IS GOD EVERYBODY, AND EVERYBODY GOD?
Pantheism is that perversion of reason and language which denies God's
personality, and calls some imaginary soul of the world, or the world
itself, by his name. While Pantheists are fully agreed upon the
propriety of getting rid of a God who could note their conduct, and call
them to account for it hereafter, and who would claim to exercise any
authority over them here, they are by no means agreed, either in India,
Germany, or America, as to what they shall call by his name. Public
opinion necessitates them to say they believe in a God, but almost every
one has his own private opinion as to what it is. We shall speak of it
as we hear it pronounced from the lips of its prophets, here, as well as
in the writings of its expounders, in Europe, and Asia. Some of them
declare, that it is some absolutely unknown cause of all the phenomena
of the universe, and others, that it is the universe itself. A large
class speak of it as the great soul of the world, while the more
materialistic regard it as the world itself, body and soul; the soul
being the sum of all the imponderable forces, such as gravitation, heat,
light, electricity, magnetism, galvanism, vegetable and animal life, and
especially the mesmeric influence, of which many of them regard
intellect as a modification; and the body being the sum of all the
ponderable substances, such as air, water, earth, minerals, vegetables,
and bodies of animals and men. This creed is popularly expressed in the
sentence so often heard, "God is everything, and everything is God." But
this vast generalization of all things into the higher unity--this
exalting of monkeys, men, snails, and paving stones to the same level of
divinity--by no means meets the views of the more unphilosophical and
aspiring gods and goddesses, for the very reason that it is so
impartial. To deify a man and his cat by the same process is not much of
a distinction to the former; and of what advantage is it to be made a
god, if he does not thereby obtain some distinction? This leveling
apotheosis is generally confined to the German Pantheists; their more
ambitious American brethren ascribe the contented humility which accepts
it to the continual influence of the fumes of tobacco and lager beer.
Man is the great deity of the other class. Renan boldly says: "For
myself, I believe there is not in the universe an intelligence superior
to that of man; the absolute of justice and reason manifests itself only
in humanity; regarded apart from humanity that absolute exists only as
an abstraction. The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in
form."[23] And as the soul of man is, rather inconsistently for people
who believe everything God, supposed to be superior to the rest of him,
they go off into great rhapsodies of adoration of their own souls.
"The doctrine of the soul--first _soul_, and second _soul_, and evermore
_soul_"[24]--is the doctrine which is to regenerate the world. God, in
their view, is nothing till he attains self-consciousness in man. "The
universal does not attract us till housed in the individual. Who heeds
the waste abyss of possibility? Standing on the bare ground, my head
bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mere
egotism vanishes. The currents of the universal being circulate through
me. I am part or particle of God." "I stand here to say, 'Let us worship
the mighty and transcendent soul.'" "God attains to self-consciousness
only in the human soul." "Honor yourself." "Reverence your own
individuality." "The soul of man is the highest intelligence in the
universe." Such are the dogmas which, under the name of Philosophy, are
poured forth oracularly, unsupported by reason or argument, by the
prophets of the new dispensation--the last and highest achievement of
the human intellect.
It is very unfortunate, however, for the honor of the prophets of the
nineteenth century, that this profound discovery was invented, and
illustrated, patented, and peddled, by the Hindoos, among the people of
India, two thousand years before the divinity had struggled into self
consciousness in the mighty and transcendent souls of Schelling, Hegel,
and Strauss, of Atkinson, Parker, or Emerson. We mean to show in this
lecture, that it is an _Antiquated, Hypocritical, Demoralizing Atheism_.
1. _Pantheism is an Antiquated Heresy._--It has rotted and putrefied
among the worshipers of cats, and monkeys, and holy bulls, and bits of
sticks and stones, on the banks of the Ganges, for more than two
thousand years; yet it is now hooked up out of its dunghill, and hawked
about among Christian people, as a prime new discovery of modern
philosophy for getting rid of Almighty God. As the Hindoo Shasters are
undoubtedly the sources from which French, German, and American
philosophers have borrowed their dogmas, and as they have not had time
to take the whole system, we shall edify the public by a view of this
sublime theology as exhibited in the writings of the Pantheistic
philosophers of India, as follows:
"When existing in the temporary imperfect state of _Sagun_, Brahm (the
Pantheist deity) wills to manifest the universe. For this purpose he
puts forth his omnipotent energy, which is variously styled in the
different systems now under review. He puts forth his energy for what?
