ANTITHEISTIC THEORIES

Theism is the doctrine of an extra-mundane, personal God, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things. Any theory, therefore, that denies Him a personality, or a moral character, or denies that He is distinct from His works and more than all He has made, or that He cannot be known in such a sense as to be loved, feared and adored, is antitheistic.

The various forms that anti-theism has taken may be discussed under the following heads: Atheism, Pantheism, Positiveism, Materialism, Secularism, Agnosticism.

I. ATHEISM

Other theories, as we shall see, have atheistic tendencies in them. But there is an avowed Atheism. It means the open and positive denial of the existence of God, or an intelligent First Cause, or a Superintending Providence. It is a purely negative system of thought. It affirms nothing. It simply denies whatever Theism asserts. The arguments of the previous chapter sufficiently answer it.

Atheism is a disreputable doctrine. Few men are willing to be called Atheists. It is said that Hume resented it. Helvetius said: "There is no man of understanding who does not admit an active principle in nature; therefore there is no Atheist. He is not an Atheist who says that motion is God, . . . and by it all things are performed in the universe." Cousin says: "Atheism is impossible, because the existence of God is implied in every affirmation. If a man believes that he exists, he must believe in the power of thought, and that is God." Herbert Spencer claims to be religious: his two principles of faith are, Force is, and Force is persistent.

But the word "God" has a definite meaning in the language of men, and it cannot be changed to accommodate every infidel. It means an Infinite, Self-conscious, Selfacting, Personal Being. If any one reduces this being to "force," "motion," "power of thought," "moral order," "the unknowable" or any "somewhat" abstraction, he is playing atheist.

It is still a debated question whether real Atheism is possible. Dr. Charles Hodge answers as follows: "If the question be, whether a man can emancipate himself from the conviction that there is a personal Being to whom he is responsible for his character and conduct, and who will punish him for his sins it must be answered in the negative. For that would be to emancipate himself from the moral law, which is impossible. If, however, the question means, whether a man may, by speculation or otherwise, bring himself into such a state as to lose, for a time, the consciousness of the belief of God, as written in his heart: and free himself from its power, it must be answered affirmatively. A man may, in this sense, also deny his own individuality or identity; the real objective existence of soul or body, mind or matter, the distinction between right and wrong. But this is unnatural and cannot last. It is like deflecting a spring by force. The moment the force is removed the spring returns to its normal position. Men, therefore, often pass in a moment from such a state of entire skepticism to a state of unquestioning faith."1 1. Hodge, Vol. I, p. 242 In much the same way Dr. Miley answers: "Profound thinkers deny that there ever was an instance of Speculative, dogmatic Atheism. But we think in the possible aberrances of the mind, there is the possibility of Atheism. Yet the instances are rare or transient. . . . . The moral and religious sentiments, native to the soul, and never permanently repressible, must rise in resentful protest against it."

"Primarily and directly, atheism is the negation of God. Of all negation, this is the greatest that the human mind can think or utter. For it cannot remain alone, but must carry with it many others of profound moment. The negation of the divine existence is the negation of all related truths. If there is no God, there can be no Son of God; and, hence, no incarnation, no atonement, and no salvation. There can be no spiritual existence. Matter must be all. There is no mind in nature, no intelligence that planned the earth and the heavens, and no omnipotent will that set them in order, or that preserves their harmonies. There are no intuitions or absolute truths: for atheism is as thorough a negation of our reason as of our God. There can be no spontaneity or freedom of mind. There is no mind. Mental phenomena are a mere physical process determined by mechanical force. There can be no moral obligation or responsibility. Morality is no duty. Whatever expediencey may urge in behalf of secular interests, without God there can be no ground of moral duty. There is no future existence. Death is the oblivion of man, just as it is the oblivion of a beast."2

Such a theory plunges a man into a fathomless abyss of intellectual, moral and spiritual ruin. And by every principle of reason, the theory is absolutely unproveable. 2. Miley, Vol. I, pp. Ill, 112

II. PANTHEISM

While Atheism denies the existence of God, Pantheism-from pan-all, and theos-God-is the doctrine that God includes all reality. The universe is God and God is the universe. "He is the one and the all." "Besides God, no substance can exist, or be conceived to exist," said Spinoza.

