Pater mundi, or, Modern science testifying to the heavenly father : being in substance lectures delivered to senior classes in Amherst College

Front matter

1»-

V.I

''?liSfiiii"i!iii'ii!i'iiiii*"^i •"''^S''" science testif

Preface

The whole plan of the author looks beyond the present volumes. It proposes to defend and illustrate both Theism and Christianity from the side of Modern Science. This accounts for the structure of the first two lectures.

In the second volume the appeals to the Sciences will be found more direct and full than even in this — especially as negativing that Law Scheme which is the only present competitor of Theism as an explanation of Nature.

These lectures were designed to be spoken to College Classes on the eve of graduation. Hence some peculiarities. They speak to the ear. They speak to the young. They speak to educated young men who may be presumed familiar with general classical as well as scientific knowledge ; and whom it is of the last importance to have go forth into the world richly assured of the exceeding breadth of the Christian Foundations, and richly prepared to manifest them to all unbelievers. So the lectures are zealous for a side. They are anxious to carry vi PREFACE.

a point. They appear not to have discovered that one must be indifferent in order to be fair. They affeat no philosophic impartiality ; but speak as a Christian believer, to the sons of Christian parents, and within a Christian college which has not yet thought it necessary to teach neutrality (or worse) between Christianity and Buddhism, from chairs resting on Christian endowments.

The author states some things very strongly. But he does not suppose himself to have stated them more strongly than facts warrant. He feels very hostile to Atheism. He holds it the worst enemy of mankind. Its recent attempts to shelter itself under the great name of Science greatly move his indignation. He is amazed at its effrontery in claiming that a single true science looks on it with favor. At the same time he aims to be just, even to Satan. What he would gladly destroy in the interest of humanity, he would only destroy by the lawful use of lawful weapons.

The larger part the sixth lecture has been published before. But as it properly belongs to this (jourse of lectures, and as the omission of it would, in the author's view, mar the symmetry of his general plan, he has thought best to insert it in its proper place.

Contents

I. Experimental Method.

1. ILLUSTRATIONS ,

a. APPLICATION TO RELIGION ii

I. Experimental Method

I. Experimental Method.

1. ILLUSTRATIONS ,

2. APPLICATION TO RELIGION li

3. RELIGIOUS VALUE i.

FIEST LECTURE.

EXPERIMENTAL METHOD.

THERE are two ways in which men assure themselves of the qualities of material objects. One is the way of argument : the other is that of direct personal experiment. A man of reputation tells me that a certain sort of wood is tough, flexible, and hard ; or I see it extensively used for purposes to which these qualities are essential ; or the general appearance and arrangement of the fiber, I find, are the same as in other woods known to have these qualities — these are so many arguments firom which in a way of inference my mind reaches a belief in the toughness, flexibility, and hardness of that wood. But, if I choose, I may reach the same belief in another way. I may strike my own hammer on that wood, and see what resistance it makes to indentation. I may take it into my awn hands and try to bend it. I may with my own fingers or wedges attempt to tear it asunder. Thus by a direct personal trial, and not at all in the way of argumentative inference, I may convince myself that the wood is what it is claimed to be.

In the same twofold way we may satisfy ourselves of the existence of certain spiritual qualities. Is your acquaintance generous, is he honest, is he capable ? You may argue out an answer for yourself, or you may obtain it by the personal application of certain practical tests. Honest ? Yes, you may say, for it is an honest family to which he belongs, and I know that from childhood he has had instruction and training fitted to make an honest man. Besides, he bears a good reputation for honesty. Those with whom he has had dealings speak well of him. This is argument. A judgment is reached inferentially fi:om other judgments or facts. But there is such a thing as your making a direct experiment on the man which will settle the question of his honesty to your mind without help from any other quarter. Put in his way an opportunity of taking ^me small unfair advantage of you with apparently entire safety, and see what he will do with it. Try him again and again at a variety of points, and watch how he carries himself under the temptation. This will finally show you what the man is — perhaps will show you that his word is as good as a bond, and that you might venture to trust him with every dollar you are worth. You have personally experimented upon him in true Baconian and scientific way, and found hjm trustworthy in the last degree. With your own hands

APPLICATION TO RELIGION. 11

you have applied the acid to what men call gold, and have found that gold it really is. See how the metal shines under the nitric drop !

