Gospel Philosophy
by J. H. Ward · English · Gutenberg #46635 · 318,573 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Gospel Philosophy
Author: J. H. Ward
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOSPEL PHILOSOPHY ***
GOSPEL PHILOSOPHY,
SHOWING THE
ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY,
AND THE
HARMONY OF THE GOSPEL
WITH SCIENCE AND HISTORY
* * * * *
BY ELDER J. H WARD
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS,
* * * * *
Salt Lake City, Utah:
Published at the Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884.
Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1884, by J. H. Ward,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
Sectarians generally dread meeting a "Mormon" Elder in discussion, for
they well know the humiliating defeat which has been the result to
their compeers in hundreds of instances.
But there is another class of persons who often bring
formidable-looking arguments against the truths of the gospel. This
class is composed frequently of persons of considerable learning,
research and intelligence. They have long ago become disgusted with
the absurdities of so-called Christianity; and are not slow in showing
the disagreement of sectarian dogmas with the teachings of the Bible,
or contrasting the Bible with supposed science. In some instances,
otherwise valuable scientific works are marred by sneers at the books
of inspiration. In this age of earnest thought and research into all
branches of knowledge, many of these works fall into the hands of
the young and hence the growth of skepticism in the minds of many.
Many of the facts contained in this work have been collected from,
and references made to larger works not easily accessible to the
general reader. A large number of the illustrations have been designed
expressly for this work, and engraved by Brother John Held, of Salt
Lake City.
To gather into a small compass the leading arguments of infidel
writers, and to refute them by well-known facts; to show the cause
of the conflict between science and religion; and to harmonize true
science with the teachings of God's word, has been the design in
writing this little work. That in its perusal the young may find their
faith strengthened in the principles of the gospel; thoughtful minds
find food for reflection, and the missionary Elder a valuable book of
reference, is the earnest wish of
The Author.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1--ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY
CHAPTER 2--CAUSES OF THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION
CHAPTER 3--FALLACIES OF SCIENTISTS
CHAPTER 4--DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
CHAPTER 5--OUR NEED OF REVELATION
CHAPTER 6--VALIDITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AS SHOWN BY INTERNAL EVIDENCE
CHAPTER 7--NEW TESTAMENT FACTS CORROBORATED BY SECULAR WRITERS
CHAPTER 8--HISTORICAL GLIMPSES OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
CHAPTER 9--FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY
CHAPTER 10--INFIDEL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
CHAPTER 11--MOSES AND MODERN SCIENCE
CHAPTER 12--HARMONY OF GENESIS AND GEOLOGY
CHAPTER 13--SCIENTIFIC PROOFS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE
CHAPTER 14--FAITH AND INFIDELITY CONTRASTED
* * * * *
INDEX
Ancient Scientists 22, 164
Absurdities of Spiritualism 19
Anaesthetics Discovered 35
Astronomy not Exact 39
Apostles, their Character 122, 125
Atmosphere, Condition of Early 179
Aurochs not yet Extinct 188
Benefits of Romanism 23
Brahminism 16
Bruno 29
Buffon's Theory of Creation 65
Babylon, Prophecies Concerning 136,139
Books of New Testament 97
Burial Place in Catacombs 128
Bird, Earliest yet Found 196
Bird-Like Reptile 191
Bark from Coal Mine 182
Catacombs 127, 129
Calvin's Bigotry 29, 31
Constantine, Character of 93
Cosmas, Philosophy of 27
Copernicus 29
Causes of Infidelity 35, 36
Carlyle's Absurdities 77
Compte's Absurdities 83
Chesterfield's Letters 84
Coin Found at Philippi 89
Celsus, His Writings 95
Crust of the Earth 43
Comets 155, 156
Correspondence of Paine 84
Chalk Magnified 194
Climate of Coal Period 184, 198
Character of Heathen Gods 81
Disagreement of Scientists 13, 47
Dead Sea 70
Dispersion of Jews 117
Deluge, Scientific Theory of 154
Dinornis, Skeleton of 189
Development of Species 188
Eye, Section of Human 58
Errors in Astronomy 39
Egypt, Present State of 142
Errors of Romanism 25, 26
Early Vegetation 182
Extinct Birds 188, 189
Essential Conditions of Life 205
Fire-Mist, Theory of 64
Forest of Coal Period 185
Faculties of the Mind 207
Galileo 30
Geology Uncertain 41, 45
Giant Cities of Bashan 74
Gibbon's Testimony 93
Great Men Believers 212
Humboldt 33
Heathen Philosophy 79
Heathen Morals 80
Human Eye 58
Heat and Motion 178, 179
Huxley's Embryotic Theory 190
Illumination of St. Lawrence 176
Influence of Judaism 119
Jenner's Discoveries 35
Juggernaut 82, 83
Luther's Superstition 32
Light, Velocity of 156
" Various Sources of 175
" Without Sunshine 165, 166
" From the Earth 175, 176
Marcion, the Apostate 96
Milky Way 157
Modern Prophecy 149, 150
Monsters, Primeval 198
Man's Nervous System 208
Newman's Absurdities 77
New Testament Books 97
Nature in Continual Change 167
Ocean, Primeval 178
Olbers, Theory of 67
Plesiosaurius 197
Protestant Bigotry 33
Parker's Absurdities 77, 78
Plato's Code of Laws 80
Paine, his Character and Writings 84
Paul, the Apostle 102, 122
Pliny's Letters 109
Personal Appearance of the Savior 116
Prophetic Symbols 134
Prophecy Concerning Judea 144
" " Egypt 142, 143
" " Babylon 138
Protoplasm 204
Rosetta Stone 17
Revelation Progressive 72
Religion of India 15, 82
Rings of Saturn 153, 154
Reptilian Bird 192
Servetus Burned 31
Spirit Controls Protoplasm 205
Simpson, James Y. 35
Section of Earth's Crust 43
" of Human Eye 58
Solar System 66
Solomon's Knowledge 73
Saturn 153
Stars Variable 167
Sun Spots 173
Sun Inhabitable 174
Sun's Atmosphere 172
Spencer's Philosophy 206
Tertulian's Writings 104
Testimony of Tacitus 106
Trajan's Letter 111
Temple of Belus 137
Universe, Extent of 55, 158
Uintah Mountains, Section of 54
Worship of Juggernaut 82
Western Continent Upheaved 199
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY.
THE PRESENT AN EARNEST AGE--AN EARNEST RELIGION REQUIRED--YOUNG MEN
LIABLE TO SKEPTICISM--LITERARY FOPS--SCIENTISTS DO NOT AGREE--TESTIMONY
OF SOCRATES AND PLATO--ABSURDITIES OF BRAHMINISM--ATTEMPTS OF FRENCH
INFIDELS--ROSETTA STONE-MODERN SPIRITUALISM.
The gospel is truly a grand system. Let us try to entertain right views
concerning it. Let us enlarge our minds to grasp it, that we may,
to some extent at least, conceive its greatness and appreciate its
beauties.
The peculiar wants of the age in which we live are worthy of deep and
careful consideration. Never was there a time in the history of the
race, when learning and general intelligence were so well diffused as
at the present. The press is throwing off continually its millions of
printed pages, which are scattered broadcast as the leaves of Autumn.
Books on almost every conceivable subject can be cheaply bought;
and journals, {10} magazines and pamphlets, both of a good and evil
influence, attract the attention of the young.
Never was there a time of more intense activity. Who can pass through
the crowded streets of our cities, listen to the throbbings of the
steam-engine, the hum of machinery, the appliances of electricity,
gaze at the vast trains that are driven with fire and vapor along our
railways, or view those magnificent structures that cross the mighty
deep, without feeling that this is an earnest age?
Now, this earnest, active, thinking age demands a religion that has
life and power in it. Not a religion of cold formality and narrow
sectarianism, but a religion that will satisfy the intellect with
its truths, touch the heart with its love, sway the will with its
persuasiveness, gratify the taste with its beauties and fill the
imagination with its sublimities. A religion is wanted that will
enlist upon its side the whole nature of man, and command his willing
and devoted homage; a religion that, bearing the full impress of its
Author's image, shall carry its own credentials with it; and which,
clothed with all the elements of truth and righteousness, beauty and
grandeur of love and power, shall be revered by all those who love the
truth, and dreaded by all who love it not.
This is the religion that the gospel reveals. There is no antagonism
between philosophy and faith, between science and religion, whatever
the seeming oppositions of the present; in reality it is perfect
harmony. The gospel overwhelms, nay, rather, includes all philosophy.
{11}
In the life of many young men there is a period of skepticism. Then
the young man is extremely liable to doubt. Then he questions all his
previous convictions, challenges all his accepted opinions, and is
in danger of drifting aimlessly on the wide tossing sea of unbelief,
the sport of every wind of doctrine, the easy prey of every theory
conceived by the ingenious brain of man.
At this period his faith in God and man is liable to be swept away
through a misconception of the real teachings of science, and the
example of those who seek to excuse their wicked lives under the
specious plea of unbelief. This period of skeptical tendency comes
early in life, frequently when the young man is in college or in the
schools of science, when he begins to think and act for himself. It
is intelligent, earnest young men of brains and capacity who are in
special danger from the skepticism of the age.
Many of these young men have been trained in the Sabbath school, but at
nineteen or twenty a change comes over them. They feel the strength and
vigor of awakening manhood, and that impatience of authority which is
characteristic of young men in this formative period of life. A young
man hears of men of learning who reject religion; he reads now and then
a magazine full of doubts and insinuations, and he begins to feel that
all his belief is simply the result of his education, and that under
other circumstances he might have been a Confucian, a Buddhist or a
Mahometan. Perhaps he meets with a tolerably educated but skeptical
{12} friend, who tells him in effect that religion is a fraud, that
the Bible is a very good book, to be sure, but destitute of divine
authority. He tells him, in a word, that these things may do for women
and children to believe, but as for himself, he has put away all such
belief along with his childish toys.
Our young man listens to all this flippant nonsense with itching ears,
until, at length, he pretends to believe the world was made by chance,
is governed by chance and all things that exist are only the effects of
chance.
But there is a comical side to this question, as well as to many
others. Prof. Agassiz wisely observes that, "men frequently talk
very learnedly of what they know but very little;" and I know of
nothing more irresistibly ludicrous than to see one of these so-called
scientific skeptics, who scarcely knows the difference between the leg
of a wasp and the horn of a beetle, and yet will assume to patronize
the Almighty and talk about progress and culture as though he was the
most remarkable prodigy of the age in which he lives.
It is enough to disgust an honest man, to see some of these literary
fops going along with Darwin's works under one arm and a case of
transfixed grasshoppers and butterflies under the other, talking
about Huxley's "protoplasm" and "natural selection," and "nebular
hypothesis," and "biogensis," and "abigensis," all the while lisping
with an "exthquithit lithp," and indicating by word, tone and gesture
that all who dissent from their opinions {13} are grossly ignorant and
scarcely worthy of their notice.
But the greatest joke is that the scientists which they so much admire
do not agree. Darwin is charging at Lamarch, Walace spearing Cope, and
Herschel denouncing Ferguson. How many colors in a ray of sun-light?
Seven, says Newton; only three, says David Brewster. How high above the
earth is the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Light? Two and a half miles,
says Prof. Lias; one hundred and sixty-five, says Prof. Tumming. La
Place says the moon was not put in the right place, it should have been
four times as far away; while Prof. Lionville comes up just in time and
gives us the wonderful information (?) that the Creator was acquainted
with His business and fixed it exactly right.
How far is the sun from the earth? Less than a million miles, says
Zadkiel; seventy-six millions of miles, says La Caille; eighty-two
millions, says Humboldt; ninety millions, says Henderson; one hundred
and four millions, says Mayer. Only a slight difference of one hundred
and three millions of miles, or a good deal farther than a person
could travel, at the rate of fifty miles per hour, during the next
two centuries, if he could live that long. And yet, amidst all this
confusion and contradiction, we are coolly asked to give up the words
of inspiration and hang our hopes of the future on the miserable
vagaries of self-contradicting philosophers.
Another very ludicrous as well as amusing instance {14} of the folly of
infidelity is the fact that skeptics will catch at almost anything upon
which to hang their faith. All around us, in every grade of society,
are to be found men who will tell us that the Vedas and Shasters of the
Hindoos are far more trustworthy than the writings of Moses, Isaiah,
Paul, Nephi or Joseph. They will tell us what sublime philosophers
Brahma and Confucius were, while, at the same time, they have never
read a word of their doctrines, or even seen a volume of their works.
All they know is what some other truth-hating infidel has told them.
But for the sake of argument let us glance at some of these wonderful
writings. Socrates, one of the greatest of heathen philosophers,
admits, "We must of necessity wait till some one from Him, who careth
for us, shall come and instruct us how to behave toward God and toward
man."
Plato declares, "We cannot know of ourselves what will be pleasing to
God; it is necessary that a law-giver should be sent from heaven to
instruct us." And he further adds, "Oh, how greatly do I long to see
that man!" (_Plato's Republic, Book iv and vi._)
Who has not felt sad at the dying words of Socrates, "I am going out
of the world and you are to continue in it, but which of us has the
better part is a secret to all but God." Nor is the philosophy of India
any better. A few years ago, when, through the labors of Oriental
scholars, the Vedas and Shasters of the Hindoos were translated and
printed in European languages, a great shout went {15} up from the army
of infidels. "Here," said they, "is the true chronology. Henceforth the
Jewish records must hide their heads." Accordingly the Shasters were,
for a time, in high repute among those who knew very little about them.
Now, when we remember that these much-vaunted histories profess to
reach back through _ma-ha-yugs_ or epochs of 4,320,000 of our years,
that a thousand of these epochs makes a _kalpa_ or one day of the
life of Brahma--the nights being of the same duration--and that his
life consists of one hundred years of such days and nights, we can
easily see the absurdity of these histories. In these works are also
the records of the seven great continents of the world, separated by
seven rivers and seven chains of mountains, four hundred thousand miles
high, and the history of the families of their kings, one of whom had
ten thousand sons, another sixty thousand who were born in a pumpkin,
nourished in pans of milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a demon
and restored to life by the waters of the Ganges. These records give
statements of wonderful eclipses, comets and deluges, seven of which
covered the earth, not merely to the top of these wonderfully high
mountains, but even reaching to the polar star. Yet infidels have the
assurance to quote these as standard works of undoubted authority, and
worthy of the credence of intelligent beings. (_Duff's India, page_
127.)
Nor are the promises of the future life any less absurd than the
foregoing. "Tell me," said a {16} wealthy Hindoo, who had given all
his wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that he might
obtain a pardon of his sins, "what shall become of my soul when I
die?" The priest replied, "Your soul will go into the body of a holy
cow." "And after that?" he asked again. "It will pass into the body
of a divine peacock." "And after that?" "It will pass into a flower."
"Where, O, where will it go last of all?" cried the dying man. "Where
will it go last of all? Ah! that is the question."
While British infidels were admiring the sacred writings of the
Hindoos, and holding them up before the world as superior to the
word of God, French skeptics were busy in a similar employment. When
Napoleon invaded Egypt, in 1798, he took with him a large corps of
scientific men. In the ceiling of a temple at Dendera, in Upper
Egypt, some of these scientists discovered a stone, tablet covered
with strange characters. These characters, it was concluded, were a
representation of the relative positions of the sun, moon and stars
at the time the temple was built; and, calculating backwards, it was
found that this could not be less than seventeen thousand years ago.
This tablet was taken from the ceiling of the temple and carried away
to France, and placed in the national library in Paris. Hundreds
of thousands came to see the antediluvian monument, and infidel
commentators were never wanting to inform them that this remarkable
stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. One of the
discoverers, afterwards {17} a professor in the University of Breslau,
published a pamphlet, entitled, "Invincible proof that the earth is
at least ten times older than is taught by the Bible." During the
next thirty years, scores of such publications followed; and the base
slander received many additions and improvements, until it was a common
saying that this stone proved that "the priests of Egypt were carving
astronomy on their pyramids ten thousand years before Adam was born."
It did not shake their credulity in the least, that no two of their
wise men were agreed by some thousands of years, how old the stone
was--that no one even knew the first principles of the Egyptian system
of astronomy, and that _none of them could read the hieroglyphics_.
But, in 1832, the curious Egyptian astronomy was studied, and it
then appeared that this object, which had caused so much commotion,
was simply a calendar stone to aid in the measurement of time; and
that the positions of the sun, moon and stars were so placed to
enable common observers to ascertain the beginning of the year. At
length, by means of the Rosetta Stone--which furnished a key to these
hieroglyphics--Champolion and others learned to read the inscriptions
on Egyptian monuments.
[ILLUSTRATION: Rosetta Stone, showing present and original form, and
specimens of Greek, Coptic and Hieroglyphic characters.]
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French, in 1799, at Rosetta,
Egypt. When in a perfect condition it was a tablet of black basalt,
three feet high, two feet five inches wide, and ten inches thick. The
inscription was in three languages: {18} Coptic, Greek and ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics. On the publication of the inscriptions it was
found that they were the key to the hieroglyphic characters. It was
then discovered that the names of Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn,
were engraved on the stone, as well as the names of the Roman emperors
Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Domitian. The inscriptions revealed the
fact that they had no reference to early Egyptian history. The edifice
in which the first-mentioned stone was found was {19} simply a heathen
Roman temple, built between the fourteenth and eighty-first years of
the Christian era.
Even at the present time, in the noon-day of modern science and
so-called civilization, astrologers, mediums, clairvoyants and
fortune-tellers by the hundred find a profitable business among those
who consider themselves too learned, wise and progressive to believe
in the word of God. One infidel lecturer even advertises that he will
reveal to you the secrets of the future and cure you of any disease
you may have, if you will only enclose in a letter a few hairs taken
from your right temple and--and--a--ten dollar bill. Concerning the
future life, infidels have every variety of oracles, conjectures and
suppositions; but for their guesses they have no proof. The only thing
upon which they seem agreed is in denying the resurrection of the body.
According to their ideas, a poor, naked, shivering, table-rapping
spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any brainless
fop or silly, sentimental girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced
strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of all the great and good men
and women that have lived upon the earth.
To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the
gospel, for only through it life and immortality are brought to light.
A year or two since, the leader of American infidels, Robert Ingersol,
was called to deliver a funeral oration over the body of his brother.
In that short discourse there were many beautiful sentiments: {20} but
through it all, as through a transparent glass, was shown the need,
which even Ingersol felt, of divine revelation and divine guidance.
* * * * *
CHAPTER II.
