The Origin and destiny of man...reports of a series of Sunday evening sermons

Preface

The following discourses were delivered in the ordinary coarse of pastoral labors, and without the least thought that they should ever reach the public in print. Indeed, the first one was published before I knew that it had been reported. Their appearance in book form now is due to the request of those who heard them — a request that I could not well deny, and yet, knowing how imperfect the work must be, felt reluctant to grant. I could not revise them, beyond some mere verbal corrections, or the addition of an occasional sentence, without writing them entu-e, and then they would have ceased to be what they now honestly are, verbatim reports ; and so I let them go to the world, word for word, as caught by the faithful stenographer. Anything like an exhaustive discussion of so large a subject was not possible in a few brief talks ; nor was more attempted than to suggest outlines of thought, and in some measure to direct the thinking of those who came to hear.

As to the views here expressed, I can only say that they are such as have taken shape in my own mind as seeming to be most reasonable, and possibly nearest the truth. On many points I felt — and, feeling it, expressed — a sense of uncertainty. The dogmatists who know, or rather think they know, everything, will probably not find satisfaction in reading these pages. But those who, with myself, deeply conscioua of the mystery of hfe, are glad to see at aU, even though it be "through a glass darkly," may, I trust, find some thought or word to help them by the way.

vr Preface,

Writing these words now, recalls tearful memories of a little more than a year ago. When the discourse on "Death" was given, the typhoid fever had entered our home, and was also fastening upon myself, so that I was scarcely able to go through the service. I was not in the pulpit again for eight long weeks ; and then when the storm was past, and the sun shone out brightly again, one of our number — our dear httle Lollie, who had been with us more than seven beautiful years — had passed beyond the reach of the chill and the fever. She had entered the golden gates. Yes, these sermons are bound up with the memory of the early going away of that fair, sweet Ufe, and with grateful recollections of the prayers and sympathies of the good people of Aurora, and of one of the kindest congregations that ever Burroxmded a minister's family in the hour of trial.

H. W. T.

JLwrora, iS., May^ YiTl,

KOTE BY THE PUBLISHEKS.

These discourses were delivered in the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Aurora, Illinois, in the Winter of 1875-6, and the following Spring, and were reported for and puhhshed in The Auboba Herald. They awakened a deep interest in those who heard or read them, and, in deference to oft-repeated requests, they are now given to the public in this permanent form. The questions discussed are of universal interest, and the popular manner in which they are here handled will commend the book to the great mass of people who seek the truth, but are repelled by the harsh dogmatisiji that marks the ordinary iheological treatise.

Contents

I— GOD, OR FIRST CAUSE, - - - 9

n— CREATOR AND CREATED, - - 19

in— ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF OUR RACE, - 83

II. Ceeatok And Ceeated

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens.— Genksis, n, 4.

ONE beautiful morning last summer, being a guest of an old and esteemed friend at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, the table had been spread for breakfast on the porch, beneath the shadow of a great tree. There had been nailed against the wall a small fruit-can, that served as a shelter and a nest for a pair of friendly wrens ; and it so happened that while we were sitting at the table, the young birds made their first attempt to reach the outside world. Watching them as they tried their strength and entered upon their new being, I fell to musing upon the fact of their origin. Only a few weeks before there had been nothing in the nest but the seemingly lifeless egg ; and now came forth the living bird. And I suppose, had I thought upon this without any knowledge of the facts, or had you so thought of it, and had we taken and examined one of those birds, we would have thought of some such process as this : that some skillful mechanic had wrought out the frame-work of the bird, moulding the bones and joining them together ; that some ingenious workman had made

20 2^ he Origin and DesHay of Man.

the muscles, the flesh and the vital organs ; that some artist had constructed the eye and the ear, and painted the -wings ; that some rare genius had brought the various parts together, given them a living organization, and thus made a living bird. And as I sat thinking of the wonderful mystery of the bird being evolved from the egg, my thoughts went on, and I tried to see the process by which not only birds but all the forms of animal and vegetable life are made. And this led me to the thought of God, or first cause, which I sought to lay before you last Sabbath evening. And having considered that thought, I come now to speak on the method and magnitude of God's creations.

