DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
MANIFESTATIONS OF POWER--MOUNTAIN CHAINS--PHENOMENA THE EFFECT OF
CAUSE--EXTENT OF UNIVERSE--MANIFESTATIONS OF DESIGN--THE HUMAN
EYE--MATTER INERT--DID THE PAVING-STONES MAKE THEMSELVES?--THEORIES OF
BUFFON--OF DR. OLBERS--HISTORY DECLARES GOD'S GOVERNMENT.
"Nature is but the name of an effect whose cause is God."--COWPER.
"The infidel astronomer is mad."--HERSCHEL.
Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? Let us look out upon
nature, and see what there is to suggest the idea of God. Infidels
tell us that faith is destined to be left behind in the onward
march of intellect; that it belongs to an infantile {53} stage of
intellectual development; that children and childish notions are prone
to superstition, which is only another name for religion. To account
for the wonders of creation they will coolly talk of the eternity of
matter, and the action of natural laws, as if these assertions would
lead them out of their dilemma.
One of the most impressive lessons that a person ever learns, is from
the manifestation of power as shown in the phenomena of nature, as,
for example, when he gazes upon the phenomena of a thunder storm. The
dark and thickening cloud, the flashes of the lightning, the roaring
of thunder, the dashing of the rain and the wild sweep of the winds,
sometimes crushing forests in their pathway, are all manifestations of
an unseen power. Among the works of human hands, the traveler gazes
with amazement at the ponderous bulk of the pyramids. But what are
the pyramids to the Alps, which have been lifted by some power to an
altitude thirty-three times the hight of the largest pyramid? And yet
the Alps are little more than half the hight of the Andes, and not more
than a hundredth part of their mass. These ponderous mountain chains
have been upheaved bodily, tearing their way through masses of solid
rock miles in thickness, uplifting, crushing, tilting and dislocating
the solid floor of half a continent. Here is a power which may well
amaze us.
Again, no strain, that man has ever applied, has compressed or
stretched, in the least perceptible degree, a block of building stone.
In fact, the {54} architects and builders of the most ponderous
edifices, such as the Salt Lake Temple, make not the least allowance
for the compression of the stones which lie at their very base. Yet
such is the strain which nature exerts upon the rocky slabs built into
the hill-sides, that they yield like india-rubber to the pressure;
and when, by quarrying, the strain is relieved, the crushed rocks,
with a groan, ease themselves back to their original dimensions. (See
_Winchel's Reconciliation of Science and Religion, page_ 334.)
[ILLUSTRATION: IDEAL SECTION OF THE UINTAH MOUNTAINS, SHOWING UPHEAVAL
OF STRATA AND UNDERLYING GRANITE--AFTER POWELL.]
And yet, after all, this is but one of nature's feeblest efforts. Look
beyond the phenomena of uplifted mountain-masses, deep-scooped ocean
basins, forest-laying tempests and land-consuming waves. Look out
into limitless space! There hang worlds of ponderous bulk. They were
fashioned by some skillful hand; they are upheld by some mighty agency;
and moved onward in their {55} majestic course by some mysterious
power. We cannot bring our minds to comprehend that power; but let us
raise our thoughts and try to understand something concerning it. There
is the sun whose bulk is so great that, if its center was placed where
the center of the earth is, its body would extend in every direction
as far as the moon. Nay, farther, it would extend beyond the moon a
distance of twenty-four times the diameter of the earth. This vast sun,
still in the fiery vigor of its youth, imparting light and life to all
that dwell on the planets which revolve around it, is only one of the
numberless orbs that shine in the abyss of heaven.
Now, what is this power that has formed these glorious suns and sent
them whirling onward through the cycles of the ages? The infidel tells
us it is gravity. But what is gravity? Whence proceeds that mighty
force which men call by that name? Matter is inert, that is, it does
not possess the power of moving itself. It is evident, then, that
matter is acted upon by some power outside of itself. In human affairs
we can find no result without a cause, no design without a designer;
and, on thinking carefully, we find that every designer is under the
control of a will. So, in the field of nature, every phenomenon is but
the effect of some cause, and that cause must have acted under the
control of some intelligent will.