CAUSES OF THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
SCIENCE AND REVELATION HARMONIZE--WANT OF REVELATION THE CAUSE OF
BARBARISM--BENEFITS AND EVILS OF ROMANISM--CONFLICT CONCERNING
GEOGRAPHY--PHILOSOPHY OF COSMAS--STRUGGLES OF COPERNICUS--BRUNO
--GALILEO--OPPOSITION OF LUTHER--SERVETUS BURNED--PROTESTANT
BIGOTRY--CAUSES OF INFIDELITY.
Truth is ever harmonious. Science and religion, in the true sense
of the terms, can never be in conflict with each other. The direct
revelations of God to man must ever agree with the results of
scientific investigation. Invention and discovery are but the unfolding
of the laws, attributes and objects of nature to man's finite
understanding--the action of the divine will on the minds of men.
So, whether man seeks for spiritual truth through the revelations of
God, or looks out upon the material world and investigates the working
of physical laws, the result must be the same. A truth revealed to
the sensitive, impulsive human {21} heart to-day in its full play of
emotions and passions cannot be at any real variance with a truth
written upon a far-off planet rolling in the depths of space, or upon a
fossil whose poor life ebbed away thousands of years ago. Yet, strange
to say, a conflict has been going on for years between some students of
science on one side and the devotees of religion on the other. Nearly
all the great and good men of the medieval or modern times have been
engaged on one side or the other, and a hard contest it has been. The
war has been waged longer, the battles have been fiercer, the sieges
more persistent, the diplomacy more far-reaching, and the revenge more
deadly than ever characterized the military campaigns of Alexander,
Caesar or Napoleon.
Let us then inquire into the causes of this conflict and try and
understand something concerning it. In the first place we must be
careful not to underrate science. On every side we see its beneficent
effects. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, and the houses we dwell
in depend in a great measure upon it for their existence. When we
travel it is mostly by the appliances of science. The books we read
are manufactured by its aid. It transmits our messages to and from
our friends, and prepares the light that illuminates our streets and
dwellings. It has contributed greatly to relieve human suffering and
promote human happiness, and to distinguish the civilized from the
savage races of the earth.
And what has religion done? So long as it was {22} true and pure it was
the favored child of heaven. While the true church existed upon the
earth, whether Jewish or Christian, we hear of no conflict between its
members and the students of science. On the other hand we find from
their writings that Moses, Job, David, Solomon and Isaiah were the
leading scientists of the ages in which they lived. They understood
natural history, architecture, sculpture, poetry, music, botany, and
in astronomy they made such progress that many of the constellations
still retain the names they used, such as Orion, Pleaides, etc. (_See
Job xxxviii_, 31; _Amos v_, 8.) We read of no conflict between the
truths of science and the teachings of Paul, though he was one of the
most learned men of the age in which he lived. On the other hand the
discourse of Paul in the court of the Areopagus, was the complement
or sequel of ideas already held by the most celebrated Grecian
philosophers. (_See Acts xvii_, 19-23.)
It was not till after the great apostasy, when the voice of inspiration
had ceased, that the great conflict commenced between science and the
so-called Christian church.
We shall better understand this fact, when we recollect that from the
time of the apostles to the ninth century, science, literature and
philosophy were well nigh extinct. No schools of painting flourished,
no models in sculpture were designed, no order of architecture arose,
no great poem was written, and no history compiled, which have been
deemed worthy to be transmitted to our times. It {23} was only when
European society came largely in contact with Jewish and Saracen
influences during the wars of the Crusades and in contact with the Jews
and Saracens of Spain, that any decided advances were made. As if to
mark out to the world the real cause of its intellectual degradation,
the regeneration of Italy commenced with the banishment of the popes
to Avignon. Their exile continued more than seventy years; and during
their absence, so rapid was the social and intellectual progress
that on their return to Rome, they found it impossible to make any
successful resistance, or to restore the old condition of society.
Yet even in her apostatized condition the Catholic church did much
for the amelioration of society. At the commencement of the fourth
century of the Christian era, a cloud of more than Cimmerian darkness
overshadowed western Europe. It was then occupied by wandering savages.
The period embraced in the next thousand years greatly improved its
condition. It was during this period that the population were organized
into families, communities and cities. Those centuries found it full of
bondmen--they left it without a slave. Where there had been trackless
forests, there were now farms, orchards and villages. Instead of bloody
chieftains drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were parish
priests teaching the masses the crude beginning of religious thought.
Instead of gladiatorial combats, which characterized ancient Roman
civilization, there were {24} thoughtful men gravely pondering the
problems of free agency and moral responsibility.
Enveloped as she was by the evils of the times, the Catholic church
gave rise to many improvements. She taught the doctrine of an ultimate
accountability for personal deeds, of which the ancient inhabitants
of Europe had very indistinct perceptions. Under her direction the
brotherhood of man was taught as it had never been before, and was
illustrated, not merely by individual acts of charity, the memory of
which is soon forgotten, but also by the establishment of permanent
institutions, such as hospitals, alms-houses, schools and asylums
for the relief of the afflicted, for the spread of knowledge and the
succoring of the oppressed. Many of her high dignitaries, and even
popes, were men who had risen from the humbler ranks of society. These
men, true to their instincts, were often the champions of right against
might. In an age of tyranny, the very organization of the church was
essentially republican. It thus paved the way for modern representative
governments, and prepared the minds of men for their introduction.
Still it was not over nations and communities that Rome showed her
chief power, but in her control of domestic and individual interests.
History presents no record like hers. Her pontiffs in the quiet halls
of the Vatican could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance or
examine the private character of any individual. Was there a rebellion
in Spain? Her agents informed her of {25} it. Was there an obscure
philosopher in Germany writing down the results of his investigations?
She also knew it. While she restrained the power and tyranny of kings
by her influence, she also relieved the hungry beggar or wandering
minstrel at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too
obscure, too insignificant or too desolate for her. Surrounded by
her solemnities every one received his name at her altar, her bells
chimed at his marriage and her knell tolled at his funeral. By her
confessionals she extorted from him the secrets of his life, and by her
penances she punished him for his faults. In the hour of sickness and
trouble her servants sought him out, teaching him to place his trust
in God, and strengthening him for the trials of life by the example of
the good and faithful of former days. And when at length his lifeless
body had become an offense, even to his friends, she received it into
her consecrated ground, there to rest till the resurrection morning.
She raised woman from nearly the condition of a slave and made her the
equal and fit companion of man; and in turn, received a recompense by
a firm friend in every home. In an age of bloodshed and plunder she
lifted up her hand in defense of the weak, and made her sanctuaries a
refuge for the despairing and oppressed.
But here arose the difficulty. The so-called Christian church by
apostasy had lost the key of revelation. Her decisions depended not
upon the voice of inspiration but upon the musty parchments of the
past. Claiming to be the church of {26} God, she regarded her decisions
as infallible and irrevocable, her teachings as beyond question.
Her ideas were crystalized; her philosophy, if indeed it was worthy
of that name, was stationary, as must be the case with all systems
reposing on a final revelation of God. In the domain of the Catholic
church during the space of a thousand years, namely from the time of
the apostles to the eleventh century, not a book had been written,
not a painting executed, nor statue sculptured of sufficient merit to
rescue the name of the author from oblivion. Throughout the length and
breadth of Europe there fell a dark cloud of intellectual stagnation,
an invisible atmosphere of oppression ready to break down morally and
physically whatever opposed its weight; except where a few feeble rays
of light were kept flickering by the efforts of Jewish and Mahometan
scholars. She at once disclosed her human and denied her divine origin
by attempting to force fixed laws on society in the presence of higher
truths and advancing civilization.
The first great conflict was in reference to geography--the shape and
surface of the earth. When science disclosed the fact that the earth
was round, there was a great commotion, and so much the more since it
was by Mahometan scholars that the discovery had been made. It was
asked, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" In other words,
"Is it possible for vile Mahometans to understand and teach such a
truth when it is not yet known to the assumed church of God?" At {27}
once the war-spirit became fierce and hot. The great writer Eusebius
treated the doctrine with contempt. Lactantius asks, "Is there any
one so senseless, as to believe that there are men whose footsteps
are higher than their heads? That the crops and trees grow downwards?
That the rains, snow and hail fall upward to the earth?" (_For further
particulars see Whewel's Hist. Induct. Sciences, Vol. I, page_ 196.)
At this stage of the controversy, Cosmas Indicopleustes, by direction
of the Catholic church, undertook to give a description of the earth.
According to Cosmas, the universe is in the form of an immense box,
twice as broad as it is high and twice as long as it is broad. At the
bottom of this box lies the earth, surrounded by four great seas or
oceans. At the outer edges of these seas, rise immense walls, which
support the vault of heaven, even as the walls of a house support the
roof; and thus walls and vault shut in the earth and all the heavenly
bodies. This vast box he divides into two compartments or stories.
In the lower one men were said to live, and sun, moon and stars to
move. The upper one was said to be the abode of God and angels, whose
principal work was to push and pull the sun and planets to and fro, and
to open the windows of heaven, and thus regulate the quantity of rain.
The ignorance or impudence of Cosmas can only be partially imagined,
when we recollect that he supported his theory by reference to the
Bible, and quoted _Genesis i_, 6; _Job xxvi_, 11; _Psalms cxlviii_, 4;
_Isaiah xl_, 22. All the sublime poetry and {28} beautiful imagery of
these texts were thus debased to give credence to the wild vagaries of
this ignorant man.
Space will not permit us to follow this contest in all its phases:
suffice it to say that so late as the fourteenth century Cecco d'
Ascoli was burned alive for asserting his belief in the rotundity of
the earth. (_See Neander's History of the Christian Church, Vol. II,
page_ 63.) The student of history will also remember how Columbus at
the great council of Salamanca was overwhelmed by texts of scripture
wrested from their rightful meaning. It was only after the successful
navigation of the earth, by Magellan's ship, the _San Vittoria_, that
Rome ceased to persecute the adherents of this doctrine. In all this
contest Rome's dogmas only resulted in injury to herself. The authority
of the scriptures was not in the end weakened, but rather strengthened;
but to thinking men, Rome's claim of divine right to interpret the
scriptures was of little value. Rome had been "weighed in the balances
and found wanting."
It was therefore in a scientific not less than a religious point of
view that many leading minds looked with favor toward that great
religious, movement known as the Reformation.
While Luther, Calvin and Zwingle were busy denouncing the corruptions
of the Romish church, the forces were preparing for the second
great conflict between science and so-called religion, namely, that
concerning the motion of the earth. Copernicus lived at the same time
as Luther, and died {29} two years before him. His was as brave a life
as ever lived in story. For thirty-six years, at the very time the
Protestant struggle was raging, he was working at that immortal book,
_De Revolutionibus Orbum_, in which he so clearly demonstrates the
motion of the earth, and the revolution of the planets around the sun.
But he dared not print it for many years. If he published it at Rome,
it would fall into the hands of the Inquisition; if he caused it to be
printed in Germany, there were the Protestant leaders no less hostile;
if he sent it to Switzerland, there stood Calvin and Zwingle ready to
burn it. At length the work was ready for the press. By the entreaty
of the Romish Cardinal Schomberg, and with many apologies, Copernicus
ventured to publish it. He was now old and feeble. Patiently he waited
at death's door to see a printed copy. At length the long looked-for
copy arrived, he saw it, composed himself and died, 1543.
Seven years after the death of Copernicus, was born that strange
mortal, Giordano Bruno. For teaching the rotation of the earth he had
to flee to Switzerland. But Calvin held power there and Bruno was
soon obliged to leave. Driven in succession from England, France and
Germany, and, like Noah's dove, finding no rest for the sole of his
foot, he at length ventured to return to Italy. He was arrested in
Venice, and after eight years of solitary confinement, was burned at
Rome, February 16, 1600. When the atrocious sentence was passed upon
him, he nobly replied, "Perhaps it is with {30} greater fear that ye
pass this sentence upon me than I receive it."
Meanwhile Galileo was prosecuting his studies at Florence. In May,
1609, he made his first telescope and pointing it toward the heavens
saw the satellites of Jupiter and the phases of Venus. These were two
of the weightiest arguments that had as yet been presented in favor
of the Copernican theory. Already Galileo began to encounter vulgar
indignation which accused him of impiety. In 1611, Galileo publicly
exhibited the spots upon the sun. This only excited the rage of his
persecutors. Goaded by opposition he wrote a letter, in 1613, to
the Abbe Castelli, showing that the scriptures were given for our
salvation, and not to teach astronomy in particular. This was repeating
Bruno's offense. Galileo was brought before the Inquisition, and, after
years of imprisonment, only saved his life by denying the great truths
he had discovered. He died 1642, in the seventy-eighth year of his
age, the prisoner of the Inquisition. But religious bigotry did not end
there. It tried to follow him beyond the grave, disputing his right to
make a will and denying him burial in consecrated ground. Nor were the
leaders of the Protestant cause less bitter.
In reference to Copernicus, Luther declared, "People give ear to an
upstart astrologer, who strives to show that the earth revolves;" and
again, "This fool (Copernicus) wishes to reverse the whole system of
astronomy." Melancthon, in his treatise _Initia Doctrinea Physicae_,
says, "The eyes are the {31} witnesses that the heavens revolve about
the earth in the space of twenty-four hours," and adds, "Now it is
a want of decency to assert publicly the notions of Copernicus;"
and Zwingle declares, "The earth can be no where, if not in the
center of the universe. It is a part of a good mind to accept the
truth as revealed by God, and acquiesce in it." (_See Geschichte des
Materialismus, Vol. I, page_ 217.)
[ILLUSTRATION: BURNING OF SERVETUS.]
Further, Calvin proved the darkness of his own mind when he put to
death that celebrated philosopher and physician, Michael Servetus,
whose greatest crimes were that in religion he denied the absurd dogma
that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three separate and distinct
beings and yet one and the same person; and in science he had partially
succeeded in discovering the circulation of blood. The circumstances
were also of the {32} most atrocious character. Servetus was roasted
for two hours in the flames of a slow fire made of green wood.
Meanwhile he was begging for the love of God that they would put on
more wood or do something to end his torture.
So also in superstition the Protestants were not a whit behind the
Catholics. In presence of the Protestant king, James I., of England,
it was declared that Agnes Sampson with two hundred other witches had
sailed in sieves from Leith to North Betwick church to hold a banquet
with the devil. It was also said that the witches had baptized and then
drowned a black cat, which caused a terrible storm in which the ship
that carried the king narrowly escaped being wrecked. King James and
the high church dignitaries who formed his privy council, believed the
accusation and condemned the poor woman to the flames.
The leaders of German Protestantism were Luther and Melancthon, yet
even they were victims of the grossest superstition. They believed
that in the Tiber, not far distant from the pope's palace, a monster
had been found having the body of a man, the head of an ass and the
claws of a bird of prey. After much speculation and searching of their
Bibles, they concluded it was a manifestation of God's anger against
Rome, and they wrote a pamphlet about it. (_See Buckle's Hist. of
Civilization._)
It is a quite common error to suppose these persecutions to have
emanated from the papal power exclusively. When we read of Copernicus
escaping {33} persecution only by death, of Bruno, burned alive as
a monster of impiety, of Galileo imprisoned and humiliated as the
worst of misbelievers we are apt to look upon these things as the
effect of Romish intolerance. But we should not forget that Kepler
who stands pre-eminently conspicuous, who lead science on to greater
victories than either Copernicus or Galileo, who thought and spake as
one inspired--even he was hunted alike by Protestant and Catholic. Nor
was this feeling of intolerance confined to any particular age. On the
contrary we behold its continuance even to our own times. In Protestant
England so late as 1772, the celebrated Dr. Priestly was not permitted
to accompany the famous expedition for scientific discovery under
Captain Cook, because he did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity
as taught by the Church of England.
On the 10th of May, 1859, was buried Alexander Von Humboldt. His labors
were among the greatest glories of this century, and his funeral one
of the most imposing of modern times. Among those who did themselves
the honor of following his remains to their last resting-place was the
present emperor of Germany. But no minister of any sect was present
except the officiating clergyman and a few others who were considered
as not in good standing in their respective churches. By these
instances and many others it might be shown how has been wrought into
the very fibre of modern society that pernicious idea that there is a
necessary antagonism between science and religion.
{34} The lessons thus taught were clear and convincing. Many
intelligent minds saw that Protestants as well as Catholics lacked not
merely the charitable spirit of the gospel, but likewise that knowledge
and authority, which are the certain results of divine revelation. The
result was soon apparent. A violent reaction followed. Germany, the
birthplace of the Reformation, is now the stronghold of infidelity.
And why was this? What was it that made large numbers of the best
men in Europe hate both the Catholic and Protestant religions? Why
did Ricetto, Bruno and Servetus in the hour of martyrdom turn with
loathing from that sacred emblem, the crucifix? The reason was simply
this: So-called Christianity had been made to them identical with
the most horrible oppression of mind, because they who had assumed
to represent Christianity had misrepresented it. In other words, the
absurd theories, rigid dogmas and heathenish superstitions of apostate
Christianity bore no more resemblance to the benign and heavenly
principles of the gospel, than an ancient Egyptian mummy, with its
shrunken skeleton and ghostly visage, bears to the person of a living
being in the meridian of his mental and physical powers. (_See appendix
to Vol. IV. Histoire des Mathematiques._)
Did space permit it would be easy to show that the Protestant sects
have opposed scientific truth as bitterly, and been overthrown as
completely as Rome has ever been. Not merely in the examples {35} of
geography and astronomy, but also in chemistry and natural philosophy,
as shown in the imprisonment of Roger Bacon and John Barillon; in
anatomy and surgery as illustrated in the persecutions against
Versalius, the great anatomist of the sixteenth century. Nor was it
merely in the olden times that this opposition was manifest. Scarcely
eighty years have passed since Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination,
barely escaped with his life from the persecutions of leading
religionists in Protestant England, for conferring upon mankind the
knowledge of prevention of a horrible disease. So, also, in 1847, James
Y. Simpson, the eminent Scotch physician, who did so much to alleviate
human suffering by means of anaesthetics, was denounced throughout
Europe and America by the leading Protestant ministers. The persecutors
seemed to forget that, in the first surgical operation of which we have
record, God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam. (See _Genesis ii._,
21.)
So, also, in geology, scarcely forty years have elapsed since both
Protestant and Catholic leaders were denouncing that science as a "dark
art," "infernal artillery," and "an awful evasion of the testimony
of revelation." While such honored names as Prof. Sedwick, Edward
Hitchcock, Louis Agassiz and Mary Somerville were denounced coarsely
by name for those studies which unfold the wonders of creation, and
illustrate the goodness of our Heavenly Father--studies that have made
their names honored throughout the world. (See _Silliman's Journal_.
Vol. 30, page 114.)