He held that there was one simple substance-God, known to us through the two attributes of infinite thought and infinite extension, neither of which implied personality. This substance was self-operative from the force of an inward necessity, without choice or reference to ends. All finite existences are merely phenomena."

It will be seen at once how irrational and unscientific this is. Thought is not an attribute of substance, but an act of a personal mind, and extension is a spatial quality of extended being. His theory of a one substance with two attributes is a baseless assumption.

Pantheism seems in the main to have assumed three forms. (1) That which ascribes to the Infinite and Universal Being, the attributes of both mind and matter, or thought and extension. (Spinoza's theory.) (2) That which ascribes to it only the attributes of matter.-Materialistic Pantheism. (3) That which ascribes to it only the attributes of Spirit, Idealistic Pantheism.

Some writers give six different forms the doctrine has assumed. But whether more or less, the systems all tend to the following logical inferences or conclusions, which are startling in the extreme.

1. They deny all dualism in the Universe. The essential distinctions between matter and mind, soul and body between God and the world, between the infinite and finite is repudiated. Cousin says: "The finite cannot exist without the infinite, and the infinite can only be realized by developing itself in the finite.

2. Whatever the infinite may be, matter or spirit, thought or force, it has no existence apart from the world. The world is therefore, consubstantial and co-eternal with God.

3. There is no such thing as creation; except as an eternal and necessary process of evolution.

4. They deny that the Infinite, Absolute Being, has either intelligence, consciousness, or will.

5. Pantheism denies the personality of God, Personality as well as consciousness implies a distinction between the Self and the Not Self; and such a distinction they hold is a limitation inconsistent with the nature of the infinite. God therefore is not a person who can say "I," and can be addressed as "Thou." Cousin says: "Take away nature and the soul, and every sign of God disappears. What the soul would be without faculties and without consciousness, that is God without the Universe." Dr. Hodge pertinently remarks: "An unconscious God without life, of whom nothing can be predicated but simple being, is not only not a person, but he is, for us, simply nothing."

6. Man is not an individual subsistence. He is but a moment in the life of God; a wave on the surface of the sea; a leaf which falls and is renewed year after year."

7. When the body, which makes the distinction of persons among men, perishes, personality ceases with it. There is no conscious existence for man after death. Schleiermacher said in a sermon: "The piety in which I was nurtured in my youth remained with me when the God and immortality of my childhood disappeared from my doubting sight." In other words, the personal God of the Moravian faith was exchanged for the impersonal God of philosophy. The absorption of the soul in God, the finite into the Infinite, is the highest destiny that Pantheism can offer to man.

8. If man is only a mode of God's existence, it logically follows that all man's acts are the acts of God, whether good or bad. Also, since the acts of God are necessary, it follows that there is no such thing as freedom of the will either in God or man. Spinoza said, "All things are determined by the necessity of the Divine Nature, to exist and to act, after a certain fashion."

9. Pantheism, in making man a mode of God's existence, and in denying all freedom of the will, precludes the possibility of sin. Man may have a subjective sentiment about right and wrong. But if God be at once God, nature and humanity; if reason in us be God's reason; his intelligence our intelligence, his activity our activity; if God be the substance of which the world is the phenomenon; if we are only moments in the life of God, then there can be nothing in us which is not in God, and all idea of human sin is a delusion. Spinoza says: "We speak improperly when we say that we sin against God, or that men offend God. Man is compelled to the pursuit of what is agreeable, and the hatred of the contrary. To follow this impulse is not only a necessity but it is the right and the duty of every man, and every one should be reckoned an enemy who wishes to hinder another in the gratification of the impulses of his nature. The measure of everyone's right is his power. The best right is that of the strongest; and as the wise man has an absolute right to do all which reason dictates, so also the ignorant and foolish man has a right to live according to the laws of appetite. This evidently was the philosophy of modern Germany. Behold the result!