Suppose, now, that our inquiries, instead of relating to attributes of matter or attributes of the human soul, relate to that still higher plane of thought, the attributes of God and His Word — say the reality of the Christian God and the divinity of the Christian Scriptures. Have we still the same two ways of information that are universally allowed in dealing with those questions of the lower order ? Can we properly argue, and can we properly experiment also ? The first question I reserve to be answered in the next lecture : the second I propose to answer now, because I regard it as primary in its character. I repeat, can we and may we put things of such great names and august claims as the Christian God and the Christian Scriptures under substantially just such direct practical tests as show us that a given wood is hard, and a given man honest ? This question is an interesting one — for the reasons that the radical experimental method is found so enormously powerful and fruitful in the lower fields of inquiry, that we need all the light on the alleged God and Revelation we can possibly obtain, and that there is more or less current the idea that it is not possible, or at least lawful, to deal with such great spii-itual matters in the way of critical experiment. The great questions that stand before the world from age to age, and which make all others almost invisible, are these. Is God real ? Are the Christian Scriptures His message ? There are some in the world — we suppose an ever-decreasing number — who to these questions are prepared to say, " No," or are not prepared to say, " Yes " — disbelievers or unbehevers. Then there is another class who truly believe in God and Scripture ; but their faith is far from being as large-limbed, and muscular, and majestic of mien as they could desire. Lastly, there are those who themselves believe almost as though they saw, but who would like to communicate something of their own full assurance of faith to the many around whose condition is less happy, and on whom mere argument seems so largely spent in vain. To all these classes it is a question of very great moment whether the field of religion, like every other field, is open to the double-handed exploration of argument and personal experiment^ — whether, after having exhausted or, what is much better, before touching the system of premises and inferences, they may not bare their arms and go forth on the subjects of God and Scriptui-e with such practical tests as shall be to them what the hammer is to the wood that asks to be considered hard, and actual opportunities of safe cheating to the man who asks to be considered honest. The idea of experimenting on God and His Word may have at first quite an objectionable look. It looks, perhaps, like irreverence and audacity and desecration. One gets his

APPLICATION TO R'ELIGION. 13

mind filled with the idea of coarse mechanical experiments and of the harsh, irreverent ways in which they are sometimes played off on creaturenatures ; and when mention is made of religious experiments, the gross old ideas still cling about the new thought. It seems as if nothing of the kind would he allowable out of the low realm of the commonplace and profane world. How it sounds to talk of trying experiments on God and Religion ! In answering this current, or at least not unfrequent, feeling, it must be admitted at the outset that there are experiments on these objects of which we may not entertain thought for a moment. They would be extreme presumption and sacrilege. Our instinctive sense of propriety would revolt from them as putting dishonor on the conception of a God and a Religion. When the Jews came to Jesus on a certain occasion, saying, " Master, we would see a sign from thee," what they proposed to do was then and there to try a direct experiment on His miraculous power. The proposal met a severe rebuff. If one of you should rise in his place and say, " If there is a God, let Him immediately show Himself by casting yonder hill into the river," his experiment would be a very wrong one. If one of you should take it on himself to cry out towards the heavens, " If the religion of Jesus is divine, let rain this moment fall from a clear sky," his experiment would be a very wrong one. If he should put Liberalism to a similar test, saying, " If it is really Scripture that God is Trinity and future punishment everlasting, let a plumed angel at once appear in that door-way, and say so," his experiment would be a very wrong one. All such tests are plain irreverence and presumption. They set up our wisdom as supreme, and presume to dictate terms and methods to God. This will never do. Let the rash man take the shoes from his feet as he nears the ■place where perchance God is concealed: why must a voice smite him with the information that all such places are holy ?

