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[Illustration: Robert Patterson]
FABLES OF INFIDELITY
AND
FACTS OF FAITH:
BEING AN EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCES OF INFIDELITY.
BY
REV. ROBERT PATTERSON, D. D.
REVISED AND ENLARGED.
CINCINNATI:
WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
WESTERN TRACT SOCIETY,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
Stereotyped by
OGDEN, CAMPBELL & CO.,
176 Elm St., Cincinnati.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE.
Did the World Make Itself? 7
Eternity of Matter.
Disproved by its Composite Nature.
Disproved by its Motion.
Evolution only a big Perpetual Motion Humbug.
Work of a Designer in the structure of the Eye.
The Eye-Maker sees over a wide Field and far.
The Eye-Maker sees Perfectly.
CHAPTER II.
Was Your Mother a Monkey? 34
The Divine Fact of Evolution Quite Different from the Atheistic Theory.
State the Question Sharply--Why?
Darwin's Answer.
The Ancestral Monkey, Fish, Squirt.
Natural Selection.
Intended to Exclude God.
1. _The History of the Theory._
Indian; Phoenician; Greek; Popish; La Place's Theory; The Vestiges of
Creation.
Herbert Spencer's Contradictory Theory.
The Evolutionists' Hell.
Spontaneous Generation--two Theories; the Conflicting Theories of
Progress; Tremaux; Lamarck; the Climatal; Darwin's; Huxley's;
Parson's; Mivart's; Hyatt's; Cope's; Wallace's; the Gods; Denounced
by the Princes of Science.
Agassiz's Deliverance Against it.
Imperfection of the Theory Eked out.
Huxley's Protoplasm.
Tyndall's Potency of Life in Matter.
Buchner's Matter and Force.
Lubbock's Origin of Civilization.
Consequences of the Brutal Origin of Man.
Propagandism of Atheism.
2. _The Theory Illogical and Incoherent._
Darwin Admits Insufficiency of Proof.
Useless as an Explanation of Nature.
Self-Contradictory; _e. g._, Protoplasm.
Wallace's Self-Contradictions.
Incoherency of the Denial of Design with the Assertion of Progress.
Failure of Alleged Facts to Sustain the Theory.
Does not Account for the Origin of Anything.
Wild Assumptions Made by Darwin.
Erroneous Assumption of the Tendency of Natural Selection to Improve
Breeds.
Assumption of Infinite Possibility of Progress in Finite Creatures.
3. _An Unfounded Theory._
No Evidence of the Facts Possible.
None Ever Alleged, save Gulliver's.
Domestication Disproves Transmutation--Horses; Pigeons; Dogs.
The Egyptian Monuments.
The Mummied Animals.
The Geological Record.
The Limits of Geological Time.
4. _Embryology._
Testimony of Scientists:
1. Embryology Only Analogical.
2. Embryos _not_ all Alike.
3. Four Distinct Plans of Structure.
4. Germs Always True to the Breed.
5. _Gradations of Species._
Lamarck's Statement.
Birth Descent not Inferable from Gradation.
No such Imperceptible Blending in Nature.
The Fact of the Present Existence of Distinct Species.
Sterility of Hybrids.
Geological Species Distinct.
The Intermediate Forms not Found.
The Gradation Does not Begin with the Lowest Forms.
Four Kingdoms from the Beginning.
The New Species Began with the Giants.
The Gaps Fatal to the Theory.
The Abyss Between Death and Life.
The Gulf Between the Plant and the Animal.
The Gaps Between Species Which will not Breed Together.
The Gaps Between Air Breathers and Water Breathers, &c.
The Great Gulf Between the Brute and the Man.
Natural Selection Could not Have Deprived a Monkey of Hair.
Nor Have Given a Human Brain.
The Brain-Worker Contravenes Natural Selection at Every Step.
Civilization the Contradiction of Natural Selection.
Morality and Religion the Direct Contraries of Natural Selection.
Tendency Immoral, Degrading, and Atheistic.
CHAPTER III.
Is God Everybody, and Everybody God? 91
Pantheism Described.
An Antiquated Hindooism.
A Jesuitical Atheism.
Grossly Immoral.
A Practical Atheism.
CHAPTER IV.
Have We Any Need of the Bible? 112
Civilization and the Bible.
Revelation Not Impossible.
The Mythical Theory.
The Inner Light.
Many Ignorant of God.
Heathen Morality--Plato's.
Infidel Morality--Paine's.
CHAPTER V.
Who Wrote the New Testament? 147
The Bible Not Just Like Any Other Book.
Two Modes of Investigation.
Did the Council of Nice Make the Bible?
The Mythical Theory.
The Evidence of Celsus.
The Fragment Hypothesis.
The Bank Signature Book.
Could the New Testament be Corrupted?
CHAPTER VI.
Is the Gospel Fact or Fable? 169
The Nature of Historical Evidence; Letters; Monuments.
Contemporary Letters of Peter, Pliny and John.
Prove the Existence of Churches.
And Their Worship, Holiness, and Sufferings.
CHAPTER VII.
Can We Believe Christ and His Apostles? 190
The Gospel a Unit; Must Take or Refuse it All.
Apostles' Testimony Circumstantial.
Witnesses Numerous and Independent.
Confirm Their Testimony with Their Blood.
CHAPTER VIII.
Prophecy, 210
Political--Napoleon's--Wrong.
Presidential Candidates.
Draper's Dogma of Youth and Decrepitude of Nations.
Statesmen Prophets.
General Claim for All Genius.
Instances of Secular Prediction:
Cayotte's of the French Revolution.
The Oracles of Apollo.
Vettius Valens' Twelve Vultures.
Spencer's of the Disruption of the American Union.
Saint Malachi's Prophecies.
Mohammed's Prophecies.
Seneca's of the Discovery of America.
Dante's of the Reformation.
Plato's of Shakespeare.
Symbolical Language of Prophecy.
Anybody may Predict Downfall of Nations.
An Awful Truth if it be True.
But Bible Predictions Circumstantial--Egypt; Babylon; Nineveh; Judea.
Predict Life and Resurrection.
The Arabs; Jews; Seven Churches; Messiah.
CHAPTER IX.
Moses and the Prophets, 266
God the Author of the Bible.
Every Other Book Inspired?
Connection of Bible History and Morality.
Hume's Sophism. Miracles Being Violations of Laws of Nature, Contrary to
an Unalterable Experience.
No Testimony can Reach to the Supernatural.
Records of Facts Not Judged by Your Notions.
Rationalistic Explanation of the Miracles.
Bible Account of Creation Unscientific.
Antiquity of Man.
The Anachronisms of the Pentateuch.
Bishop Colenso's Blunders:
The Universality of the Deluge.
Joshua Causing the Sun to Stand Still.
Cain's Wife.
Increase of Jacob's Family in Egypt.
The Number of the First-Born.
The Fourth Generation.
The Bishop's Blunders in Camp Life.
