Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Part 5

[20] Aga.s.siz's Methods of Study.

[21] Draper's Human Physiology, 506.

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

CHAPTER III.

IS G.o.d EVERYBODY, AND EVERYBODY G.o.d?

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

Man is the great deity of the other cla.s.s. Renan boldly says: "For myself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only in humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only as an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in form."[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for people who believe everything G.o.d, 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. G.o.d, in their view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "The universal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heeds the waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite s.p.a.ce, all mere egotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate through me. I am part or particle of G.o.d." "I stand here to say, 'Let us wors.h.i.+p the mighty and transcendent soul.'" "G.o.d attains to self-consciousness only in the human soul." "Honor yourself." "Reverence your own individuality." "The soul of man is the highest intelligence in the universe." Such are the dogmas which, under the name of Philosophy, are poured forth oracularly, unsupported by reason or argument, by the prophets of the new dispensation--the last and highest achievement of the human intellect.

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

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

"When existing in the temporary imperfect state of _Sagun_, Brahm (the Pantheist deity) wills to manifest the universe. For this purpose he puts forth his omnipotent energy, which is variously styled in the different systems now under review. He puts forth his energy for what?

For the effecting of a creation out of nothing? 'No,' says one of the Shasters, but to '_produce from his own divine substance a multiform universe_.' By the spontaneous exertion of this energy he sends forth, from his own divine substance, a countless host of essences, like innumerable sparks issuing from the blazing fire, or myriads of rays from the resplendent sun. These detached portions of Brahm--these separated divine essences--soon become individuated systems, destined, in time, to occupy different forms prepared for their reception; whether these be fixed or movable, animate or inanimate, forms of G.o.ds or men, forms of animal, vegetable, or mineral existences.

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

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

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

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

"Interminable as are the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonis.h.i.+ng than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all.

Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time he is said to have performed a long and severe course of ascetic devotions, to enable him to accomplish his wish; but in vain; at another, inflamed by anger and pa.s.sion at his repeated failures, he sat down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time, after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his side. But enough of such monstrous legends."[26]

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

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

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

But the very perfection of Jesuitism is reached, when Pantheists profess their high respect for the Christian religion. They do not generally speak of it as a superst.i.tion, though some of the vulgar sort do; nor do they decry its mysteries, as Deists are in the habit of doing; nor, as Socinians, and Unitarians, and Rationalists, do they attempt to reduce it to a mere code of morals. They grant it to be the highest development of humanity yet reached by the majority of the human race. The brute, the savage, the polytheistic idolater, the star wors.h.i.+per, the monotheist, the Christian, are all, in their scheme, so many successive developments of humanity in its upward progress. There is only one step higher than Christianity, and that is Pantheism. Well knowing that Christianity is diametrically opposed to their falsehoods, and that the Bible, everywhere, teaches that the natural progress of man has ever been down from a state of holiness to idolatry and barbarism, they have yet the hardihood to profess respect for it, as a system of concealed Pantheism, and to clothe their abominations in Scripture language. They speak, for instance, of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that has surmounted every idea of a personal G.o.d;" and of "G.o.d dwelling in us, and his love perfected in us," when they believe that he dwells as really in every creature: in that hog, for instance. Then they will readily acknowledge that the Bible is inspired. They _can accept_--that is the phrase--they can accept the Book which denounces death upon those fools who, "professing themselves to be wise, change the truth of G.o.d into a lie, and wors.h.i.+p and serve the creature more than the Creator,"

as merely a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves man to "erect everything into a G.o.d, provided it is none: sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fas.h.i.+on into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis at once." Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired--a G.o.d inspired Book--inasmuch as _every_ product of the human mind is a development of Deity. The Bible, then, when we have the matter fully explained, is quite on a level with Gulliver's Travels, or Emerson's Address to a Senior Cla.s.s of Divinity.

There is nothing, however, in this vast system of monstrosities, which fills the soul of a Christian with such loathing and detestation, as to hear Pantheists profess their veneration for the Lord Jesus, and claim him as a teacher of Pantheism. If there is one object which they detest with all their hearts, it is the Judge of the quick and dead, and the vengeance which he shall take upon them that know not G.o.d, and obey not the gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them with fury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know that the Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living and the dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of d.a.m.nation;" and that the very last sentence of his public discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." When they drop the mask for a moment, they can accuse apostles and disciples with "dwelling with noxious exaggeration about the _person_ of Christ."[29]

Christ, as revealed in the gospel, they hate with a perfect hatred. But when it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them into the deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes the model man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highest perfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed of powers of generalization far in advance of the age in which he lived.

