The only creed consistent with the rejection of the Gospel of Christ is
an eternal tomb, with the heart-shivering inscription, "Death is an
eternal sleep." Americans who reject the Scriptures are as uncertain
about the future as the poor heathen of other lands. Some of our
unbelievers have gathered the information from heathen oracles that the
future consists in being a poor, empty, shivering, table-rapping spirit,
flying to and fro over the country in response to the sigh of some silly
waiting-girl, or at the bidding of some brazen-faced, unscrupulous "free
lover." And this, "O, ye gods!" is all that ever shall be of the noblest
spirits that ever left human flesh! Others, to gain rest from this
horrible and unsatisfying fate, fly to the theory of everlasting
silence, as a result of the idea that mind is simply brain action, and
ceases to exist when the brain ceases to act. Their appropriate motto
is, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." It has been said that
even this brute philosophy is reasonable compared with the dogma of a
large portion of unbelievers, to wit., that blasphemers, thieves,
profane swearers, murderers and adulterers, will all go straight to
heaven when they die; that men with their hearts steeped in blood will
sit down with Abraham and Isaac in the kingdom of God. But
Spiritualists, Pantheists, Atheists, and Deists inform us that an
external revelation is useless. Their common exposition of the sentiment
is too well known to need comment. We hear them saying, "You need say
nothing about the Bible to me; I know my duty well enough without it;
and as for miracles, they will never prove anything to me. Can thunder,
repeated daily through centuries, make God's laws and his wisdom and
goodness more God-like? No! I am grown, perchance, to manhood, and do
not need the thunder and terror. I am not to be scared. It is not
_fear_, but _reverence_, that shall lead me! _Revelation!_ Inspiration!
And thy own God-like spirit; is not that a revelation?" See Carlyle's
"Past and Present," page 307.
Now, if Mr. Carlyle was in no need of the fear of God, somebody else
may be in a different mental and moral condition. There is nothing in
which men differ more. If one man is above the weakness of fearing God
(?) all men are not. Say what we may of fear, it is nevertheless true
that we are greatly influenced by fear. We are greatly indebted to the
fear of sickness for health, to the fear of poverty for wealth, and to
the fear of death for life. Fear is to caution what knowledge is to a
wise choice. Where there is no fear there is no caution. The love of
life and bliss is natural, therefore we fear sickness, poverty and
death. Why say with your lips, "I am above fear," while away down in
your heart you know it to be a lie?
Love and fear, like the Siamese twins, live and perish together. Do we
not _need_ "revelation?" Where is the shadow, and where is the sunshine?
May we not contrast them? The very wisest of heathen legislators
approved of vice in some of its most heinous forms. The Carthaginian law
required human sacrifices. When Agathoclas besieged Carthage two hundred
children of the most noted families were put to death by command of the
Senate, and three hundred citizens sacrificed themselves to Saturn. See
Diodorus Siculus, b. 20, ch. 14. The laws of Sparta required theft and
the death of unhealthy children. The laws of Rome allowed parents to
kill their child, if they pleased to do it. At the headquarters of
heathen literature it was recommended that maimed infants should be
killed or exposed to death. Aristotle's Political Library, 7, chapter
17. In Plato's Republic we discover an advance of society, but a
community of wives continues, and what was termed woman's rights was
maintained upon the condition that the women were trained to war. In war
times the children were led out to look upon the struggle, and become
accustomed and hardened to blood. The teachings of the best minds were
immoral. "He may lie," says Plato, "who knows how to do it." Profane
swearing was enjoined by the example of their best writers. Oaths are of
common occurrence in the writings of Seneca and Plato. Aristippus
taught that adultery and theft were commendable in a wise man, and
Cicero plead for the last dreadful tragedy--_suicide_. Such immoralities
are eulogised in the writings of Virgil, Horace and Ovid. When Rome was
in her glory and greatness, Trajan had ten thousand men to hew each
other to pieces to amuse the Romans. In the face of all these facts,
modern Spiritualists advance along with Deists, Atheists and Pantheists,
and gravely inform us that we have no need of any external
revelation--that men are wise enough without it.
