The creation and the Scripture, the revelation of God

Front matter

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rMTKI) STATES OF AMEIUCA.

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CHAPTER I. Unwritten Divine Laws

Theology too often acts as if science originated with man, and tlie assertion of physical facts were but assumptions of his own brain ; whereas a physical fact, though but recently brought to man's comprehension, is in some way the result of laws operating through all time.

The law of gravitation, discovered and applied by Newton, was not a law of Newton to cease its operation when he died or to be perverted by his errors of judgment or imperfect understanding; but was a law of God for all time, unchangeable in its relations, and to be applied with assured faith by man in every condition of hfe.

Engineering, architecture, navigation, and almost every mechanic art soon became subordinate to this law and the certainty and uniformity of its action.

On the other hand, the emission theory of light advocated by Newton was as universally accepted two hundred years ago as the theory of gravitation, and is now universally rejected.

Time and rc-cxaniination, with increased knowledge of natural laws, have conllrmcd the theory of

NATURAL LAWS INSPIRED. 2/

gravitation as Divine and rejected the emission theory of light as human.

Light is clearly emitted and is a fact, now as then ; but the law of its action is now correctly learned.

The law of expansion and condensation of steam was a law of God long before it was understood and utilized by Watt and others in navigation, or by Stephenson and others in railroads and mechanic arts.

The old-time song of the tea-kettle by the fireside, when understood by the human mind and formulated in language, has changed the commerce of nations, strengthened the structure of society, developed the powers and genius of men, and improved the spiritual relations of the entire race. Thus the law of gravitation and the law of steam became inspired and revealed truth of God for the guidance of men.

The confidence and trust we have in these laws and the record of their operations are not founded simply on the written word or authority of those who discovered and recorded them, but upon a condition of things; which condition is just as open to investigation now as then, and will be for all time.

The Divine authority of a law of God, thus known and recorded, thus tested and applied, transcends, as a mere matter of credence, the authority of a recorded miracle long since performed, or a mere verbal utterance as long since revealed.

The miracle and the utterance depend entirely on the authority and accuracy of the record, the facts being entirely beyond a reinvestigation ; whereas the laws of nature and the facts of science are ever open to question and answer: a process which consigns bigotry, superstition, witchcraft, demoniac possession, spiritual communication, spiritual materialization, and all dogmas of mere belief and emotion, to the realms of the unknown or untrue, but enshrines the scriptures of law as holy oracle and unavoidable will of God.

The same is true of magnetism, electricity, heat, and all other forces of nature, now so thoroughly identified with our daily life that we too often cease to realize our dependence upon them or our obligations to study and obey them.

A knowledge of these forces in the material world and the laws by which they act has taught, and still by daily warning teaches us, that a long list of accidents and widespread disease arc not special visitations of God for sin, but a necessary penalty for ignorance, carelessness, or presumption.

The collision at sea, the foundering on a rock, the exploded boiler, when causing death, are violations of the sixth coniniandmcnt.

The barometer, the chronometer, the compass, the

SPECIAL JUDGMENTS. 29

steam-gauge, instruments for determining latitude and longitude, etc:, are religious truths, speaking the language of inspiration ; and a failure to know their use or a failure to use them is a worse sin than ignorance of creeds or heresy in theological dogma.

It is the broken rail, the misplaced switch, the rotten bridge, the weakened or oversteamed boiler, and the neglected compass that send unfortunate travellers to destruction, and not a special judgment of God ; for the accident involves both the righteous and the wicked, the just and the unjust, and occurs alike on week-day or Sunday.

When the uninformed or reckless miner rashly or ignorantly opens his safety-lamp in the foul air of the mine, it is the explosion of carburetted hydrogen, and not the avenging angel of the Lord, which produces the awful results.

It was the certain operation of a general law of which he was or might have been well informed, and not a special judgment from which he had no way of escape.

God never plans the affliction of His people, nor does He hasten the death of the wicked by special agencies beyond their knowledge and control.

