a writer of truthful history. 

The alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch have been adduced astestimony that it could not have been written till long after the timeof Moses. These alleged anachronisms are generally the insertion of amodern name of a city instead of the ancient name, or an explanatoryaddition which would not have been necessary in the days of Moses. Nowif all these cases could be proved, they would at most only show thatthe scribes who copied the manuscripts in later ages had inserted theseexplanatory changes or additions, under proper authority. Everybody'scommon sense will tell him, that Moses did not narrate his own death inthe last chapter of Deuteronomy; but it is none the less true thoughJoshua, or some other prophet, added that postscript. 

But Hengstenberg has[130] examined these alleged anachronisms in detail, and shown that the objectors allow themselves to interpolate into thetext a meaning of their own in order to show the inaccuracy of theBible. For instance, Genesis xii. 6, "The Canaanite was then in theland, " they maintain could only be written after the Canaanites had beendriven out. They interpolate _still_, which is not in the text. But theyentirely mistake the meaning of the passage, which refers to an earlierstatement of the same fact, chapter x. 15, to show that Abraham, theheir of the promise, came as a stranger and a pilgrim to a landpreoccupied by a powerful people, who are again mentioned, chapter xiii. 7, for the purpose of showing how Lot and Abraham came to be so crowdedas to separate. 

Another of the prominent instances is the name of the ancient city ofHebron, which, in the book of Joshua, is said to have been ancientlycalled Kirjath-arba. But Numbers xiii. 22, which states that Hebron wasbuilt seven years before Zoan in Egypt, and was the residence of Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the sons of Anak, shows that the writer was wellacquainted with the history of the place, and Genesis xxxv. 27 showsthat Hebron was the first name, and that it had two other names added toit, both after the time of Abraham, since Mamre was his contemporary, and the Anakim lived centuries later. This may stand for a specimen ofthe alleged anachronisms of the Pentateuch. 

But now comes Bishop Colenso with his slate and pencil to demonstrate tous that, no matter who wrote it, or by what external authority it iscommended, the Pentateuch is so full of arithmetical errors, and ofimpossible narratives, in its accounts of common affairs, as well as inits miraculous stories, that not only is it not the Word of God, butthat it is not even a truthful history, and stands self-convicted ofbeing a collection of fables. Of course, if that can be proved, there isan end of the matter, though it would still seem strange that it shouldhave been left for the bishop to discover Moses' ignorance ofarithmetic, and of camp-life among the Arabs. Nevertheless the verynovelty of a bishop assaulting the Bible in such a style has securedfor him a large number of readers, many of them ignorant enough tobelieve his assertions, though too indolent to test his calculations, oreven to read the passages he criticises. This renders some notice of hiscriticisms necessary according to our plan of considering objectionsaccording to their popularity, rather than according to their merit. For, on examining the bishop's objections to the Bible, they are allfound to arise from want of science, want of sense, or ignorance ofScripture--an inability to read the Scriptures in their original Hebrew, or even to cite them correctly in English. In some criticisms hecontrives to compile these three kind of blunders into a single chapter, making a mosaic of very amusing reading indeed. 

Of course we can only give specimens of his peculiar style of attack onthe Bible; for to expose all his blunders would require some volumes aslarge as his own. But we shall select illustrative instances of thebishop's blunders from each of the departments indicated above. 

As a specimen of the bishop's blunders in science, let us take the firstwhich he offers--his attempt to convict Moses of a contradiction togeology in his account of the deluge. 

Bishop Colenso declares that the Bible teaches that the deluge wasuniversal, and that this is contradicted, among other things, by certaingeological discoveries, in Auvergne, of volcanic cones of light cinders, which would have been swept away by any such flood. 

Aye, if they had only been there at that time! But Eli de Beaumont, alearned geologist, not convicted of so many blunders as the bishop, alleges that the whole of the system of Teanarus, including theelevation of Stromboli, and Ętna, has been formed since the catastropheof the principal Alps; and that the volcanoes of Auvergne and theVivarrus are of post-Adamic origin. [131] So the bishop's geology doesnot contradict what he thinks the Bible says after all. On the contrary, so far from geology contradicting a universal deluge, the bestgeologists speak of every part of the earth having been repeatedly underthe sea, and they collect its fossils on the tops of the mountains. 

But the bishop ought to know that hundreds of years ago, before geologywas born, some of the most learned bishops and theologians of his ownChurch, as well as some of the chief scholars of the dissenters, following the most learned of the Hebrew rabbis, did not believe thatthe Bible taught that the deluge was universal. For instance, BishopStillingfleet, in his great work, _Origines Sacra_, says: "I can not seeany urgent necessity from the Scriptures to assert that the flood didspread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in theark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to theScriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind, but from thencefollows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as tothe globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the wholeearth was peopled before the flood; which I despair of ever seeingproved. " Matthew Poole says: "Where was the need of overwhelming thoseregions of the earth in which there were no human beings? It would behighly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before thedeluge as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. It isindeed not probable that they had extended themselves beyond the limitsof Syria and Mesopotamia. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effectsof the punishment, inflicted upon men alone, applied to those places inwhich there were no men. If, then, we should entertain the belief thatnot so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread withwater, still the deluge would be universal; because the extirpation tookeffect upon all the part of the globe then inhabited. "

Nor does the language of the Bible necessarily convey the idea that thewhole surface of the globe was covered with water. Dathe, professor ofHebrew (in his _Opuscala ad Crisin_, edited by Rosenmuller, 1795), says:"Interpreters do not agree whether the deluge inundated the whole earthor only the regions then inhabited. I adopt the latter opinion. Thephrase _all_ does not prove the inundation to have been universal. Itappears that in many places _kol_ is to be understood as limited to thething or place spoken of. Hence all the animals introduced into the arkwere only those of the region inundated. "

But the most literal rendering of the language of Moses does notnecessitate our belief that when he says that the waters covered thewhole earth, _arets_, he meant the whole globe. The common Bible meaningof this word is land, country, or region, as the perpetually recurringphrases, the land, _arets_, of Havilah, the land of Nod, the land ofEthiopia, the land of Goshen, the land of Egypt, the land of Canaan, which occurs three hundred and ninety times, may convince every readerbeyond the possibility of mistake. How now, from this word being used byMoses, could this learned bishop conclude that he necessarily meant todescribe the globe? Moses says, "The waters prevailed upon and coveredthe whole country. " The bishop translates, "covered the whole globe;"evidently in order to make Moses commit a blunder. 

But reference is made to the expression, "All the high hills under thewhole heavens were covered;" which the bishop will have it meant all themountains under the moon. 

But the popular use of the word "heavens, " in Moses' day, had as littlereference to universal space, as the word earth, or land, had to thewhole globe. It meant simply the visible heavens over any place; and itsextent was defined by the extent of the earth those visible heavenscovered. Thus Moses himself defines it, Deuteronomy iv. 32: "Ask fromthe one side of heaven unto the other. " Deuteronomy xxviii. 8: "Thyheaven over thee shall be as brass. " Deuteronomy ii. 25: "This day Iwill begin to put the fear of thee upon the nations that are under thewhole heaven. " And so commonly throughout the Bible, "the clouds ofheaven, " "the fowls of heaven, " refer to the optical heavens. Such isthe meaning in Genesis. Noah describes the deluge as it appeared to him, as covering all the hills within the horizon of observation, and Mosescopies Noah's log-book. 

The geologist adds his testimony to the existing evidences of the recentsubmergence of a large region of Persia and Turkey around the CaspianSea, and its subsequent elevation. But it is no part of our business toshow in what way God produced the deluge. Geology shows us, however, that the submergence of parts of the earth beneath the sea, and theirsubsequent elevation, is the most common of all geological phenomena;almost all existing continents and islands having been submerged. 

The bishop is as far behind the age in his astronomy as in his geology. He blindly follows the Infidels of the last century in their attack onJoshua's miracle, arresting the sun and moon, as inconsistent with theirscience; which taught the immobility of the sun and moon, it seems, andwas entirely ignorant of the modern discovery of the grand motions ofthe fixed stars, including our sun, and of the dependence of all theplanets, including our earth and moon, upon that grand motion for themotive power of their revolutions. [132]

One wonders from what college the bishop came out ignorant of factsknown to the boys of American common schools. 

A great many of the bishop's blunders are occasioned by want of sense. The process is very simple. The sacred history is very brief. Only theheadings of things are recorded. Much must be supplied by the commonsense of the reader. The manners of the East are very different fromours. Three thousand years have greatly changed the face of the country. Ignore all this, and interpret the Pentateuch as though it consisted ofthe letters of Our Own Correspondent, and you will find difficulties onevery page. Such is the style of Colenso's criticism. Assume that Mosesgives a full and complete chronicle of all events which have happenedsince the creation, and then dispute the recorded facts because it caneasily be shown he omitted many. 

But the bishop has not the honor of discovering this method, or offounding this school of criticism. We have heard village critics of theloom and the forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, andthe Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acuteness andpenetration. With what _eclat_ has our village critic unhorsed theitinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became of the forks belongingto the nine and twenty knives which Ezra brought back from Babylon? butwas, alas! himself routed in the moment of triumph by the inquiry as tothe sex of the odd clean beasts of Noah's sevens. How often has ourvillage blacksmith critic requested a sermon upon the genealogy ofMelchizedek, which the minister agreed to furnish when our blacksmithcould tell him the foundry which manufactured Tubal Cain's hammer andanvil. Lot's wife, the witch of Endor, Jonah's whale, the sundial ofAhaz, and the population of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, togetherwith the bodies in which the angels dined with Abraham. Did the loavesand fishes miraculously multiply in numbers, or increase in size? Wheredid the angel get the flour to bake the cake for Elijah? Did our Lordcatch the fish by net, or by miracle, which he used in the Lord's Dinneron the shore of the Sea of Galilee. But _the_ question--which we marvelbeyond measure that the bishop overlooks--always was, Where did Cainget his wife? This is the fundamental question for such critics. Thedifficulty, it will be perceived, lies across the very threshold of thehistory. How did he stumble over it without record of his misadventure?It recurs, however, on every page. If the bishop will only answer thatquestion, and introduce us politely to Cain's wife, I will engage thatshe will answer most of these other difficult questions. Had Seth awife? How could Noah and his three sons build a ship larger than theGreat Eastern? We can imagine the roars of laughter with which thebigger school-boys will greet the serious exhibition of their old testsof dullness, in a printed book, and by a learned bishop, as objectionsto the inspiration of the Bible. But the bishop does actually devoteChapter V. To the impossibility of Moses addressing all Israel; ChapterVI. To the extent of the camp compared with the priest's duties; ChapterXX. To the grave difficulty of the three priestly families consuming theofferings of some millions of people; which surely to a bishop of theChurch of England should not be an unparalleled feat. Such chaptersenable us to appreciate the mental caliber of our critic, and excuse usfrom argument with a man incapable of interpreting popular phrases. Hewould prove the associated press dispatches all a myth, because it isimpossible for the House of Commons to appear at the bar of the House ofLords--six hundred men to stand on four square yards of floor; forMcClellan to address the Army of the Potomac, which extended along aline of thirty miles; for Grant and Sherman--two men--to captureVicksburg and thirty thousand prisoners! Manifestly impossible. 

The most specious of all the sophistry spread over the volume is thatcontained in the Seventeenth Chapter, regarding the increase of Jacob'sfamily, of seventy persons, to a nation of two or three millions, inEgypt, during the two hundred and fifteen years to which he confines thebondage. But it is only another case of Cain's wife. The Pentateuchgives us the list of Jacob's children and their wives, but makes noformal mention in that place of their servants and retainers. These, inAbraham's times, amounted to three hundred fencible men, or a populationof fifteen hundred; who would have increased in Jacob's time to severalthousands, capable of defending the border land of Goshen against themarauding Bedouin. And this population could easily increase to thethree millions of the Exodus, at the same ratio in which the populationof the United States is now increasing; so that it is a mere superfluityof naughtiness for the bishop to deny what the sacred historian soemphatically asserts: "That the people were fruitful, and increasedabundantly, and multiplied, and the land was filled with them. " But thebishop utterly ignores the people of the _clan_, and taking his slateand pencil ciphers out the impossibility of Jacob's _family_ amountingto so many. And yet it is not impossible that in the four hundred andthirty years which the sacred historian so precisely asserts as theperiod of their sojourn in Egypt, Exodus xii. 40, the family alone mighthave multiplied as fast as the family of the famous Jonathan Edwards, which, in a hundred years after his death, numbered two thousand souls. 

Peter Cartwright, the venerable Methodist minister, celebrated hiseighty-seventh birthday on the first of September, 1871, at PleasantPlains, Sangamon County, Illinois, surrounded by one hundred and twentychildren, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Now, if this family oftwo persons could so increase in eighty-seven years, why could notJacob's family, of seventy persons, increase in equal ratio? In thatcase, even in the two hundred and fifteen years to which the bishoplimits the sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites would have amounted to overeight millions. If it be objected that this was a case of specialblessing, we answer that the Israelites are expressly asserted to havebeen specially and wonderfully multiplied. There is, therefore, noimprobability in Moses' numbers. 

The bishop ascribes to Moses another of his own blunders; this time, however, in reading his Bible in plain English, which correctlytranslates the Hebrew--Exodus xiii. 2. The Lord commands Moses andIsrael to "Sanctify to him every male that openeth the womb, both of manand beast, " from the time of the death of the first-born of theEgyptians. The impropriety of _ex post facto_ legislation, the reasonassigned for this law, and the grammatical meaning of the language inthe present tense, all combine to show that the law is prospective; andthe number of the first-born, twenty-two thousand two hundred andseventy-five, afterward given in Numbers, shows plainly that this is themeaning, being about the proper increase of thirteen months. But thebishop strangely blunders into the notion that this is the number of allthe first-born of Israel; only about one in forty-five or fifty, andtherefore argues against the historical veracity of the Pentateuch. Agood many of the bishop's blunders arise in this way from misreading hisBible. 

He makes another blunder of this kind, and as usual charges it on Moses, in his misreading of Leviticus xxiii. 40, as if directing Israel to makebooths of palm branches and willows at the feast of tabernacles, insteadof bearing the palms of victory in triumph into the temple of God. Theson of the chief rabbi of London ridicules the bishop's Hebrewscholarship here, saying that any Jewish child could have set him right;but had he read even his English translation carefully he need not haveblundered here. 

In connection with the subject of the numbers of the people we noticehis tacit assumption--that Moses records everything necessary for astatistical table--in his criticisms on the numbers of the Danites andLevites, Chapters XVIII. And XVI. ; and on Judah's family, Chapter II. He takes it for granted that because the Exodus took place in thelifetime of the fourth generation of some of the sons of Jacob, therefore there were none but four generations born in the two hundredand fifteen years to which he confines the bondage, and none but thosewhose names are recorded. This is a blunder of the same sort as if heshould mistake the list of the British peerage for a census of all thefamilies of Great Britain, and calculate the average duration of humanlife by the ages of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. But herewe have a wonderful instance of the providence which often makesobjectors refute themselves. The chapter on Judah's family (II. ) showsthat in forty-two years Judah had grandchildren ten or twelve years old;as many Syrians, Persians, and Hindoos have at this day. But if sixgenerations could thus be born in Syria, or India, in a century, why notin Egypt? And 1 Chronicles vii. 20, 21 enumerates ten generations of thesons of Ephraim; giving ample opportunity for the biblical increase. 

Another set of the bishop's blunders is occasioned by his utterignorance of camp-life, especially among the Arabs. In Chapter VIII. Heassumes that all the people had tents, and the bishop orders them madeof leather. But he concludes they could not possibly get them, nor ifthey had them could they carry them. By and by he provides them with twomillions of cattle, however; and it is likely each of them had a skin, and was able to carry it for a while, while the Hebrews dwelt in thebooths of the encampments they still commemorate in the feast oftabernacles. But the word "tents" is the common phrase for any kind ofshelter in Scripture, including even houses in the expression, "To yourtents, O Israel, " used in the days of David. 

In Chapter IX. He discusses the probability of their obtaining arms inEgypt. A week with one of the Union armies would show him how speedilyfreedmen can provide themselves with arms and learn tactics; and ashort residence in Ireland would teach him the utter impossibility ofpreventing a discontented people from arming themselves even withfirearms; much more when every grove furnished artillery. He proteststhat all Egypt could not furnish lambs enough for the passover; becausein Natal an acre will only graze one sheep, forgetting that Moses wasnot raising sheep in Natal, but in the best of the land of Goshen, which, if as fertile as the county of Dorset in England, would easilykeep five millions of sheep. 

In Chapter X. He insists on the impossibility of giving warning of thepassover, and subsequent march, in one day, to a population as large asLondon, scattered over two or three counties. Has he forgotten thestraws carried over all Ireland in one night, and the Chupatties of theIndian Mutiny? The negro insurrection of Charleston was known by thenegroes of Louisiana two days before their masters received theintelligence by mail. Critics know little of the power of the love offreedom. But there is no reason for the bishop's supposition that allthe preparations for leaving were made in one day, save his own mistakeof the Hebrew of Exodus xii. 12, as referring to the night of the day onwhich God spake to Moses, instead of the night of the day of which hewas speaking, as the slightest reflection on the context shows. 

In Chapter XI. The bishop assumes the functions of Major-General, andmasses his army--rank, and file, wagon train, hospital, commissariat, contrabands, droves of cattle, and camp followers--into a mass of fiftyfront and twenty-two miles long. Very naturally he gets into atremendous jam, out of which we have no intention of extricating him;merely remarking that bishops do not make good generals, and that ArabSheikhs do not march in that way. They scatter themselves and theircattle over the whole country for forty or fifty miles, and have noconfusion; and attend moreover to Moses' sanitary camp regulations, intheir several encampments. 

In Chapter XII. He exerts himself to starve the cattle for want ofpasture and water; garbling Moses' account of the wilderness for thatpurpose, Deuteronomy viii. 15, "Beware that thou forget not Jehovah, thyGod, who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, whereinwere fiery serpents, and scorpions, _where there was no water_. " Here hestops, as if this was all that referred to the subject. But when we turnto the passage, we find that he omits the most material part of thespeech. For Moses goes on to say, in the hearing of all Israel, whocould certainly have contradicted him had the fact not been well knownto them, "Who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint. " Moses'account is quite self-consistent, and the bishop's garbling of it isdishonest. There were districts of Arabia so dry and sterile that butfor this miraculous supply both men and beasts had perished; but thegreater part of the country was simply uninhabited pasture land, sufficiently productive even now to support several Arab tribes; andmuch better wooded and watered then. The monuments of Egypt abundantlytestify the number and power of its shepherd kings, who pastured theirflocks upon it in their successive invasions of Egypt. 

The bishop says, Chapter XIII. , that the climax of inconsistenciesbetween facts and figures is reached when we come to the notice by theLord to Israel, contained in Exodus xxiii. 29, "I will not drive them, the Canaanites, out from before thee in one year, lest the land becomedesolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee. " Theargument is that a population of two millions was assigned to aterritory of only eleven thousand square miles; and consequently wouldbe more dense than the population of the agricultural region of England, where there is no danger of wild beasts multiplying. 

But the objection is again based on a blunder, and a garbling of thetext of Scripture. Had the bishop done himself and his readers thejustice to complete the passage which he has half cited, by insertingthe next two verses, he could have read verse thirty-one: "And I willset thy bounds from the Red Sea even to the Sea of the Philistines, andfrom the desert unto the river, " _i. E. _, the Euphrates, as otherpassages show, Genesis xv. 18. That is to say, a territory five hundredmiles long by one hundred miles broad, or fifty thousand square miles, was to be occupied by two millions of people. That is about the presentpopulation, and all travelers testify that three-fourths of it liesdesolate. Prof. Porter saw seventy deserted towns and villages in Bashanalone. But for the rifle and gunpowder the wild beasts would nowoverpower the inhabitants. 

By a wonderful providence, contemporaneously with these attacks, theLord has raised up an army of scholars, travelers, and archęologists, whose explorations illustrate the Bible in a remarkable manner, throwingnew light upon its history, poetry, and prophecy. It is refreshing toturn from the cavils of ignorant criticism to the clear light ofdiscovered facts and imperishable monuments. 

The Bible history has recently received a wonderful amount ofillustration and confirmation from the researches of scholars anddiscoverers amid the ruins of Egypt, Persia, and Assyria; completelyexploding the theory that this history was a comparatively recentcomposition, written long after the events which it records, andbetraying its want of genuineness by the anachronisms and errors ofdescription of historical and natural events with which it abounds. Wherever it differed from the statements of any Greek, or other heathenhistorian, it was forthwith alleged that Moses was wrong, and theprofane author was right; and for a long time nobody could bring anyevidence on the other side, because there were no contemporary records;the oldest heathen historian being a thousand years later than Moses. But by some strange inspiration, the Lord set a multitude of explorersto work upon the monuments of Egypt, deciphering the hieroglyphics whichhad so long puzzled the world, digging into the mounds which had forcenturies covered the ruined palaces and cities of Persia and Assyria, and bringing to Europe ship-loads of recovered statues, marbles, cylinders, mummies, obelisks, papyrii, covered with all manner ofpictures and inscriptions, civil, religious, and political, contemporarywith the Bible history, and setting the best scholars of Europe todecipher and translate them. They are only, as yet, in the middle oftheir labors, but already so much has been discovered as to warrant theassertion that before they have finished they will furnish fullcorroboration of all the great outlines of Old Testament history. 

Egypt was the first to come forward in furnishing her quota ofcommentary to the corroboration of the Books of Moses. Hengstenberg's_Egypt and the Books of Moses_, Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, andOsburn's _Monumental History of Egypt_, furnish almost a commentary uponMoses' account of Egyptian affairs, confirming every biblical allusionto Egypt as historically correct, and revealing to us even the naturalcauses of the seven years high Nile and plenteous harvests; in theoverflow of the great central lake in Nubia wearing away the embankment;and of the seven years subsequent low Nile and famine, by the droughtconsequent on this immense drainage. The very titles of Joseph as, "Director of the Full and Empty Irrigating Canals, " "Steward of theGranaries, " etc. Etc. , are still to be read on his tomb atSakkarah, [133] and much more of the same sort. 

F. Newman ridicules the Bible narrative of Shishak's expedition againstRehoboam as a mere fictitious embellishment of an otherwise tamenarrative;[134] but Egyptologists, like Stuart, Poole, and Brugsch, haveexamined the inscription of Shishak, at Karnak, and allege that it fullycorroborates the Scripture history. [135]

Some of the most obscure portions of the Bible, which have long beenstumbling-blocks to commentators and historians, are now thusilluminated by the light of modern discoveries of monuments andinscriptions found in the ruins of the ancient cities of Persia andAssyria, upon which they in turn cast such light as to enable thediscoveries of Layard and Rawlinson to assume an intelligible coherency. The tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis, written a thousand yearsbefore Herodotus or Manetho, and which Rationalistic commentators wereso long "unable to verify by their own consciousness, " and which weretherefore consigned to the realm of mythology, are now acknowledged bythe first scholars and discoverers to stand at the head of the page ofreliable history, and to form the basis of all scientific ethnography. 

The diversity of languages among mankind seems not to have attracted theattention of the Greek philosophers. When modern inquirers began toinvestigate the matter, they were well-nigh confounded by the multitudeof dialects and languages. The labor of three generations of scholarshas been expended upon philology, the most ancient monument of mankind. And the result is that all the various languages of earth have at lengthbeen classified under three tongues--the Shemitic, the Aryan, and theTuranian. But this most recent discovery of comparative philology wasnarrated by Moses thirty centuries ago, with the historical account ofthe origin of the division of the primeval family into three separatecolonies, colonizing the earth after their families and after theirtongues. --Genesis x. 32. The discovery of this coincidence fills Bunsenwith astonishment. "Comparative philology, " he says, "would have beencompelled to set forth as a postulate the supposition of some suchdivision of languages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relationof the Egyptian language to the Shemitic, even if the Bible had notassured us of the truth of this great historical event. It is trulywonderful; it is a matter of astonishment; it is more than a mereastounding fact that something so purely historical, and yet divinelyfixed--something so conformable to reason, and yet not to be conceivedof as a mere natural development--is here related to us out of theoldest primeval period, and which now for the first time, through thenew science of philology, has become capable of being historically andphilosophically explained. "

The brief, yet definite, assertions of the Hamitic origin of the oldempire of Babylon, and of an Asiatic Cush or Ethiopia, which have beenso repeatedly charged against the Bible as blunders, even by someprofound scholars, have been vindicated by the recent discoveries in themounds of Chaldea Proper of multitudes of inscriptions in a languagewhich Sir H. Rawlinson affirms "is decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian, " andthe modern languages to which it makes the nearest approaches are thoseof Southern Arabia and Abyssinia. The old traditions have then beenconfirmed by comparative philology, and both are side lights toScripture. * * * "The primitive race which bore sway in Chaldea Properis demonstrated to have belonged to this Ethnic type. "[136]

"The conquest of Palestine is recorded on the annals of Sennacherib, andthe cylinder of Tiglath-Pileser describes his invasion of Palestine. The names of Jehu, of Amaziah, of Hezekiah, of Omri, Ahaz, and Uzziahhave been made out. _The very clay which sealed the treaty between thekings of Judah and Assyria, with the impresses of their joint seals uponit, is preserved in the Nineveh gallery. _ The library of Assurbanipal, in twenty thousand fragments, contains among other scientific treatises, such as astronomical notices, grammatical essays, tables of verbs, genealogies, etc. , an historico-geographical account of Babylonia andthe surrounding countries. As far as these fragments have beentranslated, the district and tribal names given in the Bible correspondvery closely with them. "[137]

But this is not the only illustration and confirmation which these oldAssyrian monuments offer to the Sacred Writings. From the first invasionof the Assyrians, under Tiglath-Pileser, to the restoration of Israelfrom Babylon, and the rebuilding of the temple, under Darius, the Biblehistory is full of references to the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persianmonarchies, and their affairs with Israel and Judah. And the inscribedtablets, cylinders, and temple tablets, and statues, are full ofreferences which directly or indirectly elucidate and corroborate theBible history, attesting to skeptics the truthfulness of its wonderfulnarrative; the very stones of Nineveh, and the ruined palaces of Babylonand Assyria, crying out in vindication of the veracity of the Bible. Already so much has been discovered as to fill several volumes, to whichwe must refer the reader for details. [138]

One of the alleged historical errors greatly insisted on byRationalistic commentators was the statement by Daniel, that Belshazzarwas King of Babylon when it was taken by the Medo-Persians, and that hewas slain at the storming of the city. Herodotus and Berosus had statedthat Nabonnidus was king, and that he was not in the city then, but wasafterward taken prisoner and treated generously by Cyrus. These accountsseemed contradictory; and as Herodotus and Berosus were generallyesteemed respectable historians, the Rationalists ridicule Daniel as anerroneous writer of history. But one of Sir H. Rawlinson's discoverieshas vindicated the prophet, and also explained how the historians weretruthful too. W. Taylor, one of Rawlinson's assistants, discovered aninscribed cylinder in Ur of the Chaldees containing an account of thereign of this very Nabonnidus, which Sir Henry describes in a letter tothe _Athenęum_, (1854, page 341): "The most important facts, however, which they disclose are that the eldest son of Nabonnidus was namedBel-shar-ezar, and that he was admitted by his father to a share in thegovernment. " This name is undoubtedly the Belshazzar of Daniel, and thusfurnishes a key to the explanation of that great historical problemwhich has hitherto defied solution. We can now understand howBelshazzar, as _joint-king_ with his father, may have been Governor ofBabylon when the city was attacked by the combined forces of the Medesand Persians, and may have perished in the assault which followed; whileNabonnidus, leading a force to the relief of the place, was defeated, and was obliged to take refuge in Borsippa, capitulating after a shortresistance, and being subsequently assigned, according to Berosus, to anhonorable retirement in Carmania. A minute coincidence also is thusbrought to light, showing the accuracy of the inspired historian in oneof the details of his narrative. Belshazzar elevates him to the positionof Grand Vizier, or Prime Minister, which, under ordinary circumstances, would be the _second_ place of dignity in the empire. But Danielrepresents the king as raising him to the _third_ place, which we nowsee to be strictly correct, since Belshazzar himself was the second inrank. Thus the weapons discharged against the Bible ever recoil upon theheads of its assailants. 

Not only among the monuments of the great historic nations do we nowdiscover corroborations of Scripture, the records and monuments of evenobscure nations are most strangely turning up and being discovered, after lying unnoticed for centuries, as if God had reserved theirtestimony for the time when it would be needed and valued. The Bibledoes not refer to the history of the surrounding nations, save inconnection with their relations to Israel; but it is surprising to seehow many of these references are corroborated by recent discoveries. TheBible, for instance, describes[139] Omri as establishing a kingdom withhis capital at Samaria, and he and his son, Ahab, making war on Mesha, King of Moab, conquering him and making him pay an annual tribute of onehundred thousand lambs and one hundred thousand rams, with the wool. Butit came to pass that when Ahab was dead that the King of Moab rebelledagainst the King of Israel. 

Now amid the perpetual wars of the petty kingdoms of Asia, and after theutter extirpation of the Moabitish nation, the chances were millions toone against our recovering any historical monuments whatever of thatpeople; and almost infinite against recovering any which should coincidewith the half dozen allusions to them in the Bible. But Mr. Kleindiscovered in the ruins of Dibon, one of the ancient cities of Moab, andCapt. Warren recovered, the fragments of the now famous Moabite Stone, on which, in the old Samaritan characters, we read: "I, Mesha, son ofJobin, King of Moab. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and Ireigned after my father. I erected this altar unto Chemosh, who grantedme victory over mine enemies, the people of Omri, King of Israel, who, together with his son, Ahab, oppressed Moab a long time--even fortyyears, "[140] etc. 

But space forbids even the enumeration of the corroborations of Biblehistory from the days of Abraham to the time of the first census of theRoman Empire, when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria the second time. Inevery instance where its monuments have spoken of biblical affairs theyhave confirmed the accuracy of the Bible history. The history of GreatBritain, or of the United States, is not more authentic than, and not soaccurate as, the long line of history recorded in the Bible. Noimportant error has been proven in any of its historical statements ofthe world's history for forty centuries. This accuracy contrasted withthe acknowledged errors of the best historians, is proof to every candidmind of divine direction and help to the sacred writers. 

Sweeping away, then, these cobwebs, we open the volume and form ouropinion of its genuineness and authenticity from its own internalevidences--its nature and contents--and from the way in which it wasused by the Hebrew nation. 

It is important at the outset to know how long these documents haveundoubtedly existed. No one denies that they were in existence eighteenhundred years ago. Indeed, the first literary attack on them which hasbeen recorded was made about that time; and Josephus' defense of theScriptures against Apion still exists. The very same writings which theProtestant churches now acknowledge as canonical, and none other, werethen acknowledged to be of divine authority by the Jews. It is true theybound their Bibles differently from ours, but the contents were the verysame. They made up their parchments of the thirty-nine books intwenty-two rolls or volumes, one for every letter of their alphabet;putting Judges and Ruth, the two books of Samuel, the two books ofKings, the two books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Jeremiah'sProphecy and Lamentations, and the twelve minor prophets, in one volumerespectively. They also distinguished the five books of Moses as, _TheLaw_; the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon as, _ThePsalms_; and all the remainder as, _The Prophets_. [141] Moreover, it iswell known that two hundred and eighty-two years before the Christianera, these writings were translated into Greek and widely circulated inall parts of the world. They were, in fact, not only popular, butreceived as of divine authority by the Jews at that time, read in theirsynagogues in public worship, and regarded with sacred reverence. Howdid they come to receive them in this manner?

These writings were not only acknowledged by the Jews; their bitterestenemies--the Samaritans--owned the divine authority of the five books ofMoses, and preserve an ancient copy of them, differing in no essentialparticular from the Hebrew version, to this day. The Samaritans alwaysbore to the Hebrews such a relation as Mohammedans do to Christians, andthe Hebrews returned the grudge with interest: "For the Jews have nodealings with the Samaritans. " These heathen Babylonians, four centuriesor more before the Christian era, were somehow induced to receive thePentateuch as of divine authority, and to frame some sort of religionupon it. Their enmity to the Jews is conclusive proof that, since thattime, neither Jews nor Samaritans have altered the text; else themanuscripts would show the discrepancy. 

These books are not such as any person would forge to gain popularity, or to make money by. There is nothing in them to bribe the good opinionof influential people, or catch the favor of the multitude. On thecontrary, their stern severity, and unsparing denunciation of popularvice and profitable sin must have secured their rejection by the Jewishpeople, had they not been constrained by undeniable evidence toacknowledge their divine authority. They set out with the assertion ofthe divine authority of the law of Moses, and everywhere sharply reproveprinces, priests, and people for breaking it. The prophets, so far fromseeking popularity, are foolhardy enough to denounce the bonnets, hoops, and flounces of the ladies, and to cry, Woe! against the regularbusiness of the most respectable note-shavers, [142] to croak against themarch of intellect, and shake public confidence in the prosperity oftheir great country, [143] to ally themselves with fanatic abolitionists, and introduce agitating political questions into the pulpit; crying, _Woe to him that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and givethhim not for his work. _[144] To crown all, they organized abolition clubsto procure immediate emancipation, and published incendiaryproclamations in the cities of the slaveholders, [145] and, strange tosay, they were allowed to escape with their lives; and their writingswere held sacred by the children of those very men and women they sounsparingly denounced; a conclusive proof that the calamities theypredicted had compelled them to acknowledge these prophets as theheralds of God. The proof must have been conclusive, indeed, whichcompelled the Jews to acknowledge the writings of the prophets assacred. 

Another very striking feature of these writings is, their mutualconnection with each other. They were written at various intervals, during a period of a thousand years' duration, by shepherds and kings, by prophets and priests, by governors of States and gatherers ofsycamore fruit; in deserts and in palaces, in camps and in cities, inEgypt and Syria, in Arabia and Babylon; under the iron heel of despoticoppression, and amid the liberty of the most democratic republic theworld ever saw; yet, circumstances, and lapse of time, they ever hold toone great theme, always assert the same great principles, andperpetually claim connection with the writers who have preceded them. There is nothing like this in the histories of other nations. Twocenturies will work such changes of opinion, that you can not findnowadays any historian who approves the sentiments of Pepys orClarendon, whatever use he may make of their facts. But the historiansof the Bible not only refer to their predecessors' writings, but referto them as of acknowledged divine authority. Thus the very latest ofthese books gives the weight of its testimony to the first--"_And theyset the priests in their divisions, and the Levites in their courses forthe service of God, which is at Jerusalem, as it is written in the bookof Moses. _"[146] And Daniel spake of the books of Moses as well knownwhen he says, "_Therefore the curse is poured upon us, and the oath thatis written in the law of Moses the servant of God. _"[147] The shortestbook in the Old Testament--the prophecy of Obadiah, consisting only oftwenty sentences--contains twenty-five allusions to the precedinghistories and laws. The last of the prophets shuts up the volume with acommand to "_Remember the law of Moses. _" In fact, just as the epistlesprove the existence and acknowledged authority of the gospels; so do theprophets prove the existence and acknowledged authority of the law ofMoses. They were acknowledged not merely by one generation of the Jewishpeople, but by the nation during the whole period of its nationalexistence; and they are of such a character, that they must then, andnow, be taken as one whole--all accepted, or all rejected together. 

The reader of the Old Testament will speedily find that these writingsare not merely a connected history of the nation, of great generalinterest, like Bancroft's or Macaulay's, but of no such special interestto any individual as to force him, by a sense of self-interest, or thedanger of loss of liberty or property, to correct their errors. On thecontrary, every farmer in Palestine was deeply concerned in the truthand accuracy of the Bible; for it contained not only the generalboundaries of the country, and of the particular tribes, like the surveyof the Maine boundary, or of Mason and Dixon's line, but it delineatedparticular estates, also, and was, in fact, the report of theSurveyor-General, deposited in the county court for reference, in caseof any litigation about sale or inheritance of property. [148] Thegenealogies of the tribes and families were also preserved in thesewritings; and on the authenticity and correctness of these records, theinheritance of every farm in the land depended; for as no lease ran morethan fifty years, every farm returned to the heirs of the originalsettler at the year of jubilee. [149] Thus every Jewish farmer had adirect interest in these sacred records; and it would be just as hard toforge records for the county courts of Ohio, and pass them off upon thecitizens as genuine, and plead them in the courts as valid, as to imposeat first, or falsify afterward, the records of the commonwealth ofIsrael. 

This will appear more clearly when we consider that they contained alsothe laws of the land--the Constitution of the United States of Israel, with the statutes at large--according to which every house, and farm, and garden in the whole country was possessed, every court of justicewas guided, [150] every election was held, from the election of a pettyconstable, to that of Governor of the State, [151] and the militiaenrolled, mustered, officered, and called out to the field ofbattle. [152] These laws prescribed the way in which every house must bebuilt, regulated the weaver in weaving his cloth, and the tailor inmaking it, and the cooking of every breakfast, dinner and supper eatenby an Israelite over the world, from that day to this. [153] Now, let anyone who thinks it would be an easy matter to forge such a series ofdocuments, and get people to receive and obey them, try his hand inmaking a volume of Acts of Assembly, and passing it off upon the peopleof Ohio for genuine. Let him bring an action into one of the courts, andpersuade the judges to give a decision in his favor, upon the strengthof his forged or falsified statutes, and then he may hope to convince usthat the laws of Moses are simply a collection of religious tracts, which came to be held sacred through lapse of time, nobody knows how orwhy. 

Nor were these laws, and the usages thus established, common, and suchas the people would be ready easily to adopt. On the contrary, Mosesrepeatedly asserts, and all ancient history shows, that they were quitepeculiar to the Hebrew people then; and they are to this day confined tothe republics which, like our own, have drawn their ideas from theBible. It is enough to name the common law and trial by jury; the armednation; the right of free public assembly, free speech, free passport, and free trade; the election of civil, judicial, and military officersby universal suffrage; the division of the land in fee-simple among thewhole people; the rights of women to hold real estate in their ownright, to speak in public assemblies, and to prophetic functions; andthe support of religion by the voluntary offerings of the people. 

Our own republic resembles Israel as a daughter her mother. The land ofliberty was the Bible country. The first republic which the world eversaw was designed by Almighty God, and revealed to the world in theBible, and by the example of the United States of Israel. From thatpattern our forefathers copied all the grand features of our gloriousrepublic--the equitable distribution of the land, in fee-simple, amongthe people; securing them, by the jubilee, against the introduction offeudal tenure, and landlordism; the abolition of a standing army, andthe defense of the country by the militia; the election of all officers, civil and military, from the town constable, and the justice of thepeace, up to the president of the republic, the Lord Jehovah himself, byuniversal suffrage--and the Federal Union of the twelve tribes into onenation, with township, county, and state governments, with a common law, common schools, and the equality of all citizens before the law; theright of naturalization; sanitary and social institutions, such asmodern philanthropists are only beginning to dream of, for the elevationof the people; and all this avowedly held in trust for all mankind, as afountain of blessings for all the families of the earth. No such ideasof liberty, equality, and fraternity, ever existed among the wisestheathen nations--the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, or Romans. On the faceof the whole earth there never was, and there is not to-day, a freerepublic outside of the light and liberty of the Bible. The so-calledrepublics of Athens and Rome were hideous aristocracies, and tyrannies. From the Bible the men of the Continental Congress learned the grandtruth, which they emblazoned on the forefront of their immortalDeclaration of Independence, "That all men are endowed by their Creatorwith certain inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit ofhappiness;" thus planting the rights of man upon the only immovablebasis--the throne of the eternal God. 

But there were other features of the Mosaic legislation so far inadvance of the ideas of our modern Materialism as not to have been evenyet suggested in our social congresses, nor even dreamt of by our mostadvanced Christian philanthropists, in their endeavors after theelevation of the masses. Moses' idea was the prevention of pauperism, and of the conflict between labor and capital, and of the gamblingspeculating fever, and the formation of an independent, intelligent, joyous, religious, healthy, and thrifty people, well-bred, well-fed, well-lodged, able to fight their foes on the battle-field, to reap theirridge on the harvest-field, to enjoy the blessings of healthy families, and to rejoice before the Lord. A volume would be needed to develop thesocial bearings of the laws of the Hebrews. We can only suggest forconsideration the laws regarding inalienability of the homestead, andthe bankrupt law; the laws of marriage and inheritance; the laws ofservitude and wages; the sanitary laws regarding building, clothing, bathing, eating, and contagion; the protection of the rights of animals;the dispersion of the educated class; and the three great nationalfestivals, during which the whole people were released from the laborsof the field, and of the kitchen, and enjoyed during the eight summerdays of each picnic such an excitement of social enjoyment, religiousfervor, and political patriotism, as modern Christendom anticipates inthe millennium, but which neither Church nor State has, as yet, systematically attempted to nurture. 

That the Hebrews did not obey the law, and so did not enjoy thehappiness obedience would have secured, is only what God foresaw, andforetold repeatedly, with solemn warning of the disastrous degradationto which disobedience to God's laws must ever reduce man. Nevertheless, even their very imperfect conformity to these institutions gave themsuch superiority of blood and breeding to their ungodly neighbors, thatthey have survived the most powerful nations, and, in spite ofdispersion, exile, disfranchisement, and persecution, they exist as adistinct people, superior intellectually, commercially, and morally toall the heathen nations at this day. How much higher had been theirposition had they fully obeyed the law. 

Our argument is, that this law of liberty, equality, fraternity, andreligion, was worthy of our Father in heaven, and a seed of blessing toall the families of the earth. 

To a Jew living before the coming of Christ, the unanimous testimony ofhis nation, confirmed by all the commemorative observances of thesacrifices, the passover, the Sabbath, and the jubilee, by the readingof the law and the prophets, and the singing of the historical psalms inthe temple and the synagogues, by the execution of the laws of Moses inthe courts, and by the very existence of his nation as a distinctpeople, separate from all the other nations--could leave no doubt thatlaws so peculiar and beneficent must have been enacted by a wisdomsuperior to that of man, and their observance imposed by divineauthority; nor that the miracles by which these laws were authenticated, and the national existence of the people of Israel was secured, weregenuine, and divine. The chain of historical and internal evidence istoo strong to be broken, while the Jewish nation exists. 

But yet this historical and internal evidence of the authority of theOld Testament is but the smallest part of that which we possess, whohave the testimony of Christ on this subject. For this testimony removesthe question from the mists of antiquity, and even from the debatableground of historic certainty, and resolves the whole process ofsearching for, and comparing and examining a host of second-handwitnesses, into the easy and certain one of hearing the Author himselfsay, whether he acknowledges this Book to be his or not. Christiansreceive the Old Testament as the Word of God, because Jesus says so. 

Now, reader, it is of the utmost importance that you should stop justhere, and give a plain, confident answer to these questions: Dost thoubelieve upon the Son of God? Is Jesus the Messiah of whom Moses in thelaw, and the prophets, did write? Are you perfectly satisfied of thetruth of the New Testament, and willing to venture your eternalsalvation upon the words of Christ contained in it?

For, if not, of what use is it for you to trouble yourself about the OldTestament? You might as well waste your time in examining thegenuineness of the bills of a broken bank; they may be genuine or theymay be forgeries; but who cares? They will never be paid. If the firstpromises of the bank of heaven, to send the Messiah eighteen hundredyears ago, have been fulfilled, its other paper may be also valuable; ifnot, it must be equally worthless. If the New Testament be not of divineauthority, you may place the prophets on the same shelf with the Poemsof Ossian; and then follows the serious consequence, that there is not agrain of hope left for you or for any man on earth. If Jesus be indeedan Almighty Savior, and if he has indeed risen from the dead, then, through the power of his mighty love, your filthy soul may be washedfrom its sins, and your mortal body may be raised from the rottenness ofthe grave. But if Christ be not risen, you are yet in your sins. Youhave no notion that any of the gods of the heathen, or the precepts ofthe Koran, can purify your heart. You know well that Infidelity neversanctified any of your comrades. Conscience tells you that you are notany better now than you were a year ago, but worse. You are yet in yoursins; and in them you must live and die! Aye, while your immortal soullives, while the laws of human nature continue, you must carry thosebrands of infamy on your character, and daily progress from bad toworse; sinking deeper and deeper in the contempt of all intelligentbeings; and, were there no other avenger, in the remorse and despair ofyour own mind, you must experience the horrors of perdition. Jesus, ableto save to the uttermost, all that come unto God by him, is your onlyhope. There is none other name given under heaven among men whereby wemust be saved. If his gospel be true, you may be saved; if it is false, you must be damned. 

