Part 3

“He whose powers were measureless, being thus requested by the great sages, whose thoughts were profound, saluted them all with reverence and gave them a comprehensive answer, saying: Be it heard! This universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared with undiminished glory, expanding his idea or dispelling the gloom. He, whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has not visible parts, who exists from eternity, even he, the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He, having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, first, with a thought, created the waters and placed in them a productive seed; that seed became an egg bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams; AND IN THAT EGG HE WAS BORN HIMSELF IN THE FORM OF BRAHMA THE GREAT FOREFATHER OF ALL SPIRITS. The waters were called nara, because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of God; and, since they were his first ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named Nayrayana, or moving on the waters. From that which is, the first cause, not the object of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all worlds under the appellation of Brahma. In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the Creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself; and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of waters.

“From the supreme soul he drew forth mind, existing substantially, though unperceived by sense, immaterial; and before mind, or the reasoning power, he produced consciousness, the internal monitor, the ruler; and before them both he produced the great principle of the soul, or first expansion of the divine idea; and all vital forms endued with the three qualities of goodness, passion and darkness; and the five perceptions of sense, and the five organs of sensation. Thus, having at once pervaded, with emanations from the Supreme Spirit, the minutest portions of six principles immensely operative, consciousness and the five perceptions, he framed all creatures; and since the minutest particles of visible nature have a dependence on those six emanations from God, the wise have accordingly given the name of S’arira, or depending on six, that is, the ten organs on consciousness, and the five elements on as many perceptions, to his image or appearance in visible nature; thence proceed the great elements, endued with peculiar powers, the mind with operations infinitely subtile, the unperishable cause of all apparent forms.

“This universe, therefore, is compacted from the minute portions of these seven divine and active principles, the great soul, or first emanation, consciousness, and five perceptions; a mutable universe from immutable ideas. Among them each succeeding element acquires the quality of the preceding; and in as many degrees as each of them is advanced, with so many properties is it said to be endued. He, too, first assigned to all creatures distinct names, distinct acts, and distinct occupations, as they had been revealed in the pre-existing Veda. He, the supreme ruler, created an assemblage of inferior _Deities_, with divine attributes and pure souls, and a number of Genii exquisitely delicate; and he prescribed the sacrifice from the beginning. From fire, from air, and from the sun he milked out, as it were, three primordial Vedas, named Rich, Yajush and Saman, for the due performance of the sacrifice.

“He gave being to time and the divisions of time, to the stars also, and to the planets, to rivers, oceans and mountains, to level plains and uneven valleys, to devotion, speech, complacency, desire and wrath, and to the creation, which shall presently be mentioned; for he willed the existence of all those created things. For the sake of distinguishing actions, he made a total difference between right and wrong, and enured these sentient creatures to pleasure and pain, cold and heat, and other opposite pairs. With very minute transformable portions called matras, of the five elements, all this perceptible world was composed in fit order; and in whatever occupation the Supreme Lord first employed any vital soul, to that occupation the same soul attaches itself spontaneously when it receives a new body again and again. Whatever quality, noxious or innocent, harsh or mild, unjust or just, false or true, he conferred on any being at its creation, the same quality enters it, of course, on its future births; as the six seasons of the year attain respectively their peculiar marks in due time and of their own accord, even so the several acts of each embodied spirit attend it naturally.

“That the human race might be multiplied, he caused the Brahmen, the Cshatriya, the Vaisya and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his thigh and his foot.

“Having divided his own substance, the mighty power became half male, half female, or nature active and passive, and from that female he produced Viraz. Know me, O most excellent of Brahmens, to be that person whom the male power, Viraz, having performed austere devotion, produced by myself; me, the secondary framer of all this visible world. It was I who, desirous of giving birth to a race of men, performed very difficult religious duties, and first produced ten Lords of created beings, animated in holiness, Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Cratu, Prachetas, or Dacsha, Vasishtha, Bhrigu and Narada; they, abundant in glory, produced seven other Menu, together with deities and the mansions of deities, and Maharshis, or great sages, unlimited in power; benevolent genii, and fierce giants, blood-thirsty savages, heavenly quiristers, nymphs and demons, huge serpents and snakes of smaller size, birds of mighty wing, and separate companies of Pitirs, or progenitors of mankind; lightnings and thunder-bolts, clouds and colored bows of Indra, falling meteors, earth-rending vapors, comets and luminaries of various degrees; horse-faced sylvans, apes, fish, and a variety of birds, tame cattle, deer, men, and ravenous beasts with two rows of teeth; small and large reptiles, moths, lice, fleas, and common flies, with every biting knat and immovable substances of distinct sorts.”

Reader, I have given you this chapter of ancient cosmogonies under the conviction that a bare statement of them must convince any one of either the ignorance or dishonesty of infidels who claim that Moses learned all that he gave in his cosmogony from the ancient cosmogonies. How was it that Moses avoided all their errors and extravagance? How was it that he gave such a severely simple description of creation, which no rhetoric can improve, and no scientist _successfully_ refute?

Can you believe that energy, or force, lies behind all things, operating them, without believing there is something lying behind it, to which it belongs?