Beginning with the thought of a first cause, a living and informing intelligence, there comes up, as one of the problems to be considered, the origin of matter — whether it were eternal or whether it were created. And when you come to think upon the fact of creation, it is one of the most difficult questions that the mind can attempt — the thought of creating that which in no sense existed before. The difficulties are so great that I am strongly incHned to agree with Sir William Hamilton, who says that when we come to the very crisis of creation, we cannot conceive that there was anything more in creation a moment after the act than there was in God the moment before, and nothing less in God the moment after than there was the moment before creation. But though it did not exist in the shape in which we now see it, yet there was, potentially, back in God Himself, all that we now see in outward creation. "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." And when we consider the method of God in creation, I think we make a great mistake if we think of Him as a workman operating from the outside. Bather, I think, should we look upon Him as working from within — upon the universe as the thought of God projected and actualized — the thought of God taking shape in material things. If we so think of God having in His might once started life, beginning down in the simplest rudimentary forms, we soon realize how natural it is, and we see how the rudest forms have their correspondences in the highest types of created beings. As an example, take the thought of the lungs, and observe the thought rising from the simplest conception — that which nature has provided in the leaf of a tree — to the perfect lungs of man. Or take the thought of the hand. How wonderful is the progress, all the way from the wing of the bat, the leg and hoof of the animal, to the almost speaking hand of man. I say that, thinking of God in this way, as working from within, we may reflect upon His thought as actualized in the universe about us. I cannot refrain from thinking that the universe was, in a sense, born as well as made. It is in accordance with the teachings of the Scriptures that God impressed his thought upon matter; that the vast universe was not built as a mechanic builds his house ; but that in some way God breathed an informing and controlling spirit or life into matter, and that matter, impelled by this life and power, moved forward along the lines that God intended.

Now, if you have succeeded in getting the thought I have indicated here, I will endeavor to give the possible process by which the worlds were made — looking at God not as an outside workman, bnt as somehow impressing the law of their being upon things, and things then moving forward in obedience to that law. When we look out upon the solar system, we are impressed with several facts. We are impressed with the thought of these stupendous worlds revolving around a common centre, on a plane coincident with the plane of the ecliptic, and that this plane is coincident with the plane of the solar equinox ; that these planets all revolve in the same direction. The law of gravity is not responsible for this, and hence it has been supposed that there was a time when the material that composes our solar system existed in a nebulous state, and that this nebulous, vaporous mass filled all the space that would be included between the Sun and the orbit of Neptune. To this mass was given a rotary motion, and as it revolved, it would cool by radiation ; as it cooled, it would condense ; as it condensed, it would increase in velocity ; and as the velocity increased, the centrifugal force would become more powerful than the centripetal, and this would cause ring after ring to be thrown off. These rings would continue to revolve, and in breaking up would form centres of their own. This is the supposed process by which the all-controlling mind of God set the forces at work out of which was evolved this vast universe as simply and natur- ^y as the little wren was evolved from its shell.

Let us look out along this method and see its results. In the words of the text, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created." I ask you to think for a moment upon the magnitude of this creation. Think of the Sun — that vast body constantly pouring forth light and heat. It is said by astronomers that it is 888,000 miles in diameter ; a line drawn through its centre would reach around our globe more than thirty-five times. Or think of it in another way. Suppose it were a hollow sphere, and that by some means our Earth were suspended in the centre of that sphere, and that we could stand upon Earth, and look up to the rim of the Sun ; so vast is the Sun that the surface our eyes would rest upon would be larger than the heavens we look at on a clear day. Look at it in still another way. It is said that the Sun is 1,384,000 times larger than our Earth. It is only by the aid of the imagination that we can take in this stupendous magnitude. Why, if the Sun were hollow, and worlds the size of this had been thrown in, one every day, since the time of Abraham, the Sun would hardly yet be filled up.