If you have the shadow of a doubt of the truth of the New Testament, goover the subject again; re-read the former chapters of this book; prayto God for light and truth; above all, read the Book again and again;and if, in your case, as in that of one of the most famous teachers ofGerman Neology--De Wette--the careful study of the New Testament impelsyou to rush through all the mists of doubt to the higher standpoint of alofty faith, and the sunshine of real religion; and if with him you cannow say, "Only this one thing I know, that in no other name is theresalvation than in the name of Jesus Christ the crucified, and that forhumanity there is nothing higher than the incarnation of Deity setbefore us in him, and the kingdom of God established by him, "[154] youmay then go on with your inquiry into the divine authority of the OldTestament. With the Master himself before you, the Author, the Inspirer, by whom, and for whom, the prophets spake, and to whom all theScriptures point, you will not think of wasting time in examiningsecond-hand evidence; but go direct to Jesus himself. His testimony willnot be merely so much additional testimony--another candle added to thechandelier by whose light you have perused the evidences of theScriptures; it will shine out on your soul as the light of the Sun ofRighteousness with healing on his wings. Every word from his lips willawaken in your heart the voice from heaven, "_This is my beloved Son. Hear him. _" What saith Christ, then, respecting the Old Testament?

The moment you open the New Testament to make this inquiry, you are metby a reference to the Old. "_The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham_, " is its formal title; and themost cursory perusal tells you that you have taken up, not a separateand independent work, which you can profitably peruse and understandwithout much reference to some foregoing volumes--as one might readAbbott's Life of Napoleon without needing at the same time to study theHistory of the Crusades--but that you have taken up a continuation ofsome former work--the last volume in fact of the Old Testament--and thatyou can not understand even the first chapter without a careful readingof the foregoing volumes. Before you have finished the first chapter youmeet with the most unequivocal assertion of the harmony of the gospelsand the prophecies, and of the divine authority of both--"_Now all thiswas done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by theprophet_, " etc. The whole tenor of the New Testament corresponds to thisbeginning, teaching that the birth, doctrine, miracles, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming of the Lord, are thefulfillments of the Old Testament promises and prophecies; of which noless than a hundred and thirty-nine are expressly quoted, beginning withMoses and ending with Malachi. 

We can not explain this by saying, with the mythical school ofinterpreters, that this was merely the opinion of the writers of thegospels and of the Jews of their age; whose longings for the Messiah ledthem to imagine some curious coincidences between the events of Christ'slife and the utterances of these ancient oracles to be readyfulfillments; and that Christ did not deem it needful in all cases toundeceive them. For to suppose that Christ--the Truth--would sanction orconnive at any such sacrilegious deception, is at once to deprive him, not only of his divine character, but of all claim to common honesty. Sofar from the Jews longing for any such events as those which fulfilledthe prophecies, they despised the Messiah in whom they were fulfilled, and refused to believe in him; and his disciples were as far from thegospel ideal of the Messiah, when Jesus needed to reproach them with, "_O fools, and slow of heart, to believe all that the prophets havespoken. _"[155] It was not the Jews, nor yet the disciples, but the Lordhimself who perpetually insisted on the divine authority of the OldTestament as the _Word_ of his Father, and the sufficient attestation ofhis own divine character, after this manner: "_Ye have not his wordabiding in you; for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search theScriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are theywhich testify of me. * * * Had ye believed Moses, ye would havebelieved me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, howshall ye believe my words?_"[156]

His first recorded sermon contains a remarkable and solemn attestationto the divine authority of the Old Testament, and of his own relation toit as its substance and supporter, "_Think not that I am come to destroythe law, and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Forverily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittleshall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. _"[157] Thewhole of this discourse is an exposition of the true principles of theOld Testament, stripping off the rubbish by which tradition had madevoid the law of God, and enforcing its precepts by the sanction of hisdivine authority. And in one of his last discourses after hisresurrection: "_Beginning at Moses, and the prophets, he expounded untothem in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. * * * And hesaid unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I wasyet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written inthe law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand theScriptures. _"[158]

In this distinct enumeration of the whole of the Scriptures of the OldTestament; in the assertion that they all treated of him, and that theirprincipal predictions were fulfilled in him; and in his bestowal ofdivine illumination to enable them to understand these divineoracles--we have such an indorsement of their character by the Truthhimself, as must command the faith and obedience of every believer inhim. Had no objections been raised against particular doctrines orfeatures of the Old Testament, we should stop here; perfectly satisfiedwith the attestations to the truth of its history, given by thecontinual references, and to the authority of its precepts, by thesolemn formal declarations of the Son of God. But some popularobjections to its completeness and perfection demand a brief notice. 

1. The general character of the Old Testament being then ascertainedbeyond doubt, our first inquiry must be as to the integrity andcompleteness of the collection. For it is manifest that their divineauthority being admitted, any attempt to add to them any human writings, or to take away those which were from God, would be a crime so seriousin its consequences, that it could not escape the notice of him whoseverely rebuked even the verbal traditions by which the Jews made voidthe law of God. Now we are told by some that a great many inspiredbooks have been lost; and they enumerate the prophecy of Enoch; the bookof the Wars of the Lord; the book of Joshua; the book of Iddo the seer;the book of Nathan the prophet; the acts of Rehoboam; the book of Jehu, the son of Hanani; and the five books of Solomon, on trees, beasts, fowls, serpents, and fishes; which are alluded to in the Bible. 

If the case were so, it is difficult to see what objection could beraised against the divine authority of the books we have, because of thedivine authority of those we have not; for it is not supposed that onedivinely inspired book would contradict another. Nor yet can we see howthe loss of these books should disprove their inspiration, much less theinspiration of those which remain, any more than the want of a record ofthe multitude of words and works of Jesus himself which were nevercommitted to writing, [159] should be an argument against the divineauthority of the Sermon on the Mount. It will hardly be asserted thatGod is bound to reveal to us everything that the human race ever did, and to preserve such records through all time, or lose his right todemand our obedience to a plain revelation of his will; or that we dowell to neglect the salvation of our own souls until we obtain aninfallible knowledge of the acts of Rehoboam. 

But there is not the shadow of a proof that any of these were inspiredbooks, or that some of them were books at all. The Bible nowhere saysthat Enoch wrote his prophecy, or that Solomon read his discourses onnatural history; nor of what religious interest they would have been tous any more than the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba, and hisanswers to them. Though the loss of these ancient chronicles may beregretted by the antiquarian, the Christian feels not at all concernedabout it; knowing as he does, on the testimony of Christ, that the HolyScriptures, as he and his apostles delivered them to us, contain allthat we need to know in order to repent of our sins, lead holy lives, and go to heaven; and that we have the very same Bible of which Jesussaid: "_They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. * * * Ifthey hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuadedthough one rose from the dead. _"[160]

2. Another objection is, that the religion of the Old Testament wasessentially different from that of the New. It is at once acknowledged, that the light which Christ shed on our relations to God, and to ourbrethren of mankind, is so much clearer than that of the Old Testamentthat we see our duties more plainly, and are more inexcusable forneglecting them, than those who had not the benefit of Christ'steaching. And no objection can be raised against God for not sending hisSon sooner, or for not giving more light to the world before his coming, unless it can be shown that he is debtor to mankind, and that they weremaking a good use of the light he gave them. So that the question isnot, Did God give as full and expanded instructions to the Church in herinfancy as he has given in her maturity? but, Did he give instructionsof a different character? It is not, Did Christ reveal more than Moses?but, Did Christ contradict Moses? And here, at the very outset, we aremet by Christ's own solemn formal disclaimer of any such intention:"_Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets. I am notcome to destroy, but to fulfill. _" And as to the actual working of theChristian religion, when Paul is asked, "_Is the law then against thepromises of God?_"[161] he indignantly replies, "_God forbid!_"

But it is urged, "Judaism is not Christianity. You have changed theSabbath, abolished the sacrifices, trampled upon the rules of living, eating, and visiting only with the peculiar people, you neglect thepassover, and drop circumcision, the seal of the covenant, all on theauthority of Christ. Do you mean to say that these are not essentialelements of the Old Testament religion?"

Undoubtedly. Outward ceremonies of any kind never were essential partsof religion. "_I will have mercy and not sacrifice_, " is an OldTestament proverb, which clearly tells us that outward ceremonies aremerely means toward the great end of all religion. "_The law_, " says theHoly Ghost, by the pen of Paul, "_was our schoolmaster to bring us toChrist_. " The bread of heavenly truth is served out to God's childrennow on ten thousand wooden tables, instead of one brazen altar; but itis made of the same corn of heaven, it is dispensed by the same hand oflove, to a larger family, it is true, but received and eaten in theexercise of the very same religious feelings, by any hearer of thegospel in New York, as by Abraham on Moriah. By faith in Christ thesinner now is justified, "_Even as Abraham believed God, and it wasimputed to him for righteousness. _" So says one who knew both law andgospel well. "_Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid!Yea, we establish the law!_" The Epistles to the Romans and to theHebrews are just demonstrations of this truth, that the law was theblossom, the gospel the fruit. 

But it is alleged that the religion of the Old Testament could not butbe defective, as it wanted the doctrines of immortality and theresurrection; of which, it is alleged, the Old Testament saints wereignorant. 

It were easy to prove, from their own words and conduct, that Job, Abraham, David, and Daniel, were not ignorant of these greatdoctrines. [162] But the manner in which our Lord proves the truth ofthe resurrection, by a reference to it as undeniably taught in the OldTestament, must ever silence this objection. "_But as touching theresurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken untoyou by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and theGod of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. _"[163]

3. But it is objected the Hebrew Jehovah tolerated and approvedpolygamy, slavery, and divorce; and, in general, a low code of moralsamong the Hebrews. 

But we demand to know what standard of morals our objectors adopt? Thatof the ancient oriental world in which Israel lived? Then the laws ofJehovah were very far in advance of that age. The slave had his blessedSabbath rest secured to him; which is more than modern civilization cansecure for her railway slaves; his master was forbidden to treat himcruelly; and the maid-servant's honor was protected by the best meansthen known; while the Sacred Writings held up for example the primitiveexample of marriage, interposed the formality of a legal document beforedivorce, and elevated the family far above the degraded state of theheathen around them. 

But the objector falls back on the morals of Christendom, thecivilization of the nineteenth century, and judges the laws of Moses bythat standard. Very well. This is simply to say that our ideas have beenraised to the standard of Christianity; and then the objection is thatthe laws of Moses are not so spiritual and elevated as the precepts ofChrist. Our Lord himself asserts the same thing. He says Moses tolerateddivorce because of the hardness of the people's hearts; but from thebeginning it was not so. And Paul (Hebrews viii. 6, 7) alleges theimperfection of Moses' law as a good reason for the introduction of abetter covenant. The Bible itself then recognizes an advance from goodto better, the path of the just shining more and more unto the perfectday. 

But then it is asked, Is God the Author of an imperfect law? Could Godgive a defective code of morals? The question entirely misses the designof God's revelation as a process of educating his children. Suppose weask, Could God speak Hebrew--a language so defective in philosophicalterms? God must condescend to the mental, and even, in some degree, tothe moral level of mankind if he is to reach us at all. All educationmust begin low, and rise from step to step. The A, B, C of morals mustbe first learned. The whole analogy of providence shows this to be God'smethod of procedure. The kingdom of God is like the growing seed; firstthe blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. Gradual, andeven slow, progress is the law of nature. 

Our modern civilization, which is so proudly invoked, is very far indeedfrom any such perfection as might enable us to look down upon Moses'legislation with contempt. We have only to name our standing armies andconscriptions; our national promises to pay debts, which no one everexpects to pay; our laws regarding drunkenness, and our revenues derivedfrom the licenses for the sale of liquors; the utter failure of ourattempts to put down betting, gambling, and stock and gold speculations, prostitution, bribery, frauds, and plundering of the public funds; toconvince ourselves that there are many things law can not do, even inthis nineteenth century of civilization. 

Our little progress, such as it is, has not been made all at once, or byone great advance. God gives mankind blessings by degrees. He gave themariner's compass to the fourteenth century, the printing press andAmerica to the fifteenth, the Bible in the vulgar tongue to thesixteenth, parliamentary government to the seventeenth, the steamengine to the eighteenth, railroads and the telegraph to the nineteenth. One might as well cavil at his providence for not giving the Hebrewssewing machines, Hoe's printing presses, and daily newspapers, when theyentered into Canaan, as for delaying to give them the elements ofChristian civil law, and social life, before they were able to value andto use them. 

As it was, Moses' law was so far in advance of their own ideas ofpropriety, and so far in advance of those of all the people around them, that they were continually falling back from it, and rebelling againstit, and subjecting themselves to the discipline which God had threatenedfor disobedience. Thus they were kept ever looking upward to a highermodel. Their transgressions must be confessed as sins, and atoned for bybloody sacrifices, declaring the transgressor worthy of death. Theirconsciences were educated to the idea of holiness, an idea utterlywanting among the heathen; and the law became a powerful motive power, urging them to higher and holier lives, and preparing them to receivethe higher and holier example and precepts of Christ. 

The imperfection, then, of the law of Moses, so far from being anevidence of the human origin of the Bible, is a mark of the infinitewisdom of the great Lawgiver in adapting his legislation to thecondition of his people; and while tolerating for the time then presentan imperfect state of society, just as at this time he tolerates aChristendom far below the gospel standard, yet implanting in the mindsof his people principles of righteousness and love which were certaineventually to raise them to the high level of the kingdom of God. This, then, is simply an instance of the general law of divine development. 

4. Again, however, it is contended, "that the morality of the OldTestament was narrow and bigoted; requiring, indeed, the observance ofcharity to the covenant people, but allowing Israel to hate all othersas enemies, and as well expressed in the text, _Thou shalt love thyneighbor and hate thine enemy. _"[164]

But let it be noticed, that this is no text of Scripture, nor does ourLord so quote it. He does not say it is so written, but, _ye have heardit said by them of old time_. The first part is God's truth; the secondis the devil's addition to it, which Christ clears away and denounces. It were easy to quote multitudes of passages from the Old Testament, commanding Israel to show kindness to the stranger, and a whole host ofpromises, that in them all the families of the earth should be blessed;any one of which would sufficiently refute the foolish notion, that themorality of the Old Testament was geographical, and its charity merelynational. But the simple fact, that the most sublime sanction ofworld-wide benevolence which ever fell even from the lips of Christhimself, was uttered by him as the sum and substance of the teachings ofthe Old Testament, conclusively confutes this dogma. The Golden Rule wasno new discovery, unless its Author was mistaken, for he says:"_Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, doye even so to them_: FOR THIS IS THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS. "[165] Hedeclares the very basis and foundation of the whole Old Testamentreligion to be those eternal principles of godliness and charity, whichhe quotes in the very words of the law: "_Then one of them, which was alawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which isthe great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt lovethe Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with allthy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second islike unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these twocommandments hang all the law and the prophets. _"[166] The law and theprophets, then, taught genuine world-wide benevolence, Christ beingwitness; and the moral law of the Old Testament is the moral law of theNew Testament, if we may believe the Lawgiver. 

5. Still, it is alleged, "it can not be denied that the writers of theOld Testament breathed a spirit of vindictiveness, and imprecated curseson their enemies, utterly at variance with the precepts of the gospel, which command us to bless and curse not; and even in their solemndevotions uttered sentiments unfit for the mouth of any Christian; northat their views of the character of God were stern and gloomy, and thatthey represented the Hebrew Jehovah as an unforgiving and vengefulbeing, utterly different from the kind and loving Father whom Christdelighted to reveal. "

This, if the truth were told, is the grand objection to the OldTestament. The holy and righteous sin-hating God, presented in itshistory, is the object of dislike. The God who drowned the old world, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven, commanded theextermination of the lewd and bloody Canaanites, thundered his cursesagainst sinners of every land and every age, saying, "_Cursed be he thatconfirmeth not all the words of this law to do them_, " requiring all thepeople to say _Amen_, [167] is not the God whom Universalists can find intheir hearts to adore. A mild, easy, good-natured being, who would allowmen to live and die in sin without any punishment, would suit thembetter. They try to think that he is altogether such an one asthemselves, and an approver of their sin. 

But it is worth while to inquire whether the Father of our Lord JesusChrist be in this respect anything different from the Hebrew Jehovah, orwhether the gospel has in the least degree lessened his displeasureagainst iniquity. Paul thought not that he was a different person, whenhe said:

"_We know him who hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I willrecompense, saith the Lord. _"[168] Jesus thought not that he was morelenient to sinners when he cried, "_Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe untothee, Bethsaida! * * * Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell * * * It shall be more tolerable for theland of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. _"[169] It is not inthe Old Testament, but in the New, that we are told that Jesus himselfshall come "_In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall bepunished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, andfrom the glory of his power. _"[170] It is not an old, bigoted Hebrewprophet giving a vision of the Hebrew Jehovah, but the beloved disciplewho leaned on Jesus' breast, picturing the Savior himself, who says:"_He was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is calledthe Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him uponwhite horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of hismouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations; andhe shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treadeth the wine-press ofthe fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. _"[171]

Let no man imagine that the New Testament offers impunity to the wicked, or that the Old Testament denies mercy to the repenting sinner, or thatChrist exhibited any other God than the God of Abraham, Isaac andJacob--the same Hebrew Jehovah who _commands the wicked to forsake hisway, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and to return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantlypardon_. [172] It is exceedingly strange that those who dwell upon thepaternal character of God, as a distinctive feature of Christ's personalteaching, should have forgotten that the hymns of the Old Testamentchurch, a thousand years before his coming, were full of this endearingrelation; that it was by the first Hebrew prophet that the HebrewJehovah declared, "_Israel is my son, even my first-born; and I say untothee, Let my son go, that he may serve me_;"[173] and that by the lastof them he urges Israel to obedience by this tender appeal: "_If I be afather, where is mine honor?_"[174] It was not Christ, but David--one ofthose gloomy, stern, Hebrew prophets--who penned that noble hymn to ourFather in heaven, which Christ illustrated in his Sermon on the Mount:

 "The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, Neither will he keep his anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities; For as the heaven is high above the earth, So great is his mercy to them that fear him; As far as the East is from the West, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, So the Lord pitieth them that fear him. "--Psalm ciii. 

It is utter ignorance of the Old Testament which prompts any one toimagine that it presents any other character of God than "_The Lord, theLord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant ingoodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity andtransgression and sin, and that will by no means clear theguilty. _"[175] This is the name which God proclaimed to Moses, and thisis the character which he proclaimed in Christ, when he cried on thecross: "_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But thou art holy, Othou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. _"[176] Justice and mercy areunited in Christ dying for the ungodly. 

It is untrue to say that the prophets of the Old Testament were actuatedby a spirit of malice, or of revenge for personal injuries as such, inpraying for, or prophesying destruction on the inveterate enemies of Godand his cause. [177] Of all Scripture characters, David has been mostdefamed for vindictiveness; but surely never was man more free from anysuch spirit, than the persecuted fugitive, who, with his enemy in hishand in the cave, and his confidential advisers urging him to take hislife, cut off his skirt instead of his head; and on another occasionprevented the stroke which would have smitten the sleeping Saul to theearth, and sent back even the spear and the cruse of water, the trophiesof his generosity. When cursed himself, and defamed as a vengefulshedder of blood by the Benjamite, he could restrain the fury of hisfollowers, protect the life of the ruffianly traitor, and thus appeal toGod as the witness of his innocence:

 "O Lord, my God! if I have done this, If there be iniquity in my hands, If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me, Yea I have delivered him that without cause was mine enemy. "[178]

It is true that he does bitterly curse several living persons; of whomit is observable that some had done him no sort of personal injury; asDoeg the Edomite--the Nana Sahib of his day--who anticipated the scenesof Cawnpore, in the streets of Nob, by mercilessly butcheringunoffending men, helpless women, and innocent babes. But surely nofriend of humanity can imagine that it is improper that the chiefmagistrate of Israel, anointed for the very purpose of being a terror toevil doers, should express his righteous indignation against suchatrocities; nor confound such public execration with the petty gnawingsof private revenge. Still less can the fearer of God doubt the proprietyof his expressing by the mouth of his prophet, that displeasure hesignally displayed by his providence, scathing and blasting the accursedwretch into a terror to all bloody and deceitful men who shall readtheir own warning in his doom. 

 "God shall likewise destroy thee forever, He shall take thee away and pluck thee from thy dwelling, And root thee out of the land of the living. "[179]

We have the most solemn assurance, that every one of the historicalincidents of Scripture is recorded for our instruction, and that everyprophecy gives a lesson to all ages. "_Now all these things happenedunto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, uponwhom the ends of the world are come. _"[180] The imprecations of theBible against individual sinners are the gibbets on which thesemalefactors are hung up for warning to all men to flee the crimes thatbrought them to that fate. 

It is put beyond the possibility of doubt, by the combined testimony ofthe Lord and his apostles, that by far the greater number of the curseswhich David uttered, he spoke in the person of Christ himself, of whomhe was a type; and with direct reference to the crimes and punishment ofhis enemies. Thus the Sixty-ninth Psalm, and the One hundred and ninth, pre-eminently the cursing Psalms, are most explicitly and repeatedlyasserted by Christ, by Peter, and by John, to belong to Christ, and toexpress his very words: "_This scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerningJudas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. * * * For it iswritten in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and letno man dwell therein. And, His bishopric let another take. _"[181] If anyone feels reluctant to imagine that such cursings should fall from thelips of the merciful Savior, let him remember that the most awful cursewhich shall ever fall on the ears of terrified men shall be pronouncedby Jesus himself, "_Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, preparedfor the devil and his angels. _"[182] The solemn facts of the Bible willnot accommodate themselves to our likes and dislikes. Christ lovesrighteousness and hates iniquity; in the Bible he takes leave to say so, and he expects his people to share his feelings, and to be willing toexpress them on fit occasions. 

Personal revenge, and curses for mere personal injuries, are forbiddenin the New Testament as well as in the Old. But it was an apostle ofJesus Christ who cried, "_If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, lethim be accursed. Though we or an angel from heaven bring any othergospel unto you, let him be accursed. _"[183] Nor until we can in somemeasure feel this holy indignation against sin, and this burning desireto see all tyranny, superstition, bribery, licentiousness, andprofanity, crushed and banished from the earth, can we pray in truth"_Thy kingdom come. _" Still less can we be prepared for the rejoicingsof heaven over the conquest of the enemies of God and man: "_Rejoiceover her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hathavenged you on her. _"

Reader, you hope to go to heaven; but it may be a different place fromwhat you dream of. Did you ever study the employment of the saintsthere? Are you washed from your sins? Is your mind purified from yourcarnal notions? Unless a man be born again he can not see the kingdom ofGod. Are your likes and dislikes, your sentiments and sympathies, yourunderstanding and your will, all brought into subjection to Christ? Canyou heartily love and adore a sin-hating, sin-avenging God? Or do youshrink back in terror or dislike from God's denunciations of wrathagainst the wicked? Would your benevolence lead you to deal alike withthe righteous and the wicked; and to abhor the thought of destroyingthem that destroy the earth? Then how will you join in the hallelujahsof heaven; for God's judgments are the themes of thanksgiving and praisefrom saints and angels there, and this is their song:

"_Hallelujah, salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto the Lord, our God, for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judgedthe great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, andhath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands. And again theysaid, Hallelujah! And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the fourand twenty elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipedGod that sat on the throne, saying, Amen! Hallelujah! And a voice cameout of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants; and yethat fear him, both small and great. And I heard as it were the voice ofa great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice ofmighty thunderings, saying, Hallelujah!_ FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENTREIGNETH. "[184]

And now, if this be the character of God, if he be indeed one who hatesiniquity, and punishes impenitent sinners, we need not wonder that thosewho spake his word should utter imprecations, either in the OldTestament or in the New; but rather bless the mercy which warns beforejustice strikes, which hangs the red lantern over the abyss, and whichseeks by the terrors of the Lord to persuade men from perdition. Thecurses of the Bible are denounced against the enemies of God, with thedesign of showing sinners their danger, and leading them to repentance. 

The conclusion, then, of our investigation is, that the Old Testament isthe Word of God no less than the New; that it is in no respect contraryto it; that all its parts--the law and the prophets, and the Psalms--areof divine authority; that all its contents were written by divinedirection, whether prophecy or history, ceremony or morality, promise orthreatening, curses or blessings. It is of the Old Testament principallythat the Holy Ghost declares: "_All Scripture is given by inspiration ofGod, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, forinstruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. _"[185]

FOOTNOTES:

[120] Parker's Absolute Religion, p. 205. 

[121] Parker's Discourses on Religion, p. 161. 

[122] Macknight's Doctrine of Inspiration, p. 161, and seq. 

[123] Macknight's Doctrine of Inspiration, p. 192, etc. 

[124] Essays and Reviews, page 121. 

[125] John, chap. X. 25, 38. 

[126] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, p. 254. Annual Cyclopędia, 1863, p. 377. 

[127] Mastodon Giganteus, Boston, 1855, p. 199. 

[128] For a fuller discussion of the subject, and references to theauthorities, which our space here forbids, I must refer the curiousreader to the _Princeton Review_, Vol. XL. No. 4, where I have noticedevery fact bearing on the subject up to that date; merely adding that nonew fact, establishing man's remote antiquity, has been established upto this date, September 21, 1874. 

[129] Familiar Lectures, page 456. 

[130] Authenticity of the Pentateuch, II. 150. 

[131] Creation's Testimony to its God. London, 1867, page 338. 

[132] See this subject more fully discussed in chapter XII. , TelescopicViews of Scripture. 

[133] Osburn's Monumental History. 

[134] Hebrew Monarchy, 160. 

[135] Prof. Rawlinson's Modern Skepticism, 285. 

[136] Ancient Monarchies I. 65. 

[137] W. R. Cooper, Secretary Biblical Archęological Society, in _Faithand Free Thought_, page 257. 

[138] Rawlinson's Illustrations of Scripture. 

[139] 2 Kings, chap. Iv. 2 Chronicles, chap. Xx. 

[140] Recovery of Jerusalem, page 496, Gunsberg's Essay. 

[141] Josephus against Apion, Book I. Sect. 8. Horne's IntroductionChap. Ii. Sect. 1. 

[142] Isaiah, chap. Iii. 16. Ezekiel, chap. Xviii. 12. 

[143] Jeremiah, chaps. Xxi. , and xxii. 16. 

[144] Jeremiah, chap. Xxii. 13. 

[145] Jeremiah, chap. Xxxiv. 

[146] Ezra, chap. Vi. 18. 

[147] Daniel, chap. Ix. 11. 

[148] Joshua, chaps. Xiii. -xix. 

[149] 1 Chronicles, chaps. I. -ix. Leviticus, chap. Xxv. 

[150] Exodus, chap. Xxi. 6. Deuteronomy, chap. I. 16; chap. Xix. 

[151] Exodus, chap. Xviii. 21. 

[152] Deuteronomy, chap. Xx. Numbers, chap. X. 9. 

[153] Deuteronomy, chap. Xxii. 8, 11, 12. Leviticus, chap. Xi. 

[154] Preface to Exposition of the Apocalypse. 

[155] Luke, chap. Xxiv. 25. 

[156] John, chap. V. 38, 39, 46, 47. 

[157] Matthew, chap. V. 17, 18. 

[158] Luke, chap. Xxiv. Throughout. 

[159] John, chap. Xx. 30. 

[160] Luke, chap. Xvi. 29. 

[161] Galatians, chap. Iii. 21. 

[162] Job, chap. Xix. 25. Psalm xvi. 10. Hebrews, chap. Xi. 13-16. Daniel, chap. Xii. 2, 3. 

[163] Matthew, chap. Xxii. 31, 32. 

[164] Matthew, chap. V. 43. 

[165] Matthew, chap. Vii. 12. 

[166] Matthew, chap. Xxii. 35-40. 

[167] Deuteronomy, chap. Xxvii. 26. 

[168] Hebrews, chap. X. 30. 

[169] Matthew, chap. Xi. 

[170] 2 Thessalonians, chap. I. 

[171] Revelation, chap. Xix. 

[172] Isaiah, chap. Lv. 

[173] Exodus, chap. Iv. 22. 

[174] Malachi, chap. I. 

[175] Exodus, chap. Xxxiv. 

[176] Psalm xxii. 

[177] 2 Timothy, chap. Iv. 14. 

[178] Psalm vii. 

[179] Psalms vii. And lii. And 2 Samuel, chaps. Xvi. , xxi. And xxii. 

[180] 1 Corinthians, chap. X. 

[181] John, chap. Ii. 17; chap. Xv. 25; chap. Xix. 28. Acts, chap. I. 20. 

[182] Matthew, chap. Xxv. 41. 

[183] Galatians, chap. I. 9. 1 Corinthians, chap. Xvi. 22. Revelation, chaps. Xix. , xx. And xxi. 

[184] Revelation, chaps. Xix. , xx. And xxi. 

[185] 2 Timothy, chap. Iii. 16, 17. 

CHAPTER X. 

INFIDELITY AMONG THE STARS. 

 A little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline a man's mind to Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. --BACON. 

When skeptics, who are determined not to believe in the Bible, find thehistorical evidences of its genuineness, authority, and inspiration, impregnable against the assaults of criticism, they turn their attentionto some other mode of attack, and of late years have selected theirweapons from the physical sciences. The argument thus raised is, thatthe Bible can not be the Word of God, because it asserts facts contraryto the teachings of science. Of this warfare Voltaire may be consideredthe leader, in his celebrated attack on the chemical processes recordedin Scripture; in which he exposed himself to the ridicule of all thechemists and metallurgists in Europe, by denying the possibility ofdissolving the golden calf; the solution of gold being actually found inevery gilder's shop in Paris, and known even to coiners and forgers, forhundreds of years before he made this notable discovery. The result wasominous. 

The whole circle of the sciences has been ransacked for such arguments, and especially has every new discovery been hailed by skeptics as anally to their cause, until further acquaintance has demonstrated thatthe stranger, too, was in alliance with religion. Thus, when a few yearsago, Geology began to upheave his titanic form, he was eagerly greetedas a being undoubtedly not of celestial, but rather of subterranean, oreven of infernal origin, willing to employ his gigantic powers in theassault upon heaven, and able to overwhelm the Bible and the Churchunder the ruins of former worlds. But now that skeptics have discoveredthe proofs he gives of the presence of the Almighty on this world ofours, they are getting shy of his acquaintance, and are cultivating thesociety of some still more juvenile visitors from the chambers of animalmagnetism and biology. The same scene will doubtless be acted overagain; and these infantile strangers, when able to give distinctutterance to the facts of their developed consciousness, will beartestimony to the truth of God. 

Such objections to the Bible are very rarely brought forward by trulyscientific men. It is a phenomenon, like the advent of a great comet, tofind a man profoundly versed in science attack the Bible. Your third orfourth rate men of learning attain distinction in this field. Ananti-Bible writer or lecturer has generally been promoted to that higheminence from the school-room, or the editorial sanctum of anunsuccessful newspaper; or his patients have not sufficientlyappreciated his physic; or he has failed in getting a patent right forhis wonderful perpetual motion; or possibly he has enlarged hispractical knowledge of science in the laboratory of some college, or hashad his head turned by being asked to hear the mathematical recitationsduring the sickness of some professor. But to hear of men like Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton, and Leibnitz, or Lyell, Mantell, Herschel, Agassiz, Hitchcock, Faraday, Balbo, Nichol, or Rosse, heading an attackupon Christianity, would be an unprecedented phenomenon. Such men areprofoundly impressed with the thorough agreement between the facts ofnature rightly observed, and the declarations of the Bible rightlyinterpreted. 

It is equally rare to hear of a specialist in any department of scienceassume Atheistic ground in that department; though a few of that classare willing to believe that some other department of science, of whichthey have no personal knowledge, favors Infidelity. Even Huxley, withall his nonsense about the identical composition of the protoplasm ofthe mutton chop, and that of the lecturer, denies, and disproves, spontaneous generation, and votes in the London School Board for thereading of the Bible. The leading Infidel writers, such as Comte andSpencer, are not distinguished by any personal scientific researches anddiscoveries; they are merely collectors and retailers, at second-hand, of other men's discoveries. The original scientific explorers anddiscoverers are few and modest. 

Nevertheless, the other class, being both the most numerous and the mostnoisy, make up by loquacity for their deficiency of science, andcounterbalance their ignorance by their assurance. Such writers, assuming that they have outstripped all the philosophers of former days, will tell you how foolishly David, and Kepler, and Bacon, and Newton, and Herschel dreamed of the heavens declaring the glory of the Lord, andthe firmament showing his handiwork; "while at the present time, and forminds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, theheavens display no other powers than those of natural laws, and no otherglory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, of Newton, and of all who havehelped to discover them. " Theology belongs only to the infancy of thehuman intellect; metaphysical philosophy is the amusement of youth; butthe full-grown man has learned to relinquish both religion and reason, and comes to the "positive state of science in which the human mind, acknowledging the impossibility of obtaining absolute knowledge, abandons the search after the origin and destination of the universe, and the knowledge of the secret causes of phenomena. " The crown ofmodern science is ultimately to be placed upon the brow of Atheism; butlong before that eagerly desired achievement, the old Bible theology isto be buried beyond the possibility of a resurrection, under mountainsof natural laws, and monuments of scientific discovery. Theseassertions, confidently made, and perseveringly reiterated in the earsof ungodly men ignorant of the facts, of impetuous youths eager to throwoff the restraints of religion, of Christians weak in the faith, andeven poured into the unsuspecting mind of childhood, produce the mostpainful results; and it becomes the imperative duty of the bishops ofthe Church of Christ not to allow them to pass unchallenged, but toconvince the gainsayers, and stop the mouths of these unruly and vaintalkers; or, if that be not possible, to make their folly manifest toall men. The implements for such a service are well tried and abundant, and the difficulty lies only in making a proper selection. 

At first view, the extinction of religion by science seems veryunlikely. It is as unlikely that any thing that an Infidel says aboutreligion should be true, as that a blind man should describe the suncorrectly, or even read a chapter accurately, with the book open beforehim? I shall show you presently that learned Infidels make the grossestblunders respecting the plainest Scripture records of scientific facts. It is very unlikely that Infidels, who lay no claim to propheticinspiration, should make any predictions about religion more reliablethan those they have been telling so abundantly for two hundred yearspast, respecting the immediate overthrow of Christianity and the Bible;which, nevertheless, has been going on conquering new kingdoms everyyear, its missionaries outstripping scientific ardor in exploring themysteries of African geography, honorably receiving the prizes which theInfidel Volney instituted for philological proficiency, and printingBibles from Voltaire's printing-press. And it is very unlikely thatthese physical sciences, so long worshipers in the temple of God, shouldnow become impious; as unlikely as that Hitchcock, or McCosh, or Hodge, or Barnes should now, in their old days, renounce the Bible, andblaspheme God. What! astronomy, and zoology, and botany, andethnography, that were suckled at the breast of the Bible, raise theirhands against the mother that bore them! Incredible! These sciences madean early profession of religion; taught Sabbath-school in the days ofJob, Zophar, and Elihu; wrote sacred poetry, and were licensed topreach, in the days of Solomon; poured forth prophetic raptures in thedays of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah; wrote volumes on thepolitics of Christianity in Babylon, and painted glorious visions of thevictories of the Lamb of God, and dazzling views of the landscapes ofparadise restored, in Patmos; employed the gigantic intellect of Newton, the elegant pen of Paley, the eloquence of Chalmers, Herschel'sheaven-piercing eye, and Miller's muscular arm, to guard the outercourts of the sanctuary, while they sung sublime anthems to the music ofDavid's harp within. Have they now, after such a life of devotion, relinquished all these sublimities and beatitudes, taken lodgings in thesty, and renounced their faith in God, and hope of heaven, for theInfidel maxim, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?" God forbid!On the contrary, all matured science glorifies its Creator. 

As a specimen of the testimony of matured science to religion, let uslook at the progress of astronomy, as it has successively swept away oneAtheistic theory after another, answered anti-Bible objections, andillustrated promises couched in heavenly figures, long incomprehensibleto the Church. If, in order to present something like a fair outline ofthe bearings of astronomy on modern Atheism, we should have occasion torepeat, expand, and illustrate some things already introduced inprevious chapters, the repetition won't hurt us. A good story is nothingthe worse for being twice told; and the story of our opponents isnothing but a ceaseless repetition of the Atheism of twenty centuries. 

The progress of astronomical science has swept away the alleged facts onwhich all systems of Atheism have been based. 

1. _It has refuted the fundamental dogma of Atheism, that the universeis infinite, and therefore self-existent. _

The assertion is confidently made by Atheists and Pantheists, that theuniverse has no boundaries; not merely none which we can see, but thatit actually fills all immensity; suns succeeding suns, and firmamentclustering beyond firmament, throughout infinite space. 

It is indispensable for the Atheist not only to assert, but to provethis to be the fact, if he would convince himself, or any other person, that the universe had no Creator, but exists by the necessity of its ownnature; for that which exists by the necessity of its own nature mustexist in all time, and in every place. No reason can be given whyself-existent suns, planets, and moons should exist in any one portionof space, and not exist in any other similar portion of space. For ifsuch a reason could be given, that reason must show a cause for theirexistence in the one place, and their non-existence in another; and thatcause must have existed before the universe, and must have been a causesufficient to produce the effect. This sufficient cause includes abilityto produce, wisdom to arrange, and force to put in motion all the powersof the universe; qualities which reside only in an intelligent being. This is the cause which the Bible asserts when it says, "In thebeginning GOD created the heavens and the earth, " and which Atheistsdeny when they assert that "the universe is eternal and infinite. "

Now, this fundamental article of the creed of Infidels is utterlyincapable of proof. If the fact were really so, they never could proveit. They acknowledge no revelation from an infinite understanding, butfound their belief on the knowledge of a number of finite and ignorantbeings. Before they are competent to pronounce upon the extent of theuniverse, they must explore it thoroughly; which, when they shall havedone, they will have demonstrated that it has boundaries, seeing theyhave discovered them; but, if they have not thoroughly explored theuniverse, they can not say that it is infinite, because they do notknow. The very utmost, then, which could possibly be asserted on thematter would be, not that the universe has no boundaries, but that manhas never reached them. As in the case of ocean soundings, if we can notfind bottom, we are not therefore to conclude that there is none, butthat our line is not long enough, or our lead not heavy enough to reachit. 

It were a logical absurdity to say, that the whole is greater than thesum of its parts--that any number of finite parts could compose aninfinite universe. Each sun or planet is a finite object, and anypossible number of them can be counted in a sufficient time. It isimpossible that any number can be infinite; for we are not using theword infinite here in the loose sense in which it is used bymathematicians, when they speak of an infinite series; that is, a serieswhich, though it has no end, has a beginning; but in the strict sense ofsomething having neither beginning nor end. A beginning of the universe, either in space or time, is the very thing the Atheist denies. 

The same objection applies to the allegation, that infinite space isfull of ether, air, gas, nebulę, or any other kind of matter. It is anassertion incapable of proof; and therefore thoroughly unscientific; asall Infidel theories are. But if it could be proven that every part ofspace accessible to our telescopes is full of an ether whose undulationstransmit light, as we believe it can, that would be only a proof of thefinitude of matter. That ether consists of parts whose movements can bemeasured and numbered; and no possible multitude of such parts canamount to the infinite. 

While reason thus enables us to show this dogma of the infinity of theuniverse to be theoretically improbable, and logically irrational, science has lately taken a more decisive step, and demonstrated it to beactually false. The universe has boundaries, and we have seen them. Theproof is simple, and easily demonstrable. That broad band of luminouscloud which stretches across the heaven, called the Milky Way, consistsof millions of stars, so small and distant that we can not see theindividual stars, and so numerous that we can not help seeing the lightof the mass; just as you see the outline of the forest at a distance, but are unable to distinguish the individual trees. Besides this mass ofstars to which our solar system belongs, there are thousands of smallersimilar clouds in various parts of the heavens, which have successivelybeen shown to consist of multitudes of stars. But all around thesestar-clouds the clear blue sky is discovered by the naked eye. 

Now, it is easy to perceive, that if all the regions of infinite spacewere filled either with self-luminous suns, or planets capable ofreflecting light, or luminous nebulę, or comets of gaseous consistency, at such distances as the Milky Way, or any other star-cloud demonstratesto be safe and practicable, we should see no blue sky at all; but thewhole vault of heaven would present that whitish light resulting fromthe mingling of the rays of multitudes of stars, planets, and comets, which the Milky Way does actually exhibit. No matter how small or howdistant these stars, _if they were only infinitely numerous_, it isimpossible that there could be any point in the heavens unilluminated bytheir rays, even although the stars themselves were invisible to oureyes, or even to our telescopes. The whole heaven would be one vastMilky Way. Or rather, as Humboldt reasons, "If the entire vault ofheaven were covered with innumerable strata of stars, one behind theother, as with a widespread starry canopy, and light were undiminishedin its passage through space, the sun would be distinguished only by itsspots, the moon would appear as a dark disc, and amid the general blazenot a constellation would be visible. "[186] It would appear also tofollow, as a necessary consequence, that such an infinite multitude ofblazing suns must generate a heat compared with which the generalconflagration would be cool and comfortable. 

But the telescope shows us a state of matters vastly different fromthis. It shows us, in fact, that space, so far from being occupied withsuns and stars, is mostly empty. Our universe is only a little island inthe great ocean of infinite space. 

Though the telescope discovers multitudes of stars where the naked eyesees none, yet they are, in far the greater number of instances, "_seenprojected on a perfectly dark heaven, without any appearance ofintermixed nebulosity_. "[187] And even through the Milky Way, and theother nebulę, the telescope penetrates, through "_intervals absolutelydark, and completely void of any star, of the smallest telescopicmagnitude_. "[188] It may assist us to understand the full import of thisdeclaration, to remember that Lord Rosse's large telescope clearlydefines any object on the moon's surface as large as the Custom House. Its power of penetrating space surpasses our power of imagination, butis represented by saying, that light, which flashes from San Franciscoto London quicker than you can close your eye and open it again, requires _millions of years_ to travel to our earth from the mostdistant star-cloud discoverable by this telescope. [189] If a galaxy likethis of ours existed anywhere within this amazing distance, thattelescope would discover its existence. It has, in fact, augmented theuniverse visible to us, 125, 000, 000 times, and thus made us feel thatnot merely this world, which constitutes our earthly all, and yonglorious sun, which shines upon it, but all the host of heaven's suns, and planets, and moons, and firmaments, which our unaided eyes behold, are but as a handful of the sand of the ocean shore compared with theimmensity of the universe. But ever, and along with this, it has shownus the ocean as well as the shore, and revealed boundless regions ofdarkness and solitude stretching around and far away beyond theseislands of existence. The telescope, then, enlarges and confirms ourviews of the extent of the unoccupied portions of space. 

If there were only one dark point of the heavens no larger than theapparent magnitude of the smallest star, this one unoccupied space wouldsufficiently disprove the infinity of the universe, inasmuch as therewould be a portion of space of boundless length, and of a diameter notless than the diameter of the earth's orbit, say 190, 000, 000 miles, inwhich stars might exist, as they do in its borders, but yet do not. Butthe argument becomes utterly overwhelming, when the attempt is made tocalculate the proportion of space occupied by the stars to that leftunoccupied. Whether we take Herschel's computation, that the nebulęcover one two hundred and seventieth part of the superficies of thevisible heaven, [190] or Struve's supposition of the existence of a starsubtending no measurable angle, in every part of the visible sky aslarge as the surface of the moon, the vast disproportion of theuniverse, to the space in which it is placed, forces itself upon ournotice. For, upon the largest of these computations, the proportion ofexistence to empty space is mathematically proved to be not greaterthan as the cube of one to the cube of two hundred and sixty-nine; thatis to say, there is room for 19, 395, 109 such universes as this of oursin that small part of infinite space open to the view of Herschel'stelescopes. But when we come to consider the vastness of these regionsof darkness, over which no light has traveled for twenty millions ofyears, and remember also that astronomers have looked clear through thenebulę, and find that they bear no more cubical proportion to theinfinite darkness behind them than the sparks of a chimney do to theextent of the sky against which they seem projected, so far fromimagining the universe to be infinite, we stand confounded at itsrelative insignificance, and are convinced that it bears no moreproportion to infinite space than a fishing-boat does to the AtlanticOcean. 

There is no possible evasion of this great fact, by any contradictoryhypothesis. It can not be objected "that stars may exist at infinitedistances, whose light has not yet reached the limits of our universe. "If they do, they did not exist from eternity, for there is no possibledistance over which light could not have traveled, during eternalduration. But their eternal existence is the very thing which theAtheist is concerned to prove. Grant that infinite space is filled withworlds _which had a beginning_, and their necessary existence instantlyfalls, and we are compelled to seek for a cause of their beginning ofexistence; that is to say, a Creator. 

Nor will it answer the purpose to say, "that for anything we know to thecontrary, these dark regions may be filled with dark stars. "

If the fact were so, it is equally fatal to the dogma of self-existence. Some stars shine; others are dark. Why so? Wherefore this difference?Variety is an effect, and demands a prior cause. Were there only twostars in the sky, or two substances on the earth, and those unlike inany particular, that plurality, and that variety, would prove that theycould not be infinite or self-existent, but dependent upon some causefor their existence, and for their variety of form. 

