CHAPTER XIV. FAITH AND INFIDELITY CONTRASTED. FAITH AND SCIENCE HARMONIOUS--GREAT MEN, BELIEVERS--THE SAFETY OF SOCIETY DEMANDS RELIGION--THE GOSPEL THE BASIS OF TRUE CIVILIZATION--WHO ARE THE CREDULOUS--CONCLUSION.

We repeat it: there is no antagonism between philosophy and faith. Whatever the seeming oppositions of the present, all in the end will be perfect harmony. The gospel not merely overwhelms but comprehends all philosophy.

The star of science shines very beautifully indeed in its own sphere; but its light at best is a borrowed light, and its beams grow pale and vanish before the glorious sun of righteousness.

Often as the comparison has been made the result has been uniform—the sun outshines the star. Astronomy tried it. When the old Ptolemaic system was exploded by Copernicus, the vaunted wisdom of men proclaimed that the Bible also was exploded. But the Star-Maker triumphed over the star-gazers.

The gospel may indeed be likened to a splendid palace which the Great Builder founded on a rock, digging deep and bolting it to the solid granite; and false religion to a building of fair appearance, but founded upon the sand, which, when the floods come and storms beat, falls into irretrievable ruin. False religion cannot endure investigation; but the gospel, though tried by the severest tests that science can devise, only reveals more fully its beauty and solidity. Instead of astronomy undermining the temple of gospel truth, it has led the greatest of astronomers to unite with Herschel in the exclamation, "The infidel astronomer is mad."

Geology tried it. She came forth boasting her discoveries, and declaring that she had been among the rocks and deep down in the caves of the earth, and that she had found the teachings of the Bible contradicted by the strata of pre-Adamic ages, and had read its epitaph deeply chiseled by Nature herself in everlasting stone. But now the geologists admit that we have no rule for the measurement of geologic time. The fact is, we are not so far out of the dust, and chaos, and barbarism of antiquity as we had supposed. Geologically speaking, the very beginnings of our race are still almost in sight. The most eminent geologists admit that the total age of our race is not of necessity greater than indicated by the Mosaic history of primeval times.

Anatomy also tried it. By all the appliances of modern science every bone, muscle and tissue of the human body has been examined; yet no one has discovered the secret springs of action of the human soul. The power of vision, the source of muscular action, the fountain of life, have all eluded the skill of man. These mysteries belong to Him whose goings forth are from everlasting, and whose ways are past finding out. Man with all his learning and skill cannot solve the problem of his own being.

And so with all other sciences. Many a wild hurricane has spent its force on this tree of life, but has only caused it to strike its roots deeper. The day is hastening when men of science will be the very first to recognize the authority of God. Already it is largely so. What infidel names can be placed over against Raphael, Reynolds, Rubens, Trumbull, West and Cole as painters, or what against Canova or Thorwaldsen in sculpture, or Christopher Wren in architecture, or Michael Angelo in all three? In poetry, Milton, Young, Shakespeare, Dryden, Pope, Montgomery, Cowper, Watts, Wesley, Scott, Beattie, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Hemans, the Careys and hundreds of others who were all believers in inspiration. As if religion only was entitled to sing, infidelity has never produced a Handel, a Haydn, a Mozart, a Beethoven or a Spohr. Where can infidelity find such a galaxy of peerless judges as Grotius, Selden, Blackstone, Hale, Mansfield, Wirt, Story, Kent and Frelinghuysen. Among physicians, none can outrank Harvey, Sydenham, Boerhave, Gregory, Goode, Cooper and Rush; yet these all reverenced the name of God. Infidel philosophy can boast no names like Bacon, Newton, Locke, Stewart, Davy, Herschel, Cuvier, Whately, Hamilton, Proctor, Winchell or Le Conte. Jesus was in His appropriate place when among the doctors; and the wise men of the east were never wiser than when they brought their royal gifts to Him.

If the Being who made man has not had consideration enough for him to reveal to him His will, then he is not of the slightest consequence. These horrible wars which drown nations in sorrow, are the mere squabbles of a crowd of insects too insignificant for the divine notice. These dreams of moral purity, these aspirations after a higher life, these hopes of immortality, these out-reachings toward the everlasting Father, the assumption that we have a nature higher than the horse we drive or the dog we caress, are all miserable mistakes. If there is no authoritative revelation from God, what better are we than the brute creation? When we have set revelation aside and renounced our hope of immortality and thrown off all our moral and religious obligations, and relinquished the leadership of the Savior, what shall we do for a restraining power to keep society together at all?

If men should be convinced that they are only animals, and that God takes no notice of them, whose property would be safe? Whose life would be sacred? Who would be secure from the unrestrained ravages of every base passion that finds its home in the human heart? When Christ, as a Divine Being, or as a man divinely commissioned, dies out of the popular faith, what then? Who shall comfort the hearts that mourn? Who shall assure us that virtue has a reward, or that there is any such thing as virtue? Who shall stimulate the love of brotherhood, and move men to works of benevolence? Who then would strive to raise the world out of its beastly degradation?

No candid observer will deny that whatever of good there is in our civilization is the product of the gospel. The very government under which we live was organized and established by men who were the instruments of God.

That which gives us protection by day and night—the dwellings we live in, the clothes we wear, the institutions of mental, social and moral culture—all these are the direct results of the revelations of God. A faith in God is the very fountain head of everything that is desirable in our civilization, and this civilization is the flower of time. Humanity has reached its noblest thrift, its highwater mark, its loftiest flight of excellence through the influence of this faith. And now we are told by infidels, in the most complacent language that the gospel is a myth, and that the Old Testament, which holds a relation to the New Testament and all other divine records as the blade holds to the ear, the bud to the flower, is a huge batch of absurdities with no valid claim to our respectful faith. We are told in effect that out of an ingenious lie, out of a cunning delusion, out of a baseless myth, out of a systematized falsehood has sprung all that there is in this life worth living for—the grandest motive of human progress in purity and power! We are, in effect, told that by means of a stupendous cheat, men are trained to goodness, purified of their passions, filled with love to one another, prompted to the highest heroism, inspired to sacrifices of life and fortune for the public good, and are built up into a civilization which is immeasurably superior to all that human nature, assisted merely by human reason and false religion, ever dreamed of!

We are, in effect, told all this; and we now ask reasonable men what they think of it. Who are the credulous men—those who believe in a divine power and personage, out of whose life has flown into humanity those pure principles and elevating and purifying motives—or those who believe that a lie has wrought those marvels?

Of all the credulous idiots that the age has produced, we know of none so pitiable as those who, in the full blaze of such a civilization as ours, soberly talk of the gospel as a myth and its Author as a cheat.