The young man was not born blind for his own sin or the sin of his parents ;"'^" and the tower of Siloam,f

* John ix. 3. f Luke xii. 4.

as well as the rain* falls alike upon the just and the unjust.

God does not exempt His professed followers from the effects of violated law, nor does He violate His own laws to work out mysterious or special results for their benefit.

The epidemic which decimates an encamped army is not a destroying angel of war sent to fight an enemy, but a necessary consequence of filth, dissipation, and exposure of camp Hfe, for which the proper remedy is not formal prayers or pharisaic fasting, but the Sanitary Commission and the Sisters of Mercy.

" The pestilence that walketh in darkness and wasteth at noonday" in city and country, desolating the hearts and homes of humanity, is the result of violated laws of life, and must be remedied by sanitary regulations.

Slow disease is constantly produced and developed by idleness, indulgence, intemperance, fashion, and bad habits of life and broken laws of health, even with professing Christians who arc perfectly satisfied with their church professions, and so-called Christian experiences, higher life, and orthodox belief, as sufficient testimonials of a correct conscience and a true faith.

* Matthew V. 45.

SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 3I

The curse of fashion, filth, and self-indulgence is not to be removed by groanings of the spirit or penitential enchantments, or prevented except by penitential reform.

The scavenger, with spade, broom, and water, must cleanse the streets, the alleys, and the houses ; aye, and if need be, the people also until Christianity can boast at least the human virtue of cleanliness.

Idleness must yield to industry. Indulgence must yield to temperance, and a right life must accompany religious creeds.

Let humanity, whether heretic or orthodox, understand that every excess, whether in eating or drinking, every hot-bed of dirt about our persons or our homes, every dissipation of mind or body, are mortgages on our natural life, to run with compound interest until foreclosed by death, in spite of future fasting and prayer.

The joy of believing can never cancel the consequences of sinning, nor any hope for the life to come counteract the penalty of violated law in the present life.

It is safe to affirm that the science of medicine, by revealing God's law as to pure air and cleanliness alone, has materially modified the fatality of those terrible epidemics which once desolated the cities of Christian nations, and still scourge cities where they fail to enforce sanitary rules.

In 134S the black plague carried off eighty thousand persons at Avignon in a few months. One of these victims was Laura De Sade, immortalized by Petrarch.*

Before the introduction of vaccination in Europe, five hundred thousand persons perished of small-pox in a single year; yet when science found a preventive, theology denounced it as interfering with the will of God.

In 161 1 pestilence destroyed two hundred thousand persons in Constantinople ; in 1625, thirty-six thousand in London; in 1632, sixty thousand at Lyons; in 1656, four hundred thousand at Naples; in 1720, sixty thousand at Marseilles; in 1773, eighty thousand at Bassora, in Persia. In 1799 three thousand persons died daily in Barbary for a time, and two hundred and forty-seven thousand perished in Fez.

These are but items of modern times, and are exceeded by the like destruction in earlier ages, when even less was known as to the laws of life and health.

The fearful famines in Asia, which so often end in disease and death, arise almost entirely from a neglect of well-known laws of agriculture and meteorology.

* " Hislory of Our Tiuu-s," p. 93. J. McCarthy.

FAMINES. 33

It is estimated that sixty millions — more than the entire population of the United States of America — perished in the famine recently prevailing in Northern China, and this not only because entire regions neglected proper irrigation, but because they raised only opium, ^ and trusted for grain to other provinces, now also parched.

Sufficient reservoirs of water and suitable irrigation during drought is the rational remedy for a rainless famine in the East, and one such system of English supply in India is worth all the Buddhist prayer-mills in the land. In like manner let Christian cities neglect a supply of good water to every family, and allow the sewerage of every house to swelter and ferment in every door-yard and filtrate into every well, and pestilence will spread its death pall over such cities and houses as surely as in pagan lands, in spite of the fasting and formal prayers of pious men — if men can be pious without being clean.