For the effecting of a creation out of nothing? 'No,' says one of the
Shasters, but to '_produce from his own divine substance a multiform
universe_.' By the spontaneous exertion of this energy he sends forth,
from his own divine substance, a countless host of essences, like
innumerable sparks issuing from the blazing fire, or myriads of rays
from the resplendent sun. These detached portions of Brahm--these
separated divine essences--soon become individuated systems, destined,
in time, to occupy different forms prepared for their reception; whether
these be fixed or movable, animate or inanimate, forms of gods or men,
forms of animal, vegetable, or mineral existences.
"Having been separated from Brahm in his imperfect state of _Sagun_,
they carry along with them a share of those principles, qualities, and
attributes that characterize that state, though predominating in very
different degrees and proportions; either according to their respective
capacities, or the retributive awards of an eternal ordination. Among
others it is specially noted, that as Brahm at that time had awakened
into a consciousness of his own existence, there does inhere in each
separated soul a notion, or a conviction, of its own _distinct_,
independent, individual existence. Laboring under this delusive notion,
or conviction, the soul has lost the knowledge of its own proper
nature--its divine origin, and ultimate destiny. It ignorantly regards
itself as an inferior entity, instead of knowing itself to be what it
truly is, a consubstantial, though it may be an infinitesimally minute
portion of the great whole, a universal spirit.
"Each individual soul being thus a portion of Brahm, even as a spark is
of fire, it is again and again declared that the relation between them
is not that of master and servant, ruler and ruled, but that of whole
and part! The soul is pronounced to be eternal _a parte ante_; in
itself it has had no beginning or birth, though its separate
individuality originated in time. It is eternal _a parte post_; it will
have no end--no death; though its separate individuality will terminate
in time. Its manifestation in time is not a creation; it is an effluence
from the eternal fount of spirit. Its disappearance from the stage of
time is not an extinction of essence--a reduction to nonentity; it is
only a refluence into its original source. As an emanation from the
supreme, eternal spirit, it is from everlasting to everlasting. Neither
can it be said to be of finite dimensions; on the contrary, says the
sacred oracle, 'being identified with the Supreme Brahm, it participates
in his infinity.'
"After having enumerated all the elementary principles, atoms, and
qualities successively evolved from Brahm, one of the sacred writings
states, that though each of these had distinct powers, yet they existed
separate and disunited, without order or harmonious adaptation of parts;
that until they were duly combined together, it was impossible to
produce this universe, or animated beings; and that therefore it was
requisite to adopt other means than fortuitous chance for giving them an
appropriate combination, and symmetrical arrangement. The Supreme,
accordingly, produced an egg, in which the elementary principles might
be deposited, and nurtured into maturity." "All the primary atoms,
qualities, and principles--the seeds of future worlds--that had been
evolved from the substance of Brahm, were now collected together, and
deposited in the newly produced egg. And into it, along with them,
entered the self-existent himself, under the assumed form of Brahm; and
then he sat vivifying, expanding, and combining the elements, a whole
year of the creation, or four thousand three hundred millions of solar
years! During this amazing period, the wondrous egg floated like a
bubble on the abyss of primeval waters, increasing in size, and blazing
refulgent as a thousand suns. At length the Supreme, who dwelt therein,
burst the shell of the stupendous egg, and issued forth under a new
form, with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand arms. Along
with him there issued forth another form, huge and measureless. What
could that be? All the elementary principles having now been matured,
and disposed into an endless variety of orderly collocations, and
combined into one harmonious whole, they darted into visible
manifestation under the form of the present glorious universe! A
universe now finished, and ready made, with its entire apparatus, of
earth, sun, moon, and stars. What, then, is this multiform universe? It
is but a harmoniously arranged expansion of primordial principles and
qualities. And whence are these? Educed or evolved from the divine
substance of Brahm. Hence it is that the universe is so constantly
spoken of, even by mythologists, as a manifested form of Brahm himself,
the supreme, invisible spirit. Hence, too, under the notion that it is
the manifestation of a being who may assume every variety of corporeal
form, is the universe often personified, or described as if its
different parts were only the different members of a person, of
prodigious magnitude, in human form. It is declared that the hairs of
his body are the trees of the forest; of his head, the clouds; of his
beard, the lightning. His breath is the circling atmosphere; his voice,
the thunder; his eyes, the sun and moon; his veins, the rivers; his
nails, the rocks; his bones, the lofty mountains![25]
"The substantial fabrics of all worlds having now been framed and fitted
up as the destined abodes of different orders of being, celestial,
terrestrial, and infernal, the question next arises, How or by whom were
produced the various organized forms which these orders of being were
designed to animate? Though hosts of subtle essences or souls flowed
forth from Brahm, all of these remain inactive till united to some form
of materialism. From this necessity the gods themselves are not
exempted. While the souls of men, and other inferior spirits, must be
encased in tabernacles fashioned out of the grosser elements, the souls
of the gods, and all other superior spirits, must be made to inhabit
material forms, composed of one or other of the infinitely attenuated
and invisible rudimental atoms that spring direct from the principle of
consciousness.