Sterility of the Wilderness.
Population of the Promised Land.
Modern Discoveries in Bible Lands.
Egyptian Monuments of Joseph.
Assyrian Ethnology and Genesis, Chaps. x. and xi.
Sennacherib's Conquest of Palestine.
Belshazzar's Kingship.
The Moabitic Inscriptions, and Omri and Ahab.
The Samaritan Pentateuch.
The Character of the Books--Austere.
Variety of Writers and Unity of Plan.
Contained the Surveys, and the Laws of the Nation.
Introduced New and Republican Usages.
Moses' Law in Advance of Modern Social Science.
Testimony of the Jewish Nation.
Testimony of Christ.
The Lost Books.
The Law Abolished by the Gospel.
The Imperfect Morality of Old Testament.
Polygamy, Slavery, and Divorce.
The Education of the World a Gradual Process.
The Imprecations of Scripture.
CHAPTER X.
Infidelity Among the Stars, 335
Scientific Objections to the Bible.
The Infinity and Self-Existence of the Universe.
Disproved by
Its Evident Limits.
Its Composite Materials.
Its Steady Loss of Heat.
Buffon's Explosion of Planets.
The Nebular Theories.
The Fiction of Homogeneous Matter.
The Contradictory Theories.
The Perpetual Motion Machine.
Contrary to Facts of Astronomy.
Contradicted by Astronomers.
Impossibility of any Cosmogony.
CHAPTER XI.
Daylight Before Sunrise, 378
Infidel Objections to Genesis.
The Hindoo Chronology.
The Egyptian Chronology.
The Bible Age of the Earth.
The Solid Firmament.
Light Before the Sun.
CHAPTER XII.
Telescopic Views of Scripture, 423
The Source of the Water of the Deluge.
The Stars Fighting Against Sisera.
The Astronomers of the Great Pyramid.
The Grand Motion of the Sun.
The Formation of Dew.
The Multitude of the Stars.
The Descent of the Heavenly City.
CHAPTER XIII.
Science or Faith? 466
Must Faith Fade Before Science?
Scientists as Partial as Other People.
Have no Such Certainty as is Claimed.
1. _Mathematical Errors._
The Infinite Half Inch, Etc.
The Doctrine of Chances.
No Mathematical Figures in Nature.
The French Metric System.
The Lowell Turbine Wheel.
2. _Errors of Astronomy._
Kant's Predictions; Le Verrier's.
Herschel's Enumeration of Errors.
Sun's Distance; Other Measurements.
The Moon's Structure and Influence.
La Place's Proposed Improvement.
The Sun's Structure, Heat, Etc.
The Sizes, Distances, and Densities of the Planets.
Errors About the Nebulæ.
Errors About Comets.
The Cosmical Ether.
The Cold of Infinite Space.
From This Chaos Springs the Theory of Development.
3. _Errors of Geology._
No _Fact_ of Geology Anti-Biblical.
All Anti-Biblical Theories Based on an _If_.
No Geological Measure of _Time_.
All Calculations of Time by Geologists, which Have Been Tested, Have
Proved Erroneous--the Danish Bogs; the Swiss Lake Villager; Horner's
Nile Pottery; the Raised Beaches of Scotland; Lyell's Blunder in the
Delta of the Mississippi; Sir Wm. Thompson's Exposure of the
Absurdity of the Evolutionists' Demands for Time.
Conflicting Geological Theories--the Wernerian, Huttonian, and Diluvian
Theories; the Catastrophists and Progressionists; Eleven Theories of
Earthquakes; Nine Theories of Mountains; False Geology of America;
Scotland Kicked About Too.
4. _Errors of Zoology._
Lamarck's Vestiges; Tremaux; Darwin's Contradictions; Huxley; Mivart,
and Wallace.
Blunders of the French Academy, Denouncing Quinine, Vaccination,
Lightning Rods, and Steam Engines.
Uncertainty of Science Increases in Human Concerns.
Second-hand Science Founded on Somebody's Say So.
5. _All Science Founded on Faith._
Reason Also Based on Faith.
This Life Depends on Faith.
We Demand Truths of which Science is Ignorant.
All Our Chief Concerns in the Domain of Faith.
Religion the Most Experimental of the Sciences.
The Only Science which can Make You Happy.
Try for Yourself.
PREFACE.
This is not so much a volume upon the Evidences of Christianity, as an
examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us
that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of
course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under
penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our
birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could
persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved
to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men
professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow?
Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to
scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float
me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they
must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and
venerate, and trust.
A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned upon
some of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want of
something for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, a
poor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. At any rate, having
grown tired of pelting the Church with the dirtballs of Voltaire and
Paine, they begin to acknowledge that it is, after all, an institution;
and that the Bible is an influential book, both popular and useful in
its way. Mankind, it seems, will have a Church and a Bible of some sort;
why not go to work and make a Church and a Bible of their own?
Accordingly they have gone to work, and in a very short time have
prepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that the
worldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must be
very hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positive
statements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of the
Bible, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come. Nevertheless
each discoverer or constructor presents his system to the world with
great confidence, large claims to superior benevolence, vast pretensions
to learning and science, and no little cant about duty and piety.
Wonderful to tell, some of them are very fond of clothing their
ungodliness in the language of Scripture.
No pains are spared to secure the wide spread of these notions.
Prominent Infidels are invited to deliver courses of scientific
lectures, in which the science is made the medium of conveying the
Infidelity. Scientific books, novels, magazines, daily newspapers, and
common school books, are all enlisted in the work. The disciples of
Infidelity are numerous and zealous. It would be hard to find a factory,
boarding-house, steamboat or hotel where twelve persons are employed,
without an Infidel; and harder still to find an Infidel who will not use
his influence to poison his associates.
These systems are well adapted to the depraved tastes of the age. The
business man, whose whole soul is set on money-making and spending, is
right glad to meet the Secularist, who will prove to him on scientific
principles, that a man is much profited by gaining the whole world, even
at the risk of his soul, if he has such a thing. The young and
ill-instructed professor of Christianity, whose longings for forbidden
joys are strong, has a natural kindliness toward nationalism, which
befogs the serene light of God's holy law, and gives the directing power
to his own inner liking. The sentimental young lady, who would recoil
from the grossness of the Deist, is attracted by the poetry of
Pantheism. Infidelity has had, in consequence, a degree of success very
little suspected by simple-minded pastors and parents, and which is
often discovered too late for remedy.
This book is written to expose the _folly_ of some of these novel
systems of Infidelity--leaving others to show their wickedness. It may
surprise some who would glory in being esteemed fiends, to learn that
they are only fools. If they should be awakened now to a sense of the
absurdities which they cherish as philosophy, it might save them from
awaking another day to the shame and everlasting contempt of the
universe.
I have not taken up all the cavils of Infidelity. Their name is Legion.