But we do know many things contrary to the notion that the dark regionsof infinite space may be full of dark stars. Light is not the onlyindication of the presence of a star. The attraction of gravity, whichis wholly independent of light, is a proof quite as certain andsatisfactory to the astronomer. The presence of stars and planets toofaint to be discovered by the naked eye, and of one, the planetNeptune, [191] as far distant from the planet disturbed by its attractionas the earth is from the sun, was ascertained, and its place pointed outby Adams and Le Verrier, _before it was seen_. If the darkinterplanetary spaces, then, were full of dark attracting bodies, theperturbations of the other planets would discover their existence. Sothe presence of some invisible stars at much greater distances fromtheir visible associates has been discovered by Bessel, [192] and it isquite possible that a dark firmament may yet be discovered, containingas great a number of dark stars as we now behold of luminaries; anothergroup of islets in the ocean of infinite space. But the very facts whichwill prove their existence will disprove their infinity; for we can knowtheir presence only by their perturbation of the proper motions of thevisible stars; but if infinite space were full of dark bodies, thevisible stars would have no room to move at all. It is easilydemonstrable, that if infinite space were filled with dark stars, theequilibrium and coherence of our galaxy, and of all other clusters ofstars, would be destroyed. The existence of nebulę, and clusters, andthe revolutions of the binary stars, are conclusive proof that the darkparts of infinite space are not full of dark attracting bodies. 

Nor can the Atheist here raise his usual argument from unknown facts, and say that, "far beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, aboundless expanse of firmaments may exist. " It concerns not our presentargument whether such exist or not. Whatsoever discoveries may be madeto eternity, of firmaments, ten thousand times ten thousand times largerthan we now behold, _they can never bear the smallest proportion to theinfinite space in which they exist_. Beyond these islets will extendgulfs and oceans immeasurable. Our argument, however, has no concernwith the unknown possible, but with the actual fact--visible to thenaked eye and confirmed by the telescope--that there is a portion ofspace in which millions of universes such as this might exist withsafety, yet they do not. Worlds, therefore, do not exist by thenecessity of their own nature, wherever there is room for them, but musthave had some pre-existent, external, and supernatural cause of theirexistence in this place and not in other places. This implieschoice--will--God. 

The physical refutation of the self-existence of the universe iscompleted by the discovery, _that all the orbs of heaven, as well as theearth, are in motion, and that an orderly and regulated motion_. [193]The fact need not be illustrated, for it is not denied. The consequenceis inevitable. That which is self-existent must be unchangeable; forchange is an effect, and demands a cause; and the cause must existbefore the effect, and produce it. Whatsoever is changeable, then, is aproduct of a prior cause, and so not self-existent. But every part ofthe universe is changeable, for it is in motion, which is a change ofplace; and, therefore, is not self-existent, but the product of a priorcause. 

Professor Fick, who was some time since called from Zurich to fill theprofessorship of physiology at Wurzburg, and who is known by hisexperiments on muscular physics, in a recent work on the transformationof force, brings out the argument in proof of the non-eternity of ouruniverse in a new form. He shows that heat is continually being lost byradiation; and when mechanical force is converted into heat _some_ ofthat heat can never be brought back to be mechanical force. And as thischange from mechanical force to heat is ever going on, all force must atlast turn into heat, in which case all difference of temperature wouldbe lost and universal stagnation and death would be the result. He thenconcludes in the following words, which we quote from _Nature_, Macmillan's weekly: "We are come to this alternative; either in ourhighest, or most general, our most fundamental scientific abstractionssome great point has been overlooked; or the universe will have an end, and must have had a beginning; could not have existed from eternity, butmust at some date, not infinitely distant, have arisen from somethingnot forming part of the chain of natural causes, _i. E. _, must have beencreated. "[194]

To this it has been replied, that motion is the normal condition ofmatter; arising from the force of gravitation, acting in and upon thevarious bodies composing the universe; and mathematical calculationshave been attempted to show how vortices, and spiral motions, could beproduced by the force of gravitation, and the mutual resistances of theatoms originally composing the universe. 

But this attempt is easily seen to be a failure. The attraction ofgravitation alone can not possibly produce any such motion as we beholdin the heavens; nor can it originate, nor sustain, any kind of eternalmotion whatever. For the attraction of gravitation is always in rightlines; but there is no rectilinear motion in the heavens; all celestialmotions are curvilinear. Nor can the attraction of gravitation accountfor the maintenance of any kind of eternal motion. Its tendency is todraw all bodies to the center of gravity, and to keep them there, in onevast heap, by the force of their mutual attraction; thus bringing allmotion to an eternal rest. 

To this it is now replied that motion is the equivalent of light, heat, electricity, and chemical reaction; all of which are convertible intomotion. These are properties of matter, and inseparable from it, and soas eternal as itself. 

We have already disproved the eternity of matter; but if, for the sakeof argument, it were granted, yet would not the regulated and orderlymotions of the universe be thereby accounted for. For these forceseither exactly balance the force of gravitation, or they do not. If theydo not, and their repulsion prevails, by even the slightest degree, theparticles of matter had been driven away into infinite space millions ofyears ago, and suns, and planets, and atheistic philosophers, would havevanished like the baseless fabric of a vision. But if the attraction ofgravitation had prevailed, by even the weight of an ounce, long ages agosun, moon and stars would have rushed together into one vast mountainmass, whose attraction would have been so great, that no living creaturecould move upon its surface, and whose parts would be compressed into adensity compared with which quicksilver would be lighter than cork. 

But if, on the other hand, it be alleged, that these inherent forces ofmatter exactly balance its power of gravitation--with which they have noother apparent relation--then the argument is irresistible, that thesegrains of sand and drops of water and globes of granite being unequal tosuch calculations, there was some calculating engineer at work arrangingthe motions of the stars. 

No mechanical law is a sufficient cause for this motion. To allege thata power of orderly, regulated motion--and there is no other sort ofmotion in heaven or earth--is an inherent property of matter, is simplyto insult our common sense, and overturn the foundation of all reason. For we have no knowledge of matter, and can have none, more certain thanwe have of the constitution of our own minds, which requires us to traceup every change among material objects to _the energy and will of aperson_ capable of planning and effecting the change. To refer us to thelaw of gravity is not to give us a cause for the motions of the heavenlybodies, but only a _name_; for law is only _a rule of action_. We demanda lawgiver--an agent--a _force_, capable of producing effects. When thelaw of projectiles makes a cannon-ball, and projects it, we will believethat the law of gravity made the worlds, and moves them. 

"Descending within the mind's interior chambers, I find no conviction sosure of the existence of an external world, as is my belief in thereality of _power_--of something that sustains succession, and causesorder. Again, then, whence this idea, and what is it? What thisattribute with which I endow material laws, and raise them into_forces_? Now, in my apprehension, the strictest scrutiny can not obtainfor these inquiries any reply save one; we _primarily_ connect the ideaof _power_ with no change or movement, except an act or determination ofthe FREE WILL; but from such acts, that idea is inseparable. If, therefore, in order to explain the progress of material things, werequire the agency of _efficient causes_, is not this a direct andsolemn recognition--through all form and transiency--of the necessity ofan _ever-present creative power_; a power requisite and necessary touphold--to renew the universe every moment--or, rather, to prolongcreation by the persistence of the creative act? And, in very truth, startling though it be, such is the only and ultimate scientific idea ofthe divine omnipresence. Law is not even the Almighty's minister; theorder of the material world, however close and firm, is not merely theAlmighty's ordinance. The _forces_, if so we name them, which expressthat order, are not powers which he has evolved from the silences, andto whose guardianship he has committed all things, so that he himselfmight repose. No! above, below, around, _there_ is God; there hisuniversal presence, speaking to finite creatures, in finite forms, alanguage which only the living heart can understand. In the rain andsunshine; in the soft zephyrs; in the cloud, the torrent, and thethunder; in the bursting blossom, and the fading branch; in therevolving season, and the rolling star; there is the infinite essence, and the mystic development of HIS WILL. "[195]

2. _Scientific astronomy inexorably demolishes the Atheistic scheme forthe arrangement of the solar system by accident, commonly known asBuffon's cosmogony. _

"Buffon supposed that the force of a comet falling obliquely on the sunhas projected to a distance a torrent of the matter of which it iscomposed, as a stone thrown into a basin causes the water which itcontains to splash out. This torrent of matter, in a state of fusion, has broken into several parts, which have been arrested at differentdistances from the sun, according to their density, or the impetus theyreceived. They then united in spheres, by the effect of the motion ofrotation, and condensing by cold, have become opaque and solid planetsand satellites. "[196]

This formation of worlds by accident, it is true, gave no reason for theform of their orbits, for their rotation on their axes, in onedirection, and that, too, the direction of their motion, nor for severalother matters, of which Infidels make little account, but about whichplain men like to ask, namely: Where did the sun come from? What meltedit down into a fluid state, fit to be splashed about? Where did thecomet come from? And who threw it with so correct an aim throughinfinite space as exactly to hit the sun _in an oblique direction_. Creation, it seems, was nearly missed, after all. This chaotic theorynever gained much respect from men of science, though its simplicityspeedily opened its way among the vulgar, and it has ever been afavorite with the most ignorant class of Infidels, numbering thousandsof warm advocates, even at the present day. 

It was thought to be very much corroborated by the discovery of theasteroids, and their supposed formation by the explosion of a largerbody. There is a certain proportion observed in the distances of theorbits of the planets from each other--a breadth or gauge, as it were, on the celestial railroad. But there was the breadth of a track betweenthe orbits of Mars and Jupiter on which no train ran, and this vacancyexcited the curiosity of astronomers. In the first seven years of thiscentury, three very small planets were discovered, running near thistrack; and Dr. Olbers, the discoverer of Pallas, finding that they werenearly in the same track, and sometimes crossed each other, and thatthey were diminutively small--bearing about the same proportion to aregular planet which a hand-car does to a freight train--imagined thatthey were formed by the explosion of a large planet; that the boiler ofthe large locomotive had burst, the fragments had all lighted upon thetrack again, in the shape of hand-cars, and the hand-cars hadmagnanimously resolved to keep running, and do the business of the line;and that, as there must have been material enough in the original planetto make some thousands of them, more would be discovered by watching twodepots, at the crossings of the tracks, in the constellations Virgo andthe Whale, where they must all pass. In fact, he did himself findanother, very near one of these nodes; more recently many others havebeen found; and astronomers now expect to hear of one or two more everyyear. 

At first sight his theory seemed strengthened by every new discovery. It is true, reflecting men could not help wondering at such amarvelously regular explosion as would produce beautiful little orderlyplanets, going so regularly too, and all by accident. They never heardof the blowing up of a palace producing cottages, or the explosion of asteamboat throwing off the hurricane deck in the shape of whaleboats, orthe bursting of a locomotive producing model engines, or even hand-cars. However, as the theory removed God out of sight, it was generallyaccepted and freely used by Infidels, to show that the world had no needof a Creator. 

But astronomers saw, that as each new asteroid had a track of its own, and ran to a different terminus, and the roads in which they ran were ofdifferent gauges and grades--one little asteroid, Pallas, running up anddown a track inclined thirty-five degrees, just as speedily as theothers--every new discovery increased the difficulty of accounting fortheir origin by explosion. But the discovery of the planet Hygeia, at avast distance from the others, utterly overturned the explosion theory. Loomis says:

"The difficulties in the way of our regarding these small planets, asfragments of a single body, were well nigh-insuperable before thediscovery of Hygeia. This last discovery has probably given thedeath-blow to the theory of Olbers. The orbit of Hygeia completelyincloses the orbits of several of the asteroids, its periheliondistance--that is, its least distance from the sun--exceeding theaphelion--or greatest distance--of Flora by _twenty-five millions ofmiles_. _No change of position of the orbits could, therefore, bringthese orbits to a coincidence. _"[197]

The matter has been finally settled by the greatest of modernmathematicians, Le Verrier, who has subjected the eccentricities, distances, and inclinations of the orbits of the asteroids to amathematical investigation, the result of which is as follows:

"In the present state of things, these eccentricities and theseinclinations are totally incompatible with Olbers' hypothesis, whichsupposed that the small planets--some of which were discovered even inhis day--were produced from the wreck of a larger star, which hadexploded. The forces necessary to launch the fragments of a given bodyin such different routes (whose existence we should be obliged tosuppose) would be of such an improbable intensity, that the most limitedmathematical knowledge could not but see its absurdity. " He concludesthe memoir by advancing four propositions, "which forever annihilateOlbers' hypothesis. "[198]

3. _The progress of astronomical discovery has utterly refuted thenotion of creation by natural law, known as the Development Theory, orthe Nebular Hypothesis. _

Scientific Infidels knew that there was too much order and regularity inthe motions of the planets to allow any rational mind to ascribe thesemotions to accident, according to Buffon's notion. They saw that thesemovements must be regulated by law. La Place, an eminent mathematician, saw that there are at least five great regularities pervading thesystem, for which Buffon's theory gave no reason:

1. The planets all move in elliptical orbits, nearly circular. Theymight, on the contrary, have been as elongated as those of comets. 

2. They revolve in orbits nearly in the plane of the sun's equator. Theymight have revolved in orbits inclined to it at any angle, or even inthe plane of his poles. 

3. They revolve around the sun all in the same direction, which is thedirection of his rotation on his axis. 

4. They rotate on their axes, also, so far as known, in the samedirection. 

5. The satellites (with the exception of those of Uranus) revolve aroundtheir primary planets, and also rotate on their axes, in the same normaldirection. 

It was evident, even to the believers in chance, that so manyregularities were not produced by accident. La Place found, by computingthe chances by the formula of probabilities, that the chances were twomillions to one against these regularities happening by chance, _andfour millions to one in favor of these motions having a common origin_. The grand phenomenon being a motion of rotation in the whole system, ofwhich the rotation of the sun is the central part, he thought if hecould account for this, he could explain all the rest. 

He set out by supposing, that the sun and planets originally existed asa vast cloud of gaseous matter, intensely heated--a vastfire-mist--placed in a region of space much cooler, and that this cloud, by gradual cooling, and the pressure of its parts, settled down intosolid forms. It was supposed that some portions of this cloud wouldbegin to cool sooner than others, and so become solid sooner, and thatthe hot gas, rushing to the solid part, would form a vortex, which wouldset the cloud in motion around its center. As the speed of its rotationwould increase, and the outside condense and grow solid before theinside, the cloud would whirl off the rings of solid matter, which wouldkeep revolving in the same orbits in which they were cast off, and wouldrevolve faster and faster as they grew cooler and more solid, till theybroke up, by the force of their velocity, into smaller pieces; whichfragments, in their turn, repeated the process, until the present numberof planets and their satellites was produced. [199]

This theory differs from Buffon's much as a low pressure engine, deriving most of its power from the condenser, differs from one of highpressure. La Place does not explode the boiler to make his planets, butmerely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then, when the wheel runs off with the velocity it has got, and keeps itstrack as well as if it had an engineer to guide it, grows into a littlelocomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axletoo--breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that hadno God to make them--and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moonsand rings, like Saturn's. The illustration is not nearly so absurd asthe theory, inasmuch as a locomotive is an incomparably less complicatedcontrivance than a planet. However the nonsense was cradled in the hallsof philosophy by means of antiquity, and distance. 

As no fiction was too marvelous for the credence of the Greek, if itwere only a hundred years old, or located beyond the Euxine, so to ourdevelopment philosopher any impossibility may be accepted, if it canonly be dissolved into gas, and located a good many millions of milesaway; and to make it an article of faith on which he will risk his soul, it is only necessary to give it a remote antiquity. No Papist everinsisted more on antiquity as the solvent of all absurdity. Antiquity, distance, and expansion are his trinity, with which all absurditiesbecome scientific facts. 

Herschel had discovered numbers of nebulę, or luminous clouds, in thedistant heavens shining with a distinct light, but which, with thehighest magnifying power he could apply, presented no trace of stars. Some nebulę, it is true, his largest telescope resolved, like our ownMilky Way, into beds of distinct stars; but there were others--forinstance, one in the belt of Orion--visible to the naked eye as a cloud, but which his forty feet telescope only displayed as a larger cloud, without any shape of stars. Now, reasoning upon the matter, he foundthat if these nebulę were composed of stars as large as those distinctlyvisible, they must be immensely distant to be indistinguishable by histelescope, and exceedingly numerous and close together to give a cloudof light visible to the naked eye. In fact, the suns of those firmamentsmust be so close to each other as to present a blaze of glory, andcomplexities of revolution inconceivable to the dwellers on earth. Butas this daring idea seemed incredible, even to his giant mind, hethought the appearance of these nebulę might be more rationallyaccounted for by supposing that they were not stars at all, but simplyclouds of gaseous matter, like the matter of comets, from which hesupposed that stars were formed by a long process of condensation andsolidification. He thought this theory was favored by the fact, thatnebulę are generally seen in those portions of the heavens that are notthickly strewn with stars; and also by the various forms of theseclouds. Some were merely loose clouds, without any definite form; othersseemed gathering toward the center. In some, of a roundish, or ovalform, the central mass seemed well defined. In a few, the process seemednearly complete, a bright star shining in the midst of a faint nebuloushalo. Here, then, it was said, we see the whole progress of the growthof stars; their development from the gaseous nebulous fluid into solid, brilliant suns. La Place accepted Herschel's discoveries as conclusiveproof of the truth of his theory, and it was generally accepted by thescientific world. Oddly enough, Infidels seem not to have noticed thatthose appearances of _condensation toward the center_, which seemed toHerschel so strongly in favor of his theory of the nebulous fluid, werediametrically opposed to La Place's requirements of _condensation at thecircumference_; and these two contradictory notions were supposed tosupport each other, and to furnish a solid basis for the developmenthypothesis. 

This theory, as stated by Herschel, and expounded by Nichol, Dick, andother Christian writers, _is not necessarily Atheistical_. On thecontrary, they allege that it furnishes us with greater evidences of thepower of God, and gives us higher ideas of his wisdom, to suppose asystem of creation by development, under natural law, than by a directexercise of his will. Undoubtedly, had God so pleased he could have madesuns from fire-mists, according to some plan which his infinite wisdomcould devise, and his omnipotent power could execute; but it is beyondthe possibilities even of omniscience and omnipotence to make worlds, orto make anything but nonsense, according to La Place's plan. Had God sopleased, to make firmaments grow as forests do, and if he should pleaseto enable us to discover such celestial growth in some distant part ofheaven, we should have the same kind of evidence of his being, power, wisdom, and goodness in this creation by natural law which we now havefrom his providence by natural law, in the growth of the fruits of theearth, and as much greater an amount of it as the heavens are greaterthan the earth. The first beginning of primeval elements demands aCreator. The contrivance of the law of development proclaims aContriver. The force by which it operates--whether that of gravity orchemical reaction--must be the force of an Agent. 

_The development theory, then, fails to account for the origin of theuniverse, or even of our own world. _ Herbert Spencer, its most eloquentexpounder, admits this. He says: "It remains only to point out thatwhile the genesis of the solar system, and of countless other systemslike it, is thus rendered comprehensible, the ultimate mystery continuesas great as ever. The problem of existence is not solved; it is simplyremoved farther back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on theorigin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accountingfor as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceivethan the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making theuniverse a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation byevolution. A man can put together a machine, but he can not make amachine develop itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some have been, so far to imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical piano-forteplayer, may in some sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete manmight be artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive how such acomplex organism gradually arises out of a minute, structureless germ. That our harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless, diffused matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far more astonishing fact than would have been its formation afterthe artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate toargue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the NebularHypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending 'the mechanicalgod of Paley, ' as this does the fetish of a savage. "[200]

The Nebular Hypothesis, then, can not exist without God. However, as itseems to remove him to a great distance from this present world, both inspace and time, it has become popular with Atheists. 

The Nebular Hypothesis, as presented by Atheists, _imagines a state ofprimeval matter as simple, or homogeneous, of which science presents noexample, in heaven or on earth_. 

This homogeneous condition of matter is the very foundation of thetheory. Spencer reasons at great length, that all progress is from thesimple to the differentiated. And it is indispensable for the Atheiststo prove that the primeval world was composed of matter perfectly simpleand homogeneous. If they alleged that it was composed of severalingredients, nobody would believe them that this compound was eternal. There is no conviction of common sense stronger than that every compoundhas been put together by some compounder. 

They could not persuade a child that a plum pudding made itself, or thata steamship filled with passengers existed so from eternity, much less aplanet with a much larger crew and company. They therefore alleged thatthe first matter of the universe was perfectly homogeneous and simple. When common people objected that no such thing was to be seen in thisworld nowadays, since all things here--stones, water, air, earth, plants, animals--are compounded and built up out of a great variety ofmatters, they claimed that this is the result of the growth of ourplanet; but that the nebulę, which astronomers see far away in the sky, are young suns and planets, just beginning to condense, and that the gasthey consist of is the genuine, simple, homogeneous matter out of whichthis world, and all worlds, originally made themselves. They thought thenebulę were so very far away that nobody would ever go there to see andcome back to contradict them; and so they were quite safe in pointing tothem as examples of homogeneous matter. 

Now one does not see, if the nebula had been exactly what thedevelopment men assert--_simple, homogeneous matter_--_how they couldever have made such a composite world as this out of it_, or indeed howthey could make anything but itself out of it. No chemical actions orreactions can begin in a simple substance; there must always be at leasttwo simple substances to make a compound. Heating or cooling a simplesubstance will never make it a compound. You may heat water in a boilerand cool it again as often as you please, but your heating and coolingwill never make coffee out of it, unless you put coffee into it. So youmay heat and cool your simple nebula to all eternity, but you will neverget coffee out of it, much less coffee and coffee-pot, china andcompany, with the biscuits and butter; all which, and a great dealmore, our philosophers contrive to churn out of the primeval homogeneousnebula. 

But the progress of science has enabled us to show that the nebulę, farfrom being simple, homogeneous matter, are compounded of as manyingredients as the flame of your lamp or gas light, which is combined ofhalf a score of different substances. By the discovery of SpectrumAnalysis we are able to analyze the chemical composition of the mostdistant flames, to tell whether they proceed from solids or gases in astate of combustion, and what are the gases and minerals consumed inthem. As space forbids the details of this discovery here, I can onlystate the results, namely that some of the nebulę consist of clouds ofsmall solid stars, of which the nebula in Orion is an instance; butothers consist of flames of gases, in all cases compound, and showing, besides the oxygenated flame, the lines which declare the presence ofhydrogen, and of several metals. Thus it is proved, that no sucheternal, homogeneous nebulę are to be found in heaven, and consequentlynobody could ever make worlds out of a substance which had no existence. 

This theory of development was always _a mere notion, a castle in theair_, and never could be anything more. To say that it was meremoonshine would be to give it far too respectable a standing; formoonshine has a real existence, and may be seen and felt. But nobodyever saw or felt a homogeneous nebula. Indeed, its inventor neverpretended that he, or anybody else, ever saw one; or saw it sailing offinto moons, and planets, and suns, or ever would see any such thing. Noscientific man has ever pretended that it was an established fact, oranything more than a theory, a notion. Young people, who are invited tohazard their souls on the strength of this miscalled scientific theory, should remember that it is not science, which means something a manknows, but merely a theory, which is some notion which he imagines. 

_It is an unsatisfactory notion. _ It does not answer the purpose of itsinventors. As we have already seen, it gives us no account of the originof the homogeneous matter of the nebula. It gives no answer to thequestions, How did it get to be so hot, while all the space around itwas so cold? Is the fire that heated it burning still, or is itexhausted for want of fuel? Were the germs of all the plants and animalsin it while it was blazing at a white heat? If they were, how did theyescape being burnt to ashes? If they were not, where did they come from?For there was nothing but that nebula then in existence. Did it containwithin itself all the principles of things, all the forces now found inthe worlds which grew out of it? If so, how came they there? If not, howdid attraction, and repulsion, vegetable life, animal life, intellect, and free will, work themselves into that cloud of homogeneous gas?

Professor Tyndall thus exposes the absurdity of the supposition that thenebula contained the elements of mind: "For what are the core andessence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to facewith the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular oranimal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alonethe exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, but the humanmind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena, wereonce latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notionis more than a refutation. "[201]

_It was only one of several contradictory notions. _ Thus a writer in the_Atlantic Monthly_, so far from accepting the notion that the sun andearth are solidifying and cooling down, as explanatory of the factsrevealed by astronomy and geology, infers the very contrary from theacknowledged facts, namely, that we are coming up to the nebularcondition, rather than developing from it. He writes as follows:

 "The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a _souvenir_ of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an expanding nebula. 

 "In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent, without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday, and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued production of spiritual forms. "

_It is an impracticable notion, contrary to the first principle ofmechanics, that action and reaction are equal. _

The grand requirement of the system--power to work the engine--can neverbe raised by La Place's, nor by any other mechanical plan. The coolingcloud of fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine cangenerate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or othergot power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might havemade it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outsidestuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn itrapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make thegrindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same valueas any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power bymachinery, of the perpetual motion men, in defiance of the first law ofmechanics, that action and reaction are equal. 

Moreover, he proposes to raise the power by making the gas cool at onepart of the surface faster than at another, and so to make a vortexaround that spot, which would set the whole mass to revolving. But noconceivable reason can be alleged why the homogeneous mass should beginto cool at one place faster than another, or indeed why an eternally hotmass should ever begin to cool at all. But, letting that pass, to makethe required vortex for the rotation of the whole mass, it should notbegin to cool at any part of the surface, but at the center, where, asevery engine driver who ever saw a condenser, and every woman who evercooled a dish of mush knows, it could not possibly begin to cool tillthe outside mass had become cold; and so no motion could be produced. This is so well known in the machine shops that it is rare to find amachinist own the theory. 

But even a more fatal objection has been raised by one of the mosteloquent expounders of the theory. Mr. Spencer shows us that the mass, condensing under the influence of gravitation, so far from cooling _mustnecessarily evolve heat_. He is perfectly clear and decided on thismatter, _that the condensing mass could never, by any possibility, beginto cool, but must begin to heat, and go on heating till it burst out ina blaze_. He says: "Heat must inevitably be generated by the aggregationof diffused matter into a concrete form; and throughout our reasoningswe have assumed that such generation of heat has been an accompanimentof nebular condensation. "[202] "While the condensation and the rate ofrotation are progressively increasing, the approach of the atomsnecessarily generates _a progressively increasing temperature_. As thistemperature rises light begins to be evolved, and ultimately thereresults a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating intense light andheat--a sun. "[203]

This, it will be perceived, is exactly the reverse of the originalnebular theory of a cooling globe, or spheroid of homogeneous nebularmatter, diffused by intense heat, and cooling down into suns, and moons, and planets. So far as the Spencer system is accepted, it displaces LaPlace's theory, and the inventor accordingly works out a new theory ofhis own, and equally inconsistent with known facts and principles. Butas Mr. Spencer candidly owns that his scheme can neither generate matternor force, as we have already seen, it needs no further discussion inthis connection. 

The fact is simply this, a chemical perpetual motion is as impossible asa mechanical one. The discovery of the convertibility of forces showsthis. The development theory of the generation of motion by processes ofthe self-heating or the self-cooling of the machine, or by chemicalactions and reactions, is, in its last analysis, only a big perpetualmotion humbug. 

Even were the rotation, and the cooling process, to take place, as issupposed, _no such results would proceed from these combined operationsas the case requires_; for, according to the theory, as the cooling andcontracting rings revolve in the verge of a vortex of fluid less densethan themselves, one of these two results must take place: either, as ismost probable, from their exceeding tenuity, the rings will break atonce into fragments, when, instead of flying outward, they will sinktoward the center, and, as long as they are heavier than the surroundingfluid, _they will stay there_; and, as the cooling goes on on theoutside, so will the concentration of the heavier matter, till we have_one_ great spheroid, with a solid center, liquid covering, and gaseousatmosphere. A vortex will never make, nor allow to exist beyond itscenter, planets heavier than the fluid of which it is composed. Theother alternative, and the one which La Place selected, was thesupposition that the cooling and contracting rings did not at firstbreak up into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, contrary toall experience and reason, he supposed that these cooling rings keptcontracting and widening out from the heated mass, at the same time. Theonly fluid planetary rings which we can examine--those of Saturn--havebeen closing in on the planet since the days of Huygens, and eventuallywill be united with the body of the planet. Every boy who has seen ablacksmith hoop a cart-wheel has learned the principle, that a heatedring contracts as it cools, and in doing so presses in upon the massaround which it clings. But, according to this nebular notion, thefire-mist keeps cooling and shrinking up, while the rings, of the verysame heat and material, keep cooling faster, and widening out from it; apiece of schismatical behavior without a parallel among solids orfluids, either in heaven or earth, or under the earth. 

Plateau's illustration of the mode in which centrifugal force acts inovercoming molecular attraction, has been cited as a demonstration ofthe truth of the nebular hypothesis. The conditions, however, areentirely different. By means of clock-work he caused a globule of oil torotate in a mixture of alcohol and water _of the same density_, thusentirely getting rid of the power of gravitation; and by increasing thevelocity he caused it to flatten out into a disc, and finally to projecta multitude of minute drops, which continued their revolutions so longas the fluid in which they floated kept revolving by the motion of therotating spindle, _the divergent drops, the central mass, and thesurrounding fluid, being all the while of the same density_. But theessential conditions of the nebular theory are, that _the central mass_exert an attraction of gravitation upon all its parts, and _therefore bedenser than the surrounding ether or empty space_, and that _the coolingand contracting rings be of a different density from the rest of themass_. Their divergence from the more fluid portion is supposed to arisefrom their growing denser. And Reclus shows[204] that the divergentdrops owe their existence to the _expansion_, not to the _contraction_, of the globule of oil. This experiment, then, contradicts the theory, sofar as it is applicable. 

Plateau himself never adduced this experiment in support of the nebulartheory; but having, by way of illustration, spoken of the revolvingdrops as satellites, and finding that expression misunderstood, hecorrected the error in a subsequent paper. He says: "It is clear thatthis mode of formation is entirely foreign to La Place's cosmogonichypothesis; therefore we have no idea of deducing from this littleexperiment, which only refers _to the effects of molecular attraction_, and _not to those of gravitation_, any argument in favor of thehypothesis in question; an hypothesis which _in other respects we do notadopt_. "[205]

_It was always contrary to the facts of astronomical science. _ It hasaccordingly been repudiated by the most eminent astronomers. 

Sir John Herschel declares that the appearance of those groups, orclusters, of stars, supposed to be formed by the condensation of nebulęis quite different from that depicted by this theory, and that no tracesof the ring-making process is visible among them. He thus describes theappearances of these groups; exactly the contrary of that demanded bythe theory, which he emphatically disclaims, from the presidential chairof the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 

"If it is to be regarded as demonstrated truth, or as receiving thesmallest support from any observed numerical relations which actuallyhold good among the elements of the primary orbits, I beg leave todemur. Assuredly it receives no support from the observation of theeffects of sidereal aggregation as exemplified in the formation ofglobular and elliptic clusters, supposing them to have resulted fromsuch aggregation. For we see this cause working out in thousands ofinstances, to have resulted, _not_ in the formation of a single largecentral body, surrounded by a few smaller attendants disposed in oneplane around it, but in systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of nearly equal luminaries, grouped together ina solid elliptic or globular form. So far then as any conclusions fromour observations of nebulę can go, the result of agglomerativetendencies _may_ indeed be the formation of families of stars of ageneral and very striking character, but we see nothing to lead us topresume its further result to be the surrounding of those stars withplanetary adherents. "[206]

_This theory is contradicted by the peculiarities of our solar system. _The orbits of the comets being inclined at all angles to the sun'sequator, are often out of the plane of his rotation, and so in the wayof the theory. The moons of Uranus revolve in a direction contrary toall the other bodies, and fly right into the face of the theory. According to the nebular theory, the outer planets, first cast off fromthe sun, ought to be lighter than those nearer him, as these had longerpressing near the middle of the mass; and the sun himself, having beenpressed by the weight of all the rest of the system, should be thedensest body of the whole. And the author of _The Vestiges of Creation_, in expounding the theory, manufactures a set of facts to suit it, andtells his readers that the planets exhibit a progressive diminution indensity from the one nearest the sun to that which is most distant. Oursolar system could not have lasted thirty years had that been the case. The Earth, Venus, and Mars, are nearly of the same density. Uranus ismore dense than Saturn, which is nearer the sun. Neptune is more densethan either. The sun, which ought to be the heaviest of all, accordingto the theory, is only one-fourth the density of the earth. La Placehimself has demonstrated that these densities and arrangements areindispensable to the stability of the system. But they are plainlycontradictory to his theory of its formation. [207]

The palpable difference of luminosity between the sun and the planets, which, as they are all made of the very same materials, and by the sameprocess, according to this theory, ought to be equally self-luminous, isin itself a self-evident refutation of the nebular hypothesis, or of anyother process of creation by mere mechanical law. "The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center ofthe six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orb of hisfive secondary planets; and Jupiter in the center of his four secondaryplanets; and the earth in the center of the moon's orbit; and, therefore, had this cause been a blind one, _without contrivance ordesign_, the sun would have been a body of the same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth; that is, _without light or heat_. Why there isone body in our system qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but because the Author of the system thought itconvenient. " So says the immortal Newton. [208]

The great expounder of modern science--Humboldt--is equally explicit inenumerating the decisive marks of choice and will in the construction ofthe solar system, and in contemptuously dismissing the notion ofdevelopment and creation by natural law from the halls of science. 

"Up to the present time, _we are ignorant, as I have already remarked, of any internal necessity--any mechanical law of nature_--which (likethe beautiful law which connects the square of the periods of revolutionwith the cube of the major axis) represents the above-namedelements--the absolute magnitude of the planets, their density, flattening at the poles, velocity of rotation, and presence or absenceof moons--of the order of succession of the individual planetary bodiesof each group, in their dependence upon the distances. Although theplanet which is nearest the sun is densest--even six or eight timesdenser than some of the exterior planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, andNeptune--the order of succession in the case of Venus, the Earth, andMars, is very irregular. The absolute magnitudes do, generally, asKepler has already observed, increase with the distances; but this doesnot hold good when the planets are considered individually. Mars issmaller than the Earth; Uranus smaller than Saturn; Saturn smaller thanJupiter, and succeeds immediately to a host of planets, which, onaccount of their smallness, are almost immeasurable. It is true, theperiod of rotation generally increases with the distance from the sun;but it is in the case of Mars slower than in that of the Earth, andslower in Saturn than in Jupiter. "[209] "_Our knowledge of the primevalages of the world's physical history does not extend sufficiently far toallow of our depicting the present condition of things as one ofdevelopment. _"[210]

Sir David Brewster adds his testimony as follows: "Geology does notpretend to give us any information respecting the process by which thenucleus of the earth was formed. Some speculative astronomers indeedhave presumptuously embarked in such an inquiry; but there is not atrace of evidence that the solid nucleus of the globe was formed bysecondary causes, such as the aggregation of attenuated matter diffusedthrough space; and the _nebular theory_, as it has been called, thoughmaintained by a few distinguished names, has, we think, been overturnedby arguments which have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, in hisfour celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, has demonstrated that theplanets of the solar system could not have been thus formed and put inmotion round a central sun. "[211]

4. _Astronomy not only exposes the folly of past cosmogonies, butdemonstrates the impossibility of framing any true theory of creation, and thus refutes all future cosmogonies. _

The grand error of all cosmogonies lies in the arrogant assumption, onwhich every one of them must be founded, _that the theorist isacquainted with all substances, and all forces in the universe_, andwith all the modes of their operation; not only at the present period, and on this earth, but in all past ages, and in worlds in widelydifferent, and utterly unknown situations; for, if he be ignorant of anysubstance, or of any active force in the universe, his generalization isavowedly imperfect, and necessarily erroneous. That unknown force musthave had its influence in framing the world. Its omission, then, isfatal to the theory which neglects it. A theory of creation, forinstance, which would neglect the attraction of gravitation would bemanifestly false. But there are other forces as far reaching, whoseomission must be equally fatal; for instance, the power of repulsion. 

A conviction of this truth has given rise to a constant effort tosimplify matters down to the level of our ignorance, by reducing allsubstances to one, or at most two simple elements, and all forces to theform of one universal law; but the progress of science utterly blaststhe attempt. Instead of simplifying matters, the very chemical processesundertaken with that view revealed new substances, and every yearincreases our knowledge of nature's variety. No scientific man nowdreams of one primeval element. In the same way, astronomy, which, itwas boasted, would enable us to account for all the operations of theuniverse, by reducing all motion to one mechanical law, has revealed tous the existence of other forces as far reaching as the attraction ofgravitation, and more powerful; and substances whose nature andcombinations are utterly unknown. But every cosmogony is just an attemptto simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknownsubstances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, asutterly unphilosophical and absurd. 

Astronomy has shown us _our ignorance of the substances_, or_materials_, _of our own little globe_. It has demonstrated that thewhole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. Asthe rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the centermust be heavier than iron, to make up this density. Of what, then, dothey consist? The geologist says he does not know. No geologist ever sawthem. No mortal ever will see them, and report their chemicalconstitution, their dip, and the arrangement of their strata, to theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science. The very utmost "wecan say is that they are unlike anything with which we are acquainted. "Very well; then be pleased to have the decency to abstain from tellingus how the world was made, when you don't know what it is made of. 

The sun's heat, at its surface, is 300, 000 times greater than at thesurface of the earth, but a tenth of this amount, collected in the focusof a lens, dissipates gold and platinum in vapor. When the most vividflames which we can produce are held up in the blaze of his rays, theydisappear. If a cataract of icebergs, a mile high, and wider than theAtlantic Ocean, were launched into the sun with the velocity of acannon-ball, the small portion of the sun's heat expended on our earthwould convert that vast mass into steam as fast as it entered hisatmosphere without cooling its surface in the least degree. "The greatmystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration (ifsuch it be) can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science hereleaves us completely at a loss, or rather seems to remove farther theprospect of probable explanation. "[212] Yet, the sun is the nearest ofthe fixed stars, and by far the best known, and most nearly related tous. In fact, we are dependent on his influences for life and health. Butif the theorist _can not tell his substance, or the nature and cause ofthe light and heat he sends us_, how can he presume so far on theworld's credulity as to present a theory of his formation?

"Astronomical problems accumulate unsolved upon our hands, because wecan not, as mechanicians, chemists, or physiologists, experiment on thestars. Are they built of the same material as our planet? Are Saturn'srings solid, or liquid? Has the moon an atmosphere? Are the atmospheresof the planets like ours? Are the light and heat of the sun begotten ofcombustion? And what is the fuel which feeds these unquenchable fires?These are questions, which we ask, and variously answer, _but leaveunanswered after all_. "[213] But, till he can answer these, and athousand questions like these, let no man presume to describe theformation of these unknown orbs. 

Comets constitute by far the greatest number of the bodies of our solarsystem. Arago says seven millions frequent it, within the orbit ofUranus. [214] They are the largest bodies known to us, stretching acrosshundreds of millions of miles. They approach nearer to this earth thanany other bodies, sometimes even involving it in their tails, andgenerally exciting great alarm among its inhabitants. But the nature ofthe transparent luminous matter of which they are composed is utterlyunknown. As they approach the sun, they come under an influence directlythe opposite of attraction. The tail streams away from the sun, over adistance of millions of miles, _and yet the rate of the comet's motiontoward the sun is quickened_, as though it were an immense rocket, driven forward by its own explosion. 

Further, while the body of the comet travels toward the sun, sometimeswith a velocity nearly one-third of that of light, the tail sends forthcoruscations in the opposite direction, with a much greater velocity. The greatest velocity with which we are acquainted on earth is thevelocity of light, which travels a million of times faster than acannon-ball, or at the rate of 195, 000 miles per second; but here is asubstance capable of traveling twenty-three times faster, and here is aforce propelling it, twenty-three times greater than any which exists onearth. Its existence was first discovered by the coruscations of thecomet of 1807. "In less than one second, streamers shot forth, to twoand a half degrees in length; they as rapidly disappeared, and issuedout again, sometimes in proportions, and interrupted, like our northernlights. Afterward the tail varied, both in length and breadth; and insome of the observations, the streamers shot forth from the wholeexpanded end of the tail, sometimes here, sometimes there, in aninstant, two and a half degrees long; _so that within a single secondthey must have shot out a distance of 4, 600, 000 miles_. "[215] Similarexhibitions of this unknown force were made by the comet of 1811, byHalley's comet, and several others. 

In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do wenot hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, withthe questions, Knowest _thou_ the ordinances of heaven? Canst _thou_ setthe dominion thereof in the earth? Hear one of the most distinguished ofmodern astronomers expound the moral bearings of such a discovery: "Theintimation of a new cosmical power--I mean of one so unsuspected before, but which yet can follow a planet through all its wanderings--throws usback once more into the indefinite obscure, and checks all dogmatism. How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may beever streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. Andyet, because we had traced one of these, we have deemed our astronomycomplete! Deeper far, and nearer to the root of things, is that worldwith which man's destiny is entwined. "[216]

We can have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, tobelieve that the discovery of these two forces exhausts the treasures ofinfinite wisdom. Humboldt thus well refutes the folly of such animagination: "The imperfectibility of all empirical science, and theboundlessness of the sphere of observation, render the task ofexplaining the forces of matter by that which is variable in matter, animpracticable one. What has been already perceived, by no means exhauststhat which is perceptible. If, simply referring to the progress ofscience in our own times, we compare the imperfect physical knowledge ofRobert Boyle, Gilbert, and Hales, with that of the present day, andremember that every few years are characterized by an increasingrapidity of advance, we shall be better able to imagine _the periodicaland endless changes which all physical sciences are destined toundergo. New substances and new forces will be discovered. _"[217]

Thus, all true science, conscious of its ignorance, ever leads the mindto the region of faith. Its first lesson, and its last lesson, ishumility. It tells us that every cosmogony, which the children of theoryso laboriously scratch in the sand, must be swept away by the risingtide of science. When we seek information on the great questions of ourorigin and destiny, and cry, "Where shall wisdom be found, and what isthe place of understanding?" The high priests of science answer, in hername, "It is not in me; the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. "

We receive this honest acknowledgment as an inestimable boon. We aresaved thereby the wearying labor of a vain and useless search afterknowledge which lies not in her domain. We come down to the Bible withthe profound conviction that science can give us no definite informationof our origin, no certainty of our destiny, and but an imperfectacquaintance with the laws which govern this present world. If the Biblecan not inform us on these all-important questions, we must remainignorant. Science declares she can not teach us. The Word of Godremains, not merely the best, but absolutely the only, the last resourceof the anxious soul. 

The Bible gives us no theory of creation. It simply asserts the fact, that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, " but doesnot tell us _how_ he did so. The knowledge could be of no use to us, forhe never means to employ us as his assistants in the work of creation. Nor could we understand the matter. The force by which he called theworlds into being, and upholds them in it, exists in no creature. "Hestretcheth forth the heavens alone. He spreadeth abroad the earth byhimself. " "He upholdeth all things by the word of his power. "

But it presents anxious, careworn, humbled souls with somethinginfinitely more precious than cosmogonies; even an explicit declarationof the love toward them of him who made these worlds. 

 "Thus saith the Lord, THY REDEEMER, And he who formed thee from the womb: I am the Lord, who maketh all things; Who stretcheth forth the heavens alone, And spreadeth abroad the earth, by myself. "

 "He healeth the broken in heart, And bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars, And calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power; His wisdom is infinite!"

Yes, the Creator of heaven and earth, who upholds all things by the wordof his power, became a man like you, and dwelt on earth, and sufferedthe sorrow, the shame, the pain, the death, that sinful man deserved;and when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right handof the Majesty on high. From that heavenly throne his voice now sounds, reader, in your ear, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and areheavy-laden, and _I will give you rest_. "

FOOTNOTES:

[186] Cosmos III. 138. 

[187] Herschel's Outlines, chap. Xvii. Sec. 887. 

[188] Cosmos III. 197. 

[189] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. P. 180. 

[190] Cosmos IV. 292. 

[191] Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx. 

[192] Cosmos III. 253. 

[193] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. Xvi. 

[194] _New York Evangelist_, May 5, 1870. 

[195] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272. 

[196] Pontecoulant in _System of the World_, p. 70. 

[197] Progress of Astronomy, 70. 

[198] Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; from _The Annualof Scientific Discovery_, for 1855, p. 376. 

[199] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. Of 1853. 

[200] Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298. 

[201] Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163. 

[202] Illustrations of Progress, page 292. 

[203] Illustrations of Progress, page 34. 

[204] The Earth, page 256. 

[205] Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V. , cited in McCosh's TypicalForms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403. 

[206] Opening Address to the British Association, 1845. 

[207] Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6. 71; Venus, 5. 11;Earth, 5. 44; Mars, 5. 21; Saturn, 0. 76; Uranus, 0. 97; Neptune, 1. 25; theSun, 1. 37. --Cosmos IV. P. 447. 

[208] Newton's Optics, IV. P. 438. 

[209] Cosmos, IV. P. 425. 

[210] Cosmos, III. P. 28. 

[211] More Worlds Than One, p. 45. 

[212] Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400. 

[213] Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E. , in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. P. 53. 

[214] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360. 