We are still more amazed when we consider the inconceivable space over
which this power extends. The bulk of the sun is beyond our mental
grasp. How then shall we comprehend its distance from {56} us? It is
generally considered that the sun is about ninety-two millions of miles
distant. It is easy to say these words, but difficult to realize their
meaning. Our express trains move at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
Now if a railway stretched from the earth to the sun, it would require
three hundred and fifty years for an express train to pass over it. If
Champlain, the founder of Quebec, and Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas,
so famous in early Virginia history, had stepped on board this train it
would still require nearly eighty years more for their descendants to
reach the end of their journey. The distance would still be so great,
that only the great grand-children of the present generation could
expect to reach the sun. And yet there is a power that reaches across
this vast distance, swings the world around its orbit like a haltered
colt trotting around a hitching post, lifts the ocean into a mighty
tide and lashes the rocky shores with the fury of the angry waves. But
this is not all. Light flashes across this mighty chasm in the brief
space of eight minutes and a half. The light by which we read these
lines started from the sun about the time we read the heading of this
article. What shall we say of a space so vast, that this light must
travel a year, a hundred, aye, even a thousand years before it reaches
its destination? And yet there is a power that governs even there,
a power so mighty that He "grasps the whole frame-work of stars and
systems, and sends them whirling and wheeling through the depths of
boundless space like a {57} handful of pebbles thrown through the air."
Well might the great philosopher and poet, Addison, exclaim:
"The spacious firmament on high
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
"In Reason's ear they all rejoice
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine."
While we are amazed at the manifestations of _power_ in creation, let
us not forget the indications of _intelligence_ and _design_ that exist
all around us. For example, I see a friend walking along the street
in the rain, with an umbrella over his head, and I feel that somebody
contrived that instrument with the design of keeping off the rain. In
one word, it was intended for that purpose. In like manner we perceive
marks of design and intelligence in the countless contrivances and
instruments used in every-day life. In fact, we cannot look upon the
simplest invention without feeling that it is the result of design
and intelligence. Now the world is full of contrivances, which were
not made by human hands, nor invented by human brains. The hand that
wrote these words or the hand that set up the type to print them is a
more ingenious contrivance than was ever made by human skill. If it
required intelligence to make a pen, did it not require still greater
intelligence to make the hand that wields the pen? If it required
design to {58} fashion a metal type, did it not require a still greater
design to form the hand that manipulates that type? not to speak of
that subtle and mysterious power, called the mind, which guides the
hand under both these circumstances.
In like manner we might observe the marks of design and mechanical
skill displayed in the formation of the eye. First, there is the cavity
in which it is placed, composed of seven little bones nicely fitted and
glued together, lined with the softest fat and enveloped in a tissue,
compared with which the softest silk is only coarse canvas. Then the
cavity is so shaped as to exactly fit the eye, while the brow projects
over like the roof of a veranda and the lids close down over it to
protect it from injury. Again, we find that the ropes and pulleys used
in the rigging of a ship are simplicity indeed as compared with the
nerves and muscles used in the movements of the eye.
[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Here there is an uncaptioned representation of the
anatomy of the human eye, with its major parts labeled.]
Most persons have seen a ship, and know the way in which the yards are
moved, and the sails squared by means of ropes and pulleys. Now, there
is a tackle called a muscle to pull the eye down when you want to look
down; another to pull it up when you have done; there is one to pull
it to the right, and another to pull it to the {59} left. There is one
fastened to the eyeball in two places, and so arranged that it will
move the eye in any direction, as when we roll our eyes; and a sixth
fastened to the under side of the eye to keep it steady when we do not
need to move it. Then the eyelids are provided with suitable gearing,
and it needs to be durable too, for it is said to be used thirty
thousand times a day, in fact, every time we wink.
