wisdom, yet everywhere penetrated and pierced with tales and marvels of the most puerile character, inserted by those who, in all other things, were gloriously wise and true. We are to believe, on the one hand, "no supernatural halo can brighten its spiritual beauty, no mysticism deepen its holiness, in its wisdom it is eternal;"1 but to hold, on the other hand, "the falsity of all miraculous pretension; " that St. Paul worked no miracles; that the birth, marvellous death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, are "pious distortions;" that the Apostles' testimony is full of falsehoods; that "upon all grounds of reason and experience the supposed miraculous evidence, by which alone we could be justified in believing the Divine Revelation, must be pronounced mere human delusion." 2 What a comment on the inspired words—“I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you"! (Acts xiii. 41). It reminds one of a sarcastic speech-" I believe that the philosophers of every age are equally foolish, but that the common people gradually increase in wisdom." 3 'We feel that common sense shows no difficulty in the way of belief in miracles; surely the Power who made all things may again, at any time, create or annihilate force or matter, and interfere with natural laws at His pleasure." + Common sense sees that the argument of unspiritual men must be pushed to the bitter end; and, if it be true doctrine, all providence, all government, all Divine interest in human affairs, must be banished from our thoughts. If these men are right, all men of piety are wrong. Kant should not have said "Two things impress me with awe: the starry heavens without, and the moral law within." the moral law within." Those vastly our superiors in wisdom and virtue, whom we contemplate with involuntary admiration-admiration kindling emotions of love -are in nowise to be followed. We must take for guides men who say "There was no Creation, and is no personal God. The Old and New Testaments are legends; incarnation, redemption, glorification, are fond delusions." Hume, un2 Ibid. p. 480. 1 "Supernatural Religion,” vol. ii. p. 489. 3 "Social Pressure," by the author of "Friends in Council." Intelligent Adaptation in Nature. believer as he was, declared-"The whole frame of Nature bespeaks an intelligent author;" but now the words of Goethe -"Matter can never exist and be active without mind," are made to mean that matter is eternal, and that the combination of matter into diversified forms of beauty, and the wonders of organic life, are without design, and unguided by intelligence. The eye was not made to see, nor the ear to hear; the complex and compact apparatus of the human mouth was not arranged to breathe, to taste, to eat, to talk; nor legs and feet to walk and run; nor heart and lungs to circulate and purify the blood; verily, "Nihil tam absurdum, quod non quidam philosophi dixerint." The man of common sense, the man of real science too, John Hunter to wit, sees that the eye did not make itself, nor man make it, nor his parents, nor any other man; yet, that it was made by One who understood the transmission, reflection, and refraction of light; how to make lenses of different powers, adjust them for clear perception of near or distant objects; how to make and use most ingenious mechanical contrivances, in order to turn the eye in every direction, and increase or diminish light; how to place the eye so as to be of most service, protected from injury, moistened from time to time, and able to open or shut. Common sense is sure that Divine Intelligence made the eye; and, in duty bound, worships God. If there is no Supernatural in Religion and Nature; then, of course, morality is without Divine sanction; there is no vindication of right, no, retribution for the good. Mistakes there may be, but certainly not sins; and Herbert can be defended, who declared lust and passion to be no more blameworthy than hunger and thirst; and Hobbs, that right and wrong are but quibbles of the imagination; and Bolingbroke, who held that the chief end of life is to gratify our passions; and Hume, who deemed humility a vice rather than a virtue. We may tell those who are sensual as swine, fierce as wolves, knavish, petulant, wayward, that there is no Judgment to come. Monsters of cruelty are not monsters, nor blameworthy. Those who break the law, knowing that they shall escape the law, whom we account deserving of ten times more punishment, are to be free from all punishment if they take care of their health. Human nature is outraged by such doctrine. We feel that the moral element is the centre of our structure; “peccatum non est natura, sed vitium naturæ ;" our consciousness of right and wrong says "there will be, there must be, a future reckoning." Every temptation that we resist, every pure impulse discreetly yielded to, every noble thought that is encouraged, every sinful desire that is extinguished, every wrong word that is withheld, enriches our character and testifies of a higher life. Present before any audience the spectacle of a pious, loving, watchful mother, whose son requites her unselfish, unwearied efforts for his welfare by barbarous murder, that he may seize the little savings only hoarded by self-denial for his benefit. Will the spectators applaud that act? Will they not instantly, passionately, without doubt, stigmatise it as wrong, wicked, base, abominable turpitude? Then place before them the life of Christ, good and gentle, promising