Now, taking the Sun as a starting point, let us travel outward. At a distance of 35,000,000 miles, we come to the planet Mercury, sweeping around the Sun in eighty-eight days. In order to accomplish the circuit in so short a time, it moves with a velocity of 100,000 miles an hour. Traveling on, we come next, at a distance of 68,000,000 miles — I give the figures from memory, and the calculations have varied somewhat in late years — we reach the planet Venus, a world not so large as ours, revolving around the sun in two hundred and eighty-eight of our days. Then we come to the Earth, at a distance of 91,000,000 or 92,000,000 miles from the Sun, having a diameter of 8,000 miles, turning on its own axis every twenty-four hours, revolving around the Sun in three hundred and sixty-five days, and having a satellite, or Moon, which, acoording to our theory, was thrown off from the Earth while it was yet in a nebulous condition. Our satellite is 237,000 miles distant from us, and revolves on its axis in such a manner as to always present the same surface to us. At a distance of 140,000,000 miles we come to the planet Mars, having a diameter of 4,400 miles, and completing its circuit around the Sun in about six hundred and eighty-six days. At a distance of 500,000,000 miles, passing beyond the Asteroids, we come to that wonderful old world, Jupiter, 92,000 miles in diameter, requiring twelve years to travel its long circuit around the Sun, having four satellites, or Moons, revolving around it in various periods. Beyond Jupiter, at a distance from the Sun of 906,000,000 miles, is the planet Saturn, 75,000 miles in 4iameter, requiring thirty years to travel its stupendous circuit around the Sun, having not only eight Moons, but its beautiful rings, that appear to us like threads of golden light. Then, traveling on to a distance of 1,888,000,000 miles, we oome to the world Uranus, requiring eighty years to perform its revolution around the Sun. Traveling still outward, 2,800,000,000 miles from the Sun, we come to the latest discovered planet, Neptune, requiring one hundred and sixty years to traverse its orbit.

As I look up to the starry way, and think of these vast magnitudes and distances, there comes a sense of the infinite, a sense of the wonderful power and wisdom of God, that is overwhelming. Yet this grand system of worlds, under God's informing thought, which His will impresses upon things — these worlds have slowly taken their places with all the ease and naturalness that the bud unfolds and the flower blooms.

And we have only touched upou the vast conception. The fitars that you see as you gaze upon the heavens are Suns, around which other worlds are moving, as our world moves about our Sun. So distant are these stars that light traveling at the rate of twelve million miles a minute requires nine years to reach us from the nearest fixed star. The light from the North Star is forty years in traveling to the Earth. From some it takes thousands and possibly tens of thousands of years. And thus we look upon this vast universe, systems of worlds rising one above the other — sun systems, group systems, nebular systems, on up to the ultimate, or universe system.

Having sketched these outlines of the solar system, I want to change the order, and return to our Earth, and give some thoughts as to the probable process by which it became what it is. This globe, then, was thrown off from the Sun. There would come a time when the Earth, by contraction and cooling, would form a crust. This crust would naturally exclude all matter that might be outside of it that had not been attracted to it. We now look at our world as a ball of fire, then, as it cooled, rolling on in darkness. This was the first, or azoic, period. No one knows how long this globe rolled on through space, a fiery mass of rock-encrusted substance, and then a world without light. Then there would come a time when the crust would cool, and the waters falling on it would gather about it. This was the paleozoic period, when the first forms of life began to appear. At first there were onty manifestations of vegetable life, but, later, forms of animal life began to appear. Geologists tell us that the life in that time was on a scale far greater than the life that is now on the earth. It was of a different form and of a grosser type than that we have now. Then comes the carboniferous period, when the air was so full of carbon that the forms of life that now exist could not breathe it. The soft and abundant vegetation absorbed the carbon and threw off oxygen, thus purifying the air, and fitting it for higher forms of life, and also storing this carbon away for the coal beds of onr day. Then we come to the mesozoic period, and to the cenozoic, or recent period before man, when the continents were lifted up, when the larger animals were disappearing, and when the forms of life upon the land became as they are now. Finally we come to the period of the finished world, the rivers having found their beds, the oceans having been gathered together, and the mountains uplifted — the period of flowers and fruits, and birds of song and plumage — a sweet, fair world, that God had builded for man.