{36} And what has been the result of all this? In the older nations
have come forth, by natural reaction, the most formidable enemies
the so-called Christian church has ever known. Of these Voltaire and
Renan may be considered types, and there are many signs that the same
causes are producing similar results in our own country. Yet Renan,
Bennet and Ingersol are not haters of truth. Rather may it be said,
they hate counterfeits and are indignant at the assumptions of apostate
Christendom. In their impetuosity they have rushed into the other
extreme, and demand for science more than she can rightly claim.
* * * * *
CHAPTER III.
FALLACIES OF SCIENTISTS.
IGNORANCE OF SKEPTICS--ERRORS IN ASTRONOMY GEOLOGY NOT
RELIABLE--SCIENTISTS DISAGREE--TESTIMONIES OF HUGH MILLER--HUMBOLDT
--LYELL--SECOND-HAND KNOWLEDGE--OUR NEED OF FAITH.
"A little or superficial knowledge may incline a man's mind to atheism;
but depth in philosophy bringeth him back to religion." So said Francis
Bacon, one of the world's greatest philosophers, and history has proved
his saying to be true. The {37} great lights of the scientific world,
such as Columbus, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Herschel,
Agassiz, Rosse or Proctor, all have cherished a reverence for religion.
On the other hand, it is generally third or fourth rate men of
learning, or those whose impetuosity is greater than their judgment,
who ever attempt to achieve distinction as infidel lecturers. Men who
have failed in their business for want of capacity, frequently turn
misanthropes and denounce truths and men that they have not brains
enough to comprehend. True, apostate Christianity has been "weighed in
the balances and found wanting," but does that prove that there is no
vital, no divine religion that will satisfy the intellect of man with
its truths, and touch the heart with its love--a Christianity which,
bearing the full impress of its Author's image, shall take its place
among the various forces at work in society and eventually subordinate
them all? Nay, verily! As well might we say that because there are
counterfeit bank bills in existence, therefore, none are genuine.
One cannot help being amazed at the cool impudence with which infidels
take for granted the very points to be proved, and set aside, as
unworthy of serious examination, the most authentic records of history
and facts of science. When skeptics, who are determined not to believe
in the Bible, find the historical evidences of its genuineness,
authority and inspiration impossible to be overthrown by ridicule or
sophistry, they turn their attention to some other mode of attack;
and, of {38} late years, they have ransacked the whole circle of
sciences hoping to find a more powerful weapon. Especially has every
new discovery been hailed by skeptics as an ally to their cause, until
further acquaintance has proved that it was not so. Thus, when geology
began to upheave its titanic form it was eagerly greeted by skeptics;
but now that they have discovered the proofs it gives of a Creator they
are getting shy of its acquaintance.
It is, therefore, worth while to enquire, is science really so positive
as these persons pretend? Or, is it true that the students of the
physical sciences have no certain knowledge of their theories? We need
not here speak of the disputes between Herschel and Ferguson, Newton
and Brewster, La Place and Lionville. Rather let us begin with the most
positive of all sciences. _Mathematics_--the science of magnitude and
numbers--and note a few things concerning it. Upon reflection, it is
surprising how few subjects are capable of a mathematical demonstration.
The mathematician may demonstrate the size and properties of a
triangle, but he cannot demonstrate the continuance of any actual
triangle for one hour, or one minute after his demonstration.
A mathematical proof admits of no doubts or contingencies. A man may
calculate the force of the wind, but he cannot tell how long it will
continue to blow in that direction, whether it will increase to a
hurricane or subside to a calm. He may count the revolutions of an
engine, but he cannot test its extreme power, or prove its continued
{39} existence for a single hour. How many of the most important
affairs of life can be demonstrated by means of the multiplication
table? It would be safe to say not one in ten. Again, mathematics
frequently deal with purely ideal figures, which never did or never can
exist. There is not a mathematical line--length without breadth--in
all the universe. On careful examination, we find that there are no
mathematical figures in nature. We speak of the earth as a sphere,
but it is a sphere pitted with hollows as deep as the ocean, and
crested with protuberances as high as the Andes or Himalayas, in every
conceivable irregularity of form. There is not an acre of absolutely
level ground on the face of the earth; even its waters pile themselves
up in waves, or dash into breakers, rather than remain perfectly level
for a single hour. The microscope reveals the fact that the pearl is
proportionally rougher than the surface of the earth, and the dew-drop
is no nearer round than a pear. When we speak of the orbits of the
planets as elliptical or circular, it is only in a general way; just as
we speak of a circular saw, the outline of its teeth being regularity
itself, as compared with the motions of the planets in their orbits.
So also with _Astronomy_, it is far from being an exact science. From
the comparative simplicity of the forces with which it has to deal,
and the approximate regularity of the paths of the heavenly bodies,
it may be regarded as the science in which the greatest possible
certainty is attainable. {40} It opens, at once, the widest field to
the imagination, and the noblest range to the reason; it has attracted
the most exalted intellects to its pursuit, and has rewarded their
toils with the grandest discoveries. Lest we should ascribe to the
discoverers of the laws of the universe, the glory due to their
Creator, let us glance at some of the errors of astronomy.
Sir John Herschel, than whom none has a better right to speak on this
subject, devotes a chapter to the "Errors of Astronomy."
"No philosophical observation or experiment is absolutely accurate. The
error of a thousandth part of an inch in an instrument, will multiply
itself into thousands and millions of miles according to the distance
of the object."
To begin at our own little globe, where exactness is more easily
attained, than among distant planets, we find that two of the greatest
astronomers, Bessel and Newton, differ from each other in the
measurement of the diameter of the earth fully eleven miles. So also
the diameter of the earth's orbit is uncertain by 360,000 miles. Now
the diameter of the earth, and the diameter of its orbit are the very
foot rule and yard stick, as it were, by which astronomers measure the
heavens. (_See Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol, I. page 7, and Vol. IV. page
477._)
"Let us then be candid," says Loomis, "and claim no more for astronomy
than is reasonably due. When in 1846 the great astronomer Le Verrier
announced the existence of a planet hitherto unseen, and when he
assigned to it its exact position {41} in the heavens, and declared
that it shone like a star of the eighth magnitude, not an astronomer
of France, and scarcely one in Europe had sufficient faith in the
prediction to prompt him to point his telescope to the heavens."
So also geology, one of the most recent of the sciences, and in the
hands of infidel nurses one of the most noisy, has been found to be
unreliable in many particulars. True a wonderful outcry has been
raised about the antagonism between the records of the rocks, and the
records of the Bible. But no one has yet succeeded in proving such an
antagonism; for the plain reason that neither the Bible nor geology
says how old the earth is. They both say it is very old. The Bible
says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The
term here translated "in the beginning" signifies, as every Hebrew
scholar knows, a period of such remote antiquity, that in Bible
language it stands next to eternity. Now if the geologist could prove
that the earth is a thousand million years older than the time when
Adam appeared upon it, this would contradict no statement of the Bible.
So when infidels come to us with their geological theories about the
manner in which God made the earth, or in which the earth is said to
have made itself, and how long it took to do it, and tell us that
they have scientific demonstration from the rocks that the Bible is
false, we surely have a right to enquire into the foundation of these
theories upon which they have built such startling conclusions. Now it
is remarkable that every infidel {42} argument is based not upon the
_facts_, but upon the _theories_ of geology. But how does our infidel
geologist set about his work of proving that the earth has any given
age, say a thousand million years? Why he simply commences with a
theory or supposition. Yet a demonstration must rest upon facts, it
admits of no suppositions. In examining the crust of the earth we find
a great many layers of rocks, one above the other, evidently formed
below the water, some of them out of the fragments of former rocks
containing bones, shells and casts of fishes and tracks of the feet
of birds, made when these rocks were in the state of soft mud. These
layers form what is termed the crust of the earth, and are altogether
several miles in thickness. Yet not one of these layers gives us the
element of time. They announce to us successive generations of animals
and plants; but they do not tell us how long these generations lived.
We have every reason to believe that the condition of the world was
very different then, from what it is now; not only as regards its
temperature, of which we have many proofs that it was much higher than
at present; but likewise in regard to the density of the atmosphere
and the distribution of water on the surface of the globe. All these
conditions indicate that both animal and vegetable life were then
far different from what they are now, as the fossil remains of those
animals and plants abundantly and unquestionably prove. But in all this
we have no means of determining the duration of those species. The
various species of plants and animals may have flourished during a
period of a thousand, a million, or a thousand million years for all we
know.
{43}
[ILLUSTRATION: SECTION OF THE CRUST OF THE EARTH]
RECENT DEPOSITS--Showing remains of animals still existing.
QUATERNARY--Showing remains of some extinct and some living species.
First appearance of deciduous trees, (those that drop their leaves in
autumn) showing alternations of heat and cold.
Remains of vertebrates (animals having back bones) of the more perfect
species.
Mammals, (milk-giving animals); carnivora, (flesh-eating animals),
monkeys, etc.
First appearance of birds and land monsters, megatheriums, mammoths,
etc.
CRETACIOUS ROCKS--Age of reptiles and amphibious monsters, as
iguanodons, saurians and crocodiles.
CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS--Age of coal formation; first indications of
reptiles, numerous amphibious animals--supposed uniform climate.
SUB-CARBONIFEROUS--First traces of amphibious animals.
First traces of cone-bearing trees, pines, ferns, etc.
First fishes; first vertebrates; numerous shell fish; limestone strata.
Chalk measures; sandstone strata,
SILURIAN ROCKS--Few traces of life; old red sandstone.
HURONIAN ROCKS--No traces of life; gneiss, quartz, felspar, mica.
LAURENTIAN Rocks--Granite.
{44} Here is a problem exactly similar. On examination we find
that a certain house is built on a foundation of well-cemented concrete
three feet deep, that it has ten courses of stone in the basement,
forty courses of brick in the first story, thirty-six courses in the
second, thirty-two in the third; with a roof of nine inch rafters,
covered with inch boards, and an inch and a half layer of coal-tar and
gravel; now tell us how long was the house in building? Why the very
school-boy would laugh at the absurdity of such a question. He would
say, "How can I tell unless I know where the materials were obtained,
how they were conveyed, how many workmen were employed, and how much
they could do in a day? If the rock had been brought from a distance,
the brick to be made by hand, the lumber all dressed with a handsaw and
jackplane, and all the work done by a slowgoing jobbing contractor who
employed only three or four men--why, they would not get through in a
year. But if the rock was found in excavating the cellar, if the brick
were made by machinery and near at hand, the lumber dressed by steam
saw and planing mills, and thirty or forty workmen employed, it might
be all finished in a month."
So the geologist ought to say, "I do not know either the source of the
materials of the earth's strata nor the distance from which they were
conveyed to their present position, nor the forces which were employed
in changing them from their {45} primitive elements to the forms in
which we now see them; therefore I cannot tell the time required for
their formation. If the crust of the earth was originally fused into
granite by intense heat, and this granite has been thrown up into
vast mountains by the internal heat of the earth; and in turn, these
mountains have been slowly worn away, by the action of wind, rain and
frost, and conveyed down to the shores of the primeval ocean, by the
still slower agency of mountain torrents and rivers; and if these
deposits having first been the home of various species of animals and
plants have hardened into rock which in turn has been heaved up by
volcanic forces--if this was the mode of creation, hundreds of millions
of years may have been required to produce the effects we now see upon
the surface of the globe.
"But if the crust of the earth originally consisted of the various
elements of which granite and other rocks are composed, if (as is
generally conceded, granite is the lowest in the scale of all the rocks
with which man is acquainted,) the granite was fused into its present
condition by the intense heat generated by the chemical action of these
elements upon each other, and if the overlying strata were consolidated
by the vast pressure of a universal ocean, as is generally conceded to
have covered the earth at a certain geologic period, and if these rocks
were baked by their own chemical heat or by the continuous heat of the
underlying granite, while the cooler temperature of the water above
prevented the upper strata from becoming {46} so solid--then, under
such circumstances, a very few centuries might suffice." (_See Lyell's
Principles of Geology, chapters_ 12 _and_ 32.)
Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geology can make
no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formation of the
strata.
Again, all geological computations of time are made upon the
supposition that only the same agents were then at work which we now
see, that they wrought with the same degree of force and produced the
same results though working under widely different conditions. For
example, suppose it now takes a year to deposit mud enough at the
bottom of the sea, to make an inch of rocks, and _if mud was deposited
no faster_ in those remote ages, then the rocks would be as old as
there are inches in the eight or nine miles depth to which the strata
extends. But how can we prove that mud was deposited at the same rate
then as now? And so the whole fabric of geological chronology vanishes
into a mere unproved notion, based upon an _if_.
It is truly astonishing that any sober-minded person should allow
himself to be shaken in his religious convictions by the alleged
results of a science so unformed and imperfect, as geologists
themselves acknowledge their favorite science to be. Thus Hugh Miller
admits, "There are no calculations more doubtful than those of the
geologist;" and again, "It furnishes us with no certain clue by which
to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of {47} creation." (_See
Footprints of the Creator, page_ 313.)
These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to Him only. Men
attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law; but all
nature rises up against them in their presumptuous rebellion. A stray
splinter of cone-bearing wood, a fish's skull, the skeleton of a
reptile, the tooth or jaw of a quadruped, all or any of these things--
weak and insignificant as they may seem--when found imbedded in the
strata of the rocks, become evidence too strong for man and all his
theories. These puny fragments in the grasp of truth become weapons as
irresistible as the dry bone in the hand of Sampson of old; and our
slaughtered theories lie piled up heaps upon heaps before them.
Then, again, they are quarreling about the leading principles of the
science. Hopkins attempts to prove that the crust of the earth is
eight hundred miles thick, while Humboldt asserts that it is less
than twenty-four. As the temperature increases one degree for every
forty-five feet we descend into the earth, so, at that rate, in less
than twenty-four miles the heat would be so great as to melt iron and
almost any known substance. But here, again, they differ. Wedgewood
declares that iron melts at 21,000 degrees Fahrenheit; while Professor
Daniels is positive that it melts at 2,786 degrees, Fahrenheit. Only a
slight difference of 18,214 degrees.
But then comes the great question: if granite is the lowest layer in
the strata, what is below the {48} granite? De Beaumont affirms that
"the whole globe, with the exception of a thin envelope--much thinner
in proportion than the shell of an egg--is a melted mass kept fluid
by heat, but constantly cooling and contracting its dimensions and
occasionally cracking and falling in, and squeezing upwards large
portions of the mass, thus producing those folds or wrinkles which we
call mountain chains." On the other hand, Davy and Lyell think that "we
may perhaps refer the heat of the interior to chemical changes going on
in the earth's crust." So much for the uncertainties of geology.
If space permitted, it would be easy to go over other sciences and show
similar uncertainties in them all. It is worthy of notice that the
uncertainties of science increase just in proportion to our interest
in it. About what does not concern us, it is very positive; but very
uncertain about our dearest interests. The astronomer may calculate
with considerable certainty the movements of distant planets with which
we have no intercourse; but he cannot predict the heat or cold, clouds
or sunshine, and other phenomena continually occurring on our earth.
The forces of heat may be measured, to some extent, but what physician
can measure the strength of the malignant fever that is destroying the
life of his patient. The chemist can thoroughly analyze any foreign
substance, but the disease of his own body, which is bringing him to
the grave, he can neither weigh, measure nor remove. Science is very
positive about distant {49} stars and remote ages, but stammers and
hesitates about the very lives of its professors.
If such are the uncertainties of science to the actual investigators,
what shall we say to him who has learned his science at school? When
we meet with such an infidel, who denounces religion while he extols
the certainties of science, would it not be well to ask a few questions
such as the following? Have you personally measured the diameter of the
earth, observed the transit of Venus, or calculated the distance of the
moon? Or, further, would you feel yourself competent to perform such
labor; or is it possible that, after all your boasting, you have taken
your science at second-hand, and on the testimony of another? Again,
perhaps you are a student of the stone book (as scientists sometimes
call the strata of the earth's crust), with its enduring records graven
in the rock forever; and perhaps you profess to believe that under
these ponderous strata the Bible has found an everlasting tomb! But how
many of the volumes of this stone book have you perused personally!
Have you ever visited the many localities in our own country, to say
nothing of the instructive lessons to be learned from the strata of
England, Scotland, Wales, the Himalayas, the Andes and the Lauretian
rocks of Canada, where the different formations are to be seen? Have
you personally excavated from their beds, the various fossils that
form, as it were, the very alphabet of the science; or, is it possible
that all you know of geology is from the specimens of collectors, and
the statements {50} of lecturers aided by maps of ideal stratification
in rose-pink, brimstone-yellow and indigo-blue?
But perhaps you are a chemist, and proud, as most chemists are, of
the accuracy attainable in that most demonstrative science. But how
much of it is really science to you? Of the nine hundred and forty-two
substances mentioned in Turner's Chemistry, how many have you analyzed?
Could you truthfully say one-half, one-fourth, or even one-tenth? Much
less, would you face the laughter of a college class, to-morrow, upon
the experiment of taking nine out of the nine hundred, reducing them
to their primitive elements, and giving an accurate analysis of their
component parts?
In fact, do you know anything worth mentioning of the facts of science
upon your own knowledge, except those of the trade by which you make
your living? Or, after all your boasting about scientific certainty, is
it true that you have been obliged to receive your science upon faith,
at second-hand, and on the word of another, and to save your life you
could not tell who that other is, or even name the discoverers of half
the scientific truths you believe? Therefore, whatever precision may be
attained by scientific men--and we have seen that it is not much--it
is very certain you have none of it. The very best you can have to
wrap yourself in is a second-hand assurance, grievously torn by rival
schools, and needing to be patched every month by later discoveries.
{51} But this is not all. Most sciences are not only uncertain, but
also insufficient. We demand the knowledge of truths of which science
is profoundly ignorant. Of all the great problems and precious
interests which belong to me as a mortal or immortal being, science
knows nothing. I ask her whence I came. She points to her pinions
stretched over 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 her of the voice of conscience within--she never heard
it and does not pretend to understand it. I tell her of my anxieties
about the future--she is learned only in the past. I inquire how I may
be happy hereafter--but happiness is not a scientific term, and she
cannot even tell me how to be happy here! Poor, blind science!
Further still, all our dearest interests lie beyond the domains
of physical science, in the regions of faith. Science treats of
things--faith is confidence in persons. Take away the persons and of
what value are the things? The world becomes at once a vast desert, a
dreary solitude. I can live, and love, and be happy without science;
but not without companionship whose bond is faith. In its sunshine
alone can happiness grow. It is faith sends man out in the morning to
his work, nerves his arms through the toils of the day, brings him
home in the evening, gathers the children around the table, inspires
the oft-repeated efforts of the little prattler to ascend his parent's
knee, clasps the chubby arms {52} around his neck, looks with the most
confiding innocence into his eye and puts forth the little hand to
catch his bread and share his cup. Undoubting faith is happiness even
here below. Need we marvel, then, that man must be converted from his
pride of empty, barren science, and casting himself with all his powers
into the arms of faith, become as a little child before he can enter
into the kingdom of heaven?