Could anything possibly be more diabolical than such a theory? It makes might right, and glorifies tyranny and oppression. It tells the cruel murderer or the brutal ravisher that he is Godlike in gratifying his impulse, and whoever hinders him is wrong.

Cousin unblushingly defends the same principles: "The vanquishing party not only serves the cause of civilization, but it is better and more moral than the vanquished party. Virtue and prosperity, misfortune and vice, are in necessary harmony. Feebleness is a vice, and therefore it is always punished and beaten. It is time that the philosophy of history put beneath its feet the declamations of philanthropy." So the infamous Nero, puissant with the might of Rome, was incarnate virtue! And the aged, feeble, holy Paul was incarnate vice!

But if Pantheism be true, if God is the life of the world, all power His power, every act His act, not only can there be no sin, but the most powerful are the best, and "might makes right," as German writers insisted.

1. Pantheism is self-deification. If God comes to existence only in the world, and everything there is a manifestation of God. Man being the highest creature, it follows that he is the most God, -the highest form of the divine existence. Every man is his own divinity! What a noble God some people have!

2. There is only one step further, the deification of Evil, and pantheists have not hesitated to take it. The wicked are only one form of the self-manifestation of God; sin is only one form of the activity of God. This blasphemous doctrine is explicitly avowed. If God be everything, and if there be a Satan, God must be Satan. So Rosenkranz taught unblushingly, and justified it by saying that "the mind is horrified at such language only because it does not recognize the intimate connection between good and evil."

In view of this deification of evil one has said: "This system should be called Pandiabolism instead of Pantheism. This is the true blasphemy of God-this veiled blasphemy-this diabolism of the deceitful angel of light-this speaking of reckless words, with which the man of sin sets himself in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. The Atheist cannot blaspheme with such power as this; his blasphemy is merely negative. He merely says: There is no God' It is only out of

Pantheism that a blasphemy can proceed, so wild, of such inspired mockery, so devoutly Godless, so desperate in its love of the world-a blasphemy so seductive, and so offensive that it may well call for the destruction of the world."

Dr. Charles Hodge's extended discussion we have greatly abridged in giving these eleven points, says: "Pantheism, however, becomes all things, to all men. To the pure it gives scope for sentimental religious feeling, which sees God in everything and everything in God. To the proud it is the source of intolerable arrogance and self-conceit. To the sensual it gives authority for every form of indulgence. Some of the most reputable of the Pantheistic School do not hesitate to say in reference to the trammels of morality: "It is well that the rights of our sensual nature should, from time to time, be boldly asserted."1 Tholuck said: "This system comes to the same result with the materialism of French encyclopedists, who mourned over mankind for having sacrificed the real pleasures of time for the imaginary pleasures of eternity, and the protracted enjoyments of life, for the momentary happiness of a peaceful death." 1. Hodge: Systematic Theology, Vol. I, pp. 300-308.

We quote one passage from Dr. Miley which may well close our discussion of this infamous system of thought. He says: "Pantheism is as really blank of all objective truth which can minister to the religious cravings of the soul as Atheism itself. 'There is no personality of God, no divine majesty for the Soul's reverence, no love for the inspiration of its own adoring love, no providence over us, no place for prayer, no knowledge of us, no heart-sympathy with us, no hand to help us, no 'Father in Heaven.' There can be no religious helpfulness in the idea of a being so utterly blank of all that the soul craves in God."2 2. Miley's Theology, Vol. I, p. 116

III. POSITIVISM

Positivism originated with M. Auguste Comte, born 1798; died 1859. It is a pretentious but most impractical philosophy, claiming to be at once a philosophy, a polity, and a religion. It professes to systematize all scientific knowledge, to organize all industrial activities, and to satisfy all spiritual aspirations. It proposes for itself the modest task of explaining the past, instructing the present and forecasting the future, forming a religion "sans Dieu," without God, offering for worship humanity, symbolized by a woman.