But we need not quote the pestilence which broods in the poisoned air of crowded cities, and finding oftentimes victims in honest poverty as well as in

* The British Government produced opium as a monopoly in India, and sold it at public sale in Calcutta, thus stimulating the trade to increase the revenue, and took eight hundred millions of dollars from China for this drug during the last century.

dirt and dissipation ; we need not quote the famine of rainless regions where ignorance suffers aHke with neglect ; we need not quote the catastrophe by land or sea which hurls confiding travellers from life to sudden death without warning, to prove that the ways of God are not special or mysterious in these matters, but are so plain " that the wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein."

If the innocent and ignorant perish by these providences of God, it is because they ignorantly or otherwise subject themselves to the same influences which destroy the careless or sinful, and not because of a special providence.

When Pompeii was rebuilt on the lava foundation of a previous eruption, ten righteous men within its walls would not have saved it, nor would ten thousand wicked ones have increased its danger from a subsequent outburst of the volcano.

The law of burning lava is inexorable, and the goodness of God in all of these cases is not in special providence, but in allowing us to understand these inexorable laws of His creation and providence, and to use them as ministers of mercy.

Steam governed by law is the angel of industry and progress, but used recklessly or ignorantly is a demon of destruction.

Tlie alcohol of connncrcc, in the various forms, entering into a thousand useful arts and industries,

WEALTHY INEBRIATE. 35

IS deliberately perverted and patronized for the production of disease and death, by thousands who sneer at the science which forbids its use as a beverage, and whose souls rest in peace on some church creed, in contented ignorance or wilful bigotry.

The sixty thousand graves filled annually in the United States alone by victims of intemperance are not all from the huts and hovels of the degraded and destitute, whose hard lot of privation and penury compels them to live in a miasm they cannot avoid, and incur disease from which they cannot escape ; but these victims of intemperance come largely from mansions of wealth, where men live in ease and affluence and enter into temptations and progress to ruin from choice.

The bleared eye and bloated body of the wealthy inebriate going down cheerily to a drunkard's doom, are the slow but sure witnesses of broken laws, blasting a life which might be beautiful and useful ; they are witnesses, as surely as the sunken eye and famished frame of the friendless sot who dies starving in his debauchery.

Wealth nor friends can avert, resources of nature cannot resist, remedies of medicine cannot rescue, body or brain that persists in the use of intoxicating drinks.

Dives luxuriating in his palace, and Lazarus suffering at his gate, are in this, as at the day of judgment, on equal footing.

The broken law exacts the penalty, and there is no vicarious atonement in this Hfe, whatever a trusting faith may hope for in a life to come.

Step by step, nature kindly warns the victim of danger incurred, and thus entreats him to pause ere it be too late.

The sickness of an occasional debauch is followed by disordered digestion, until disease as well as drinking becomes a habit : " The horse-leech still cries. Give ! give !" until both mind and body suffer fiery torments, which Revelations affirm are but a prelude to that flame which even eternity cannot quench.

Sixty thousand victims to intemperance each year is the actual count in this land of Christian privilege alone.

Add to this the victims of strong drink and opium elsewhere, and who can count the final footing up of this awful harvest of voluntary woe?

Add to these the suffering, the disease, the despair of friends, the children inheriting a craving appetite or incipent disease, and even imagination fails to conceive the sorrow and crime that follows the violation of this one law of life.

If theology taught more the scientific certainty of these results, it would add greatly to the influence of

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 37

a teaching which refers only to the uncertainty of a life to come.

The logic of science and religion is the same, and cause and effect follow with the same inevitable sequence, in the moral and spiritual as in the material world.

CHAPTER II. Influence of the Past

Such and a multitude of similar facts teach us, that the unwritten laws of God, which science seeks to reveal, are woven into the web and woof of our daily life and future destiny, although long unrecorded, and all knowledge of their first discovery and gradual application forgotten.

Phoenicia and her dependent colonies passed away centuries ago, but the alphabet we inherit from her literature prints our Bible, and the ships we inherit from her commerce carry it to evangelize the world.