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV.
DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
MANIFESTATIONS OF POWER--MOUNTAIN CHAINS--PHENOMENA THE EFFECT OF
CAUSE--EXTENT OF UNIVERSE--MANIFESTATIONS OF DESIGN--THE HUMAN
EYE--MATTER INERT--DID THE PAVING-STONES MAKE THEMSELVES?--THEORIES OF
BUFFON--OF DR. OLBERS--HISTORY DECLARES GOD'S GOVERNMENT.
"Nature is but the name of an effect whose cause is God."--COWPER.
"The infidel astronomer is mad."--HERSCHEL.
Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? Let us look out upon
nature, and see what there is to suggest the idea of God. Infidels
tell us that faith is destined to be left behind in the onward
march of intellect; that it belongs to an infantile {53} stage of
intellectual development; that children and childish notions are prone
to superstition, which is only another name for religion. To account
for the wonders of creation they will coolly talk of the eternity of
matter, and the action of natural laws, as if these assertions would
lead them out of their dilemma.
One of the most impressive lessons that a person ever learns, is from
the manifestation of power as shown in the phenomena of nature, as,
for example, when he gazes upon the phenomena of a thunder storm. The
dark and thickening cloud, the flashes of the lightning, the roaring
of thunder, the dashing of the rain and the wild sweep of the winds,
sometimes crushing forests in their pathway, are all manifestations of
an unseen power. Among the works of human hands, the traveler gazes
with amazement at the ponderous bulk of the pyramids. But what are
the pyramids to the Alps, which have been lifted by some power to an
altitude thirty-three times the hight of the largest pyramid? And yet
the Alps are little more than half the hight of the Andes, and not more
than a hundredth part of their mass. These ponderous mountain chains
have been upheaved bodily, tearing their way through masses of solid
rock miles in thickness, uplifting, crushing, tilting and dislocating
the solid floor of half a continent. Here is a power which may well
amaze us.
Again, no strain, that man has ever applied, has compressed or
stretched, in the least perceptible degree, a block of building stone.
In fact, the {54} architects and builders of the most ponderous
edifices, such as the Salt Lake Temple, make not the least allowance
for the compression of the stones which lie at their very base. Yet
such is the strain which nature exerts upon the rocky slabs built into
the hill-sides, that they yield like india-rubber to the pressure;
and when, by quarrying, the strain is relieved, the crushed rocks,
with a groan, ease themselves back to their original dimensions. (See
_Winchel's Reconciliation of Science and Religion, page_ 334.)
[ILLUSTRATION: IDEAL SECTION OF THE UINTAH MOUNTAINS, SHOWING UPHEAVAL
OF STRATA AND UNDERLYING GRANITE--AFTER POWELL.]
And yet, after all, this is but one of nature's feeblest efforts. Look
beyond the phenomena of uplifted mountain-masses, deep-scooped ocean
basins, forest-laying tempests and land-consuming waves. Look out
into limitless space! There hang worlds of ponderous bulk. They were
fashioned by some skillful hand; they are upheld by some mighty agency;
and moved onward in their {55} majestic course by some mysterious
power. We cannot bring our minds to comprehend that power; but let us
raise our thoughts and try to understand something concerning it. There
is the sun whose bulk is so great that, if its center was placed where
the center of the earth is, its body would extend in every direction
as far as the moon. Nay, farther, it would extend beyond the moon a
distance of twenty-four times the diameter of the earth. This vast sun,
still in the fiery vigor of its youth, imparting light and life to all
that dwell on the planets which revolve around it, is only one of the
numberless orbs that shine in the abyss of heaven.
Now, what is this power that has formed these glorious suns and sent
them whirling onward through the cycles of the ages? The infidel tells
us it is gravity. But what is gravity? Whence proceeds that mighty
force which men call by that name? Matter is inert, that is, it does
not possess the power of moving itself. It is evident, then, that
matter is acted upon by some power outside of itself. In human affairs
we can find no result without a cause, no design without a designer;
and, on thinking carefully, we find that every designer is under the
control of a will. So, in the field of nature, every phenomenon is but
the effect of some cause, and that cause must have acted under the
control of some intelligent will.
We are still more amazed when we consider the inconceivable space over
which this power extends. The bulk of the sun is beyond our mental
grasp. How then shall we comprehend its distance from {56} us? It is
generally considered that the sun is about ninety-two millions of miles
distant. It is easy to say these words, but difficult to realize their
meaning. Our express trains move at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
Now if a railway stretched from the earth to the sun, it would require
three hundred and fifty years for an express train to pass over it. If
Champlain, the founder of Quebec, and Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas,
so famous in early Virginia history, had stepped on board this train it
would still require nearly eighty years more for their descendants to
reach the end of their journey. The distance would still be so great,
that only the great grand-children of the present generation could
expect to reach the sun. And yet there is a power that reaches across
this vast distance, swings the world around its orbit like a haltered
colt trotting around a hitching post, lifts the ocean into a mighty
tide and lashes the rocky shores with the fury of the angry waves. But
this is not all. Light flashes across this mighty chasm in the brief
space of eight minutes and a half. The light by which we read these
lines started from the sun about the time we read the heading of this
article. What shall we say of a space so vast, that this light must
travel a year, a hundred, aye, even a thousand years before it reaches
its destination? And yet there is a power that governs even there,
a power so mighty that He "grasps the whole frame-work of stars and
systems, and sends them whirling and wheeling through the depths of
boundless space like a {57} handful of pebbles thrown through the air."
Well might the great philosopher and poet, Addison, exclaim:
"The spacious firmament on high
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
"In Reason's ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine."
While we are amazed at the manifestations of _power_ in creation, let
us not forget the indications of _intelligence_ and _design_ that exist
all around us. For example, I see a friend walking along the street
in the rain, with an umbrella over his head, and I feel that somebody
contrived that instrument with the design of keeping off the rain. In
one word, it was intended for that purpose. In like manner we perceive
marks of design and intelligence in the countless contrivances and
instruments used in every-day life. In fact, we cannot look upon the
simplest invention without feeling that it is the result of design
and intelligence. Now the world is full of contrivances, which were
not made by human hands, nor invented by human brains. The hand that
wrote these words or the hand that set up the type to print them is a
more ingenious contrivance than was ever made by human skill. If it
required intelligence to make a pen, did it not require still greater
intelligence to make the hand that wields the pen? If it required
design to {58} fashion a metal type, did it not require a still greater
design to form the hand that manipulates that type? not to speak of
that subtle and mysterious power, called the mind, which guides the
hand under both these circumstances.
In like manner we might observe the marks of design and mechanical
skill displayed in the formation of the eye. First, there is the cavity
in which it is placed, composed of seven little bones nicely fitted and
glued together, lined with the softest fat and enveloped in a tissue,
compared with which the softest silk is only coarse canvas. Then the
cavity is so shaped as to exactly fit the eye, while the brow projects
over like the roof of a veranda and the lids close down over it to
protect it from injury. Again, we find that the ropes and pulleys used
in the rigging of a ship are simplicity indeed as compared with the
nerves and muscles used in the movements of the eye.
[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Here there is an uncaptioned representation of the
anatomy of the human eye, with its major parts labeled.]
Most persons have seen a ship, and know the way in which the yards are
moved, and the sails squared by means of ropes and pulleys. Now, there
is a tackle called a muscle to pull the eye down when you want to look
down; another to pull it up when you have done; there is one to pull
it to the right, and another to pull it to the {59} left. There is one
fastened to the eyeball in two places, and so arranged that it will
move the eye in any direction, as when we roll our eyes; and a sixth
fastened to the under side of the eye to keep it steady when we do not
need to move it. Then the eyelids are provided with suitable gearing,
and it needs to be durable too, for it is said to be used thirty
thousand times a day, in fact, every time we wink.
Not less wonderful is the construction of the eye itself. The optic
nerve is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose
instead of it being where you observe it, at the back part of the
eye, it had been brought out to the front, and that reflections from
objects had fallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have
been exposed to injury from every floating particle of dust, and we
would always have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald
when the skin peels off and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to
the air. Also the tender points of the fibres of the optic nerve would
soon become blunted and the eye of course useless. How then is the
nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were
covered with skin as the other nerves are, we could not see through it.
For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knew no
substance at once hard and transparent, which could answer the double
purpose of vision and protection. To this day man knows no substance
clear enough for vision, hard enough for protection, and elastic enough
to resume its form {60} after a blow. Now observe in the eye, that
forward part, called the cornea, is as it were the watch-glass. It it
is made of a substance at once hard, transparent and elastic; something
which man has never been able to imitate.
It may be asked, what is the use of so many lenses in the eye? Light
when refracted through a lens, becomes separated into its component
colors--red, yellow, green, blue and violet. So that if the crystalline
lens of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object,
bluish in the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges. This
difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never
discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would
obviate it. That remained for M. Dolland, a celebrated physician,
to do; and he did it by studying and imitating the formation of the
eye. Now what absurdity to say that a law of nature, such as gravity,
or electricity has such a knowledge of the principles of optics and
mechanics as the eye proclaims its Former to have! In all this we see
marks of the most admirable design. The eye is fitted both to gaze at
the stars millions of miles away and minutely examine objects only a
few inches distant. In the brightness of sunshine the pupil contracts
in order to protect the optic nerve from injury; in twilight it expands
so as to admit a greater amount of light. When we wish to regulate
the admission of light to our rooms we have recourse to very clumsy
contrivances. A self-acting window which shall expand in the twilight
and partially close of its {61} own accord as the light increases
towards noon, has never been manufactured by man. In short, anatomists
have already observed more than eight hundred contrivances in the dead
eye, while the greatest contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is
utterly beyond their ken.
Similar arguments might be brought from every department of nature to
prove the marks of design in creation. The question therefore returns
with double force, _had the world a creator or did it make itself_?
There are persons who say it did, and with a brazen-faced impudence
declare that the Bible tells a falsehood when it says that, "In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." "Whereas," say they,
"we know that matter is eternal, and the world being wholly composed
of matter, therefore, the heavens and the earth are eternal--never had
a beginning nor a creator." Profound reasoning indeed! In the same
manner we might say, "Here is a well-burned brick, fresh from the kiln,
which may last for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has always
existed."
Again, it is claimed by some that matter is indestructible. The
foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. Who
knows that fact? for the very reason that no one can tell what matter
in its own nature is. We may heat water to a certain degree and change
it into steam, but it is all there in the steam. We may burn coal and
thus change is appearance, but its particles are all there, in the form
of gas, ashes or tar. All that any one can say is, that matter is {62}
indestructible by any power or agency known to man. But to assert that
matter is eternal, because man cannot destroy it, is as if a child
should try to beat a locomotive to pieces with his stick, and failing
in the attempt should say, "I am sure this locomotive existed from
eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."
But, supposing that matter is eternal, how does that account for the
formation of this beautiful world? The earth consists not of one
substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material
substances as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, and some
fifty-two or three others already discovered (_see Turner's Chemistry,
section_ 341). Now which of these is the eternal matter referred to?
Is it iron, or sulphur, or carbon, or oxygen? If it is any one of
them, where did the others come from? Did a mass of iron, for example,
becoming discontented with its condition, suddenly change itself into
a cloud of gas or a pail of water? Or are all the elements eternal?
Have we fifty-eight eternal substances? Are they all eternal in their
present combinations, or is it only the simple elements that are
eternal? Whatever may be the answers to these questions, they give
no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless
mass called matter, but a beautiful building composed of a variety of
substances. Has this earth existed as it is from eternity? No man who
ever was in a quarry or gravel pit will say so, much less one who has
the least smattering of chemistry or geology. If the elements which
{63} compose the earth have not always existed as we now find them,
then how came they to put themselves in their present shapes? Matter
has no power of putting itself in motion when at rest, nor of coming to
rest when in motion. A body will never change its place unless moved,
and if once started will move on forever unless stopped. For example,
if we leave our room, and on our return find a book missing, we know
that some one has taken it--the book could not have gone off at its own
suggestion.
Now will the infidels presume to tell us, that the fifty-eight primary
elements danced about till the air, sea and earth somehow jumbled
themselves together into the present shape of this glorious and
beautiful world, with all its regularity of day and night, Summer and
Winter, with all its beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its
variety of birds, beasts and fishes, not to speak of the beauties of
the morning, the gorgeous dyes of sunset, or the silent glories of
the midnight sky. Or to bring the question down to the level of the
intellect of the most stupid atheist, tell us in plain English, _did
the paving stones make themselves_?
Absurd as it seems, there are persons claiming to be philosophers who
not only assert that they did, but will tell you how they did it. One
class of them think they found it out by supposing everything in the
universe reduced to very fine powder, consisting of very fine grains,
which they call atoms; or, if that is not fine enough, into gas, of
which it is supposed the particles are too fine {64} to be perceived,
and then by different arrangements of these atoms, according to the
laws of attraction, electricity, or some other law, the various
elements of the world were made, and arranged in their present forms.
But then the difficulty is only multiplied millions of times. Each bit
of paving stone, no matter how small you break it, can no more make
itself or move itself, than could the whole stone composed of all these
bits. So we are landed back at the sublime question, _did the paving
stones make themselves_?
Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a
vast cloud of fire-mist. What this fire-mist is they do not know, but
only that there are certain comets, which come within fifty or sixty
millions of miles of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of
fire-mist. Hence they imagine that the earth also may have been made
from the same fire-mist. But where did the mist come from? Did the mist
make itself? Where did the fire come from? Did it kindle of its own
accord? Who put the fire and the mist together? Was it red hot enough
from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler now? If it
existed as a red hot fire-mist from eternity, why should it ever begin
to cool at all? Infidels claim that there was nothing else in all the
universe except this fire-mist. Then the cause of all this must have
been in the mist itself. In other words, _the fire-mist made itself,
then the paving stones and the infidels afterwards_.
{65} Others suppose that the world was once in a stage of solution,
in primeval oceans, and that the mixing of these waters caused them
to deposit a sediment, which hardened into rock, then vegetated into
plants and trees, then grew into animals, these in turn developed
into monkeys, and finally the monkeys into men. Thus it is clearly
demonstrated that there is no need for the Creator if we only had
somebody to make these primeval oceans, somebody to mix them together,
and somebody to establish these laws of development.
Another favorite theory among infidels, is that of Buffon, the
vain-glorious French philosopher. His theory was that the sun is a vast
melted mass, and that once on a time a huge comet struck the sun in
such a manner, that portions of it splashed off, just as a stone thrown
in a slanting direction into a bucket of water would cause portions
of the water to splash out of the vessel. These portions of matter
(acting under certain laws) then formed themselves into spheres and
being condensed by cold have become solid planets and satellites. Thus,
according to this idea, creation was only an accident after all. Still,
as might be expected, thinking men kept asking: "Where did the sun come
from? What melted it down into a fluid state fit to be splashed about?
Where did the comet come from? And who threw it with so correct an aim,
as to hit the sun exactly in an oblique direction."
{66} [ILLUSTRATION: SOLAR SYSTEM]
This idea received considerable encouragement from a certain class of
scientific men during the early part of this century. Between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is a vast space which was supposed
to be unoccupied. In the first seven years of this century, three
small planets were discovered revolving in orbits midway between Mars
{67} and Jupiter. Afterwards many others were discovered until now
the number exceeds two hundred. Dr. Olbers, the discoverer of two of
them, Pallas and Vesta, finding that their orbits were comparatively
near together and sometimes crossed each other, imagined that they
were formed by the explosion of a large planet or by a comet coming
in contact with a large planet and thus shattering it to pieces.
This theory seemed all the more plausible seeing that these minor
worlds or "pocket planets," as Herschel styles them, are exceedingly
diminutive. So, to use a familiar illustration, he imagined the boiler
of a large locomotive had burst and the fragments had all alighted on
the track in the shape of hand-cars; much more, that the hand-cars had
magnanimously resolved to keep running and do the business of the line.
At first sight this theory seemed strengthened by every new discovery.
It is true, reflecting men could not help wondering at such a strange
event, that would produce beautiful little planets all by accident.
They never heard of the blowing up of a palace producing cottages, or
the fragments of a steam-ship changing into yawl-boats, nor even the
pieces of a wrecked locomotive becoming neat little engines or even
respectable hand-cars. However, as the theory removed God out of sight,
it was generally accepted by the infidels and freely used by them, to
show that the world has no need of a Creator.
Genuine scientists, however, were not long in seeing the
absurdity and demonstrating the {68} impossibility of such a theory.
It was found that their orbits did not coincide by more than twenty
millions of miles. Again, it has been proven that comets are incapable
of greatly affecting a sun or planet. Herschel says, "It is evident
that the most unsubstantial clouds which float in the highest region of
our atmosphere must be looked upon as dense and massy bodies compared
with the filmy texture of a comet."
Thus Reason declares, that 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 God. The work is not the
workman; the house is not the builder; the watch is not the watchmaker.
The maker is always distinct from the thing made and superior to it.
You, and I, and the universe have been made; therefore, our Creator is
distinct from us, and superior to us.
The consciousness of our ignorance and weakness confirms this fact.
The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the universe. In
his present state he has not yet acquired a knowledge of the laws and
functions of the body he inhabits, much less the laws that sway the
universe. He may know much about what does not concern him; but he
feels his weakness where his dearest interests are concerned. He may
be able to tell the place of a distant planet a century hence; but he
cannot tell where he himself will be next year. He may calculate for
years the motion of the tides; but he cannot tell how his own pulse
will beat to-morrow, {69} or whether it will beat at all. Ever as his
knowledge of the laws of nature increases, his conviction deepens that
a wiser head and a stronger hand than his planned and rules the world.
The world's history declares the existence and government of God.
History is but the record of men's acts and God's providences, of men's
crimes and God's punishments. Once He swept away the human race with a
flood of water because the wickedness of man was great upon the earth.
Again, He testified His displeasure against the wicked of Sodom and
Gomorrah by consuming those cities by fire from heaven, and leaving
the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to the end of time.
No amount of learning or skill, wealth or commerce, power of arms,
or extent of territory, has ever secured a wicked nation against the
sword of God's justice. Read the black record of the past. Where is
the greatness of Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon and Petra? Tyre had ships,
colonies and commerce, Rome an empire of half a hemisphere; Greece had
philosophy, arts and liberty secured by a confederation of republics,
Spain the treasures of the earth's gold and silver? but these did
not exempt them from the moral government of God. His laws sway the
universe, and link together sin with misery, and crime with punishment,
in the brazen fetters of eternal justice. These nations have been
hurled down from the pinnacle of their greatness, to dash themselves in
pieces against each other in the valley of destruction; and there they
lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save
some shivered fragments of former greatness, to show that they once
existed and were the enemies of God.