[215] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. Xx. 

[216] Nichol's Solar System, p. 76. 

[217] Cosmos, III. P. 27. 

CHAPTER XI. 

DAYLIGHT BEFORE SUNRISE. 

In the last chapter we saw astronomy demonstrating our need of arevelation from God. In this we shall see how it illustrates andconfirms that revelation. Seen through the telescope, the Bible glowswith celestial splendor. Even its cloudy mysteries are displayed asclouds of light, and its long misunderstood phrases are resolved, by ascientific investigation, into galaxies of brilliant truths, proclaimingto the philosopher that the Book which describes them is as truly theWord of God as the heavens which it describes are his handiwork. 

If, once in a century, a profound practical astronomer is found denyingthe inspiration of the Bible, he will either acknowledge, or discoverhimself, not familiar with its contents. For the most part, the chargesbrought against the Bible, of contradicting the facts of astronomy, arebased upon misstatements and mistakes of its teachings, and so do notfall within the range of the telescope, or the department of theobservatory. The Sabbath-school teacher, and not the astronomer, is theproper person to correct such errors. A few months' instruction in theBible class of any well-conducted Sabbath-school would save some of ourpopular anti-Bible lecturers from the sin of misrepresenting the Word ofGod, and the shame of hearing children laugh at their blunders. 

A favorite field for the display of their knowledge of science, andignorance of the art of reading, by our modern Infidels, is the Bibleaccount of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, which is allegedto be utterly irreconcilable with the known facts of astronomy andgeology. Leaving the latter out of view, for the present, theastronomical objections may all be arranged under four heads. First:that the Bible account of the creation of man, only some six or seventhousand years ago, must be false; because the records of astronomicalobservations, taken more than seventeen thousand years ago, by theHindoos and Egyptians, are still in existence, and have been verified. Second: that the light of some of the stars, now shining upon us, andespecially of some of the distant nebulę, must have left them millionsof years ago, to have traveled over the vast space which separates themfrom us, and be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teachesthat the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago. Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solidcrystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which), to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around theearth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Biblerepresents God as creating the sun and moon only two days before Adam, and as creating light before the sun, which is also held to be absurd. 

1. The first of these objections--that the Hindoos and Egyptians madeastronomical observations thousands of years before Adam, and that theaccuracy of these observations has been verified by moderncalculations--_is simply untrue_. No such observations were ever made. The pretended records of such have been proved, in the case of theHindoo astronomy, to be forgeries, and in the case of the Egyptianrecords, blunders of the discoverers. There is not an authenticuninspired astronomical observation extant for two thousand years afterAdam. 

The objection, however, is worth noticing, and its history worthremembering, as a specimen of the way in which ignorant men swallowimpudent falsehoods, if they only seem to contradict the Word of Truth. When the labors of oriental scholars had made the Vedas andShasters--the sacred books of the Hindoos--accessible to Europeanphilosophers, a wonderful shout was raised among Infidels. "Here, " itwas said, "is the true chronology. We always knew that man was not adegenerate creature, fallen from a higher estate, some few thousandyears ago, but that he has existed from eternity, in a constant progresstoward his present lofty position; and now we have the most authenticrecords of the most ancient and civilized people in the world--thepeople of India--reaching back for millions of years before the Mosaiccosmogony, and allowing ample time for the development of the noblesavage into the cultivated philosopher. These records have every mark oftruth, giving minute details of events, and histories of successivelines of princes; and, moreover, record the principal astronomical factsof the successive periods--eclipses, comets, positions of stars, etc. --which attest their veracity. Henceforth, the Hebrew records musthide their heads. Neither as poetry nor history can they pretend tocompare with the Vedas. "

The Hindoo Shasters were accordingly, for a time, in high repute, amongpeople who knew very little about them. Even Dr. Adam Clarke was so farled away with the spirit of the age, as to pollute his valuablecommentary by the insertion of the _Gitagovinda_, after the ChaldeeTargum on the Song of Solomon; where the curious reader can satisfyhimself as to the scientific value of such Pantheistic dotings. By theInfidels of Britain and America they were appealed to as standard worksof undoubted authority; and hundreds, who declared that it wasirrational credulity to believe in the Bible, risked their souls on thefaith of the Vedas, _of which they never had read a single sentence_!

Now, when we remember that these veracious chronicles reach back through_maha yugs_ of 4, 320, 000 years of mortals, a thousand of which, or4, 320, 000, 000, make a _kalpa_ or one day of the life of Brahma, whilehis night is of the same duration, and his life consists of a hundredyears of such days and nights, about the middle of which period thelittle span of our existence is placed; that among the facts of thehistory are the records of the seven great continents of the world, separated by seven rivers, and seven chains of mountains, four hundredthousand miles high (reaching only to the moon); of the families oftheir kings, one of whom had a hundred sons, another only ten thousand, another sixty thousand, who were born in a pumpkin, nourished in pans ofmilk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a sage, and restored to life bythe waters of the Ganges; and that among the astronomical observations, by which the accuracy of these extraordinary facts is confirmed, areaccounts of deluges, in which the waters not only rose above the tops ofearth's mountains, but above the seven inferior and three superiorworlds, _reaching even to the Pole Star_[218]--we may well wonder at thefaith which could receive all this as so true, that on the strength ofit they rejected the miracles of the Bible as false. Even Voltaireridiculed these stories. 

But a visionary man, named Baillie, calculated the alleged observationsbackward, and found them sufficiently correct to satisfy him that allthe rest of the story was equally true. It never seems to have occurredto him, that if he could calculate eclipses _backward_, so could theHindoos. It is just as easy to calculate an eclipse, or the position ofa planet, backward as forward. If I watch the motion of the hands of aclock accurately, and find that the little hand moves over the twelfthof a circle every hour, and the large hand around the circle in the sametime, and that the large hand, now at noon, covers the little one, Ican calculate, that at sixteen minutes and a quarter past three it willnearly cover it again; but then, it is just as easy to count that thetwo hands were covered at sixteen minutes and a quarter before nine thatmorning, or that they were exactly in line at 6 A. M. If my clock wouldkeep going at the same rate for a thousand years, I could predict theposition of the hands at any hour of the twenty-ninth of March, of theyear 2857; but it is evident that the very same calculation applied theother way would show the position that the hands would have had athousand years ago, or five thousand years ago, just as well. And if Iwere to allege that my clock was made by Tubal Cain, before the flood, and for proof of the fact declare, that on the first of January, 3857 B. C. , at 6 o'clock P. M. , I had seen the two hands directly in line, andsome wiseacre were to calculate the time, and find that at that hour thehands ought to have been just in that position, and conclude thence thatI was undoubtedly one of the antediluvians, and the clock no lesscertainly a specimen of the craft of the first artificer in brass andiron, the argument would be precisely parallel to the Infidel's argumentfrom the Tirvalore Tables, and the astronomy of the Vedas. 

But suppose my clock ran a little slow; say half a minute in the month, or so; or that it was made to keep sidereal time, which differs by alittle from solar time, and that I did not know exactly what thedifference was; it is evident that on a long stretch of some hundreds orthousands of years, I would get out of my reckoning, and the hands wouldnot have been in the positions I had calculated. Now, this was just whathappened with the Brahmins and their calculations. The clock of theheavens keeps a uniform rate of going, but they made a slight mistake inthe counting of it; and so did their Infidel friends. But our modernastronomers have got the true time, set their clocks, and made theirtables by it; and on applying these tables to the pretended Hindooobservations, find that they are all wrong, and that no such eclipses asthey allege ever did occur or possibly could have happened in our solarsystem. [219] So the Hindoo astronomy is now consigned to the same tombwith the Hindoo chronology and cosmogony, except when a missionary, onthe banks of the Ganges, exhibits it to the pupils of his Englishschool, as a specimen of the falsehoods which have formed the swaddlingbands of Pantheism. 

Failing in the attempt to substitute Brahminism for Christianity, Infidels beat a retreat from India, and went down into Egypt for help. Here they made prodigious discoveries of the scientific and religioustruths believed by the worshipers of dogs and dung beetles, recordedupon the coffins of holy bulls, and the temples sacred to crows andcrocodiles. The age was favorable for such discoveries. 

Napoleon and his savans cut out of the ceiling of a temple, at Denderah, in Egypt, a stone covered with uncouth astronomical, astrological, andhieroglyphic figures, which they insisted was a representation of thesky at the time the temple was built; and finding a division madebetween the signs of the crab and the lion, and marks for the sun andmoon there, they took it into their heads that the sun must have enteredthe Zodiac at that spot, on the year this Zodiac was made; and, calculating back, found that must be at least seventeen thousand yearsago. Hundreds of thousands visited the wonderful antediluvian monument, in the National Library, in Paris, where it had been brought; and whereInfidel commentators were never wanting to inform them that thisremarkable stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. Aprofessor of the University of Breslau published a pamphlet, entitled_Invincible Proof that the Earth is at least ten times older than istaught by the Bible_. Scores of such publications followed, and forforty years Infidel newspapers, magazines, and reviews kept trumpetingthis great refutation of the Bible. From these it descended to thevulgar, with additions and improvements; and it is now frequentlyalleged as proving that "ten thousand years before Adam was born, thepriests of Egypt were carving astronomy on the pyramids. " There isscarcely one of my French or German readers who has not heard of it. 

It did not shake the Skeptic's credulity in the least that no two of thesavans were agreed, by some thousands of years, how old it was--thatthey could not tell what the Egyptian system of astronomy was--_and thatnone of them could read the hieroglyphics which explained it_. Whatevermight be doubtful, of one thing they were all perfectly sure, that itwas far older than the creation. But in 1832 the curious Egyptianastronomy was studied, and it appeared that the sun and moon were soplaced on the Zodiac to mark the beginning of the year there; and thedividing line fenced off one half of the sky under the care of the sun, while the other was placed under the moon's patronage. Then it wasdiscovered that the positions of the stars were represented by thepictures of the gods whose names they bore--Jupiter, Saturn, etc. --andby calculating the places of these pictures back, it was found that thisZodiac represented their places in the year of our Lord 37; the year ofthe birth of Nero, a great temple-builder and repairer. Finally, Champollion learned to read the hieroglyphics, and the names, surnames, and titles of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian werefound on the temple of Denderah; and on the portico of the temple ofEsneh, which had been declared to be a few thousand years older thanthat of Denderah, were found the names of Claudius and Antoninus Pius;while the whole workmanship and style of building have satisfied allantiquarians that these buildings were erected during the declining daysof art in the Roman Empire. The Roman title, _autocrat_, engraved onthe Zodiac itself, attests its antiquity to be not quite two thousand, instead of seventeen thousand years. 

But, not satisfied with merely demolishing the batteries of Infidelity, astronomy has been employed to ascertain the dates of numbers of eventsrecorded on Egyptian monuments to have happened to one or other of thePharaohs, "beloved of Ammon, and brother of the sun, " when such a starwas in such a position. Mr. Poole has spent years in gathering suchinscriptions, and in calculating the dates thus furnished. Theastronomer royal, at Greenwich, Mr. Airy, has reviewed the calculations, and finds them correct. Wilkinson, the great Egyptologist, agrees withtheir conclusions. And the result is, that _the astronomical chronologyof the Egyptian monuments sustains the Bible chronology_. [220] Geologycomes forward to confirm the testimony of her elder sister, and assuresus, that the alleged vast antiquity of the Egyptian monuments isimpossible, as it is not more than 5, 000 years since the soil of Egyptfirst appeared above water, as a muddy morass. [221] The learned AdrianBalbo thus sums up the whole question: "No monument, either astronomicalor historical, has yet been able to prove the books of Moses false; _butwith them, on the contrary, agree, in the most remarkable manner, theresults obtained by the most learned philologists and the profoundestgeometricians_. "[222]

2. To the second objection--that astronomers have discovered stars whoselight must have been millions of years traveling to this earth, and thatconsequently these stars must have existed millions of years ago, andtherefore the Bible makes a false declaration when it says the universewas created only some six or seven thousand years ago--I reply byasking, _Where does the Bible say so?_

"What, " says our objector, "is not that the good old orthodox doctrineof Christians and commentators? Do they not unanimously denouncegeologists and astronomers as heretics, for asserting the vast antiquityof the earth?"

We shall see presently that no such unanimity of denunciation has everexisted, and that some of the most ancient and learned Christiancommentators taught the antiquity of the earth, from the Bible, beforegeology was born. But that is not the question before us just now. Weare not asking what the good old orthodox doctrine of Christians, or theunanimous opinion of commentators may have been; but what is the readingof the Bible--_What does this Book say?_--not, "What does somebodythink?"

"Well, " replies our objector, "does not the Bible say, in the first ofGenesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, andAdam on the sixth; and are not chronologists agreed that that was notmore than seven thousand years ago, at the very utmost?"

If the Bible had said that God created the heavens and the earth in sixdays, and that the end of that period was only seven thousand years ago, it would by no means follow that the beginning of it was only a fewhours before that; for every Bible reader knows, that the most commonuse of the word _day_, in Scripture, is to denote, not a period oftwenty-four hours, but a period of time which may be of variouslengths. [223] In this very narrative (Genesis ii. 5) it is used todenote the whole period of the six days' work: "In the day the Lord Godmade the earth and the heavens. " Does it mean just twenty-four hoursthere? In the first of Genesis, its duration is defined to consist of"the evening and the morning. " Before our Infidel chronologist findsout the Bible date of creation, he must be able to tell us _of whatlength was the evening which preceded the first morning_, and with itconstituted the first day? God has of set purpose placedstumbling-blocks for scoffers at the entrance and the exit of the Bible, as a rebuke to pride and vain curiosity. [224]

The duration of the seventh day is also hidden from man. It is God'sSabbath, on which he entered when he ceased from the work of creation, arest which still continues, and which he invites us to enter into(Hebrews iv. 1-5) as a preparation for the eternal rest. God's rest dayhas already lasted six thousand years, and no man can tell how muchlonger it may last. Perhaps his working days were each as long. 

But if our objector had read the Bible attentively, he would have seenthat it _does not say that God created the heavens and the earth in sixdays_. Before it begins to give any account of the six days' work, ittells us of a previous state of disorder; and going back beyond thatagain, it says: "_In the beginning_, God created the heavens and theearth. " It is as self-evident that this _beginning_ was before the sixdays' work, as that the world must have existed before it could beadjusted to its present form. How long before, the Bible does not say, nor does the objector pretend to know. It may have been as many millionsof years as he assigns to the stars, or twice as many, for anything heknows to the contrary. He must have overlooked the first two verses ofthe Bible, else he had never made this objection; which is simply ablunder, arising from incapacity to read a few verses of Scripturecorrectly. 

But it is replied, "Does not the Bible say, in the fourth commandment, 'In six days the Lord made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all thatin them is, '" etc. ? True. But we are speaking just now of a verydifferent work--the work of _creation_. If any one does not know thedifference between _create_ and _make_, let him turn to his dictionary, and Webster will inform him that the primary literal meaning of _create_is, "To produce; to bring into being from nothing; to cause to exist. "The example he gives to illustrate his definition is this verse, "In thebeginning God _created_ the heavens and the earth. " But the primarymeaning of _make_ is, "To compel; to constrain;" thence, "to form ofmaterials;" and he illustrates the generic difference between these twowords by a quotation from Dwight: "God not only _made_, but _created_;he not only made the work, but the materials. " Both words are as goodtranslations of the Hebrew originals, _bra_, and _oshe_, as can begiven. 

If any of my readers has not a dictionary he can satisfy himselfthoroughly as to the different meanings of these two words, and of theirequivalents in the original Hebrew, by looking at their use in hisBible. Thus, he will find _create_ applied to the creation of theheavens and the earth, in the beginning, when there could have been nopre-existent materials to make them from; unless we adopt the Atheisticabsurdity, of the eternity of matter--that is to say, _that the pavingstones made themselves_. [225] Then it is applied to the production ofanimal life--verse twenty-one--which is not a product or combination ofany lifeless matter, but a direct and constant resistance to thechemical and mechanical laws which govern lifeless matter: "God createdgreat whales, and every living creature that moveth. "[226] Next it isapplied to the production of the human race, as a species distinct fromall other living creatures, and not derived from any of them. "God_created_ man in his own image. "[227] It is in like manner applied toall God's subsequent bestowals of animal life and rational souls, whichare directly bestowed by God, and are not in the power of any creatureto give. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit: they are _created_. " "Remembernow thy _Creator_, in the days of thy youth. "[228] In all theseinstances, the use of the word determines its literal meaning to be whatWebster defines it: "To bring into being from nothing. "

The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literalmeaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mindand soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me aclean heart;" which God thus explains: "A new heart will I give you, anda new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heartout of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. "[229] TheHebrew word _bra_ has as many derivative meanings as our English word_create_; as we speak of "creating a peer, " "long abstinence creatinguneasiness, " etc. ; but these no more change the primitive idea in theone case than in the other. 

From this word _create_, the Bible very plainly distinguishes the words_make_ and _form_, using them as the complement of the former, in manypassages which speak of both creation and making. Thus, man was bothcreated and made. His life and soul are spoken of as a creation; hisbody as a formation from the dust; his deputed authority over the earthalso implies a primal creation, and subsequent investiture; and so bothterms are applied to it. So the words _make_ and _form_ are applied tothe production of the bodies of animals from pre-existing materials, while animal life is ever spoken of as a product of creative power. But, that we may see that these processes are distinct, and that the wordswhich express them have distinctive meanings, _the Author of the Bibletakes care to use them both_ in reference to this very work, in such away that we can not fail to perceive he intends some distinction, unlesswe suppose that he fills the Bible with useless tautologies. Forinstance, "On the seventh day, God rested from all his work, which God_created_ and _made_. " "These are the generations of the heavens and theearth, when they were _created_; in the day the Lord God _made_ theearth and the heavens. " "But now thus saith the Lord that _created_thee, Jacob, and he that _formed_ thee, O Israel. " "For thus saith theLord that _created_ the heavens, God himself, that _formed_ the earth, and _made_ it; he hath established it; he _created_ it not in confusion;he _formed_ it to be inhabited. "[230] In all these passages _creation_is clearly distinguished from _formation_ and _making_, if the Bible isnot a mass of senseless repetitions. If _create_, and _make_, and_form_, have all the same meaning, why use them all in the same verse?These, and many similar passages, show that the Bible teaches the workof _creation_--calling things into being--to be previous to and distinctfrom the work of _making_--forming of materials already created. 

Between these two widely different processes--of the original creationof the universe, and the subsequent preparation of the habitable earth, by the six days' work--two intervening periods are indicated byScripture, both of indefinite length. The first of these is that whichintervened between the original creation and the period of disorderindicated in the second verse. The second is that disordered periodduring which the earth continued without form and void. 

That original chaos which some would find in the second verse, never hadany existence, save in the brains of Atheistic philosophers. It ispurely absurd. God never created a chaos. Man never saw it. Thecrystals of the smallest grain of sand, the sporules of the humblestfungus on the rotten tree, the animalculę in the filthiest pool of mud, are as orderly in their arrangements, as perfect after their kind, andas wisely adapted to their station, as the angels before the throne ofGod. And as man never saw, so he has no language to describe, a state oforiginal disorder; for every word he can use implies a previous state ofregularity; as disorder tells of order dissolved; confusion of previousforms melted together. So the poets who have tried to describe a chaoshave been obliged to represent it as the wreck of a former state. 

Both the Bible language and the Bible narrative correspond to thephilosophy and philology of the case; for, by the use of the substantiveverb, in the past tense, implying progressive being, according to theusual force of the word in Hebrew, we are told literally, "the earth_became_ without form and void. " God did not create it so, but after itwas created, and by a series of revolutions not recorded, it becamedisordered and empty. The Holy Spirit takes care to explain this verse, by quoting it in Jeremiah iv. 23, as the appropriate symbolicaldescription of the state of a previously existing and regularlyconstituted body politic, reduced to confusion by the calamities of war. Again, he explains both the terms used in it in Isaiah xxxiv. 11, byusing them to describe, not the rude and undigested mass of the heathenpoet, but the wilderness condition of a ravaged country, and thedesolate ruins of once beautiful and populous cities: "He will stretchout upon it the line of _confusion_, and the stones of _emptiness_. " Inboth these cases the previous existence of an orderly and populous stateis implied. And finally, we are expressly assured, that the state ofdisorder mentioned in the second verse of Genesis i. , was not theoriginal condition of the earth--Isaiah xlv. 18--where the very sameword is used as in Genesis i. 2, "He created it not, _teu_, _disordered_, in _confusion_. " The period of the earth's previousexistence in an orderly state, or that occupied by the revolutions andcatastrophes which disordered its surface, is not recorded in Scripture. 

The second period is that of disorder, which must have been of someduration, more or less, and is plainly implied to have been ofconsiderable length, in the declaration that "the Spirit of the Lordmoved"--literally, _was brooding_ (a figure taken from the incubation offowls)--"upon the face of the waters. " But no portion of Scripture givesany intimation of the length of this period. 

If, then, astronomers and geologists assert that the earth was millions, or hundreds of millions of years in process of preparation for itspresent state, by a long series of successive destructions andrenovations, and gradual formations, _there is not one word in the Bibleto contradict that opinion_; but, on the contrary, very many texts whichfully and unequivocally imply its truth. But, as the knowledge of theexact age of the earth is by no means necessary to any man's presenthappiness, or the salvation of his soul, it is nowhere taught in theBible. God has given us the stars to teach us astronomy, the earth toteach us geology, and the Bible to teach us religion, and neithercontradicts the other. 

This is no new interpretation evoked to meet the necessities of modernscience. The Jewish Rabbins, and those of the early Christian Fatherswho gave any attention to criticism, are perfectly explicit inrecognizing these distinctions. The doctrine of the creation of theworld only six or seven thousand years ago is a product of monkishignorance of the original language of the Bible. But Clement ofAlexandria, Chrysostom, and Gregory Nazianzen, after Justin Martyr, teach the existence of an indefinite period between the creation and theformation of all things. Basil and Origen account for the existence oflight before the sun, by alleging that the sun existed, but that thechaotic atmosphere prevented his rays from being visible till the firstday, and his light till the third. [231] Augustine, in his first homily, represents the first state of the earth, in Genesis i. 1, as bearing thesame relation to its finished state, that the seed of a tree does to thetrunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. Horsley, Edward King, Jennings, Baxter, and many others, who wrote during the last two centuries, butbefore the period of geological discovery, explained the second versesubstantially as did Bishop Patrick, a hundred and fifty years ago. "Howlong all things continued in confusion, we are not told. _It might havebeen, for anything that is here revealed, a very great while. _"[232]

Some persons, however, have supposed that the chaos of the second versesucceeded immediately to the creation of the first, and that the sixdays' work in like manner followed that instantaneously, or at leastafter a very brief interval, because the records of these cycles areconnected by the word _and_, which, they think, precludes the idea ofany lengthened periods or intervals. But the slightest reflection uponthe meaning of the word will show that _and_ can not of itself be any_measure_ of time, its use being to indicate merely _sequence_ and_connection_. When used historically, it always implies an interval oftime; for there can be no succession without an interval; but the lengthof that interval must be determined from the context, or some othersource. A very cursory perusal of the Bible, either in English orHebrew, will show that very often in its brief narratives, the intervalindicated by _and_, and its Hebrew originals, is a very long time. Thedescent of Jacob and his children into Egypt is connected with therecord of their deaths, in the very next verse, by this word _and_, which thus includes nearly the lifetime of a generation. That event, again, is connected with a change of dynasty in Egypt, and theoppression and multiplication of the Israelites there, recorded in thenext verse, by the same word, _vau_, _and_; while the period over whichit reaches was over two hundred years. [233] So in the brief record ofthe family of Adam, after reciting the birth of Seth, the historianadds, in the next verse, "And to Seth also was born a son, and he calledhis name Enos;" while the interval thus indicated by the word _and_ wasa hundred and five years. The command to build the ark, recorded in thelast verse of the sixth chapter of Genesis, is connected with thecommand to enter into it, in the first verse of the seventh chapter, bythis same word _and_, although we know, from the nature of the case, that the interval required for the construction of such a huge vesselmust have been considerable; and from the third verse of the sixthchapter, we learn that it was a hundred and twenty years. So the birthsand deaths of the antediluvians are connected by this same word _and_, throughout the fifth chapter of Genesis; while the interval, as we seefrom the narrative, was often eight or nine hundred years. The descentof the Holy Spirit upon Christ, to qualify him for judging the world, isconnected with the actual discharge of that office, in the destructionof Antichrist by the breath of his mouth, by this word _and_, [234]although the interval has been over eighteen hundred years. If in therecords of the generations of mortal men, the word _and_ is customarilyemployed as a connecting link in the narrations of events separated byan interval of hundreds of years, it is quite consistent with thestrictest propriety of language to employ it, with an enlargementproportioned to the duration of the subject of discourse, to connectintervals of millions, in the narrative of the generations of theheavens and the earth. 

The Bible uniformly attributes the most remote antiquity to the work ofcreation. So far from supposing man to be even approximately coeval withit, the emphatic reproof of human presumption is couched in theremarkable words, "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of theearth?" In majestic contrast with the frail human race, Moses glances atthe primeval monuments of God's antiquity, as though by them he couldform some faint conceptions even of eternity, and sings, "Before themountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth andthe universe, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. "[235]

The very word here used, _the beginning_, is in itself an emphaticrefutation of the notion that the work of creation is only some six orseven thousand years old. Geologists have been unable to invent abetter, and have borrowed from the Bible this very form of speech, todesignate those strata beyond which human knowledge can notpenetrate--_the primary formations_. But, with far greater propriety, the Holy Spirit uses this word with regard to ages, compared with whichthe utmost range of the astronomer's or geologist's reasonings is but asthe tale of yesterday. For this word, in Bible usage, marks the lastpromontory on the boundless ocean of eternity; the only positive word bywhich we can express the most remote period of past duration. It is nota date--a point of duration. It is a period--a vast cycle. It has butone boundary; that where creation rises from its abyss. Created eye hasnever seen the other shore. It is that vast period which the Bibleassigns to the manifestations of the Word of God, "whose goings forthhave been of old, from everlasting. " Carrying our astonished gaze farback beyond the era of his creature, man, and ages before the "allthings" that were made by Him, the Bible places this _beginning_ on thevery shore of the eternity of God, when it declares, "_In the beginning_was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. "[236]Thus, both by the use of the imperfect tense, _was_, denoting continuedexistence, and by the connection of this _beginning_ with the eternityof the Word, does the Bible teach us to dismiss from our thoughts allnarrow views of the period of duration employed in manifesting the gloryof the self-existent Eternal One, and to raise our conceptions to thehighest possible pitch, and then to feel, that far beyond the grasp ofhuman calculation lies that _beginning_ which includes the years of theright hand of the Most High, and is even used as one of the names of theEternal: "I AM THE BEGINNING _and the Ending, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come_--THE ALMIGHTY. "[237]

In another Bible exhibition of the eternity of the Son of God, we areconducted from that _beginning_, downward, stage by stage, from thoseperiods of remote antiquity prior to the formation of water, theupheaval of the mountains, the alluvial deposits, the subsidence of theexisting sea basins, and the adornment of the habitable parts of theearth, to that comparatively recent event, the existence of the sons ofmen. Our ideas of the eternity of the love of Christ are thus enhanced, by the vastness of the ages which stretch out between the human race andthat beginning when He was, as it were, "The Lamb slain from before thefoundations of the world. "

 "The Lord possessed me _in the beginning of his way_, _Before his works of old_. I was set up from everlasting, _From the beginning, or ever the earth was_. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; When there were no fountains, abounding with water; Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, was I brought forth; While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the highest part of the dust of the world When he prepared the heavens, I was there; When he described a circle upon the face of the deep; When he established the clouds above; When he strengthened the fountains of the deep; When he gave to the sea his decree, That the waters should not pass his commandment; When he appointed the foundations of the earth: Then was I by him, as one brought up with him; And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him: Rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth; And my delights were with the sons of men. "[238]

Let the geologist, then, penetrate as deeply as he can into theprofundities of the foundations of the earth, and bring forth themonuments of their hoary antiquities: we will follow with the mostunfaltering faith, and receive with joy these proofs of his eternalpower and Godhead. Let the astronomer raise his telescope, and reflecton our astonished eyes the light which flashed from morning stars, onthe day of this earth's first existence, or even the rays which began totravel from distant suns, millions of years ere the first morning dawnedon our planet: we will place them as jewels in the crown of Him who isthe bright and morning star. They shall shed a sacred luster over thepages of the Bible, and give new beauties of illustration to itsmajestic symbols. But never will geologist penetrate, much less exhaust, the profundity of its mysteries, nor astronomer attain, much lessexplore, the sublimity of that beginning revealed in its pages; for eyehath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of manto conceive, either the antiquity, or the nature, or the duration of thethings which God hath prepared for them that love him. Human sciencewill never be able to reach the Bible era of creation. It is placed inan antiquity beyond the power of human calculation, in that sublimesentence with which it introduces mortals to the Eternal: "_In thebeginning God created the heavens and the earth. _"

3. The third objection we have named is equally unfounded. _The Biblenowhere teaches that the sky is a solid sphere, to which the stars arefixed, and which revolves with them around the earth. _ I know thatInfidels allege that the word _firmament_, in the first chapter ofGenesis, conveys this meaning. It does not. Neither the English word, nor the Hebrew original, has any such meaning. As to the meaning of theEnglish word, I adhere to the dictionary. Infidels must not be allowedto coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage ofthe English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority. Hisdefinition of _firmament_ is, "The region of the air; the sky, orheavens. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse--a wide extent; forsuch is the signification of the Hebrew word, coinciding with _regio_, _region_, and _reach_. The original, therefore, does not convey thesense of solidity, but of stretching--extension. The great arch orexpanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and theclouds, and in which the stars _appear_ to be placed, and are _really_seen. " The word _firmament_, then, conveys no such meaning as theInfidel alleges, to any man who understands the English tongue. 

No Hebrew speaking man or woman ever did, or ever could understand theoriginal Hebrew word _reqo_ in any other sense than that of _expanse_;for the verb from which it is formed means to extend, or spread out, aseven the English reader may see, by a few examples of its use, in thefollowing passages of Scripture; where the English words by which theverb _reqo_ is expressed, are marked in italics. "Then did I beat themsmall as the dust of the earth, and did stamp them as the mire of thestreet, and _did spread them abroad_. " "The goldsmith _spreadeth itover_ with gold. " "Thus saith the Lord: he that created the heavens, andstretched them out; he that _spread forth_ the earth. " "I am the Lord, that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, and_spreadeth abroad_ the earth by myself. " "To him that _stretcheth out_the earth above the waters. " "The censers of these sinners against theirown souls, let them _make them broad_ plates, for a covering for thealtar. _And they were made broad. _" "Hast thou with him _spread out_ thesky;"[239] or, in Humboldt's elegant rendering, "the pure ether, _spread_ (during the scorching heat of the south wind) as a meltedmirror over the parched desert. "[240] We might refer to the opinions oflexicographers, all unanimous in ascribing the same idea to the word;but the authorities given above are conclusive. The meaning, then, ofthe Hebrew word rendered firmament is so utterly removed from the notionof compactness, or solidity, or metallic or crystalline spheres, that itis derived from the very opposite; the fineness or tenuity produced byprocesses of expansion. Science has not been able to this day to inventa better word for the regions of space than the literal rendering of theoriginal Hebrew word used by Moses--_the expanse_. 

The inspired writers of the New Testament, though they found the worldfull of all the absurdities of the Greek philosophy, and their Greektranslations of the Bible continually using the word _stereoma_, whichexpressed these notions, _never used it_ but once, and then not for thesky, but for the _steadfastness of faith_ in Christ. Their thus using itonce shows that they were acquainted with the word, and its propermeaning, and that their disuse of it was intentional; while their disuseof it, and choice of another word to denote the heavens, provesdecisively that they disapproved of the absurdity which it wasunderstood to express. Now, whether you account for this fact byadmitting their inspiration, or by alleging that they drew theirlanguage from the Hebrew original, and not from the Greek translation, it is in either case perfectly conclusive as to the scriptural meaningof the word. Indeed, it is marvelous how any man who is familiar withhis Bible, and knows that the Scriptures usually describe the sky bymetaphors conveying the very opposite ideas to those of solidity orpermanence--as, "stretched out like a curtain, " "spread abroad like atent to dwell in, " "folded up like a vesture, " and the like--shouldallow himself to be imposed on by the impudent falsehood of Voltaire, that the Bible teaches us that the sky is a solid metallic or crystalhemisphere, supported by pillars. 

Those beautiful figures of sacred poetry in which the universe isrepresented as the palace of the Great King, adorned with majestic"pillars, " and "windows of heaven, " whence he scatters his gifts amonghis expectant subjects in the courts below, have been grossly abused forthe support of this miserable falsehood. We are assured, that soignorant was Moses of the true nature of the atmosphere, and of theorigin of rain, that he believed and taught that there was an ocean offresh water on _the outside_ of this metal hemisphere, which covered theearth like a great sugar-kettle, bottom upward, and was supported onpillars; and at the bottom of the ocean were trap-doors, to let therain through; which trap-doors in the metal firmament are to beunderstood, when the Bible speaks of the windows of heaven. Now, thebottom of an ocean is an odd place for windows, and a trap-door israther a strange kind of watering-pot; and if Moses put the ocean offresh water on the _outside_ of his metal hemisphere, he must havechanged his notions of gravity materially from the time he planned thebrazen hemisphere for the tabernacle, which he turned mouth upward, andput the water in the _inside_. 

While such writers are quite clear about the metal trap-doors and theocean, they have not yet fully fathomed the construction and arrangementof the pillars. Whether the Bible teaches that they are "pillars ofsalt, " like Lot's wife, or of flesh and blood, like "James, Cephas, andJohn, " or such "iron pillars and brazen walls" as Jeremiah was againstthe house of Israel--whether they consisted of "cloud and fire, " likethe pillar Moses describes in the next book as floating in the sky overthe camp of Israel, or are "pillars of smoke, " such as ascend out of thewilderness--whether they are those "pillars of the earth which tremble"when God shakes it, or "the pillars of heaven which are astonished athis reproof"--whether they are the pillars of the earth and itsanarchical inhabitants, which Asaph bore up, or are composed of the samematerials as Paul's "pillar and basis of the truth, " or the pillars ofvictory which Christ erects "in the temple of God"[241]--they have notyet decided. Whether the Hebrews understood these pillars to be arrangedon the outside of the metal hemisphere, and if so, to imagine any usefor them there; or in the inside, and in that case whether they kept thesky from falling upon the earth, or only supported the earth fromfalling into the sky, these learned men are by no means agreed. Havingtrampled the pearl into fragments, their attempts to combine them intoanother shape are more amusing than successful; and it is hard to saywhich of the seven opinions ascribed to the Bible by Infidelcommentators is least probable. That opinion, however, will, doubtless, after more vigorous and protracted rooting, be discovered and greedilyswallowed amid grunts of satisfaction; an appropriate reward of suchlaborious stupidity. 

The absurdities of the Greek philosophers were not drawn from the Bible. Had the Greeks read the Bible more, they would have preserved the commonsense God gave them a great deal longer, and would not, while professingthemselves to be wise, have become such fools as to adore blocks andstones, and dream of metal firmaments. But they turned away their earsfrom the truth, and were turned unto such fables as Infidels falselyascribe to the Bible. A thousand years before the cycles and epicyclesof the Ptolemaic astronomy were invented, and before learned Greeks hadlearned to talk nonsense about crystal spheres, and trap-doors in thebottom of celestial oceans, the writers of the Bible were recordingthose conversations of pious philosophers concerning stars, and clouds, and rain, from which Galileo derived the first hints of the causes ofbarometrical phenomena. The origin of rain, its proportion to the amountof evaporation, and the mode of its distribution by condensation, couldnot be propounded by Humboldt himself with more brevity and perspicuitythan they are expressed by the Idumean philosopher: "He maketh small thedrops of water; they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof, which the clouds do drop and distill upon man abundantly. Also, can anyunderstand the spreadings of the clouds, or the noise of histabernacles?"[242] The cause of this rarefaction of _cold water_ is asmuch a mystery to the British Association as it was to Elihu; and evenwere all the mysteries of the electrical tension of vapors disclosed, "the balancings of the clouds" would only be more clearly discovered tobe, as the Bible declares, "the wonderful works of Him who is perfect inwisdom. " But the gravity of the atmosphere, the comparative density offloating water, and its increased density by discharges of electricity, were as well known to Job and his friends as they are to the wisest ofour modern philosophers. "He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seethunder the whole heaven, _to make weight to air, and regulate waters bymeasure, in his making a law for the rain, and a path for the lightningof thunder_. "[243] Three thousand years before the theory of the tradewinds was demonstrated, or before Maury had discovered the rotation andrevolutions of the wind-currents, it was written in the Bible, "The windgoeth toward the south, and turneth about to the north. _And the windreturneth again, according to his circuits. _"[244]

Thousands of years before Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus were born, Isaiah was writing about the "orbit of the earth, " and itsinsignificance in the eyes of the Creator of the host of heaven. [245]Job was conversing with his friends on the inclination of its axis, andits equilibrium in space: "He spreadeth out the north over the emptyspace, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. "[246]

So far from entertaining the least idea of the waters of the atmospherebeing contained either on the outside or the inside of a metal or solidhemisphere, the writers of the Bible never once use, even figuratively, any expression conveying it. On the contrary, the well-known scripturalfigures for the fountains of the rain, are the soft, elastic, leathernwaterskins of the east, "the bottles of the clouds, " or the wide, flowing shawl or upper garment wherein the people of the east areaccustomed to tie up loose, scattering substances. [247] "He bindeth upthe waters in his thick cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them. ""Who hath bound the waters in a garment;" "As a vesture thou shaltchange them;" or the loose, flowing curtains of a royal pavilion; or theextended covering of a tent: "his pavilion around him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies;" "the spreadings of the clouds, and thenoise of his tabernacle;" "he spread a cloud for a covering. "[248]Instead of the notion of a single ocean, the "number of the clouds" isproverbial in the Scriptures[249] for a multitude; and in directopposition to the permanence of a vast metallic arch, the chosen emblemsof instability and transitoriness, and of the utmost rapidity of motion, suitable even for the chariot of Jehovah, are selected from theheavens. [250]

In short, there is not the slightest vestige of any foundation inScripture for the notions long afterward introduced by the Greekphilosophers. Yet Christians, who have read these passages of Scriptureover and over again, allow themselves to give heed to Infidels, who havenot, asserting, without the shadow of proof, that Moses taughtabsurdities which were not invented for a thousand years after hisdeath. The Bible gives hints of many profound scientific truths; itteaches no absurdities; _and, instead of countenancing the notion thatthe sky is a solid metal hemisphere, it teaches, both literally andfiguratively, directly the contrary_. 

4. We come now to the fourth objection, _that the Bible represents Godas creating light before the sun_, which is supposed to be an absurdity, _and as creating the sun, moon, and stars only two days before Adam_. This is the only astronomical objection to the Bible account of creationwhich has any foundation of Scripture statement to rest upon; but weshall soon see that here, also, Infidels have not done themselves thejustice of reading the Bible with attention. 

I have already corrected that confusion of ideas and carelessness ofperusal which confounds the two distinct and different words, _create_and _make_, so as to make both mean the same thing. God _created_ theheavens, as well as the earth, _in the beginning_; a period of suchremote antiquity that, in Bible language, it stands next to eternity. The sun and moon then came into being. Through what changes they passed, or when they were endowed with the power of giving light to theuniverse, the Bible nowhere declares; but on the fourth day, it tellsus, they _were made lights_, or, literally, _light-bearers_, to thisearth. The comparatively insignificant place allotted to the stars, inthe narrative of this earth's formation, corresponds, with the strictestpropriety, to the nature of the discourse; which is not an account ofthe system of the universe, but of the process of preparation of thisearth for the abode of man. Compared with the influences of "the twogreat light-bearers, " those of the stars are very insignificant; sincethe sun sheds more light and heat on the earth in one day, than all thefixed stars have done since the creation of Adam. It is evident, fromthe words, that Moses is not speaking either of their original creation, or of their actual magnitude, but of their appointment and use inrelation to us, when he says, "And God made two great light-bearers (thegreater light-bearer to rule the day, and the lesser light bearer torule the night), and the stars. And God set them in the firmament of theheavens, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and thenight, and to divide the light from the darkness. "

Neither here nor elsewhere does he say they were _created_ at this time, but in all the subsequent references uses other words, such as"prepared, " "divided, " "made, " "appropriated, " "made for ruling, ""gave;" a studious omission, which shows that the Author of the Biblehad not forgotten how long it was since he had called them into being. _The Bible, then, does not say that God created the sun and stars onlytwo days before Adam. _

Another correction of careless Bible reading is necessary, that we maybe satisfied about what the Bible _does not say_, ere we begin to defendwhat it does say. The Bible does not say, nor lead us to believe, thatthe darkness spoken of in the second verse of the first of Genesis hadexisted from eternity. Darkness is not eternal; it requires the exerciseof creative power for its production. Light is the eternal dwelling ofthe Word of God. [251] The darkness which brooded over our earth, at theperiod of its formation, is very plainly described in the Bible as atemporary phenomenon, incident to, and necessary for, the birth ofocean. It is confined by the adverb of time, _when_, to the period ofcondensation, upheaval, and subsidence, occupied by the birth of thatgigantic infant, "_when_ it burst forth as though it had issued from thewomb; _when_ I made the cloud a garment for it, and thick darkness aswaddling band for it, and broke up for it my decreed place, and setbars and doors. "[252] The sun may have shone for millions of yearsbefore upon the earth, or might have been shining with all hisbrilliance at that very time, while not a single ray penetrated thethick darkness of the vapors in which earth was clothed. But whether ornot, darkness must, from its very nature, be limited, both in space andtime. To speak of infinite and eternal darkness is as unscriptural as itis absurd. The source of light is Uncreated and Eternal. [253]

Further--if my readers are not tired with these perpetual corrections ofcareless reading and mistaken meaning--the light called into existencein the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis is as evidently adifferent word from _the two lights_ spoken of in the fourteenth verse, as the singular is different from the plural; and the thing signified byit is as distinct from the things spoken of in the fourteenth verse, asthe abstract is from the concrete; as, when I say of the first, "lighttravels 195, 000 miles per second, " but mean a totally distinct subjectwhen I say, "Extinguish the lights. " The Hebrew words are even morepalpably different, the word for _light_, in the third verse, being_aur_, while the words for _the lights_, in the fourth day's work, are_maurt_ and _at emaur_; words as distinct in shape and sense as ourEnglish words, _light_ and _the lighthouses_. 

The locality of the light of the third verse is, moreover, whollydifferent from that of the light-bearers of the fourteenth verse. Thatwas placed on earth--these in heaven. It was of the earth alone thewriter was speaking, in the second verse; the earth alone is the subjectof the following verses. It was the darkness of earth that needed to beilluminated; but there is not the remotest hint, in any portion ofScripture, that any other planet or star was shrouded in gloom at thistime. But, on the contrary, we are most distinctly informed that thewonders which God was performing in this world at that very time weredistinctly visible amid the cheerful illumination of other orbs, "whenthe morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted forjoy, "[254] as this earth emerged from its temporary darkness. It was notfrom the light of heaven, but out of this darkness of earth, that God, who still draws the lightning's flash from the black thunder-cloud, commanded the light to shine. [255] And it was upon this earth, and notthroughout the universe, that it produced alternate day and night. Toextend this command for the illumination of the darkened earth, so as tomean the production of light in general, and the lighting of the mostdistant telescopic, and even invisible stars--which are neitherspecified in the command itself, nor by any necessity of language orScripture implied in it, but, on the contrary, excluded, by the expressScripture declarations of the pre-existence of light, and of morningstars--is an outrage alike against all canons of criticism, laws ofgrammar, and dictates of common sense. The command, "Let there belight, " had respect to this earth only. 

The Bible does represent this earth as illuminated at a time when thesun was not visible from its surface--perhaps not visible at all. Now, if any one will undertake to scoff at the Bible for speaking of lightwithout sunshine, or of the sun shining upon a dark earth--as Infidelsabundantly do--we demand that he tell us, What is light, and how is itconnected with the sun? If he can not, let him cease to scoff at matterstoo high for him. 

