GOSPEL PHILOSOPHY,
SHOWING THE
ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY,
AND THE
HARMONY OF THE GOSPEL
WITH SCIENCE AND HISTORY
* * * * *
BY ELDER J. H WARD
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS,
* * * * *
Salt Lake City, Utah:
Published at the Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884.
Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1884, by J. H. Ward,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
Sectarians generally dread meeting a "Mormon" Elder in discussion, for
they well know the humiliating defeat which has been the result to
their compeers in hundreds of instances.
But there is another class of persons who often bring
formidable-looking arguments against the truths of the gospel. This
class is composed frequently of persons of considerable learning,
research and intelligence. They have long ago become disgusted with
the absurdities of so-called Christianity; and are not slow in showing
the disagreement of sectarian dogmas with the teachings of the Bible,
or contrasting the Bible with supposed science. In some instances,
otherwise valuable scientific works are marred by sneers at the books
of inspiration. In this age of earnest thought and research into all
branches of knowledge, many of these works fall into the hands of
the young and hence the growth of skepticism in the minds of many.
Many of the facts contained in this work have been collected from,
and references made to larger works not easily accessible to the
general reader. A large number of the illustrations have been designed
expressly for this work, and engraved by Brother John Held, of Salt
Lake City.
To gather into a small compass the leading arguments of infidel
writers, and to refute them by well-known facts; to show the cause
of the conflict between science and religion; and to harmonize true
science with the teachings of God's word, has been the design in
writing this little work. That in its perusal the young may find their
faith strengthened in the principles of the gospel; thoughtful minds
find food for reflection, and the missionary Elder a valuable book of
reference, is the earnest wish of
The Author.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1--ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY
CHAPTER 2--CAUSES OF THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION
CHAPTER 3--FALLACIES OF SCIENTISTS
CHAPTER 4--DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
CHAPTER 5--OUR NEED OF REVELATION
CHAPTER 6--VALIDITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AS SHOWN BY INTERNAL EVIDENCE
CHAPTER 7--NEW TESTAMENT FACTS CORROBORATED BY SECULAR WRITERS
CHAPTER 8--HISTORICAL GLIMPSES OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
CHAPTER 9--FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY
CHAPTER 10--INFIDEL OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
CHAPTER 11--MOSES AND MODERN SCIENCE
CHAPTER 12--HARMONY OF GENESIS AND GEOLOGY
CHAPTER 13--SCIENTIFIC PROOFS OF SPIRITUAL LIFE
CHAPTER 14--FAITH AND INFIDELITY CONTRASTED
* * * * *
INDEX
Ancient Scientists 22, 164
Absurdities of Spiritualism 19
Anaesthetics Discovered 35
Astronomy not Exact 39
Apostles, their Character 122, 125
Atmosphere, Condition of Early 179
Aurochs not yet Extinct 188
Benefits of Romanism 23
Brahminism 16
Bruno 29
Buffon's Theory of Creation 65
Babylon, Prophecies Concerning 136,139
Books of New Testament 97
Burial Place in Catacombs 128
Bird, Earliest yet Found 196
Bird-Like Reptile 191
Bark from Coal Mine 182
Catacombs 127, 129
Calvin's Bigotry 29, 31
Constantine, Character of 93
Cosmas, Philosophy of 27
Copernicus 29
Causes of Infidelity 35, 36
Carlyle's Absurdities 77
Compte's Absurdities 83
Chesterfield's Letters 84
Coin Found at Philippi 89
Celsus, His Writings 95
Crust of the Earth 43
Comets 155, 156
Correspondence of Paine 84
Chalk Magnified 194
Climate of Coal Period 184, 198
Character of Heathen Gods 81
Disagreement of Scientists 13, 47
Dead Sea 70
Dispersion of Jews 117
Deluge, Scientific Theory of 154
Dinornis, Skeleton of 189
Development of Species 188
Eye, Section of Human 58
Errors in Astronomy 39
Egypt, Present State of 142
Errors of Romanism 25, 26
Early Vegetation 182
Extinct Birds 188, 189
Essential Conditions of Life 205
Fire-Mist, Theory of 64
Forest of Coal Period 185
Faculties of the Mind 207
Galileo 30
Geology Uncertain 41, 45
Giant Cities of Bashan 74
Gibbon's Testimony 93
Great Men Believers 212
Humboldt 33
Heathen Philosophy 79
Heathen Morals 80
Human Eye 58
Heat and Motion 178, 179
Huxley's Embryotic Theory 190
Illumination of St. Lawrence 176
Influence of Judaism 119
Jenner's Discoveries 35
Juggernaut 82, 83