"Interminable as are the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and
extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is
the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing
than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all.
Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated
beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time
he is said to have performed a long and severe course of ascetic
devotions, to enable him to accomplish his wish; but in vain; at
another, inflamed by anger and passion at his repeated failures, he sat
down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as
his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so
loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time,
after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his
thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his
side. But enough of such monstrous legends."[26]
There now, reader, you have the original of the Development Theory, with
Vestiges of Creation enough to make half a dozen new infidel
cosmogonies, besides the genuine original of Pantheism, from its native
soil. Our western Pantheists will doubtless reverence their venerable
progenitors; and, should the remainder of the family find their way
here in a year or two, via Germany, the public will be better prepared
to give a fitting reception to such distinguished visitors, including
their suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cow
dung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning of
children, and other Pantheistic Philosophies, from the banks of the
Ganges. What an outrage of decency for such men to call themselves
philosophers and Christians!
The relationship of American Pantheism with that of India is
unblushingly acknowledged by the recent Pantheistic writers: "When
ancient sages came to believe in the absolute goodness, justice, love,
and wisdom of the deity, or providence, they fell into that peace which
needed nothing, feared nothing, and therefore worshiped nothing. Nothing
to blame, nothing to praise; the perfect whole became one great
divinity. It was so in Magadha and Benares; it is so in Concord and
Boston."[27]
2. _Pantheism is a System of Deception and Hypocrisy._--Has any man a
right to pervert the English language, by fixing new meanings to words,
entirely different from and contrary to those in common use? If he knows
the meaning of the words he uses, and uses them to convey a contrary
meaning, he is a deceiver. The name God, used as a proper name, in the
English tongue, means "the Supreme Being; Jehovah; the Eternal and
Infinite Spirit, the Creator and Sovereign of the Universe."[28] If,
then, a man says he believes in God, but when forced to explain what he
means by that name, says he means steam, heat, electricity, galvanism,
magnetism, mesmeric force, odyle, animal life, the soul of man, or the
sum of all the intelligences in the universe, he is a deceiver, and vain
talker, abusing language to conceal his impiety. Pantheism is simply
Jesuitical Atheism. Willing to dethrone Jehovah, but unable and
unwilling to place any other being in his stead, as Creator and Ruler of
the universe, yet conscious that mankind will never embrace open
Atheism, Pantheists profess to believe in God, only that they may steal
his name to cloak their Atheism. We, in common with all who believe in
God, demand, that, as their divinity is, by their own confession,
essentially different from God, they shall use a different word to
describe it. Let them call it Brahm, as their brethren in India do, or
any other name not appropriated to any existing being in heaven or
earth, or under the earth; and let them cease to profane religion, and
insult common sense, by affixing the holy name of the Supreme to their
thousand-headed monster.