Nor have I troubled my readers with any which they are not likely to
hear. Leaving the sleeping dogs to lie, I have noticed only such as I
have known to bark and bite in my own neighborhood, and know to be rife
here in the West. They are stated, as nearly as possible, in the words
in which I have heard them in public debate, or in private conversation
with gentlemen of Infidel principles. I have made no references to
books or writers on that side, save to such as I am assured were the
sources of their sentiments. In such cases I have named and quoted the
authors. Where no such quotations are noticed it will be understood that
I am responsible for the fairness with which I have represented the
opinions which are examined. It is not my design to fight men of straw.
Every historical or scientific fact adduced in support of the arguments
here used is confirmed by reference to the proper authority. But it has
not been deemed needful to crowd the pages with references to the works
of Christian apologists. The Christian scholar does not need such
references; while to those for whose benefit I write, their names carry
no authority, and their arguments are generally quite unknown. One great
object of my labor will be gained if I shall succeed in awaking the
spirit of inquiry among my readers, to such an extent as to load them to
a prayerful and patient perusal of several of the works named on the
next page. They have heard only one side of the question, and will be
surprised at their own ignorance of matters which they ought to have
known.
Books on the Evidences are not generally circulated. Ministers perhaps
have some volumes in their libraries; but in a hundred houses, it would
be hard to find half a dozen containing as many as would give an
inquiring youth a fair view of the historical evidences of the truth of
the gospel. Nor, where they are to be found, are they generally read.
Being deemed heavy reading, the magazine, or the newspaper is preferred.
Ministers do not in general devote enough of their time to such sound
teaching as will stop the mouths of gainsayers. I have been assured by
skeptical gentlemen, who in the early part of their lives had attended
church regularly for twenty-two years, that during all that time they
had never heard a single discourse on the Evidences. Moreover, the
protean forms of Infidelity are so various, and many of its present
positions so novel, that books or discourses prepared only twenty years
ago miss the mark; and rather expose to the charge of misrepresentation,
than produce conviction. New books on Infidelity are needed for every
generation.
The lectures expanded into this volume were delivered in Cincinnati, in
1858. Replying to different, and discordant systems of error, whose only
bond is opposition to the gospel, they are necessarily somewhat
disconnected. No attempt was made to mold them into a suit of royal
armor, but merely to select a few smooth pebbles from the brook of
truth, which any Christian lad might sling at the giant defiers of the
armies of the living God. Having proved acceptable for this purpose, and
a steadily increasing demand for repeated editions wearing out the
original plates, the author has been requested by British and American
publishers to revise the work in the light of the recent discoveries of
science. This he has attempted; with what success the reader will judge.
Conscious of its many defects, yet grateful to God for the good which he
has done to many souls by its instrumentality, the author again commends
the book to the Father of Lights, praying him to use it as a mirror to
flash such a ray of light into many dark souls as may lead them into the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 1875.
* * * * *
The author having been repeatedly asked by inquirers for the names of
books on the Evidences of Christianity, subjoins a list of those easily
accessible in the West. It is not supposed that any one inquirer will
read all these; but it is well to read more than one, since the evidence
is cumulative, and it is impossible for any writer to present the whole.
Having a list of several works, the inquirer who can not obtain one may
be able to procure another. There are many other works on the Evidences
on the shelves of all our principal booksellers.
_Modern Atheism_, by James Buchanan, LL. D.
_Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation_, by James McCosh, LL. D.,
and George Dickie, M. D.
_Religion and Geology_, Edward Hitchcock, LL. D.
_The Architecture of the Heavens_, J. P. Nichol, LL. D.
_The Christian Philosopher_, Thomas Dick, LL. D.
_Natural Theology_, William Paley, D. D.
_The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature_, Joseph Butler, D. C. L.
_The Bridgewater Treatises_, Whewell, Chalmers, Kidd, &c.
_The Comprehensive Commentary_, William Jenks, D. D.
_The Cause and Cure of Infidelity_, Rev. David Nelson.
_A View of the Evidences of Christianity_, William Paley, D. D.
_The Eclipse of Faith_, ascribed to Henry Rogers.
_The Restoration of Belief_, ascribed to Isaac Taylor.
_Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity_, University of Virginia.
_The Divine Authority of the Old and New Testaments Asserted_, J.
Leland, D. D.
_The Bible Commentary._
_An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters to Thomas Paine_, R.
Watson.
_A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion_, S. Jenyns.
_A Letter to G. West, Esq., on the Conversion of St. Paul_, Lord
Lyttleton.
_Observations on the History and Evidence of the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ_, Gilbert West, Esq.
_Difficulties of Infidelity_, Faber.
_Dissertations on the Prophecies_, Thos. Newton, D. D.
_An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scriptures_, T. H. Horne,
Vol. I.
_The Evidences of Christianity_, Charles Petit McIlvaine, D. D.
_Rawlinson's Historical Evidences._
_Modern Skepticism_, by Joseph Barker.
_Haley's Discrepancies of the Bible_, W. G. Holmes, Chicago.
_The Superhuman Origin of the Bible_, Rogers.
_Christianity and Positivism_, McCosh.
_The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural_, McCosh.
_Aids to Faith_, Appleton & Co.
_Modern Skepticism_, Randolph & Son.
_Modern Doubt_, Christlieb.
_Alexander's Evidences of Christianity._
CHAPTER I.
DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
_Understand, ye brutish among the people;
And, ye fools, when will ye be wise?
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not correct?
He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?_--PSALM xciv. 8, 9.
Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about
in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what
is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not?
Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger
question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are
persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a
lie 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 is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earth
are eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator."
But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we do
not know any such thing, and must be allowed to ask, How do _you_ know?
As you are not eternal, we can not take it on your word.
The only reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion
is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally
indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it
is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it
is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as
much as you please, but you can not destroy the substance of anything.
Wherefore, as matter is indestructible, it must be eternal."
Profound reasoning! Here is a brick fresh from the kiln. It will last
for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousand
years past!
The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It is
not agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturally
indestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them can
tell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake to
say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among
these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be
subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the
surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in
this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He
can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he
may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that
matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child
should try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and,
failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existed
from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."
But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, and
impossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrable
refutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science. The principle
of the argument is so plain that a child of four years old can
understand it. It is simply this, that all substances in heaven and
earth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can be
eternal.
We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter is
eternal, how does that account for the formation of this world? What is
this matter you speak of? This world consists not of a philosophical
abstraction called matter, nor yet of one substance known by that name,
but of a great variety of material substances, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon,
sulphur, iron, aluminum, and some fifty others already discovered.[2]
Now, which of these is the eterna-matter you speak of? Is it iron, or
sulphur, or clay, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did the
others come from? Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with its
gravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into a
pail of water? Or are they all eternal? Have we fifty-seven eternal
beings? Are they all eternal in their present combinations? or is it
only the single elements that are eternal? You see that your
hypothesis--that matter is eternal--gives me no light on the formation
of this world, which is not a shapeless mass of a philosophical
abstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building,
composed of a great variety of matters. Was it so from eternity? No man
who was ever in a quarry, or a gravel pit, will say so, much less one
who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. Do you assert the
eternity of the fifty-seven single substances, either separate or
combined in some other way than we now find them in the rocks, and
rivers, and atmosphere of the earth? Then how came they to get together
at all, and particularly how did they put themselves in their present
shapes?