If he can tell us, he knows that the retardation of Encke's comet, whichevery year falls nearer and nearer the sun, has discovered the existenceof an attenuated ether in the expanse or firmament; and that theexperiments of Arago on the polarization of light have finallydemonstrated that our sensation of light is exerted by a series ofvibrations or undulations of this fluid, [256] he will then be able toperceive the propriety with which the Author of light and of the Biblespeaks, not of _creating_ light, as if it were a material substance, butof _forming_ or commanding its display. And he will be better able tocomprehend the beauty and scientific propriety with which he selectedthe active participle of the verb _to flow_, as the name for theundulations of this fluid; for the primary meaning of the Hebrew verb_ar_ is, _to flow_, or, when used as a noun, _a flood_. "It shall becast out and drowned, as by the _flood_ of Egypt. "[257] And of the likeimport are the nouns, _iar_ and _aur_, formed from it. "Who is this thatcovereth up like a _flood_, whose waters are moved like therivers?"[258] The philosopher, even though he be a skeptic, will ceaseto mock the Bible when he reads there, that 6000 years ago its Authortermed light _the flowing--the undulation_. "In the words of the 'Son ofGod, ' and the 'Son of Man, ' no less than in his works, with all theiradaptation to the circumstances of the times and persons to whom theywere originally delivered, are things inexplicable--concealed germs ofan infinite development, reserved for future ages to unfold. "[259] Tothe man of learning and reflection, this progressive fullness, andunfathomable depth of the Scripture, is a most conclusive proof that itwas dictated by Him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom andknowledge. 

But the ignorant scoffers--the great majority--will mock on, and speakevil of the things they know not. Their mockery is founded on twoassumptions, which they believe to be irrefutable; that the sun is theonly possible source of light to the earth; and that it is impossiblefor the sun to exist without illuminating the earth. Unless they can_prove_ both of these assumptions to be true, they can not prove theBible account of creation to be false, nor even show it to beimpossible. Neither of these assumptions can possibly be proved true;for none of them can explore the universe, to discover the sources oflight, nor put the sun through every possible experiment, to discoverthat his light is an inseparable quality. The only thing Infidels cantruly allege against the Bible account of the origin of light is, _theirignorance of the process_. The argument is simply this: "God could notcause light without sunshine, _because I don't know how he did it_. Nor_can I understand_ how the sun shone on a dark earth; therefore, it isimpossible. "

These arguments from ignorance need no other answer than the questions, Do you know how the sun shines at all? Is your ignorance the measure ofGod's wisdom?

But I shall demonstrate the utter falsehood of both these assumptions, by showing the actual existence of many sources of light besides thesun, and the perfect possibility of the existence of the sun withoutsunshine, and of sunshine without any light reaching the earth. Thus, both the alleged _impossibilities_ upon which the argument against thetruth of the Bible is based will be removed, and the gross ignorance ofnatural science displayed by professedly scientific scoffers at theBible exposed. 

Light, so far from being solely derived from the sun, exists in, and canbe educed from, almost any known substance. Even children are familiarwith the light produced by the friction of two pieces of quartz; and noone needs to be informed how light may be produced by the combustion ofinflammable substances. But the number of these substances is fargreater than is generally supposed, and light can be produced byprocesses to which we do not generally apply the idea of burning. Resins, wool, silks, wood, and all kinds of earths and alkalies, arecapable of emitting light in suitable electrical conditions; so thatthe surface of our earth may have been a source of light in past ages, as it even now is, [260] near the poles and the equator, flashing itsAurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, and sending out its belts ofZodiacal light, [261] far into the surrounding darkness. 

Schubert, quoted by Kurtz, says: "May not that polar light, which iscalled the Aurora of the North, be the last glittering light of adeparted age of the world, in which the earth was inclosed in an expanseof aerial fluid, from which, through the agency of electric magneticforces, streamed forth an incomparably greater degree of light, accompanied with animating warmth, almost in a similar mode to whatstill occurs in the luminous atmosphere of our sun?"

Again, the metallic bases of all the earths are highly inflammable. Abrilliant flame can be produced by the combustion of water. All themetals can be made to flash forth lightnings, under suitable electricand magnetic excitements. The crystals of several rocks give out lightduring the process of crystallization. Thousands of miles of the earth'ssurface must once have presented the lurid glow of a vast furnace fullof igneous rocks. Even now, the copper color of the moon during anellipse shows us that the earth is a source of light. [262] The mountainson the surface of Venus and the moon, and the continents and oceans ofMars, attest the existence of upheaval and subsidence, and of volcanicfires, capable of producing such phenomena, and of course of sources oflight in those planets, such as exist on the earth. We know, then, mostcertainly, that there are many other bodies capable of producing lightbesides the sun. That God could command the light to shine out ofdarkness, and convert the very ocean into a magnificent illumination, the following facts clearly prove. "Capt. Bonnycastle, coming up theGulf of St. Lawrence, on the seventh of September, 1826, was roused bythe mate of the vessel, in great alarm, from an unusual appearance. Itwas a starlight night, when suddenly the sky became overcast, in thedirection of the high land of Cornwallis County, _and an instantaneousand intensely vivid light, resembling the Aurora, shot out of thehitherto gloomy and dark sea_, on the lee bow, which was so brilliantthat it lighted everything distinctly, even to the mast-head. The lightspread over the whole sea, between the two shores, and the waves, whichbefore had been tranquil, now began to be agitated. Capt. Bonnycastledescribes the scene as that of _a blazing sheet of awful and mostbrilliant light_. A long and vivid line of light, superior in brightnessto the parts of the sea not immediately near the vessel, showed the baseof the high, frowning, and dark land abreast; the sky became lowering, and more intensely obscure. Long tortuous lines of light showed immensenumbers of large fish, darting about as if in consternation. The topsailyard and mizzen boom were lighted by the glare, as if gas-lights hadbeen burning directly below them; and until just before daybreak, atfour o'clock, the most minute objects were distinctly visible. "[263]

The other assumption, that the sun could not possibly have existedwithout giving light to the earth, is contradicted by the most familiarfacts. The earth and each of the planets might have been, and mostprobably were, surrounded by a dense atmosphere, through which the sun'srays could not penetrate. It is not at all necessary to prove that suchwas the fact. I am only concerned to prove the _possibility_; for theInfidel's objection is founded on the presumed _impossibility_ of thecoexistence of a dark earth and a shining sun. Any person who has everbeen in Pittsburg, Glasgow, or the manufacturing districts of England, and has seen how the smoke of even a hundred factory chimneys willshroud the heavens, can easily comprehend how a similar discharge, on alarger scale, from the thousands of primeval volcanoes, [264] would coverthe earth with the pall of darkness. By the eruption of a singlevolcano, in the island of Sumbawa, in 1815, the air was filled withashes, from Java to Celebes, darkening an area of more than 200, 000square miles; and the darkness was so profound in Java, three hundredmiles distant from the volcano, that nothing equal to it was everwitnessed in the darkest night. [265] Those who have witnessed the fogsraised on the Banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and inthe Bay of San Francisco, by the mingling of currents of water ofslightly different temperatures, can be at no loss to conceive thedensity of the vapors produced by the boiling of the sea around and overthe multitude of volcanoes[266] which have produced the countless_atolls_ of the Pacific, and by the vast upheavals of thousands of milesof heated rocks of the primary formations into the beds of primevaloceans. While such processes were in progress, it was impossible butthat darkness should be upon the face of the deep. [267] Even now, aslight change of atmospheric density and temperature would vail theearth with darkness. We see this substantially done every time that God"covereth the light with clouds, and commandeth it not to shine by thecloud that cometh betwixt, " although the sun continues to shine with allhis usual splendor. To understand how there may be a day withoutsunshine, we need only conceive the whole earth temporarily envelopedin the vapors of the unastronomical atmosphere of Peru, thus describedby Humboldt:

"A thick mist obscures the firmament in this region for many months, during the period called _tiempo de la garua_. Not a planet--not themost brilliant stars of the southern hemisphere--are visible. It isfrequently almost impossible to distinguish the position of the moon. If, by chance, the outline of the sun's disc be visible during the day, it appears devoid of rays, as if seen through colored glasses. Accordingto what modern geology has taught us to conjecture concerning theancient history of our atmosphere, its primitive condition in respect toits mixture and density _must have been unfavorable to the transmissionof light_. When we consider the numerous processes which, in the primaryworld, may have led to the separation of the solids, fluids, and gasesaround the earth's surface, the thought involuntarily arises, _hownarrowly the human race escaped being surrounded with an untransparentatmosphere_, which, though not greatly prejudicial to some classes ofvegetation, would yet have completely vailed the whole of the starrycanopy. All knowledge of the structure of the universe could then havebeen withheld from the inquiring spirit of man. "[268] The sun, then, mayhave shone with all his brilliancy, for thousands of years, and a singleray never have penetrated the darkness upon the face of the deep. 

But we will go further, and show that so far from light being anessential property of suns, it is a very variable attribute, and that inseveral cases suns have ceased, and others begun, to shine, before oureyes. 

The fixed stars are self-luminous bodies, similar to our sun, onlyimmensely distant from us. Their numbers, magnitudes, and places, areknown and recorded. But new stars have frequently flashed into view, where none were previously seen to exist; and others have graduallygrown dim and disappeared, without changing their place; and a few whichhad disappeared have reappeared in the same spot they formerly occupied;while others have changed their color since the era of astronomicalobservation. In short, there is no permanence in the heavens, any morethan on the earth; but a perpetual progress and change is the destiny ofsuns and stars, of which the most conspicuous indication is thevariability of their powers of giving light, of which I shall transcribea few instances. 

"On the eleventh of November, 1572, as the illustrious Danishastronomer, Tycho, was walking through the fields, he was astonished toobserve a new star in the constellation Cassiopea, beaming with aradiance quite unwonted in that part of the heavens. Suspecting somedelusion about his eyes, he went to a group of peasants, to ascertain ifthey saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment ashimself. He went to his instrument, and fixed its place, from which itnever after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased inbrightness--greatly surpassed Sirius in luster, and even Jupiter. It wasseen by good eyes in the daytime; a thing which happens only to Venus, under very favorable circumstances; and at night it pierced throughclouds which obscured the rest of the stars. After reaching its fullestbrightness, it again diminished, passed through all degrees of visiblemagnitude, assuming in succession the hues of a dying conflagration, andthen finally disappeared. " "It is impossible to imagine anything moretremendous than a conflagration that could be visible at such adistance. "[269]

Astronomers now recognize a class of such _Temporary Stars_, which haveappeared from time to time in different parts of the heavens, blazingforth with extraordinary luster, and after remaining awhile, apparentlyimmovable, have died away, and left no trace. [270] Twenty-one of suchappearances of new suns are on record. [271]

Still further, many familiar suns have ceased to shine. "On a carefulre-examination of the heavens, _many stars are found to bemissing_. "[272] "There are many well authenticated cases of thedisappearance of old stars, whose places had been fixed with a degree ofcertainty not to be doubted. In October, 1781, Sir William Herschelobserved a star, No. 55 in Flamstead's Catalogue, in the constellationHercules. In 1790 the same star was observed by the same astronomer, butsince that time no search has been able to detect it. The stars 80 and81 of the same catalogue, both of the fourth magnitude, have likewisedisappeared. In May, 1828, Sir John Herschel missed the star No. 42, inthe constellation Virgo, which has never since been seen. Examples mightbe multiplied, but it is unnecessary. "[273]

The demonstration of the variableness of the light-giving power of sunsis completed by the phenomena of the class called _Variable Stars_;though the best astronomers are now agreed that _variability, and notuniformity_, in the emission of light, is the general character of thestars. [274] But the variations which occur before our eyes impress usmore deeply than those which require centuries for their completion. SirJohn Herschel has observed, and graphically described, one such instanceof variation of light. 

"The star Eta Argus has always hitherto been regarded as a star of thesecond magnitude; and I never had reason to regard it as variable. InNovember, 1837, _I saw it, as usual_. Judge of my surprise to find, onthe sixteenth of December, that _it had suddenly become a star of thefirst magnitude_, and almost equal to Rigel. It continued to increase. Rigel is now not to be compared with it. It exceeds Arcturus, and isvery near equal to Alpha Centauri, being, at the moment I write, thefourth star in the heavens, in the order of brightness. "[275] It hassince passed through several variations of luster. Humboldt gives acatalogue of twenty-four of such stars whose variations have beenrecorded. 

"A strange field of speculation is opened by this phenomenon. Here wehave a star fitfully variable to an astonishing extent, and whosefluctuations are spread over centuries, apparently in no settled period, and with no regularity of progression. What origin can we ascribe tothese sudden flashes and relapses? What conclusions are we to draw as tothe comfort or habitability of a system depending for its supply oflight and heat on such an uncertain source? Speculations of this kindcan hardly be termed visionary, when we consider that, from what hasbeen before said, we are compelled to admit a community of naturebetween the fixed stars and our own sun; and when we reflect, thatgeology testifies to the fact of extensive changes having taken place, at epochs of the most remote antiquity, in the climate and temperatureof our globe; changes difficult to reconcile with the operation ofsecondary causes, such as a different distribution of sea and land, butwhich would find an easy and natural explanation in a slow variation ofthe supply of light and heat afforded by the sun himself. "[276] "I cannot otherwise understand alterations of heat and cold so extensive as atone period to have clothed high northern latitudes with a more thantropical luxuriance of vegetation, and at another to have buried vasttracts of Europe, now enjoying a genial climate, and smiling withfertility, under a glacier crust of enormous thickness. Such changesseem to point to causes more powerful than the mere local distributionof land and water can well be supposed to have been. In the slow secularvariations of our supply of light and heat from the sun, _which, in theimmensity of time, may have gone to any extent, and succeeded each otherin any order, without violating the analogy of sidereal phenomena whichwe know to have taken place_, we have a cause, not indeed established asa fact, but readily admissible as something beyond a bare possibility, fully adequate to the utmost requirements of geology. A change of half amagnitude on the luster of our sun, regarded as a fixed star, spreadover successive geological epochs--now progressive, now receding, nowstationary--_is what no astronomer would now hesitate to admit as aperfectly reasonable and not improbable supposition_. "[277]

The most eminent astronomers are perfectly unanimous in their deductionsfrom these facts. They regard _variability as the general characteristicof suns and stars, our own sun not exempted_. "We are led, " saysHumboldt, "by analogy to infer, that as the fixed stars _universally_have not merely an apparent, but a real motion of their own, so theirsurfaces or luminous atmospheres are generally subject to those changes(in their "light process") which recur, in the great majority, inextremely long, and therefore unmeasured, and probably undeterminableperiods, or which, in a few, recur without being periodical, as it were, by a sudden revolution, either for a longer or a shorter time. " And heasks, _Why should our sun differ from other suns?_

In reference to the extinction of suns, he says: "What we no longer seeis not necessarily annihilated. It is merely the transition of matterinto new forms--into combinations which are subject to new processes. Dark cosmical bodies may, by a renewed process of light, again becomeluminous. "[278]

In confirmation of the fact adduced in support of this view, by LaPlace, "that those stars which have become invisible, after havingsurpassed Jupiter in brilliancy, have not changed their place during thetime they continued visible, " he adds, "The luminous process has simplyceased. " Bessel asserts[279] that, "_No reason exists for consideringluminosity an essential property of these bodies. _" And Nichol sums upthe matter in the following emphatic words: "No more is light _inherent_in the sun than in Tycho's vanished star; and with it and other orbs, atime may come when, through the consent of all the powers of nature, heshall cease to be required to shine. _The womb which contains the futureis that which bore the past. _"[280]

Here, then we behold astronomy presenting to our observation facts andprocesses so similar to those which revelation presents to our faith, that all those men who are most profoundly versed in her lore, reasoningsolely from the facts of science, and without any reference to theBible, unanimously conclude that there was such a state of darkness andconfusion before our era, as the Bible declares--that its causes weremost probably such as the Bible implies--and that the suddenilluminating of dark bodies, and their extinction, and evenre-illumination, are facts so perfectly well authenticated as matters ofobservation in regard to other suns, that no reasonable man can hesitateto believe any credible assurance that our sun has passed through such aprocess. With what feelings, then, are we to regard men who, indefiance of the most common facts, and in contradiction to thedemonstrations of science, blaspheme the God of truth as a teacher offalsehood, because he speaks of light distinct from that of the sun?Surely, such men are those whom he describes as "having theunderstanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, throughthe ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them thatbelieve not. "[281]

These facts, of the sudden kindling of stars, their gradual passagethrough all the hues of a dying conflagration, and their finalextinction, and present blackness of darkness, are facts of fearful omento the enemies of God. They are the original threatenings of Heaven, whence the fearful language of Bible warning is derived. They attest itstruth, and illustrate its import. 

The favorite theory of the unbeliever is the uniformity of nature. "Where, " says he, "is the promise of Christ's coming to judgment; forsince the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were sincethe beginning of the world?" But the telescope dispels the illusion, exhibits the course of nature as a succession of catastrophes, displaysthe conflagration of other worlds, and the extinction of their suns, before our eyes, and asks, _Why should our sun differ from other suns?_It is not the preacher, but the philosopher, who has turned prophet, when--looking back on the period when the Siberian elephant andrhinoceros were frozen amid their native jungle, and icebergs visitedthe plains of India--he proclaims, "_The womb that bore the pastcontains the future. _"

The threatenings of God's Word are invested with a mantle of terribleliterality by the facts we have been contemplating. Raised at the day ofresurrection, in these bodies, and with these senses, and thiscapability of rejoicing in the light, and shuddering and pining amidoutward gloom, physical darkness will be the terrible prison of thosewho chose darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. TheFather of Lights shall withdraw his blessed influences from the hearts, the dwellings, the eyes, of those who say to him, "Depart from us, forwe desire not the knowledge of thy ways. " The sun shall cease to vivifyGod's corn, and wine, and oil, which ungodly men consume upon theirlusts. The moon shall cease to shine upon the robber's toil, and thestars to illumine the adulterer's path. The light of heaven shall ceaseto gild the field of carnage, where men perform the work of hell. In thevery midst of your worldliness and business, unbeliever, when you are inall the engrossment of buying and selling, and planting and building, and marrying and giving in marriage, without warning or expectation, "the sun shall go down at noon, and the stars shall be darkened in theclear day. " As in the warning and example given to the enemies of theLord in Egypt, thick darkness, that may be felt, shall wind itsinevitable chains around you, preventing your escape from the judgmentof the great day, and giving you a fearful foretaste of that "blacknessof darkness for ever" of which you are now forewarned in the Word ofTruth. 

 "The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars shall fall from the heavens, And the powers of the heavens shall be shaken; And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in the heavens, And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn; And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, With power and great glory. "

 "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness; There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. "

 "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. "

 "I am the light of the world; He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, But shall have the light of life. "[282]

FOOTNOTES:

[218] Duff's India, 127. 

[219] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 83. 

[220] Poole's Horę Egyptiacę. 

[221] Henri L'Egypte Pharonique. 

[222] Atlas Ethnographique, Eth. I. 

[223] See Cruden's Concordance, Art. _Day_. 

[224] Dan. , chap. Xii. 10. Job, chap. Xxxviii. 4. Col. , chap. Ii. 18. 

[225] Chap. I. _Did the World Make Itself?_

[226] Genesis, chap. I. 21. 

[227] Genesis, chap. I. 27. 

[228] Psalm civ. 30. Eccl. , chap. Xii. 1. 

[229] Psalm li. 10. Ezekiel, chap. Xxxvi. 26. 

[230] Genesis, chap. Ii. 1-5. Isaiah, chap. Xliii. 1-7; chap. Xlv. 1, 2. 

[231] Wiseman's Lectures on the Connection of Science and RevealedReligion, 1-297. 

[232] Commentary on Genesis, i. 2. 

[233] Exodus, chap. I. 5, 8. 

[234] Isaiah, chap. Xi. 3, 4. 

[235] Psalm xc. 

[236] John, chap. I. 1. 

[237] Revelation, chap. I. 8. 

[238] Proverbs, chap. Viii. 22. 

[239] Samuel, chap. Xxii. 43. Isaiah, chap. Xl. 19; chap. Xliv. 24;chap. Xlii. 5. Psalm cxxxvi. 6. Numbers, chap. Xvii. 38. Job, chap. Xxxvii. 18. 

[240] Cosmos v. 2, p. 60. 

[241] Genesis, chap. Xix. 26. Exodus, chap. Xiii. 20; chap. Xxxiii. 10. Jeremiah, chap. I. 18. Galatians, chap. Ii. 7. Song, chap. Iii. 6. Job, chap. Ix. 6; chap. Xxvi. 11. Psalm lxxv. 3. 1 Timothy, chap. Iii. 15. Revelation, chap. Iii. 12. 

[242] Job, chap. Xxxvi. 27. 

[243] Job, chap. Xxviii. 24--literal reading. 

[244] Ecclesiastes, chap. I. 6. 

[245] Isaiah, chap. Xl. 

[246] Job, chap. Xxvi. 7. 

[247] Ruth, chap. Iii. 15. 

[248] Job, chap. Xxxviii. 37; chap. Xxvi. 8; chap. Xxxviii. 9; chap. Xxxvi. 29. Psalm cv. 39; lxxvii. 17. 

[249] Isaiah, chap. Xliv. 22. Jeremiah, chap. Iv. 13. Job, chap. Xxxviii. 37. Proverbs, chap. Xxx. 4. 

[250] Ecclesiastes, chap. Xi. 4. Psalm civ. 3. Matthew, chap. Xxix. 30. 

[251] Isaiah, chap. Xlv. 7. 1 John, chap. I. 5. Daniel, chap. Ii. 22. 1Timothy, chap. Vi. 16. 

[252] Job, chap. Xxxviii. 9, 10. Literally, _In my making_, etc. 

[253] Revelation, chap. Xxi. 23; chap. Xxii. 5. Isaiah, chap. Lx. 19. 

[254] Job, chap. Xxxviii. 7. 

[255] 2 Corinthians, chap. Iv. 6. 

[256] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, Sec. 19-23. 

[257] Amos, chap. Viii. 8. 

[258] Jeremiah, chap. Xlvi. 7. Genesis, chap. Xli. 1-18. See Parkhurst'sHebrew Lexicon, sub voce. 

[259] Neander. 

[260] Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 196. 

[261] Annual of Scientific Discovery. 1856. 

[262] Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 196. Nichol's Solar System, 184. 

[263] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 288. 

[264] Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 250. 

[265] Lyell's Principles of Geology, 465. 

[266] Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 250. 

[267] Cosmos, Vol. I. Pp. 198, 216. 

[268] Cosmos, Vol. III. P. 139. 

[269] Nichol's Solar System, 188. Connection of Physical Sciences, 363. 

[270] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 827. 

[271] Cosmos, Vol. VIII. P. 210. 

[272] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 832. 

[273] Mitchell's Planetary and Stellar Worlds, 294. 

[274] Cosmos, Vol. III. P. 253. 

[275] Astronomical Observations, 351. 

[276] Herschel's Outlines, Sec. 830. 

[277] Astronomical Observations, 351. 

[278] Cosmos, Vol. III. Pp. 222-232. 

[279] Cosmos, Vol. III. P. 246. 

[280] Solar System, 190. 

[281] Ephesians, chap. Iv. 18. 2 Corinthians, chap. Iv. 4. 

[282] Matthew, chap. Xxiv. 29. John, chap. Viii. 12. Jeremiah, chap. Xiii. 15. Matthew, chap. Xxii. 13 and chap. Xxv. 30. 

CHAPTER XII. 

TELESCOPIC VIEWS OF SCRIPTURE. 

No kind of knowledge is more useful to man than the knowledge of his ownignorance; and no instrument has done more to give him such knowledgethan the telescope. Faith is the believing of facts we do not know, uponthe word of one who does. If any one knows everything, or thinks hedoes, he can have no faith. A deep conviction of our own ignorance is, therefore, indispensable to faith. The telescope gives us thisconviction in two ways. It shows us that we see a great many things wedo not perceive, tells us the size and the distances of those littlesparks that adorn the sky, and leads us to reason out their truerelations to our earth. Then it tells us, that what we see is little ofwhat is to be seen; that our knowledge is but a drop from the greatocean, a rush-light sparkling in the vast darkness of the unknown. Ittells us, that we do not see right, and that we do not see far; and thatthere may be things, both in heaven and earth, not dreamed of in ourphilosophy. Further, it confirms the Bible testimony concerning thefacts of its own province, by removing all improbability from some ofits most wonderful narratives, attesting the accuracy of its language, and confirming, by some of its most recent discoveries the truth of itsstatements. Our space will only allow us to select five illustrations ofthe tendency of faith in the telescope, to produce faith in the Bible. 

1. One of the latest astronomical discoveries throws light upon one ofthe most ancient scientific allusions of the Bible, and one which hasperplexed both commentators and geologists; _that which hints at thesecond causes of the deluge_. Not that it is at all needful for us to beable to tell where God Almighty procured the water to drown the ungodlysinners of the old world, before we believe his word that he did so;unless, indeed, somebody has explored the universe, and knows that thereis not water enough in it for that purpose, or that it is so far awaythat he could not fetch it; for, as to the fact itself, geology assuresus that all the dry land on earth has been drowned, not only once, butmany times. It is not the province of the commentator, but of thegeologist, to account for the phenomenon. 

Several solutions of the difficulty of finding water enough for thepurpose have been proposed. One of these supposes that some of theinternal caverns of the earth are filled with water, which, when heatedby neighboring volcanic fires, would expand one twenty-third of itsbulk, and flow out, and raise the ocean. When the volcanic fire wasburnt out, and the water cooled, it would of course contract to itsformer dimensions, and the ocean recede. These caverns they suppose tobe meant by "the fountains of the great deep, " in Genesis vii. 11. 

But the Bible describes another, and plainly a very important source ofthe waters of the deluge, in the rain which fell for forty days andforty nights. At present, all the water in our atmosphere comes from thesea, by evaporation; and the quantity is too insignificant to cover theglobe to any considerable depth. Divines and philosophers were perplexedto give any adequate explanation of this language, and considered itsimply as Noah's description of the appearance of things as viewed fromthe ark, rather than an accurate explanation of the actual causes of thedeluge. Now, it is certainly true, that the Bible does describe thingsas they appear to men. It is, however, beginning to be discovered, thatthese popular appearances are closely connected with philosophicalreality. Our purblind astronomy and prattling geology may be asinadequate to expound the mysteries of the Bible philosophy as was theincoherent science of Strabo and Ptolemy. The experience of anotherplanet, now transacting before our eyes, admonishes us not to limit theresources of Omnipotence by our narrow experience, or to suppose thatour young science has catalogued all the weapons in the arsenal of theAlmighty. 

The planet Saturn is surrounded by a revolving belt, consisting ofseveral distinct rings, containing an area a hundred and forty-six timesgreater than the surface of our globe, with a thickness of a hundredmiles. From mechanical considerations it had been proved, that theserings could not be of a uniform thickness all around, else when amajority of his seven moons were on the same side, the attraction woulddraw them in upon him, on the opposite side; and once attracted to hissurface, they could never get loose again, if they were solid. [283] Itwas next ascertained that the motions of the moons and of the rings weresuch, that if the inequality was always in the same place, the sameresult must follow; so that the ring must be capable of changing itsthickness, according to circumstances. It must be either composed of animmense number of small solid bodies, capable of shifting freely aboutamong themselves, or else be fluid. Finally, it has been demonstratedthat this last is the fact; that the density of this celestial ocean isnearly that of water; and that the inner portion, at least, is sotransparent, that the planet has been seen through it. [284] "The ring ofSaturn is, then, a stream or streams of fluid, rather denser than water, flowing about the primary. "[285] The extraordinary fact, which shows ushow God can deluge a planet when he pleases, I give not in the words ofa divine, but of a philosopher, whose thoughtless illustration ofScripture is all the more valuable, that it is evidently unintentional. 

"M. Otto Struve, Mr. Bond, and Sir David Brewster, are agreed thatSaturn's third ring is fluid, that this is not of very recent formation, and that it is not subject to rapid change. And they have come to theextraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring has, sincethe day of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body of Saturn, and that we may expect, sooner or later--perhaps in some dozen years--tosee the rings united with the body of the planet. _With this delugeimpending, Saturn would scarcely be a very eligible residence for men, whatever it might be for dolphins. _"[286]

Knowing, as we most certainly do, that the fluid envelopes of our ownplanet were once exceedingly different from the present, [287] here is apossibility quite sufficient to stop the mouth of the scoffer. Let himshow that God did not, or prove that he could not, suspend a similarseries of oceans over the earth, or cease to pronounce a universaldeluge impossible. 

2. That sublime ode, in which Deborah describes _the stars in theircourses as fighting against Sisera_[288] has been rescued from the graspof modern scoffers, by the progress of astronomy. It has been alleged aslending its support to the delusions of judicial astrology; by one classdesiring to damage the Bible as a teacher of superstition, and byanother to help their trade. The Bible reader will doubtless be greatlysurprised to hear it asserted, that the Bible lends its sanction to thisantiquated, and, as he thinks, exploded superstition. He knows howexpressly the Bible forbids God's people to have anything to do withit, or with its heathenish professors. "Thus saith the Lord, Learn notthe way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, forthe heathen are dismayed at them. "[289] And they will be still moresurprised to learn, that those who object against the Bible, that itascribes a controlling influence to the stars, are firm believers inReichenbach's discovery of _odyle_; an influence from the heavenlybodies so spiritual and powerful, that they imagine it able to governthe world, instead of God Almighty. [290]

The passage thus variously abused is a description, in highly poeticstrains, of the battle between the troops of Israel and those of Sisera;of the defeat of the latter, and of an earthquake and tempest, whichcompleted the destruction of his exhausted troops. The glory of thevictory is wholly ascribed to the Lord God of Israel; while the rain, the thunder, lightning, swollen river, and "the stars in their courses, "are all described, in their subordinate places, as only hisinstruments--the weapons of his arsenal. 

 "Lord, when thou wentest out of Seir, When thou marchedst out of the field of Edom, The earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, The clouds also dropped down water; The mountains also melted from before the Lord, Even that Sinai, from before the Lord God of Israel. "

Then, after describing the battle, she alludes to the celestialartillery, and to the effects of the storm in swelling the river, andsweeping away the fugitives who had sought the fords:

 "They fought from heaven; The stars in their courses fought against Sisera; The river Kishon swept them away; That ancient river, the river Kishon. "[291]

After describing some further particulars the hymn concludes with anallusion to the clearing away of the tempest and the appearance of theunclouded sun over the field of victory:

 "So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord; But let them that love thee be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might. "

Where is there the least allusion here to any controlling influence ofthe stars? You might just as well say, "The Bible ascribes a controllinginfluence over the destinies of men, to the river Kishon;" for they areboth spoken of, in the same language, as instruments in God's hand forthe destruction of his enemies. 

But it is objected, "Even by this explanation you have the Biblerepresenting the stars as causing the rain. " Not so fast. If a man werevery ignorant, and had never heard of anything falling from the sky butrain, he might think so. And if the Bible did attribute to the starssome such influence over the vapors of the atmosphere, as experienceshows the moon to possess over the ocean, are you able to demonstrateits absurdity?

Deborah, however, when she sang of the stars _in their courses_ fightingagainst Sisera, was describing a phenomenon very different from a fallof rain--was, in fact, describing a fall of ęrolites upon the army ofSisera. Multitudes of stones have fallen from the sky, and not less thanfive hundred such falls are recorded. 

"On September 1, 1814, a few minutes before midday, while the sky wasperfectly serene, a violent detonation was heard in the department ofthe Lot and Garonne. This was followed by three or four others, andfinally by a rolling noise, at first resembling a discharge of musketry, afterward the rumbling of carriages, and lastly that of a large buildingfalling down. Stones were immediately after precipitated to the ground, some of which weighed eighteen pounds, and sunk into a compact soil, tothe depth of eight or nine inches; and one of them rebounded three orfour feet from the ground. "

"A great shower of stones fell at Barbatan, near Roquefort, in thevicinity of Bordeaux, on July 24, 1790. A mass fifteen inches indiameter penetrated a hut and killed a herdsman and bullock. Some of thestones weighed twenty-five pounds, and others thirty pounds. "

"In July, 1810, a large ball of fire fell from the clouds, at Shahabad, which burned five villages, destroyed the crops, and killed several menand women. "[292]

Astronomers are perfectly agreed as to the character of these masses, and the source whence they come. "It appears from recent astronomicalobservations that the sun numbers among his attendants not only planets, asteroids, and comets, but also immense multitudes of meteoric stones, and shooting stars. "[293] Ęrolites are, then, really stars. They arecomposed of materials similar to those of our earth; the only other starwhose materials we can compare with them. They have a proper motionaround the sun, in orbits distinct from that of the earth. They arecapable of emitting the most brilliant light, in favorablecircumstances. Some of them are as large as the asteroids. One, of600, 000 tons weight, passed within twenty-five miles of the earth, atthe rate of twenty miles a second. A fragment of it reached theearth. [294] "That ęrolites were called _stars_ by the ancients isindisputable. Indeed, Anaxagoras considered the stars to be only stonymasses, torn from the earth by the violence of rotation. Democritustells us, that invisible dark masses of stone move with the visiblestars, and remain on that account unknown, but sometimes fall upon theearth, and are extinguished, as happened with the stony star which fellnear Aegos Potamos. "[295]

When Deborah, therefore, describes the _stars in their courses_ asfighting against Sisera, it is an utterly unfounded assumption tosuppose that she has any allusion to the baseless fancies of anastrology everywhere condemned by the religion she professed, when asimple and natural explanation is afforded by the fact, that stars dofall from the heavens to the earth, and _that they do so in theircourses_, and just by reason of their orbital motion; and that theancients both knew the fact, and gave the right name to those bodies. Let no reasonable man delude himself with the notion that God has noweapons more formidable than the dotings of astrology, till he has takena view of the arsenals of God's artillery, which he has treasured upagainst the day of battle and of war. 

Here it may be well to notice the illustration which the remarkableshowers of meteors, particularly those of November, 1833, shed uponseveral much ridiculed texts of Scripture. Scientific observation hasfully confirmed and illustrated the scientific accuracy of the Bible insuch expressions as, "the stars shall fall from heaven;" "there fell agreat star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp;" "and the stars ofheaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimelyfigs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. " Whatever political orecclesiastical events these symbols may signify, there can be noquestion, now, that the astronomical phenomenon used to prefigure themis correctly described in the Bible. Most of my readers have seen someof these remarkable exhibitions; but for the sake of those who have not, I give a brief account of one. "By much the most splendid meteoricshower on record, began at nine o'clock, on the evening of the twelfthof November, 1833, and lasted till sunrise next morning. It extendedfrom Niagara and the northern lakes of America, to the south of Jamaica, and from 61° of longitude, in the Atlantic, to 100° of longitude inCentral Mexico. Shooting stars and meteors of the apparent size ofJupiter, Venus, and even the full moon, darted in myriads toward thehorizon, _as if every star in the heavens had darted from theirspheres_. " They are described as having been as frequent as the flakesof snow in a snow-storm, and to have been seen with equal brilliancyover the greater part of the continent of North America. [296]

The source whence these meteors proceed is distinctly ascertained to be, as was already remarked with regard to the ęrolites, a belt of smallplanetoids, revolving around the sun in a little less than a year, andin an orbit intersecting that of the earth, at such an angle, that everythirty-three years, or thereabouts, the earth meets the full tide on thetwelfth of November. These meteors are true and proper stars. "All theobservations made during the year 1853 agree with those of previousyears, and confirm what may be regarded as sufficiently wellestablished: the cosmical origin of shooting stars. "[297]

3. The language of the Bible with respect to _the circuit of the sun_ isfound to have anticipated one of the most sublime discoveries of modernastronomy. True to the reality, as well as to the appearance of things, it is scientifically correct, without becoming popularly unintelligible. 

There is a class of aspirants to gentility who refuse to recognize anyperson not dressed in the style which they suppose to be fashionableamong the higher classes. A Glasgow butcher's wife, in the Highlands, attired in all the magnificence of her satins, laces, and jewelry, returned the courteous salute of the little woman in the gingham dressand gray shawl with a contemptuous toss of the head, and flounced past, to learn, to her great mortification, that she had missed an opportunityof forming an acquaintance with the Queen. So a large class ofpretenders to science refuse to become acquainted with Bible truth, because it is not shrouded in the technicalities of science, butdisplays itself in the plain speech of the common people to whom it wasgiven. They will have it, that because its author used common language, it was because he could not afford any other; and as he did notcontradict every vulgar error believed by the people to whom he spoke, it was because he knew no better; and because the Hebrews knew nothingof modern discoveries in astronomy, geology, and the other sciences, andthe Bible does not contain lectures on these subjects, the God of theHebrews must have been equally ignorant, and the Bible consequentlybeneath the notice of a philosopher. 

You will hear such persons most pertinaciously assert, that Mosesbelieved all the absurdities of the Ptolemaic astronomy; that the earthis the immovable center, around which revolve the crystal sphere of thefirmament, and the sun, and moon, and stars, which are attached to it, after the manner of lamps to a ceiling; and that he, and the worldgenerally in his day, had not emerged from the grossest barbarism andignorance of all matters of natural science. Yet these very people willprobably tell you, in the same conversation, of the wonderfulastronomical observations made by the Egyptians, ten thousand yearsbefore the days of Adam! So beautiful is the consistency of Infidelscience. But when you inquire into the source of their knowledge of thephilosophy of the ancients, you discover that they did not draw it fromthe writings of Moses, of which they betray the grossest ignorance, norof any one who lived within a thousand years of Moses' time. Voltaire istheir authority for all such matters. He transferred to the earlyAsiatics all the absurdities of the later Greek philosophers, and wouldhave us believe that Moses, who wrote before these Greeks had learned toread, was indebted to them for his philosophy. Of the learning of theancient patriarchs Voltaire does not tell them much, for a satisfactoryreason. 

Yet it might not have required much learning to infer, that the eyes, and ears, and nerves of men who lived ten times as long as we can, musthave been more perfect than ours; that a man who could observe naturewith such eyes, under a sky where Stoddart now sees the ring of Saturn, the crescent of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, with the nakedeye, [298] and continue his observations for eight hundred years, wouldcertainly acquire a better knowledge of the appearance of things thanany number of generations of short-lived men, called away by deathbefore they have well learned how to observe, and able only to leave theshell of their discoveries to their successors; that unless we have somegood reason for believing that the mind of man was greatly inferior, before the flood, to what it is now, the antediluvians must have made aprogress in the knowledge of the physical sciences, during the threethousand years which elapsed from the creation to the deluge, muchgreater than the nations of Europe have effected since they began tolearn their A, B, C, about the same number of years ago; and that thoughNoah and his sons might not have preserved all the learning of theirdrowned contemporaries, they would still have enough to preserve themfrom the reproach of ignorance and barbarism; at least until their sonshave succeeded in building a larger ship than the ark, or a monumentequal to the Great Pyramid. The Astronomer Royal of Scotland[299] hasdemonstrated, that in this imperishable monument, erected four thousandyears ago, the builders, who took care to keep it alone, of all thebuildings of Egypt, free from idolatrous images or inscriptions, recorded with most laborious care, in multiples of the earth's polardiameter, a metric system, including linear and liquid measures, and asystem of weights based on a cubical measure of water of uniformtemperature; which uniform temperature they took the utmost care topreserve. He shows further, that they were acquainted with theprecession of the equinoxes, with the density of the earth, and with theearth's distance from the sun; or at least calculated it at what provesto be nearly a mean of our discordant calculations; and that they wereacquainted with problems just beginning to attract the attention of thescience of Europe. 

When we know that the Chaldeans taught the Egyptians the expansive powerof steam, and the induction of electricity by pointed conductors; thatfrom the most remote antiquity the Chinese were acquainted with decimalfractions, electro-magnetism, the mariner's compass, and the art ofmaking glass; that lenses have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, andthat an artificial currency was in circulation in the first cities builtafter the flood;[300] that astronomical observations were made in China, with so much accuracy, from the deluge till the days of Yau, B. C. 2357, that the necessary intercalations were made for harmonizing the solarwith the lunar year, and fixing the true period of 365-1/4 days; andthat similar observations were conducted to a like result within a fewyears of the same remote period, in Babylon;--if the reader does notconclude that the world may have forgotten as much ancient lore duringeighteen hundred years of idolatrous barbarism before the coming ofChrist, as it has learned in the same number since, he will, at least, satisfy himself that the ancient patriarchs were not ignorantsavages. [301] "Whole nations, " says La Place, "have been swept from theearth, with their languages, arts, and sciences, leaving but confusedmasses of ruins to mark the place where mighty cities stood. Theirhistory, with a few doubtful traditions, has perished; _but theperfection of their astronomical observations marks their highantiquity, fixes the periods of their existence, and proves that even atthat early time they must have made considerable progress inscience_. "[302] The Infidel theory, that the first men were savages, isa pure fiction, refuted by every known fact of their history. 

That, however, is not the matter under discussion. We are not inquiringnow, what Moses and the prophets _thought_, but what the Author of theBible _told them to say_. The scribe writes as his employer dictates. "Iwill put my words in thy mouth, " said God to Jeremiah. "My tongue is asthe pen of a ready writer, " said David. The prophets began, not with"Thus saith Isaiah, " but "Thus saith the Lord. " Unless the Word of Godwas utterly different from all his other works, it must transcend thecomprehension of man in some respects. The profoundest philosopher is asignorant of the cause of the vegetation of wheat as the mower who cutsit down; but their ignorance of the mysteries of organic force is noreason why the one may not harvest, and the other eat and live. Just soGod's prophets conveyed previous mysteries to the Church, of the fullimport of which they themselves were ignorant; even as Daniel heard butunderstood not. The prophets, to whom it was revealed, that they did notminister to themselves, but to us, inquired and searched diligently intothe meaning of their own prophecies; which meaning, nevertheless, continued hid for ages and generations. [303] If the prophets of the oldeconomy might be ignorant of the privileges of the gospel day, of whichthey prophesied, at God's dictation, they might very well be ignorant, also, of the philosophy of creation, and yet write a true account of thefacts, from his mouth. 

Let us suppose, then, that the ancient Hebrews and their prophets were, if not quite as ignorant of natural science as modern Infidels arepleased to represent them, yet unacquainted with the discoveries ofHerschel and Newton; and, as a necessary consequence, that theirlanguage was the adequate medium of conveying their imperfect ideas, containing none of the technicalities invented by philosophers to markmodern scientific discoveries; and that God desired to convey to themsome religious instruction, through the medium of language; must wesuppose it indispensable for this purpose that he should use strangewords, and scientific phrases, the meaning of which would not bediscovered for thirty-three hundred years? Could not Dr. Alexander writea Sabbath-school book, without filling it full of such phrases as "rightascension, " "declination, " "precession of the equinoxes, " "radiusvector, " and the like? Or, if some wiseacre did prepare such a book, would it be very useful to children? Perhaps even we, learnedphilosophers of the nineteenth century, are not out of school yet. Howmany discoveries are yet to be made in all the sciences; discoverieswhich will doubtless render our fancied perfection as utterly childishto the philosophers of a thousand years hence as the astronomy of theGreeks seems to us; and demand the use of technical language, whichwould be as unintelligible to us as our scientific nomenclature wouldhave been to Aristotle. If God may not use popular speech in speaking tothe people of any given period, but must needs speak the technicallanguage of perfect science, and if science is now, and always will be, of necessity, imperfect, we are led to the sage conclusion, that everyrevelation from God to man must always be unintelligible!

Does it necessarily follow, that because the Author of the Bible usesthe common phrases, "sun rising, " and "sun setting, " in a populartreatise upon religion, that therefore he was ignorant of the rotationof the earth, and intended to teach that the sun revolved around it? Heis certainly under no more obligation to depart from the common languageof mankind, and introduce the technicalities of science into such adiscourse, than mankind in general, and our objectors in particular, areto do the like in their common conversation. Now, I demand to knowwhether they are aware that the earth's rotation on its axis is thecause of day and night? But do you ever hear any of them use suchphrases as "earth rising, " and "earth setting?" But if an Infidel'sdaily use of the phrases, "_sun rising_, " "_sun setting_, " and the like, does not prove, either that he is ignorant of the earth's rotation asthe cause of that appearance, or that he intends to deceive the world bythose phrases, why may not Almighty God be as well informed and ashonest as the Infidel, though he also condescends to use the commonlanguage of mankind?

Do you ever hear astronomers, in common discourse, use any otherlanguage? I suppose Lieut. Maury, and Herschel, and Le Verrier, andMitchell, know a little of the earth's rotation; but they, too, use theEnglish tongue very much like other people, and speak of sunrise andsunset; yet nobody accuses them of believing in the Ptolemaic astronomy. Hear the immortal Kepler, the discoverer of the laws of planetaryrevolution: "We astronomers do not pursue this science with the view ofaltering common language; but we wish to open the gates of truth, without affecting the vulgar modes of speech. We say with the commonpeople, 'The planets stand still, or go down;' 'the sun rises, or sets;'meaning only that so the thing appears to us, although it is not trulyso, as all astronomers are agreed. How much less should we require thatthe Scriptures of divine inspiration, setting aside the common modes ofspeech, should shape their words according to the model of the naturalsciences, and by employing a dark and inappropriate phraseology aboutthings which surpass the comprehension of those whom it designs toinstruct, perplex the simple people of God, and thus obstruct its ownway toward the attainment of the far more exalted end to which it aims. "

It is evident, then, that God not only may, _but must_, use popularlanguage in addressing the people, in a work not professedly scientific;and that if this popular language be scientifically incorrect, such useof it neither implies his ignorance nor approval of the error. 