Can you believe that a concourse of dead atoms held a solemn convention, went into harmonious action and produced life?

SOME OF THE BEAUTIES (?) OF HARMONY AMONG UNBELIEVERS.

The author of “The System of Nature” says of the English Jesuit’s creation of eels by spontaneous generation from rye meal: “After moistening meal with water, and shutting up the mixture, it is found after a little time, with the aid of the microscope, that it has produced organized beings, of whose production the water and meal were believed to be incapable. Thus inanimate nature can pass into life, which is itself but an assemblage of motions.”—_Part 1, p. 23. For Needham’s Eels, see the Volume of Physics_.

Voltaire says: “Were this unparalleled blunder true, yet, in rigorous reasoning I do not see how it would prove there is no God.”

He says, it is really strange that men, while denying a creator should have attributed to themselves the power of creating eels. But it is yet more deplorable that natural philosophers, of better information, adopted the Jesuit Needham’s ridiculous system, and joined it to that of Maillet, who asserted that the ocean had formed the Alps and the Pyrenees, and that men were originally porpoises, whose forked tails changed in the course of time into thighs and legs. Such fancies are worthy to be placed with the eels formed by meal.

Voltaire says the ridiculous story of the spontaneous production of eels by rye meal is the foundation of D’Holbach’s “System of Nature.” He says: “We were assured, not long ago, that at Brussels a hen had brought forth half a dozen rabbits.” He then adds, “Needham’s eels soon followed the Brussels hen.” D’Holbach says: “Experience proves to us that the matter which we regard as inert and dead, assumes action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined in a certain way.” Voltaire responds: “This is precisely the difficulty. How does a germ come to life?”

The author of the “System of Nature” says: “Matter is eternal and necessary; but its forms and its combinations are transitory and contingent.” Upon the supposition that _all is __ matter_, Voltaire answers, it is hard to comprehend, matter being, according to our author, _necessary_, and without freedom, how there can be anything contingent.

Again, the atheistic author of the “System of Nature” asserts that order and disorder do not exist. This is strongly refuted by Voltaire, who says the author is to be distrusted very often, both in physics and in morals.

Spinosa was a pantheist. He, like many modern sciolists, repudiated design in nature. Voltaire, treating upon Spinosism, says: “I am aware that various philosophers, and especially Lucretius, have denied final causes. I am also aware that Lucretius, though not very chaste, is a very great poet in his descriptions and in his morals; but in philosophy I own he appears to me to be very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest, is not this the most revolting folly that ever entered the human mind? Doubter as I am, this _insanity_ seems to me _evident_, and _I say so_. For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes; and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour.” Voltaire charges Warburton with calumniating Cicero, by saying that Cicero said, “It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore one only God.” Voltaire’s words are these: “Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient Rome.” He then gives the above quotation, along with a short comment in Cicero’s defense, and closes with the following words: “It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a Supreme God. Their Jupiter, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jehovah of the Phœnicians, was always considered as the master of the secondary gods. This great truth can not be too forcibly inculcated.” Voltaire was a Deist.

Lucretius, according to Voltaire, denied design in nature. Voltaire said, in philosophy, he was very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle.

Spinosa was a Pantheist. Voltaire says, “He frequently contradicted himself; that he had not always clear ideas; that he sometimes clung to one plank, sometimes to another.”

Voltaire says: “A natural philosopher of some reputation had no doubt that this ‘Needham,’ who made the eels, ‘was a profound Atheist,’ who concluded that since eels could be made of rye meal, men might be made of wheat flour; that nature and chemistry produce all; and that it was demonstrated we may very well dispense with an all forming God.” Voltaire calls this _an unparalleled blunder_. D’Holbach, the author of the “System de la Nature,” was an Atheist, so were his assistants in the production of that work.

Voltaire addresses the author of that work in the following words: “In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you, with Pascal, ‘choose the safest.’ There is no safety in uncertainty. We are here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant things in order to escape embarassment. I do not say to you, ‘Go to Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a cow’s tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical to acquire the favor of the Being of beings.’ I say to you, ‘Continue to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested in all nature, and consequently the author of that design—the primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monade, which reasons on the great eternal Being, may be happy through that same great Being. There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so. In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who fight while they swim! Land who can; but he that cries out to me, “You swim in vain, there is no land,” disheartens me, and deprives me of all my strength. What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles it—you or I? You yourself own, in some passages of your work, that the belief in a God has withheld some men on the brink of crime; for me this acknowledgment is enough. If this opinion had prevented but ten assassinations, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous judgments on the earth, I hold that the whole earth ought to embrace it.’ ”—_Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary._

This Voltaire says: “The laws punished public crimes; it was necessary to establish a check upon secret crimes; this check was to be found only in religion.” In the same article we find the following: “We are obliged to hold intercourse and transact business and mix up in life with knaves possessing little or no reflection; with vast numbers of persons addicted to brutality, intoxication and rapine. You may, if you please, preach to them that there is no hell, and that the soul of man is mortal. As for myself, I will be sure to thunder in their ears that if they rob me they will inevitably be damned.” His true position upon the hell question is, that it is necessary to preach hell to the blind and brutal populace, that there is a real necessity for such teaching, whether it be true or false. He seems to regard it untrue, but necessary. What an idea! The harmony and consistency of unbelievers is (?) grand. It is no wonder that Voltaire’s name should stand, along with the names of Atheists and Pantheists and Deists, above the head line upon the first page of the _Boston Investigator_.