Yes, there are many experiments on God and the Scriptures which would be highly improper — say, if you please, intolerable. But it would be a great misfortune if, on glancing at some of these, we should hastily conclude that everything of the sort is contraband. You cannot properly put it upon God, supposed real, to prove Himself, His Word, or any of its doctrines by any given species or form of argument, arbitrarily selected. We have no right to instance Ontology, or Physiology, or History, or Astronomy, and insist upon it that God shall prove Himself by means of our favorite science and under our favorite forms of reason. A God is Himself best judge of what arguments it will be best for us to have — assuming it best for us to have some — and He is entitled to choose His own. It would be quite as presumptuous for us to dictate to Him in this matter, as it would be to dictate to Him what experiments he must submit to for the in-

APPLICATION TO RELIGION. 15

crease of our faith. But because it would be improper for us to demand that God should prove Himself to us by certain arguments of a class chosen by ourselves, we do not conclude that all arguments for that object are unlawful. We may be authorized to desire arguments in favor of what we are called on to believe ; if so, we are authorized to ask that they be sound and sufficient — only we are not allowed to require that they be of this or that sort, or that they come to us in this or that way. So with these experiments. We cannot appoint to God what arguments for Himself He shall allow iis ; nor can we appoint to Him what experiments He shall allow us. Nevertheless, there may be good and lawful arguing in that quarter to be done ; and^ there may be equally good and lawful experimenting. There are direct practical trials of God and Scripture which we can make for the benefit of faith, which are no setting up of our own wisdom, no presumptuous dictations to Him who may prove to be the Most High, no familiar and irreverent applications of as it were hammer and acid to the Holy of Holies, to the ark of the covehant, and even to Him who sitteth between the cherubim. But they are such as Faraday and Brewster, reverent interpreters of nature, seemed to be making when from a distance some disciple watched them poring with shaded eyes and shrinking, half-retreating attitude over a beam of light fresh from the sun, or the keen elemental fire that leaps from the batteries of galvanism. And the doings may all be in the manner of yon uncovered and hushed physician. Is not that sick man of monarchs the greatest and best ? Is he not the gi-eat warrior and statesman and father of his people ; and does not his empire kiss at once sunrising and sunsetting, sweep the breadth of three continents, swelter under the golden suns of the Bosphorus and glisten in perpetual whiteness beneath the frozen pole ? But now he is prostrate ; and that medical adviser enters with bare brow and muiHed step. He places his finger on that pulse as if rose and sank with it the majesty of a nation's life, and of a dynasty awful with the glory of a thousand years. In the same spiiit may we and should we deal with these imperial questions relating to august God and Revelation.

The God and Revelation of Christendom have furnished their own practical tests. They have shown us what experiments they are willing to have us make on them. We are not to make arbitrary and unauthorized experiments ; none whatever in a spirit of lightness or audacity ; but such as are actually furnished in the Scriptures we may freely use, minding to do all with a modesty befitting the great conceptions with which we deal.

Among these lawful and actually ftirnished experiments are the following — which I offer, not in the name of practical religion, but in the name of Modern Science. The Scriptures make many,

APPLICATION TO RELIGION. 17

clear, and striking promises to liberality. Thus ; " The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first-fruits of all thine increase ; so shall thy bams be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine." " Give, and it shall be given you ; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over, shall men give into your bosom." And so on in wonderful profusion. Now, unbeliever or weak believer, make an experiment. Be liberal, and see whether these promises are not fulfilled to you. See whether the property, or what you are disposed to accept as its full equivalent, does not accumulate. Then you will have put to a direct practical test both God and the Scriptures — the reality of the one and the divinity of the other. — Again, it is written that if we pray for the Holy Spirit and religious blessings in general with sincerity and earnestness, they shall without fail be given. For blessings of this sort the language is, " Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to you : for every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, ^nd to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Now, unbeliever or weak believer, make an experiment. Perseveringly put your heart into prayer for these blessings, and see whether they do not come. So will you put the alleged revelation to a searching practical test, and, as it were, bring the reality of its God and of its inspiration within reach of tlie senses. — Again, it is written that they who follow conscience faithfully shall in so doing come to something better than the light of nature, namely, a written revelation — come to an assured faith in Jesus and His doctrine.