Not less wonderful is the construction of the eye itself. The optic
nerve is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose
instead of it being where you observe it, at the back part of the
eye, it had been brought out to the front, and that reflections from
objects had fallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have
been exposed to injury from every floating particle of dust, and we
would always have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald
when the skin peels off and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to
the air. Also the tender points of the fibres of the optic nerve would
soon become blunted and the eye of course useless. How then is the
nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were
covered with skin as the other nerves are, we could not see through it.
For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knew no
substance at once hard and transparent, which could answer the double
purpose of vision and protection. To this day man knows no substance
clear enough for vision, hard enough for protection, and elastic enough
to resume its form {60} after a blow. Now observe in the eye, that
forward part, called the cornea, is as it were the watch-glass. It it
is made of a substance at once hard, transparent and elastic; something
which man has never been able to imitate.
It may be asked, what is the use of so many lenses in the eye? Light
when refracted through a lens, becomes separated into its component
colors--red, yellow, green, blue and violet. So that if the crystalline
lens of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object,
bluish in the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges. This
difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never
discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would
obviate it. That remained for M. Dolland, a celebrated physician,
to do; and he did it by studying and imitating the formation of the
eye. Now what absurdity to say that a law of nature, such as gravity,
or electricity has such a knowledge of the principles of optics and
mechanics as the eye proclaims its Former to have! In all this we see
marks of the most admirable design. The eye is fitted both to gaze at
the stars millions of miles away and minutely examine objects only a
few inches distant. In the brightness of sunshine the pupil contracts
in order to protect the optic nerve from injury; in twilight it expands
so as to admit a greater amount of light. When we wish to regulate
the admission of light to our rooms we have recourse to very clumsy
contrivances. A self-acting window which shall expand in the twilight
and partially close of its {61} own accord as the light increases
towards noon, has never been manufactured by man. In short, anatomists
have already observed more than eight hundred contrivances in the dead
eye, while the greatest contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is
utterly beyond their ken.
Similar arguments might be brought from every department of nature to
prove the marks of design in creation. The question therefore returns
with double force, _had the world a creator or did it make itself_?
There are persons who say it did, and with a brazen-faced impudence
declare that the Bible tells a falsehood when it says that, "In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." "Whereas," say they,
"we know that matter is eternal, and the world being wholly composed
of matter, therefore, the heavens and the earth are eternal--never had
a beginning nor a creator." Profound reasoning indeed! In the same
manner we might say, "Here is a well-burned brick, fresh from the kiln,
which may last for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has always
existed."
Again, it is claimed by some that matter is indestructible. The
foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. Who
knows that fact? for the very reason that no one can tell what matter
in its own nature is. We may heat water to a certain degree and change
it into steam, but it is all there in the steam. We may burn coal and
thus change is appearance, but its particles are all there, in the form
of gas, ashes or tar. All that any one can say is, that matter is {62}
indestructible by any power or agency known to man. But to assert that
matter is eternal, because man cannot destroy it, is as if a child
should try to beat a locomotive to pieces with his stick, and failing
in the attempt should say, "I am sure this locomotive existed from
eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."
But, supposing that matter is eternal, how does that account for the
formation of this beautiful world? The earth consists not of one
substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material
substances as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, and some
fifty-two or three others already discovered (_see Turner's Chemistry,
section_ 341). Now which of these is the eternal matter referred to?
Is it iron, or sulphur, or carbon, or oxygen? If it is any one of
them, where did the others come from? Did a mass of iron, for example,
becoming discontented with its condition, suddenly change itself into
a cloud of gas or a pail of water? Or are all the elements eternal?