{70} [ILLUSTRATION: THE DEAD SEA]
{71}
* * * * *
CHAPTER V.
OUR NEED OF REVELATION.
REVELATION PROGRESSIVE--ITS RELATION TO CIVILIZATION--SOLOMON--HIS
PROVERBS--NEWMAN'S ABSURDITIES--CARLYLE--PARKER--HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY
IMMORAL--ANCIENT ROMAN SONGS--CHARACTER OF HEATHEN DEITIES--RELIGION
OF INDIA--COMPTE--BRADLAUGH--CHESTERFIELD--PAINE.
The philosopher finds only two books in all the world--two divine,
original books, viz., the _Volume of Nature_, and the _Revelations of
God_. All others are mere commentaries upon these two original, divine
books. To these pertain all that has been thought, said or written, in
all the ages past; and, we might add, all that ever will be written in
all the ages to come. That which explains, delineates or illustrates
the volume of nature is called Science. That which unfolds to us the
attributes of God, our own nature and destiny is revelation. It treats
of that which man cannot otherwise perceive; its records are called
the _Scriptures_ or Books of _Inspiration_. {72} The volume of nature is
written upon the rocks, fields, forests and all the varied forms of
animal life, in symbolic characters, which it is the province of
science to decipher. The volume of revelation is the impress of the
divine will on man's spiritual nature. Thus both are the handwriting
of Deity Himself. Science teaches us material laws in relation to
time. Revelation instructs not merely in these, but likewise includes
spiritual laws and eternal duration. The lessons that man learns
from age to age are progressive even as a school boy's. Science and
revelation are therefore progressive, though in somewhat different
ways. The former advances mainly through the exercise of human reason;
the latter through man's more favored circumstances, and the increased
divine illumination of his spiritual nature. How vain, how arrogant the
babblings of the sectarians who tell us that the book of revelation
is forever closed! That man, in this puerile state, has already taken
possession of the whole treasure of divine truth! That the human mind
with its poor plummet has already sounded the depths of the divine
oracles! Still more benighted are they who do not see that there is
a divine as well as human element in all our progress, that purity
of heart is necessary for the clearest perception even of the truths
of science. Thus the nations as well as the individuals who have the
highest spiritual light are precisely those who have made the greatest
intellectual progress. If we look over a map of the world we find
that those {73} nations which possess the purest religious ideas are
precisely those which have made the greatest intellectual, social and
political progress. Now religious ideas emanate from God. They are the
result of the action of the divine will on the minds of men. Thus the
progress of the nations depends upon the revelations of God.
Thousands of years ago, Solomon perceived this fact. He was a man of
great learning as well as practical common sense. He understood not
merely the science of government, but likewise botany, or the science
of plants, from the mighty trees that grew on Mount Lebanon, to the
tiny hyssop that grew in crevices of the garden wall: and the natural
history of beasts and birds, reptiles and fishes. He was also skilled
in literature; he is said to have made "three thousand proverbs, and
his songs were a thousand and five" (_see I. Kings, iv chap_). Better
than all this, in the opinion of many, especially infidels, he made
money, and tells us how to make and keep it. Any young man will make
hundreds of dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting on them. They
would have saved some of us many a thousand. Of course Solomon knew
something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader; his ships coasted
the shores of Asia and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan; and the
overland 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
peacocks (_see I. Kings, chap. x_). Solomon 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 between the nations of the
earth. Some were enlightened, enterprising, civilized and flourishing;
others were naked savages, perpetually at war with each other, living
in ignorance, poverty, vice and on the verge of starvation.
{74} [ILLUSTRATION: GIANT CITIES OF BASHAN, BUILT BY SOLOMON]
{75} Solomon also noticed another fact, that the nations
which were favored with the revelations of God, were the civilized,
enterprising and comparatively prosperous nations. In Palestine,
Chaldea and Mesopotamia, God had revealed His will to certain persons
for the benefit of the race. Even Egypt, it is now generally admitted,
passed through the era of her greatest prosperity at the time she was
in close relationship and communication with the Hebrew Patriarchs,
Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, who were the living oracles of God, and
whose influence greatly increased for a time her national prosperity.
On the other hand the nations that were uninfluenced by the revelations
of God, were the idolatrous savages, who were but little above the
level of the brutes. Solomon epitomized these great facts in the
proverb, "Where there is no vision the people perish, but he that
keepeth the law, happy is he" (_Proverbs xxix_, 18).
"O," says the skeptic, "the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's
days. He lived in the old times of ignorance and superstition, when men
attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But we are too wise
now to believe in revelation."
{76} Again, Straus says, "No just notion of philosophy or history
is possible which includes a belief of those things that we do not
understand." Depth of wisdom indeed! We do not understand how a blade
of grass grows, therefore we must deny its existence.
One cannot 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 these arrogant
assertions, as if they were self-evident truths. Let us look at this
argument for a moment. Pagan religions have their fables, therefore,
the Hebrew and Christian records are fables. In other words, since
counterfeit bank bills exist therefore none are genuine.
Skeptics offer no proofs that miracles are impossible. Yet, surely,
if they imply a contradiction, that contradiction could be shown. The
creation of this world is the most stupendous of all miracles; yet all
men admit that this miracle occurred. The experience of man is not the
limit of knowledge. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural.
The world is as full of supernatural works as of natural. The miracles
recorded in the strata of the earth's crust are as great as any
recorded in the Bible.
If, as the infidel asserts, religion and superstition are identical,
and ignorance is the cause, how {77} happens it that the most
intellectual and progressive nations are those which have the clearest
religious ideas? The history of nations universally and unequivocally
declares this fact. Even among the so-called Christian nations of
Europe and America we find their intellectual culture and general
progress in exact proportion to the purity of their respective faiths.
While we look in vain, among the heathen nations of Africa to find a
single benefactor of the race, or one worthy to be distinguished among
the millions of her population in all the countless generations past.
In the face of all this we find a sort of spiritualistic philosophers
who tell us that we have no need of communication from God. Newman, in
his _Phases of Faith, page_ 157, says, "Miraculous phenomena will never
prove the attributes of God if we do not know these things in and of
ourselves." Carlyle, in his _Past and Present, page_ 307, exclaims,
"Revelations! inspirations! indeed! and thy own mighty transcendent,
god-like soul, dost thou not call that a revelation?" Such sort of
trash, which passes for profound philosophy, is taught in hundreds
of colleges, and is echoed from thousands of pulpits by men who call
themselves Christian ministers, but who could not reap their rich
salaries if they would openly avow their atheism.
Theodore Parker says, "If a fact depends upon revelation, it is not
eternally true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all."
Profound philosophy indeed!--as if eternally true, and sufficiently
known were just the same thing. To use {78} a familiar illustration,
because vaccination would always have prevented the small pox, if it
had been known, therefore the world is under no obligation to Jenner
for informing us of the fact. Newman adds in another place, "I cannot
receive instruction from another being." Again, "Neither God nor man
can reveal any religious truths to our minds." Parker says, "On His
(God's) word or as His second, be he whom he may, I can accept nothing"
(_Parker's Discourse page_ 209).
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 or fifty years ago, they made their appearance
among mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to
know their own names or who they were, or where they came from, and
were actually dependent on an external revelation, from their nurses,
for sense enough to find their mothers' breasts. And as they grew a
little larger, they learned the art of speaking articulate sounds, by
external revelation: viz., hearing and repeating sounds made by others.
Further, on a certain day they had a book revelation made to them, in
the shape of a ten cent primer, and received their first lessons by
the instructions of another. They had not then the least "insight,"
or "spiritual faculty," or "mighty transcendent soul," by which they
could learn all things in and of themselves. Faith in the word of their
teachers was absolutely the only means by which they learned to speak,
read and write.
{79} But this is not half their indebtedness to external revelation.
They admit that a Feejee cannibal has just the same "mighty and
transcendent soul" that they themselves have. How, then, does it happen
that Newman, Emerson and Parker, and all their followers, who are too
proud to be taught of God, are not assembled around a cannibal's oven,
smearing their faces with the blood and feasting themselves on the
limbs of women and children? Is it not, after all, the revelations of
God and the teachings depending thereon that make the whole difference
between the civilized American and his Feejee brother?
It is amusing to see how these modern atheists, who reject Moses
and the Prophets, as well as Christ and His Apostles, will permit
themselves to go into ecstacies over the supposed wisdom of ancient
heathen philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. But on
examination we find that the teachings of all these philosophers
were immoral. The gratification of the sensual appetites was openly
taught. "He may steal," says Plato, "who knows how to do it." Oaths are
frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. Anstippus taught that
a wise man had a right to commit adultery. Aristotle vindicated the
awful crimes of foeticide and infanticide. Even suicide was defended by
Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero, and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus
and Cassius carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they
might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.
{80} The laws of the best-regulated heathen states commended or
approved of vice. The student of the classics need not be reminded
that the songs of Ovid, Horace and Virgil would not be tolerated in
the vilest theater of New York or Chicago. The laws of Sparta required
theft, and the murder of unhealthy children. The Carthaginian law
required human sacrifices; and in ancient Babylon, prostitution was
compulsory on every female. Plato, dissatisfied with the laws of
his country, wrote out a code of morals and laws which he thought
much better. In this heathen Utopia the ideas of home and family
were ignored. Marriage was to be unknown; 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. Little boys and girls
were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that the young whelps
may early scent carnage and be inured to slaughter." Such were the
loftiest ideas of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. After all his
speculations and writing, Plato admitted, "We cannot know of ourselves
what petition will be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay
to Him; but it is necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven
to instruct us. Oh, how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further
adds, "This lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us things
man cannot know by his own nature." Who has not dropped a tear over the
dying words of Socrates? "I am going out of the world, and you are to
continue in it, but which of us has {81} the better part is a secret to
every one but God!" Also those memorable words, "We must of necessity
wait till some one, who careth for us, shall come and instruct us how
we ought to behave toward God and toward man."
Nor is it to be expected that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and
other heathen nations should have an exalted idea of virtue, when we
consider the character of the gods they worshiped. The Egyptian deities
consisted of bulls and dogs, cats and rats, snakes and crocodiles. When
a dog died the whole house went into mourning and fasted till night. A
Roman soldier who had accidentally killed a cat was punished with death
(_see Diodorus Siculus, Book I_). The "great, mighty and transcendent
soul," as Carlyle terms it, had been degraded so low that there is a
picture in one of the pyramids, of an Egyptian king worshiping his own
coffin.
The Greeks from their intercourse with the Jews learned some correct
religious ideas, especially after the conquest of Palestine by
Alexander, and the translation of the scriptures into the Greek
language, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C. 240. Before
this period little sense can be found in their religion. Their gods
were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had
thirty thousand. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was an adulterer.
Mars, a murderer. Mercury, a thief, Bacchus, a drunkard and Venus,
a prostitute. To their inferior gods they attributed other crimes
too horrible to be mentioned. These gods {82} they worshiped with
ceremonies of lust, drunkenness and bloodshed unfit to be described.
If any one supposes that the condition of the modern heathens is any
better than it was in ancient times, let him turn to India, where
he will find one hundred and fifty millions of rational beings,
possessing, as Theodore Parker says, "all needful spiritual light,"
who worship three hundred and thirty millions of gods in the form of
hills and trees, rivers and rocks, elephants and tigers, monkeys and
rats, serpents and crocodiles, and monsters unlike anything in heaven
or on earth. The monster idol, Juggernaut, will do as a specimen of
all. Around his temple countless multitudes from all parts of India,
congregate annually, many of them having measured with their own bodies
the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage. Within the temple, the
monster idol, with its frightful grim and distorted visage, sits
enthroned, amid thousands of massive sculptures, the representative
emblem of that cruelty and vice which constitute the very essence of
his worship. There in their sacred city of Benares may be seen at all
times crowds of religious devotees and mendicants; some remaining
all day with their heads on the ground and their feet in the air;
some cramming their eyes with mud and their mouths with straw; others
with their limbs fastened in unnatural positions, and still others
with little pots of fire placed upon their breasts, hoping by these
self-inflicted tortures to win the favor of the god. When the day of
the high festival arrives, the horrid idol is {85} dragged forth from
his temple and mounted on a lofty car in the presence of hundreds of
thousands who rend the air with their shouts, "Victory to Juggernaut!"
Then the officiating priest commences the ceremonies by a loathsome
pantomimic exhibition accompanied by the utterance of obscene and
filthy songs, to which the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in
the strains of tuneful melody, but in loud yells of approbation. After
this the terrible carnage commences; for as the car is dragged through
the streets, the more enthusiastic devotees throw themselves beneath
the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the infatuated victims
of hellish superstition. On the neighboring hills, the so-called sacred
vultures may be seen feasting on these corpses and the bleak and barren
sands on the roadside are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of
deluded pilgrims, which lie bleaching in the sun (_see Duff's India,
page_ 222).
Of course, high-toned infidels do not consider themselves as debased
as the natives of India. What then is the tendency of their teachings?
M. Compte, a leading skeptical writer, tells us, "Childhood should be
taught to worship idols, youth to believe in one God, and full grown
men (like himself) to adore the resultant of all the forces of the
universe, _not forgetting their worthy friends the animals_" (_see
Politique Positive, Vol. II._ page 60). If this is not the teachings of
idolatry, what is it?
Again, we find that the whole school of infidel writers vindicate and
apologize for the very worst {84} of crimes. Bradlaugh, the leading
atheist of England, declares that, "A man is no more to be blamed for
the indulgence of lust or anger, than he is for thirst or drowsiness."
Hume, whose arguments are so often used by American infidels, taught
that "adultery must be practiced by mankind, if they would obtain all
the advantages of life." Lord Chesterfield, another prominent infidel,
in his letters to his son (which were designed for publication)
instructs him in the art of seduction, as part of a polite education.
Nor is the character of infidels any better than their teachings. Take,
for example, Thomas Paine, the author of the Age of Reason, whose
birth-day is annually celebrated, and who is held up by infidels as a
model for the young. A few extracts from a letter written to him, by
his fellow-infidel, and co-worker, William Carver, may not be out of
place.
"New Rochelle, December 2nd, 1803.
"Mr. Thomas Paine.
"Sir:--I received your letter dated the 25th ult., 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 take you to New York, from New Rochelle. It
is fortunate for me that I have a living witness who saw you give me
five guineas, and no more in my shop at your departure at that time.
Now you have means, why do you not pay me the remainder? You said you
would have given me more, but that you had no more with you at that
time. You say, also, {85} that you found your own liquors during the
time you boarded with me; but you should have said that you found
only a small part of the liquor you drank during your stay with me.
That part you purchased of John Fellows and consisted of a demi-john
of brandy containing four gallons, and that did not serve you three
weeks. This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything that I
cannot 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, besides the demi-john above
mentioned, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Was not this a
sufficient supply 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?"
Such is the morality of those who denounce the Bible as an immoral
book, and blaspheme the God of revelation as too vile to be reverenced
or worshiped. Not even the friends of Paine have ever denied the
genuineness of this and other letters that clearly reveal his private
character. (For full particulars see _Discussion Between Dr. Berg and
Mr. Barker, published by W. S. Young, Philadelphia,_ 1854.)
Once in modern times a nation had the opportunity of showing the world
a specimen of an infidel republic. The Bible was publicly burned. Death
was declared an eternal sleep; God was declared a fiction, the Sabbath
was abolished and religious worship denounced. And what was {86} the
consequence? Revolution after revolution occurred. Thousands, aye
millions, of the sons of France were slain in the wars that ensued.
Wave after wave of blood rolled through the guilty streets of Paris,
and the people were clothed in mourning from one end of the land to the
other. In the Declaration of Independence it is declared that, "Mankind
are endowed _by their Creator_ with certain inalienable rights." It is
well said: the law of God is the only secure basis for the rights of
man.
{87}
CHAPTER VI.
VALIDITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AS SHOWN BY INTERNAL EVIDENCE.
INFLUENCE OF THE SCRIPTURES--THEIR AGREEMENT WITH SECULAR
HISTORY--COLONY OF PHILIPPI--ANCIENT COIN--CERTAINTY OF BIBLE
HISTORY--GIBBON'S TESTIMONY--QUOTATIONS OF CELSUS--MARCION THE
APOSTATE--CLASSIFICATION OF NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS--AVOCATIONS OF THE
APOSTLES--THEIR MANNER OF PREACHING--THEY CHALLENGED CRITICISM--DENIAL
OF MIRACLES, A MODERN INVENTION--SUFFERINGS OF THE APOSTLES--THEY
SEALED THEIR TESTIMONY WITH THEIR BLOOD.
Faith rests upon facts, superstition on theories. Faith is increased
by intelligence, superstition by ignorance, Faith courts investigation
for thereby it is strengthened; superstition shuns it as fatal to its
existence. Thousands can bear witness to the truth of the words of the
Savior, "If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself;" yet surrounded
as we are by skeptics and cavilers of every sort, it is well that we
should be prepared to ward off the fiery darts of the wicked, to meet
them with their own arguments, and as the youthful {88} David did to
Goliath in days of old, cut off the boastful atheistic giant's head
with his own sword.
In looking over the history of the world, we find that those books,
which collectively are called the scriptures, have in all ages, exerted
a controlling influence over the destinies of mankind. Their teachings
are perused with pleasure by the child, and pondered with patience by
the philosopher. Their practical wisdom has guided the judgment of the
wisest kings of antiquity and still teach the humblest peasant his duty
to his neighbor. Their precious promises have lighted the prophetic
eyes of old; they are still chanted by the mother over her cradle, and
by the orphan over the tomb. Here, thousands of miles distant from the
places where they were first revealed, in a language unknown alike at
Cumorah and Jerusalem, they rule as lovingly and as powerfully as in
their native soil.
With all these palpable facts in view, let us enquire into the origin
of the book which has produced such results. On looking at the Bible we
find it composed of a number of separate treatises written by different
authors, at various times; some parts fifteen hundred years before the
others. We find also, that it treats of the very beginning of the world
before man was made and of matters of which we have no other authentic
history. Again, we find portions which treat of events connected in a
thousand places with the affairs of the Medo-Persian, Macedonian and
Roman empires, of which we have several credible {89} histories. Now
the statements made in these works, so far as they refer to subjects
mentioned in the Bible agree with the Biblical record, in every
particular. Further, the inscriptions on monuments and ancient coins
have often settled mooted questions in history and invariably have been
found to agree with the scriptural narrative. For example, we are told
in Acts, xiv 12, that Paul went "to Philippi, which is the chief city
of that part of Macedonia, and a colony." "Now," says the infidel,
"Greece at that time was a conquered country; and it was contrary
to Roman customs to form colonies of Roman citizens in conquered
countries. Besides, we have no account by any Roman historian that
Philippi was a colony. Hence we may conclude that the New Testament
account is incorrect."