Greece is a memory of the past, but the science of her philosophy, of her beauty, and her art, which gave her glory and grandeur, remains our inheritance. The language of her schools furnished the Bible for centuries to Africa and Asia, and Jesus and his disciples quoted from it as authority for the New Dispensation.

It was the language in which the Gospel of Jesus was written and in which Paul addressed the men of Athens and wrote to the churches of Asia.

It is the scientific study of Greek manuscripts

MAHOMET — rERSECUTED. 39

which is age by age giving to us the corrected teaching of the entire apostoHc and patristic church.

Yet theologians still tell us " they know something better !"

The " common law" of human rights and liberties, recorded in India and Egypt, but revised in early Rome, is to-day the '^ common law" of the civilized world, though Egypt, India, and Rome have relapsed into paganism, or paganism half-Christianized.

It was the study of literature, philosophy, and science by early followers of Mahomet, more than the learning or the desire of the then dominant Church of Rome, that developed the intellect of man for a thousand years, until a great reform in Europe became possible.

Then intelligence, instead of bigotry and brute force, became the right arm of religion, and heresy ceased to peril life ; then twisting of joints, crushing of feet in iron boots, starvation in filthy dungeons, burning fagots, tearing the flesh with redhot pincers, were no longer available arguments of a spiritual church for the salvation of souls.

Burning of books for heresy continued longer than burning of bodies, and it was ignorance rather than care which preserved the Bible with other literary manuscripts from destruction.

It is often asserted that the Church of Rome preserved science, and especially literature, philosophy, and religion, with a jealous custody from vandal hands: the truth is that the Romish Church, possessing temporal power, and representing nearly all there then was of Christianity, instead of cherishing knowledge or the spirit of scientific study, crushed out as far as possible all knowledge that did not concur in her aggrandizement or obey her will.

At an early period of this gathering darkness in Europe the followers of Mahomet were students of science and philosophy, and but for the protection of Moslem power and the consequent return of literary pursuits to Europe with Moslem progress, knowledge would have been held in abeyance, the Reformation retarded perhaps for centuries, and the Bible remain for ages more in the monasteries, concealed by cloistered churchmen.

In the Arab's hand the dying embers of smothered literature were revived by the Arab's breath, and eventually became the blazing torch by which Luther saw the long-lost Bible, and was enabled to unclasp its long-locked lids, and read from its pages to an inquiring age the Gospel of Jesus the Son of God.

It was the unconquerable law of ev^olution in nature that finally triumphed over the tyranny of a church claiming Divine authority to interpret God's word, and, as some do even yet, Divine authorit}'

MAHOMET AND ROMISH CHURCH. 4I

to forbid men a better knowledge of God's laws as revealed in nature.

The right of man to think and believe for the salvation of his soul was then, as it were, flashed back upon Europe from the scymitar of the Saracen.

The son of the bondwoman rescued the child of promise, and the sword of the spirit is again tempered with Divine love.

The religion of Mahomet was, in its beginning, a pure monotheism, and as such was a reformation from that of Moses ; but, like the religion of Moses, it failed to become even a background for the religion of Jesus, mainly because it became a church militant instead of a church progressive with civilization.

Learning and religion were alike tools of statecraft and ambition until knowledge as well as religion became a slave rather than a guide to man.

In spite of its corruptions, the religion of Ishmael has maintained its hold on the heritage of Isaac for over a thousand years, and even during the decline of its spiritual power has preserved not only its spiritual strength, but has spread and gained more by its missionaries than by its warriors.

Over forty millions to-day obey Victoria as their empress, but worship Mahomet as the prophet of God; and the same fact is seen throughout Asia and

Africa. Islamism has spread into China, and in Asia and Africa has maintained itself side by side with Christian missions, and often with superior success.

In Africa whole tribes of fetich-worshippers have accepted the Koran ; in Japan eight millions accept the Koran.

The missionaries of Mahomet are everywhere throughout the East, and the sword of Mahomet still afflicts Christian pilgrims as they visit the holy shrine of their Saviour.