" If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself." Now, unbeliever or weak believer, make an experiment. Go to walking most carefully according to the light you have on matters of duty, and see whether faith in the Scripture and a scriptural God does not shake a freer wing, and soar nearer the sun, than ever before. So will you bring religion out of the hands of Plato into the hands of Bacon ; will transfer it from the dry world of tradition or logic into the green world of actual personal experiment ; will, as it were, put it where your hands can feel it, and where, like the unbelieving apostle, you can even put your finger into the print of the nails, and thrust your hand into the side of both natural and revealed theology. Act on the Bible itself carefully as a rule of life, and see whether it does not most palpably agree with your constitution, as much so as delicious water and bread do with your body — so showing by a personal trial of your own that the two were made for each other by the author of both. You can safely make these practical trials. They are not of your selecting and dictating. They are furnished ready to your hand by the parties who are to be tested by them. These parties not only consent, but urgently request to be tested by them. If this fair offer and manifold urgency be successftj — if you conduct the experiment with fitting reverence, gazing with shaded eyes, and stretching out trembling, half-retreating hand toward the possible Uncreated Light and Celestial Fire that condescend to offer themselves to the criticism of your experience — you can, so says the alleged and alleging Religion, if you are without faith, get it ; if you have small faith, you can increase it ; if your own faith is strong like sight and you wish to impart the like to the weak and the doubting and the disbelieving around you, you can powerfully say to them, " Sirs, the truth and excellency of the fundamental religious doctrine, of the Theism and the Christianity, are to me not mere matters of tradition or logic, but matters of direct personal experiment. I have, so to speak, ' tasted and seen ' that God is, is what the Christian Scriptures represent Him, is the author of those Scriptures. Take my testimony, as you would if I should say that I have smitten on this wood and found it to be hard, or have put a drop of nitric acid on this metal and found it to be gold."

This method is strictly scientific. It is just as Baconian as the process that has built up our chemistry and our other natural sciences into such admirable splendor. It is the eldestrborn of the Ipductive Philosophy ; and if any claim that its accent is that of the pulpit, I answer that it is equally that of the laboratory. In my opinion, any scheme for promoting an intellectual faith in God and the Scriptures that does not include this Experimental Method, is as much against the true modern philosophy as against religion. More than this — any scheme that does not place this method in the foreground, as having supreme rank and as vastly better than any argumentative method can possibly be by itself, is a failure. What is commonly called arguing, namely, the establishing and putting together certain propositions, and then drawing a conclusion from them, is, no doubt, a very useful thing — nowhere, as we have in due time to make evident, more useful than in the field of fundamental religious doctrine. At the same time it ought to be distinctly professed that in this field no possible argumentative proof can equal in some main respects its elder sister, the experimental ; and that no actual logic has equalled it in point of success. Such practical experiments as I have mentioned can readily be made by men of the narrowest leisure, capacity, and knowledge: their ordinary pursuits need not be interfered -with in the slightest. Not so with a large portion of arguments on the same theme. To be properly estimated, these require talent, education, and studious leisure in no small degree. But who cannot put God and the Scriptures on the test of this actual experiment ? Who so poor, so weak, so ill informed, so uncultured,

SO busy that he cannot try these things by his liberality, by his prayer, by his conscientious living ? Such a variety of easy practical methods enables all the world to become critics in religion. And, in point of fact, many times as many converts from unbelief have been made by them as by all the exertions of logic. I do not as yet say that logic has any proper place within this field ; but it has been widely supposed to have, and so has been sent out in vast masses and in every style of armament to conquer the unbeliefs and disbeliefs of the world. It has had its successes. Spolia opima have been won. Triumphs have been decreed. But never such triumphs as have been granted to the Experimental Method — triumphs of the first order — not ovations, but triumphs — triumphs in which laurels have waved like a forest, and in which chained champions and monarchs have gone in long procession after the captive wealth of empires and races. The great body of Christian believers in all ages have had no other rational faith than such as they obtained and maintained by actually putting the Christian Religion, with its God and inspired Bible, to the test of practice : thus verifying in their experience its adaptation to the human nature and condition, its transforming power, and the faithfulness of its promises. Moreover, an argumentative faith, as well as a traditional one, is observed to have always a certain deadness about it till it is supplemented and inspired by the faith that comes from direct personal experiment. The latter, when acquired, becomes a soul to the former. It paints its clayey cheek with speaking vermilion. It lights up its lack-luster eye with the beautiful fires of thought, and feeling, and force. Oh, how that poor mass of flesh and blood, by courtesy called man, and which yesterday could not stand on its feet or even scarcely fetch a breath as it lay with glassy eyes by the wayside — how strongly to-day heave the arches of its breast ; how buoyantly it springs to its feet, and, with head uplift to heaven, plants itself like a pyramid ; how swiftly now and strongly it marches hither and thither, with every feature alive, and every muscle strung for doing and daring ! A soul has entered the clay. The form now tabernacles a power. Welcome, O great, beautiful, glorious Transformer ! No vinous life art thou, no life galvaiiic, but true Divine Breath, the mighty afflatus of actual personal experience in religion : lo, thou hast wrought that wondrous change, and made of the mock man a real one ! — The proof of God and the Scriptures by personal experiment has also this advantage over any possible proof by argument ; namely, that it has an intrinsic value of its own, apart from its character as a means of faith. In general, an argument is worth nothing beyond its tendency to produce faith. But the course of beneficence, of prayer, of conscientious living, is in itself always a mighty blessing, even were no religious faith to result.