Each of them is a piece of matter of which _inertia_ is a primary and
inseparable property. Matter _of itself_ can not begin to move, or
assume a quiescent state after being put in motion.
Will you tell us that the fifty-seven primary elements danced about till
the air, and 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, and summer and winter, with all its
beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its variety of birds, and
beasts, and fishes? To bring the matter down to the level of the
intellect of the most stupid pantheist, tell us in plain English, _Did
the paving stones make themselves?_ For the paving stones are _made_ out
of a dozen different chemical constituents, and each one is built up
more ingeniously than the house you live in. _Now, did the paving stones
make themselves?_
No conviction of the human mind is more certain than the belief that
every combination of matter proves the existence of a combiner, that
every house has had a builder, and that every machine has had a maker.
No matter how simple the combination, if it be only two laths fastened
together by a nail, or two bricks cemented with mortar, or the sole of
an old pegged boot, all the atheists in the world could not convince you
that those two laths, or those two bricks, or those two bits of leather
existed in such a combination from all eternity. If any wise philosopher
tried to persuade you that for anything you could tell they might have
been always so, you would reply, "No, sir! You can't cram such stuff
down my throat. Even a child's common sense shows him that those two
laths were not always so nailed together; that those two bricks were not
always so placed, one on the top of the other; and that those two pieces
of old sole leather were not always pegged together in the sole of a
boot." There is no conviction more irresistible than our belief that
_no compound can possibly be eternal_.
But the universe is the greatest of all compounds. Everything in it is
compound. Chemists speak of simple substances, or elements of matter,
and it is well enough to separate the elements of things in our
thoughts, for the sake of distinct consideration, and to speak of the
properties of pure oxygen, or of pure hydrogen, or of pure carbon, or of
pure gold, or of pure iron, or of pure silver. But then we should always
remember that there is nothing pure in the world, that there is no such
thing in nature as any substance consisting only of a single element,
pure and uncombined with others. Just as your gold eagle is not pure
gold, but alloyed with copper, everything in nature is alloyed.
Everything in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, and in the
waters under the earth, is compound. The air you breathe, simple as it
seems, is composed of three gases, and is besides full of what Huxley
calls "a stirabout" of millions of seeds of animalculæ and motes of dust
visible in the sunbeam. That hydrant water you are about to swallow is a
rich aquarium full of all manner of monsters, which the oxy-hydrogen
microscope will exhibit to your terrified gaze, devouring each other
alive. Should you get rid of them by evaporating your water, your
chemist will tell you that still your pure water must be a compound of
oxygen and hydrogen. There is no help for it.
Many years ago some astronomers fancied they had found clouds, or
nebulæ, of gas, quite simple and uncompounded with anything else, a
great many millions of miles away in the sky. They were so very far away
that they thought nobody would ever be able to fly so far to bottle up a
specimen of that gas and bring it back here to earth and analyze it, to
find out whether it was pure and simple, or compound. So they felt quite
safe in affirming that there was the genuine, simple, homogeneous gas,
in the nebulæ, with which Almighty God had nothing whatever to do, but
which had first made itself and then had condensed into our present
world. But unfortunately for this brilliant discovery the spectroscope
opened windows into the nebulæ, and showed very plainly that they were
on fire; and fire is a compound; it can not burn without fuel and
something to support the combustion; so that settled the alleged
simplicity of the nebulæ. It is now demonstrated, therefore, that every
known substance existing in nature is a compound, and therefore can not
be eternal. And the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts. No
number of finite existences can be eternal. The universe, then, can not
be eternal.
Suppose, however, that, for the sake of argument, we should grant our
atheistic world-builder his materials, away off beyond the rings of
Saturn, or the orbit of Uranus (since he seems to like to have his
quarries a good way off from his building), would he be any nearer the
completion of his world-making? As Cornwallis declared that the conquest
of India resolved itself ultimately into a question of bullocks, the
prime consideration in the construction of the world, after you have got
your materials, is that of transportation. When one beholds the three
great stones in the temple of Baalbec, each weighing eleven hundred
tons, built into the wall twenty feet high, and a fourth in the quarry,
a mile away, nearly ready for removal, he asks, "How did the builders
move those immense stones, and raise them to their places?" And when we
behold the quarry out of which these stones were taken, and all the
other quarries of the world, and all the everlasting mountains, and the
whole of this solid earth, and boundless sea, brought, as our theorists
affirm, from far beyond the orbit of the most distant planet, we raise
the question of transportation, and demand some account of the wagon and
team which hauled them to their places. We can not get rid of the
necessity for transportation by evaporating the building stones into
gas, for a world of gas weighs just as many tons as the world made out
of it. Before we can make a world we must have _power_; but we can never
get power out of the world to build itself. The atheists' world is only
a great machine. The first law of mechanics is that action and reaction
are equal; consequently machinery can never create power. You will never
lift yourself by pulling at your boot-straps; much less can a machine
lift and carry itself.
It is no matter how big you make the wheels of your machine, as big as
the orbits of the planets if you like, still it is only a machine,
unless it has a mind in it; and your big machine can no more create
power than a little machine as small as a lady's watch. Nor does it make
the least difference in respect to making power, of what materials your
perpetual motion peddler makes his machine--whether of a skein of silk
on a reel in a bottle, or of steel and zinc electro magnets running upon
diamond points, or whether he melts up his steel, and zinc, and diamonds
into red hot fire mist; it is still only a machine, made of these
materials, as destitute of power as the smaller machines made out of it.
The atheists' universe is only a big machine, and no machine can create
power, no more than a paving stone.
It has been, however, proposed to manufacture power by the law of
gravitation, according to which all bodies attract each other, directly
in proportion to their mass, and inversely as the square of their
distances. This law appears to prevail as far as our observation extends
through space; and our world builders affirm that it must have operated
eternally, and that not only were the separate parts of our earth thus
drawn together, but that all the orbs of heaven were caused to revolve
under its influence.
Suppose, however, we grant that matter was eternal, and the force of
gravitation eternally operating upon it, would that sufficiently account
for the building up of even our own little planetary system? By no
means.
The unresisted force of gravitation would, in far less than an eternity,
draw all things together toward the center of gravity of the universe.
We should not have separate stars, and suns, and planets, and moons,
revolving in orderly orbits, but one vast mass of matter, in which all
motion had long since ceased. There must be some power of resistance to
gravitation, and nicely balanced against it, a centrifugal force--no
matter whether you call it heat, light, or electricity, or by any other
name--from which balance of power the movements of the universe are
regulated. But here again we arrive at the same conclusion from the
balance of power to which we were before driven by the combination of
matter--regulated power proclaims a regulator, a governor. Power
belongeth unto God.