Have we fifty-eight eternal substances? Are they all eternal in their
present combinations, or is it only the simple elements that are
eternal? Whatever may be the answers to these questions, they give
no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless
mass called matter, but a beautiful building composed of a variety of
substances. Has this earth existed as it is from eternity? No man who
ever was in a quarry or gravel pit will say so, much less one who has
the least smattering of chemistry or geology. If the elements which
{63} compose the earth have not always existed as we now find them,
then how came they to put themselves in their present shapes? Matter
has no power of putting itself in motion when at rest, nor of coming to
rest when in motion. A body will never change its place unless moved,
and if once started will move on forever unless stopped. For example,
if we leave our room, and on our return find a book missing, we know
that some one has taken it--the book could not have gone off at its own
suggestion.
Now will the infidels presume to tell us, that the fifty-eight primary
elements danced about till the air, sea and earth somehow jumbled
themselves together into the present shape of this glorious and
beautiful world, with all its regularity of day and night, Summer and
Winter, with all its beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its
variety of birds, beasts and fishes, not to speak of the beauties of
the morning, the gorgeous dyes of sunset, or the silent glories of
the midnight sky. Or to bring the question down to the level of the
intellect of the most stupid atheist, tell us in plain English, _did
the paving stones make themselves_?
Absurd as it seems, there are persons claiming to be philosophers who
not only assert that they did, but will tell you how they did it. One
class of them think they found it out by supposing everything in the
universe reduced to very fine powder, consisting of very fine grains,
which they call atoms; or, if that is not fine enough, into gas, of
which it is supposed the particles are too fine {64} to be perceived,
and then by different arrangements of these atoms, according to the
laws of attraction, electricity, or some other law, the various
elements of the world were made, and arranged in their present forms.
But then the difficulty is only multiplied millions of times. Each bit
of paving stone, no matter how small you break it, can no more make
itself or move itself, than could the whole stone composed of all these
bits. So we are landed back at the sublime question, _did the paving
stones make themselves_?
Others will tell you that millions of years ago the world existed as a
vast cloud of fire-mist. What this fire-mist is they do not know, but
only that there are certain comets, which come within fifty or sixty
millions of miles of this earth, which they suppose may be composed of
fire-mist. Hence they imagine that the earth also may have been made
from the same fire-mist. But where did the mist come from? Did the mist
make itself? Where did the fire come from? Did it kindle of its own
accord? Who put the fire and the mist together? Was it red hot enough
from all eternity to melt granite? Then why is it any cooler now? If it
existed as a red hot fire-mist from eternity, why should it ever begin
to cool at all? Infidels claim that there was nothing else in all the
universe except this fire-mist. Then the cause of all this must have
been in the mist itself. In other words, _the fire-mist made itself,
then the paving stones and the infidels afterwards_.
{65} Others suppose that the world was once in a stage of solution,
in primeval oceans, and that the mixing of these waters caused them
to deposit a sediment, which hardened into rock, then vegetated into
plants and trees, then grew into animals, these in turn developed
into monkeys, and finally the monkeys into men. Thus it is clearly
demonstrated that there is no need for the Creator if we only had
somebody to make these primeval oceans, somebody to mix them together,
and somebody to establish these laws of development.
Another favorite theory among infidels, is that of Buffon, the
vain-glorious French philosopher. His theory was that the sun is a vast
melted mass, and that once on a time a huge comet struck the sun in
such a manner, that portions of it splashed off, just as a stone thrown
in a slanting direction into a bucket of water would cause portions
of the water to splash out of the vessel. These portions of matter
(acting under certain laws) then formed themselves into spheres and
being condensed by cold have become solid planets and satellites. Thus,
according to this idea, creation was only an accident after all. Still,
as might be expected, thinking men kept asking: "Where did the sun come
from? What melted it down into a fluid state fit to be splashed about?
Where did the comet come from? And who threw it with so correct an aim,
as to hit the sun exactly in an oblique direction."
