Part 6 (1/2)

Oh, America, take warning ere it be too late! G.o.d rules the nations. ”He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he not correct you?”

A day of retribution, reader, comes to you, as an individual. Neither your insignificance nor your unbelief can hide you from his eye, nor can your puny arm s.h.i.+eld you from his righteous judgment. His hand shall find out his enemies. Oh, fly from the wrath to come! ”Seek the Lord while he may be found.” He is not far from every one of us. His breath is in our nostrils. His Word is in our hands. ”Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Cited in Pressense's _Jesus Christ, His Life and Times_. Page 10.

[24] Emerson.

[25] Duff's India, pages 99-114.

[26] Duff's India, page 119.

[27] Man's Origin and Destiny, 293.

[28] Webster's Dictionary.

[29] Emerson's Address to a Senior Cla.s.s in Divinity.

[30] Hennell's Christian Theism, which shows how Theists of every nation--Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or Chinese--can meet upon common ground.

[31] Atkinson's Letters, page 190.

[32] Festus, page 48.

[33] Swedenborg, or the Mystic (quoted by Pierson, 41), p. 68.

[34] Politique Positive, Vol. II. page 60.

[35] Emerson.

[36] Carlyle--Past and Present.

[37] Carlyle--Life of Sterling.

CHAPTER IV.

HAVE WE ANY NEED OF THE BIBLE?

Religion consists of the knowledge of a number of great facts, and of a course of life suitable to them. We have seen three of these: that G.o.d created the world; that he governs it; and that he is able to conquer his enemies. There are others of the same sort as needful to be known.

Our knowledge of these facts, or our ignorance of them, makes not the slightest difference in the facts themselves. G.o.d is, and heaven is, and h.e.l.l is, and sin leads to it, whether anybody believes these things or not. It makes no sort of difference in the beetling cliff and swollen flood that sweeps below it, that the drunken man declares there is no danger, and, refusing the proffered lantern, gallops on toward it in the darkness of the night. But when the mangled corpse is washed ash.o.r.e, every one sees how foolish this man was, to be so confident in his ignorance as to refuse the lantern, which would have shown him his danger, and guided him to the bridge where he might have crossed in safety. Some of the facts of religion lie at the evening end of life's journey; the darkness of death's night hides them from mortal eye; and living men might guide their steps the better by asking counsel of one who knows the way. If they get along no better by their own counsel in the next world than most of them do in this, they will have small cause to bless their teacher. Who can tell that ignorance, and wickedness, and wretchedness are not as tightly tied together in the world to come, as we see them here?

Solomon was a knowing man and wise; and better than that, in the esteem of most people, he made money, and tells you how to make it, and keep it. You will make a hundred dollars by reading his Proverbs and acting on them. They would have saved some of you many a thousand. Of course such a man knew something of the world. He was a wide-awake trader. His s.h.i.+ps coasted the sh.o.r.es of Asia, and Africa, from Madagascar to j.a.pan; and the overland mail caravans from India and China drew up in the depots he built for them in the heart of the desert. He knew the well-doing people with whom trade was profitable, and the savages who could only send apes and peac.o.c.ks. He was a philosopher as well as a trader, and could not help being deeply impressed with _the great fact_, that there was a wide difference among the nations of the world. Some were enlightened, enterprising, civilized, and flouris.h.i.+ng; others were naked savages, living in ignorance, poverty, vice, and starvation, perpetually murdering one another, and dying out of the earth.

Solomon noticed _another great fact_. In his own country, and in Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and some others, G.o.d had revealed his will to certain persons for the benefit of their neighbors. He did so generally by opening the eyes of these prophets to see future events, and the great facts of the unseen world, and by giving them messages of warning and instruction to the nations. From this mode of revelation, by opening the prophets eyes to see realities invisible to others, they were called seers, and the revelations they were commissioned to make were called visions; and revelation from G.o.d was called, in general, vision. Solomon was struck with the fact that some nations were thus favored by G.o.d, and other nations were not. The question would naturally arise, What difference does it make, or does it make any difference, whether men have any revelation of G.o.d's will or not?

Solomon was led to observe a _third great fact_. The nations which were favored with these revelations were the civilized, enterprising, and comparatively prosperous nations. In proportion to the amount of divine revelation they had, and their obedience to it, they prospered. The nations that had no revelation from G.o.d were the idolatrous savages, who were sinking down to the level of brutes, and peris.h.i.+ng off the face of the earth. He daguerreotypes these three great facts in the proverb: ”Where there is no vision the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

Oh, says the Rationalist, the world is wiser now than it was in Solomon's days. He lived in the old mythological period, when men attributed everything extraordinary to the G.o.ds. But the world is too wise now to believe in any supernatural revelation. ”The Hebrew and Christian religions like all others have their myths.” ”The fact is, the pure historic idea was never developed among the Hebrews during the whole of their political existence.” ”When, therefore, we meet with an account of certain phenomena, or events of which it is expressly stated or implied that they were produced immediately by G.o.d himself (such as divine apparitions, voices from heaven, and the like), or by human beings possessed of supernatural powers (miracles, prophecies, etc.), such an account is so far to be considered not historical.” ”Indeed, no just notion of the true nature of history is possible without a perception of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes, and of the impossibility of miracles.”[38] A narrative is to be deemed mythical, 1st. ”When it proceeds from an age in which there were no written records, but events were transmitted by tradition; 2d. When it presents, as historical, accounts of events which were beyond the reach of experience, as occurrences connected with the spiritual world; or 3d.

When it deals in the marvelous, and is couched in symbolical language.”[39] So also a host of others, who pa.s.s for biblical expositors, lay it down as an axiom, that all records of supernatural events are mythical, viz: fables, falsehoods, because miracles are impossible. Of course, from such premises the conclusion is easy. A revelation from G.o.d to man is a supernatural event, and supernatural events are impossible; therefore, a revelation from G.o.d is impossible.

But it would have been much easier, and quite as logical, to have laid down the axiom in plain words at first, that a revelation from G.o.d is impossible, as to argue it from such premises; for it is just as easy to _say_, that a revelation from G.o.d is impossible, as to _say_ that miracles are impossible; and as for _proof_ of either one or the other, we must just take their word for it.