Luther's Superstition 32
Light, Velocity of 156
" Various Sources of 175
" Without Sunshine 165, 166
" From the Earth 175, 176
Marcion, the Apostate 96
Milky Way 157
Modern Prophecy 149, 150
Monsters, Primeval 198
Man's Nervous System 208
Newman's Absurdities 77
New Testament Books 97
Nature in Continual Change 167
Ocean, Primeval 178
Olbers, Theory of 67
Plesiosaurius 197
Protestant Bigotry 33
Parker's Absurdities 77, 78
Plato's Code of Laws 80
Paine, his Character and Writings 84
Paul, the Apostle 102, 122
Pliny's Letters 109
Personal Appearance of the Savior 116
Prophetic Symbols 134
Prophecy Concerning Judea 144
" " Egypt 142, 143
" " Babylon 138
Protoplasm 204
Rosetta Stone 17
Revelation Progressive 72
Religion of India 15, 82
Rings of Saturn 153, 154
Reptilian Bird 192
Servetus Burned 31
Spirit Controls Protoplasm 205
Simpson, James Y. 35
Section of Earth's Crust 43
" of Human Eye 58
Solar System 66
Solomon's Knowledge 73
Saturn 153
Stars Variable 167
Sun Spots 173
Sun Inhabitable 174
Sun's Atmosphere 172
Spencer's Philosophy 206
Tertulian's Writings 104
Testimony of Tacitus 106
Trajan's Letter 111
Temple of Belus 137
Universe, Extent of 55, 158
Uintah Mountains, Section of 54
Worship of Juggernaut 82
Western Continent Upheaved 199
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
ABSURDITIES OF INFIDELITY.
THE PRESENT AN EARNEST AGE--AN EARNEST RELIGION REQUIRED--YOUNG MEN
LIABLE TO SKEPTICISM--LITERARY FOPS--SCIENTISTS DO NOT AGREE--TESTIMONY
OF SOCRATES AND PLATO--ABSURDITIES OF BRAHMINISM--ATTEMPTS OF FRENCH
INFIDELS--ROSETTA STONE-MODERN SPIRITUALISM.
The gospel is truly a grand system. Let us try to entertain right views
concerning it. Let us enlarge our minds to grasp it, that we may,
to some extent at least, conceive its greatness and appreciate its
beauties.
The peculiar wants of the age in which we live are worthy of deep and
careful consideration. Never was there a time in the history of the
race, when learning and general intelligence were so well diffused as
at the present. The press is throwing off continually its millions of
printed pages, which are scattered broadcast as the leaves of Autumn.
Books on almost every conceivable subject can be cheaply bought;
and journals, {10} magazines and pamphlets, both of a good and evil
influence, attract the attention of the young.
Never was there a time of more intense activity. Who can pass through
the crowded streets of our cities, listen to the throbbings of the
steam-engine, the hum of machinery, the appliances of electricity,
gaze at the vast trains that are driven with fire and vapor along our
railways, or view those magnificent structures that cross the mighty
deep, without feeling that this is an earnest age?
Now, this earnest, active, thinking age demands a religion that has
life and power in it. Not a religion of cold formality and narrow
sectarianism, but a religion that will satisfy the intellect with
its truths, touch the heart with its love, sway the will with its
persuasiveness, gratify the taste with its beauties and fill the
imagination with its sublimities. A religion is wanted that will
enlist upon its side the whole nature of man, and command his willing
and devoted homage; a religion that, bearing the full impress of its
Author's image, shall carry its own credentials with it; and which,
clothed with all the elements of truth and righteousness, beauty and
grandeur of love and power, shall be revered by all those who love the
truth, and dreaded by all who love it not.
This is the religion that the gospel reveals. There is no antagonism
between philosophy and faith, between science and religion, whatever
the seeming oppositions of the present; in reality it is perfect
harmony. The gospel overwhelms, nay, rather, includes all philosophy.
{11}
In the life of many young men there is a period of skepticism. Then
the young man is extremely liable to doubt. Then he questions all his
previous convictions, challenges all his accepted opinions, and is
in danger of drifting aimlessly on the wide tossing sea of unbelief,
the sport of every wind of doctrine, the easy prey of every theory
conceived by the ingenious brain of man.
At this period his faith in God and man is liable to be swept away
through a misconception of the real teachings of science, and the
example of those who seek to excuse their wicked lives under the
specious plea of unbelief. This period of skeptical tendency comes
early in life, frequently when the young man is in college or in the
schools of science, when he begins to think and act for himself. It
is intelligent, earnest young men of brains and capacity who are in
special danger from the skepticism of the age.