But the very perfection of Jesuitism is reached, when Pantheists profess
their high respect for the Christian religion. They do not generally
speak of it as a superstition, though some of the vulgar sort do; nor do
they decry its mysteries, as Deists are in the habit of doing; nor, as
Socinians, and Unitarians, and Rationalists, do they attempt to reduce
it to a mere code of morals. They grant it to be the highest development
of humanity yet reached by the majority of the human race. The brute,
the savage, the polytheistic idolater, the star worshiper, the
monotheist, the Christian, are all, in their scheme, so many successive
developments of humanity in its upward progress. There is only one step
higher than Christianity, and that is Pantheism. Well knowing that
Christianity is diametrically opposed to their falsehoods, and that the
Bible, everywhere, teaches that the natural progress of man has ever
been down from a state of holiness to idolatry and barbarism, they have
yet the hardihood to profess respect for it, as a system of concealed
Pantheism, and to clothe their abominations in Scripture language. They
speak, for instance, of the "beauty of holiness in the mind, that has
surmounted every idea of a personal God;" and of "God dwelling in us,
and his love perfected in us," when they believe that he dwells as
really in every creature: in that hog, for instance. Then they will
readily acknowledge that the Bible is inspired. They _can accept_--that
is the phrase--they can accept the Book which denounces death upon those
fools who, "professing themselves to be wise, change the truth of God
into a lie, and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator,"
as merely a mystic revelation of the Pantheism which leaves man to
"erect everything into a God, provided it is none: sun, moon, stars, a
cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a
shapeless trunk, which the devout impatience of the idolater does not
stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives its apotheosis at
once." Oh, yes; they accept the Bible as inspired--a God inspired
Book--inasmuch as _every_ product of the human mind is a development of
Deity. The Bible, then, when we have the matter fully explained, is
quite on a level with Gulliver's Travels, or Emerson's Address to a
Senior Class of Divinity.
There is nothing, however, in this vast system of monstrosities, which
fills the soul of a Christian with such loathing and detestation, as to
hear Pantheists profess their veneration for the Lord Jesus, and claim
him as a teacher of Pantheism. If there is one object which they detest
with all their hearts, it is the Judge of the quick and dead, and the
vengeance which he shall take upon them that know not God, and obey not
the gospel. Any allusion to the judgment seat of Christ fills them with
fury, and causes them to pour forth awful blasphemies. They know that
the Lord Jesus repeatedly declared himself the Judge of the living and
the dead--that "the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves
shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation;" and that the very last sentence of his
public discourses is, "And these" (the wicked) "shall go away into
everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal." When they
drop the mask for a moment, they can accuse apostles and disciples with
"dwelling with noxious exaggeration about the _person_ of Christ."[29]
Christ, as revealed in the gospel, they hate with a perfect hatred. But
when it becomes necessary to address Christians, and beguile them into
the deceitfulness of Pantheism, the tune is changed. Christ becomes the
model man--"one conceived in conditions favorable to the highest
perfectibility of the individual consciousness; and so possessed of
powers of generalization far in advance of the age in which he lived.
They can listen to and honor one of the best expounders of God and
nature in the Man of Nazareth."[30] The vilest falsehoods of Pantheism
are ascribed to Jesus, that those who, ignorant of his doctrine, yet
respect his name, may be seduced to receive them. Of him who declared,
"Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies," they have the hardihood to declare,
"He saw with open eyes the mystery of the soul; alone, in all history,
he estimated the greatness of man." Calculating upon that ignorance of
the teaching of Christ which is so general among their audiences, they
dare to represent the only begotten Son of God as teaching Pantheism:
"One man was true to what is in you and me; he saw that God incarnates
himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his
world. He said in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through
me God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see thee
when thou also thinkest as I now think.' Because the indwelling Supreme
Spirit can not wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this
perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons,
and denied to all the rest, and denied with fury." Yes, truly, the
divine nature is emphatically denied to all unregenerated men, and
denied, too, by that divine teacher thus eulogized. Hear him: "Ye do the
deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of
fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God
were your Father, ye would love me; for I proceeded forth and came from
God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand
my speech? Even because ye can not hear my word. Ye are of your father,
the devil; and the works of your father ye will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no
truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh it of his own; for he
is a liar, and the father of it."
Let Pantheists, then, cease to wind their serpent coils around
Christianity, and to defile the Bible with their filthy lickings. The
Lord Jesus will not suffer such persons to bear even a true testimony to
him, and his followers will not permit them to ascribe their falsehoods
to him, without reproof. Let them stand out and avow themselves the
enemies of Christ and his gospel, as they are, and cease their
abominable pretenses of giving to the world the ultimate development of
Christianity. What concord hath Christ with Belial?
3. _Pantheism is a System of Immorality._--It loosens all the sanctions
of moral law. If there is anything upon which all Pantheists are agreed,
it is in the denial of the resurrection, the judgment, and the future
punishment of the wicked. Their whole system, in all its range, from
Spiritualism to Phrenology, is expressly invented to get rid of God's
moral government. If man is the highest intelligence in the universe, to
whom should he render an account of his conduct? Or who would have any
right to call him to account? Then, if we are developments of deity,
deity can not offend against itself. Further, if our development, both
of body and mind, be the inevitable result of the laws of nature--of our
organization and our position--man is but the creature of circumstances,
and, therefore, as is abundantly argued, can not be made responsible for
laws and their results, over which he has no control. "I am what I am. I
can not alter my will, or be other than what I am, and can not deserve
either reward or punishment."[31] Before hundreds of the citizens of
Cincinnati, a lecturer publicly denied the right of either God or man to
invade his individuality, by taking vengeance upon him for any crime
whatever. Thousands, who are not yet Pantheists, are so far infected
with the poison that they utterly deny any right of vindictive
punishment to God or man.
