64 NOT THE RESULT OF CHANCE. explain away. Hermann Lotze, one of the ablest scientists in Germany, proclaimed to the world his faith in a personal God, a faith to which scientific research led him. Mr. Mill admitted that there is evidence, amounting to probability, which points to the creation of the present order of things by an intelligent mind, and yet Mr. Mill was taught by his father from his birth to believe there was no God and was schooled by the severe discipline of his father to believe that doctrine. Mr. Huxley, also, speaking of the development of a salamander from the egg, says, "After watching the process hour after hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to vision than the micro-' scope would show the hidden artist with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work." Huxley's Lay Sermons, 6th Ed. p. 261. It is admitted by the best scientists that nature cannot be explained, or even described, without admitting the presence of purpose in it. Materialism utterly fails to account for the universe. Materialism is not monism; there are over sixty elements in nature; without a combination of two or more of them nothing can be produced. The atom is the only unit, and we have on the materialist theory, as many gods as there are atoms. Again, matter and force always exist together; is matter the cause of force? if so, it is a cause destitute of power to become a cause; or is force the cause of matter? and is all force resolvable back into spiritual force? Again, we can only know elements; we cannot know atoms any more than we can know God; whence comes the unity and adaptation of the endless millions of atoms? Did they come by chance? and did they combine together to form the elements,-over sixty of them,-by chance? Even if we suppose them to be eternal and endowed with force, the difficulty of their combination remains. Without mind, matter and its combinations are unaccountable. Which is logically first, mind or matter? is mind from matter? or matter from mind? We know but very little of matter, itself; what do we really know of color, or sound, or smell, or even of touch? We know that atoms are centres of force and that they seem to be manufactured articles. Unless matter is infinite, or space finite, the universe must have had a beginning. Materialism assumes that there is nothing in the universe but matter; that the higher must be explained by the lower; the superior by the inferior; force by matter; the orderly GOD REVEALED IN NATURE. 65 by the unorderly; the organic by the inorganic; life by chemistry and mechanism; thought, feeling and volition by molecular motions in the brain and nerves. There is a fatal objection in every one of these assumptions; there is more in the effect, than in the cause. Again, matter cannot even be known to exist without mind to know it. We cannot prove that matter is eternal; we cannot know an atom. If a human mind can reveal itself as a cause through paper and ink, the Divine mind may reveal itself as a cause through the arrangements in the universe. Even Herbert Spencer has said, "The axiomatic truths of physical science unavoidably postulate absolute being as their common basis." "Deeper than demonstration, deeper even than definite cognition,deep as the very nature of the mind, is the postulate at which we have now arrived, its authority transcends all others whatever." And another has said, " The great object of science is to find reason in the universe; to find the universal in the particular, the necessary in the contingent, order and law in the accidental and unregulated, reasonableness in the complexity and confusion of phenomena." We have a gradation; empirical science, rational science, theological science; each higher rests on the lower; each lower raises questions which only the higher can answer; each higher reacts to stimulate the lower; and the three are in harmony with each other. A single flower is a proof of God, as Tennyson has said, "Little flower in the crannied wall, 'I pluck you out of the crannies ; "Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, CHAPTER SIXTH. "I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God." [Paul, at Athens. Acts. XVII. 23.] Sixth proof, from common consent of mankind; Seventh proof, Plato's argument; Eighth proof, Direct consciousness. Proof sixth-From the common consent of mankind. Herbert Spencer says, as before quoted, "We must believe, that beliefs that have long existed, and have been widely diffused, beliefs that are perennial and universal, have some foundation and some amount of verity." See First Prin. p. 4. Belief in one intelligent Creator of all things seems to have been the ancient belief of all nations. The ancient Greeks worshipped many inferior deities, but Jove was always their first, highest, supreme God. The two great truths which Socrates taught were, the providence of God, and the tendency of virtue to promote happiness in the government of God. Plato represents God as forever contemplating eternal ideas, and developing all things according to them. Aristotle taught that God is the principle and ground of all. things. Anaxagoras gave the all-important place in his system to the divine intelligence. Zenophanes, while he ridiculed the popular mythology, represented God as the essential existence. Zeus was the centre of the Pythagorean system. The ancient philosophers of India also believed that a self-existent being, existing