In world-building we need not only a quarry of materials, and power for
transportation, but a head to plan their arrangement. For, as ten
thousand loads of brick and stone dumped down higgledy piggledy will not
build a house, neither will ten thousand millions of materials poured
into a chaos make a world like this earth, arranged in order and beauty.
It is grossly absurd to imagine that the inanimate materials of the
earth arranged themselves in their present orderly structure.
Absurd as it seems to every man of common sense, 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 have found it out
by supposing every thing in the universe reduced to very fine powder,
consisting of very small grains, which they call atoms; or, if that is
not fine enough, into gas, of which it is supposed the particles are too
fine to be perceived; and then by different arrangements of these atoms,
according to the laws of attraction and electricity, the various
elements of the world were made, and arranged in its present form.
Suppose we grant this gassy supposition, that the world millions of ages
ago existed as a cloud of atoms, does that bring us any nearer the
object of getting rid of a Creator than before? The atoms must be
material, if a material world is to be made from them; and so they must
be extended; each one of them must have length, breadth and thickness.
The atheist, then, has only multiplied his difficulties a million times,
by pounding up the world into atoms, which are only little bits of the
paving stones he intends to make out of them. Each bit of the paving
stone, no matter how small you break it, remains just as incapable of
making itself, or moving itself, as was the whole stone composed of all
these bits. So we are landed back again at the sublime question, _Did
the paving stones make themselves, and move themselves?_
Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a
vast cloud of fire mist, which, after a long time, cooled down into
granite, and the granite, by dint of earthquakes, got broken up on the
surface, and washed with rain into clay and soil, whence plants sprang
up of their own accord, and the plants gradually grew into animals of
various kinds, and some of the animals grew into monkeys, and finally
the monkeys into men. The fire mist they stoutly affirm to have existed
from eternity. They do not allege that they remember that (and yet as
they themselves are, as they say, composed body and soul of this eternal
fire mist, they ought to remember), but only that there are certain
comets which occasionally come within fifty or sixty millions of miles
of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of the fire mist which
they _suppose_ this world is made of. A solid basis, truly, on which to
build a world! A cloud in the sky, fifty million of miles away, may
possibly be fire mist, may possibly cool down and condense into a solid
globe; therefore, this fire mist is eternal, and had no need of a
Creator; and our world, and all other worlds, may possibly have been
like it; therefore, they also were never created by Almighty God. Such
is the atheist's ground of faith. The thinnest vapor or the merest
supposition will suffice to risk his eternal salvation upon; provided
only it contradicts the Bible and gets rid of God. We can not avoid
asking with as much gravity as we can command, 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 mist together? Was it red
hot enough from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler
now? How could an eternal red heat cool down? If it existed as a red hot
fire mist from eternity, until our atheist began to observe it beginning
to cool, why should it ever begin to cool at all, and why begin to cool
just then? Fill it as full of electricity, magnetism and odyle as you
please; do these afford any _reason_ for its very extraordinary conduct?
The utmost they do is to show you _how_ such a change took place, but
they neither tell you _where the original matter came from_, nor _why
its form was changed_. Change is an effect, and every effect requires a
cause. There could be no cause outside of the fire mist; for they say
there was nothing else in the universe. Then the cause must be in the
mist itself. Had it a mind, and a will, and a perception of propriety?
Did the mist become sensible of the lightness of its behavior, and the
fire resolve to cool off a little, and both consult together on the
propriety of dropping their erratic blazing through infinite space, and
resolve to settle down into orderly, well-behaved suns and planets? In
the division of the property, _what became of the mind_? Did it go to
the sun, or to the moon, or to the pole star, or to this earth? Or, was
it clipped up into little pieces and divided among the stars in
proportion to their respective magnitudes; so that the sun may have,
say the hundredth part of an idea, and the moon a faint perception of
it? Did the fire mist's mind die under this cruel clipping and
dissecting process; or is it of the nature of a polypus, each piece
alive and growing up to perfection in its own way? Has each of the
planets and fixed stars a great "soul of the world" as well as this
earth, and are they looking down intelligently and compassionately on
the little globe of ours? Had we not better build altars to all the host
of heaven and return to the religion of our acorn-fed ancestors, who
burned their children alive, in honor of the sun, on Sun-days?
An aqueous solution of this difficulty of getting rid of Almighty God,
is frequently proposed. It is known that certain chemical solutions,
when mixed together, deposit a sediment, or precipitate, as chemists
call it. And it is supposed that the universe was all once in a state of
solution, in primeval oceans, and that the mingling of the waters of
these oceans caused them to deposit the various salts and earths which
form the worlds in the form of mud, which afterward hardened into rock,
or vegetated into trees and men. Thus, it is clearly demonstrated that
there is no need for the Creator if--if--if--we only had somebody to
make these primeval oceans--and somebody to mix them together![3]
The development theory of the production of the human race from the mud,
through the mushroom, the snail, the tortoise, the greyhound, the monkey
and the man, which is now such a favorite with atheists, if it were
fully proved to be a fact, would only increase the difficulty of getting
rid of God. For either the primeval mud had all the germs of the future
plants and monkeys, and men's bodies and souls, in itself originally, or
it had not. If it had not, where did it get them? If it had all the life
and intelligence in the universe in itself, it was a very extraordinary
kind of God. We shall call it the _mud-god_. Our atheists then believe
in a god of muddy body and intelligent mind. But if they deny
intelligence to the mud, then we are back to our original difficulty,
with a large appendix, viz: _The paving stones made themselves first and
all atheists afterward._
The whole theory of development is utterly false in its first
principles. From the beginning of the world to the present day, no man
has ever observed an instance of the spontaneous generation of life.
There is no law of nature, whether electric, magnetic, odylic, or any
other, which can produce a living plant or animal, save from the germ or
seed of some previous plant or animal of the same species. Nor has a
single instance of the transmutation of species ever been proved. Every
beast, bird, fish, insect and plant brings forth after its kind, and has
done so since its creation. No law of Natural Philosophy is more firmly
established than this, _That there is no spontaneous generation, nor
transmutation of species._ It is true there is a regular gradation of
the various orders of animal and vegetable life, rising like the steps
of a staircase, one above the other; but gradation is no more caused by
transmutation than a staircase is made by an ambitious lower step
changing itself into all the upper ones.
To refer the origin of the world to the laws of nature is absurd. Law,
as Johnson defines it, is a rule of action. It necessarily requires an
acting agent, an object designed in the action, means to attain it, and
authoritative enforcement of the use of those means by a lawgiver. Are
the laws of nature laws given by some supposed intelligent being,
worshiped by the heathen of old, and by the atheists of modern times,
under that name? Or do they signify the orderly and regular sequence of
cause and effect, which is so manifest in the course of all events? If,
as atheists say, the latter, this is the very thing we want them to
account for. How came the world to be under law without a lawgiver?