With such a flourish of trumpets, one might well suppose it would utilize all the powers of the mind and all the best that man has thought or been. But it does not. It could not be more dwarfed and narrow. It discounts all the profoundest intuitions of the mind, and the foundation principles of reason, and admits nothing in its philosophy but natural phenomena revealed by the senses. We only know positively what the senses reveal. They are the only source of knowledge, hence nothing exists but matter. There is no mind distinct from matter; no such thing as efficiency; no cause, either secondary or final; no God; no future state of existence for man. All we know is that there is an endless sequence of events chasing each other in uniform and necessary but unrelated succession. Nothing more must be admitted as knowledge, but the facts of phenomena.

It will be seen that Positivism is the extreme of phenomenalism. Not only the intuitions are set at nought, but the facts of consciousness are denied to knowledge. There are no truths of the reason, no ontological realities. Properties do not prove a substance. Effects do not prove a cause. "Mental phenomena, and there is no such thing discoverable as either an origin or purpose in the world, as consequently either a creative or providential intelligence."

According to Comte, there are three states or forms of thought through which the whole humanity, and each individual man passes, which he calls the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive.

(1) In the first state all facts of change are attributed to some supernatural agency; this is the theological state. (2) In the second the facts of change are attributed to the intrinsic forces of nature. This is the metaphysical state, entertaining the idea of substance and cause. That is, phenomena are the result of occult powers or forces which the senses do not detect. (3) The third state is the positive in which all thought of the supernatural, or of natural cause or force is dismissed, and men come to recognize that there are no spiritual agencies or physical causes, but only passing events, or phenomena of nature. Humanity is now in this stage. Every individual man, in his progress from infancy to manhood, passes through these several stages. We first believe in supernatural agencies, witches, ghosts, souls, angels and God; then in occult physical causes; then only in facts discerned by the senses. These are mutually exclusive. Such is the foundation of the Positive philosophy.

We make the following observations:

1. His theory of the three stages of individual and race development in thought is a pure assumption and absolutely untrue. The race has not abandoned faith in the supernatural and accepted Positivism. It may be doubted if there is one in ten thousand of our entire race who does not believe in God. The advance of knowledge has banished witch craft, necromancy, and kindred follies from the minds of men; but it has not expelled a belief in mind as distinct from matter, or in efficient causes, or in God.

2. There is no such development of the race or of the individual. Human experience is against the theory well-nigh universally. An individual does not begin in the theological and end in the positive state. The child is more positivistic,-that is, is more effected by phenomena than he will be in later years, when he knows more of God and the causal forces of Nature. Also the most highly civilized peoples have a more profound regard for God, and the laws of nature than the lower tribes of men.

3. These several states of mind are not mutually exclusive. The profoundest students of nature's laws and forces still believe in God. Positivism does not dominate the thought of this most scientific age of the world. The notion that mature men abandon all thought of God and the laws of cause and effect is intellectual foolery. Comte's law of the three states breaks down at every point. Huxley says: "It is absurd to say of men in a state of primitive savagery, that all their conceptions are in a theological state. Nine tenths of them are eminently realistic, and as "positive" as ignorance and narrowness can make them."1 1. Huxley's, Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 178.

4. Comte was in error in his classification of sciences. He professes to accept nothing in his system but phenomena. Then he names mathematics as the simplest science in his system. But what has mathematics to do with phenomena? It is a purely mental science and has nothing to do with phenomena. "There is nothing outward for the organic eye; all is for the inner eye of the mind." Then his biology is made to include the whole man just as it includes the animal and the plant. The mind has no place in his scheme. It cannot have in a system which repudiates all the inner facts of consciousness. His classifications therefore, do not include all the facts and, hence, are not scientific, but are forced and fanciful and arbitrary.