[ILLUSTRATION: FACSIMILE OF COIN FOUND AT PHILIPPI]
At first all this seemed plausible, but a few years ago, a scientific
association was formed to excavate among the ruins of eastern cities,
and, among others, Philippi came in for a share of attention. In
excavating around one of the ruins an ancient coin was unearthed,
which bore upon its surface the effigy of a Roman emperor, surrounded
by the following inscription: "PHILIPPI COLONA, CLAUDIUS IMPERATOR,"
which signifies in plain English, "_Colony of Philippi, Claudius being
emperor_."
{90} Here, then, we have an ancient Roman coin bearing testimony to the
truth of God's word. Further, by means of this coin we see a depth of
meaning, in the last five verses of the 16th chapter of Acts, not at
first perceptible. We are thus able to perceive, in some degree, the
terror of the Philippian magistrates when they learned that Paul and
Silas were also Romans.
Day by day as scientific investigation proceeds we hear of additional
corroborative evidence. Every year throws some new light on oriental
manners and customs, while from the ruins of Nineveh and the sepulchres
of Egypt, we receive unlooked-for testimonies to the minute accuracy
of the inspired penmen. The objection that the scriptures contain
mysteries, or statements which are difficult to be understood, is
in reality one of the strongest proofs of their divine source and
authority. The words of a teacher are often misunderstood by the pupil,
because the pupil's mind is not sufficiently developed to comprehend
them. Sometimes, indeed, they are entirely misapprehended for the same
reason. So also, it is to be expected that the full import of the
divine communications would sometimes transcend the partially-developed
intellect of man. The thoughts and methods of infinite wisdom,
expressed in the plainest of human words, must sometimes remain
inscrutible. After all that can be said in reference to the weakness of
the human medium, through which the divine will has been communicated,
we find in the scriptures, a wonderful agreement with the development
of {91} truths which have come to man in the progress of the ages.
Science has never successfully impeached any statement of the
scriptures when rightly interpreted. For example, "in the first chapter
of Genesis we find a brief account of the creation of the world.
Until modern times, it was the popular opinion that this narrative
taught that the earth and heavens were created during an interval of
six days of twenty-four hours each and that the work dates back but a
few thousand years. These views were entertained when our Bible was
translated into English. Since that date, several sciences have sprung
into existence which throw a vast amount of light on the history of
the creation; and if King James' translators had their work to perform
to-day, they would see meanings in Genesis of which the world had not
dreamed two hundred years ago; and they would make the translation read
a little differently, _in order to make it agree more exactly with the
original Hebrew_." (_Winchell's Reconciliations page_ 357).
Have we not here one of the plainest admissions of the total apostasy
of the so-called Christian church? Had the translators of the
scriptures been in possession of the Holy Spirit, they would have had
no difficulty in translating the sentiments dictated by that same
Spirit to the seers and prophets in ages past. Then, too, we would
have had a translation which would have furnished a key by which to
detect the true science from the false. In Genesis we have an account,
to which, when rightly understood, the latest indications of {92}
science admirably conform. This circumstance alone, ought to be strong
evidence, even to a skeptic, of its super-human origin. Written ages
before the birth of modern sciences, there was the utmost liability for
mere human authorship to fall into the most egregious misstatements
respecting the phenomena of the natural world; but in point of fact
some of its statements were so far in advance of the highest human
knowledge in all the ages past, and even the boasted science of the
nineteenth century, that we are only just beginning to understand them.
Now, the only way for us to know anything beyond our eyesight, is
to examine it, and gather testimony about it. All the blessings of
education, civilization, law and liberty have come to us through the
channel of abundant, reliable testimony. There is perhaps, not a man
living who was present at the battle of Quebec, in the encampment of
Valley Forge, or heard Washington deliver his farewell address; yet
the fact that these things transpired as they are related, no one will
doubt. Few persons now living ever saw Washington, yet no one doubts
that he lived. Certainty about the Bible history is just as attainable
as certainty about American history. Let us begin at the present and
trace the records back to the times in which the New Testament was
written. We presume there are few persons as ignorant as an infidel
lecturer we once heard, who, when asked, "Who compiled the scriptures?"
answered, after some hesitation, "The American Bible Society."
{93} Sometimes infidels tell us that the Emperor Constantine called
various councils which compiled the New Testament, in the fourth
century. We can scarcely wonder at this statement coming from those
who look upon the Catholic church as representing Christianity.
Constantine, the man who had murdered two of his sons, and strangled,
while in a bath, the wife who had trusted in him, was surely a worthy
representative of that church whom the Apostle John styles _the mother
of harlots and abominations of the earth_. Still we cannot help asking
how it was that this murderer who had made himself obnoxious even
in pagan Rome on account of his crimes and his confederates equally
wicked, was able to dictate words of such sublime virtue as are
everywhere found in the New Testament. The infidel, Gibbon, attempts
to explain, and tells us "The austerity, purity and zeal of the first
Christians, their good discipline, their belief in the resurrection of
the body, and the general judgment, and their persuasion that Christ
and His apostles wrought miracles, had made a great many converts."
But how came they to have this "belief, purity and zeal?" Just as if
we should enquire how the Chicago fire originated, and you should tell
us, that it burned very fast because it was very hot. What we want to
know is how it happened that frivolous Greeks, licentious Asiatics
and warlike Romans at once became pure and adopted the humble life
of the early Christians? What implanted the belief of a judgment to
come in the minds of {94} these heathen scoffers? Gibbon admits that,
"Christian churches were sufficiently numerous in the Roman empire,
to make it politic for the emperor to profess Christianity, and
sufficiently powerful to secure his success." Thus according to the
admissions of an infidel writer the Christians were already numerous,
and the story of Constantine forming the New Testament, which had been
read in churches and believed in for two hundred years, is as absurd as
to hear it stated that the saloon keepers, prize-fighters and hoodlums
of New York had just assembled in the Large Tabernacle in Salt Lake
City to construct the revelations contained in the book of Doctrine and
Covenants, which have been already accepted and believed by the Saints,
for more than fifty years.
If, on the other hand, we consult any or all of the hundreds of
manuscripts mentioned by Mosheim, Neander and Lardner in their
ecclesiastical histories we shall find that there were thousands, aye
millions, who believed in a teacher sent from God who had appeared
in Palestine and taught this religion which they had embraced, and
who had performed wonderful miracles such as opening the eyes of the
blind, healing lepers and raising the dead. They believed also that
this Teacher had been put to death by Pontius Pilate, a Roman governor,
had risen again from the dead, had spoken to hundreds of people and
gone out and in among them for six weeks after His resurrection, had
ascended up to heaven in the sight of numbers of witnesses, and had
promised that He would {95} come again in the clouds of heaven to raise
the dead and judge every man according to his works. Further, that
before He went away he appointed twelve of His intimate companions to
teach His religion to the world; that they and their followers did so
in spite of persecutions, sufferings and death, with so much success,
that immense numbers gave up idolatry and embraced Christianity,
braving the fury of the heathen mob, and the vengeance of the Roman
law. Afterwards, when persecution had destroyed great numbers, and
through apostasy they had lost the divine authority and priesthood we
hear of various councils wherein they assembled for the settling of
their disputes. These, so far from giving authority to the books of the
New Testament, constantly quoted the words of these books and referred
to them for proof and authority.
Again, one hundred years before the time of Constantine we find Celsus,
a celebrated infidel writer and sensualist, disputing the teachings of
the gospel because they interfered with his depraved appetites; and
in his writings he quotes freely from the New Testament. So numerous
are his quotations that from them alone, the student might gain all
the principal facts of the Christian religion. As Paine quotes the
New Testament to ridicule it, no man can deny that such a book was
in existence at the time he wrote; so the quotations of Celsus are
conclusive proofs that the books he referred to were considered
authority at the time he wrote. Yet in all his writings, Celsus never
{96} once casts a doubt on the authority of the scriptures, never
questions the gospels as books of history nor denies the miracles
recorded in them. It may also be added that the student who will
examine the writings of Celsus, will cease to admire the professed
wisdom of our modern skeptics. The objections made by Hume, Voltaire,
Hobles and Paine are frequently only the arguments of Celsus served up
in a modern style.
Going back still another hundred years we come to the times of the
notorious apostate, Marcion. Several of the apostles were alive at
the time Marcion was born; and his works date back to within twenty
years of the latest apostolical writings. Having been cut off from the
church, he was greatly enraged and said the worst he could about it. He
traveled all the way from Sinope, on the Black Sea, to Rome, through
Galatia, Bythynia, Asia-Minor, Greece and Italy, the very countries
where the apostles preached, and the churches to which they wrote. He
endeavored in many places to wrest the scriptures from their rightful
meaning; but nowhere attempted to deny their authority (_see Lardner,
Vol. ix, page_ 358). Thus in the writings of Celsus and Marcion we
have the most indubitable evidence, even the admission of enemies,
that these books were in existence and universally received as true,
by the early Christians, within twenty years of the time when they
were written and by the very churches to which they were addressed. As
printing was then unknown, and all important doctrines were written
upon {97} parchment, the books of that period presented rather a
bulky appearance. Probably for this reason the four books, Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John, were commonly joined together in one volume and
named _The Gospel_. The Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles to the
churches of Thessalonica, Galatia, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi,
Collosse, the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John,
together with those written to Philemon, Timothy and Titus, comprised
a second volume called _The Apostles_. The remaining books of the New
Testament, being the last written, usually formed a third volume and
were known as _Apostolical Writings_. This arrangement did not injure
the meaning but rather benefitted it by showing the relative dates of
the various books comprising the New Testament.
It is evident that the gospels were not copied from each other, for
they often relate different events, and when they relate the same
occurrence, each man relates those parts of it which he saw himself,
and which impressed him most. This agreement of independent writers
is the more remarkable, as the writers were persons of various
degrees of education, of different professions and ranks of life,
born in different countries and writing from various places in Italy,
Greece, Palestine and Assyria, without any communication with each
other. Matthew was a tax collector in the province of Galilee; Mark,
a Hebrew citizen of Jerusalem; Luke, a Greek physician of Antioch;
James and John owned and sailed a fishing boat {98} on Lake Tiberias;
Jude left his home and shop in Galilee in order to preach the gospel;
college-bred Paul cast his parchments and popularity aside, carried his
sturdy independence in his breast, and his sail needles in his pocket,
and dictated epistles and cut out jib sails and awnings in the tent
factory of "Aquila, Paul & Co.," at Corinth; several of Paul's letters
were written in a dungeon at Rome; the last of Peter's is dated at
Babylon; Matthew's gospel was penned at Jerusalem, and John's gospels
and epistles were written at Ephesus. The agreement of eight such
witnesses, of different pursuits, and so scattered over the world, in
relation to the same story is a convincing: proof of its veracity.
The manner in which the Apostles published their testimony to the
world, bears every mark of truthfulness. Strong in the consciousness
of right, they dared to assert that Jesus had risen from the dead, in
the very streets of the city where he was crucified--in the temple, the
most public place of resort of the Jews who saw him crucified--and to
the teeth of the very men who put him to death. "The God of our fathers
raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hung on a tree. Him that God exalted
with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to
Israel and remission of sins. And we are His witnesses of these things,
and so is also the Holy Ghost which God hath given to them that obey
him" (_Acts. v_, 30). Had Paul been conscious that he was relating
falsehood, would he have dared to appeal to the judge, before whom he
{99} was on trial for his life, as one who knew the notoriety of these
facts? "For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak
freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from
him; for this thing was not done in a corner" (_Acts xxvi_, 26).
The boldness of their preaching, however, is little, compared with the
boldness of their design, which was nothing less than to convert the
world. The heathens never dreamed of such a thing. The Jews were so
indignant at the project, that when Paul hinted it to them, they cried,
"Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he
should live" (_Acts xxii_, 22).
It is remarkable, that while in addressing the Saints, the apostles
rarely allude to their power of working miracles (fourteen of the
epistles make no allusion to apostolic miracles), but dwell on the
subject of a holy life. Yet they never hesitate to confront a Simon
Magus, or a schismatical church at Corinth, or a persecuting high
priest and sanhedrim with this power of the Holy Ghost.
Read the story of the miraculous healing of the poor, lame beggar, who
laid at the gate of the temple, as recorded in the third and fourth
chapters of Acts. Who ever heard of an impostor standing up before the
tribunal of his judges, and pleading his cause in the following manner,
"If we this day be examined of the good deed done unto the impotent
man, by what means he is made whole, be it known unto you all, and to
all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ {100} of
Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him
doth this man stand before you whole." Such an appeal was unanswerable.
"Beholding the man who was healed standing with them, they could say
nothing against it." Nay, they were compelled to acknowledge, "That
indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them
that dwell in Jerusalem--we cannot deny it."
The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention. The
Scribes and priests, emperors and philosophers of the first century,
who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were unable to
do so. Why, then, it may be asked, did they not all become Christians?
Because a miracle cannot convert a man against his will. The religion
of the gospel is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of
Christ and a life in conformity with His commands.
The labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves furnish strong
proof of the facts of gospel history. To preach another king, one
Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon
them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of Grecian philosophers,
than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could any plan be
devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan priesthood than to
denounce that by which they had their wealth. The most degraded wretch
who perishes on the scaffold is not more contemptible in our eyes than
the crucified Redeemer was to the Jewish and Roman peoples.
{101} What, then, could induce any men in their senses to stem the
tide of such opposition if they were manufacturing falsehoods to gain
popularity and power. The religion they preached was not adapted to
please sensual men; even infidels admit that they preached a pure
morality. No provision was made for making money by their preaching.
One of their first acts was to cause the church to elect deacons
who might manage its money matters, and allow the apostles to give
themselves wholly to prayer and the ministry of the word (_Acts vi_,
2-5). Twenty-five years after they could appeal to the world that,
"Even to this present hour, we (the apostles), both hunger, and thirst,
and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place,
and labor, working with our hands: being reviled, we bless; being
persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the
filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this
day" (_I. Cor. iv_, 11-13).
The New Testament opens with the story of the Savior's birth in a
stable, with the manger for his cradle, and one of its last pictures,
is that of His venerable apostle chained in a dungeon, and begging his
friend to bring his old cloak from Troas, and to do his diligence to
come before Winter (_II. Tim. iv chap_.).
Unpopular and penniless, if the gospel story were not true, how could
it have had preachers? When Paul was changed from a persecutor to a
disciple, behold the prospect the Savior presents to him, "I will
show him _how great things he must suffer for my {102} sake_." Paul
declares, "The Holy Ghost testifieth that in every city bonds and
afflictions abide me. Yet none of these things move me, neither count
I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy"
(_Acts xx_, 23, 24). In another place he adds, "Of the Jews five times
received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once
was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day T have
been in the deep: in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils
of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen,
in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the
sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in
watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness" (_II.
Cor. xi_, 24-27).
Man can give no higher proof of his veracity, save to seal his
testimony with his blood. This the apostles did. All, except John,
suffered martyrdom for the truth of the gospel.
{103}
CHAPTER VII.
NEW TESTAMENT FACTS CORROBORATED BY SECULAR WRITERS.
TERTULIAN'S WORKS--EXTRACT FROM TACITUS--VALUE OF COTEMPORARY
CORRESPONDENCE--PLINY'S LETTER--PROOF OF THE SAINTS' MORALITY--GOSPEL
DISTINCTIVE FROM ALL OTHER RELIGIONS--NO OTHER SYSTEM DEPENDS UPON
SIMILAR INFLUENCES.
In a former chapter was shown some of the internal evidences of the
validity of the New Testament. By continuing our investigations we find
other and valuable proofs of its authenticity. There was no printing in
those days; therefore the people to whom the gospels and epistles were
addressed, had the opportunity of knowing by the handwriting whether
these documents were genuine or not. For example, Paul in his second
epistle to the Thessalonians, says: "The salutation of Paul with my own
hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write. The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." These words show indeed
the heart of an apostle; but what a business man would most appreciate
is the fact how greatly these few lines add to the {104} security
against forgery. It is a hard thing to forge a signature, but give a
business man two lines of any man's writing besides that, and he is
perfectly secure against imposition. The churches to whom the epistles
were written and to whom the gospels were delivered consisted largely
of business men, merchants, traders, city chamberlains and officers of
Caesar's household. Does any one think that such men could not tell the
handwriting of the apostle who had lived among them for years or that
they cared less for the documents of the gospel, for which they risked
their lives, than we would care about the genuineness of a ten dollar
check? Tertulian, who lived from A. D. 145 to 222, was one of the most
learned men of that age. He was well versed in Roman law, in ancient
philosophy, history and poetry. He had been brought up a heathen,
and was not therefore likely to favor the teachings of the apostles
without due investigation. His writings are interesting, throwing
much light on the circumstances and social questions of that age. He
traveled extensively among the churches which the apostles had planted
and claims to have seen the original copies of Matthew and John and
the epistles written to the churches at Rome, Corinth, Thessalonica,
Ephesus and Philippi, and refers skeptics to the places where these
documents could be found. That these writings contained the same words
as are in our present New Testament is evident from the numerous
quotations in Tertulian's works.
{105} In the British and other museums may be found thousands of
manuscripts on every conceivable subject embracing every age for
the past sixteen hundred years and even some still earlier. Among
these manuscripts are over two thousand copies of the New Testament,
some of them dating back to apostolic times. These manuscripts have
been scrutinized by the most critical scholars; yet the result of
this examination is merely the suggestion of thirteen unimportant
alterations in the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses
of the New Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history
of manuscripts. We are thus, by the special providence of God, as
undoubtedly in possession of genuine copies of the gospels and
epistles, some of which were written while the companions of the Savior
were still living and the divine authority and Priesthood were still
upon the earth, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution of the
United States and of the Declaration of Independence.
There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by cotemporary
writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively
engaged in 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 Ten Thousand," Wellington's dispatches, and Washington's letters
to Congress, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written.
Of the great facts described in these {106} documents addressed to
their cotemporaries, able at a glance to detect a falsehood, we never
entertain the least suspicion. Many such historical allusions might be
quoted.
We have selected one from the well-known works of Tacitus, the
celebrated Roman historian, who lived between A. D. 60 and 120,
and wrote a history of Rome up to the reign of the emperor Trajan.