Now, if yon get my thought, you will see that God wrought from within, and all that there is in this vast universe was some how projected as the thought of God. And this thought of God impresses a law upon matter, in obedience to which it forms itself into worlds.

I want now to ask your attention to the harmony between science and religion, between science and the Bible, on this subject. And some may be already saying, " What are yon going to do with that good old book of Genesis ?" The first point of correspondence is this The first words of this book are, "In the beginning, God." And it is the latest utterance of science — "In the beginning, God." You take any system of pliilo^iophy, press that system back to tlie boundaries where the great thinkers stood and sought to look into the deep beyond, and those thinkers, all the way from Pythagoras to Mill, have felt that there was some power back of this outward world. So in all the systems of science. Wherever science has pursued her investigations — whether she has brought her microscope to bear upon the very structure of the human blood, or has turned her long glass toward the heavens, science has at last to pronounce these words — "In the beginning, God." The latest utterance from Tyndall is that when he looks out into the vast deep of things, while he cannot put it into personality, yet there is a power back of all which he cannot grasp. He feels that there must be somebody who knows more about this than himself.

Now I take another part of the correspondence between the teachings of geology and the account of the creation given in Genesis. It is here stated :

"And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

The expression, "without form, and void," may possibly indicate the idea of matter being in a nebulous condition.

"And God said, Let there be Hght : and there was hght.

" And God saw the light, that it was good : and God divided the light from the darkness.

" And God called the Hght Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

It used to be thought a strange thing that light should appear on the first day, whereas the sun was not created until the fourth day. But it is now admitted by scientists that cosmical light would be the result of the moving of this mass of unformed matter. Light is the result of molecular m. Mon. So that on this point science and the Bible have come to an accordance that is quite remarkable. Let us read agaia:

" Aivl God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of tii ■ .ters, and Jc. it divide the waters from the waters.

"Abd God made the firmament, and divided the waters whic'i vrere under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmaaica'c : and it vras so.

*'An 1 God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

" An 1 God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so.

"And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering together of the Waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good.

"And God said. Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itseli, npon the earth : and it was so.

" And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind : and God saw that it was good.

"And the evening and the morning were the third day."

Geology teaches this same great fact of the uplifting of the continents, the slow receding of the waters so that the dry land appears, the gathering of the waters into their channels so that rivers and seas are formed. And science teaches this other remarkable fact, that vegetable life was created before animal life. The Bible and science come closely together here, though the critic may find apparent discrepancies, possibly real ones. But there is a general correspondence that is most remarkable indeed. Again :

" And God said, Let there l)e lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years :

"And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth : and it was so.

"And God made two great hghts ; the greater hght to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : he made the stars also.

"And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

"And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness . and God saw that it was good.

" And the evening and the morning were the fom'th day."

This account of the creation is not a scientific narration, but rather phenomenal. It is not probable that whoever wrote the book of Genesis understood these things from a scientific standpoint. He viewed them rather with the eye of a looker-on. The appearance of the Sun on the fourth day is one of the most rational things. Before that, dense fogs would cover the earth, and it would be a long period before the rays of the Sun would pierce these murky vapors. But finally these would disperse, and there would come the Sun bursting forth in all its splendor. This is just what science would lead us to suppose.

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath hfe, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and ever -vs-inged fowl after his Kind : and God saw that it was good.

"And God blessed them, saying. Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

"And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."

First, the appearance of vegetable life ; after that, animal life, first in the waters, just where science places it, and then on the dry land. A remarkable coincidence again here.

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the Kving creature after his kind cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind ; and it was so.

"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creep eth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw that it was good,

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the eea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over aU the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

" So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them.

