Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith Part 6

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

[24] Emerson.

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

[26] Duff's India, page 119.

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

[28] Webster's Dictionary.

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

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

[31] Atkinson's Letters, page 190.

[32] Festus, page 48.

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

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

[35] Emerson.

[36] Carlyle--Past and Present.

[37] Carlyle--Life of Sterling.

CHAPTER IV.

HAVE WE ANY NEED OF THE BIBLE?

Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that G.o.d created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known.

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

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

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

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

Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men attributed everything extraordinary to the G.o.ds. But the world is too wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. "The Hebrew and Christian religions like all others have their myths." "The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the whole of their political existence." "When, therefore, we meet with an account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated or implied that they were produced immediately by G.o.d himself (such as divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.), such an account is so far to be considered not historical." "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles."[38] A narrative is to be deemed mythical, 1st. "When it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d.

When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolical language."[39] So also a host of others, who pa.s.s for biblical expositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernatural events are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles are impossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. A revelation from G.o.d to man is a supernatural event, and supernatural events are impossible; therefore, a revelation from G.o.d is impossible.

But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laid down the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from G.o.d is impossible, as to argue it from such premises; for it is just as easy to _say_, that a revelation from G.o.d is impossible, as to _say_ that miracles are impossible; and as for _proof_ of either one or the other, we must just take their word for it.

One can not help being amazed at the cool impudence with which these men take for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside, as unworthy of serious examination, the most authentic records of history, simply because they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy; and at the credulity with which their followers swallow this arrogant dogmatism, as if it were self-evident truth. Let us look at it for a moment. Other religions have their myths, or fables, therefore, the Hebrew and Christian records are fables, says the Rationalist. Profundity of logic!

Counterfeit bank bills are common, therefore none are genuine. "The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews," _i.

e._, Moses and the prophets were all liars. That is the fact, you may take my word for it. "Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles" which translated into plain words is simply this: No man can understand history who believes in G.o.d Almighty. "A narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records," such, for instance, as any account of the creation of the first man--for no event could possibly happen unless there was a scribe there to write it. Or, of the fall of man--we do not know that Adam was able to write, and no man can tell truth unless he writes a history. "A narrative is to be deemed fabulous when it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as events connected with the spiritual world." Is it not self-evident that you and I have had experience of everything in the whole universe, and whoever tells us anything which we have never seen is a liar. "When a narrative deals in the marvelous," such as Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Herodotus' History, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dealing as it does in such marvelous accounts as the death of half the inhabitants of the empire in the reign of Galerius, or any other history of wonderful occurrence--it is of course a myth. Does not every one know that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical language," as is every eloquent pa.s.sage in Thucydides, Robertson, Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good service against the Bible--it must be at once rejected, without further examination, as mythological and unworthy of any credit whatever. Thus we are conclusively rid forever of the Bible, for sure enough it is couched in symbolical language. Blessed deliverance to the world! But then, alas! this great deliverance is accompanied with several little inconveniences. All poetry, three-fourths of the world's history, and the largest part of its philosophy, is couched in symbolical language, and especially the whole of the science of metaphysics, from which these very learned writers have deduced such edifying conclusions, is, from the beginning to the end, nothing but a symbolical application of the terms which describe material objects, to the phenomena of mind.

Alas! we must forever relinquish "the absolute," and "the infinite," and "the conditioned," with all their "affinities and potencies," up to "higher unity," and "the rhythm of universal existence," and all the rest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed in their native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, by Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, or Hegel, or "wors.h.i.+ping in the great cathedral of the immensities," "with their heads uplifted into infinite s.p.a.ce," or "lying on the plane of their own consciousness," in the writings of Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, for they "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, and Strauss have p.r.o.nounced every thing couched in symbolical language to be mythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety about history, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and the multiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched in symbolical language."

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

No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible.

Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradiction could be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the general belief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in a supernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. The creation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterly beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred.

Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented.

The vain notion that G.o.d, having created the world at first, left it for ever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolished by the discoveries of geology. These discoveries established the fact recorded in Scripture, that in bringing the world into its present form there were several distinct and successive interpositions of supernatural power, in the distinct and successive creations of different species of vegetable and animal life. In former periods, they tell us, the earth was so warm that the present races of men and animals could not have lived on it, and the plants and animals of that age could not live now. These very men are profuse in proving that the earth existed for ages before _man_ made his appearance upon it. This being the case, we are compelled to acknowledge the creating power of G.o.d above the laws of nature, for there is no law of nature which can either create a new species of plants or animals, nor yet change one kind into another, make an oak into a larch, or an ox into a sheep, or a goose into a turkey, or a megatherium into an elephant, much less into a man.

Some men have dreamed of such changes as these, but no instance of such a change has ever been alleged in proof of the notion. The most distinguished anatomists and geologists are fully agreed that no such change of one animal into another ever took place; much less that any animal ever was changed into a man. Cuvier, from his comprehensive survey of the fossils of former periods, establishes the fact, "that the species now living are not mere varieties of the species which are lost." And Aga.s.siz says, "I have the conviction that species have been created successively, at distinct intervals."[40] Revelations of G.o.d's special interpositions in the affairs of this world are thus written by his own finger in the fossils and coal, and engraved on the everlasting granite of the earth's foundation stones. Dumb beasts and dead reptiles start forward to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made.

Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced immediately by G.o.d himself--the phenomena of the creation of life--have occurred repeatedly in the history of our globe. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural. The world is just as full of supernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because it records miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are as astonis.h.i.+ng as any recorded in the Bible.

The Rationalist next a.s.sures us, however, that any external revelation from G.o.d to man is _useless_, because man is wise enough without it. The vulgar exposition of this sentiment is familiar to every reader. "You need not begin to preach Bible to me. I know my duty well enough without the Bible." The more educated attempt to reason the matter after this fas.h.i.+on: "Miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and veracity of G.o.d, if we do not know these qualities in him without a miracle."[41] We may remark, in pa.s.sing, that there are some other attributes of G.o.d besides goodness and veracity--holiness and justice for instance--which are proved by miracles. "Can thunder from the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries, make G.o.d's laws more G.o.dlike to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now, and do not need the thunder and the terror any longer. Perhaps I am above being frightened. Perhaps it is not fear but reverence that shall now lead me!

Revelation! Inspirations! And thy own G.o.d-created soul, dost thou not call that a revelation?"[42] It is manifest, however, that if Mr.

Carlyle needs not the Sinai thunder to a.s.sure him that the law given on Sinai was from G.o.d, there were then, and are now, many who do, and some of his own sect who doubt in spite of it. If he is above the weakness of fearing G.o.d, all the world is not so.

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

abundantly argues that an authoritative book revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible, that G.o.d reveals himself within us and not without us, and that a revelation of all moral and religious truth necessary for us to know is to be obtained by _insight_, or gazing into the depths of our own consciousness. The sum of the whole business is, that neither G.o.d nor man can reveal any religious truth to our minds, or as Parker felicitously expresses it, "on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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