5. By his very scheme of thought, Comte affronts human nature, and asks every man who accepts his philosophy to stultify himself. But it is idle to try to reason men out of their senses, and attempt to make them believe that their nature is a lie. They act upon and use their intuitions in all the common affairs of life. They assume that effects have a cause, that the axioms are true, that we are free agents, that there is a difference betwen right and wrong, that there is a God to whom man is responsible. But Positivism denies it all. Men will be very slow to throw away their common sense to please any philosopher.

6. To crown his folly and make it complete, Comte, after denying all the facts and primal truths of our nature that would make a religion possible, proceeded to construct a new religion of Positivism. His system of thought was so utterly atheistic in tendency and foreign to religion, that this freak disgusted many of his followers. The character of the new religion did not commend it to the thinking mind. But as men always have had a religion, and must have one to satisfy them, this philosophy which aspired to universal dominion, must make some provision for this universal, even though imaginary, necessity of our nature. Comte, therefore, put out a catechism of religious belief and worship "Sans Dieu," with no God in it. The aggregate of humanity, formed by the absorption of the successive generations of men, was the object of worship. Every great man has two forms of existence; one conscious before death; the other after death, an unconscious influence, in the hearts and intellects of other men. The God of the Positive Philosophy is, therefore, the aggregate of the memories of great men. There was to be a priesthood and a Pope. Society must be absolutely subject to this new religious regime. No individual liberty, and no rights of conscience were to be tolerated.

There were to be two forms of worship, one private, the other public. The special object of private worship was woman, because she is the most perfect representative of humanity. The memory of great men was to be the object of public worship. There were to be ten sacraments, a peculiar architecture, and an extended hierarchy under the control of one absolute High Priest."

No wonder such a parody on religion disgusted men. Huxley bitterly characterized it, "Catholicism minus Christianity." Mill joined in these criticisms. Comte retorted savagely that the men who accepted his philosophy and rejected his religion were "deficient in brains."

The quarrel is not ours. But we may observe in closing, how amazing it is that men should undertake with such philospphical trash to overthrow Christianity! It is seventy years since Comte died, and the religion of Jesus still stands, and is going on to possess the world. Human reason, with its absolute truths and authoritative conscience, with its sense of God and duty, will be slow to allow these primal beliefs to be supplanted by the follies of Positivism.

IV. MATERIALISM

Comte's Positivism was only one form of Materialism. Materialism is as old as Epicurus. It is that system which ignores the distinction between matter and mind, and refers all the phenomena of the world, whether physical, vital or mental, to the functions of matter. The soul is but the result of a peculiar organization of matter; the operations of mind are merely the effect of material forces; there is no existence beyond the grave, and, therefore, no moral accountability. Matter and force are the only entities, and these are sufficient to solve all the problems of the Universe.

How little originality there is in modern Materialism may be seen from these teachings of Epicurus. He taught: (1) The Universe has always existed and must exist forever. Exnihilo nihil fit. (2) Space, and the number of bodies which it contains are infinite. (3) These bodies are of two kinds, simple and compound. The simple bodies are atoms possessing form, magnitude and weight.

They are indivisible, unalterable and indestructible. This is the doctrine of modern science. (4) These atoms have their peculiar forms, distinct from their mere gravity. (5) The quantity of matter and the amount of force is always the same. Neither can be increased or diminished. (6) The atoms move through space with incredible velocity under the guidance of necessary physical laws. (7) By the combination of these atoms, under the influence of gravity and other physical forces, the universe was formed and became a Cosmos. This is very nearly the nebular hypothesis. (8) The soul ceases to exist when the body dies. It is the cessation of the vital and intellectual functions of the individual. (9) The soul is material, and all mental phenomena are due to the properties of matter. (10) Sensation is the only source of knowledge. By remembering former sensations we form ideas. (11) Nothing is incorporeal but a vacuum. As there is no mind or spirit, therefore there is no God or moral law. Virtue is only prudence.