But this is not all. Again and again have we listened with astonishment
to men, declaring that there was no moral law--no standard of right and
wrong, but the will of the community. Of course it was quite natural,
after such a declaration, to assert that a wife who should remain with a
husband of inferior intellectuality, or unsuitable emotions, was
committing adultery; that private property is a legalized robbery; and
that when a citizen becomes mentally or physically unfit for the
business of life, he confers the highest obligation on society, and
performs the highest duty to himself, by committing suicide, and thus
returning to the great ocean of being!
We might think that confusion of right and wrong could not be worse
confounded than this; yet there is a blacker darkness still. _The
distinction between good and evil is absolutely denied._ The Hindoo
Pantheists declare that they can not sin, because they are God, and God
can not offend against himself; there is no sin--it is all
_maya_--delusion. So the American and English school tells us it lives
only in the obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in another
way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative
Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making;
that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It
is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the
last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in
the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in
brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and
true."[33]
Emerson, in a lecture in Cincinnati, is reported by the editor of _The
Central Herald_, as saying in his hearing: "To say that the majority of
men are wicked, is only to say that they are young." "Every man is
indebted to his vices--virtues grow out of them as a thrifty and
fruitful plant grows out of manure." "There is hope even for the
reprobate, and the ruffian, in the fullness of time."
If these were only the ravings of lunatics, or the dreamings of
philosophers, we should never have hunted them from their hiding-places
to scare your visions; but these doctrines are weekly propounded in your
own city, and throughout our land, from platform and press, to thousands
of your children and their school-teachers, of your work, men and your
lawgivers, to your wives and daughters. Again and again have our ears
been confounded in the squares of New York, and the streets of
Philadelphia, and the market-places of Cincinnati, by the boisterous
cry, _What is sin? There is no sin. It is all an old story._ Let men who
fear no God, but who have lives, and wives, and property to lose, look
to it, and say if they act wisely in giving their influence to a system
which lands in such consequences. Let them devise some religion for the
people which will preserve the rights of man, while giving license to
trample upon the rights of God; or, failing in the effort, let them
acknowledge that the enemy of God is, and of necessity must be, the foe
of all that constitutes the happiness of man. Impiety and immorality are
wedded in heaven's decree, and man can not sunder them.
4. _Pantheism is Virtually Atheism._--It may scarce seem needful to
multiply proofs on this head. How can any one imagine a being composed
of the sum of all the intelligences of the universe? Such a thing, or
combination of things, never was distinctly conceived of by any
intelligent being. Can intelligences be compounded, or like bricks and
mortar, piled upon each other? If they could, did these finite
intelligences create themselves? If the soul of man is the highest
intelligence in the universe, did the soul of man create, or does the
soul of man govern it? Shall we adore his soul? Some Pantheists have got
just to this length. M. Comte declares, that "At this present time, for
minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the
heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or
Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." _Establish_
these laws! Laws by which the heavenly bodies were guided thousands of
years before Kepler or Newton were born. Shall we then adore the souls
of Kepler and Newton? M. Comte has invented a religion, which he is much
displeased that the admirers of his Positive Philosophy will not accept,
in which the children are to be taught to worship idols, the youth to
believe in one God, if they can, after such a training in infancy, and
the full-grown men are to adore a Grand Etre, "the continuous resultant
of all the forces capable of voluntarily concurring in the universal
perfectioning of the world, _not forgetting our worthy auxiliaries, the
animals_."[34] Our Anglo-Saxon Pantheists, however, are not quite
philosophical enough yet to adore the mules and oxen, and therefore
refuse worship altogether. "Work is worship," constitutes their liturgy.
"As soon as the man is as one with God, he will not beg. He will then
see prayer in all action."[35] "Labor wide as earth has its summit in
heaven. Sweat of the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat
of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton
meditations, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms,
martyrdoms, up to that agony of bloody sweat, which all men have
accounted divine! Oh, brother, if this is not worship, then I say, the
more pity for worship; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered
under God's sky." "No man has worked, or can work, except
religiously."[36] "Adieu, O Church! Thy road is that way, mine is this.