According to the Christian system of religion, everything depends on possessing faith. We must believe in God, in the Scriptures, and in their principal doctrines ; and the broader and deeper our belief is, the better it will be for us. If we have a sincere faith, then we need to mlike it great ; if it is great, "we need to make it royal ; if it is royal, we need to make it perfect ; if we could say it is perfect in ourselves, we should still need to originate or improve it in a host of others as being the greatest favor we can confer upon them. So that to all of us this broad method, this scientific method, of faith by means of personal experiment and induction, is a matter of high moment. A plentiful use of it is the great want of the times. And we may be sure that quite too little account is made of it, even among most of those who have been most indebted to it for such measures of faith as they have. Even these too often assume that all improvement in this foundation grace must proceed in the way of argument. If themselves need to be stronger believers, they do not think of experimenting : it is either waiting for what the winds will bring them, or it is arguing. If others are to be rid of their doubts, they are, primarily and perhaps solely, to be argued with. Here is a profound mistake. What at the most is secondary, is made primary. It is not the reason that is so much at fault in cases of deficient faith : it is the practical part of us. The remedy is not so much syllogizing as it is doing.

It is not argument and experiment that is wanted: at the most it is experiment and argument. The one is the lightning that unsolders and seams the masonry of Doubting Castle : the other is more like the billowy and thunderous air that rolls in afterward, wave upon wave, to help in shaking the ugly structure to pieces. The foremost great thing to be done for our weak-faithed selves and our weak-faithed neighbors is to send them to school in the first department of the Inductive Philosophy. They must be put up to that which in religion answers to the hammer of the geologist, the acid of the chemist, and the prism of the optician. They must personally try practical tests on God and Scripture. They must take such tests as the Christian Deity and Scriptures offer to be tried by, and faithfully and reverently go into a sacred experiment. This I have felt bound to put forward as the leading work to be done in favor of faith. Let these men of scant faith all around us try God and the Bible by their promises. Let them test these great allegations by generous beneficence, by hearty persevering prayer for spiritual blessings, by honestly endeavoring to go by the obviously just rules of the Scriptures in all the every-day walks of life. This will do more for them than libraries of argument could do without it. It is a means universally accessible, has done wonders in its day, and is waiting at the gate of every man who needs more faith than he has, to do them again for his benefit. It may not do them at once ; it may render its proofs somewhat tardily and amid some discouragements ; but it is according to experience that for any given man this method will accomplish a quicker as well as a stronger faith in God and the Scriptures than any other method by itself could have done for him. If the man is such in his natural turn of mind and habits that it will take years at the Experimental Method to convince him, he is such a man as would hardly be convinced by a lifetime at any other school. But the crowning tiling is that the experimentalist is sure of great success in the end. Whatever the adverse appearances and long delays, the promise that he shall " know of the doctrine," will at last come to fulfillment. He shall not die till his faith lives. And though, in some rare instance, he should be tried with as much delay and as great seeming adversities as Joseph had while on his way to the fulfillment of his dreams and the premiership of Egypt, still, the faith which he shall surely reach at last shall be of that royal kind that will plenarily pay for all. As with the Hebrew, his De Profundis shall full surely become his In Excelsis.

To the pit- bottom he sank,

That poor Hebrew lad, And the thirsty darkness drank

The light within him.

" Now all things go against me,"

Said that poor sunk lad, Earth-eaten, waiting to be

Eaten of famine.

Up through the earth-pit dreary,

Swung that poor sold lad Into worse pit of slavery,

Arab, Egyptian.

" Still all things go against me," Said that poor slave lad, As sun-scorched, thought-scorched, through eea Of sand he falters

To Misraim — to be bought,