Where there is law, there must be design. Chance is utterly inconsistent
with the idea of law. Where there is design there must, of necessity, be
a designer. Matter in any shape, stones or lightnings, mud or magnets,
can not think, contrive, design, give law to itself, or to any thing
else, much less bring itself into existence. There is no conceivable way
of accounting for this orderly world we live in but one or other of
these two: Either an intelligent being created the world, or--_the
paving stones made themselves_.
"Here are two hypotheses, of which the oldest is admitted to offer a
full and consistent explanation of all the facts of science. There can
be no better cause for any given formation than that God created it so.
Men of science, however, allege that creation (out of nothing) is
'scientifically inconceivable;' but this is only throwing dust in our
eyes; of course, science can not _verify_ it, neither can it verify any
other theory of causation. The question is whether reason can accept the
fact, though science can not even imagine the process? If not, there is
nothing for us but the _eternity of matter_, for evolution itself has to
face the very same difficulty when asked to account for its primal germ.
It is surely more conceivable that God created the first matter out of
nothing, than that nothing evolved something out of itself, by an
imminent law of its nature. This point, however, our scientific men are
sadly given to shirking. They profess in general not to hold the
eternity of matter, but they have nothing to suggest for its origin.
They accept it as the starting point of evolution, and decline to
speculate on its cause. This, as Dr. Christlieb observes of Bauer's
kindred system of criticism, is 'beginning without a
beginning--everything is already extant'. We may as well start with
species, as with protoplasm, if the inquiry is not to be pushed beyond
the fact. The evolutionist is bound to answer whether the process is
eternal, or how it began to be. Either it had a beginning or it had not;
if it had, creation out of nothing is conceded, and there is nothing
left to dispute. It is puerile to except to the _frequency_ of creative
acts on the ordinary hypothesis of specific origin, because it is freely
open to science to reduce the several 'kinds' to the lowest _minimum_ it
can experimentally establish. Moreover--besides the utter inconsequence
of such purely relative ideas as _often_ and _rare_--it is far more
reasonable that an eternal, personal author of creation should watch
over his work to shape and diversify it at his pleasure, than that,
after a single act, he should relapse into _inertia_ like the Hindu
Brahmin. To concentrate the whole evidence of design in one original
act, ages upon ages ago, with no opening for after interference,
undermines belief in a personal designer, simply because it leaves him
nothing to do."[4]
Leaving these brutish among the people who assert the latter, to the
enjoyment of their folly, let us ascertain what we can know of the great
Creator of the heavens and the earth. God refers the atheists of the
Psalmist's days to their own bodies for proofs of his intelligence, to
their own minds for proofs of his personality, and to their own
observation of the judgments of his providence against evil-doers for
proofs of his moral government. Our text ascribes for him perception and
intelligence: _He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that
formed the eye, shall he not see?_ It does not say, he has an eye or an
ear, but that he has the knowledge we acquire by those organs. And the
argument is from the designed organ to the designing maker of it, and is
perfectly irresistible. A blind god could not make a seeing man. Let us
look for a little at a few of the many marks of design in this organ to
which God thus refers us.
We shall first observe the mechanical skill displayed in the formation
of the eye, and then the optical arrangements, or rather a few of them,
for there are more than eight hundred distinct contrivances already
observed by anatomists in the dead eye, while the great contrivance of
all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken. I hold in my hand
a box made of several pieces of wood glued together, and covered on the
outside with leather. Inside it is lined with cotton, and the cotton has
a lining of fine white silk. You at once observe that it is intended to
protect some delicate and precious article of jewelry, and that the
maker of this box must have been acquainted with the strength of wood,
the toughness of leather, the adhesiveness of glue, the softness and
elasticity of cotton, the tenacity of silk, and the mode of spinning and
weaving it, the form of the jewel to be placed in it, and the danger
against which this box would protect it--ten entirely distinct branches
of knowledge, which every child who should pick up such a box in the
street would unhesitatingly ascribe to its maker. Now, the box in which
the eye is placed is composed of seven bones glued together internally,
and covered with skin on the outside, lined with the softest fat,
enveloped in a tissue compared with which the finest silk is only
canvas, and the cavity is shaped so as exactly to fit the eye, while the
brow projects over like a roof of a veranda, to keep off falling dust
and rain from injuring it while the lid is open; and the eyebrows, like
a thatch sloping outward, conduct the sweat of the brow, by which a man
earns his bread, away around the outer cover, that it may not enter the
eye and destroy the sight. If it were preposterous nonsense to say that
electricity, or magnetism, or odyle, contrived and made a little
bracelet box, how much more absurd to ascribe the making of the cavity
of the eye to any such cause.
Let us next look at the shape of the eye. You observe it is nearly round
in its section across, and rather oval in its other direction, and the
cavity it lies in is shaped exactly to fit it. Now there are eyes in the
world angular and triangular, and even square; and as you may readily
suppose, the creatures which have them can not move them; to compensate
for such inconvenience, some of them, as the common fly, have several
hundred. But, unless our heads were as large as sugar hogsheads, we
could not be so furnished, and we must either have movable eyes or see
only in one direction. Accordingly, the Contriver of the eye has hung it
with a hinge. Now there are various kinds of hinges, moving in one
direction, and the Maker of the eye might have made a hinge on which the
eye would move up and down, or he might have given us a hinge that would
bend right and left, in which case we should have been able merely to
squint a little in two directions. But to enable one to see in every
direction, there is only one kind of hinge that would answer the
purpose--the ball and socket joint--and the Former of the eye has hung
it with such a hinge, retaining it in its place partly by the projection
of the bones of the face, and partly by the muscles and the optic nerve,
which is about as thick as a candlewick, and as tough as leather. Most
of you have seen a ship, and know the way the yards are moved, and
turned, and squared by ropes and pulleys. The rigging of the eye, though
not so large, is fully as curious. There is a tackle, called a muscle,
to pull it down when you want to look down; another tackle to pull it
up when you have done; one to pull it to the right, and another to the
left; there is one fastened to the eyeball in two places, and geared
through a pulley which will make it move in any direction, as when we
roll our eyes; and the sixth, fastened to the under side of the eye,
keeps it steady when we do not need to move it. Then the eyelids are
each provided with appropriate gearing, and need to have it durable too,
for it is used thirty thousand times a day; in fact every time we wink.