But it may be worthy of inquiry whether this popular language ofmankind, used in the Bible, be scientifically erroneous. If the languagebe intended to express an absolute reality, no doubt it is erroneous tosay the sun rises and sets; but if it be only intended to describe anappearance, and the words themselves declare that intention, it can notbe shown to be false to the fact. Now, when the matter is criticallyinvestigated, these phrases are found to be far more accurate than thoseof "earth rising, " and "earth setting, " which Infidels say the Author ofthe Bible should have used. For, as up and down have no existence innature, save with reference to a spectator, and as the earth is alwaysdown with respect to a spectator on its surface, neither rising towardhim, nor sinking from him, in reality, nor appearing to do so, unless inan earthquake, the improved phrases are false, both to the appearance ofthings, and to the cause of it. Whereas, our common speech, making nopretensions to describe the causes of appearances, can not contradictany scientific discovery of these causes, and therefore can not be falseto the fact; while it truly describes all that it pretends todescribe--the appearance of things to our senses. And so, after all theoutcry raised against it by sciolists, the vulgar speech of mankind, used by the Author of the Bible, must be allowed to be philosophicalenough for his purpose, and theirs; at least till somebody favors bothwith a better. 

Though we are in no way concerned, then, to prove that every poeticalfigure in Scripture, and every popular illustration taken from nature, corresponds to the accuracy of scientific investigation, before webelieve the Bible to be a revelation of our duty to God and man, yet itmay be worth while to inquire, further, whether we really find upon itssacred pages such crude and egregious scientific errors as Infidelsallege. We have seen in the last chapter, that they are not able to readeven its first chapter without blundering. Indeed, they generally boastof their ignorance of its contents. It is a very good rule to take themat their word, and when they quote Scripture, to take it for granted_that they quote it wrong_, unless you know the contrary. The firstthing for you to do when an Infidel tells you the Bible says so and so, is to get the Book, and see whether it does or not. You will generallyfind that he has either misquoted the words, or mistaken their meaning, from a neglect of the context; or perhaps has both misquoted andmistaken. Then, when you are satisfied of the correct meaning of thetext, and he tells you that it is contrary to the discoveries ofscience, the next point is to ask him, _How do you know?_ You will findhis knowledge of science and Scripture about equal. Both these testsshould be applied to scientific objections to the Bible, as they are allcomposed of equal parts of biblical blunders, and philosophicalfallacies. 

In the objection under consideration, for instance, both statements arewrong. The Bible does not represent the earth as the immovable center ofthe universe, or as immovable in space at all. It does not represent thesun and stars as revolving around it. Nor are the facts of astronomymore correctly stated. It is not the Bible, but our objector, that is alittle behind the age in his knowledge of science. 

If we inquire for those texts of Scripture which represent the earth asthe immovable center of the universe, we shall be referred to thefigurative language of the Psalms, the book of Job, and other poeticalparts of Scripture, which speak of the "foundations of the earth, " "theearth being established, " "abiding for ever, " and the like, when theslightest attention to the language would show _that it is intended tobe figurative_. The accumulation of metaphors and poetical images insome of these passages is beautiful and grand in the highest degree; butnone, save the most stupid reader, would ever dream of interpreting themliterally. Take, for instance, Psalm civ. 1-6, where, in one line, theworld is described as God's house, with beams, and chambers, andfoundations; but in the very next line the figure is changed, and it isviewed as an infant, covered with the deep, as with a garment. 

 "Bless, the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honor and majesty: Who coverest thyself with light, as with a garment; Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain; _Who layeth the beams of his chambers upon the waters_: Who walketh upon the wings of the wind: Who maketh his angels spirits: His ministers a flaming fire: _Who laid the foundations of the earth, That it should not be removed for ever_. Thou coveredst it with the deep, as with a garment: The waters stood above the mountains. "

But if any one is so gross as to insist on the literality of such apassage, and to allege that it teaches the absolute immobility of theearth, let him tell us what sort of immobility the third verse teaches, and how a building could be stable, the beams of whose chambers are_laid upon the waters_--the chosen emblems of instability. "He hathfounded it upon the seas: he hath established it upon the floods, " saysthe same poet, in another Psalm--xxiv 1. This, and all other expressionsquoted as declaring the immobility of the earth _in space_, are clearlyproved, both by the words used, and the sense of the context, to referto an entirely different idea: namely, _its duration in time_. Thus, Ecclesiastes i. 4, "One generation passeth away, and another cometh; butthe earth abideth forever, " is manifestly contrasting the duration ofearth with the generations of short-lived men, and has no reference tomotion in space at all. 

Again, in Psalm cxix. 89-91, our objectors find another Bibledeclaration of the immobility of the earth in space:

 "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven; Thy faithfulness is unto all generations; Thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. _They continue to this day_, according to thine ordinances. "

The same permanence is here ascribed to the heavens (to which, as ourobjectors argue, the Bible ascribes a perpetual revolution) as to theearth. The next verse explains this permanence to be _continuance tothis day_; durability, not immobility. That the word _establish_ doesnot necessarily imply fixture, is evident from its application, inProverbs viii. 28: "He _established_ the clouds, " the most fleeting ofall things. Nor is the Hebrew word _kun_ (whence our English word, cunning), inconsistent with motion; else, the Psalmist had not said that"a good man's footsteps are _established_ by the Lord. "[304] "He_established_ my goings. " Wise arrangement is the idea, not permanentfixture. 

The same remarks apply to Psalm xciii. 1; xcvi. 10; 1 Chronicles xvi. 30, and many other similar passages. 

 "The world is established, that it can not be moved; Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting. "

Where the establishment, which is contrasted with the impossibleremoval, and which explains its import, is evidently not a local fixingof some material seat, in one place, but the everlasting duration ofGod's authority. The idea is not that of position in space, at all, butof continued duration. 

Space does not allow us to quote all the passages which refer to thissubject; but after an examination of every passage in the Bible usuallyreferred to in this connection, and of a multitude of others bearingupon it, I have no hesitation in saying, that it does not contain asingle text which asserts or implies the immobility of the earth inspace. The notion was drawn from the absurdities of the Greekphilosophy, and the superstitions of popery, but was never gathered fromthe Word of God. 

But it is alleged that other passages of Scripture do plainly andunequivocally express the motion of the sun, and his course in acircuit; as, for instance, the Nineteenth Psalm:

 "In them he hath set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it. "

And again, in the account of Joshua's miracle, in the tenth chapter ofhis book, it is quite evident that the writer supposed the sun to be inmotion, in the same way as the moon, for he commanded them both to standstill: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valleyof Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until thepeople had avenged themselves upon their enemies. " Now, it is said, ifthe writer had known what he was about, he would have known that the sunwas already standing still, and would have told the earth to stop itsrotation. And if the earth had obeyed the command, we should never haveheard of the miracle; for, as the earth rotates at the rate of athousand miles an hour, the concussion produced by such a stoppage wouldhave projected Joshua, and Israelites, and Amorites, beyond the moon, topursue their quarrel among the fixed stars. 

When we hear men of some respectability bring forward such stuff, we areconstrained to wonder, not merely were they ever at school, but if theyever traveled in a railroad car, or whether they suppose their hearersto be so ignorant of the most common facts as to believe that there isno way of bringing a carriage to a stand but by a sudden jerk, or thatGod is more stupid than the brakeman of an express train. We will dothem the justice, however, to say, that they did not invent it, butmerely shut their eyes, and opened their mouths, and swallowed it forphilosophy, because they found it in the writings of an Infidel scoffer, and of a Neological professor of theology[305]--an edifying example ofInfidel credulity!

Let it be noticed, that in neither of these texts, nor in any otherportion of Scripture, does the Bible say a single word about therevolution of the sun _round the earth_, as the common center of theuniverse; on which, however, the whole stress of the objection is laid. The passages do not prove what they are adduced to prove. They speak ofthe sun's motion, and of the sun's orbit, _but they do not say that theearth is the center of that orbit_. These texts, then, do not prove theAuthor of the Bible ignorant of the system of the universe. 

The objection is based upon utter ignorance of one of the most importantand best attested discoveries of modern astronomy; the grand motion ofthe sun and solar system through the regions of space, and thedependence of the rotation of all the orbs composing it, upon thatmotion. It is not the Author of the Bible who is ignorant of thediscoveries of modern astronomy--when he speaks of the orbit of the sun, and his race from one end of the heavens to the other, and of the needof a miraculous interposition to stop his course for a single day--buthis correctors, who have ventured to decry the statements of a Bookwhich commands the respect of such astronomers as Herschel and Rosse, while ignorant of those elements of astronomy which they might havelearned from a perusal of the books used by their children in our commonschools. For the benefit of such, however, I will present a briefexplanation of the grounds upon which astronomers are as universallyagreed upon the belief of the sun's motion around a center of thefirmament, as they are upon the belief of the revolution of the earthround the sun. 

When you are passing in a carriage, at night, through the street of acity lighted up by gas-lamps in the streets, and lights irregularlydispersed in the windows, or passing in a ferry-boat, from one such cityto another, at a short distance from it, you observe that the lightswhich you are leaving appear to draw closer and closer together, whilethose toward which you are approaching widen out, and seem to separatefrom each other. If the night were perfectly dark, so that you could seenothing but the lights, you could certainly know not only that you werein motion, but also to what point you were moving, by carefully watchingtheir appearances. So, if all the fixed stars were absolutely fixed, andthe sun and planets, including our earth, were moving in anydirection--say to the north--then the stars toward which we were movingwould seem to widen out from each other, and those which we wereleaving would seem to close up; so that the space which appeared betweenany two stars in the south, in a correct map of the heavens, a hundredyears ago, would be smaller, and that between any two stars in the northwould be larger, than the space between the same stars upon a correctmap now. Now, such changes in the apparent positions of stars areactually observed. The stars do not appear in the same places now asthey did a hundred years ago. 

The fixed stars, then, are either drifting past our solar system, whichalone remains fixed; or, the fixed stars are all actually at rest, andour sun is drifting through them; or, our solar system and the so-calledfixed stars are both in motion. One or other of these suppositions mustbe the fact. The first is simply the old Ptolemaic absurdity, onlytransferring the center of the universe to the sun. The second iscontrary to the observed fact, that multitudes of the stars, which weresupposed to be fixed, are actually revolving around each other, insystems of double, triple and multiple suns. And both are contrary tothe first principles of gravitation; for, as every particle of matterattracts every other, directly as the mass, and inversely as the squareof the distance, if any one particle of matter in the universe is inmotion, the square of its distance from every other particle varies, andits attraction is increased in one direction, and diminished in another;and so every particle of matter in free space, as far as the force ofgravitation extends, will be put in motion too. But our earth, and theplanets, and the double and triple stars, are in motion, and the law ofgravitation extends to every known part of the universe; therefore everyknown particle of matter in the universe is in motion too, our sunincluded. 

The third supposition, then, is most indisputably true; our solarsystem, and all the heavenly bodies, are in motion. To this conclusionall the observed facts conform. The Bible does say that the sun moves, and moves in a curve. All mathematicians prove that it must of necessitydo so. All astronomers assert that it does so. The unanimous verdict ofthe scientific world is thus rendered by Nichol: "_As to the subjectitself, the grand motion of the sun, as well as its present direction, must be received now as an established doctrine of astronomy. _"[306] Butthe discovery was anticipated, three thousand years ago, by the Authorof the Bible. 

But, as will readily be perceived, the difficulty of determining eitherthe direction or the rate of this motion is immensely increased in thiscase; for we are now not like persons riding in a carriage, watching thefixed lights in the street to determine our direction and rate ofprogress; but we are watching the lamps of a multitude of carriages, moving at various distances, and with various velocities, and, foranything we can tell at first sight, in various directions. We are onboard a steamer, and are watching the lights of a multitude of othersteamers, also in motion; and it is not easy to find out, in thedarkness, how either they or we are going. If each were pursuing its ownindependent course, without any common object or destination, theconfusion would be so great that we could learn nothing of the rate ordirection either of our own motion or theirs. 

But astronomers are not content to believe that the universe is governedby accident. The whole science is based upon the assumption, that apresiding mind has impressed the stamp of order and regularity upon thewhole cosmos. They are deeply convinced that God's law extends to allGod's creation; that all his works display his intelligence, as well ashis power, and proceed according to a wise plan. Having seen that allthe stellar motions previously known are orderly motions, in circular orelliptical orbits, and that the most of the solid bodies belonging toour own system revolve in one direction, they reasoned from analogy, that this might be the case with the sun and the fixed stars, and wentto work with great diligence, to see whether it was or not; and, bycomparing a great multitude of observations, ancient and modern, madeboth in the northern and southern hemispheres, and on all sorts ofstars, they have come to the conclusion, that our sun, and all thebodies of the solar system, are flying northward, at the rate of threemillions three hundred and thirty-six thousand geographical miles aday--five thousand times faster than a railway express train--toward theconstellation Hercules, in R. A. 259° Dec. 35°. 

Further, as the direction of this motion is slowly and regularlychanging, just as the direction of the head of a steamer in wearing, orof a railway train running a curve, it is certain that the sun ismoving, not in a straight line, but in a curve. The revolution of thesun in such an orbit was known to the Author of the Bible when he wrote, "_his circuit_ is to the end of heaven. " The direction of thecircumference of a circle being known, that of its center can be found;for the radius is always a tangent to the circumference, and theintersection of two of these radii will be the center; so that, if wecertainly knew the sun's orbit to be circular, or nearly so, we couldcalculate the center. But as we do not certainly know its form, we cannot certainly calculate the center; we can only come near it. And as weknow that the line which connects the circumference with the center ofthe sun's orbit, runs through the group of stars known as the Pleiades, or the Cluster; and as all the stars along that line seem to move in thesame direction--a different direction from that of the stars in otherregions, just as they must do if they and we were revolving around thatgroup--Argelander and others have concluded, with a high degree ofprobability, that the grand center around which the sun and ourfirmament revolve, is that constellation which the Author of the Bible, more than three thousand years ago, called _kyme_--_the pivot_. 

It would require a greater knowledge of electro-magnetism than most ofmy readers possess, to explain the connection of the earth's rotationwith the sun's grand movement. I will merely state the facts. Electro-magnetism is induced by friction. The regions of space are notempty, but filled with an ether, whose undulations produce light; andthis ether is sufficiently dense to retard the motions of comets. Thefriction, produced by the rapid passage of the sun and solar systemthrough this ether, must be immense, and is one source of electricity, and the principal source of electro-magnetism. This kind of electricitydiffers from the other kinds, in that _its action is always at rightangles to the current, and tends to produce rotation in any wheel, cylinder, or sphere, along whose axis it flows_. [307] The sun, and allthe planets, traveling in the direction of their poles, the current isof course in the direction of the axis; and the result is, that whilethe sun moves along his grand course, he and all the bodies of thesystem will rotate, by the influence of the electro-magnetism generatedby that motion; and if he stops, his and their rotation stops too. Dayand night on earth are produced by the sun's motion causing the earth'srotation. You can see the principle illustrated by the child who runsalong the street with his windmill, to create a current, which will makeit revolve. The Author of the Bible made no mistake when, desiring tolengthen the day, he commanded the sun to stand still. It is not theCreator, but his correctors, who are ignorant of the mechanism of theuniverse. 

Thus, these long-misunderstood and much-assailed Scriptures are notonly vindicated, but far more than vindicated, by the progress ofastronomical discovery. It not only proves the language of the Bible tobe correct; it assures us that it is divine. The same Hand which formedthe stars to guide the simple peasant to his dwelling, at the close ofday, and to lead the mighty intellects of Newton and of Herschel amongthe mysteries of the universe, formed those expressions which, to thepeasant's eye, describe the apparent reality, and, to the astronomer'sreason, demonstrate the reality of the appearance of the heavens, andare thus, alike to peasant and philosopher, the _oracles of God_. 

Nor is this the only instance of such Bible oracles. Thousands of yearsbefore philosophers knew anything of the formation of dew, Mosesdescribed it exactly, and noticed how it differed from the rain whichdrops down, while the dew evaporates. "My doctrine shall drop as therain, my speech shall _distill_ as the dew. "--Deuteronomy xxxii. 2. Solomon described the cycloidal course of the wind, and recorded it inEcclesiastes long before Admiral Fitzroy's discovery; as he alsoanticipated the doctrine of aqueous circulation in his pregnant proverb:"Unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they returnagain. "--Ecclesiastes i. 7. Job declared the law of pneumatics when hedeclared that "God maketh _weight_ for the winds. " Long before Madler, the celebrated Russian astronomer, published his remarkable opinion: "Iregard the Pleiades as the central group to the whole astral system, andthe fixed stars, even to its outer limits, marked by the Milky Way; andI regard Alcyone as that star of all others, composing the group whichis favored by most of the probabilities as being the true central sun ofthe universe, " Moses tells us they were known as "the hinge, or pivot, "of the heavens; and God asks, "Canst thou bind the secret influences ofthe Pleiades?" Though Peter was no geologist, and probably incapable ofcalculating the ratio of the central heat, he tells us that the heavensand the earth are "reserved unto fire, " literally, "stored with fire. "

Equally in advance of modern medical science, thousands of years beforeour modern discoveries, the Author of the Bible declared that "the lifeis in the blood, " and spoke of the slow combustion of starvation exactlyin the language of the most recent physiology, "they shall be _burnt_with hunger, and devoured with burning heat. "--Deuteronomy xxxii. 24. 

Here we have scientific truth not discovered for centuries by our men ofscience, but revealed by prophets--scientific discovery, in advance ofscience--predictions of the future progress of the human intellect, noless than revelations of the existing motions of the stars. He who wrotethese oracles knew that the creatures to whom he gave them would one dayunfold their hidden meaning (else he had not so written them), and inthe light of scientific discovery, see them to be as truly divinepredictions of the advance of science, as the prophecies of Jeremiah andEzekiel, read among the ruins of Thebes or Babylon, are seen to bepredictions of the ruin of empires. Man's discoveries fade intoinsignificance in the presence of such unfolding mysteries; and we areled to our Bibles, with the prayer, "Open mine eyes, that I may beholdwondrous things out of thy law. "

4. The ancient charter of the Church was written in the language of oneof the most recent astronomical discoveries, thirty-six hundred yearsbefore Herschel and Rosse enabled us to understand its fullsignificance: "He brought him forth abroad, and said unto him, _Look nowtoward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: andhe said unto him, So shall thy seed be. _"[308]

The scenery was well calculated to impress Abraham's mind with a senseof the ability of Christ to fulfill a very glorious promise, by a veryimprobable event; but the illustration was as well calculated as thepromise to test the character of that faith which takes God's Word assufficient evidence of things not seen; for, if the promise was a tryingtest of faith, so was the illustration. Before this, God had promisedthat his seed should be as the dust of the earth; and afterward hedeclared it should be as the sand of the seashore; the well-known symbolof a multitude beyond all power of calculation. To couple the stars ofheaven with the sand upon the seashore in any such connection as toimply that the stars too were innumerable, or that their number camewithin any degree of comparison with the ocean sands, must have seemedto Abraham in the highest degree mysterious, even as it has appeared toscoffers, in modern times, utterly ridiculous; for, though the firstglance at the sky conveys the impression that the stars are reallyinnumerable, the investigations of our imperfect astronomy seem toassure us that this is by no means the case. And, as the patriarch sat, night after night, at his tent door, and, in obedience to the command ofChrist, counted the stars, and made such a catalogue of them as hisChaldean preceptors had used, he would very speedily come to theconclusion, that so far as he could see, they were by no meansinnumerable; for the catalogue of Hipparchus reckons only one thousandand twenty-two as visible to one observer, and the whole number visiblein both hemispheres by the naked eye does not exceed eightthousand. [309] And even if we suppose, that these old patriarchs hadbetter eyes, as we know they had a clearer sky, than modern westernobservers, and that Abraham saw the moons of Jupiter, and stars assmall, still the number would not seem in the least degree comparablewith the number of the sands upon the seashore--whereof a million arecontained in a cubic inch, [310] a number greater than the population ofthe globe in a square foot, [311] while the sum total of the human race, from Adam to this hour, would not approach to the aggregate of the sandsof a single mile. Though the stars of a size too small to be visible toour eyes, are much more numerous than the larger stars, yet even up tothe range of view possessed by ordinary telescopes, they are by no meansinnumerable. In fact, they are counted and registered, and the number ofthe stars of the ninth magnitude, which are four times as distant as themost distant visible to our eyes--so distant that their light is fivehundred and eighty-six years in traveling toward us--is declared to beexactly thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-nine. Abraham'ssense and Abraham's faith must have had many a conflict on this promise, as the faith and the sense of many of his children, especially thescientific portion of them, have since, when reading such portions asthis; and those other Scriptures which represent it as an achievement ofOmniscience, that "he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth themall by their names. "[312] It is indeed remarkable how God delights totest the faith of his people, and to stumble the pride of fools, bypresenting this mysterious truth, of the innumerable multitude of thestars, in every announcement of the wonderful works of Him who isperfect in wisdom. Infant astronomy stretched out her hands to catch thestars, and count them. Many a proud Infidel wondered that Moses could beso silly as to suppose he could not count the stars, and the believeroften wondered what these words could mean. But faith rests in thepersuasion of two great truths: "God is very wise, " and "I am veryignorant. "

The increase of knowledge, by widening the boundaries of our ignorance, seemed for a time to render the difficulty even greater. The increasedpower of Herschel's telescope, and his discovery of the constitution ofthe Milky Way, mark an era in the progress of astronomy, and enlarge ourviews of the extent of the universe, to an extent inconceivable by thosewho have not studied the science. Where we see only a faint whitishcloud stretching across the sky, Herschel's telescope disclosed a vastbed of stars. At one time he counted five hundred and eighty-eight starsin the field of his telescope. In a quarter of an hour, one hundred andsixteen thousand passed before his eye. In another portion, he foundthree hundred and thirty-one thousand stars in a single cluster. [313] Hefound the whole structure of that vast luminous cloud which spans thesky, "to consist entirely of stars, _scattered by millions, likeglittering dust_, on the background of the general heavens. "

Yet still it was not supposed to be at all impossible to estimate theirnumbers. Even this distinguished astronomer, a few years ago, computedit at eight or ten millions. Schroeter allowed twenty degrees of it topass before him, and withdrew from the majestic spectacle, exclaiming, "What Omnipotence!" He calculated, however, that the number of the starsvisible through one of the best telescopes in Europe, in 1840, wastwelve millions; a number equaled by a single generation of Abraham'sdescendants, far below the power of computation, and utterlyinsignificant, as compared with the sands of the sea. 

Had our powers of observation stopped here, the great promise must stillhave seemed as mysterious to the astronomer, as it once seemed to thePatriarch. But if either the Father of the Faithful, or the Father ofSidereal Astronomy, had deluded himself with the notion, that he fullycomprehended either the words or the works of Him who is wonderful incounsel, and excellent in working, and argued thence that, because therevealed words and the visible works seemed not to correspond, they werereally contradictory, he would have committed the blunder of modernInfidels, who assume that they know everything, and that as God'sknowledge can not be any greater than theirs, every Scripture whichtheir science can not comprehend must be erroneous. The grandest truths, imperfectly perceived in the twilight of incipient science, serve asstumbling-blocks for conceited speculators, as well as landmarks on theboundaries of knowledge to true philosophers, who will ever imbibe thespirit of Newton's celebrated saying: "I seem to myself like a childgathering pebbles on the shore, while the great ocean of knowledge liesunexplored before me;" or the profound remark of Humboldt: "What is seendoes not exhaust that which is perceptible. "

But the progress of science was not destined merely to coast the shoreof this ocean. In 1845, Lord Rosse, and a band of accomplishedastronomers, commenced a voyage through the immensities, with atelescope which has enlarged our view of the visible universe to onehundred and twenty-five million times the extent before perceived, anddisplayed far more accurately the real form and nature of objectspreviously seen. Herschel's researches into the Architecture of theHeavens, which have justly rendered his name immortal as the science heillustrated, had revealed the existence of great numbers of_nebulę_--clouds of light--faint, yet distinct. He supposed many ofthese to consist of a luminous fluid, pretty near to us; at least, comparatively so; for to believe that they were stars, so far away as tobe severally invisible in his forty feet telescope, while yet severalof these clouds are distinctly seen by the naked eye, involved thebelief of distances so astounding, and of multitudes so incredible, andof a degree of closeness of the several stars so unparalleled byanything which even he had observed, that his imagination and reasonfailed to meet the requirements of such a problem. The supposition was, however, thrown out by this gigantic intellect, that these clouds mightbe firmaments; that the Bible word _heavens_ might be literally plural;and more than that, he labored in the accumulation of facts which tendedto confirm it. He disclosed the fact, that several of these apparentclouds, which, to very excellent telescopes, displayed only a largersurface of cloudy matter, did, in the reflector of his largesttelescope, display themselves in their true character, as globularclusters, consisting of innumerable multitudes of glorious stars; and, moreover, that, stretching away far beyond star, or Milky Way, ornebulę, he had seen, in some parts of the heavens, "a stippling, " oruniform dotting of the field of view, by points of light too small toadmit of any one being steadily or fixedly examined, _and too numerousfor counting_, were it possible so to view them! What are these?Millions upon millions of years must have elapsed ere that faint lightcould reach our globe, from those profundities of space, though ittravels like the lightning's flash. If they are stars, the sands of theseashore are as inferior in numbers as the surface of earth is inferiorin dimensions to the arch of heaven. But if these faint dots andstipplings are not single stars!--if they arestar-clouds--galaxies--firmaments, like our Milky Way--our infinity ismultiplied by millions upon millions! Imagination pants, reason growsdizzy, arithmetic fails to fathom, and human eyes fear to look into theabyss. No wonder that this profound astronomer, when a glimpse ofinfinity flashed on his eye, retired from the telescope, trembling inevery nerve, afraid to behold. 

And yet this astounding supposition is a literal truth; and the light ofthose suns, whose twilight thus bowed down that mighty intellect inreverent adoration, now shines before human eyes in all its noondayrefulgence. One of the most remarkable of these nebulę--one which isvisible to a good eye in the belt of Orion--has been disclosed to theobservers at Parsontown as a firmament; and minute points, scarceperceptible to common telescopes, blaze forth as magnificent clusters ofglorious stars, so close and crowded, that no figure can adequatelydescribe them, save the twin symbol of the promise, "the sand by theseashore, " or "the dust of the earth. " "There is a minute point, nearPolaris, " says Nichol, "so minute, that it requires a good telescope todiscern its being. I have seen it as represented by a good mirror, blazing like a star of the first magnitude; and though examined by apotent microscope, clear and definite as the distinctest of these ournearest orbs, when beheld through an atmosphere not disturbed. Nay, through distances of an order I shall scarcely name, I have seen a massof orbs compressed and brilliant, so that each touched on each other, _like the separate grains of a handful of sand_, and yet there seemed nomelting or fusion of any one of the points into the surrounding mass. Each sparkled individually its light pure and apart, like that of anyconstituent of the cluster of the Pleiades. "[314]

"The larger and nearer masses are seen with sufficient distinctness toreveal the grand fact decisive of their character, viz: that theyconsist of multitudes of closely related orbs, forming an independentsystem. In other cases we find the individual stars by no means soclearly defined. Through effect, in all probability, of distance, theintervals between them appear much less, the shining points themselvesbeing also fainter; while the masses still further off _may be bestlikened to a handful of golden sand, or, as it is aptly termed, stardust_; beyond which no stars, or any vestige of them, are seen, but onlya patch or streak of milky light, similar to the unresolved portions ofour surrounding zone. "[315]

To say, then, that the stars of the sky are actually innumerable is onlya cold statement of the plainest fact. Hear it in the language of oneprivileged to behold the glories of one out of the thousands of similarfirmaments: "The mottled region forming the lighter part of the mass(the nebula in Orion) is a very blaze of stars. But that stellarcreation, now that we are freed from all dubiety concerning thesignificance of those hazes that float numberless in space, howglorious, how endless! Behold, amid that limitless ocean, every speck, however remote or dim, a noble galaxy. Lustrous they are, too; inmanifold instances beyond all neighboring reality--beyond the loftiestdream which ever exercised the imagination. The great cluster inHercules has long dazzled the heart with its splendors, but we havelearned now that among circular and compact galaxies, a class to whichthe nebulous stars belong, there are multitudes which infinitely surpassit--nay, that schemes of being rise above it, sun becoming nearer tosun, until their skies must be one blaze of light--a throng of burningactivities! But, far aloft stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory andwonder of the starry universe! Judged by the only criticism yetapplicable, it is perhaps so remote that its light does not reach us inless than fifty or sixty thousand years; and as at the same time itoccupies so large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendousmust be the extent of the nebula. It would seem almost as if all theother clusters hitherto gauged were collected and compressed into one, they would not surpass this mighty group, _in which every wisp--everywrinkle--is a sand-heap of stars_. There are cases in which, thoughimagination has quailed, reason may still adventure inquiry, and prolongits speculations; but at times we are brought to a limit across which nohuman faculty has the strength to penetrate, and where, as now, at thevery footstool of the secret THRONE, we can only bend our heads, andsilently _adore_. And from the inner Adyta--the invisible shrine of whatalone is and endures--a voice is heard:

 "Hast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like Him? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, Or loosen the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons? Canst thou guide Arcturus and his sons?[316] He telleth the number of the stars: He calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power; His understanding is infinite. "[317]

Thus, nobly does science vindicate Scripture, and display the wisdom andpower of the Lord of Hosts, whose kingdom extends through all space, andendures through all duration. He who called these countless hosts ofglorious orbs into being is abundantly able to multiply, to an equallyincalculable number, the humble sands which line the oceans ofterrestrial grace, the brilliant stars which shall yet adorn the heavensof celestial glory. All, of every nation, who shall partake of Abraham'sfaith, are Abraham's children. They are Christ's, and so Abraham's seed, and heirs, according to this promise. [318] When the great multitude, which no man can number, out of every nation, and tongue, and people, stand before the throne of God, and cause the many mansions of ourFather's house to re-echo the shout, "Salvation to our God which sittethon the throne, and to the Lamb, " the answering hallelujahs of the mostdistant orbs shall expound the purport of that solemn oath to Abrahamand Abraham's seed: "By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for becausethou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine onlyson, that in blessing I will bless thee, and _in multiplying I willmultiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is uponthe seashore_. "[319]

5. It is not probable that the mysteries of the distant heavens, _or ofthose future glories of the redeemed which the Bible employs them tosymbolize_, will ever be fully explored by man, or adequatelyapprehended in the present state of being. But it is most certain thatGod would not have employed the mysteries of astronomy so frequently asthe symbols of the mysteries of the glory to be revealed, had there notbeen some correspondence between the things which eye hath not seen, andthese patterns shown in the mount. So habitual, indeed, is the Scriptureuse of these visible heavens as the types of all that is exalted, pure, cheering, and glorious, that, to most Christians, the word has lost itsprimary meaning, and the idea first suggested to their minds by the word_heaven_ is that of future glory; yet their views of the locality andphysical adornments of the many mansions of their Father's house are dimand shadowy, just because they do not acquaint themselves sufficientlywith the divine descriptions in the Bible, and the divine illustrationsin the sky. The Bible would be better understood were the heavensbetter explored. "I go, " said Jesus, "to prepare a _place_ for you. " Thebodies of the saints, raised on the resurrection morn, will need a_place_ on which to stand. The body of the Lord, which his discipleshandled, and "saw that a spirit had not flesh and bones, as they saw himhave, " is now resident in a place. Where He is, there shall his peoplebe also. Why, then, when the Bible employs all that is beauteous inearth, and glorious in heaven, to describe the adornments of the palaceof the King of kings, should we hesitate to believe that the power andwisdom of God are not exhausted in this little earth of ours, but thatother worlds may as far transcend ours in glory, as many of them do inmagnitude?--or, to allow that the glorious visions of Ezekiel and Johnwere not views of nonentities, or mere visions of clouds, or of someincomprehensible symbols of more incomprehensible spiritualities, butactual views of the existing glories of some portion of the universe, presented to us as vividly as the dullness of our minds and theearthliness of our speech will permit? It is certain that the recentprogress of astronomical discovery has revealed celestial scenery whichillustrates some of the most mysterious of these visions. 

It has long been known, that "one star differeth from another star inglory, " and that the orbs of heaven shine with various colors. Sirius iswhite, Arcturus red, and Procyon yellow. The telescope shows all thesmaller stars in various colors. Under the clear skies of Syria theirbrilliance is vastly greater than in our climate. "_One star shines likea ruby, another as an emerald, and the whole heavens sparkle as withvarious gems. _"[320] But the discovery of the double and triple starshas added a new harmony of colors to these coronets of celestial jewels. These stars generally display the complementary colors. If the one stardisplays a color from the red end of the spectrum, the other isgenerally of the corresponding shade, from the violet end. For instance, in O2 Cygni, the large star is yellow, and the two smaller stars areblue; and so in others, through all the colors of the rainbow. "It maybe easier suggested in words, " says Sir John Herschel, "than conceivedin imagination, what a variety of illumination two stars--a red and agreen, or a yellow and a blue one--must afford a planet circulatingaround either, and what cheering contrasts and grateful vicissitudes ared and a green day, for instance, alternating with a white one, andwith darkness, must arise from the presence or absence of one, or other, or both, from the horizon. "[321] But suppose one of the globularclusters--for instance, that in the constellation Hercules--thusconstituted; its unnumbered thousands of suns, wheeling round centralworlds, and exhibiting their glories to their inhabitants; "skiesblazing, with grand orbs scattered regularly around, and with aprofusion to which our darker heavens are strangers;" the overhead sky, seen from the interior regions of the cluster, _must appear gorgeousbeyond description_. In the strictest literality it might be said to thedwellers in such a cluster, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neithershall thy moon withdraw herself. " The surrounding walls of such acelestial palace must seem indeed "garnished with all manner of preciousstones. " Sapphire, emerald, sardius, chrysolite, and pearl, must seembut dim mirrors of its glorious refulgence. Under its ever rising sunsthe gates need not be shut at all by day, "for there shall be no nightthere. " That glorious place now exists, though far away. 

But the Lord of these hosts has said, "Behold, I come quickly. " He willnot tarry. A thousand times faster than the swiftest chariot, our solarsystem and the surrounding firmament wing their flight toward that sameglorious cluster in Hercules. As our firmament approaches, under theguidance of Omnipotent wisdom, it too must fly to meet our sun, with avelocity increasing with an incalculable ratio. The celestial city willthen be seen to descend from heaven. Once within the sphere of itsattractions, our sun and surrounding planets will feel their power. Their ancient orbits and accustomed revolutions must give way to thehigher power. Old things must pass away, and all things become new. Anew heaven, no less than a new earth, will form the dwelling ofrighteousness. 

These are no longer the visions of prophecy merely, but the sobercalculations of mathematical science, based upon a foundation as solidas the attraction of gravitation, and as wide as the existence of thatether whose undulations convey the light of the most distant stars; for, so surely as that attraction is efficient, must all the firmaments ofthe heavens be drawn more closely together; and as certainly as theyrevolve not in empty space, but in a medium capable of retarding Encke'scomet three days in every revolution, must that retarding medium bringtheir revolutions to a close. "And so, " said Herschel, casting his eyefearlessly toward future infinities, "we may be certain that the starsin the Milky Way will be gradually compressed, through successive stagesof accumulation, until they come up to what may be called the ripeningperiod of the globular cluster. " Unnumbered ages may be occupied withsuch a grand evolution of celestial progress, beyond our power ofcalculation; but will the changes of created things, even then, havecome to an end? Hear again the voice, not of the prophet, but of theastronomer: "Around us lie stabilities of every order; but it is_stability_ only that we see, not _permanence_. " As the course of ourinquiry has already amply illustrated, even majestic systems, that atfirst appear final and complete, are found to resolve themselves intomere steps or phases of still loftier progress. Verily, it is anastonishing world! Change rising above change--cycle growing out ofcycle, in majestic progression--each new one ever widening, like thecircles that wreathe from a spark of flame, enlarging as they ascend, finally to become lost in the empyrean! And if all that we see, fromearth to sun, and from sun to universal star-work--that wherein we bestbehold images of eternity, immortality and God--if that is only a stateor space of a course of being rolling onward evermore, what must be theCreator, the Preserver, the Guide of all!--He at whose bidding thesephantasms came from nothingness, and shall again disappear;--whose name, amid all things, alone is _Existence_--I AM THAT I AM?

 "Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, And the heavens are the works of thy hands; They shall perish, But thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment: As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, And their seed shall be established before thee. "

Psalm cii. 25

 "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 tabernacle of God is with men, And he will dwell with them, And they shall be his people, And God himself shall be with them, and be their God. "

Revelation xxi. 

 * * * * *

Reader, is this glorious heaven your inheritance? Is this unchangeableJehovah your God? Are you looking for and hasting unto the coming of theday of God? Is it your daily prayer, Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly?

FOOTNOTES:

[283] Kendall's Uranography, 268. 

[284] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1856, p. 380. 

[285] Ibid. 1852, p. 376. 

[286] Ibid. 1856, p. 377. 

[287] Cosmos, Vol. I. Pp. 198-215. 

[288] Judges, chap. V. 

[289] Jeremiah, chap. X. 

[290] Some of my readers may deem any notice of such a subject, in thenineteenth century, entirely unnecessary; but having lived for someyears within sight of the dwelling of a woman who publicly advertisedherself in the newspapers as a professor of astrology, and seen thecontinual flow of troubled minds to the promised light--the humbleserving-girl stealing up the side entrance, and the princely chariotdischarging its willing dupes at the door, and rolling hastily away, toawait them at the corner--I know of a certainty that folly is not yetdead. There are women, aye, and men too, who are above the folly ofreading the Bible, but just wise enough to pay five dollars for, andspend hours in the study of an uncouth astrological picture, representing a collocation of the stars, which was never witnessed byany astronomer. There are men who would not give way to the superstitionof supposing that their destiny was regulated by the will of AlmightyGod, yet who believe that every living creature's fate is regulated bythe aspect of the stars at the hour of his nativity; the same starsalways causing the same period of life and mode of death; though everyday's experience testifies the contrary. The same stars presided overthe birth of the poor soldier, who perished in an instant at Austerlitz;of his imperial master, who pined for years in St. Helena; of the oldgentleman who died in his own bed, of gout; and of the batch of puppies, whereof old Towser was the only surviving representative, the other ninehaving found their fate in the horse-pond, in defiance of thecontrolling stars. They were all born at the same hour, and under thesame auspices, and destined to the same fate, by the laws of astrology. Yet half a dozen professors of astrology find patrons enough in each ofour great cities to enable them to live and to pay for advertising inthe daily papers. 

[291] Judges, chap. V. 

[292] Dick's Celestial Scenery, p. 57, Applegate's edition, where manysuch instances are related. 

[293] Vaughn's Report to the American Association for the Advancement ofScience, in Annual of Scientific Discovery for 1855, p. 364. 

[294] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 382. 

[295] Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 122; Vol. IV. P. 569. 

[296] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 383. 

[297] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, p. 361. 

[298] Letter to Herschel, from Oroomiah, in Persia--Annual of ScientificDiscovery, 1854, p. 367. 

[299] _Life and Work in the Great Pyramid_, by Piazzi Smyth, F. R. S. , LL. D. 

[300] "These tablets (of unbaked clay, with inscriptions, found in thetombs of Erech, the city of Nimrod--Genesis, chap. X. 10--and decipheredby Rawlinson) were, in point of fact, the equivalent of our bank notes, and prove that a system of artificial currency prevailed in Babylon andPersia at an unprecedentedly early age; centuries before theintroduction of paper and writing. "

_Rawlinson, in News of the Churches, February, 1858, p. 50. _

[301] Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Egyptians, Vol. III. P. 106; Cosmos, Vol. I. Pp. 173, 182; Chinese Repository, Vol. IX. P. 573;Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. II. P. 147. 

[302] Somerville's Connection of Physical Sciences, 82. 

[303] Daniel, chap. Xii. 8. 1 Peter, chap. I. 10. Ephesians, chap. I. 3. 

[304] Psalm xl. 1, and xxxvii. 23, margin. 

[305] M. Voltaire; M. Cheneviere; Theol. Essays, Vol. I. P. 456. 

[306] Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol. I. P. 139; Herschel's Outlines, 380;Kendall's Uranography, 205. 

[307] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, 171, 337, 315;Architecture of the Heavens, 286. 

[308] Genesis, chap. Xv. 5. 

[309] Cosmos I. 140. 

[310] Ehrenberg computes that there are forty-one millions of the shellsof animalculę in a cubic inch of Bilier Slate. 

[311] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1860, p. 341. 

[312] Psalm cxlvii. 4. 

[313] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, 59; Herschel's Outlines. 

[314] Architecture of the Heavens, 62. 

[315] Architecture of the Heavens, 64. These unresolved milky streaksand patches have since been discovered to be true nebulę, or phosphoricclouds, in some way connected with their adjacent stars. 

[316] Architecture of the Heavens, 144. 

[317] Job, chap. Xxxviii. 31. Psalm cxlvii. 4. 

[318] Genesis, chap. Xxii. 16. 

[319] Galatians, chap. Iii. 14, 29. Gen. Xxii. 16, 17. 

[320] Architecture of the Heavens, 217. 

[321] Architecture of the Heavens, 77, 130. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

SCIENCE, OR FAITH?

"Faith is destined to be left behind in the onward march of the humanintellect. It belongs to an infantile stage of intellectual development, when experience, dependent on testimony, becomes the slave of credulity. Children and childish nations are prone to superstition. Religionbelongs properly to such. Hence the endless controversies of religioussects. But as man advances into the knowledge of the physical sciences, and becomes familiarized with mathematical demonstration and scientificexperiment, he demands substantial proofs for all kinds of knowledge, and rejects that which is merely matter of faith. The certainties ofscience succeed the controversies of creeds. Science thus becomes thegrave of religion, as religion is vulgarly understood. But science givesa new and better religion to the world. Instead of filling men's mindswith the vague terrors of an unknown futurity, it directs us to the bestmodes of improving this life. "--"This life being the first in certainty, give it the first place in importance; and by giving human duties inreference to men the _precedence_, secure that all interpretations ofspiritual duty shall be in harmony with human progress. "--"Nature refersus to science for help, and to humanity for sympathy; love to the lovelyis our only homage, study our only praise, quiet submission to theinevitable our duty; and truth is our only worship. "--"Our _knowledge_is confined to this life; and _testimony_, and _conjecture_, and_probability_, are all that can be set forth in regard toanother. "--"Preach nature and science, morality and art; _nature, theonly subject of knowledge_; morality, the harmony of action; art, theculture of the individual and society. "[322]

Or, if you will insist upon preaching religion, support it "with suchproofs as accompany physical science. This I have always loved; for Inever find it deceives me. I rest upon it with entire conviction. Thereis no mistake, and can be no dispute in mathematics. And if a revelationcomes from God, why have we not such evidence for it as mathematicaldemonstration?"

Such is the language now used by a large class of half-educated people, who, deriving their philosophy from Comte, and their religion from the_Westminster Review_, invite us to spend our Sabbaths in the study ofnature in the fields and museums, turn our churches into laboratories, exchange our Bibles for encyclopedias, give ourselves no more troubleabout religion, but try hard to learn as much science, make as muchmoney, and enjoy as much pleasure in this life as we can; because we_know_ that we live now, and can only _believe_ that we shall livehereafter. I do not propose to take any notice here of the proposal ofSecularism--for that is the new name of this ungodliness--to deliver menfrom their lusts by scientific lectures, and keep them moral byoverturning religion. That experiment has been tried already. But it isworth while to inquire, Is science really so positive, and religion souncertain, as these persons allege? Is a knowledge of the physicalsciences so all-sufficient for our present happiness, so attainable byall mankind, and so certain and infallible, that we should barter ourimmortality for it? And, on the other hand, are the great facts ofreligious experience, and the foundations of our religious faith, sodim, and vague, and utterly uncertain, that we may safely consign themto oblivion, or that we can so get rid of them if we would?

The object of this chapter is to refute both parts of the Secularist'sstatement; to show some of the uncertainties, errors, contradictions, and blunders of the scientific men on whose testimony they receive theirscience; and to exhibit a few of the facts of religious experience whichgive a sufficient warrant for the Christian's faith. 

Scientific observations are made by fallible men exposed to everydescription of error, prejudice and mistake; men who can not possiblydivest themselves of their preconceived opinions in observing facts, andframing theories. 