May we not be allowed to believe that even Islamism in its earlier faith may have been, and even yet may again be, a possible pioneer, an entering wedge to open up a pantheistic paganism to the belief in one God, which the theological doctrine of a Triune God so often fails to do? May we not hope that a more liberal Christianity will take up these half-converted pagans, and, without confusing their half-developed minds with a theological Jesus, teach them the simple truth of Jesus as revealed in the Fatherhood of God — at least until a heathen intellect is sufficiently educated to understand the difference between a Trinitarian and a Pantheist.

We thus see that error as well as truth may spread by preaching; and this fact should convince us that to teach an intelligent man religion, we should teach him all there is to know of God in science as well as tlicology.

BUDDHA. 43

In like manner the religion of Buddha springing from Brahmanism, as Christianity did from Mosaism, began five or six hundred years before the Christian era, and is to-day sending more missionaries and making more converts than Christianity; spreading also over a greater extent of country and converting more followers.

It has done this not by persecution or by force of arms, but by preaching the gospel of Buddha, and showing a way, false though it be, to deliverance from evil.

Driven out of India, the land of its birth, as Christianity was driven out of Judea and Asia long after it had been established and flourishing, its devoted missionaries have spread it over Ceylon, Burmah, China, Japan, Tartary, Thibet, Central Asia, Siberia, and even Swedish Lapland, until nearly five hundred millions of our race live and die in the hope and faith of Gautama, their Saviour.

All these religionists of Mahomet, Gautama, or other false faiths, are earnest devotees, believing their religion inspired by God and their own salvation secured by their faith and practice as they have been taught.

If such fruits are borne by the green tree of infancy in pagan thought and development, what might we not hope from a better culture and a like simple faith in the mature tree of intelligence, unencumbered by bigotry or superstition and unhindered by heresy-hunters in the garden of the Lord ? — a practice introduced by Satan and adopted by too many of the rehgions of all subsequent times.

It is the inspiration of intelligence and not the inspiration of ignorance that will win upon the intelligence of men and bind their consciences or lead the race in progressive civilization.

If we grope in ignorance when we can grow In intelligence, and grovel in darkness when we can walk in light, we will be without answer or excuse when finally called upon to account for our stewardship.

If we would live with honor and profit, we must accept truth whenever and wherever revealed or re corded.

The maxim of Confucius in its negative form, *' Whatsoever you would not that men should do unto you, that do not unto them," and the same maxim by Zoroaster in its positive form, '' Whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, that do unto them," was as much an inspired rule of life to ancient China and Persia as it was when re-enforced by Jesus five hundred years later.

The maxim was the same, its truth and efiicacy the same ; but there was not until then a surrounding civilization, a fulness of time, to apply it to all creeds and all people.

Another great truth applied by Josus, that the

SUN AND RAIN. 45

sun and rain were blessings to all alike and were witnesses of God's love and goodness to all, was not a revelation to Jews only, or first made known to that generation.

The witness of the sun began with the first appearance of its rays through chaotic gloom, and the witness of the rain began when its showers first watered the earth.

It is the goodness of God thus manifested, which Paul taught the Romans,* "leadeth to repentance."

It is the love of God thus manifested, as revealed to all, which Jesus taught as proof of the universal Fatherhood of God.

To aflirm that such witnesses and such blessings, secured to all alike by eternal and universal law, can be controlled and measured out by the petitions of men, however self-consecrated or holy, is but to fossilize a pagan superstition as the evolution of a perfect faith.

The ancient pagan had his rain enchanters and enchantments ; and David, the Prophet, Priest, and King of Israel, hung seven of Saul's family on the same principle.

The modern pagan has these enchantments still, and relies on their use as hopefully and trustfully as modern Christians do on their formal prayers, long

* Romans ii. 4.

orations, and pious platitudes, though the pagan does not know that he thus violates the teaching of Jesus.