In God's name, adieu!"[37]
Such is the theory. How faithfully acted out, you can learn from the
thousands who are now, publicly, upon God's holy Sabbath, working
religiously upon the bridge that is to span the river, or less
ostentatiously in their shops and workrooms throughout the city. Within
a circle of three miles' radius of the spot you now occupy, one hundred
thousand intelligent beings in this Christian city worship no God.
The abstraction, which the Pantheist calls God, is no object of worship.
It is not to be loved. If it does good, it could not help it, and did
not intend it. It is not to be thanked for benefits. It, the sum of all
the intelligence of the universe, can not be collected from the seven
spheres to receive any such acknowledgment. It can not deviate from its
fated course of proceeding; therefore, says the Pantheist, why should I
pray? It neither sees his conduct, nor cares for it; and he denies any
right to call him to account. It did not create him, does not govern
him, will not judge him, can not punish him. It is no object of love,
fear, worship, or obedience. It is no god. He is an Atheist. He believes
not in any God.
HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD. He is distinct from, and
supreme over all his works. He now rules, and will hereafter judge all
intelligent creatures, and will render to every one according to his
works.
1. _Reason declares it._ 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. God is known by his works to be
distinct from them, and superior to them. The work is not the workman.
The house is not the builder. The watch is not the watchmaker. The sum
of all the works of any worker is not the agent who produced them. Let
an architect spend his life in building a city, yet the city is not the
builder. The maker is always distinct from, and superior to, the thing
made. You and I, and the universe, are made. Our Maker, then, is
distinct from, and superior to us. One plan gives order to the universe;
therefore, one mind originated it. The Creator is over all his
creatures.
2. _Our consciousness confirms it._ If a blind god could not make a
seeing man, a god destitute of the principle of self-consciousness (if
such an abuse of language may be tolerated for a moment) could not
impart to man the conviction, _I am_,--the ineradicable belief that I am
not the world, nor any other person; much less, everybody; but that I am
a person, possessed of powers of knowing, thinking, liking and
disliking, judging, approving of right, and disapproving of wrong, and
choosing and willing my conduct. My Maker has at least as much common
sense as he has given me. He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not
know?
3. _Our ignorance and weakness demand a Governor of the world wiser than
ourselves._ The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the
universe. It can not know the mode of its own operation on the body it
inhabits, much less the plan of the world's management. Man may know
much about what does not concern him, and about things over which he has
no control; but it is the will of God that his pride should feel the
curb of ignorance and impotence where his dearest interests are
concerned, that so he may be compelled to acknowledge that God is
greater than man. He may be able to tell the place of the distant
planets a thousand years hence, but he can not tell where himself shall
be next year. He can calculate for years to come the motions of the
tides, which he can not control, but can not tell how his own pulse
shall beat, or whether it shall beat at all, to-morrow. Ever as his
knowledge of the laws by which God governs the world increases, his
conviction of his impotence grows; and he sees and feels that a wiser
head and stronger hand than that of any creature, planned and
administered them. Ever as he reaches some ultimate truth, such as the
mystery of electricity, of light, of life, of gravitation, which he can
not explain, and beyond which he can not penetrate, he hears the voice
of God therein, demanding him to acknowledge his impotence.
"Where is the way where light dwelleth,
And as for darkness, what is the place thereof?
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his seasons?
Or canst thou guide Arcturus, with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?
Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds,
That abundance of waters may cover thee?
Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go
And say unto thee, 'Here we are?'"
4. _Our consciences convince us that God is a Moral Governor._ The
distinction between brutes and men is, that man has a sense of the
distinction between right and wrong. If we find a tribe of savages, or
individuals who indulge their appetites without rule, and who do wrong
without any apparent remorse or shame, we designate them brutes. Even
those who in words deny any difference between right and wrong, do in
fact admit its existence, by their attempts to justify that opinion.