A German writer in Herzog's Encyclopaedia declares, that the Materialists of our day have not advanced a step upon the system of Epicurus.1 1. Quoted from Ritter by Hodge, Vol. I, pp. 246, 247

The principles of modern Materialism may be stated as follows:

1. Matter and force are inseparable. Wherever there is matter there is force, and -vice versa.

2. All physical forces such as light, heat, chemical affinities, electricity, magnetism, etc., are convertible. Light may be converted into heat, and heat into light; either into electricity, and electricity into either.

3. The physical forces are not only convertible, one into any of the others, but they are also quantitatively equivalent; that is, a given amount of heat, will produce a given amount of light, or electricity, or any other force.

4. These purely physical forces produce everything, no other forces being known or knowable. They thus deny that vital force produces vital phenomena, and mental force produces mental phenomena, Materialists banish mind and vital force to the region of the unknown and the unknowable. Huxley says: "The matter of life is composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated. It is built up of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done." "What justification is there for the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something which has no representative or correlative, in the not-living matter? What better status has 'vitality' than 'agnosity'?" Others besides Huxley have accepted this physical theory of life, and hold that vital force is only a form or mode of ordinary motion.

5. Materialists carry the logic of their assumptions to the end, and declare that not only vital force in plant or animal, but even the thoughts of man, are the product of physical force in matter. Says Huxley: "The thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them are the expression of molecular changes... It is impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause . . . and human logic is incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. . . . This means the extension of the province of what we call matter, and the gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity...

In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena."1 1. Huxley's Lay Sermons, pp. 151-156.

All this put briefly means: All effects are produced by material causes; Spirit has only an imaginary existence; the spontaneous action of a human or Divine will is an absurdity; necessity is inexorable and universal; there is neither a human Spirit nor a God; the distinction between material and mental forces is obliterated, and the universe is created and ruled by fate.

Such opinions are openly avowed in the plainest terms in Germany. Otto Berger says: "Materialism is the philosophy of the five senses. It admits nothing but on the testimony of sensation, and therefore denies the existence of the soul, of God, and of everything super sensuous. In its modern form it teaches that, as the material is alone true and real, matter is uncreated and eternal. It always has been and always will be. It is indestructible, and, in its elements, unchangeable. Force is inseparable from matter. According to the theory, no matter is without force, and no force is without matter. No force exists of itself; and, therefore, there is none to which the Creation of matter is to be referred. The universe as it now is, is due to the gradual evolution of the two elements, matter and force, which evolution proceeds under the operation of fixed laws. The lower organisms are first formed; then the higher, until man appears. All life, whether vegetable, animal, or Spiritual, is due to the working of physical or chemical forces in matter. As no power exists but in matter, there can be no divine Being with creative power, nor any created human soul." He quotes Virchow as saying, "The scientific naturalist knows only bodies and the properties of bodies. All that is beyond them is transcendental, and the transcendental is the chimerical." He also quotes Vogt, as saying, "We admit of no Creator, either in the beginning, or in the course of the world's history; and regard the idea of a self-conscious, extramundane Creator as ridiculous."

Answer

It will be observed from the above that "The fundamental affirmation of Materialism is, that all the phenomena of the universe, physical, vital and mental, are to be referred to unintelligent physical forces. The fundamental negation is, that there is no such objective entity as mind or Spirit." We answer:

1. They assume the very thing that needs to be proved, namely, that there is no mind and no God, and everything is produced by matter and force. Unintelligent force cannot account for all the phenomena of the Universe. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. There is too much evidence of purpose, wisdom and thought in the world, and too much order and development in the life of plants, animals and man to believe that it could be produced by unthinking and unliving matter and force. The credulity of such a theory is immeasurable. Its absurdity is boundless.

Over against this Materialistic theory is the theory of Theism which teaches the existence of an infinite, extramundane God, who created matter endowed with forces, and finite minds gifted with intelligence and will; and that all the ordinary phenomena of the Universe are proximately due to these physical and mental forces, as constantly upheld and controlled by the Omnipresent wisdom and power of God. It is doubtful if any amount of argument could increase the all-but-universal conviction that the Theistic solution of this world and its events is the true one. It satisfactorily accounts for all the facts of consciousness and observation, which Materialism cannot do. It satisfies the reason and the heart. It is so evidently true that none doubt it but those who do violence to their own innate convictions, and forcibly drag themselves into the snares and fogs of an infidel philosophy.