Lord Bacon long ago observed that "the eye of the human intellect is notdry, but receives a suffusion from the will and the affections, so thatit may be almost said to engender any science it pleases. For what a manwishes to be true, that he prefers believing. " "If the human intellecthath once taken a liking to any doctrine, either because received andcredited, or because otherwise pleasing, it draws everything else intoharmony with that doctrine, and to its support; and albeit there may befound a more powerful array of contradictory instances, these, however, it does not observe, or it contemns, or by distinction extenuates, andrejects. "[323]

A prejudiced observer sees the facts distorted and exaggerated. "Thus itis that men will not see in the phenomena what alone is to be seen; intheir observations they interpolate and expunge; and this mutilated andadulterated product they call a fact. And why? Because the realphenomena, if admitted, would spoil the pleasant music of theirthoughts, and convert its factitious harmony into a discord. Inconsequence of this many a system professing to be reared exclusively onobservation and fact, rests, in reality, mainly upon hypothesis andfiction. A pretended experience is indeed the screen behind which everyillusive doctrine regularly retires. 'There are more false facts, ' saysCullen, 'current in the world than false theories. ' Fact, observation, induction, have always been the watchwords of those who have dealt mostextensively in fancy. "[324] We propose, therefore, to show that, _I. Thestudents of the physical sciences have no such certain knowledge oftheir facts and theories as Secularists pretend. _

1. Mathematical science relating merely to abstract truth is supposed topossess powers of demonstration, and capability of scientific certaintysuperior to all other kinds of knowledge, but the moment we begin toapply it to any existing facts we enter the domain of liability toerrors as numerous as our fallible observations of these facts; and whenwe attempt to apply mathematical demonstration to the infinite, and toenter the domain of faith, in which as immortals we are chieflyconcerned, it baffles, deceives, and insults our reason. Take thefollowing illustrations:

Let an infinite whole be divided into halves; the parts must be eitherfinite or infinite. But they can not be finite, else an infinite wholewould consist of a finite number of parts; neither can they be infinite, being each less than the infinite whole. 

Again: it is mathematically demonstrable, that any piece of matter isinfinitely divisible. A line therefore of half an inch long isinfinitely divisible, or divisible into an infinite number of parts. Thus we have an infinite half inch. Further, for a moving body to pass agiven point requires some time; and to pass an infinite number of pointsmust require an infinite number of portions of time, or an eternity;therefore, as half an inch contains an infinite number of points, itwill require eternity to pass half an inch. 

Again: it is mathematically demonstrable, that a straight line, theasymptote of a hyperbola, may _eternally approach_ the curve of thehyperbola and _never meet_ it. But no axiom can be plainer than that iftwo lines continually approach each other they must at length meet. Hereis a demonstration contradicting an axiom; and no man has ever yet shownthe possibilities of reconciling them, nor yet of denying either side ofthe contradiction. 

Again: it is a fundamental axiom, contained in the definition of acircle, that it must have a center; but the non-existence of this centeris mathematically demonstrable, as follows: Let the diameter of thecircle be bisected into two equal parts; the center must be in one, orthe other, of these parts, or between them. It can not be in one ofthese parts, for they are equal; and, therefore, if it is in the one, itmust also be in the other, and thus the circle would have two centers, which is absurd. Neither can it be between them, for they are incontact. Therefore the center must be a point, destitute of extension, something which does not occupy or exist in space. But as all existencesexist in space, and this supposed center does not, it can not be anexistence; therefore it is a non-existence. 

In like manner it has been mathematically demonstrated, [325] thatmotion, or any change in the rate of progress in a moving body, isimpossible; because in passing from any one degree of rapidity toanother, all the intermediate degrees must be passed through. As when atrain of cars moving four miles an hour strikes a train at rest, theresulting instantaneous motion is two miles an hour; and the first trainmust therefore be moving at the rate of four, and at the rate of twomiles an hour at the same time, which is impossible. And so the ancientsdemonstrated the impossibility of motion. 

Thus the non-existence of the most undeniable truths, and theimpossibilities of the most common facts are mathematicallydemonstrable; and the proper refutation of such reasoning is, not thescientific, but the common sensible; as when Plato refuted thedemonstration of the impossibility of motion, by getting up and walkingacross the floor. In the hyperbola we have the mathematicaldemonstration of the error of an axiom. In the infinite inch we beholdan absurdity mathematically demonstrated. So that it appears we can givemathematical demonstration in support of untruth, impossibilities andabsurdities; and our reason can not discover the error of the reasoning!Alas, for poor humanity, if an endless destiny depended upon suchscientific certainty! Yet mathematical reasoning about abstract truth isuniversally conceded to be less liable to error than any other form ofscientific analysis. This line, then, is too short to fathom the oceanof destiny; too weak to bear inferences from even the facts of commonlife. 

Attempts have indeed been made to apply mathematics to the facts of lifein what is called the doctrine of chances. By this kind of calculationit can be shown, that the chances were a thousand millions to one thatyou and I should never have been born. Yet here we are. 

But when we begin to apply mathematics to the affairs of every-day life, we immediately multiply our chances of error by the number andcomplexity of these facts. The proper field of mathematics is that ofmagnitude and numbers. But very few subjects are capable of amathematical demonstration. _No fact_ whatever which depends on the willof God or man can be so proved. For mathematical demonstration isfounded on necessary and eternal relations, and admits of nocontingencies in its premises. The mathematician may demonstrate thesize and properties of a triangle, but he can not demonstrate thecontinuance of any actual triangle for one hour, or one minute, afterhis demonstration. And if he could, how many of my most importantaffairs can I submit to the multiplication table, or lay off in squaresand triangles? It deals with purely ideal figures, which never did orcould exist. There is not a mathematical line--length withoutbreadth--in the universe. When we come to the application ofmathematics, we are met at once by the fact that there are nomathematical figures in nature. It is true we speak of the orbits of theplanets as elliptical or circular, but it is only in a general way, aswe speak of a circular saw, the outline of its teeth being regularityitself compared with the perturbations of the planets. We speak of theearth as a spheroid, but it is a spheroid pitted with hollows as deep asthe ocean, and crusted with irregular protuberances as vast as theHimalaya and the Andes, in every conceivable irregularity of form. Itsseas, coasts, and rivers follow no straight lines nor geometricalcurves. There is not an acre of absolutely level ground on the face ofthe earth; and even its waters will pile themselves up in waves, or dashinto breakers, rather than remain perfectly level for a single hour. Itsminuter formations present the same regular irregularity of form. Eventhe crystals, which approach the nearest of any natural productions tomathematical figures, break with compound irregular fractures at theirbases of attachment. The surface of the pearl is proportionally rougherthan the surface of the earth, and the dew-drop is not more sphericalthan a pear. As nature then gives no mathematical figures, mathematicalmeasurements of such figures can be only approximately applied tonatural objects. 

The utter absence of any regularity, or assimilation to the spheroidalfigure, either in meridianal, equatorial, or parallel lines, mountainranges, sea beaches, or courses of rivers, is fatal to mathematicalaccuracy in the more extended geographical measurements. It is only bytaking the mean of a great many measurements that an approximateaccuracy can be obtained. Where this is not possible, as in the case ofthe measurements of high mountains, the truth remains undetermined byhundreds of feet; or, as in the case of the earth's spheroidal axis, Bessel's measurement differs from Newton's, by fully eleven miles. [326]The smaller measures are proportionately as inaccurate. No field, hill, or lake, has an absolute mathematical figure; but its outline iscomposed of an infinite multitude of irregular curves too minute forman's vision to discover, and too numerous for his intellect toestimate. No natural figure was ever measured with absolute accuracy. 

All the resources of mathematical science were employed by theconstructors of the French Metric System; but the progress of science inseventy years has shown that _every element_ of their calculations waserroneous. They tried to measure a quadrant of the earth'scircumference, supposing the meridian to be circular; but Schubert hasshown that that is far from being the case; and that no two meridiansare alike; and Sir John Herschel, and the best geologists, show cause tobelieve that the form of the globe is constantly changing; so that theancient Egyptians acted wisely in selecting the axis of the earth'srotation, which is invariable, and not the changing surface of theearth, as their standard of measure. 

The Astronomer Royal, Piazzi Smyth, thus enumerates the errors ofpractice, which they added to those of their erroneous theory: "Theirtrigonometrical survey for their meter length has been found erroneous, so that their meter is no longer sensibly a meter; and their standardtemperature of 0° centigrade is upset one way for the length of theirscale, and another way for the density of the water employed; and theirmode of computing the temperature correction is proved erroneous; andtheir favorite natural reference of a quadrant of the earth is notfound a scientific feature capable of serving the purpose they have beenemploying it for; and even their own sons show some dislike to adopt itfully, and adhere to as much of the ancient system as they can. "[327]

But coming down to more practical and every-day calculations, in whichmoney is invested, how very erroneous are the calculations of our bestengineers, and how fatal their results. Nineteen serious errors werediscovered in an edition of _Taylor's Logarithms_, printed in 1796; someof which might have led to the most dangerous results in calculating aship's place, and were current for thirty-six years. In 1832 the_Nautical Almanac_ published a correction which was itself erroneous byone second, and a new correction was necessary the next year. But inmaking this correction a _new error was committed of ten degrees_. [328]Who knows how many ships were run ashore by that error?

Nor can our American mathematicians boast of superior infallibility tothe French or British. In computing the experiments which were made atLowell (for a new turbine wheel), it was found that when the gate wasfully open, the quantity of water discharged through the guides was_seventy per cent. Of the theoretical discharge_. (An error of thirtyper cent. ) The effect of the wheel during these experiments waseighty-one and a half per cent. Of the power expended; but when the gatewas half open the effect was sixty-seven per cent. Of the power, whilethe discharge through the guides eleven per cent. More than thetheoretical discharge. But when the opening of the gate was stillfurther reduced to one-fourth of the full opening, the effect was alsoreduced to forty-five per cent. Of the power, while the dischargingvelocity was raised to _forty-nine per cent. More than that given bythe theory_. [329] An unscientific man would hardly call that goodguessing; but it was the best result of labored and expensive scientificcalculation. No wonder the _London Mechanics' Magazine_ says: "More canbe learned in this way (testing engines in the workshop) in half anhour, than can be derived from the theoretical instructions, howevergood, in a year. " So much for the infallibility of a mathematicaldemonstration. In regard even to the very limited circle of ourrelations which can be measured by the foot rule, and the small numberof our anxieties which may be resolved by an equation, if bymathematical accuracy be meant anything more than tolerable correctness, or by mathematical demonstration a very high degree of probability, mathematical certainty is all a fable. 

2. _Astronomy. _

The omniscience and prescience of the human intellect have been largelyglorified by some Infidel lecturers, upon the strength of the accuracywith which it is possible to calculate and predict eclipses, and to thedisparagement of Bible predictions. And this glorification has beenamazingly swollen by Le Verrier's prediction in 1846 of the discovery ofthe planet Neptune. But the prediction of some unknown motion would forma more correct basis for a comparison of the prophecies of science withthose of Scripture; such, for instance, as Immanuel Kant's prediction ofthe period of Saturn's rotation at six hours twenty-three minutesfifty-three seconds; "which mathematical calculation of an unknownmotion of a heavenly body, " he says, "_is the only prediction of thatkind in pure Natural Philosophy_, and awaits confirmation at a futureperiod. " It is a pity that this unique scientific prediction should nothave had better luck, for the encouragement of other guessers; butafter waiting long and vainly, for the expected confirmation, it wasfinally falsified by Herschel's discovery of spots on the surface of theplanet, and observation of the true time, ten hours sixteen minutesforty-four seconds. [330] This, however, was not his only astronomicalprediction. He predicted that immense bodies in a transition statebetween planets and comets, and of very eccentric orbits, would be foundbeyond the orbit of Saturn, and intersecting it, but no such bodies havebeen discovered. Uranus and Neptune have no cometary character whatever, their orbits are less eccentric than others and do not intersect, norapproach within millions of miles of Saturn's orbit. The verification ofLe Verrier's prediction affords even a more satisfactory proof of thenecessarily conjectural character of astronomical computations ofunknown quantities and distances. The planet Neptune has not one-halfthe mass which he had calculated; his orbit, which was calculated asvery elliptical, is nearly circular; and the error of the calculation ofhis distance is three hundred millions of miles![331]

"Let us then be candid, " says Loomis, "and claim no more for astronomythan is reasonably due. When in 1846 Le Verrier announced the existenceof a planet hitherto unseen, and when he assigned it its exact positionin the heavens, and declared that it shone like a star of the eighthmagnitude, and with a perceptible disc, _not an astronomer of France, and scarce an astronomer in Europe, had sufficient faith in theprediction to prompt him to point his telescope to the heavens_. Butwhen it was announced that the planet had been seen at Berlin, that itwas found within one degree of the computed place, that it was indeed astar of the eighth magnitude, and had a sensible disc--then theenthusiasm not only of the public generally, but of astronomers also, was even more wonderful than their former apathy. The sagacity of LeVerrier was felt to be almost superhuman. Language could scarce be foundstrong enough to express the general admiration. The praise thenlavished upon Le Verrier was somewhat extravagant. _The singularly closeagreement between the observed and computed places of the planet wasaccidental. _ So exact a coincidence could not reasonably have beenanticipated. If the planet had been found even ten degrees from what LeVerrier assigned as its probable place, _this discrepancy would havesurprised no astronomer_. The discovery would still have been one of themost remarkable events in the history of astronomy, and Le Verrier wouldhave merited the title of First Astronomer of the age. "[332]

Nevertheless, astronomy from the comparative simplicity of the bodiesand forces with which it has to deal, and the approximate regularity ofthe paths of the heavenly bodies, may be regarded as the science inwhich the greatest possible certainty is attainable. It opens at oncethe widest field to the imagination, and the noblest range to thereason; it has attracted the most exalted intellects to its pursuit, andhas rewarded their toils with the grandest discoveries. Thesediscoveries have been grossly abused by inferior minds, ascribing to thediscoverers of the laws of the universe the glory due to their Creator;and boasting of the power of the human mind, as if it were capable ofexploring the infinite in space, and of calculating the movements of thestars through eternity. Persons who could not calculate an eclipse tosave their souls, have risked them upon the notion that, becauseastronomers can do so with considerable accuracy, farmers ought toreject the Bible, unless its predictions can be calculated by algebra. It may do such persons good, or at least prevent them from doing othersharm, to take a cursory view of the errors of astronomers; errorsnecessary as well as accidental. 

Sir John Herschel, than whom none has a better right to speak on thissubject, and whose devotion to that noble science precludes allsupposition of prejudice against it, devotes a chapter to _The Errors ofAstronomy_, [333] which he classifies and enumerates:

 "I. External causes of error, comprehending such as depend on external uncontrollable circumstances; such as fluctuations of weather, which disturb the amount of refraction from its tabulated value, and being reducible to no fixed laws, induce uncertainty to the amount of their own possible magnitude. 

 "II. Errors of observation; such as arise for instance from inexpertness, defective vision, slowness in seizing the exact instant of the occurrence of a phenomenon, or precipitancy in anticipating it; from atmospheric indistinctness, insufficient optical power in the instrument, and the like. 

 "III. The third, and by far the most numerous class of errors, arise from causes which may be deemed instrumental, and which may be divided into two classes. 

 "The first arises from an instrument not being what it professes to be, which is _error of workmanship_. Thus if an axis or pivot, instead of being as it ought, exactly cylindrical, be slightly flattened or elliptical--if it be not exactly concentric with the circle which it carries--if this circle so called be in reality not exactly circular--or not in one plane--if its divisions, intended to be precisely equidistant, shall be in reality at unequal intervals--_and a hundred other things of the same sort_. 

 "The other subdivision of instrumental errors comprehends such as arise from an instrument not being placed in the position it ought to have; and from those of its parts which are made purposely movable not being properly disposed, _inter se_. These are _errors of adjustment_. Some are unavoidable, as they arise from a general unsteadiness of the soil or building in which the instruments are placed. [334] Others again are consequences of imperfect workmanship; as when an instrument, once well adjusted, will not remain so. But the most important of this class of errors arise from the non-existence of natural indications other than those afforded by astronomical observations themselves, whether an instrument has, or has not, the exact position with respect to the horizon, and the cardinal points, etc. , which it ought to have, properly to fulfill its object. 

 "Now, with regard to the first two classes of error, it must be observed, that in so far as they can not be reduced to known laws, and thereby become the subjects of calculation and due allowance, _they actually vitiate in their full extent the results of any observations in which they subsist_. With regard to errors of adjustment, not only the possibility, _but the certainty of their existence in every imaginable form, in all instruments_, must be contemplated. _Human hands or machines never formed a circle, drew a straight line, or executed a perpendicular, nor ever placed an instrument in perfect adjustment, unless accidentally, and then only during an instant of time. _"

The bearing of these important and candid admissions of error inastronomical observations upon all kinds of other observations made bymortal eyes, and with instruments framed by human hands, in everydepartment of science, is obvious. No philosophical observation orexperiment is absolutely accurate, or can possibly be more thantolerably near the truth. The error of a thousandth part of an inch inan instrument will multiply itself into thousands, and millions ofmiles, according to the distance of the object, or the profundity of thecalculation. Our faith in the absolute infallibility of scientificobservers, and consequently in the absolute certainty of science, beingthus rudely upheaved from its very foundations by Sir John Herschel'scrowbar, we are prepared to learn that scientific men have made errorsgreat and numerous. 

To begin at home, with our own little globe, where certainty is muchmore attainable than among distant stars, we have seen that astronomersof the very highest rank are by no means agreed as to its diameter. Itsprecise form is equally difficult to determine. Newton showed that anellipsoid of revolution should differ from a sphere by a compression of1/230. The mean of a number of varying measurements of arcs, in fivedifferent places, would give 1/299. The pendulum measurement differsvery considerably from both, and "no two sets of pendulum experimentsgive the same result. "[335] The same liability to error, and uncertaintyof the actual truth, attends the other modes of ascertaining thisfundamental measurement. A very small error here will vitiate all otherastronomical calculations; for the earth's radius, and the radius of itsorbit, are the foot-rule and surveyor's chain with which the astronomermeasures the heavens. But this last and most used standard is uncertain;and of the nine different estimates, it is certain that eight must bewrong; and probably that all are erroneous. For example, Encke, in 1761, gives the earth's distance from the sun at

 95, 141, 830 Encke, in 1769, 95, 820, 610 Lacaille, 76, 927, 900 Henderson, 90, 164, 110 Gillies and Gould, 96, 160, 000 Mayer, 104, 097, 100 Le Verrier, 91, 066, 350 Sir John Herschel, 91, 718, 000 Humboldt, 82, 728, 000[336]

Here now is the fundamental standard measure of astronomy; and ninefirst-class astronomers are set to determine its length; but theirmeasurements range all the way from seventy-seven to one hundred andfour millions of miles--a difference of nearly one-fourth. Why theold-fashioned finger and thumb measure used before the carpenter'stwo-foot rule was invented never made such discrepancies; it couldalways make a foot within an inch more or less; but our scientificmeasurers, it seems, can not guess within two inches on the foot. 

Their smaller measurements are equally inaccurate. Lias says the AuroraBorealis is only two and a half miles high; Hood and Richardson make itsheight double that, or five miles; Olmsted and Twining run it up toforty-two, one hundred, and one hundred and sixty miles![337] When theyare thus inaccurate in the measurement of a phenomenon so near theearth, how can we believe in the infallibility of their measurements ofthe distances of the stars and the nebulę in the distant heavens?

The moon is the nearest to us of all the heavenly bodies, and exercisesthe greatest influence of any, save the sun, upon our crops, ships, health and lives, and consequently has had a larger share ofastronomical attention than any other celestial body. But the mostconflicting statements are made by astronomers regarding her state andinfluences. There is no end to the controversy whether the mooninfluences the weather; though one would think that question, beingrather a terrestrial one, could easily be decided. Schwabe says Herschelis wrong in saying that the years of most solar spots were fruitful; butWolf looks up the Zurich meteorological tables, and confirms Herschel. 

In _Ferguson's Astronomy_, the standard text-book of its day, we areinformed that "Some of her mountains (the moon's) by comparing theirheight with her diameter, are found to be three times higher than thehighest hills on earth. " They would thus be over fifteen miles high. ButSir Wm. Herschel assures us that "The generality do not exceed half amile in their general elevation. " _Transactions of the Royal Society_, May 11, 1780. Beer and Madler have measured thirty-nine whose heightthey assure us exceed Mont Blanc. But M. Gussew, of the ImperialObservatory at Wilna, describes to us, "a mountain mass in the form of ameniscus lens, rising in the middle to a height of seventy-nine Englishmiles. "[338] As this makes the moon lopsided, with the heavy side towardthe earth, the question of an atmosphere, and of the moon'sinhabitability is reopened; and the discussion seems to favor the man inthe moon; only he keeps on the other side always, so that we can not seehim. 

The best astronomers have gravely calculated the most absurdproblems--for instance the projection of meteorites from lunarvolcanoes; Poisson calculated that they would require an initialvelocity of projection of seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-fivefeet per second; others demanded eight thousand two hundred andeighty-two; Olbers demanded fourteen times as much; but La Place, thegreat inventor of the nebular theory, after thirty years' study fixed itdefinitely at seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-two! It appearsthat the absurdity of the discharging force of a part greater than theattracting force of the whole never occurred to him. [339]

This same La Place supposed, that he could have placed the moon in amuch better position for giving light than she now occupies; and thatthis was the only object of her existence. As this was not done heargued that her waxing and waning light was a proof that she was notlocated by an Omniscient Creator. He says he would have placed her inthe beginning in opposition to the sun, in the plane of the ecliptic, and about four times her present distance from us, with such a motion aswould ever maintain that position, thus securing full moon from sunsetto sunrise, without possibility of eclipse. But Lionville demonstratesthat "if the moon had occupied at the beginning the position assignedher, by the illustrious author of the _Mecanique Celeste_, she could nothave maintained it but a very short time. "[340] In short, La Place'shypothetical calculations generally have proved erroneous when appliedto any existing facts; and we have no reason to attach more value to hisnebular theory calculations. 

The sun is the principal orb of our system, and by far the mostconspicuous, and the most observed of all observers, astronomersincluded. But we have seen already how contradictory their measurementsof his distance, and their observations of the influence of his spots. Far more conflicting are the theories as to his constitution, of whichindeed we may truly say very little was known before the application ofphotography and the spectroscope to heliography within the last sevenyears. One astronomer fixed the period of his rotation at twenty-fivedays, fourteen hours, and eight minutes; another at twenty-six days, forty-six minutes; another at twenty-four days, twenty-eightminutes. [341]

In regard to the sun's heat, a matter fundamental to the nebulartheory, the calculations differ widely, and some of them must be grosslyerroneous. M. Vicaire called the attention of the French Academy, at arecent meeting, to this unsatisfactory condition of science. FatherSecchi estimates it at eighteen million Fahrenheit; while Pouillet saysit ranges from two thousand six hundred and sixty-two to three thousandtwo hundred and one; and others range from two hundred thousanddownward. The most singular thing is that these results are derived fromobservations or radiations made by apparatus identical inprinciple. [342] But Waterston calculates the temperature of the solarsurface at above ten, and probably twelve million Fahrenheit. [343]

Now what feeds these enormous fires? The old opinion of astronomy, thatthe sun was a mass of fire, was assailed by Sir Wm. Herschel, whomaintained that it was in the condition of a perpetual magnetic storm. This notion was altered into the belief of a central dark body, surrounded by a stratum of clouds, outside of which is a photosphere oflight and heat; which some made one thousand five hundred miles indepth, others four thousand. Outside of this was another layer ofrose-colored clouds. To this theory Arago, Sir John Herschel andHumboldt assented. But Le Verrier declares that the facts observedduring late eclipses are contrary to this theory, and a new theory isslow in process of construction, to be demolished in its turn by laterobservations. [344]

One of the most recent theories is that the fuel is furnished by astream of meteorites, planetoids, and comets, falling in by the power ofattraction, and being speedily converted into gas flames; a process thevery reverse of the theory of the evolution of the solid celestialbodies from gas. But it is pretty evident from these conflictingtheories that nobody knows anything certainly as to the materials of thesun, or the fuel which feeds his flames. But if the very bestastronomers do not know of what he is made, is it not too great a demandupon our credulity to ask us to believe that they can tell how he wasmade?

The size, density, and distances of the planets, which form suchessential elements in the calculations of the nebular theory ofevolution, are equally uncertain. Ten or twelve years ago Mercury wasbelieved to be nearly three times as dense as the earth (2. 94); and thetheory of evolution was partly based upon this assumed fact. But Hausennow finds that it is not half so dense; that, as compared with theearth, it is only 1. 22; and that its mass is less than half (5/12) ofwhat had been confidently calculated. [345] Corrections of the masses anddensities of other planets are also offered. 

Still wider differences prevail in calculating the velocities of thesebodies; velocities _calculated_ and found to correspond with the theoryof evolution. Bianchini gives the period of the rotation of Venus attwenty-four days, eight hours; but Schroeter says it is not as manyhours as Bianchini gives days; that it is only twenty-three hours andtwenty minutes. Sir Wm. Herschel can not tell which is right, or whetherboth are wrong. [346]

From such imperfect and erroneous calculations astronomers have deducedwhat they called a _law_, which holds the same place in nature that theBlue Laws of Connecticut maintain in history; and which like them haveimposed upon the credulous. Titius and Bode imagined that they haddiscovered that, "When the distances of the planets are examined, it isfound that they are almost all removed from each other by distanceswhich are in the same proportion as their magnitudes increase. " And this_law_ played an important part in introducing the theory of evolution, which, it was alleged, exactly corresponded with such an arrangement. But more accurate calculations and recent discoveries have dissipatedthe supposed order of progression. Humboldt says of it, it is "a lawwhich scarcely deserves this name, and which is called by Lalande andDelambre a play of numbers; by others a help for the memory. * * * Inreality the distances between Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus approximatevery closely to the duplication. Nevertheless, since the discovery ofNeptune, which is much too near Uranus, the defectiveness in theprogression has become strikingly evident. " And Olbers rejects it, as"contrary to the nature of all truths which merit the name of laws; itagrees only approximately with observed facts in the case of mostplanets, and what does not appear to have been once observed, not at allin the case of Mercury. It is evident that the series, 4, 4+3, 4+6, 4+12, 4+48, 4+96, 4+192, with which the distances should correspond, isnot a continuous series at all. The number which precedes 4+3 should notbe 4; _i. E. _, 4+0, but 4+3/2. Therefore between 4 and 4+3 thereshould be an infinite number, or as Wurm expresses it, for _n_=1, thereis obtained from 4+2^{n-2}. 3; not 4, but 5-1/2. "[347] Thus thisso-called law is erroneous in both ends, and defective in the middle. Finally it has been utterly abolished by the discovery of the planetVulcan, which does not correspond to any such law. [348] If the theory ofevolution then corresponds to Bode's law, as its advocates alleged, itcorresponds to a myth. 

About the nebulę which have played so large a part in the atheisticworld building, our astronomers are utterly at variance. Sir JohnHerschel says they are far away beyond the stars in space. But theMelbourne astronomer, M. Le Seur, suggests that the star Eta and thenebulous matter are neighbors; that the nebulous matter formerly aroundit, which has recently disappeared, while the star has blazed up intoflames, is being absorbed and digested by the star. This has happenedbefore, thirty years ago, to that star. Why may not our sun also absorband burn up nebulę. But if so, what becomes of the rings of the nebulartheory?

The light of the stars is almost the only medium through which we canobserve them, and it would naturally be supposed that astronomers wouldbe at pains to have clear views of light. But the most surprisingdifferences of statement regarding it exist among the very firstastronomers. They do not see it alike. Herschel says a Herculis is red;Struve says it is yellow. They dispute about its nature, motion, andquantity. Some astronomers believe the sun to be the great source oflight, at least to our system. But Nasmyth informs the RoyalAstronomical Society that "the true source of latent light is not in thesolar orb, but in space itself, and that the grand function of the sunis to act as an agent for the bringing forth into existence theluciferous element, which element I suppose to be diffused throughoutthe boundless regions of space. "[349] The nature of light is howeverstill as great a mystery as when Job demanded, "Where is the way wherelight dwelleth?" The undulatory theory of light, now generally accepted, assumes that light is caused by the vibrations of the ether in a planetransverse to the direction of propagation. In order to transmit motionsof this kind, the parts of the luminiferous medium must resistcompression and distortion, like those of an elastic solid body; itstransverse elasticity being great enough to transmit one of the mostpowerful kinds of physical energy, with a speed in comparison withwhich that of the swiftest planets of our system is inappreciable, andits longitudinal elasticity immensely greater--both of theseelasticities being at the same time so weak as to offer no perceptibleresistance to the motion of the planets, and other visible bodies. [350]Is the velocity of light uniform? Or, if variable, is the variationcaused by the original difference of the projectile force of thedifferent suns, stars, comets, etc. ? or by the different media throughwhich it passes? Arago alleges that light moves more rapidly throughwater than through air; but Brequet asserts that the fact is just thereverse. [351] Both admit that its velocity varies with the medium. Jacobs alleges that during the trigonometrical survey of India heobserved the _extinction_ of light reflected through sixty miles ofhorizontal atmosphere. [352] How, then, can astronomers make any reliablecalculations of the velocity of light reaching us through regions ofspace filled with unknown media? Newton calculated the velocity of lightat one hundred and fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-five andfive-ninth miles a second; but Encke shows he erred thirty per cent. Other eminent astronomers make the time of the passage of light from thesun all the way from eleven to fourteen minutes, instead of Newton'sseven or eight. Busch reckons its velocity at one hundred andsixty-seven thousand nine hundred and seventy-six miles; Draper onehundred and ninety-two thousand; Struve two hundred and fifteen thousandeight hundred and fifty-four. Wheatstone alleges that electric lighttravels at the rate of two hundred and eighty-eight thousand miles asecond; but Frizeau's calculations and measurements give only onehundred and sixty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-eight for thelight of Oxygen and hydrogen. [353] Thus we have a variation of onehundred and twenty thousand miles a second in all calculations ofsidereal distances. Humboldt tries to reconcile these differences by thesuggestion, that no one will deny, that lights of different magnetic orelectric processes may have different velocities; a fact which throwsall sidereal astronomy into inextricable confusion, and sets aside allexisting time tables on sidereal railroads. 

They are no more agreed as to its composition after it reaches us thanas to its velocity. Newton taught that it consisted of seven colors;Wallaston denies more than four; Brewster reduces the number tothree--red, yellow, and blue. Newton measures the yellow and violet, andfinds them as forty to eighty. Fraunhofer makes the proportiontwenty-seven to one hundred and nine. Wallaston's spectrum differs fromboth. Field says, "No one has ventured to alter either estimate, and noone who is familiar with the spectrum will put much faith in anymeasurement of it, by whosoever and with what care soever made. "[354] Hesays white light is composed of five parts red, three yellow, and eightblue; which differs wholly from Brewster, who gives it three parts red, five yellow, and two of blue. 

Equally wild are their calculations of the quantity of light emitted byparticular stars. Radeau calculates Vulcan's light at 2. 25 that ofMercury; Lias, from the same observations, at 7. 36, nearly three timesas much. [355] Sir John Herschel calculates that _Alpha Centauri_ emitsmore light than the sun; that the light of Sirius is four times asgreat, and its parallax much less; so that by such a calculation Siriuswould have an intrinsic splendor sixty-three times that of the sun. ButWallaston only calculates his light at one-fourth of this amount; andSteinheil makes it only one two-hundredth part of the formerestimate. [356]

Astronomers have lately been comforting the world with the assurancethat we have little to fear from comets; that the superstitious fear ofthe comets prevalent in the past was ill founded, because comets are sovery thin that we might pass through one without its breaking upanything. But that, as Principal Leitch shows us, is not the onlyquestion. "We know that the most deadly miasmata are so subtle that itis impossible to detect them by any chemical tests, and a veryhomeopathic dose of a comet, in addition to the elements of our ownatmosphere, might produce the most fatal effects. "[357]

The phenomena indicative of cosmical processes are out of the range ofastronomical observation. We can only observe those indicated by light, and gravitation; but how small a proportion of the formative processesof our own world indicate themselves by these two classes of phenomena!How few of the chemical, vegetative, animal, moral, social, or evengeological processes, now progressing under our own observation, couldgive us notice of their existence by the two channels of light andgravitation? How, then, can philosophers ever learn the process ofbuilding worlds like our own in which many other powers are at work?

Astronomers are not all agreed as to the existence of a cosmical ether;nor do those who assert it agree as to its properties. What is itsnature, density, power of refraction and reflection of light, andresistance to motion? What is its temperature? Is it uniform, or likeour atmosphere, ever varying? These are manifestly questionsindispensable to be answered before any theory of the development ofworlds is even conceivable. But of the properties of this all-extendingcosmical atmosphere, which is the very breath of life of the developmenttheory, astronomers present the most conflicting statements. ProfessorVaughan says, "If such a body exists, it is beyond our estimation of allthat is material. It has no weight, according to our idea of weight; noresistance, according to our idea of calculating resistance bymechanical tests; no volume, on our views of volume; no chemicalactivity, according to our experimental and absolute knowledge ofchemical action. In plain terms, it presents no known re-agency by whichit can be isolated from surrounding or intervening matter. "[358] Or, inplainer terms, we know nothing about it. 

The only fact about it which astronomers have ventured to specify andcalculate is its temperature; for upon this all the power of thedevelopment world-making process depends. But they are very far from anyagreement; indeed, they are much farther apart than the equator from thepoles. Stanley finds the temperature of absolute space--58°; Arago--70°;Humboldt--85°; Herschel--132°; Saigey--107°; Pouillet, to be exact to afraction--223-6/10° below the freezing point; though when it gets to beso cold as that one would think he would hardly stay out of doors tomeasure fractions of a degree. But Poisson thinks he is over 200° toocold, and fixes the temperature accurately, in his own opinion, 8-6/10°. Moreover, he alleges that there is no more uniformity in the temperatureof the heavens than in that of our own atmosphere, owing to the unequalradiations of heat from the stars; and that the earth, and the wholesolar system, receive their internal heat from without, while passingthrough hot regions of space. [359]

From this chaos of conflicting assertions of unknown facts the theory ofdevelopment develops itself. Its fundamental postulate is thedifference of temperature between the nebulę and the surrounding space. But the fact is that nobody knows what is the temperature of eitherspace or nebulę, nor is anybody likely ever to know enough of either tobase any scientific theory upon. Astronomy will never teach men how tomake worlds; nor is it of the least consequence that it does not; sincewe could not make them, even if we knew how. 

From these specimens of the errors and contradictions of the bestastronomers, the teachers upon whose accuracy we depend for our faith inscience, we can see, that though the Pope and the Infidel savans mayclaim infallibility, yet after all the savant is just as infallible asthe Pope, viz: he is right when he is right, and he is wrong when he iswrong, and that happens frequently and common folks can not always tellwhen. There is no such thing, then, as infallible science upon faith, inwhich I can venture to reject God's Bible, and risk my soul's salvation. Science is founded on faith in very fallible men. 

3. _Geology_, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the handsof Infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been supposed to beanti-Christian. The supposition is utterly unfounded. Such of its factsas have been well ascertained have demonstrated the being, wisdom, andgoodness of an Almighty Creator, with irresistible evidence. Nor, thougha wonderful outcry has been raised about the opposition between therecords of the rocks and the records of the Bible, regarding theantiquity of the earth, has any one yet succeeded in proving such anopposition, for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology sayshow old it is. They both say it is very old. The Bible says, "In thebeginning God created the heavens and the earth;" and by the use whichit makes of the word _beginning_, leaves us to infer that it was longbefore the existence of the human race. [360] If the geologist couldprove that the earth was six thousand millions of years older than Adam, it would contradict no statement of the Bible. The Bible reader, therefore, has no reason to question any well ascertained fact ofgeology. But when Infidels come to us with their geological _theories_about the mode in which God made the earth, or in which the earth madeitself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that they have gotscientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible account is false, and that our old traditions can not stand before the irresistibleevidence of science, we are surely bound to look at the foundation offacts, and the logical superstructure, which sustain such startlingconclusions. 

Now it is remarkable that every Infidel argument against the statementsof the Bible, or rather against what they suppose to be the statementsof the Bible, is based, not on the _facts_, but upon the _theories_, ofgeology. I do not know one which is based solely on facts and inductionsfrom facts. Every one of them has a wooden leg, and goes hobbling uponan _if_. 

Take for example the argument most commonly used--that which asserts thevast antiquity of the earth--a thing in itself every way likely, and notat all contrary to Scripture, if it could be scientifically proved. Buthow does our Infidel geologist set about his work of proving that theearth is any given age, say six thousand millions of years? A scientificdemonstration must rest upon _facts_--well ascertained facts. It admitsof _no suppositions_. Now what are the facts given to solve the problemof the earth's age? The geologist finds a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed below the water, some of them outof the fragments of former rocks, containing bones, shells, and casts offishes, and tracks of the feet of birds, made when these rocks were inthe state of soft mud, and altogether several miles thick. He has agreat multitude of such facts before him, but they are all of thischaracter. Not one of them gives him the element of _time_. Theyannounce to him a succession of events, such as successive generationsof fishes and plants; but not one of them tells how long thesegenerations lived. The condition of the world was so utterly differentthen, from what it is now, that no inference can be drawn from thelength of the lives of existing races, which are generally also ofdifferent species. The utmost any man can say, in such a case, is, _Isuppose_, for there is no determinate element of time in the statementof the problems, and so no certain time can appear in the solution. 

Here is a problem exactly similar. A certain house is found to be builtwith ten courses of hewn stone in the basement, forty courses of brickin the first story, thirty-six courses in the second, thirty-two in thethird; with a roof of nine inch rafters covered with inch boards, and aninch and a half layer of coal tar and gravel; how long was it inbuilding? Would not any school-boy laugh at the absurdity of attemptingsuch a problem? He would say, "How can I tell unless I know whence thematerials came, how they were conveyed, how many workmen were employed, and how much each could do in a day? If the brick had to be made byhand, the lumber all dressed with the hand-saw and jack-plane, thematerials all hauled fifty miles in an ox-cart, the brick carried up byan Irishman in a hod, and the work done by an old, slow-going, jobbingcontractor, who could only afford to pay three or four men at a time, they would not get through in a year. But if the building stone and sandwere found in excavating the cellar, if the brick were made by steam andcame by railroad, a good master builder, with steam saw and planingmills, steam hoists, and a strong force of workmen, would run it up inthree weeks. "

So our geologist ought to say; "I do not know either the source of thematerials of the earth's strata, nor the means by which they wereconveyed to their present positions; therefore I can not tell the timerequired for their formation. If the crust of the earth was createdoriginally of solid granite, and the materials of the strata were grounddown by the slow action of frost and rain, and conveyed to the ocean bythe still slower agencies of rivers and torrents--hundreds of millionsof ages would not effect the work. But if the earth was created in sucha shape as would rationally be considered the best adapted for futurestratification; if its crust consisted of the various elements of whichgranite and other rocks are composed; if these materials were ejected ina granular or comminuted form, and in vast quantities by submarinevolcanoes generated by the chemical action of these elements upon eachother; and if, after being diffused by the currents of the ocean, andconsolidated by its vast pressure, the underlying strata were baked andmelted and crystallized into granite[361]--a very few centuries wouldsuffice. Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geologycan make no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formationof the strata. "

But instead of saying so, he _imagines_ that God chose to make the earthout of the most impossible materials, by the most unsuitable agencies, and with the most inadequate forces; and that therefore a long time wasneeded for the work. In short, to revert to our illustration of thehouse-building, he _supposes_ that Almighty God built the earth with theox-team, and employed only the same force in erecting the building, which he now uses for doing little jobbing repairs. Almost allgeological computations of time are made upon the supposition that onlythe same agents were at work then which we see now, that they onlywrought with the same degree of force, and that they produced just thesame effects in such a widely different condition of the earth as thenprevailed. It takes a year say to deposit mud enough at the bottom ofthe sea to make an inch of rock now; _and if mud was deposited nofaster_ when the geological strata were formed, they are as many yearsold as there are inches in eight or nine miles depth of strata. But thisis not the scientific proof we were promised. How does he prove that mudwas deposited at just the same rate then as now? The very utmost he cansay is that it is a very probable supposition. I can prove it a veryimprobable supposition. But it is enough for my present purpose to pointout that, probable or improbable, it is _only supposition_. No proof isgiven or can possibly be given for it. Any conclusion drawn from suchpremises can be only a _supposition_ too. And so the whole fabric ofgeological chronology, upon the stability of which so many Infidels arerisking the salvation of their souls, and beneath which they areboasting that they will bury the Bible beyond the possibility of aresurrection, vanishes into a mere _unproved notion_, based upon an_if_. 

It is truly astonishing, that any sober-minded person should allowhimself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged resultsof a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists themselvesacknowledge their favorite science to be. "The dry land upon our globeoccupies only _one-fourth_ of its whole superficies. All the rest issea. How much of this fourth part have geologists been able to examine?and how small seems to be the area of stratification which they haveexplored? We venture to say not one _fiftieth part of the whole_. "[362]"Abstract or speculative geology, were it a perfect science, wouldpresent a history of the globe from its origin and formation, throughall the changes it has undergone, up to the present time; describing itsexternal appearance, its plants and animals at each successive period. _As yet, geology is the mere aim to arrive at such knowledge_; and whenwe consider how difficult it is to trace the history of a nation, evenover a few centuries, we can not be surprised at the small progressgeologists have made in tracing the history of the earth through thelapse of ages. To ascertain the history of a nation possessed of writtenrecords is comparatively easy; but when these are wanting, we mustexamine the ruins of their cities and monuments, and judge of them as apeople from the size and structure of their buildings, and from theremains of art found in them. This is often a perplexing, always anarduous task; _much more so is it to decipher the earth'shistory_. "[363] "The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found inour peat bogs afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of theearliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date ofsome Roman emperor; the ancient encampments indicate the districts onceoccupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructingmilitary defenses; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art ofembalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of ancientEgypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, butit constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historianrelies; whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which isat our command. For this reason _we must not expect to obtain a full andconnected account of any series of events beyond the reach ofhistory_. "[364] "There are no calculations more doubtful than those ofthe geologist. "[365] In fact, no truly scientific geologist pretendsthat it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much lesswith the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new factmay overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which tounravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belongto the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize uponthem, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us inour presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone bearing wood--afish's skull or tooth--the vertebra of a reptile--the humerus of abird--the jaw of a quadruped--_all_, _any_ of these things, weak andinsignificant as they may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong forus and our theory--the puny fragment in the grasp of truth forms asirresistible a weapon as the dry bone did in that of Samson of old; andour slaughtered sophisms lie piled up, 'heaps upon heaps, ' beforeit. "[366]

The history of the progress of geology furnishes abundant proof of thetruth of these admissions of weakness and fallibility. In almost everyinstance when we have had the opportunity of testing geologicalcalculations of time they have proved to be erroneous; and sometimesgrossly erroneous. The lake dwellings of Switzerland, which were oncealleged to be at least fifteen thousand years old, are found surroundedby heaps of burnt corn; illustrating Cęsar's account of the burning oftheir corn by the Helvetians, preparatory to the invasion of Gaul, whichhe repelled. The peat bogs of Denmark, surrounding stumps of oak, beech, and pine, claimed to be successive growths, and at least twelve thousandfive hundred years old, have been compared with a piece of primeval bogand forest, on the Earl of Arran's estate, in Scotland, whichcorresponds perfectly to the Danish bog; but which shows the threegrowths not successive, but contemporaneous, at different levels; thebog growing as well as the trees. And the frequent discovery of Danishremains of the stone and bronze ages in the old Danish forts andbattle-fields of Ireland fixes their historical period at the era of theDanish invasion; some of these stone and bronze weapons being found onthe battle-field of Clontarf, dating A. D. 827. Skeletons of warriorswith gold collars, bronze battle-axes, and flint arrow heads are quitecommon in the Irish bogs. The absence of iron, on which so great atheory of the stone, bronze, and iron ages as successive developments ofcivilization has been raised, is easily accounted for by the perishablenature of iron when exposed to moisture. But that this Celtic race usediron also, as well as bronze and stone, is proved incontestably by thediscovery, in 1863, of the slag of their iron furnaces, among a numberof flint weapons, and Celtic skulls, at Linhope, in Northumberland; theiron itself having perished by rust. [367] The pottery, glass, andhandmills found beside these skulls show that their owners were by nomeans the degraded savages supposed to represent the so-called stoneage. 

Horner's Nile pottery, discovered at a depth of sixty feet, andcalculated to be twelve thousand years old, and fragments found stilldeeper in this deposit, and calculated at thirty thousand years, werefound to be underlaid by still deeper layers, producing Roman pottery;and in the deepest boring of all, at the foot of the statue of RamesesII. , the discovery of the Grecian honeysuckle, marked on some of thesemysterious fragments, which they had claimed as pre-historic, provedthat it could not be older than the Greek conquest of Egypt. Sir RobertStephenson found in the neighborhood of Damietta, at a greater depththan Mr. Horner reached, a brick bearing the stamp of Mohammed Ali. [368]The shifting currents of all rivers flowing through alluvial depositsbury such things in a single season of high water. 

The raised beaches of Scotland are quite conspicuous geological featuresof the Highlands, and have furnished themes for calculations of theirvast antiquity. Here and there human remains had been discovered inthem, but no link could be had to connect them otherwise thangeologically with history. Geologists, accordingly, with their visualgenerosity of time, assigned them to the pre-Adamite period. Butrecently the missing link has been found, and these progenitors of TubalCain, and the pre-Adamites generally, are found to have been in thehabit of supping their broth out of Roman pottery!