The teachings of Jesus were so precise as to the equal and universal application of God's laws to material things, that it is hard to understand how intelligent minds can believe that mere mortal prayer can change or arrest the operation of a law of all creation and instituted for all time, in order to accommodate man's fallen estate and temporary desire.

The teaching of Jesus was so precise in confining prayer to the closet as a personal communion with God, and forbidding it as public worship in the synagogue as well as in the street to be seen of men, that it is hard for true reverence to understand how ministers can make a merit of long prayers in the pulpit, and how other professors do not merit the rebuke of Jesus to the Pharisees for thus assuming a personal influence with God which would render a prayer more effectual from their lips than from the lips of a publican.

And yet we constantly hear men commended for being gifted in prayer — a gift of grace not mentioned by Paul when he enumerated other spiritual gifts.*

* 1 Corimhians xii, i-io.

SPECIAL PRAYER. 47

Notwithstanding this beHef in the potency of prayer in controlHng material laws, and especially in thwarting the Devil, the same theology which holds to such prevailing power with God also believes as equally true that the Devil, who is supposed to curse instead of pray, possesses a controlling power over material laws equal to, and often superseding, the power of God.

Hence the necessity of special intercession on the part of God's people and special interference on the part of God Himself to maintain His own honor and protect His followers.

In the matter of witchcraft, pestilence, heresy, etc., the Devil seems to have triumphed for generations, in spite not only of finite prayers, but in spite of Divine special interference ; and theology resorted to burning, hanging, drowning, and torture as necessary accessories to perfect a Divine purpose to purify the church.

It was the organized church which kept up for generations a belief in ghosts, witches, and demoniac possessions, and various other superstitions supposed to be torturing the soul of man ; and a like belief in charms, relics of holy saints and holy things, and even the repetition of certain texts as amulets to outwit Satan.

The special providence which causes the lightning to strike a Sabbath-breaker's haystack, or burn a

Sabbath-breaker's house, or sink a Sabbath-breaker's boat, is of the same pagan parentage and must give way to a better knowledge of Divine providence.

For centuries sailors would not commence a voyage on Friday for fear of disaster ; it was the Devil's day; and the same superstition influenced landsmen, and does to some extent even yet.

Friday is still a hangman's day.

How many would dare to be married on Friday even now?

A thousand similar superstitions have thrived in the midst of churches as religious doctrine, and when they were finally dispelled it was not because the church taught a better theology, but because science taught a better religion.

The domain of material law is not the domain for spiritual intercession, and however much scientific study may enable us to profit by and apply these laws to our benefit or God's glory, they remain the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

Denuding the earth of its forests and wasting the soil by work without culture will cause rainless seasons, destructive floods, and wasting famine, though all Christendom joined in prayer to the contrary.

Prayer to God must be in the line of His laws, and not the line of man's fallible will ; it must also be in the domain of man's intellectual and spiritual experience.

STUDY OF NATURE LEADS TO RELIGION. 49

Our spirits commune with God spiritually, but we commune with God in nature by knowledge of and obedience to His laws as revealed in nature ; and the more we know of God intellectually, the better we can commune with Him spiritually.

This spirit of communing with God spiritually and studying God intelligently will lead us to accept truth as a revelation of God, under all forms and under all circumstances, and honor all efforts for a better belief and a better life, though they are but kindling sparks of the perfect light.

Who can decipher how much Brahma, Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, and other heathen philosophers have done to prepare the world for the advent of Jesus? — how much they, and even Mahomet, are doing now to fallow the soil of humanity for the final harvest of peace and love?

The patience, zeal, self-sacrifice, and devotion of heathen philosophers have often been so noble and Christ-like that the God who inspired their goodness should receive the glory ; and the religion which accepts a similar philosophy as part of its essential belief should openly profit by the example, and credit it to God instead of paganism.

It is not now believed that Seneca, though contemporaneous with Paul, was ever a convert to Christianity, or received any of his rehgious beliefs from apostolic or other Christian sources : he was literally a heathen philosopher ; and yet his philosophy of religion^ except in acquaintance with Christ, differed but little from that of Paul.