must tell us how this world came to be just as it is, and how all the order and system, apparent in its construction and movements, were and are produced. Here we are in the midst of creations so stupendous as to mock all our attempts to comprehend their magnitude. A material world, or rather material worlds, whose vastness tries our farthest stretch of imagination, and outreaches all our powers of thought and calculation. Not only do these displays of vastness and power challenge us, but the nice and wise adjustment of parts, the amazing expenditure of mechanical skill and genius in the construction of this prodigious machinery, the wonderful adaptation of means to ends, through all the gradations of animal and vegetable life, the harmony of all things existing, and the manifestations of design in every de partment of nature. The atheist must tell us who placed the sun in the heavens and the moon to give light by night. He must inform us, if he can, who set the planets in their order, and sent them circling so noiselessly, and yet with such inconceivable velocity, through the spacious realms of the heavens. Who hath set bounds to the ocean's flood and keeps the tides in perpetual ebb and flow? Whence came man? and the countless orders of animals? Who clothes the earth with verdure and sends the early and the latter rains? and who bedecks all nature with scenes of indescribable beauty and grace? Now I assume, what I presume no one will deny, that the atheist alike with the theist must account for all these things. Let us hear how he does it. Says Mirabaud, "The universe is an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing the one from the other." But where is the first link in this immense chain of causes and effects? And upon what does this link hang? It is plain that in a chain, every link is dependent upon the one above it. Now let us run up this chain of causes to an indefinite height and yet we must at length reach the last link, and it belongs to the atheist to tell us upon what that link hangs. Who does not see that this is reasoning absurdly? How is it possible that a chain, the separate links of which are all dependent, can be independent as a whole? Surely the "fool hath said in his heart-no God." To suppose an uncaused series or chain of things, every separate one of which is caused and dependent, is an absurdity at which every unprejudiced mind revolts. And yet the credulity of atheism is equal to all this. How can any man know or be reasonably assured that this universe is without an intelligent and omnipotent Father ? "The wonder turns on the process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence that could compass this end. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment? This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place the manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not absolutely know every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, that one which he wants may be that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be God. If he does not know everything that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by the very God he denies. Thus unless he knows all things, that is, precludes all other divine existence by being Deity himself, he cannot know that the being whose existence he rejects does not exist."* I have probably said enough upon this point to show you that infinite and inextricable difficulties hedge about the path of the atheist, and whoever takes his ground, must believe what the christian will be compelled to reject; thus all this fair creation, with its grand and solemn music and its matchless beauty, is without an intelligent cause. This is credulity before which the christian's faith wanes away into nothingness. True is it that it were far easier to receive without questionings or doubts, the wildest and most extravagant tales from fairy land, than to credit the doctrines of atheism. II. He who rejects the revealed word of God is more credulous by far than they who receive it. It is not only possible but somewhat common for men to avow their belief in the divine existence and yet deny revelation--and there have been some in the world who have even gone so far as to deny that it is possible for God to make any kind of a revelation of his will to men. But this number has been comparatively small, and they are really to be classed with atheists. For the very admission that there is such a being as God is proof enough to ordinary minds, unprejudiced, that he may give to men in some permanent form, a revelation of his will. I speak not now of the manner of such Revelation, but simply of the fact. But there is still another class of men who admit that revelation is possible, but deny that one has ever been made. They allege that with the power to communicate a knowledge of his will to men, and show them their true relations to their Maker; he has hitherto uniformly refused, or neglected to use that power. Now if we look a little we shall see that they who thus refuse their belief in revelation, involve themselves in the necessity of believing greater absurdities than any and all they profess to reject. We claim that God not only could make but has made a revela tion of his will, and that here in the Book we have it. And I affirm that next to the difficulty of explaining away the evidences of * Foster's Essays, page 35. 