Many of these young men have been trained in the Sabbath school, but at
nineteen or twenty a change comes over them. They feel the strength and
vigor of awakening manhood, and that impatience of authority which is
characteristic of young men in this formative period of life. A young
man hears of men of learning who reject religion; he reads now and then
a magazine full of doubts and insinuations, and he begins to feel that
all his belief is simply the result of his education, and that under
other circumstances he might have been a Confucian, a Buddhist or a
Mahometan. Perhaps he meets with a tolerably educated but skeptical
{12} friend, who tells him in effect that religion is a fraud, that
the Bible is a very good book, to be sure, but destitute of divine
authority. He tells him, in a word, that these things may do for women
and children to believe, but as for himself, he has put away all such
belief along with his childish toys.
Our young man listens to all this flippant nonsense with itching ears,
until, at length, he pretends to believe the world was made by chance,
is governed by chance and all things that exist are only the effects of
chance.
But there is a comical side to this question, as well as to many
others. Prof. Agassiz wisely observes that, "men frequently talk
very learnedly of what they know but very little;" and I know of
nothing more irresistibly ludicrous than to see one of these so-called
scientific skeptics, who scarcely knows the difference between the leg
of a wasp and the horn of a beetle, and yet will assume to patronize
the Almighty and talk about progress and culture as though he was the
most remarkable prodigy of the age in which he lives.
It is enough to disgust an honest man, to see some of these literary
fops going along with Darwin's works under one arm and a case of
transfixed grasshoppers and butterflies under the other, talking
about Huxley's "protoplasm" and "natural selection," and "nebular
hypothesis," and "biogensis," and "abigensis," all the while lisping
with an "exthquithit lithp," and indicating by word, tone and gesture
that all who dissent from their opinions {13} are grossly ignorant and
scarcely worthy of their notice.
But the greatest joke is that the scientists which they so much admire
do not agree. Darwin is charging at Lamarch, Walace spearing Cope, and
Herschel denouncing Ferguson. How many colors in a ray of sun-light?
Seven, says Newton; only three, says David Brewster. How high above the
earth is the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Light? Two and a half miles,
says Prof. Lias; one hundred and sixty-five, says Prof. Tumming. La
Place says the moon was not put in the right place, it should have been
four times as far away; while Prof. Lionville comes up just in time and
gives us the wonderful information (?) that the Creator was acquainted
with His business and fixed it exactly right.
How far is the sun from the earth? Less than a million miles, says
Zadkiel; seventy-six millions of miles, says La Caille; eighty-two
millions, says Humboldt; ninety millions, says Henderson; one hundred
and four millions, says Mayer. Only a slight difference of one hundred
and three millions of miles, or a good deal farther than a person
could travel, at the rate of fifty miles per hour, during the next
two centuries, if he could live that long. And yet, amidst all this
confusion and contradiction, we are coolly asked to give up the words
of inspiration and hang our hopes of the future on the miserable
vagaries of self-contradicting philosophers.
Another very ludicrous as well as amusing instance {14} of the folly of
infidelity is the fact that skeptics will catch at almost anything upon
which to hang their faith. All around us, in every grade of society,
are to be found men who will tell us that the Vedas and Shasters of the
Hindoos are far more trustworthy than the writings of Moses, Isaiah,
Paul, Nephi or Joseph. They will tell us what sublime philosophers
Brahma and Confucius were, while, at the same time, they have never
read a word of their doctrines, or even seen a volume of their works.
All they know is what some other truth-hating infidel has told them.
But for the sake of argument let us glance at some of these wonderful
writings. Socrates, one of the greatest of heathen philosophers,
admits, "We must of necessity wait till some one from Him, who careth
for us, shall come and instruct us how to behave toward God and toward
man."
Plato declares, "We cannot know of ourselves what will be pleasing to
God; it is necessary that a law-giver should be sent from heaven to
instruct us." And he further adds, "Oh, how greatly do I long to see
that man!" (_Plato's Republic, Book iv and vi._)
Who has not felt sad at the dying words of Socrates, "I am going out
of the world and you are to continue in it, but which of us has the
better part is a secret to all but God." Nor is the philosophy of India
any better. A few years ago, when, through the labors of Oriental
scholars, the Vedas and Shasters of the Hindoos were translated and
printed in European languages, a great shout went {15} up from the army
of infidels. "Here," said they, "is the true chronology. Henceforth the
Jewish records must hide their heads." Accordingly the Shasters were,
for a time, in high repute among those who knew very little about them.