Lyell, the acknowledged prince of geologists, is famous for hischronological blundering; of which his calculations of the age of thedelta of the Mississippi is a very good American example. He calculatesthe quantity of mud in suspension in the water, and the area and depthof the delta, and says it must have taken sixty-seven thousand years forthe formation of the whole; and if the alluvial matter of the plainabove be two hundred and sixty-four feet deep, or half that of thedelta, it must have required thirty-three thousand five hundred yearsmore for its accumulation, even if its area be estimated at only equalto the delta, whereas it is in fact larger. [369] He makes no allowancefor tidal deposits. 

But Brig. Gen. Humphrey, of the United States Surveying Department, goes over Lyell's calculations, and shows that instead of 3, 702, 758, 400cubic feet of mud brought down by the Mississippi, as estimated byLyell, the actual amount is 19, 500, 750, 000, 000; that the rate at whichthe delta is now advancing into the gulf is fifty feet per annum, andthat the age of the delta and alluvial deposit is four thousand fourhundred, instead of Lyell's one hundred thousand five hundredyears. [370] We might go on and give a dozen such instances of geologicalmiscalculations of time did space permit; but these are enough todisabuse us of any faith in such calculations. 

With such specimens before us of the miscalculations of the smallerperiods by geologists, we are not surprised to find that they grosslyexaggerate the larger cycles of time. The necessities of the evolutionof the ascidian into the snail, of the snail into the fish, and of thefish into the lizard, of the lizard into the monkey, and of the monkeyinto the man, by slow and imperceptible changes, demanded an almostinfinite length of time; and the geologists of that school accordinglyasserted the existence of animal life upon our globe for hundreds ofthousands of millions of years. 

But Sir Wm. Thompson, one of the first mathematicians, demonstrates[371]the impossibility of any such length of time being spent in the processof cooling our little globe. Beginning with their own assumption, of aglobe of molten granite cooling down to the present state, he provesthat the earth can not have been in existence longer than a hundredmillions of years; and of course that plants and animals have existed onit a much shorter time; as for the greater part of that period it wastoo hot for them. The geologists are now becoming ashamed of theirpoetical cycles, and some acknowledge that their chiefs blunderedegregiously in their calculations. 

The principles of geology seem to be as unsettled as its facts. There isno agreement upon any of its theories. The history of its theories, likethat of their framers, begins with their birth, and ends with theirburial. Each new theory placed the tombstone upon the preceding, andinscribed it with the brief record of the antediluvian, "and he died. " Abusy time they must have had with their Wernerian, Huttonian, andDiluvian hypotheses; not to mention the Hutchinsonian theory, the animalspirits flowing from the sun, the vegetative power of stories, and othersage and serious facts and theories, theological and philosophical, invented to account for the world's creation. "No theory, " says Lyell, "could be so far-fetched or fantastical as not to attract somefollowers, provided it fell in with the popular notion. " "Some of themost extravagant systems were invented or controverted by men ofacknowledged talent. " A more amusing exhibition of philosophicalabsurdity can not be found than those chapters which he devotes to "TheHistorical Progress of Geology, "[372] unless perhaps the scientificdiscussions of the erudite acquaintances of Lemuel Gulliver. 

Let it not be supposed that the progress of inductive science, and theprevalence of the Baconian philosophy have banished absurdities andcontradictions from the sphere of geology. It would require a man ofconsiderable learning to find three geologists agreed, either in theirfacts, or in their theories. In a general way, indeed, we have theCatastrophists, with Hugh Miller, overwhelming the earth with direconvulsions in the geological eras, and upheaving the more conservativeLyell and the Progressionists; who affirm that all things continue asthey were from the beginning of the world. And there is perhaps ageneral agreement now that the underlying _primitive_ rocks, so called, are not primitive at all, as geologists thought twenty years ago; but, like the foundations of a Chicago house, have been put in long after thebuilding was finished and occupied. But then comes the question how theywere inserted--whether as Elie de Beaumont thinks, the mountains wereupheaved by starts, lever fashion, or, as Lyell affirms, very gradually, and imperceptibly, like the elevation of a brick house by screws. [373]Nor is there the least likelihood of any future agreement among them;inasmuch as they can not agree either as to the thickness of the earth'ssolid crust which is to be lifted, or the force by which it is to bedone? Hopkins proves by astronomical observation that it is eighthundred miles thick. Lyell affirms that at twenty-four miles deep therecan be no solid crust, for the temperature of the earth increases onedegree for every forty-five feet, and at that depth the heat is greatenough to melt iron and almost every known substance. But then there isa difference between philosophers about this last test ofsolidity--those who believe in Wedgewood's Pyrometer, which was theinfallible standard twenty years ago, asserting that the heat of meltediron is 21, 000° Fahrenheit; while Professor Daniells demonstrates byanother infallible instrument that it is only 2, 786° Fahrenheit;[374]which is rather a difference. In one case the earth's crust would beover two hundred miles thick, in the other twenty-four. But then comesthe great question, What is below the granite? and a very important onefor any theory of the earth. It evidently underlies the whole foundationof speculative geology, whether we assume with De Beaumont and Humboldt, that "the whole globe, with the exception of a thin envelope, muchthinner in proportion than the shell of an egg, is a fused mass, keptfluid by heat--a heat of 450, 000° Fahrenheit, at the center, Cordiercalculates--but constantly cooling, and contracting its dimensions;" andoccasionally cracking and falling in, and "squeezing upward largeportions of the mass;" "thus producing those folds or wrinkles which wecall mountain chains;" or, with Davy and Lyell, that the heat of such aboiling ocean below would melt the solid crust, like ice from thesurface of boiling water--and with it the whole theory of the primevalexistence of the earth in a state of igneous fusion, its gradual coolingdown into continents and mountains of granite, the gradual abrasion ofthe granite into the mud and sand which formed the stratified rocks, andall the other brilliant hypotheses which have sparked out of this greatinternal fire. Instead of an original central heat he supposes that "wemay _perhaps_ refer the heat of the interior to chemical changesconstantly going on in the earth's crust. "[375] Now if the veryfoundations of the science are in such a state of fusion, and floatingon a _perhaps_, would it not be wise to allow them to solidify a littlebefore a man risks the salvation of his soul upon them?

The various theories are contradictions. The igneous theory assault theaqueous theory with the greatest heat; while the aqueous theorists pourcold water, in torrents, upon the igneous men. The shocks of conflictingglacier theories have shaken the Alps and convulsed all North America;and have not yet ceased. There are eleven theories of earthquakes, whichhave been, and are still, such energetic agents in geology; and thewhole eleven afford not the least rational idea of their causes; nor ofany means of preventing, predicting, or escaping their ravages. The bestgeologists have described fossil tracks as the footprints of giganticbirds, which others equally as authoritative pronounce the tracks offrogs and lizards. Indeed, a good part of every geological treatise, andof the time of every association of geologists, is taken up withrefutations of the errors of their predecessors. 

There are no less than nine theories of the causes of the elevation ofmountains; some scoop out the valleys by water; others by ice; othersheave up the mountains by fire; and some by the chemical expansion oftheir rocks; while others still upheave them by the pressure of moltenlava from beneath; and others again make them out to be the wrinkles ofthe contraction of the supposed crust of the liquid interior. Of allthese theories an able geologist says: "The many proposed theories ofmountain elevation are based upon assumptions which unfortunately arenot true; but that is an unimportant matter to the majority of ourspeculating geologists; and one never seen by the inventors of thetheories, who allow themselves to be led captive by a poeticimagination, instead of building their inductions upon fieldobservations. 

"Thus, to suppose that mountains are elevated by a wedge like intrusionof melted matter is to give to a fluid functions incompatible with itsdynamic properties. So also the supposition that the igneous rocks wereintruded, as solid wedges separating and lifting the crust, is opposedto the fact that no apparent abrasion, but generally the closestadhesion, exists at the line of contact of the igneous and stratifiedrocks. Equally fatal objections may be advanced against the othertheories. "[376]

Multitudes of the alleged facts of Infidel geologists are as apocryphalas their theories. Thus in a recent ponderous quarto volume, theproduction of half a dozen philosophers, this identical impossibletheory--of the cooling of the earth's crust down to solidity, while anirresistible central heat remains below--is presented to the world as anascertained fact; we are informed of the discovery of a human skullfifty-seven thousand years old, _in good preservation_; asked to believethat two tiers of cypress snags could not be deposited in the delta ofthe Mississippi in less than eleven thousand four hundred years; and tocalculate that the delta of the Nile must have been a great many ages ingrowing to its present size, because it is quite certain that for thelast three thousand years _it has never grown at all_. [377]

It were easy to fill a volume with such mistakes of geologists, but mylimits restrict me to a few specimens. Silliman's Journal, in a reviewof "_The Geology of North America_, by Julius Marcoe, U. S. Geologist, and Professor of Geology in the Federal Polytechnic School ofSwitzerland; quarto, with maps and plates, " says:

"The author describes the mountain systems of north America as _hesupposes they must be_, according to the theoretical views of Elie deBeaumont. " "Thus one single fossil--that one a species of pine, and onlyvery much resembling the _Pinites Fleurotti_ of Dr. Monguett--_establishes_ a connection between the New Red of France, andthat of America. This is a very strong word for a geologist to use onevidence so small, _and so uncertain_, with the fate of four thousand orfive thousand feet of rock at stake, and the beds beneath, containing'perhaps Belemnites. ' The prudent observer would have said, _establishesnothing_; and such is the fact. " "_On such evidence_ a region over theRocky Mountains, which is one thousand miles from north to south, andeight hundred miles from east to west, is for the most part colored inthe maps as Triassic. Such a region would take in quite a respectablepart of the continent of Europe. " "We now know beyond any reasonabledoubt, that all the country from the Platte to the British Possessions, and from the Mississippi to the Black Hills, is occupied by Cretaceousand Tertiary rocks. And as regards the region from the Platte southwardto the Red River, very far the largest part _is known to be notTriassic_, while it is possible the Trias may occur in some parts ofit. " "It is unfortunate in its bearing on the progress of geologicalscience to have false views about some five hundred thousand miles ofterritory, and much more besides, spread widely abroad throughrespectable journals, and transactions of distinguished EuropeanSocieties. "[378]

One can not but sympathize with the poor abused Rocky Mountains, tormented and misrepresented for a thousand miles by this Frenchgeologist. But our American patriotism may be partially pacified when wefind that Europe fares no better; and that Great Britain, and OldScotland, Hugh Miller's own cradle, which has been the very lecture roomof geologists, has nevertheless been most grossly misrepresented in allbooks and maps, up till the last decade. The _Edinburgh Review_, acompetent authority, says (No. Cxxvii. ): "The new light which has beenthus thrown on the history of the geological series of Scotland (by SirRoderick Murchison), showing that great masses of crystalline rocks, called primary, and supposed to be much more ancient than the Siluriansystem, are here simply metamorphosed strata of that age, may withjustice be looked upon as one of the most valuable results which havebeen attained by British geologists for many years. " A very just remarkindeed! If only geologists would learn a little modesty from thisdiscovery, which completely turns upside down their old world-buildingprocess of grinding down all the upper strata out of the moltengranite, and gives us, instead, the baking of the strata intocrystalline rocks; a process exactly the reverse of the former, and ofthat asserted by the theory of evolution. There is no prospect of anycessation of the war of geological theories. 

4. _Zoology. _

Equally hostile to each other are the expounders of the development ofman from the monkey. As Ishmaelites their hand is against every man. Each is a law in theorizing unto himself. Their contendings may wellteach us caution. Lamarck set those right who preceded him. The authorof the _Vestiges of Creation_ outstripped Lamarck, and Mr. Darwin setsboth aside; while he in his turn is severely censured by M. Tremaux, andhas all his reasoning controverted in favor of the new theory. Lamarckbelieved in spontaneous generation; Darwin does not. The author of the_Vestiges of Creation_ expounded a law of development, and Mr. Darwinreplaces it by Natural Selection. M. Tremaux has repudiated the originwhich Mr. Darwin has assumed, and insists on our believing that, notwater, but the _soil_, is the origin of all life, and therefore of man. With him there is no progress; all creatures have reached their restingplace. But man rises or sinks, according to the more ancient or recentsoil he dwells upon. Professor Huxley is unwilling to abandon his ideathat life may come from dead matter, and is not disposed to accept ofMr. Darwin's explanation of the origin of life by the Creator having, atfirst, breathed it into one or more forms. While accepting of Mr. Darwin's theory of a common descent for man with all other creatures, henot only differs from him as to the beginning, but he admits that thereis no gradual transition from the one to the other. He acknowledges thatthe structural differences between man and even the highest apes aregreat and significant; and yet because there is no sign of gradualtransition between the gorilla, and the orang, and the gibbon, heinfers that they all had a common origin; whereas the more naturalconclusion from the facts would be that they had separate beginnings. Mr. Wallace, whose claims are admitted to be equal to these of Mr. Darwin, as the propounder of the theory of the origin of species byNatural Selection, has firmly asserted that, with all its resources, Natural Selection is utterly inadequate to account for the origin andstructure of the human race. [379] Thus they go, biting and devouringeach other, until at last it becomes a reproduction of the Kilkennycats, and there is nothing left but the tails. We have only to wait, andthe current Infidel theory will certainly be exposed and demolished nextyear, by the author of some equally impossible theory. 

Not merely individual scientists, but the most learned societies haveblundered. "Has not the French Academy pronounced against the use ofquinine and vaccination, against lightning rods and steam engines? Hasnot Reaumer suppressed Peysonnel's 'Essay on Corals, ' because he thoughtit was madness to maintain their animal nature? Had not his learnedbrethren decreed, in 1802, that there were no meteors, although a shorttime later two thousand fell in one department alone; and had they notmore recently still received the news of ether being useful as ananęsthetic with sure and unanimous condemnation?"[380]

If space permitted we could go over the circle of the sciences, and showthat a similar state of uncertainty and exposure to error exists in themall. We have, however, confined our attention to those whose certaintyis now most loudly vaunted, and whose theories are most largely used asthe basis of Infidelity. Nor have we by any means exhausted the list oferrors and contradictions of these. A volume as large as this would berequired to present the list of several hundred errors, absurdities, contradictions, and mutual refutations of scientists, in the physicalsciences, now before me; errors not sought after, but incidentallyobserved and noted in the spare hours' reading of a busy professionallife. 

It is worthy of notice, that the uncertainties of science increase justin proportion to our interest in it. It is very uncertain about all mydearest concerns, and very positive about what does not concern me. Thegreatest certainty is attainable in pure mathematics, which regards onlyideal quantities and figures; but biology--the science of life--isutterly obscure. The astronomer can calculate with considerable accuracythe movements of distant planets, with which we have no intercourse; butwhere is the meteorologist bold enough to predict the wind and weatherof next week, on which my crops, my ships, my life may depend? Heat, light, and electricity may be pretty accurately measured and registered, but what physician can measure the strength of the malignant virus whichis sapping the life of his patient? The chemist can thoroughly analyzeany foreign substance, but the disease of his own body which is bringinghim to the grave, he can neither weigh, measure nor remove. Science isvery positive about distant stars and remote ages, but stammers andhesitates about the very life of its professors. 

4. Such, then, are a few of the uncertainties, imperfections, andpositive and egregious errors of science at its fountain head. To theactual investigator infallible certainty of any scientific fact ishardly possible, error exceedingly probable, and gross blunders in factand theory by no means uncommon. But how greatly diluted must themodified and hesitating conviction possible to an actual observerbecome, when, as is generally the case, a man is not an actual observerhimself, but _learns his science at school_. Such a person leaves theground of demonstrative science, and stands upon faith. The firstquestion then to be proposed to one whose demonstrative certainty of thetruths of physical science has disgusted him with a religion received ontestimony and faith, is, How have you reached this demonstrativecertainty in matters of science? Are you quite sure that your certaintyrests not upon the testimony of fallible and erring philosophers, butsolely upon your own personal observations and experiments?

To take only the initial standard of astronomical measurements--theearth's distance from the sun. Have you personally measured the earth'sradius, observed the transit of Venus in 1769, from Lapland to Tahiti atthe same time, calculated the sun's parallax, and the eccentricity ofthe earth's orbit? Would you profess yourself competent to take even thepreliminary observation for fixing the instruments for such a reckoning?Were you ever within a thousand miles of the proper positions for makingsuch observations? Or have you been necessitated to accept this primarymeasure, upon the accuracy of which all subsequent astronomicalmeasurers depend, merely upon hearsay and testimony, and subject to allthose contingencies of error and prejudice, and mistakes of copyists, which, in your opinion, render the Bible so unreliable in matters ofreligion?

Or to come down to earth. You are a student of the stone book, with itsenduring records graven in the rock forever; and perhaps have satisfiedyourself that "under the ponderous strata of geological science thetraditionary mythology and cosmogony of the Hebrew poet has found aneverlasting tomb. " But how many volumes of this stone book have youperused personally? You are quite indignant perhaps that theologians anddivines, who have no practical or personal knowledge of geology, shouldpresume to investigate its claims. Have you personally visited thevarious localities in South America, Siberia, Australia, India, Britain, Italy, and the South Seas, where the various formations areexhibited; and have you personally excavated from their matrices thevarious fossils which form the hieroglyphics of the science? Have you, in fact, ever seen one in a thousand of these minerals and fossils _insitu_? Or are you dependent on the tales of travelers, the specimens ofcollectors, the veracity of authors, the accuracy of lecturers, aided bymaps of ideal stratifications, in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow, andindigo-blue, for your profound and glowing convictions of theirresistible force of experimental science, and of the shadowy vaguenessof a religion dependent upon human testimony?

To come down considerably in our demands, and confine ourselves to thenarrow limits of the laboratory. You are a chemist perhaps, and proud, as most chemists justly are, of the accuracy attainable in that mostpalpable and demonstrative science. But how much of it is experimentalscience _to you_? How many of the nine hundred and forty-two substancestreated of in Turner's Chemistry have you analyzed? One-half? One-tenth?Would you face the laughter of a college class to-morrow upon theexperiment of taking nine out of the nine hundred, reducing them totheir primitive elements, giving an accurate analysis of their componentparts, and combining them in the various forms described in that, or anyother book, whose statements, because experimentally certain, havefilled you with a dislike of Bible truths, which you must receive upontestimony? In fact, do you know anything worth mention of the facts ofscience upon your own knowledge, except those of the profession by whichyou make your living?

Or, after all your boasting about scientific and demonstrativecertainty, have you been obliged to receive the certainties of science"upon faith, and at second-hand, and upon the word of another;" and tosave your life you could not tell half the time who that other is, bynaming the discoverers of half the scientific truths you believe? What!are you dependent on hearsay, and probability, for any little scienceyou possess, having in fact never obtained any personal demonstration orexperience of its first principles and measurements, nor being capableof doing so? Then let us hear no more cant about the uncertainty of areligion dependent upon testimony, and the certainties of experimentalscience. Whatever certainty may be attainable by scientific men--and wehave seen that is not much--it is very certain you have got none of it. The very best you can have to wrap yourself in is a second-handassurance, grievously torn by rival schools, and needing to be patchedevery month by later discoveries. Your science, such as it is, _restssolely upon faith_ in the testimony of philosophers, often contradictoryand improbable, and always fallible and uncertain. 

5. Nor would you cease to be dependent upon faith could you personallymake all the observations and calculations of demonstrative science. Theknowledge of these facts does not constitute science; it is merely thebrick pile containing the materials for the building of science. Scienceis knowledge systematized. But if the parts of nature were not arrangedafter a plan, the knowledge of them could not be formed into a system. Chaos is unintelligible. Our minds are so constituted that we look fororder and regularity, and can not comprehend confusion. We possess thisexpectation of order before we begin to learn science, and without itwould never begin the search after a system of knowledge. All scientificexperiment is but a search after order, and order is only another namefor intelligence--for God. Deprive us of this fundamental faith in causeand effect, order and regularity--of reason, in short--and sciencebecomes as impossible to man as to the orang-outang. _All science, evenin its first principles, rests upon faith. _

Not only science, reason, also, is founded upon faith; for we can notprove by reason the truths which form the data of reasoning. Theintuitions of the mind, which form the postulates necessary to the firstprocess of reasoning, are believed, not proven. When the wise foolattempted to prove his own existence by the celebrated sophism, "Ithink, therefore I exist, " he necessarily postulated his existence inorder to prove it. How did he know that there was an "I" to think? Andhow did he know that the "I" thought? Certainly not by any process ofreasoning, but by faith. He believed these truths; but could neverreason them into his consciousness. Faith, then, underlies reasonitself. 

We may now proceed to inquire whether or not faith, which we have foundso prevalent even among those who repudiate it, is a thing to be ashamedof; or if it be a sufficiently certain and reliable basis for human lifeand conduct. 

1. We are met at the very outset by the great fact that God has soconstituted the world and everything in it, that _in all the greatconcerns of life we are necessitated to depend on faith_; without anypossibility of reaching absolute certainty regarding the result of anyordinary duty. We sow without any certainty of a crop, or that we maylive to reap it. We harvest, but our barns may be burned down. We sellour property for bank-bills, but who dare say they will ever be paid inspecie? We start on a journey to a distant city, but even though youinsure your life, who will insure that fire, or flood, or railroadcollision may not send you to the land whence there is no return?

Science is the child of yesterday; but from the beginning of the worldmen have lived by faith. Before science was born, Cain tilled his groundwithout any mathematical demonstration that he should reap a crop. Abelfed his flock without any scientific certainty that he should live toenjoy its produce; and Tubal Cain forged axes and swords without anyassurance that he should not be plundered of his wages. All theexperience of mankind proves that experimental certainty regarding themost important business of this life is impossible. By what process ofphilosophical induction is religion alone put beyond the sphere of faithand hope? If religious duties are not binding on us, unless religion bescientifically demonstrated, then neither are moral obligations; forthese two can not be separated. Is it really so, that none butscientific men are bound to tell the truth, and pay their debts; andthat a person may not fear God, and go to heaven, unless he hasgraduated at college? The common sense of mankind declares that we liveby faith, not by science. 

2. _We demand the knowledge of truths of which science is profoundlyignorant. _ Science is but an outlying nook of my farm, which I mayneglect and yet have bread to eat. Faith is my house in which all mydearest interests are treasured. Of all the great problems and preciousinterests which belong to me as a mortal and an immortal, science knowsnothing. I ask her whence I came? and she points to her pinions scorchedover the abyss of primeval fire, her eyes blinded by its awful glare, and remains silent. I inquire what I am? but the strange and questioning_I_ is a mystery which she can neither analyze nor measure. I tell herof the voice of conscience within me--she never heard it, and does notpretend to understand its oracles. I tell her of my anxieties about thefuture--she is learned only in the past. I inquire how I may be happyhereafter--but happiness is not a scientific term, and she can not tellme how to be happy here! Poor, blind science!

3. _All our dearest interests lie beyond the domains of science, in theregions of faith. _ Science treats of things--faith is confidence inpersons. Take away the persons, and of what value are the things? Theworld becomes at once a vast desert, a dreary solitude, and moremiserable than any of its former inhabitants the lonely wretch who isleft to mourn over the graves of all his former companions--the lastman. Solitary science were awful. Could I prosecute the toils of studyalone, without companion or friend to share my labors? Would I studyeternally with no object, and for no use; none to be benefited, none tobe gratified by my discoveries? Though you hung maps on every tree, madeevery mountain range a museum, bored mines in every valley, and coveredevery plain with specimens, made Vesuvius my crucible, and opened thefoundations of the earth to my view--yet would the discovery of a singlefresh human footprint in the sand fill my heart with more true hope ofhappiness, than an endless eternity of solitary science. I can live, andlove, and be happy without science, _but not without companionship, whose bond is faith_. 

Faith is the condition of all the happiness you can know on earth. Law, order, government, civilization, and family life, depend not uponscience, but upon confidence in moral character--upon faith. In itssunshine alone can happiness grow. It is faith sends you out in themorning to your work, nerves your arms through the toils of the day, brings you home in the evening, gathers your wife and your childrenaround your table, inspires the oft-repeated efforts of the littleprattler to ascend your knee, clasps his chubby arms around your neck, looks with most confiding innocence in your eye, and puts forth hislittle hand to catch your bread, and share your cup. Undoubting faith ishappiness even here below. Need you marvel, then, that you must beconverted from your pride of empty, barren science, and casting yourselfwith all your powers into the arms of faith, become as a little childbefore you can enter into the kingdom of heaven?

4. But religion is not founded upon faith as distinct from observationand experiment. _It is the most experimental of all the sciences. _ Thereis less of theory, and more of experience in it than in any otherscience. Its faith is all practical. It is a great mistake to supposethat faith is the opposite pole of experience. On the contrary, experience is the fruit which ripens from the blossom of faith. We haveseen how an underlying conviction of the existence of an intelligentplanner and upholder of the laws of nature is the source of allscientific experiment, and systematized knowledge. A similar underlyingconviction of the existence of a moral governor of the world is thesource of all religious experience. _He that cometh to God must believethat he is, and that he is the rewarder of those that diligently seekhim. _ But this fundamental axiom believed, long trains of experiencefollow; of every one of which you can be, and actually are, infinitelymore certain than of any fact of physical science. Your eyes, your ears, your touch, your instruments, your reason, may be deceived; but yourconsciousness can not. If your soul is filled with joy, that is a_fact_. You know it, and are as sure of it as you are that the sunshines. If you feel miserable, you are so. A sense of neglected duty, aconsciousness that you have done wrong, and are displeased with yourselffor it; a certainty that God is displeased with you for wrong-doing, andthat he will show his displeasure by suitable punishment; the tenaciousgrasp of vicious habits on your body and soul, and the fearful thoughtthat by the law of your nature these vipers, which you vainly struggleto shake off, will forever keep involving you more closely in theircursed coils--these are _facts of your experience_. You are as certainthat they give you disquiet of mind, when you entertain them, as thatthe sea rages in a tempest; and that you can no more prevent theirentrance, nor compel their departure, nor calm nor drown the anxietythey occasion, than you can prevent the rising of the tempest, dismissthe thunder-storm, or drown Etna in your wine-glass. Of these primaryfacts of moral science, and of others like them, you possess the mostabsolute and infallible certainty from your own consciousness. Theyresult from the inertia of moral matter, which, when put into a state ofdisturbance, has no power of bringing itself to rest; as expressed inthe formula, _There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. _[381]

Let us now go out of your own experience, as you must do in every otherscience, into the region of observation, and study a few of the otherphenomena of religion. Your comrade, Jones, has taken to drinking oflate, and also to going with you to Sunday lectures, and in the eveningto other places of amusement. He has, however, been warned that the nexttime he comes drunk to the workshop he will be discharged; and as he isa clever young fellow, and knows more about the Bible than you, havinggone to Sabbath-school when a boy, and is able to use up the saintscleverly, you would be sorry to lose his company. So you set on him togo with you to hear a temperance lecture, hoping that he may be inducedto take the pledge; for if he does not you fear he will soon lie in thegutter. He curses you, and himself too, if ever he listens to any suchstuff; and refuses to go. You can easily gather a hundred otherillustrations of the great law of the moral repulsion between vice andtruth, expressed in the following formula: "_This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather thanlight, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evilhateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should bereproved. _"[382] Your life, however, is but a long illustration of thisprinciple. Have you not willingly remained in ignorance of the contentsof the Bible, because you dislike its commands?

There is another fact of the same science--there, in the gutter beforeyou, wallowing in his own vomit, covered with rags, besmeared with mud, smelling worse than a hog, his bruised and bleeding mouth unable toarticulate the obscenities and curses he tries to utter. "Is it possiblethat can be Bill Brown! Why, only three years ago we worked at the samebench. It was he who introduced me to the Sunday Institute; as clever aworkman and as jovial a comrade as I ever knew, but would get on a spreenow and again. He had a good father and mother, got considerableschooling, had good wages, got married to a clever girl, and had twofine children. Is it possible he could make such a beast of himself insuch a short time?" Yes, quite possible, and more, quite certain. Notonly in his case, but in all others, the law of moral gravitation isuniversal and infallible. "_Evil men and seducers wax worse andworse. _"[383] The degradation may not always be in this precise form, nor always as speedy; as all heavy bodies do not fall to the same place, nor with like rapidity. But it is always as certain and always as deep, and will one day be far more public. Fix it firmly in your mind. Itconcerns you more than all the science you will ever know. You, too, arein the course of sin, and you know it. You have already begun to fall. 

Come again into this room. "What, into a prayer-meeting? I don't go tosuch places. " But, if you want to study the phenomena of religionscientifically, you should go to such places; just as if you want tostudy geology, you should go to the places where the strata are exposedto view. I do not ask you to speak, and to ask people to pray for you, but only to look on and listen. If you are a philosopher I wish you tocease dogmatizing about fanaticism, and enthusiasm, and the ignorance, and credulity of believers, at least until you philosophically examinethe evidence upon which they believe. You can set aside, if you please, their unfounded beliefs concerning matters beyond their capacity, andalso their confident hopes for futurity. What I wish you to examine istheir _actual experience of religion_, as they severally relate it. Foras we have seen, the facts of consciousness are just as certain, and asascertainable, as the facts discovered by our senses; and there is noreason in the world why we should not pursue the study of religion inthe same way that we gain a knowledge of science; namely, by collectingand studying the facts accumulated by those who have made experiments, and have obtained a practical knowledge of the matter. 

There are here, as you see, a great number of religious experimenters. They are also of very various conditions of life, and of various degreesof education. Many of them are moreover well known to you, so that youare in a favorable position for forming a fair judgment of theirdiscoveries. There is your comrade Smith, Hopkins who does the haulingfor your establishment, Lawyer Hammond, Professor Edwards, whosechemical lectures you attend, Dr. Lawrence, who lectured before theLyceum last winter, Mr. Heidenberger, who wrote a series of articles onComte's Positive Philosophy for the Investigator, Mrs. Bridgman, yourAunt Polly, who nursed you during your typhoid fever, and a great manyothers whom you know quite well. Professor Edwards leads in prayer, andgives a brief address. You never dreamt that he was hoaxing you when hetold you of his chemical experience; have you any reason to offer forbelieving that he now solemnly, and in the presence of God, lies to youand to this assembly, when he tells you of the peace he has found inbelieving in Christ, and the happiness he experiences in uniting withhis brethren in the worship of God? Or is he more liable to error innoting the fact of his mental joy or sorrow, than in observing theeffect of the extraordinary ray in double refraction? If not, the factthat he has felt this religious experience, is just as certain as thefact, that he has seen polarized light. 

There is your comrade Smith, whom you have known for years, actuallygot up to speak in meeting. You are surprised; but listen: "Neighborsand friends, most of you know I never cared much about religion, and wasoften given to take more liquor than was good for me, and then I wouldfight and curse awful bad. I knew as well as anybody that it wasn'tright, and always felt bad after a spree, and many a time I said I wouldturn over a new leaf, and be good. But it was all no use, for as soon asany of the fellows would come around after me, I always went along withthem, till at last I gave it up and said it was no use to try. Still, whenever any of my acquaintances died, I felt scared like; and I keptaway as far as I could from churches and preachers and such like, because I could not bear to think about God and judgment to come. Well, about five weeks ago my little Minnie set on me one Sabbath morning tocarry her to church, and to please the little creature--for she is aspert a darling as you could see anywhere--I told my wife to get herready, and we would go. She seemed as if she would cry, and kept talkingto herself all the way. When we got into the church the singing almostupset me, for I had not been to a church since I was a little fellow, just before father and mother died. But it seemed as if it was the sametune, and as if the tune brought them all back, and as if I saw themagain and all the family, and heard mother sing as she used to, and Iforgot church and everything, and thought I was a little fellow playingabout on the floor just as I used to do when I was a happy child. Whenthey stopped I was so sorry, and wished I could just be as innocent andas happy as I was then. Well, it seemed like the preacher had beenreading my thoughts, for he gave out for his text, '_Verily, verily, Isay unto you, unless a man be born again he can not see the kingdom ofGod. _' He began to preach how Jesus can give us new hearts, and save usfrom our sins; that his blood cleanses from all sin; that he is able tosave to the uttermost all that come unto God through him. The tearscame into my eyes, and I could hardly keep my mouth shut till I got out. When I got home I knelt down, and cried to Jesus to save me from mysins; and my wife prayed too, and we cried for mercy. The Lord heard us, and I felt light and happy, and I went to church again, and sung withthe rest. And the best of it is, the Lord delivered me from the drink;as I told a man who asked where I was going to-day, and I told him I wasgoing to prayer-meeting, for I had got religion now. He said there werea great many religions, and most of them wrong, and a great many peoplesaid all religion was only a notion, and preaching only nonsense. I saysto him, 'Look here, stranger, do you see that tavern there?' 'Yes, ' sayshe. 'Well, ' says I, 'do you see me?' 'I do, of course, ' says he. 'Well, 'says I, 'every little fellow in these parts knows that so long as TomSmith had a quarter in his pocket he could never pass that tavernwithout having a drink. All the men in Jefferson could not stop him. Nowlook here, ' says I, 'there is my week's wages, and I can go past, andthank God I don't feel the least like drinking, for the Lord Jesus hassaved me from it. If you call that a notion, it is a mighty powerfulnotion, and it is a notion that has put clothes on my children's backs, and plenty of good food on my table, and songs of praise to the Lord inmy mouth. _That's a fact, stranger. _ Glory be to God for it. And I wouldrecommend you to come to prayer-meeting with me, and maybe you would getreligion too. A great many people are getting religion now. '"

His last remark is certainly very true. There are so many, and of suchvarious characters and grades of life, and in so many places, that everyreader can easily find several Tom Smiths of his own acquaintance, whoseconversions display all the essential facts of this case, and provethat:

5. The facts of religious experience _are better attested, and moreunobjectionable_ than those of any other science. 

Unless they can be shown to be unreasonable or impossible, we are boundto receive them, when presented by the experimentists who havediscovered them, though personally we may not have any such experience;just as we believe the chemists, or the astronomers who relate theirdiscoveries which personally we have not observed. But the facts ofreligion are _by no means unreasonable_. They can not be shown tocontradict any known law of the human mind. It is true they aremysterious. But so are the facts of physical science--heat, light, electricity, gravitation. Of either, we may be quite certain that suchphenomena exist, and utterly ignorant of the mode of their operation. Itwere as utterly unphilosophical to deny that Almighty God could impartnervous energy to the languid limbs of your sick neighbor, because youare ignorant of its origin and means of transmission, as to deny thatGod could impart spiritual electricity to his paralyzed soul, becauseyou are ignorant of the mode in which he bestows it. And ignorance isall that you can plead in this case. You must just admit that havingtried an experiment which you have not, your religious friend has aright to know more than you. 

Moreover, the facts of religion are presented for belief upon _the mostabundant and reliable testimony_. In physical science you must rely onthe testimony of a very few observers--the great bulk even of scientificmen having no opportunity of testing the facts themselves, and beingwell satisfied if any fact is confirmed by the testimony of two or threephilosophers--and this testimony often contradictory, and alwaysfallible, as the discordant results of their experiments prove. But hereyou have a great multitude of experimentists, in every city and villageof the land, of every variety of intellect and education, prosecutingthe same course of experiments, and all arriving at the same results. They do not all confess the _same_ sins, but they all felt the power of_some_ sin, and felt miserable in their guilt. And however they maydiffer in their external circumstances, their inward constitution, or intheir views of the outward part of religion, there is no differenceamong them about the great facts of their religious experience. They allbelieved the faithful saying that Christ Jesus came into the world tosave sinners, cried to God for mercy through him, and received peace ofmind, grace to live a new life, and to delight in the worship of God. Doyou know any science which has been prosecuted by one-hundredth part ofthis number of inquirers? Which has been confirmed by one-thousandthpart of this number of experimenters? Or any experiment tried with suchuniform and unfailing success as this, "_Whosoever shall call on thename of the Lord shall be saved?_"[384] Why then do you hesitate toadmit the correctness of these facts? Is it because you perceive theylead to results which you dislike?

They do lead to results. They are effects and tell us of a cause. Theyare powerful effects, and proclaim a powerful cause. They are moral andspiritual effects, and assure us of the existence of a moral andspiritual agent who has caused them. They are holy effects, and convinceyour sinful soul that they are produced by a holy being. But they arealso benevolent, life-giving, blessed effects, and proclaim that God islove. The Lord, the Spirit, is as plainly declared in the facts ofreligious experience, as the Creator is in the creation of the universe;and it were as rank Atheism to attribute these orderly and blessedresults to chance or to evil passions, as to attribute the Cosmos toblind fate, or to the beasts that perish. He is as much an enemy to hishappiness who denies the one, as a foe to his reason who rejects theother. Dear reader, why should you not believe in, 6. _The only science which can make you happy?_ which can bestow peaceof mind, nerve you to conquer your evil habits, enable you to live aholy and happy life, and to die with a blessed hope of a gloriousresurrection? You know there is no science which makes any such offers, or which you would believe if it did. But the Bible unfolds a sciencewhich does, and enables you to believe it too. The facts of religiousexperience give most convincing evidence of the reality and power of thegrace of God. It were as easy to persuade a Christian that he hadproduced this change of heart and life by the excitement of his ownfeelings, as that he had kindled the sun with a lucifer match. And thecharacter of the work and the worker assures him that it will not beleft unfinished. His faith receives these facts of religious experienceas the first installments upon God's bonds, and as pledges for thepayment of the remainder of his promises. The joy and peace which Godgives him now, prove most satisfactorily his ability and willingness togive him larger measures of these enjoyments when he is capable ofreceiving them. Just as we have good reason to believe that he who hasmade the sun to rise out of darkness will guide him onward in his courseto perfect day, have we also good reason to believe that he that hathbegun the good work of his grace in us will perform it until the day ofJesus Christ. Christ is in us the hope of glory. This eternal life, which is begun in our souls, is so much superior to mere animalvitality, that we can not doubt that he who has given us the greater, will also give us the lesser, and quicken our mortal bodies also, by hisSpirit which dwelleth in us. We know that our Redeemer liveth. 

7. And now, in conclusion, dear reader, we ask you not to take thesethings on our testimony, nor yet on our experience; _but to try foryourself_. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Come see the Saviorwho has saved us, and be saved by him too. There is nothing moredangerous, unless resisting the evidence of the truth as it is in Jesus, than acknowledging this to be truth without immediately obeying thegospel. God requires your immediate and cordial acceptance of Christ tosave you from your sins. He tells you that the only way of escape fromyour sins now and from hell hereafter is through him; for there is noneother name given under heaven or among men whereby you must be saved. Hepromises to hear your prayer and give you his Holy Spirit to work in youthe work of faith with power, if you will only and earnestly ask. "_Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shallbe opened unto you: What man is there of you whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him aserpent? If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto yourchildren, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give goodthings to them that ask him?_"[385]

Thus you will come to possess an actual experimental knowledge of themost excellent of the sciences. In the present begun enjoyment ofeternal life you will, not merely believe in, but positively _know_, itsAuthor, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. You willrest in no fallible and erring testimony of man's wisdom, but your faithwill stand in the power of God. You will be able to say, "_Now webelieve not because of thy sayings: for we have heard him ourselves, and_ KNOW _that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of theWorld. _"[386]

Hear God's own warrant and invitation to your poor, thirsty soul, toforsake your vanities and come and be eternally blessed in Christ. Havethe witness in yourself and be a living proof of the blessed reality ofreligion. 

 "Ho every one that thirsteth! Come ye to the waters! And he who hath no money! Come ye, buy and eat! Yea, come! Buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good, And let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear and come unto me: Hear and your soul shall live: And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, Even the sure mercies of David. Behold! I have given him for a witness to the people, A leader and a commander to the people: Behold! thou shall call nations that thou knowest not, And nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, Because of the Lord thy God, And for the Holy One of Israel, for he hath glorified thee. 

 "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, Call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, And to our God for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways, And my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, And return not thither again, But water the earth, and cause it to bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: It shall not return unto me void, But it shall accomplish that which I please, And it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, And all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, And instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: _And it shall be to the Lord for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. _"

FOOTNOTES:

[322] Holyoak's Discussion with Grant and Tonney. 

[323] Bacon Novum Organum, I. Xlix. Xlvi. 

[324] Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures, I. 53. 

[325] Journal of Speculative Philosophy, I. 20. 

[326] Humboldt, _Cosmos_, Vol. I. P. 7, 156. 

[327] Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 356. 

[328] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852. 

[329] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852. 

[330] _Cosmos_, 4, 518. Dick's _Celestial Scenery_, chap. III. Sec. 7. 

[331] _Cosmos_, 1, 75. Loomis' _Progress of Astronomy_, pp. 34, 40

[332] Loomis' _Progress of Astronomy_, p. 34, etc. 

[333] _Outlines of Astronomy_, III. Sec. 13, 140. 

[334] Thus several of the best telescopes in the world are renderednearly useless by the passage of heavy railroad trains in theirvicinity. 

[335] Somerville's Physical Sciences, VI. 

[336] Cosmos IV. 477. Phillips' Address to the British Association, 1865. 

[337] North British Review, LXV. 

[338] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, 158. 

[339] Cosmos I. 109. 

[340] Cosmos IV. 501. 

[341] Cosmos IV. 378. 

[342] Harper's Magazine, June, 1872, p. 149. 

[343] Annual Scientific Discovery, 1864, 134. 

[344] Cosmos III. 40; IV. 363. Annual, 1861, 395, 396. 

[345] Cosmos IV. 474. 

[346] Kendall's Uranography, p. 11. 

[347] Cosmos, 443-5. 

[348] North British Review, No. LXV. 

[349] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852, 119. 

[350] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1854, 150. 

[351] Cosmos III. 115. 

[352] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1860. 

[353] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1852, 139. 

[354] Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1864, 166. 

[355] Plurality of Worlds, XII. 

[356] North British Review, LXV. 

[357] God's Glory in the Heavens, 168. 

[358] Annual Scientific Discovery, 1863, 324. 

[359] Cosmos IV. 378. 

[360] See this proved chapter XI. , _Daylight Before Sunrise_. 

[361] See the possibility of such a source of volcanic action, of such aformation of plutonic rocks, proved by Lyell. _Principles_, chaps. XXXII. And XII. 

[362] Sir David Brewster, K. H. , D. C. L. , F. R. S. , _More Worlds thanOne_, p. 56. 

[363] _Rudiments of Geology_, W. & R. Chambers, p. 10. 

[364] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, p. 3. 

[365] Miller, _Old Red Sandstone_, p. 25. 

[366] Hugh Miller, _Footprints of the Creator_, p. 313. 

[367] American Cyclopędia, 1863, p. 374. Annual of Scientific Discovery, 1861, p. 351. 

[368] London Quarterly Review, 1866, No. 51, p. 240. 

[369] Lyell's Second Visit to the United States. 

[370] _The Advance_, Chicago, May 28, 1868. 

[371] Geological Time. 

[372] _Principles_, Chaps. III. And IV. 

[373] _Principles_, chap. XI. 

[374] _Principles_, p. 530. 

[375] _Principles_, chap. XXXI. 

[376] Chambers' Cyclopędia Art. Appalachians. 

[377] Types of Mankind, 329, 335, 338. 

[378] The American Journal of Science and Art, edited by Profs. Sillimanand Dana, XXVI. 235, 300. 

[379] Frazer--Blending Lights, p. 113. 

[380] De Vore's _Modern Magic_, 58. 

[381] Isaiah, chap. Xlviii. 22. 

[382] John, chap. Iii. 

[383] 2 Timothy, chap. Iii. Read the whole chapter. 

[384] Romans, chap. X. Read the chapter. 

[385] The Sermon on the Mount. Read it all. 

[386] John, chap. Iv. 

[THE END. ]

Transcriber's Notes:

Missing punctuation, including periods, hyphens, and commas, has beenadded. 

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. 

Variations in spelling have been left as in the original in thefollowing words:

 coveredst coverest orang-otang orang-outang water-skin waterskin

The following words use an oe ligature in the original:

 foetus Phoenician Phoebus Phoenicians Phoenicia

The spelling of the last name of Scottish astronomer John Pringle Nicholhas been corrected throughout the text. 

The spelling of the last name of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarckhas been corrected throughout the text. 

The spelling of the last name of French physicist Claude-Servais-MathiasPouillet has been corrected throughout the text. 

The spelling of the last name of Hellenistic astrologer Vettius Valenshas been corrected throughout the text. 

The spelling of the last name of French mathematician Urbain Jean JosephLe Verrier has been corrected throughout the text. 

A series of three asterisks * * * represents an ellipsis in the text. Shorter and longer rows of asterisks have been standardized to threeasterisks. 

The carat ^ character indicates that the following numbers (enclosed in{} brackets) are superscripted in the original. 

The mathematical formula 4+3/2 is rendered 4 + 1-1/2 in the original. 

Footnote 15 reads "Origin of Species, 4, 10, 127, 9, 97, 100, 409, 410, 415, 423. Descent of Man, 192, 204, and II. --15, 257. " The page number"9" is probably a typographical error, but it has been left as in theoriginal.