If God had neglected to place these little cords to pull up the eyelash,
we should all have been in the condition of the unfortunate gentleman
described by Dr. Nieuwentyt, who was obliged to pull up his eyelashes
with his fingers whenever he wanted to see. There is, too, another
admirable piece of forethought and skill displayed by the Former of the
eye, in providing a liquid to wash it, and a sponge to wipe it with, and
a waste pipe, through the bone of the nose, to carry off the tears which
have been used in washing and moistening the eye. Now what absurdity to
say that a law of nature, say gravity, or electricity, or magnetism has
such knowledge of the principles of mechanics as the eye proclaims its
Former to have--that it could make a choice among multitudes of shapes
of eyes and kinds of joints, and this choice the very best for our
convenience; and that having known and chosen, it could have
manufactured the various parts of this complicated machine. Such a
machine requires an intelligent manufacturer; and yet we have only as
yet been looking at the dead eye, paying no regard to sight at all. Even
a blind man's eye prove an intelligent Creator.
Let us now turn our thoughts to the instrument of sight. The optic nerve
is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose,
instead of 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 you 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. The
tender points of the fibers of the optic nerve, too, would soon become
blunted and broken, 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, you 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 protection and vision. And to this day they know none
hard enough for protection, clear enough for vision, and elastic enough
to resume its form after a blow. But men did the best they could, and
put a round piece of brittle but transparent glass in a ring of tougher
metal for the protection of the hands of a watch; and he who first
invented the watch crystal thought he had made a discovery. Now, observe
in the eye, that forward part is the watch glass; the cornea, made of a
substance at once hard, transparent and elastic--which man has never
been able to imitate--set into the sclerotica, that white, muscular coat
which constitutes the white of your eye, acts as a frame for the cornea,
and answers another important purpose, as we shall presently see.
[Illustration: Structure of the Human Eye]
But, supposing the end of the nerve protected by the glass, we might
have had it brought up to the glass without any interposing lenses or
humors, as, in fact, is nearly the case with some crustacea. We can not
well imagine all the inconveniences of such an eye to us. If we could
see distinctly at all, we could not see much farther or wider than the
breadth of the end of the nerve at once. Our sight would then be very
like that faculty of perceiving colors by the points of the fingers,
which some persons are said to possess. In that case, seeing would only
be a nicer kind of groping, and our eyes would be more conveniently
fixed on the points of our fingers; or, as with many insects, on the
ends of long antennae. Such a form of eye is precisely suited to the
wants of an animal which has not an idea beyond its food, which has no
business with any object too large for its mouth, and whose great
concern is to stick to a rock and catch whatever animalculæ the water
floats within the grasp of its feelers. But for a being whose
intercourse should be with all the works of God, and whose chief end in
such intercourse should be to behold the Creator reflected in his works,
it was manifestly necessary to have a wider and larger range of vision;
and, therefore, a different form of eye. Both these objects, breadth of
field combined with length of range, are obtained by placing the optic
nerve at the back of the eye, and interposing several lenses, through
which objects are observed. By this arrangement a visual angle is
secured, and all objects lying within it are distinctly visible at the
same time. This faculty of perceiving several objects at the same time
is a special property of sight which tends greatly to enlarge our
conceptions of the knowledge of Him who gave it. A man who never saw can
have no idea of it. He can not taste two separate tastes at once, nor
smell two distinct smells at once; nor feel more than one object with
each hand at once; and if he hears several sounds at the same time, they
either flow into each other, making a harmony, or confuse him with their
discord. Yet we are all conscious that we see a vast variety of
distinct and separate objects at one glance of our eyes. I think it is
manifest that the Former of such an eye not only intended its owner to
observe such a vast variety of objects, but from the capacity of his own
sight to infer the vastly wider range of vision of Him who gave it.
Besides the breadth of the field of vision, we also require length of
range for the purpose of life. The thousand inconveniences which the
short-sighted man so painfully feels are obvious to all. Yet it may tend
to reconcile such to their lot to know that thousands of the liveliest
and merriest of God's creatures can not see an inch before them. Small
birds and insects, which feed on very minute insects, need eyes like
microscopes to find them; while the eagle and the fish hawk, which soar
up till they are almost out of sight, can distinctly see the hare or the
herring a mile below them, and so must have eyes like telescopes. We,
too, need to observe minute objects very closely, as when we read fine
print, or when a lady threads a fine needle at microscope range; but, if
confined to that range, we could not see our friends across the room, or
find our way to the next street. Again, in traveling we need to see
objects miles away, and at night we see the stars millions of miles
away; but then, if confined to the long range, we should be strangers at
home, and never get within a mile of any acquaintance. Now, how to
combine these two powers, of seeing near objects and distant ones with
the same eye, is the problem which the Maker of the eye had to solve.
Let us look how man tried to solve it. A magnifying lens will collect
the rays from any distant object, and convey them to a point called the
focus. Then suppose we put this glass in the tube of an opera-glass, or
pocket spy-glass, and look through the eye-hole and the concave lens,
properly adjusted, in front of it, we shall see the image of the object
considerably magnified. But suppose the object draws very near, we see
nothing distinctly; for the rays reflected from it, which were nearly
parallel while it was at a distance, are no longer so when it comes
near, but scatter in all directions, and those which fall on the lens
are collected at a point much nearer to the lens than before, and the
eye-glass must be pushed forward to that focus. Accordingly, you know
that the spy-glass is made to slide back and forward, and the telescope
has a screw to lengthen or shorten the tube according to the distance of
the objects observed. Another way of meeting the case would be by taking
out the lens, and putting in one of less magnifying power, a flatter
lens, for the nearer object. Now, at first sight, it would seem a very
inconvenient thing to have eyes drawing out and in several inches like
spy-glasses, and still more inconvenient to have twenty or thirty pairs
of eyes, and to need to take out our eyes, and put in a new set twenty
times a day. The ingenuity of man has been at work hundreds of years to
discover some other method of adapting an optical instrument to long and
short range, but without success. Now, the Former of the eye knew the
properties of light and the properties of lenses before the first eye
was made; he knew the mode of adjusting them for any distance, from the
thousands of millions of miles between the eye and the star, to the
half-inch distance of the mote in the sunbeam; and he had not only
availed himself of both the principles which opticians discovered, but
has executed his work with an infinite perfection which bungling men may
admire, but can never imitate. The sclerotic coat of the eye, and the
choroid which lies next it are full of muscles which, by their
contraction, both press back the crystalline lens nearer the retina, and
also flatten it; the vitreous humor, in which the crystalline lens lies,
a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, giving
way behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power of
refraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or the
microscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly,
we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, with
that perfect compound microscope and telescope invented by the Former of
the human eye. Surely, in giving us an instrument so admirably fitted
for observing the lofty grandeur of the heavens and the lowlier beauties
of the earth, he meant to allure us to the discovery of the perfections
of the great Designer and Former of all these wondrous works.
But there is another contrivance in the eye, adapted to lead us further
to the consideration of the extent of the knowledge of its power. We are
placed in a world of variable lights, of day and night, and of all the
variations between light and darkness. We can not see in the full blaze
of light, nor yet in utter darkness. Had the eye been formed to bear
only the noonday glare, we had been half blind in the afternoon, and
wholly so in the evening. If the eye were formed so as to see at night,
we had been helpless as owls in the day. But the variations of light in
the atmosphere may be in some measure compensated, as we know, by
regulating the quantity admitted to our houses--shutting up the windows.