from all eternity, whom no man could comprehend, created Brahma, who in turn created the heavens and the earth. The ancient Brahmins of India worshipped one supreme God. The Rig-Veda, the earliest Indian document in existence, is the loftiest in thought and the purest in expression. Max Müller, the great English scholar, in his work on the ancient Vedas, or bible of the Brahmans, says, “There is a monotheism which precedes the THE ANCIENT BELIEF IN ONE GOD. 67 polytheism of the Vedas, and even in the invocation of their innumerable gods, the remembrance of a God, one and infinite, breaks through the mists of an idolatrous phraseology, like the blue sky which is hidden by passing clouds." In these books God is thus addressed, "Oh thou who art all in all: infinite is thy power and glory; thou art the Father of all things, animate and inanimate, there is none like unto thee." God is represented as addressing Brahma thus, "Even I was at first, not any other being, that which exists unperceived, supreme; afterwards, I am that which is, and he who must remain, am I.” Zoroaster, the founder of the system which bears his name, which is an off-shoot of Brahmanism, and who lived at least one thousand years before Christ, and perhaps contemporary with Moses, taught a system which is preserved to us in the Zend-Avesta, in which the name of the supreme God, Ahuramazda, is used almost like the name Jehovah of the Old Testament. He was once asked to tell his name and he gave twenty names. The first was "I am," the fourth was, "The best righteousness," the twelfth was "The living;" the twentieth was, "I am who I am." See Ex. III. 14. This supreme God is represented by Zoroaster as "the Creator of the earthly and spiritual life, the Lord of the whole universe, in whose hands are all the creatures.' وو The following is an extract from the earliest of all the productions of Zoroaster, the Gatha, "Blessed i he, blessed are all men to whom the living wise God of his own command should grant these two everlasting powers,-namely, immortality and wholesomeness, I believe thee, O God, to be the best thing of all, the source of light for the world. Everybody shall choose thee as the source of light, thee, thee, holiest spirit, Mazda! Thou createst all good things by means of the power of thy good mind at any time, and promisest us, who believe in thee, a long life. I believe thee to be the powerful, holy God, Mazda! For thou givest with thy hand, filled with helps, good to the pious man, as well as to the impious, by means of the warmth of the fire, strengthening the good things. Who was in the beginning the Father and the Creator of truth? Who showed to the sun and the stars their way? Who causes the moon to increase and wane, if not thou? Who is holding the earth and the skies above it? Who made the waters and the trees of the field? Who is in the winds and in the storms that they so quickly run? Who is the Creator of the good-minded beings, 68 THE ANCIENT BELIEF IN ONE GOD. thou wise? Who made the lights of good effect and the darkness? Who made the sleep of good effect and the activity? Who made morning, noon and night? Ahuramazda is thus to Zoroaster the light and the source of light. He is wisdom and intellect; he possesses all good things, temporal and spiritual; among them the good mind, immortality, wholesomeness, the best truth, devotion, piety, and abundance of all earthly good. All these gifts he grants to the pious man who is pure in thought, word, and deed. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked; and all that is created, good or evil, fortune or misfortune, is his work alone! The government of ancient Egypt was in the hands of the priests, and the ancient Egyptians worshipped one supreme God, Kneph. On a temple of Isis in Sais, one of the most ancient of the Egyptian cities, was this inscription, "I am all that was and is, and shall be, and no mortal hath ever uncovered my veil.” In the museum in Berlin, is a tablet, made during the XIX dynasty, perhaps 1500 years B. C., which calls Ra the "Only living substance," "The only eternal substance." "The only Begetter in heaven and earth, who is not begotten." On the walls of the temple of Denderah, in upper Egypt, we read, "He has made all beings and all things; all which lives was made by him." In another place, we read, "He is the former of all that which hath been formed, but, he himself was not formed.” The soul of Ra giveth life to thy soul." An Egyptian tablet in the Louvre in Paris, reads, "His existence extends throughout eternity, he always. is." He is called, "The author of eternity;" 66 The Lord of I am the the infinite duration of time." He, himself says, Lord of ages, who has no limit, I am an eternal substance ; Atmu, made forever." "He is the mystery of mysteries, unknown is his mystery." The Egyptians believed also in his omnipresence and in his omnipotence. In China are found unmistakable evidences that that people once worshipped one supreme God, the Lord of heaven. There exists to this day an altar to the God of heaven in a sacred enclosure in the capital, which Dr. Legge felt so sure was the remains of this original monotheistic worship that he bared his head, and approached it with reverence. It is by no means impossible that we have in the Shinto worship of Japan the remains of what was once the worship of the true God. On the most ancient tablets of stone which are being dug out of the ruins of the oldest |