OUR NEED OF REVELATION.
REVELATION PROGRESSIVE--ITS RELATION TO CIVILIZATION--SOLOMON--HIS
PROVERBS--NEWMAN'S ABSURDITIES--CARLYLE--PARKER--HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY
IMMORAL--ANCIENT ROMAN SONGS--CHARACTER OF HEATHEN DEITIES--RELIGION
OF INDIA--COMPTE--BRADLAUGH--CHESTERFIELD--PAINE.
The philosopher finds only two books in all the world--two divine,
original books, viz., the _Volume of Nature_, and the _Revelations of
God_. All others are mere commentaries upon these two original, divine
books. To these pertain all that has been thought, said or written, in
all the ages past; and, we might add, all that ever will be written in
all the ages to come. That which explains, delineates or illustrates
the volume of nature is called Science. That which unfolds to us the
attributes of God, our own nature and destiny is revelation. It treats
of that which man cannot otherwise perceive; its records are called
the _Scriptures_ or Books of _Inspiration_. {72} The volume of nature is
written upon the rocks, fields, forests and all the varied forms of
animal life, in symbolic characters, which it is the province of
science to decipher. The volume of revelation is the impress of the
divine will on man's spiritual nature. Thus both are the handwriting
of Deity Himself. Science teaches us material laws in relation to
time. Revelation instructs not merely in these, but likewise includes
spiritual laws and eternal duration. The lessons that man learns
from age to age are progressive even as a school boy's. Science and
revelation are therefore progressive, though in somewhat different
ways. The former advances mainly through the exercise of human reason;
the latter through man's more favored circumstances, and the increased
divine illumination of his spiritual nature. How vain, how arrogant the
babblings of the sectarians who tell us that the book of revelation
is forever closed! That man, in this puerile state, has already taken
possession of the whole treasure of divine truth! That the human mind
with its poor plummet has already sounded the depths of the divine
oracles! Still more benighted are they who do not see that there is
a divine as well as human element in all our progress, that purity
of heart is necessary for the clearest perception even of the truths
of science. Thus the nations as well as the individuals who have the
highest spiritual light are precisely those who have made the greatest
intellectual progress. If we look over a map of the world we find
that those {73} nations which possess the purest religious ideas are
precisely those which have made the greatest intellectual, social and
political progress. Now religious ideas emanate from God. They are the
result of the action of the divine will on the minds of men. Thus the
progress of the nations depends upon the revelations of God.
Thousands of years ago, Solomon perceived this fact. He was a man of
great learning as well as practical common sense. He understood not
merely the science of government, but likewise botany, or the science
of plants, from the mighty trees that grew on Mount Lebanon, to the
tiny hyssop that grew in crevices of the garden wall: and the natural
history of beasts and birds, reptiles and fishes. He was also skilled
in literature; he is said to have made "three thousand proverbs, and
his songs were a thousand and five" (_see I. Kings, iv chap_). Better
than all this, in the opinion of many, especially infidels, he made
money, and tells us how to make and keep it. Any young man will make
hundreds of dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting on them. They
would have saved some of us many a thousand. Of course Solomon knew
something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader; his ships coasted
the shores of Asia and Africa, from Madagascar to Japan; and the
overland caravans from India and China drew up in the depots he built
for them in the heart of the desert. He knew the well-doing people with
whom trade was profitable, and the savages who could only send apes and
peacocks (_see I. Kings, chap. x_). Solomon was a philosopher as
well as a trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with the
great fact that there was a wide difference between the nations of the
earth. Some were enlightened, enterprising, civilized and flourishing;
others were naked savages, perpetually at war with each other, living
in ignorance, poverty, vice and on the verge of starvation.
{74} [ILLUSTRATION: GIANT CITIES OF BASHAN, BUILT BY SOLOMON]
{75} Solomon also noticed another fact, that the nations
which were favored with the revelations of God, were the civilized,
enterprising and comparatively prosperous nations. In Palestine,
Chaldea and Mesopotamia, God had revealed His will to certain persons
for the benefit of the race. Even Egypt, it is now generally admitted,
passed through the era of her greatest prosperity at the time she was
in close relationship and communication with the Hebrew Patriarchs,
Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, who were the living oracles of God, and
whose influence greatly increased for a time her national prosperity.
On the other hand the nations that were uninfluenced by the revelations
of God, were the idolatrous savages, who were but little above the
level of the brutes. Solomon epitomized these great facts in the
proverb, "Where there is no vision the people perish, but he that
keepeth the law, happy is he" (_Proverbs xxix_, 18).