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it , and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Science has placed, first, vegetable life ; next, animal life ; and, finally and last, mankind. And this is just the order in which the Bible places them. Now I raise the question, how are we to account for this remarkable correspondence ? And here I want to read to you what has been thought on the subject in other lands, though I must necessarily be Tery brief. First, let us look at the cosmogony of the Babylonians. They believed that —

" The beginning of thmgs was in darkness and water, where nondescript animals, hideous monsters, half-men and half-beasts, appeared, and after this, a woman — who personates the creative spii'it or jirinciple — Avas split into two parts, and the heaven and the earth produced by the di^dsion. Then Belus, the supreme deity, cut ofi" his own head, and his blood trickling down and minghng with the dust of the earth, produced human creatures having intelligence and spiritual hfe. According to the Phoenician cosmogony, that which first appeared was an ether or a mist difi"used in space. Then arose the wind, the representative of motion, and from this agitation proceeded a spuitual God, from whom again in turn proceeded an cqq — which is so common a feature of the cosmogonies of antiquity — the division of which, as in the case of the woman, produced the heavens and the earth. The noise of thunder awaked beings into spiritual life. The Egyptian cosmogony was in general harmony witli the Phoenician. Its principal divinity was Ptah, the world-creating power, who shaped the cosmic e^g, which again appears here, as in the Phoenician. There followed from Ptah a long succession of gods, with various powers— solar, telluric, psychical — ^from whom at length proceeded demi-gods, and from these again heroes, untU the link of our common humanity was estabhshed."

How immeasurably superior to these accounts, in dignity and nobility, is the Bible record of creation, and how infinitely more truthful, judged by the lights of science!

Now, I say, if there were no inspiration from God back in the mind of the writer of this book, whether it was Moses or whoever it may have been, how came it that four thousand years ago he produced a work that now we place by the side of the latest revelations of science, and find that the correspondence between them is so striking? I say these things that young men, who have dipped a little into some branches of science, who have perhaps read a few numbers of the Boston Investigator, or imbibed crude notions concerning Tyndall's theories, and think that the Bible has been blown away as a myth, — that they may look at this great fact and see how, with this broader interpretation of Genesis, the truths of the Bible stand side by side with the truths of science. But I am asked, What do you do with these "days"? Well, when we come to compute geological time, the most we can do is to guess. The word " day," as here used, is simply an indefinite expression for time or a period. Some give to each of these periods millions of years, and in this view we get a clearer interpretation of the grand old saying that ' ' these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth."

When I stand in the presence of such truths as these, and

3S The Origin and Destiny of Man.

look out upon tlie starry depths, and the great Earth sweeping through space, and the illimitable universe surrounding us, my very reason seems to totter as it stands out on the verge of thought, crying out for that cause which is back of it all. But I sit down by the babbling brook, I hear the singing of the birds, and behold the bursting of bad and blossom, and I thank God for that thought of the infinite over which a Socrates has struggled, over which a Mill has struggled, over which a Descartes has struggled. I thank God that in His mercy he has spoken to us in His word, and that His infinite spirit has given us something that we can rest upon. Oh, my friends, let us appreciate the Bible as an expression of His infinite wisdom and glory. Think of nature above this earth; think of the stellar depths where countless systems of worlds abide, and think of the infinite God above them all. Kejoice again that there was a Bethlehem; that the absolute God came down among men, clothed with finite conditions; that the Infinite Ruler of all revealed Himself to mortal sight as He went about healing the sick and blessing little children. "When I think of our Earth as a mere speck in the solar system, as something less than a speck in the vast universe about us, I rejoice that the infinite God not only created this inconceivable grandeur, and unfolded his beauty in the dew-drop and the flower, but that He has given His word that my poor soul and yours are safe in His keeping. The fires of the Sun may burn low, the vast system of worlds may fall back into chaotic ruin, but God has kindled a fire in our brains and in our hearts that will live and think and love forever. May that forever be in His presence.