Now, when we remember that these much-vaunted histories profess to
reach back through _ma-ha-yugs_ or epochs of 4,320,000 of our years,
that a thousand of these epochs makes a _kalpa_ or one day of the
life of Brahma--the nights being of the same duration--and that his
life consists of one hundred years of such days and nights, we can
easily see the absurdity of these histories. In these works are also
the records of the seven great continents of the world, separated by
seven rivers and seven chains of mountains, four hundred thousand miles
high, and the history of the families of their kings, one of whom had
ten thousand sons, another sixty thousand who were born in a pumpkin,
nourished in pans of milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a demon
and restored to life by the waters of the Ganges. These records give
statements of wonderful eclipses, comets and deluges, seven of which
covered the earth, not merely to the top of these wonderfully high
mountains, but even reaching to the polar star. Yet infidels have the
assurance to quote these as standard works of undoubted authority, and
worthy of the credence of intelligent beings. (_Duff's India, page_
127.)
Nor are the promises of the future life any less absurd than the
foregoing. "Tell me," said a {16} wealthy Hindoo, who had given all
his wealth to the Brahmins who surrounded his dying bed, that he might
obtain a pardon of his sins, "what shall become of my soul when I
die?" The priest replied, "Your soul will go into the body of a holy
cow." "And after that?" he asked again. "It will pass into the body
of a divine peacock." "And after that?" "It will pass into a flower."
"Where, O, where will it go last of all?" cried the dying man. "Where
will it go last of all? Ah! that is the question."
While British infidels were admiring the sacred writings of the
Hindoos, and holding them up before the world as superior to the
word of God, French skeptics were busy in a similar employment. When
Napoleon invaded Egypt, in 1798, he took with him a large corps of
scientific men. In the ceiling of a temple at Dendera, in Upper
Egypt, some of these scientists discovered a stone, tablet covered
with strange characters. These characters, it was concluded, were a
representation of the relative positions of the sun, moon and stars
at the time the temple was built; and, calculating backwards, it was
found that this could not be less than seventeen thousand years ago.
This tablet was taken from the ceiling of the temple and carried away
to France, and placed in the national library in Paris. Hundreds
of thousands came to see the antediluvian monument, and infidel
commentators were never wanting to inform them that this remarkable
stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. One of the
discoverers, afterwards {17} a professor in the University of Breslau,
published a pamphlet, entitled, "Invincible proof that the earth is
at least ten times older than is taught by the Bible." During the
next thirty years, scores of such publications followed; and the base
slander received many additions and improvements, until it was a common
saying that this stone proved that "the priests of Egypt were carving
astronomy on their pyramids ten thousand years before Adam was born."
It did not shake their credulity in the least, that no two of their
wise men were agreed by some thousands of years, how old the stone
was--that no one even knew the first principles of the Egyptian system
of astronomy, and that _none of them could read the hieroglyphics_.
But, in 1832, the curious Egyptian astronomy was studied, and it
then appeared that this object, which had caused so much commotion,
was simply a calendar stone to aid in the measurement of time; and
that the positions of the sun, moon and stars were so placed to
enable common observers to ascertain the beginning of the year. At
length, by means of the Rosetta Stone--which furnished a key to these
hieroglyphics--Champolion and others learned to read the inscriptions
on Egyptian monuments.
[ILLUSTRATION: Rosetta Stone, showing present and original form, and
specimens of Greek, Coptic and Hieroglyphic characters.]
The Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French, in 1799, at Rosetta,
Egypt. When in a perfect condition it was a tablet of black basalt,
three feet high, two feet five inches wide, and ten inches thick. The
inscription was in three languages: {18} Coptic, Greek and ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics. On the publication of the inscriptions it was
found that they were the key to the hieroglyphic characters. It was
then discovered that the names of Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn,
were engraved on the stone, as well as the names of the Roman emperors
Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Domitian. The inscriptions revealed the
fact that they had no reference to early Egyptian history. The edifice
in which the first-mentioned stone was found was {19} simply a heathen
Roman temple, built between the fourteenth and eighty-first years of
the Christian era.
Even at the present time, in the noon-day of modern science and
so-called civilization, astrologers, mediums, clairvoyants and
fortune-tellers by the hundred find a profitable business among those
who consider themselves too learned, wise and progressive to believe
in the word of God. One infidel lecturer even advertises that he will
reveal to you the secrets of the future and cure you of any disease
you may have, if you will only enclose in a letter a few hairs taken
from your right temple and--and--a--ten dollar bill. Concerning the
future life, infidels have every variety of oracles, conjectures and
suppositions; but for their guesses they have no proof. The only thing
upon which they seem agreed is in denying the resurrection of the body.
According to their ideas, a poor, naked, shivering, table-rapping
spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any brainless
fop or silly, sentimental girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced
strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of all the great and good men
and women that have lived upon the earth.
To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the
gospel, for only through it life and immortality are brought to light.
A year or two since, the leader of American infidels, Robert Ingersol,
was called to deliver a funeral oration over the body of his brother.
In that short discourse there were many beautiful sentiments: {20} but
through it all, as through a transparent glass, was shown the need,
which even Ingersol felt, of divine revelation and divine guidance.
* * * * *