"O," says the skeptic, "the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's
days. He lived in the old times of ignorance and superstition, when men
attributed everything extraordinary to the gods. But we are too wise
now to believe in revelation."
{76} Again, Straus says, "No just notion of philosophy or history
is possible which includes a belief of those things that we do not
understand." Depth of wisdom indeed! We do not understand how a blade
of grass grows, therefore we must deny its existence.
One cannot help being amazed at the cool impudence with which these
men take for granted the very point to be proved, and set aside as
unworthy of serious examination, the most authentic records of history,
simply because they do not coincide with their so-called philosophy;
and at the credulity with which their followers swallow these arrogant
assertions, as if they were self-evident truths. Let us look at this
argument for a moment. Pagan religions have their fables, therefore,
the Hebrew and Christian records are fables. In other words, since
counterfeit bank bills exist therefore none are genuine.
Skeptics offer no proofs that miracles are impossible. Yet, surely,
if they imply a contradiction, that contradiction could be shown. The
creation of this world is the most stupendous of all miracles; yet all
men admit that this miracle occurred. The experience of man is not the
limit of knowledge. Revelation is not impossible because supernatural.
The world is as full of supernatural works as of natural. The miracles
recorded in the strata of the earth's crust are as great as any
recorded in the Bible.
If, as the infidel asserts, religion and superstition are identical,
and ignorance is the cause, how {77} happens it that the most
intellectual and progressive nations are those which have the clearest
religious ideas? The history of nations universally and unequivocally
declares this fact. Even among the so-called Christian nations of
Europe and America we find their intellectual culture and general
progress in exact proportion to the purity of their respective faiths.
While we look in vain, among the heathen nations of Africa to find a
single benefactor of the race, or one worthy to be distinguished among
the millions of her population in all the countless generations past.
In the face of all this we find a sort of spiritualistic philosophers
who tell us that we have no need of communication from God. Newman, in
his _Phases of Faith, page_ 157, says, "Miraculous phenomena will never
prove the attributes of God if we do not know these things in and of
ourselves." Carlyle, in his _Past and Present, page_ 307, exclaims,
"Revelations! inspirations! indeed! and thy own mighty transcendent,
god-like soul, dost thou not call that a revelation?" Such sort of
trash, which passes for profound philosophy, is taught in hundreds
of colleges, and is echoed from thousands of pulpits by men who call
themselves Christian ministers, but who could not reap their rich
salaries if they would openly avow their atheism.
Theodore Parker says, "If a fact depends upon revelation, it is not
eternally true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all."
Profound philosophy indeed!--as if eternally true, and sufficiently
known were just the same thing. To use {78} a familiar illustration,
because vaccination would always have prevented the small pox, if it
had been known, therefore the world is under no obligation to Jenner
for informing us of the fact. Newman adds in another place, "I cannot
receive instruction from another being." Again, "Neither God nor man
can reveal any religious truths to our minds." Parker says, "On His
(God's) word or as His second, be he whom he may, I can accept nothing"
(_Parker's Discourse page_ 209).
Now we are tempted to ask, who are these wonderful prodigies, so
incapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement
we learn that some forty or fifty years ago, they made their appearance
among mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to
know their own names or who they were, or where they came from, and
were actually dependent on an external revelation, from their nurses,
for sense enough to find their mothers' breasts. And as they grew a
little larger, they learned the art of speaking articulate sounds, by
external revelation: viz., hearing and repeating sounds made by others.
Further, on a certain day they had a book revelation made to them, in
the shape of a ten cent primer, and received their first lessons by
the instructions of another. They had not then the least "insight,"
or "spiritual faculty," or "mighty transcendent soul," by which they
could learn all things in and of themselves. Faith in the word of their
teachers was absolutely the only means by which they learned to speak,
read and write.
{79} But this is not half their indebtedness to external revelation.
They admit that a Feejee cannibal has just the same "mighty and
transcendent soul" that they themselves have. How, then, does it happen
that Newman, Emerson and Parker, and all their followers, who are too
proud to be taught of God, are not assembled around a cannibal's oven,
smearing their faces with the blood and feasting themselves on the
limbs of women and children? Is it not, after all, the revelations of
God and the teachings depending thereon that make the whole difference
between the civilized American and his Feejee brother?