{66} [ILLUSTRATION: SOLAR SYSTEM]
This idea received considerable encouragement from a certain class of
scientific men during the early part of this century. Between
the orbits of Mars and Jupiter is a vast space which was supposed
to be unoccupied. In the first seven years of this century, three
small planets were discovered revolving in orbits midway between Mars
{67} and Jupiter. Afterwards many others were discovered until now
the number exceeds two hundred. Dr. Olbers, the discoverer of two of
them, Pallas and Vesta, finding that their orbits were comparatively
near together and sometimes crossed each other, imagined that they
were formed by the explosion of a large planet or by a comet coming
in contact with a large planet and thus shattering it to pieces.
This theory seemed all the more plausible seeing that these minor
worlds or "pocket planets," as Herschel styles them, are exceedingly
diminutive. So, to use a familiar illustration, he imagined the boiler
of a large locomotive had burst and the fragments had all alighted on
the track in the shape of hand-cars; much more, that the hand-cars had
magnanimously resolved to keep running and do the business of the line.
At first sight this theory seemed strengthened by every new discovery.
It is true, reflecting men could not help wondering at such a strange
event, that would produce beautiful little planets all by accident.
They never heard of the blowing up of a palace producing cottages, or
the fragments of a steam-ship changing into yawl-boats, nor even the
pieces of a wrecked locomotive becoming neat little engines or even
respectable hand-cars. However, as the theory removed God out of sight,
it was generally accepted by the infidels and freely used by them, to
show that the world has no need of a Creator.
Genuine scientists, however, were not long in seeing the
absurdity and demonstrating the {68} impossibility of such a theory.
It was found that their orbits did not coincide by more than twenty
millions of miles. Again, it has been proven that comets are incapable
of greatly affecting a sun or planet. Herschel says, "It is evident
that the most unsubstantial clouds which float in the highest region of
our atmosphere must be looked upon as dense and massy bodies compared
with the filmy texture of a comet."
Thus Reason declares, that the world did not make itself. The soul of
man did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They
must have had an intelligent Creator, who is God. The work is not the
workman; the house is not the builder; the watch is not the watchmaker.
The maker is always distinct from the thing made and superior to it.
You, and I, and the universe have been made; therefore, our Creator is
distinct from us, and superior to us.
The consciousness of our ignorance and weakness confirms this fact.
The soul of man is not the highest intelligence in the universe. In
his present state he has not yet acquired a knowledge of the laws and
functions of the body he inhabits, much less the laws that sway the
universe. He may know much about what does not concern him; but he
feels his weakness where his dearest interests are concerned. He may
be able to tell the place of a distant planet a century hence; but he
cannot tell where he himself will be next year. He may calculate for
years the motion of the tides; but he cannot tell how his own pulse
will beat to-morrow, {69} or whether it will beat at all. Ever as his
knowledge of the laws of nature increases, his conviction deepens that
a wiser head and a stronger hand than his planned and rules the world.
The world's history declares the existence and government of God.
History is but the record of men's acts and God's providences, of men's
crimes and God's punishments. Once He swept away the human race with a
flood of water because the wickedness of man was great upon the earth.
Again, He testified His displeasure against the wicked of Sodom and
Gomorrah by consuming those cities by fire from heaven, and leaving
the Dead Sea to roll its solemn waves of warning to the end of time.
No amount of learning or skill, wealth or commerce, power of arms,
or extent of territory, has ever secured a wicked nation against the
sword of God's justice. Read the black record of the past. Where is
the greatness of Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon and Petra? Tyre had ships,
colonies and commerce, Rome an empire of half a hemisphere; Greece had
philosophy, arts and liberty secured by a confederation of republics,
Spain the treasures of the earth's gold and silver? but these did
not exempt them from the moral government of God. His laws sway the
universe, and link together sin with misery, and crime with punishment,
in the brazen fetters of eternal justice. These nations have been
hurled down from the pinnacle of their greatness, to dash themselves in
pieces against each other in the valley of destruction; and there they
lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save
some shivered fragments of former greatness, to show that they once
existed and were the enemies of God.
{70} [ILLUSTRATION: THE DEAD SEA]
{71}
* * * * *