“Hail human liberty; there is no God!” Such is the exulting song of many a
human heart when bewildering metaphysics or superficial science has
crowded from its convictions faith in the Deity and his moral government.
Few men have reached the pure, unclouded heights of religion and morality,
where the unselfish love of the holy and the right, for their own inherent
excellence, forms the controlling motive of their conduct, regardless of
penalty or reward. Humanity is yet on the low moral plane, where penal
laws, human or divine, are the most potent forces in regulating human
life. Hence the sad fact appears that when theism seems most successfully
assailed we hear from many quarters ill-concealed rustlings of exultation
at the welcome loosening of the bonds of morality and religion. It seems
to be overlooked that a very stern theological system may be quite
rationally evolved from atheistic premises; and there is now a new and
very tempting field inviting some bold Calvin or Luther in the ranks of
positivism to write an immortal book, with the original and attractive
title, Ethics of Atheism. The great offense of the scientific (sciolistic)
atheist is his lofty arrogance. He complacently assumes the name of
Infallible Wisdom. He “understands all mysteries;” his mental telescope
sweeps eternity “from everlasting to everlasting;” his microscopic vision
pierces the secrets of creation,—sees the beauty and order of all
celestial worlds emerge from fiery chaotic dust,—by the fortunate contact
of cooling cinders of the right chemical properties and temperature, he
secretes and hatches into life an egg, or cell of throbbing protoplasm; to
this pulsating mass of jelly there comes from the unconscious abyss at
length a vague instinct, a drowsy awakening of desire; next a feeble gleam
of definite thought; reason then faintly dawns, and lo! at last this fair
universe burst into glorious light, clothed in surpassing loveliness,
throbbing with love, tender sympathy and sublime aspiration, and all
through the magic potency of blind matter and unconscious force, without
an architect or guide. O, wondrous matter, could a God do more?
O, divine science (sciolist), we bless thy name; thou hast delivered us
from the terrors of dogmatic fear! Man is but dust, and unto dust shall he
return; “let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” But ere we run riot
in the intoxication of our new-born freedom from divine law, does not the
skeptical, cautious, scientific spirit admonish us to pause a moment and
look logically at another class of possible achievements of this
wonder-working, material power. In philosophical researches, analogy is a
recognized and legitimate guide to truth. Admitting, then, that pure
matter has done all that materialism claims it has done in the past, let
us look by the light of analogy at other and graver possibilities it may
have wrought in its reckless, unrestrained creations. Time is a mighty
attribute of evolutionary divinities; its power seems next to infinite. In
a few millions of years Alexanders, Bonapartes, Bismarks, Miltons, Edisons
and Ingersols have been evolved from thoughtless chaos; now, if in limited
time (for what are millions of years to eternity) such majestic mental
forces have been developed from the inexhaustible store-house of
_intellectual nothingness_, why should bold mathematical science deem it a
“thing incredible” that in an eternity of time, with an unlimited amount
of matter for capital and infinite space for a theater of action, this
mind-evolving force may not have generated beings of almost infinite
capacities—even a monarch who sways a scepter over more worlds than
one—EVEN A GOD. Why should material philosophy cavil at the creeds which
teach a righteous judgment to come? Have not the judicial elements of
oxygen, carbon and hydrogen combined to organize on one planet at least
courts of equity and judgment seats, and crystalized into prison walls and
hand-cuffs the gallows and the hangman? Upon the established scientific
principle that nature’s laws are uniform, undeviating and universal in
their action, does not the analogy of earthly tribunals logically
necessitate the belief that our globe is but a province of the infinite
empire governed by righteous laws, of which enlightened human laws are a
partial revelation.
Modern science teaches the oneness of the universe and the identity and
sameness of the matter composing it. What then can be more strictly
scientific and demonstrable from materialistic premises than the vast
conclusion that uniform passive matter, operated upon by the same
undeviating laws, must in all worlds produce the same results and evolve,
as it has on our planet, intelligence in which a sense of right and
justice shall predominate, and everywhere and in all time, enact and
execute laws discriminating between right and wrong? What astronomical
prediction, then, can be more certain of fulfillment than this moral
prophecy of the final eclipse of evil and ultimate triumph of the right?
With no existing power to arrest or mitigate the sentence of this
relentless, carboniferous judge, how fearful may be the possible fate of
those who disregard the moral laws of protoplasm. Matter has evolved a
Franklin and a Morse, who learned to wield the lightning’s power. Why may
there not have been evolved in the infinite past a more profound
electrician, who, with his battery and etherial wires can shiver a planet
with his touch? A marvelous power—the human spirit—has gained a vast
control over the blind, stubborn substances and forces that created it,
and by its immaterial, invisible will, can in a limited degree overrule
the most imperious law of nature by throwing a stone into the air. Is it
unscientific, then, or derogatory to the vaunted potency of matter to
affirm that the eternal ages may have developed an intelligent will that
can project a planet or sun, as the human will and muscle project the
pebble? Scoff not, exalted sages, at the weak terrors of those who tremble
at the dogma of a malignant devil; consider that pity and compassion are
not the known chemical constituents of this soulless creator. Where, then,
can we fix the limit of that unconscious, fiendish force that evolved a
Nero, and incarnated in human bodies the myriads of demoniac spirits that
walk the earth to-day? Egotistical scientist (sciolist) calm the cyclone,
quiet the engulphing earthquake, blot from human history the records of
war, pestilence, famine, the tales of St. Bartholomew and the Inquisition,
and then deny by material philosophy the possibility of even a Calvinistic
hell; deny the personality of man because your microscope and scalpel can
not find a soul by dissecting the brain of the mathematician, and then
deny a personal God because his spirit eludes the grasp of sealed
crucibles and can not be detected by digging in the earth with the spade.
Deny the existence of conscious life, and then in the light of reason and
science deny that the forces that generate life must from necessary law
work for its continuance and immortality. Extreme materialism confidently
teaches the birth, death and resurrection of planetary universes; why
should such grand faith stagger at the theory of the resurrection of a
soul? Where is the scientific absurdity of Renan’s distant hope, that this
mighty resurrection of dead worlds will embrace in its infinite scope the
awakening to consciousness; the universal past consciousness of the
universe. May not both theist and atheist find in this line of thought a
partial answer to the oft recurring modern prayer, “Help thou mine
unbelief.”—_From the Religio-Philosophic Journal._
Can you believe that all things are the result of blind, unintelligent
forces, operating under mechanical laws?