to His own hurt and changing not; denying Himself, helping the unfortunate and unhappy, dying amidst the taunts and scoffs of His murderers; and praying, while He dies, that God will forgive them. The whole audience will admire and approve. In every language the voice of the multitude will be, "That man is a good man, He is a man of God." While human nature remains the same, so long as common sense continues, virtue will have a sort of glorious pattern coming from God and returning to God. Notwithstanding, we are unwisely urged to abandon the Divine Record of this God-Man and of Creation. Mr. Herbert Spencer writes thus against the Bible doctrine of Creation :— "Many who in all else have abandoned the aboriginal theory of things still hold this remnant." Then, speaking of a man who has not abandoned it, he says-" Catechise him, and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be right while all the rest is wrong, he is unable to say. May we not then expect that the relinquishment of all other parts of this The Greatest Men are Believers. 15 story, will by-and-by be followed by the relinquishment of this remaining part of it?"1 If all other parts of the story had been disproved, then the narrative of Creation might be imperilled; but, as intelligence widens, piety deepens. Those difficulties in the Holy Word which appear contrarieties, accurate investigation so conciliates that faith is confirmed. They are like knots in the oak which strengthen it, as knots in the net which retain. So far from the aboriginal theory being all wrong, a really scientific investigation confirms the sacred truths, and makes our knowledge of them more accurate. Men of honourable name, world-heroes, historians, poets, the ablest students of Nature, are not atheists; nor are they secularists. The Newtons, Bacons, Boyles, Faradays, Harveys, Hunters, are Christians. If Materialists have lost the Spirit of Divinity, is there neither Spirit nor Divinity for other men? Take Socrates and Cicero, who lived and died before Christianity appeared; or Voltaire, who rejected it; or Napoleon, who regarded it with the genius of a statesman: all recognised Divine handiwork in the Creation. In every man, worthy of the name, there is a longing for higher fulness of life, a closer walk with God, which, whether formulated in the symbols of science or of Scripture, is the very essence of all religion. It is not well known, but it is true, that a singularly large proportion of the leading scientific men of the day are devout Christians; and we may safely hold that religion which, in time past, by definite expression in creeds and ceremonies, preserved reverence and holiness of thought and feeling, will be preserved, not destroyed, by science. Opponents are in part aware of it: "If Nature have in store a man of the requisite completeness-equivalent, let us say, to Milton and Helmholtz rolled into one-such a man, freed by his own volition from 'society,' and fed for a time upon the wild honey of the wilderness, might be able to detach religious feeling from its accidents, and realise it to us in a form not out of keeping with the knowledge of the time." " Another writes “The army of liberal thought is, at present, in very 1 "Principles of Biology," vol. i. pp. 335, 336. 2 "Fragments of Science," pref., 2nd ed.: Prof. Tyndall. loose order, and many a spirited freethinker makes use of his freedom merely to vent nonsense. We should be the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the Bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the 'Analogy,' who, if he were alive, would make short work of the current à priori infidelity."1 Now, in reality, the scientific work is not so much for the priest as for the professor. Science, less than religion, can stand alone; but must freely combine with all right efforts for the betterment of our race. Men of science are priests of the material universe; why do they not, seeing that the feelings of awe, reverence, wonder, worship, are woven into the texture of their nature, give reasonable satisfaction to holy emotion? Theirs is the privilege of removing the apparent antagonism between Science and Religion-the abiding terror of timid or superficial minds; theirs the high aim to unite moral power with intellectual achievement; and all the more because out of their province, from men of their companionship, flows the poison-stream of unbelief which destroys the ignorant. The man, whether priest or professor, for whom the wedding-bells have to be rung at the union of Intellect and Piety will come: "I hope and believe, that when the world is older, and when the mutual relations of all branches of knowledge are as well understood as are now, for instance, the relation of chemistry to the theory of electricity, the scientific progress which began by rejecting religion as the basis of science, will finally accept religion as not indeed the basis, but the summit and crown." Meanwhile the theologian and the student of Nature must ask each other—" How readest thou?" For the book of Nature and the book of Scripture are the two books which were meant to be compared, and can never be antagonistic: "altera posse docens, altera velle Dei." "2 The opposition of Materialists to the Biblical manner of looking at things, is due to the fact that they prefer cosmic or physical symbols to those which are human; forgetting 1 "Scientific Education:" Prof. Huxley. 2 "Scientific Bases of Faith," Introd.: Joseph John Murphy. |