Concerning this extract from the history of Tacitus the infidel,
Gibbon, says, "The most skeptical criticism is obliged to respect
the truth of this important fact and the integrity of this important
passage of Tacitus." After relating the burning of the city of Rome
by order of Nero, and his attempt to transfer the odium of it to the
Christians, Tacitus 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; afterwards, a vast multitude were discovered by
them; all of whom were condemned, not so much for the
crime of the burning of 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
{107} 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."
Now let the reader take up the New Testament and read the last six
chapters of Acts and the letters of Paul to Philemon, Titus and the
second to Timothy. These letters were written when the aged prisoner
was ready to be martyred, and the time of his departure was at hand.
Then let the reader form his opinion of the origin and nature of that
faith which enabled Paul to say, "None of these things move me, neither
count I my life dear unto me, that I may finish my course with joy, and
the testimony which I have received of the Lord Jesus."
There is still another kind of cotemporary history, which does not even
propose to relate history at all; but is for that very reason entirely
removed from the suspicion of making a false statement. By this is
meant cotemporary correspondence. The undersigned and incidental use
of a name, a date or a quotation often flashes conviction upon the
reader's mind in the most forcible manner. If we have the private
letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right
into them, and see their true characters. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the
world the proud, lying, stupid tyrant King, James, displayed in his own
letters. Thus the celebrated Voltaire records himself an adulterer,
and begs his friend {108} D'Alembert to lie for him, and his friend
replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of Thomas Paine
exhibits him drinking a quart of brandy daily at his friend's expense
and refusing to pay his bill for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of
confidential correspondence the veil is taken from the heart. We see
men as they are. The true man stands out in his native dignity and the
gilding is rubbed off the hypocrite. Give to the world their letters,
and no just person would hesitate to pronounce Hume a sensualist, or
Washington, "the noblest work of God," an honest man.
Now we are in possession of this same kind of indisputable evidence
concerning the great facts of the New Testament. From the abundant
notices of the faith, teachings and practices of the early saints,
which are to be found in the works of cotemporaneous writers,
historians and poets, philosophers and magistrates, Jewish, Christian
and heathen; it may be well to select one, to corroborate and compare
with the statements of the New Testament. Lest we should be accused of
partiality, let us take the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan. This
letter is utterly undeniable and admitted by the most skeptical to be
beyond suspicion, Pliny, the younger, was born A. D. 61. He lived and
died a pagan. In A. D. 106, when a little more than forty-five years
of age, he was appointed by the emperor Trajan to be governor of the
Roman provinces of Pontus and Bithynia--a vast tract of Asia-Minor, in
which {109} were situated the cities and churches of Ephesus, Smyrna,
Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis and Philadelphia. The Epistles of Peter "to
the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia Asia,
and Bithynia," brings us to the same mountainous region. Pliny, having
taken up his residence in Ephesus, wrote the following letter to the
Roman emperor:
"Pliny to the Emperor Trajan wishes health and happiness.
"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? T 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.
"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 (Rome).
"In a short time, the crime spreading itself even while under
persecutions, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people
came in my way. And information was presented to me,
{110} without mentioning the author, containing the names of many
persons, who, upon examination denied that they were
Christians, or had ever been so; who repeated after me an
invocation to 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 afterwards 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, who
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
{111} the open country. Nevertheless, it seems 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."
To this the Emperor Trajan replied:
"Trajan to Pliny wisheth health and happiness:
"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 supplication 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."
Now let us read the First General Epistle of Peter, the First General
Epistle of John, and the second and third chapters of Revelation and we
will be able to see the force of the various allusions, to the numbers,
doctrines, morals and persecutions of the Saints as mentioned in this
letter. The doctrines of the Christian faith then are not the gradual
growth of centuries, as the infidel would make us believe. On the
other hand the primitive churches possessed a perfection of doctrine
and organization unknown to the so-called Christian churches of the
present day. In the life time {112} of those who had seen the Savior
crucified, and in countries a thousand miles distant from Jerusalem, we
find the Saints scattered over Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and
Bithynia, as well as in the world's proud capital, the city of Rome.
In this letter also we have the testimony of apostates, eager to save
their lives by giving such information as they knew would be acceptable
to the persecuting governor, the testimony of the two servants under
torture, and the unwilling, yet express testimony; of their torturer,
that all his cruel ingenuity could discover nothing worse than what he
called "a bad and excessive superstition." Now, what was it that this
heathen governor called a "superstition?" Why simply that they bound
themselves by the most solemn religious services, not to be guilty of
theft, robbery or adultery; not to falsify their word nor deny a pledge
committed to them; and when a statue of the emperor was presented to
them they refused to make supplication to it. For this refusal, and
this alone, he ordered them away to death. And as these martyrs went
away to torture and to death, may they not have heard tingling in
their ears the words of Peter which had been written to them a few
years previous: "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery
trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto
you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an
evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men's matters" (_I. Peter iv_,
12-15). Pliny says that there were apostates twenty years previous,
that is in the year 86. Now does not {113} that exactly coincide with
what John wrote to them in the year 90: "They went out from us but
they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would no doubt
have continued with us" (_I. John ii_. 19). So Pliny speaks of the
apostates, "They all worshiped your image and statues of the gods;
these also reviled Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who
are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do." What was it
that enabled the early Saints of all ranks and all ages, of both sexes
likewise, to joyfully meet death in its most horrid forms? It was the
power of truth--it was the power of God.
Now, the grand idea that strikes us in the testimony of the Saints,
both of primitive and modern times, is that it stands out utterly
different from all other religions. There is nothing in the world
like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact of
Christianity--that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the
dead--stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests
of Baal, Brahma or Jupiter never dreamed of such a thing. Confucius,
Buddha or Zoroaster never attained to such sublime ideas. Our modern
positivists and spiritualists perceiving the grandeur of this doctrine,
have vainly attempted to destroy this, the key-stone of the gospel arch.
There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion
ever producing the same effects; no other instance of men destitute
of wealth, arms, power and learning, converting multitudes of lying,
lustful, murdering idolators {114} into honest, peaceable Christians,
simply by prayer and preaching. When the skeptic tells us of the rapid
spread of impostures which enlist disciples by promising free license
to lust, robbery and murder, and retain them by the terror of scimetar
and rifle ball, he simply insults our common sense, by ignoring the
difference between the degrading practices of vice, and the ennobling
principles of virtue. The gospel stands alone in its doctrines,
singular in its operation, unequalled in its success.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII,
HISTORICAL GLIMPSES OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF OUR SAVIOR--BY MARCUS--BY JOSEPHUS--CONDITION
OF THE WORLD AT--THE BIRTH OF CHRIST--INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM
HEATHEN TRADITIONS CONCERNING THE SAVIOR'S ADVENT--CHARACTER OF
BARNABAS--APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER OF PAUL--PETER, THE LEADER OF
THE APOSTLES--CHARACTER OF JOHN AND JAMES--STATEMENT CONCERNING
MARY--HISTORY EPITOMIZED IN THE GOSPELS--DESCRIPTION OF THE
CATACOMBS--INSCRIPTIONS OF THEM.
The living or written testimony of those who have been actively
engaged in the great latter-day {115} work will ever have a weight far
superior to any given by inimical or disinterested parties. Still, the
descriptions given and the historical facts and incidents related by
such persons are often highly interesting as furnishing glimpses of
scenes and facts unmentioned by more prominent actors. For example, the
discourse delivered by Thomas L. Kane before the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, throws a flood of light upon the manners and customs of
the Latter-day Saints and the scenes attending their expulsion from
Nauvoo, which no history of the Church has exceeded; and this is all
the more valuable as it corroborates many of the statements made by the
Saints. So in like manner there are many references made by secular
writers which throw light on New Testament history, and by this light
we see a new beauty and force in the language of the inspired writers.
No man of sense will for a moment hesitate to acknowledge the
superiority of the narratives written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John, to any merely human composition. The biographies of the Savior,
written by Fleetwood and others bear no comparison to the simple, yet
sublime records of the evangelists. But it does not militate against
the authority of the scriptures to read a description of the personal
appearance of the Savior as described by Marcus, a Roman lawyer who
resided at Jerusalem, and still preserved in the works of Origen:
{116}
"Jesus of Nazareth, sometimes called the Galilean, was a most
remarkable person. In stature He was above the medium hight, straight
and tall. His complexion was fair: His hair was of a brown color,
and fell in heavy curls upon His shoulders. His eyes were blue, and
possessed such a penetrating power that no man could meet His gaze. His
beard was of a deep wine color, fine and full: it is said that He was
never shaved. His countenance was majestic, calm and serene, bearing
the impress of wisdom, justice and love."
Again, we have the testimony of Josephus, the celebrated Jewish
historian who flourished between the thirty-seventh and ninety-eighth
year of the Christian era. He was a Jewish priest and had no connection
with the early saints; yet in the _History of the Antiquities of the
Jews, Book xviii_, he declares:
"Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it
be lawful to call Him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful
works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
pleasure. He drew over to Him, both many of the Jews, and many
of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the
suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned
Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first, did not
forsake Him, for He appeared to them alive on the third day:
as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand
other wonderful things concerning Him. And the tribe of
Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day."
In the time of Christ, Palestine was in the very center of the then
known world. To the north and north-east lay the decaying remnants
of the Medo-Persian and still more ancient Babylonian and Assyrian
empires; on the east were the powerful tribes of Arabia, who, fearless
of any foreign power, had built their capital in the rugged defiles
{117} of Arabia-Petrea, the magnificent ruins of which astonish the
travelers of the present day.
On the south lay Egypt reposing in gloomy grandeur and already boasting
a hoary antiquity; yet even this ancient civilization was to a great
extent indebted to the founders of the Jewish commonwealth. On the west
lay the classic countries of Greece and Italy.
As is well known, after the Babylonish captivity, the Jews were
widely scattered. Comparatively few of them availed themselves of the
permission granted by Cyrus, to return to Palestine. The majority
remained in Babylonia or wandered into other lands. In Alexandria,
for example, at the time of Christ, fully one-half the inhabitants
were Jews, who by trading had become rich and powerful. At that
time the coasts of Arabia and even India were visited by Jewish
merchants. In Asia Minor and Greece there was scarcely a town without
its Jewish synagogue. In Rome the Jews possessed the greater part of
the Trastevere, or right bank of the Tiber. From the time of Julius
Caesar they were allowed to build synagogues and granted many other
privileges. All these Jews who lived outside of Palestine and formed
a majority of the whole nation were commonly called the Dispersion,
It was this class of persons to which the Jews referred, when in
speaking of Christ, they said, "Will He go unto the dispersed among
the Gentiles and teach the Gentiles?" (_John vii_, 25). Yet these Jews
still considered Jerusalem as their center, regarded the Sanhedrim (or
high council) {118} as their highest church court, sent yearly gifts of
money and sacrifices to the temple, and visited it from time to time at
the great festivals.
It is easy to see how this state of things aided the spread of the
gospel. The feasts of the Passover and of Pentecost brought many of
these dispersed Jews from the neighboring countries to Jerusalem. Thus
thousands, who were not residents of Palestine, had an opportunity
at these yearly feasts to become acquainted with the teachings and
miracles of Jesus. It was also at the time of the great feast of the
Passover, that the crucifixion took place. Fifty days later was the
feast of Pentecost at which time occurred those wonderful events
recorded in the second chapter of Acts.
Thus, we perceive, how it was that people from various nations had
gathered together; and how important the gift of tongues whereby each
could hear in his own language the wonderful works of God. (_See Acts
ii_, 5, 9-11.)
These men on their return carried the news of Christianity to their
homes. Then again the apostles in their missionary travels found
synagogues in all the principal towns and cities; likewise, devout
persons who were looking forward to the advent of the Messiah and
the redemption of Israel. Of these might be mentioned Dorcas, and
Cornelius, (_Acts ix_, 10.) Lydia (_Acts xvi_, 14.), Aquilla and
Priscilla, (_Acts xviii_), Eunice and Lois, the mother and grandmother
of Timothy, and many others.
{119} Every synagogue was, as it were, a missionary station in
readiness for them with friends and inquirers already there to welcome
them. The influence of the Jews had helped also to undermine heathenism
and thus to prepare the ground for Christianity. So much was this the
case that the Roman philosopher, Seneca, in speaking of the Jews, says,
"The conquered have given laws to the conquerors." Josephus, in his
Antiquities, Book 18, says, "Many of the Jews held high offices, and
lived at the courts of princes. Even the empress Poppea, wife of Nero
was a proselyte to Judaism." In his autobiography, he relates that,
when in Rome, he made the acquaintance of this empress through a Jewish
favorite of Nero, and at once received from her the release of some
imprisoned Jewish priests together with large presents. Through her
influence also was due much of that bitterness which characterized the
persecutions of the saints in the reign of Nero.
Juvenal, a Latin poet, ridicules the prevalence of Jewish customs;
also many of the Greeks, following the teachings of Socrates, believed
in the existence of an "unknown God." It is in the very nature of man
to believe in something. When the absurdities of heathenism became
apparent, men fell into other superstitions. More and more was felt
the want of a true religion. Even the Samaritans who were so carried
away by the sorceries of Simon Magus, as to call him "the great power
of God," readily received the preaching of the gospel. (_Act viii_,
5.) So also Sergius {120} Paulus, who, dissatisfied with heathenism,
had with him the Jewish sorcerer and false prophet Elymas, was won
to the Christian faith by the preaching of Paul (_Acts xiii_, 6-11).
Indeed the best feature of that age was a strong religious yearning.
Expectations of a coming Messiah, in various forms and degrees of
clearness, were at that time, by the political collision of the nations
and by their intellectual and religious contact, spread over all the
nations; and, like the first red streaks upon the horizon, announced
the approach of day. The Persians were looking for their Sosiosch, who
should conquer Ahriman and his kingdom of darkness. The Chinese sage,
Confucius, pointed his disciples to a Holy One who should appear in the
west. The wise men who came to worship the new-born king of the Jews,
we must look upon as representatives of the Messianic hopes of oriental
heathens.
The western nations, on the contrary, looked toward the east for the
dawn of a better day. The Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, both
speak of a current saying in the Roman empire, that in the east, and
more particularly in Judea, a new universal empire would soon be set up.
Thus, in a time, the like of which history before or since has never
seen, appeared the Savior of men. Amid the dying and decaying forms of
ancient society, while those things that had been the objects of man's
enthusiastic love were withering away, Christ came that through Him
humanity should receive a new, youthful life.
{121} Impenitent Judaism, it is true, still wanders, ghost like through
all ages and countries: but only as an incontrovertible living witness
of the divinity of the Christian religion.
The Jews who were scattered through the various countries of the
east came in contact with the manners and customs of those various
countries, and this had a tendency to break down Jewish exclusiveness
and prepare the minds of many for broader and more liberal views. Hence
we find that several of the most useful men of the apostolic church,
such as Stephen, the martyr, Philip, the deacon, Paul and Barnabas were
of this class. Barnabas was, indeed one, of the most remarkable men of
the age in which he lived. He was born in the island of Cyprus, but
removed to Jerusalem where he became one of the active members of the
apostolic church.
After the martyrdom of Stephen and in consequence of the persecution
which followed, some of the disciples were scattered as far as Antioch,
whither Barnabas was sent to organize a church, and here the disciples
first received the name of Christians. (_Acts xi_, 26.) It was Barnabas
who first introduced Paul to the rest of the apostles and removed the
mistrust which was felt towards him. Afterwards, when Paul was living a
retired life in his native city of Tarsus, Barnabas sought him out and
brought him to Antioch. To win over this great reticent and susceptible
soul, to labor with him and even to take a subordinate place under him,
indicate both wisdom and {122} humanity; and this is what Barnabas did
for Paul.
Saul, afterwards Latinized into Paul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia,
in the tenth or twelfth year of our era. Paul's father early intended
that he should become a religious teacher, but, according to the
customs of that age, taught him a trade also, by which he afterwards
supported himself without becoming a burden to the church. He came to
Jerusalem at an early age and entered the school of Gamaliel the elder.
This Gamaliel was one of the most learned men in Jerusalem, and the
youthful Paul soon became a leader in society. This is evident from the
position he held at the death of Stephen. Paul was short in stature,
somewhat stooping and at the middle age his hair was thin, inclining to
baldness. His countenance was pale and half hidden by a dark beard. His
nose was aquiline, his eyes piercing and his eyebrows heavy. It is said
that he possessed one of those strange visages which though plain, yet,
when lighted up by emotion, assumes a deep brilliancy and grandeur.
Paul was a man of great politeness and exquisite manners. His letters
show that he was a man of rare intelligence, who formed for his lofty
sentiments, expressions of great beauty. No correspondence exhibits
more careful attention, finer shades of meaning or more amiable
pleasantries. What animation! What a wealth of charming sayings! What
simplicity! It is easy to see that his character is that of a polite,
earnest and affectionate man.
{123} Simon, or Peter, as he was afterwards called, was a son of the
fisherman, Jonas. He resided at Capernaum, on the shore of the sea
of Galilee, where he followed his father's occupation. His brother,
Andrew, who had been a disciple of John the Baptist, first brought him
to Jesus by whom he was called to be a fisher of men. He was one of
the witnesses of the transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and the agony of
the Savior in the garden of Gethsemane. He was evidently the leader of
the ancient apostles. In the four places where a list of the twelve
is given, he is invariably placed at the beginning; and in many other
places he is mentioned as the leading speaker. In Peter's character we
have a remarkable combination of great natural talents and virtues,
with peculiar weaknesses. This apostle was distinguished from the other
eleven by an ardent, impulsive, sanguine temperament, and an open,
shrewd, practical nature. He was always ready to speak out his mind,
to resolve and to act. His excitable, impulsive disposition led him
sometimes to over-estimate his powers, to trust too much to himself,
and, in the hour of danger, to yield to opposite impressions. Thus
we find that, in spite of his usual firmness and joy in confessing
his faith, he actually denied the Savior when arraigned in the palace
of Caiphas. In learning he was inferior to Paul, and in loving
character, to John; but he possessed, in an eminent degree, the gift of
inspiration which enabled him to act with promptness and decision.
{124} The apostle and evangelist, John, was the son of Zebedee, and
the brother of the elder James. His mother was one of the women who
supported Jesus with their property, and brought spices to embalm Him.
John himself owned a house in Jerusalem, into which he received the
mother of the Savior after the crucifixion. He was the only one of
the apostles who was present at the cross, and to him Jesus committed
the care of his mother. (_John xix_, 26, 27.) Nicephorus states that
Mary continued to live with John until her death, which occurred
about fourteen years after the crucifixion. After this, John went
to preside over the church at Ephesus. Here he wrote the gospel and
epistle that bear his name. In the reign of Domitian, about the year
84, he was called to Rome where he was condemned to be put to death by
being thrust into a caldron of boiling oil. From this he miraculously
escaped, even as the three Hebrews who were cast into the fiery
furnace. Afterwards he was banished to the solitary, rocky island,
Patmos, where he received that wonderful prophetic history of the
conflicts and conquests of the church, which is called the Apocalypse,
or Revelation. In the opening chapter he says, "I, John, who also am
your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and
patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for
the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ."