2. Materialism can only exist by a contradiction of Consciousness. The fundamental condition of all knowledge is a knowledge of self. Unless we are a self-conscious being we can not know either the phenomena that take place around us or within us. This knowledge of self is a knowledge that we are a real existence, an objective entity, an individual person, distinct from all others, possessed of intellect, sensibility and free will. This is a fundamental fact, a primal truth, the most essential condition of all knowledge, without which we can know nothing.

It is moreover a fact of consciousness that the body is not the Ego, the real self. We know as well as we can know anything, that there is a spirit dwelling in the body as in a house, which uses the body as a medium of communication with the external world. This Spirit is the self, the real I. Now these are not guesses, or mere theories, or arbitrary assumptions. They are facts of consciousness, universally known and admitted. All human speech and literature and conduct are a proof of it. "Even the Materialist himself cannot think or speak or write without assuming the existence of the mind as distinct from matter, any more than the Idealist can live and act without assuming the existence of the external world. The materialist cannot have any higher evidence or more reliable proof of the phenomena of which he makes so much, than he has of the existence of his own mind, afforded him by his consciousness. Neither can be denied except theoretically. As a matter of fact, every man, even the Materialist himself, believes both in matter and in mind. When he thinks and feels and wills he believes that he himself is an intelligent, feeling, willing being, distinct from matter when it is revealed to him by his senses. The one is as inevitable as the other. The belief in mind, therefore, is involved in the belief of Self-existence.

3. Materialism contradicts the facts of moral and religious consciousness. Nothing is more real or imperative in the experience of man. It is far easier to deny and reject the testimony of the senses than to deny the testimony of Conscience. No one can ever free himself from the inner voice, or from the sense of sin, or of accountability. This necessitates the belief in God to whom we must give an account. Neither Hume nor Paine, nor Voltaire, could permanently rid themselves of it, and it tortured their closing hours.

But Materialism, in repudiating all mind in man, leaves nothing to be accountable; and in repudiating the idea of God, leaves no Being to whom an account could be rendered. Plainly, in doing this, it does violence to our moral nature. To substitute "matter and force" for this personal, intelligent, holy, infinite, extra-mundane God, is to insult both Him and our own moral nature. Our Spiritual being revolts at such a theory, and instinctively declares it false. "It cannot be true unless our whole nature is a lie."

The logical sequences of their theory is something awful to contemplate. For, if the testimony of consciousness is not to be received with regard to our mental operations, neither can it be with regard to our sensations; therefore, if we have no valid evidence of mind, neither have we any evidence of matter. We would be driven to the conclusion that there is no matter and no mind, no universe and no God. Everything would be swallowed up in the abyss of nothing. But for an illogical Materialist to see this is quite too much to expect!

4. Materialism contradicts the primary truths of reason. It is an intuitive truth of reason that every event must have an adequate cause. The cause must be of such a kind as can rationally satisfactorily account for the result. In nature we see everywhere evidence of thought, foresight, plan and purpose; but in the cause put forward by Materialism there is no thought or design, and no possibility of it. Now every man would recognize the absurdity of attributing all the works of human ingenuity and intellectual genius to a horse; but how much greater would be the absurdity of referring to blind, unintelligent, unthinking, lifeless force the stupendous, complicated and orderly works of God, stamped everywhere with evidences of His purpose, foresight and benevolent designs! Yet this is the very absurdity of which Materialism is guilty.