It is amusing to see how these modern atheists, who reject Moses
and the Prophets, as well as Christ and His Apostles, will permit
themselves to go into ecstacies over the supposed wisdom of ancient
heathen philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. But on
examination we find that the teachings of all these philosophers
were immoral. The gratification of the sensual appetites was openly
taught. "He may steal," says Plato, "who knows how to do it." Oaths are
frequent in the writings of Plato and Seneca. Anstippus taught that
a wise man had a right to commit adultery. Aristotle vindicated the
awful crimes of foeticide and infanticide. Even suicide was defended by
Cicero and Seneca as the mark of a hero, and Demosthenes, Cato, Brutus
and Cassius carried the means of self-destruction about them, that they
might not fall alive into the hands of their enemies.
{80} The laws of the best-regulated heathen states commended or
approved of vice. The student of the classics need not be reminded
that the songs of Ovid, Horace and Virgil would not be tolerated in
the vilest theater of New York or Chicago. The laws of Sparta required
theft, and the murder of unhealthy children. The Carthaginian law
required human sacrifices; and in ancient Babylon, prostitution was
compulsory on every female. Plato, dissatisfied with the laws of
his country, wrote out a code of morals and laws which he thought
much better. In this heathen Utopia the ideas of home and family
were ignored. Marriage was to be unknown; women's rights were to be
maintained by having the women trained to war. Children were still
to be murdered if convenience called for it. Little boys and girls
were to be led to battle at a safe distance, "that the young whelps
may early scent carnage and be inured to slaughter." Such were the
loftiest ideas of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. After all his
speculations and writing, Plato admitted, "We cannot know of ourselves
what petition will be pleasing to God, or what worship we should pay
to Him; but it is necessary that a lawgiver should be sent from heaven
to instruct us. Oh, how greatly do I long to see that man!" He further
adds, "This lawgiver must be more than man, that he may teach us things
man cannot know by his own nature." Who has not dropped a tear over the
dying words of Socrates? "I am going out of the world, and you are to
continue in it, but which of us has {81} the better part is a secret to
every one but God!" Also those memorable words, "We must of necessity
wait till some one, who careth for us, shall come and instruct us how
we ought to behave toward God and toward man."
Nor is it to be expected that the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and
other heathen nations should have an exalted idea of virtue, when we
consider the character of the gods they worshiped. The Egyptian deities
consisted of bulls and dogs, cats and rats, snakes and crocodiles. When
a dog died the whole house went into mourning and fasted till night. A
Roman soldier who had accidentally killed a cat was punished with death
(_see Diodorus Siculus, Book I_). The "great, mighty and transcendent
soul," as Carlyle terms it, had been degraded so low that there is a
picture in one of the pyramids, of an Egyptian king worshiping his own
coffin.
The Greeks from their intercourse with the Jews learned some correct
religious ideas, especially after the conquest of Palestine by
Alexander, and the translation of the scriptures into the Greek
language, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C. 240. Before
this period little sense can be found in their religion. Their gods
were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had
thirty thousand. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was an adulterer.
Mars, a murderer. Mercury, a thief, Bacchus, a drunkard and Venus,
a prostitute. To their inferior gods they attributed other crimes
too horrible to be mentioned. These gods {82} they worshiped with
ceremonies of lust, drunkenness and bloodshed unfit to be described.
If any one supposes that the condition of the modern heathens is any
better than it was in ancient times, let him turn to India, where
he will find one hundred and fifty millions of rational beings,
possessing, as Theodore Parker says, "all needful spiritual light,"
who worship three hundred and thirty millions of gods in the form of
hills and trees, rivers and rocks, elephants and tigers, monkeys and
rats, serpents and crocodiles, and monsters unlike anything in heaven
or on earth. The monster idol, Juggernaut, will do as a specimen of
all. Around his temple countless multitudes from all parts of India,
congregate annually, many of them having measured with their own bodies
the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage. Within the temple, the
monster idol, with its frightful grim and distorted visage, sits
enthroned, amid thousands of massive sculptures, the representative
emblem of that cruelty and vice which constitute the very essence of
his worship. There in their sacred city of Benares may be seen at all
times crowds of religious devotees and mendicants; some remaining
all day with their heads on the ground and their feet in the air;
some cramming their eyes with mud and their mouths with straw; others
with their limbs fastened in unnatural positions, and still others
with little pots of fire placed upon their breasts, hoping by these
self-inflicted tortures to win the favor of the god. When the day of
the high festival arrives, the horrid idol is {85} dragged forth from
his temple and mounted on a lofty car in the presence of hundreds of
thousands who rend the air with their shouts, "Victory to Juggernaut!"