Though weaker, or less regarded in some than in others, every man is
conscious of a faculty in himself which sits in judgment on his own
conduct, and that of others, approving or condemning it as right or
wrong. In all lands, and in all ages, the common sense of mankind has
acknowledged the existence and moral authority of conscience, as
distinct from and superior to mere intellect. No language of man is
destitute of words conveying the ideas of virtue and vice, of goodness
and wickedness. When one attempts to deceive you by a willful lie, you
are sensible not only of an intellectual process of reason detecting the
error, but of a distinct judgment of disapprobation of the crime. When
one who has received kindness from a benefactor, neglects to make any
acknowledgment of it, cherishes no feelings of gratitude, and insults
and abuses the friend who succored him, we are conscious, not merely of
the facts, as phenomena to be observed, but of the ingratitude, as a
crime to be detested. And we are irresistibly constrained to believe
that he who taught us this knowledge of a difference between right and
wrong, does himself know such a distinction; and that he who implanted
this feeling of approval of right, and condemnation of wrong, in us,
does himself approve the right, and condemn the wrong. And as we can
form no notion of right or wrong unconnected with the idea that
approbation of right conduct should be suitably expressed, and that
disapprobation of wrong conduct ought also to be suitably expressed--in
other words, that right ought to be rewarded, and wrong ought to be
punished--so we are constrained to trace such a connection from our
minds to the mind of him who framed them. This conviction is God's law,
written in our hearts. When we do wrong, we become conscious of a
feeling of remorse in our consciences, as truly as the eye becomes
conscious of the darkness. We may blind the eye, and we may sear the
conscience, that the one shall not see, nor the other feel; but light
and darkness, right and wrong, will exist. The awful fact which
conscience reveals to us, that we sin against God, that we know the
right, and do the wrong, and are conscious of it, and of God's
disapprobation of it, is conclusive proof that we are not only distinct
from God, but separate from him--that we oppose our wills against his.
And every pang of remorse is a premonition of God's judgment, and every
sorrow and suffering which the Governor of the world has connected with
sin--as the drunkard's loss of character and property, of peace and
happiness, the frenzy of his soul, and the destruction of his body--is a
type and teaching of the curse which he has denounced against sin.
5. _The World's History is the record of man's crimes, and God's
punishments._ Once God swept the human race from earth with a flood of
water, because the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Again, he
testified his displeasure against the ungodly sinners of Sodom and
Gomorrah, by consuming their cities with fire from heaven, and leaving
the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to all ungodly sinners,
to the end of time.
By the ordinary course of his providence, he has ever secured the
destruction of ungodly nations. No learning, commerce, arms,
territories, or skill, has ever secured a rebellious nation against the
sword of God's justice. Ask the black record of a rebel world's history
for an instance. Egypt, Canaan, Nineveh, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome.
Where are they now? Tyre had ships, colonies, and commerce; Rome an
empire on which the sun never set; Greece had philosophy, arts, and
liberty secured by a confederation of republics; Spain the treasures of
earth's gold and silver, and the possession of half the globe. Did these
secure them against the moral government of God?
No! God's law sways the universe; that law which, with the brazen
fetters of eternal justice, binds together sin and misery, crime and
punishment, and lays the burden on the backs of all ungodly nations,
irresistibly forcing them down--down--down the road to ruin. The vain
imagination that refuses to glorify God as God, leads to darkness of
heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfish
gratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury,
licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military
tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and
the sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl them
down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them 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
potsherds of former greatness, to show that once they were, and were the
enemies of God.
Oh, America, take warning ere it be too late! God rules the nations. "He
that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct you?"
A day of retribution, reader, comes to you, as an individual. Neither
your insignificance nor your unbelief can hide you from his eye, nor can
your puny arm shield you from his righteous judgment. His hand shall
find out his enemies. Oh, fly from the wrath to come! "Seek the Lord
while he may be found." He is not far from every one of us. His breath
is in our nostrils. His Word is in our hands. "Whosoever shall call on
the name of the Lord shall be saved."
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Cited in Pressense's _Jesus Christ, His Life and Times_. Page 10.
[24] Emerson.
[25] Duff's India, pages 99-114.
[26] Duff's India, page 119.
[27] Man's Origin and Destiny, 293.
[28] Webster's Dictionary.
[29] Emerson's Address to a Senior Class in Divinity.
[30] Hennell's Christian Theism, which shows how Theists of every
nation--Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Chinese--can meet upon common
ground.
[31] Atkinson's Letters, page 190.
[32] Festus, page 48.
[33] Swedenborg, or the Mystic (quoted by Pierson, 41), p. 68.
[34] Politique Positive, Vol. II. page 60.
[35] Emerson.
[36] Carlyle--Past and Present.
[37] Carlyle--Life of Sterling.