They argue, that as we have physical senses to take hold of earth's
material blessings and appropriate them; so we have intellectual
faculties to take hold of all else that is necessary to supply our
mental and moral wants. It is most certainly true that we have physical
senses and intellectual faculties. I can not tell how it is with all the
infidels of our country, but I do know persons having physical senses
who are in great need of some of the substantials of life. I have also
known persons who have destroyed their physical senses to such an extent
as to be miserable objects of pity and compassion, needing some external
help as well an internal. Now, if, in spite of physical senses, men and
women do starve in this world on account of want, it is certainly
allowable that persons may fail of the enjoyment of needed mental and
moral culture in spite of intellectual faculties. And if it is a matter
of charity for men to put forth their hands and assist their fellow men
when they are in want of material blessings, surely it is a matter of
love, the love of God, to present to weary, burthened souls mental and
spiritual blessings which correlate with man's spiritual wants. Do you
deny the existence of such wants?
Tyndal said there is a place in man's soul-nature for religion. This
fact is acknowledged by all leading writers in unbelief. He who calls it
in question experiences the fact. Why say it is not true against the
testimony of your own conscience?
"Tell me," said a rich Hindoo who had given all his wealth to the
Brahmans surrounding his dying bed that they might obtain pardon for his
sins, "tell me what will become of my soul when I die?" "Your soul will
go into the body of a holy cow." "And after that?" "It will pass into
the body of a divine peacock." "And after that?" "It will pass into a
flower." "Tell me, oh! tell me," cried the dying man, "where will it go
last of all?" "Where will it go last of all? Aye, that is the question
reason can not answer," said the poor Brahmans.
Where there is no vision the people perish. "Life and immortality was
brought to light through the Gospel." Without a revelation from God, men
know neither how to live or die. Our ancestors trusted to the powers of
magic, to incantations, for health, for success in tilling the ground,
for finding lost articles, for preventing accidents, etc. They
superstitiously regarded certain days of the week. If an infant was born
upon a certain day it would live; if upon another it would live, but be
sickly.
Do you unceremoniously reject the Gospel of the Christ? "Yes," you say,
"if it depends on Jesus it is not eternally true, and therefore is not
true at all." But, I ask in all candor, is eternally true and
sufficiently revealed _one_ and the _same_? Are we under no obligations
to the man who first informed us of vaccination as a preventive of
small-pox, simply because it would always have prevented it? Are we
under no obligations to men on account of scientific discoveries, just
because the truths discovered are eternal truths? _Nonsense!_ You know
it is nonsense. Then we may be under lasting obligations to the Christ
for the revelation of the Gospel, with its sublime precepts and
principles, consolations and promises, which fill up the human spirit
with undying love and the hope of eternal glory.
Let parents look well to this question. Let infidels set themselves to
work and get up some law of man capable of regenerating the hearts of
those men who, at their bidding, renounce the law of God and his
authority, and also with it all human authority. Will they do it? Can
they do it? Oh! There are no means outside of the sanctions of religion
by which the heart may be reached and purified from the love and
practice of sin.
What right, says the Pantheist, the Atheist, the Deist, and
Spiritualist, have you to command me?
The rejectors of the Bible made an experiment, an attempt, in trying to
govern France without religion. Shall the scenes of Paris and Lyons be
repeated, re-enacted in our own beloved America? No, we don't want it,
and we do not think we shall experience it, for the framers of our
Declaration of Independence laid the rights of God in the bed-rock of
our republic, believing that the rights of God are the basis of human
rights. "All men are born free and equal, and are endowed by their
CREATOR WITH CERTAIN INALIENABLE RIGHTS, AMONG WHICH IS LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, ETC."
Nations destitute of the Bible ever were, and are, ignorant and wicked.
There are peoples in the world decently clad, well fed, and living in
comfortable mansions, with well tilled lands, who make powerful streams
turn powerful wheels and run great machinery; who yoke the iron horse to
the market train and drive their floating palaces against the floods;
who erect churches in every village, and make their children more
learned than the priests of Egypt, or the philosophers of Greece; even
many of their criminals are more decent and upright than were the sages,
philosophers and heroes of lands destitute of the Bible. These peoples
have that wonderful book; and they claim that it contains a revelation
from God to man; and that it teaches us how to live, and how to die.
"EVERY TREE IS KNOWN BY ITS OWN FRUITS."
* * * * *
"The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." He claims, however,
that something without life or intelligence produced organic nature.
That BLIND, DEAD, SOMETHING IS THE FOOL'S GOD.