When this Godless theory would teach us that carbonic acid, water and ammonia with molecular forces, can produce all life from a fungus to man, our credulity halts. When Huxley intimates "that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapor; and that then, a sufficient intelligence, could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapor, have predicted the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869 with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapor of the breath in a cold winter's day." We draw back from this daring monstrosity of speculation. It cannot be dignified with the name of reasoning; for it gives no rational account of the existence of "God's world," and the living, and thinking beings upon it. To tell us that.a few molecules can produce man, with his libraries of thought and his heroic sacrifices and sublime devotions to duty, is to affront the common sense of mankind.

But still more, the Materialistic theory depends upon an endless series of phenomena or molecular causations, one thing causing another endlessly. Calm reason, however, decides that an infinite series of physical causes and effects is as unthinkable as a chain, infinite in length, and hanging on nothing.

Modern science has decided that spontaneous generation of life is an impossibility. Dead matter never becomes living, save as life reaches down from its upper sphere, and touches with its mystery, of vitality, the dead minerals and gases, and lifts them up transformed into the living sphere. Only so can dead matter ever know life. But here is a world full of life, and if dead matter can only be made alive by previously existing life, when and how did the "cosmic vapor" start this life? Evidently there must be a living Creator outside of matter, or life never could have begun. But this logically routs Materialism, and enthrones God.

5. Take the doctrine of the correlation of physical and vital and mental force, and their convertibility into one another. The Materialistic theory is that light and heat and electricity can be converted into life and thought, and the process can be reversed; the latter are identical with the former, and both classes are resolvable into the motion of molecules. Huxley avers, "It has been proved that every exercise of thought or feeling is attended with an evolution of heat, which shows that thought is resolved into heat. Can we longer doubt, then, that the brain, too, is a machine for the conversion of energy? Can we longer refuse to believe that thought is, in some mysterious way, correlated to the other natural forces?"

This may sound to some, and may seem to Materialists to be a masterly argument. That thought does increase the flow of blood to the brain and so increases its temperature may be admitted; but do their inferences at all follow, that light and heat are convertible into life and thought, and life and thought can be reverted into heat and light and electricity? Suppose that muscular power and nerve force are physical. What then? Who or what guides them and makes them work to a purposed end? Are heat and thought identical? "When ashamed we blush, when afraid we become pale. Does that prove that shame and fear and their bodily effects are one and the same thing? Does that prove that heat is shame, and shame heat, and that they can be converted into one another?" Even Tyndall tells the Materialists that when they have proved all they claim to prove they have proved nothing. The mind is still distinct from the matter of the body which it inhabits.

The whole civilized world is now distressed by the high price of food. If light and heat and electricity can be resolved into life, the people would gladly furnish Materialists the heat, if they will resolve it into live oxen and lessen the price of steaks. Even with all our literary activity, we would gladly furnish Materialists with any amount of physical force, if they will transmute it into the mental power of Shakespeare and produce some more Hamlets! The truth is, they cannot prove their theory by works. "Until scientific men," says Dr. Hodge, "can actually change heat and electricity into life, and go about raising the dead, men will be slow to believe that heat and life are identical; and until they can transmute physical force into intelligence and will, they cannot convert thinkers into Materialists."1 1. Hodge, Vol. I, p. 295.

Professor Baker of Yale delivered a lecture to his students proving, as he thought, that vital force and thought are correlated to other natural forces. But he was compelled to give away the whole case of Materialism in the following closing words with which we will close this discussion.

"Is it only this? Is there not behind this material substance, a higher than molecular power in the thoughts which are immortalized in the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the art creations of a Michael Angelo, or a Titian, the harmonies of a Mozart or a Beethoven? Is there really no immortal portion separable from this brain-tissue, though yet mysteriously united to it? In a word, does this curiously fashioned body inclose a soul, God-given and to-God returning? Here science veils her face, and bows in reverence before the Almighty. We have passed the boundaries by which physical science is inclosed. No crucible, no subtle magnetic needle can answer now our questions. No word but His who formed us can break the awful silence. In the presence of such a revelation science is dumb, and faith comes in joyfully to accept that higher truth which can never be the object of physical demonstration."2 2. Baker's Lecture, pp. 26, 27.