They can listen to and honor one of the best expounders of G.o.d and nature in the Man of Nazareth."[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheism are ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yet respect his name, may be seduced to receive them. Of him who declared, "Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies," they have the hardihood to declare, "He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul; alone, in all history, he estimated the greatness of man." Calculating upon that ignorance of the teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, they dare to represent the only begotten Son of G.o.d as teaching Pantheism: "One man was true to what is in you and me; he saw that G.o.d incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through me G.o.d acts; through me, speaks. Would you see G.o.d, see me; or see thee when thou also thinkest as I now think.' Because the indwelling Supreme Spirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury." Yes, truly, the divine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, and denied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even G.o.d. Jesus said unto them, If G.o.d were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from G.o.d; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye can not hear my word. Ye are of your father, the devil; and the works of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. _Pantheism is Virtually Atheism._--It may scarce seem needful to multiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composed of the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, or combination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by any intelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or like bricks and mortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finite intelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highest intelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does the soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." _Establish_ these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands of years before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the souls of Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is much displeased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept, in which the children are to be taught to wors.h.i.+p idols, the youth to believe in one G.o.d, if they can, after such a training in infancy, and the full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultant of all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universal perfectioning of the world, _not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, the animals_."[34] Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quite philosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and therefore refuse wors.h.i.+p altogether. "Work is wors.h.i.+p," const.i.tutes their liturgy.

"As soon as the man is as one with G.o.d, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action."[35] "Labor wide as earth has its summit in heaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms, up to that agony of b.l.o.o.d.y sweat, which all men have accounted divine! Oh, brother, if this is not wors.h.i.+p, then I say, the more pity for wors.h.i.+p; for this is the n.o.blest thing yet discovered under G.o.d's sky." "No man has worked, or can work, except religiously."[36] "Adieu, O Church! Thy road is that way, mine is this.

In G.o.d's name, adieu!"[37]

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

The abstraction, which the Pantheist calls G.o.d, is no object of wors.h.i.+p.

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

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

1. _Reason declares it._ The world did not make itself. The soul of man did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must have had an intelligent Creator, who is G.o.d. G.o.d is known by his works to be distinct from them, and superior to them. The work is not the workman.

The house is not the builder. The watch is not the watchmaker. The sum of all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Let an architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not the builder. The maker is always distinct from, and superior to, the thing made. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our Maker, then, is distinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe; therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all his creatures.

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

3. _Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser than ourselves._ The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the universe. It can not know the mode of its own operation on the body it inhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may know much about what does not concern him, and about things over which he has no control; but it is the will of G.o.d that his pride should feel the curb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests are concerned, that so he may be compelled to acknowledge that G.o.d is greater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distant planets a thousand years hence, but he can not tell where himself shall be next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of the tides, which he can not control, but can not tell how his own pulse shall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as his knowledge of the laws by which G.o.d governs the world increases, his conviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiser head and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned and administered them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as the mystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he can not explain, and beyond which he can not penetrate, he hears the voice of G.o.d 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 G.o.d is a Moral Governor._ The distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or individuals who indulge their appet.i.tes without rule, and who do wrong without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion.

Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is conscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his own conduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right or wrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind has acknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, as distinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man is dest.i.tute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodness and wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a willful lie, you are sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting the error, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. When one who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make any acknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of grat.i.tude, and insults and abuses the friend who succored him, we are conscious, not merely of the facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingrat.i.tude, as a crime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believe that he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right and wrong, does himself know such a distinction; and that he who implanted this feeling of approval of right, and condemnation of wrong, in us, does himself approve the right, and condemn the wrong. And as we can form no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea that approbation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and that disapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed--in other words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to be punished--so we are constrained to trace such a connection from our minds to the mind of him who framed them. This conviction is G.o.d's law, written in our hearts. When we do wrong, we become conscious of a feeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomes conscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, and we may sear the conscience, that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but light and darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact which conscience reveals to us, that we sin against G.o.d, that we know the right, and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of G.o.d's disapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinct from G.o.d, but separate from him--that we oppose our wills against his.

And every pang of remorse is a premonition of G.o.d's judgment, and every sorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected with sin--as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace and happiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body--is a type and teaching of the curse which he has denounced against sin.

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

By the ordinary course of his providence, he has ever secured the destruction of unG.o.dly nations. No learning, commerce, arms, territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against the sword of G.o.d's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's history for an instance. Egypt, Canaan, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome.

Where are they now? Tyre had s.h.i.+ps, colonies, and commerce; Rome an empire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, and liberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures of earth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did these secure them against the moral government of G.o.d?

No! G.o.d's law sways the universe; that law which, with the brazen fetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime and punishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all unG.o.dly nations, irresistibly forcing them down--down--down the road to ruin. The vain imagination that refuses to glorify G.o.d as G.o.d, leads to darkness of heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfish gratification, violent rapacity, l.u.s.t of conquest, and luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and the sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl them down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against each other, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save some s.h.i.+vered potsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were the enemies of G.o.d.