When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms, we have
recourse to various clumsy contrivances; paper blinds, perpetually
tearing, sunblind rollers that will not roll, venetian blinds
continually in need of mending, awnings blowing away with every storm,
or shutters, which shut up and leave us in entire darkness. A
self-acting window, which shall expand with the opening of light in the
mornings and evenings, and close up of its own accord as the light
increases toward noon, has never been manufactured by man. But the
Former of the eye took note of the necessities and conveniences of the
case, and besides giving a pair of shutters to close up when we go to
sleep, he has given the most admirable sunblinds ever invented. The
nerve of the eye at the back of its chamber can not see without light,
and its light comes through the little round window called the pupil, or
black of the eye--which is simply a hole in the iris, or colored part.
Now this iris is formed of two sets of muscles: one set of elastic
rings, which, when left to themselves, contract the opening; and another
set at right angles to them, like the spokes of a wheel, pulling the
inner edge of the iris in all directions to the outside. In fact it is
not so much a sunblind, as a self-acting window, opening and closing the
aperture according to our need of light, and doing this so
instantaneously that we are not sensible of the process.
It is self-evident that the Maker of such an eye was acquainted with the
properties of light, and the alternations of night and day, as well as
with the mechanical contrivances for adjusting the eye to these variable
circumstances. He has given us an eye capable of seeking knowledge among
partial darkness, and of availing itself for this purpose of imperfect
light; an apt symbol of our mental constitution and moral situation in a
world where good and evil, light and darkness, mix and alternate.
Perhaps some one is ready to ask, What is the use of so many lenses in
the eye? It seems as if the crystalline lens and the optic nerve were
sufficient for the purpose of sight, with the cornea simply to protect
them. What is the use of the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor?
Light, when refracted through the lens, becomes separated into its
component colors--red, yellow, green, blue, and violet; and the greater
the magnifying power of the lens, and the brighter the object viewed,
the greater the dispersion of the rays. 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; or, in vulgar
language, we should see starlight.
This difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never
discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would obviate
it. But M. Dolland, an optician, reflecting that the very same
difficulty must have presented itself to the Maker of the eye,
determined to ascertain how he had obviated it. He found that the Maker
of the eye had a knowledge of the fact that different substances have
different powers of refracting or bending the rays of light which pass
through them, and that liquids have generally a different power of
refraction from solids. For instance, if you put a straight stick in
water, the part under water will seem bent at a considerable angle,
while if you put the stick through a little hole in a pane of glass it
will not seem so much bent. He further discovered that oil of cassia had
a different power of refraction from water, and the white of an egg
still a different power. He discovered also that the first lens of the
eye, the aqueous humor, is very like water; that the crystalline lens is
a firm jelly, and that the vitreous humor is about the consistency of
the white of an egg. The combination of these three lenses, of different
powers of refraction, secures the correction of their separate errors.
He could not make telescope lenses of jelly, nor water; therefore, he
could not make a perfect achromatic telescope, but he learned the lesson
of mutual compensations of difficulties which the Maker of the eye
teaches the reflecting anatomist, and procuring flint and crown glass of
different degrees of refraction, he arranged them in the achromatic lens
so as nearly to remedy the defect.
I think that you will at once admit that Dolland's attempt to remedy the
evils of confused sight in the telescope indicated a desire to obtain a
precise and correct view of the objects; and that his success in
constructing an instrument, nearly perfect, for the use of astronomers,
gave evidence that he himself had a clear idea of that perfect and
accurate vision which he thus attempted to bestow on them. Shall we then
imagine any inaccuracy in the sight of Him, who not only desired, but
executed and bestowed on us, an instrument so perfectly adapted to the
imperfections of this lower world, and whose very imperfections are the
materials from which he produces clear and perfect vision? No! in God's
eye there are no chromatic refractions of passions, or prejudice, or
party feeling, or self-love. He sees no reflected or refracted light. O
Father of Light! with whom is no variableness, or shadow of turning,
open our eyes to behold Thee clearly!
Our text thus leads us to a knowledge of God's character, from the
structure of the bodies he has given us. He that formed my eye sees.
Though my feeble vision is by no means a standard or limit for his
Omniscience, yet I may conclude that every perfection of the power of
sight he has given me existed previously in him. Has he endowed me, a
poor puny mortal, the permanent tenant of only two yards of earth, with
an eye capable of ranging over earth's broad plains and lofty mountains,
of traversing her beauteous lakes and lovely rivers, of scanning her
crowded cities, and inspecting all their curious productions, and
specially delighting to investigate the bodily forms of men, and their
mental characters displayed on the printed page? Has he given me the
principle of curiosity, without which such an endowment were useless?
Then most undoubtedly he has Himself both the desire to observe all the
works of his hands, and the power to gratify that desire. The Former of
the eye must of necessity be the great Observer.
Wheresoever an eye is found of his handiwork, and wheresoever sight is
preserved by his skill, let the owner of such an instrument know that if
he can see, God can, and as surely as he sees, God does.
If it is possible for us to behold many objects distinctly at once, it
is not impossible for God to behold more. If he has given us an eye to
look from earth to heaven, then his eye sees from heaven to earth. If I
can see accurately, God's inspection is much more impartial. And if he
has given me the power of adjusting my imperfect vision to the varying
lights and shades of this changing scene, let me not dream for a moment
that he is destitute of a corresponding power of investigating
difficulties, and penetrating darknesses, and bringing to light hidden
works and secret things. God is light. In him is no darkness at all.
Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all
things are naked and opened to the eyes of him with whom I have to do.
He has seen all my past life--my faults, my follies, and my crimes. When
I thought myself in darkness and privacy, God's eye was upon me there.
In the turmoil of business, God's eye was upon me. In the crowd of my
ungodly companions, God's eye was upon me. In the darkness and solitude
of night, God's eye was upon me. And God's eye is on me now, and will
follow me from this house, and will watch me and observe all my actions,
on--on--on--while God lives, and wheresoever God's creation extends.
"O God, Thou has searched and known me;
Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising;
Thou understandest my thoughts afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down,
And art acquainted with all my ways
For there is not a word in my tongue,
But, lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me!
It is high, I can not attain unto it;
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?
And whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there,
If I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there!
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me,'
Even the night shall be light about me;
Yea the darkness hideth not from thee,
But the night shineth as the day,
The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Reid's Chemistry, II. § 37.
[2] Johnson's Turner's Chemistry, § 341.
[3] It might be supposed that such a theory is too palpably absurd to be
believed by any save the inmates of a lunatic asylum, had not the
writer, and hundreds of the citizens of Cincinnati, seen a lecturer
perform the ordinary experiment of producing colored precipitates by
mixing colorless solutions, as a demonstration of the self-acting powers
of matter. Common sense, being a gift of God, is righteously withdrawn
from those who deny him.
[4] John Bull.