When Peter asked the manner of John's death, the Savior replied, "'If I
will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?'
{125} "Then went this saying abroad among the brethren that that
disciple should not die."
Peter, James and John were the chosen among the chosen, upon whom the
Savior bestowed special favor. Peter was a man of great energy, fitted
to be a leader in the church and in society. John possessed a deep,
affectionate nature, which made him the dearest of the Savior's three
chosen friends.
Of James we know very little. He seems to have been of a quiet,
earnest, meditative turn. He presided over the church at Jerusalem
until the year forty-four of our era, when he sealed his testimony with
his blood, being the first of that glorious band of apostolic martyrs.
Such were the chief actors in New Testament times. The great facts of
their lives are corroborated both by Jewish and heathen writers, and
admitted to be true by the most eminent of modern infidels, such as
Volney, Straus and Renan. Christianity did not take its rise in an
obscure corner of the earth. On the other hand, from the very first
it attracted the attention of the good, the wise and the learned, and
aroused the opposition of the wicked, though they were powerful kings
and potentates of the earth. Yet, in spite of all, it has won its way,
both in ancient times and at the present day among the honest in heart
by the simplicity, grandeur and harmony of its truths.
We must, therefore, accept the New Testament as a whole. We cannot
accept the writings of one, and say they are true, and reject the
writings of {126} another, teaching the same doctrine, and say it is
false. Neither can we accept the gospel and reject the epistles, for
there is not a doctrine of the gospel which is not taught in the very
first of them, that written by Matthew.
He who writes forgeries must needs be well posted in the matter of
names, dates and places, or else he will contradict some well-known
facts and so expose his forgery to the world. Men who write falsehoods
do not write as follows:
"Now, in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius
Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee,
and his brother, Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and of the region of
Trachonitis, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiphas being
high priests, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in
the wilderness."
Here, in one sentence, are twenty historical, geographical, political
and family references, every one of which can be proven true by the
statements of cotemporaneous secular writers. Infidels have utterly
failed in their attempts to disprove one of the hundreds of such
statements in the New Testament.
Among the various historical evidences of primitive Christianity, none
seem more authentic or possess a deeper interest than those connected
with the catacombs of ancient Rome. These were subterraneous chambers
or excavations which were made in the soft, sandy rock which underlies
the hills on which stood ancient Rome. To these dreary vaults
the early saints were in the habit of retiring, in order to celebrate
their worship in times of persecution, and in them were buried many of
the saints and martyrs of the primitive church. They consist of long,
narrow galleries, {128} usually about eight feet high and five feet
wide, which twist and turn in all directions, very much resembling
mines. The graves were constructed by hollowing out a portion of the
rock at the side of the gallery, large enough to contain the body. The
entrance was then built up, and generally an inscription was placed
upon it.
{127} [ILLUSTRATION: SECTION OF THE CATACOMB OF CALIXTUS.]
{128} These excavations were first formed by quarrying the
volcanic, sandy rock, in order to supply the materials necessary for
the building of ancient Rome. They were afterwards increased in order
to procure the sand used for cement, until, at length, they formed an
area of very extensive dimensions. They are mentioned by the Roman
writers, Horace and Varro, by Cicero and Seutonius. Jerome, writing
about the middle of the fourth century, describes them as they existed
in his day, declaring that he "was accustomed, as a youth, when
studying in Rome, to visit these dark and dreary spots on Sundays, in
order to see the tombs of apostles and martyrs."
[ILLUSTRATION: BURIAL PLACE IN THE CATACOMBS.]
Among the many inscriptions which the museum of the Vatican has derived
from the catacombs is {129} the following. It relates to the reign of
Marcus Aurelius, or Antoninus, as he is sometimes called, about A. D.
150:
ALEXANDER MORTUUS NON EST SED
VIVIT SUPER ASTRA ET CORPUS IN HOC
TUMULO QUIESCIT. VITAM EXPLEVIT
SUB ANTONINO IMPO, QUI UBI MULTUM
BENEFITII ANTEVENIRE PRAEVIDERET
PRO GRATIA ODIUM REDDIDIT GENUA
ENIM FLECTENS VERO DEO
SACRIFICATURUS AD SUPPLICIA DUCITUR.
TEMPORA INFAUSTA! QUIBUS INTER SACRA
ET VOTA NE IN CAVERNIS QUIDEM
SALVARI POSSIMUS. QUID MISERIUS VITA
SED QUID MISERIUS IN MORTE CUM
AB AMICIS ET PARENTIBUS
SEPELIRI NEQUEANT TANDEM IN COELO
CORUSCANT PARUM VIXIT QUI VIXIT IN X.
TEM.
TRANSLATION:
"Alexander is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, and his
body rests in this tomb. He lived under the Emperor
Antoninus, who, foreseeing that great benefit would result from his
services, returned evil for good. For, while on his knees and
about to sacrifice to the true God, he was led away to
execution. O, sad times! in which sacred rites and prayers, even
in caverns, afford no protection to us. What can be more
wretched than such a life, and what than such a death, when
they could not be buried by their friends and relatives? At
length they are resplendent in heaven. He has scarcely lived
who has lived in Christian times."
Sometimes a victor's crown--one of laurel--is intended to mark that
the interred one has passed {130} through the agony and strife of his
Christian conflict, and was triumphant. At other times the simplest
words indicated a saint's last resting place. In some cases these
epitaphs are imperfectly spelled, indicating the humble class to which
the survivors belonged.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX.
FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY.
PROPHECY DEFINED--OBJECTIONS TO SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE ANSWERED--HISTORY
REVERSED, UNINTELLIGIBLE--NECESSITY OF PROPHETIC OBSCURITY--INFIDEL
DREAD OF PROPHECY--PROPHECIES CONCERNING BABYLON--THEIR
FULFILLMENT--PROPHECIES CONCERNING EGYPT--PROPHECIES CONCERNING JUDEA
AND THE JEWS--CONCERNING THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA--TESTIMONIES OF
INFIDELS--MODERN PROPHECY--ITS FULFILLMENT.
An astronomer is able to predict the eclipses of the sun and moon,
because he knows the laws that govern the heavenly bodies. So also a
countrywoman can predict the time of hatching, and the kind of birds
that will come forth from a certain class of eggs placed under a fowl
in the act of incubation, because she has many times observed {131}
phenomena of this kind. Prophecy is only prediction in the highest
sense of the term. Our Heavenly Father, who knows, not merely the laws
that govern the material world, but also the mental, moral and physical
laws that govern humanity, can foretell the phenomena incident to man's
social and religious development. He who knows the origin of man--both
his strength and his weakness--and the extent and influence of the
powers of darkness, can foretell the result of that awful conflict that
has been in progress since before the foundation of the world. When
man, in obedience to law, shall have gained his higher development
and become as one of the Gods, he will, no doubt, obtain the power of
prophecy. Even in his present state, every true poet, philosopher and
scientist may be said to possess, in a certain degree, this gift; in
fact, so far as they can penetrate into the laws and mysteries of the
universe beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. Thus the steam-engine
was predicted eighteen hundred years before Watt heard the first
deep, regular respiration of this modern evangel. Thus, the magnetic
telegraph was expected for quite three hundred years before its first
tap of the keys announced its presence. When Shakespeare wrote, "I'll
put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes," it was nothing
but the instinct of the poet, peering with a glimmer of inspiration
into the darkened chamber towards which science was advancing. Bruno,
Galileo, Newton, Columbus and Washington had glimmerings of this
celestial light. The lines {132} written by Julia Ward Howe are as
truthful as they are beautiful:
"Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen,
Fling to the winds your needless fears;
He who unfurled your glorious banner,
Said it shall wave a thousand years.
A thousand years, my own Columbia,
'Tis the glad day so long foretold;
'Tis the glad morn whose early twilight
Washington saw in days of old."
But it is objected that the prophecies of scripture are obscure and
wrapped up in symbolical language. This objection proceeds from a total
misapprehension of the nature and design of prophecy, which is not to
unveil the future for the gratification of our curiosity, but to give
directions for our present duty and future welfare. The larger part of
the prophecies of scripture is taken up with directions how men should
regulate their conduct, rather than with information how God intends to
regulate His.
As to the objection against the symbolical language of prophecy, it
may be asked, how can heavenly things be revealed to earth-born men,
but by earthly figures? Who knows a single word, in our own or any
other language, to express a spiritual state, or mental operation,
that is not the name of some material state or physical operation used
symbolically? Spirit, memory, imagination, etc., are each a symbol
or figure of speech. In what way could God or man teach us to know
anything except by either showing us a picture of it, or telling us
what it is like, that is, simply by {133} type or symbol? These are the
only possible means for conveying heavenly truth or future history to
our minds.
When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally
in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God
should make it utterly unintelligible.
We may gather much valuable information from symbolic language; but
history written in advance would be more difficult to decipher than
the inscriptions of Nineveh or Egypt, or the still more obscure
hieroglyphics of Central America. Imagine Alexander reading Bancroft
instead of Daniel. The Hebrew prophet he might understand, for he
himself was the fulfillment of a part of Daniel's prophecy, but what
could he learn from reading such a record as this? "In the year
of Christ, 1847, the United States conquered Mexico and annexed
California." He would say, "In the year of Christ--what does that
mean? The United States may mean the states of Greece; but on what
shore of the Mediterranean can Mexico and California be found?" What
information could Aristotle gather from the fact that the electric
telegraph was invented in 1844? Could all the wise men of Rome have
explained to Julius Caesar the following dispatch, if given in
prophetic vision? "Sebastopol was evacuated last night after enduring,
for three days, an infernal fire of shot and shell."
Should we diminish the vista to within two or three centuries, what
could Oliver Cromwell, aided by the whole British parliament, have
made {134} of a prophetic vision of a single newspaper paragraph,
written in advance, to inform them that "Three companies of soldiers
came down last night from Berwick to Southampton, by a special train,
traveling fifty-four and a half miles an hour, including stoppages, and
embarked immediately on arrival. The fleet put to sea at noon in the
face of a full gale from the south-west?" Why, the intelligible part
of this single paragraph would seem to them more impossible, and the
unintelligible part more absurd than all the mysterious symbols of the
Apocalypse.
A complete prophetic history of the steam-engine, steam navigation and
railways would have been necessary before they could have understood it.
The world has accepted God's symbols thousands of years ago, and it
is too late in the day for skeptics to deride the laws of thought and
forms of speech. David's prophetic psalms, Isaiah's celestial anthems,
Ezekiel's glorious symbols, Solomon's terse proverbs and the Savior's
lovely parables will be recited and admired ages after the foggy
abstractions of Parker and Newman, Carlyle and Emerson have vanished
from the earth. The Biblical symbols of the Thirst of Passion, the
Blood of Murder, the Rod of Chastisement, the Iron Scepter, the Fire
of Wrath, the Balance of Righteousness, the Sword of Justice and the
Wheels of Providence will photograph their lessons on Memory's tablet,
while the mists of the "positive philosophy" float past unheeded to
the land of forgetfulness. God's prophetic symbols are the {135}
glorious embodiments of living truths, while skeptics' theories are the
melancholy ghosts of expiring nonsense.
The prophetic symbols are sufficiently plain to be distinctly
intelligible _after_ the fulfillment; but sufficiently obscure to
baffle presumptuous curiosity before it. Had they been so written as to
be fully intelligible beforehand, they must have interfered with man's
free agency, by causing their own fulfillment. They hide the future
sufficiently to make man feel his ignorance; they reveal enough to
encourage faith in the God who rules it. God's prophecy is not merely
His foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future
time, but over which He has no control--as an astronomer foretells an
eclipse of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it--but it is
the revealing of a part of His plan of this world's affairs, to show
that God and not man is the sovereign of it. Infidels feel the power of
this manifestation of God in His word; and are driven to every possible
denial of the fact. They feel, instinctively, that the Bible prophecies
are far more than mere predictions. They would rather endow every human
being on earth with the power of predicting the future, than allow the
God of heaven that power of ruling the present, which these prophecies
assert. Hence we find them frequently patronizing "mediums" and fortune
tellers of various kinds.
[ILLUSTRATION: THE RUINS OF BABYLON]
The prophecies of the scriptures are frequently predictions at once
unexampled and unparalleled. Nations could not perish before they
had grown, {136} nor empires be destroyed till they had accumulated.
Babylon, Nineveh, Damascus and Tyre had been growing and flourishing
for a thousand years, at the time that Jonah, Micah, Hosea and Isaiah
pronounced their sentences against them. At that time, mankind had not
yet seen a ruined empire. Judging from the past they had no reason to
expect {137} anything else than prosperity concerning these cities;
yet the prophets pronounced desolation and solitude against these
cities which were then the capitals of nations more populous than this
continent at the present time, and displayed buildings, a sight of
whose crumbling ruins is deemed sufficient recompense for the perils
of a journey of ten thousand miles. Every church, hall, school-house,
theatre and hospital of Salt Lake City could have been conveniently
arranged in the basement of the great temple of Belus. On the first
floor there was room enough for the whole adult population of Utah to
assemble, while the remaining seven stories would have still been open
for the accomodation of the citizens of Babylon. When the prophets
wrote their predictions, the walls of Babylon had been raised to the
hight of three hundred and fifty feet, and made broad enough for six
chariots to drive upon them abreast. From its hundred brazen gates
issued the armies which trampled under foot the liberties of mankind,
and presented their lives to the nod of a despot, who slew whom he
would, and whom he would, allowed to live. Twenty years' provisions
were collected within its walls, and the world would not believe that
an enemy could enter its gates. Nevertheless, the prophets of God
pronounced against it a doom of destruction as extraordinary as the
pride and wickedness which procured it. Tyre, the London of Asia, was
to "become a place for the spreading of nets" (_Ezekiel xxvi_ 5),
The infidel, Volney, tells us that, "Its commerce has declined to a
trifling, {138} fishery;" but even that implies some few resident
inhabitants. Rabbah of Ammon was to become, "A stable for camels and
couching place for flocks" (_Ezekiel xxv_, 5). Lord Lindsay reports
that, he "could not sleep amidst its ruins for the bleating of sheep
in the sheep-folds and the braying of camels in its ruins." Yet
sheep-folds imply that their Arab owners would occasionally reside
near its ruins. But desolation, solitude and utter abandonment to the
wild beast of the desert is the clearly-predicted doom of the ancient
world's proud capital: "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of
the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in,
from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent
there; neither shall the shepherds make their folds there. But wild
beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of
doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance
there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate
houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces" (_Isaiah xiii_, 19 22).
Every traveler attests the fulfillment of this strange prediction. "It
is a tenantless and desolate ruin," says Mignon, who, though fully
armed and attended by six Arabs, could not be induced by any reward
to pass the night among its ruins, from his apprehension of evil
spirits. So completely fulfilled is the prophecy, "The Arabian shall
not pitch his tent there." The same voice {139} that called camels
and flocks to the palaces of Rabbah, summoned a very different class
of tenants for the palaces of Babylon. Rabbah was to be a sheep-fold,
Babylon a menagerie of wild beasts--a very specific difference and
very improbable. However, after it was destroyed and deserted, one of
the Persian kings repaired its walls, converted it into a vast hunting
ground and stocked it with various kinds of wild beasts; and to this
day the apes of the Spice Islands, and the lions of the African wilds
meet in its ruins and howl their testimony to the truth of God's word.
Only a few years ago. Sir R. K. Porter and Dr. Rich, saw two majestic
lions in the "Mujelibe" or ruins of the palace.
The nations selected as examples of divine justice are as various as
their sentences are different--covering a space as long as from New
York to San Francisco and climes as various as those between Canada and
Cuba; peopled by men of every shade of color and degree of capacity
from the negro servant of servants, to the builders of the Coliseum and
the pyramids. The prophecies describe in their own expressive symbols,
the nations yet unfounded and kings unborn, who should ignorantly
execute the judgments of God. They also predict the future of over
thirty states--no two of which are alike.
If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York should be
overturned and become a little fishing village--that Philadelphia
should become a swamp and never be inhabited--that New {140} Orleans
should become a dry, barren desert, and Chicago be utterly consumed
with fire and never be rebuilt--that learning should depart from Boston
and no travelers should pass through it any more--that New England
should become the basest of the nations and no native American ever be
president of the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the
most savage tribes--that the Russians should tread Washington under
foot for a thousand years, but that God would preserve Pittsburg and
Salt Lake City in the midst of destruction; then, if all these things
should come to pass, would any man dare to say that the prophet spake
the dictates of human sagacity, or the calculations of human reason,
and was not inspired by the Spirit of God?
Such was the character of the prophecies concerning the geographical,
political, social and religious condition of the greatest nations of
antiquity.
Considering the modes of ancient warfare, Egypt was one of the most
defensible countries in the world. Bounded on the south by high
mountains, on the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless,
burning desert, she was able to defend the mouths of her river with a
powerful navy, to drown an invading army every year by the inundation
of the Nile. Egypt had not only maintained her independence, but
extended her conquests for a thousand years. She had given learning,
art, science and idolatry to half the world and had not yet risen to
the hight of her fame or extent of her influence until many years after
the {141} predictions against her were uttered. Yet it was prophesied,
"I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the
wicked; and I will make the land waste and all that is therein by the
hand of strangers. I, the Lord, have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord
God, I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to
cease out of Noph, and there shall be no more a prince of the land of
Egypt."
{141} [ILLUSTRATION: SPHYNX AND PYRAMIDS]
{142} The infidel, Volney, thus relates the fulfillment of these
predictions:
"Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of
her natural properties, she has seen her fertile fields successively
a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the
Arabs, the Georgians and at length the race of Tartars distinguished
by the name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes purchased as slaves, and
introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and selected a leader.
If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is
no less extraordinary; they are replaced by slaves, brought from their
original country." (_Volney's Travels, Vol. I, page_ 74).
Gibbon, another infidel, states, "The most illustrious sultans of the
Baharite and Beyite dynasties were themselves promoted from the Tartar
and Circassian bands; and the four and twenty beys, or military chiefs,
have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."
(_Decline and Fall, chap. xlix_).
It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither
the nominal Christians of Egypt nor the Mahometans allow images among
them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry
water courses will be crossed {143} in the delta of the Nile; and the
traveler needs to carry water with him, who explores the ruined cities
through which once floated Greek and Roman navies.
Again, it was prophesied, "It shall be the ba
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