Then the officiating priest commences the ceremonies by a loathsome
pantomimic exhibition accompanied by the utterance of obscene and
filthy songs, to which the vast multitude at intervals respond, not in
the strains of tuneful melody, but in loud yells of approbation. After
this the terrible carnage commences; for as the car is dragged through
the streets, the more enthusiastic devotees throw themselves beneath
the wheels, and are instantly crushed to pieces, the infatuated victims
of hellish superstition. On the neighboring hills, the so-called sacred
vultures may be seen feasting on these corpses and the bleak and barren
sands on the roadside are forever whitened with the skulls and bones of
deluded pilgrims, which lie bleaching in the sun (_see Duff's India,
page_ 222).
Of course, high-toned infidels do not consider themselves as debased
as the natives of India. What then is the tendency of their teachings?
M. Compte, a leading skeptical writer, tells us, "Childhood should be
taught to worship idols, youth to believe in one God, and full grown
men (like himself) to adore the resultant of all the forces of the
universe, _not forgetting their worthy friends the animals_" (_see
Politique Positive, Vol. II._ page 60). If this is not the teachings of
idolatry, what is it?
Again, we find that the whole school of infidel writers vindicate and
apologize for the very worst {84} of crimes. Bradlaugh, the leading
atheist of England, declares that, "A man is no more to be blamed for
the indulgence of lust or anger, than he is for thirst or drowsiness."
Hume, whose arguments are so often used by American infidels, taught
that "adultery must be practiced by mankind, if they would obtain all
the advantages of life." Lord Chesterfield, another prominent infidel,
in his letters to his son (which were designed for publication)
instructs him in the art of seduction, as part of a polite education.
Nor is the character of infidels any better than their teachings. Take,
for example, Thomas Paine, the author of the Age of Reason, whose
birth-day is annually celebrated, and who is held up by infidels as a
model for the young. A few extracts from a letter written to him, by
his fellow-infidel, and co-worker, William Carver, may not be out of
place.
"New Rochelle, December 2nd, 1803.
"Mr. Thomas Paine.
"Sir:--I received your letter dated the 25th ult., and after minutely
examining its contents, I found that you had taken to the pitiful
subterfuge of _lying_ for your defense. You say that you paid me four
dollars per week for your board and lodging, during the time you were
with me, prior to the first of June last; which was the day that I
went up, by your order, to take you to New York, from New Rochelle. It
is fortunate for me that I have a living witness who saw you give me
five guineas, and no more in my shop at your departure at that time.
Now you have means, why do you not pay me the remainder? You said you
would have given me more, but that you had no more with you at that
time. You say, also, {85} that you found your own liquors during the
time you boarded with me; but you should have said that you found
only a small part of the liquor you drank during your stay with me.
That part you purchased of John Fellows and consisted of a demi-john
of brandy containing four gallons, and that did not serve you three
weeks. This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything that I
cannot prove, for I hold truth as a precious jewel. It is a well-known
fact, that you drank one quart of brandy per day at my expense, during
the different times you boarded with me, besides the demi-john above
mentioned, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Was not this a
sufficient supply for dinner and supper? * * * * *
"I have often wondered that a French woman and three children should
leave France and all their connections to follow Thomas Paine to
America. Suppose I were to go to my native country, England, and take
another man's wife, and three children of his and leave my wife and
children in this country; what would be the natural conclusion in
the minds of the people, but that there was some criminal connection
between the woman and myself?"
Such is the morality of those who denounce the Bible as an immoral
book, and blaspheme the God of revelation as too vile to be reverenced
or worshiped. Not even the friends of Paine have ever denied the
genuineness of this and other letters that clearly reveal his private
character. (For full particulars see _Discussion Between Dr. Berg and
Mr. Barker, published by W. S. Young, Philadelphia,_ 1854.)
Once in modern times a nation had the opportunity of showing the world
a specimen of an infidel republic. The Bible was publicly burned. Death
was declared an eternal sleep; God was declared a fiction, the Sabbath
was abolished and religious worship denounced. And what was {86} the
consequence? Revolution after revolution occurred. Thousands, aye
millions, of the sons of France were slain in the wars that ensued.
Wave after wave of blood rolled through the guilty streets of Paris,
and the people were clothed in mourning from one end of the land to the
other. In the Declaration of Independence it is declared that, "Mankind
are endowed _by their Creator_ with certain inalienable rights." It is
well said: the law of God is the only secure basis for the rights of
man.
{87}