1 E God himself, from the surface and the mysterious deeps of the universe-next to this difficulty is that of accounting for the origin and preservation from age to age of this wonderful book, on the supposition that it is not divine and authoritative from heaven. And yet this is the difficulty of infidelity. He who rejects the divine origin of this book is as much bound to account for its existence as I am. It will not answer to ignore it altogether. It is here as really a standing fact, as it has been for centuries, as the sun that shines in mid-heaven, or the waters that belt the world. It is operative among men and it comes knocking at the door of infidelity. And it will not do to say, " I will none of you; I had nothing to do in your origin, and feel no responsibility for your existence." This will never do. The Bible, true or false, will not be shuffled off in this unceremonious manner. It must he accounted for in some reasonable and satisfactory way, or the minds of men will not be at rest respecting it. The believer receives it as God's word and rests there. The infidel says it is not God's word. Will he tell us whence it is? He must believe that this immense volume, containing, as even he must acknowledge, such an amoun and variety of knowledge and wisdom, applicable to all human conditions in all time, is the result of chance or the most astonishing coincidence, fortuitously brought about. He must believe that numerous writers, flourishing at different periods of the world, and of different mental capacities and training, by a mere chance concurrence of circumstances, wrote with reference to one and the same great end-the revelation of man's way of recovery through Jesus Christ from sin and death. He must believe that the preservation of the Scriptures unchanged from age to age, through so long a period, in the midst of circumstances the most unfavorable, has been a mere accident. He must believe that the literal fulfilment of prophecies uttered centuries of years before, was also the result of chance. He must believe that all the influence which this book has exerted over the minds of men for 1800 years, and the firm and tenacious hold that it still has upon the very heart-strings of humanity, all this is the result of unforeseen circumstances. This last would be the master-piece of credulity, for if the Bible be not the word of God, that it professes to be, it is surely the most consummate and awful falsehood that the world could ever imagine, it is either divine or it is the worst book in existence. But is it possible that such a bundle of pretensions, such a mighty conglomeration of lies, could have been palmed off upon reasoning and intelligent beings? And much more is it supposable that instead of losing, it should strengthen its hold upon human conscience and belief with the lapse of centuries. All this infidelity must account for and make consonant with reason and the common sense of mankind. No other book has ever been written so adapted to man, in all the stages of his being and the history of his race. Other books, the products of the most majestic intellects grow obsolete in whole or in part, and their philosophy and systems vanish away. The works of ancient phi losophers, like Aristotle and Plato, are almost wholly superseded by productions of more modern date. Large portions of the writings of Lord Bacon are now obsolete. But not so with this book. It lives on and seems to gather fresh meaning and power with the steady flow of ages and generations; and in its undisturbed depths lie embosomed truths and principles that will doubtless have their full realization in that eternal future that opens to the eye of death. Now the credulity that can pronounce such a production a fable or the fruit of chance, is immense. But this is the credulity of Infidelity! And my hearers, are you not ready to confess with me that to believe all that one must who rejects the word of God, is a more difficult matter than to accept the creed of christianity without modification or abatement? III. He who rejects the christian religion, must give larger scope to his credulity than he who believes it. There are insuperable difficulties for him to explain. In the outset, he must account for the rapid propagation of christianity in its commencement. As an historical fact, I suppose no sane mind will question it. The historian, Gibbon, than whom no one could be more unlikely to admit anything favorable to christianity, concedes, in the 15th chapter of his "Decline and Fall," that the doctrines of Christ did make the most astonishing conquests over almost the entire world during the first three centuries, A. D. But he is not the only unwilling witness to the truth. Celsus, who wrote within 100 years after Paul, bears the most ample testimony to the authenticity and genuineness of christianity, and to its mar vellous progress in subduing the opinions of men to its dominion. This writer, who was a most bitter enemy of Christ, particularizes in his writings almost every prominent historical incident of the New Testament, and never once intimates that they are not true. He speaks of the birth of our Saviour and the worship of the magi. The murder of the infants by Herod. The descent of the Spirit at Christ's baptism. The temptation in the wilderness-the conversation with the woman of Samaria. He quotes from the sermon on the mount. He relates with minuteness of detail the trial and crucifixion of Christ, the earthquake and unnatural darkness, and the appearance of the risen Lord to Mary.* Such testimony as this would be strong from any writer, so near the time when all these things transpired. But how much stronger when coming from an avowed enemy of the whole christian scheme? Would Celsus have been likely to record such matters, militating as they did so powerfully against * Cave's Primitive Christianity. |