IS GOD THE AUTHOR OF DECEPTION AND FALSEHOOD?

There is a want of fair dealing with Bible language manifested by all the enemies of our religion. The unbelievers of our time will find it very difficult for them to sustain the reputation of moral honesty and, at the same time, retain many of the old, worn out objections which they have urged against the Bible. They should remember that while the light of scientific investigation is exposing the old, unscientific and unscriptural tenets of the creeds of our forefathers, and making it hard for candid, sensible men to defend them, it is also shedding light upon Bible truth to such an extent that unbelievers are finding it equally difficult to retain their silly objections to the Bible. They have asserted from 1st Kings 32, that God kept false as well as true prophets. This charge is not only without foundation in fact, but also false and contemptible. The four hundred prophets mentioned in the sixth verse of that chapter are emphatically denominated “Ahab’s prophets,” notwithstanding they professed to be the Lord’s prophets. This wicked King of Israel had those wicked, false prophets in his service. The address of Micaiah to the two kings in verses 19-23 is a mere parable showing what, in the providence of God, would shortly take place, and the divine permission for the agents, spoken of, to act. Micaiah did not tell the mad and impious Ahab that his prophets were all liars; but he represents the whole by a parable, and, in language equally strong and inoffensive, he says that which amounts to the same thing. Unbelievers of the schools of modern spiritualism and Bostonian infidelity, both say that God inspired prophets with false messages, and violated his own word.

The charge of inspiring prophets with false messages is founded, pretendingly, upon 1st Kings 22: 22, 23, Jeremiah 4: 10, and Ezekiel 14: 9. To answer this, it is only necessary to know that it is an idiom of the original languages to express, in the imperative active, that which is simply permitted. Thus, when the devils begged permission to enter into the herd of swine, Jesus said, “_Go_”—Mat. 8: 31.

And so we are to understand, John 13: 27, where Jesus says to Judas Iscariot, “What thou dost, _do quickly_.” No man is thoroughly posted as a Bible scholar who is honest in making the above charge. It is either ignorance or dishonesty that causes men to thus oppose the record. As we are not justifiable in saying that Jesus commanded his own betrayal, so we are not justifiable in saying God commanded lying. Correct principles of interpretation do not justify the unbeliever in any such blasphemy. When an evil spirit offered himself to be a lying spirit in the mouth of a wicked prophet—false prophet—God said, “Go forth and do so,” which only signifies permission, not command. In Jeremiah 4: 10, where the prophet complains that God had deceived them, saying, “They should have peace, when the sword reached to the soul,” we are to understand that God permitted the false prophets to deceive him, prophesying peace to the people, as appears from the history (Ezekiel 14: 9). _I_, the _Lord_, have deceived that prophet, that is, permitted him to be deceived, and permitted him to deceive the people, as the legitimate result of their own wickedness, and a just judgment upon them for their rejection of the testimony of his true prophets. There is nothing strange about all this; for as sure as there is a God, so sure it is that he permits wicked lying men to be deceived in our own day. He has done this in all ages of the world. In fact, it belongs to his ordained plan to permit, or suffer, men, individually or collectively, to fall in their own deceptions and wickedness. This he threatened in the above case, as you may see in the fifth verse of Ezekiel 14, in these words, “I will take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols; because they have chosen to themselves false Gods, I will _suffer them to be deceived_ with _false prophets_; and I will stretch out my hand _upon him_, and I will _destroy him_ from the midst of my people.” _Destroy whom?_ Ans.—_The false prophet._

When the prophet of God mistook the promise of God, who told him, when he commissioned him, that he would be with him, by which he understood that he would be saved from all evils, he said, “Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.” This prophet was now a derision, the people mocking him, and in his passion and weakness he breaks forth in the above language. It was simply his own mistake, or misunderstanding of God’s promise. God had not promised him that he should not meet with scorn and opposition and persecution, but simply that they should not prevail against him, as we may learn from the latter part of the first chapter. The second objection, that the Lord violated his promise, is also founded in ignorance or dishonesty; it is based upon the statements found in Joshua 13: 1, and Judges 2: 20, 21, compared with Genesis 15: 18 and 18: 19, 20. In Joshua 13, it is said that there remained very much land yet unconquered, which they had not taken possession of, notwithstanding the Lord had promised to be with them, and to give them all the land remaining yet in the possession of their enemies.

In Judges 2: 20, it is said that the people did not perform their part of the covenant, and this is given as the reason why the Lord had not driven out any more of the nations before them.

The covenant with Abraham was in consideration of his past faith and obedience; yet it was suspended upon the future obedience of his posterity. See Deut. 7: 12, 13 and 11: 22 to 24; and Judges 2 to 20. The Lord gives the following as the reason why he had not given them a complete fulfillment of the covenant upon his part, “Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not harkened to my voice, I also will not henceforth drive out any of the nations which Joshua left when he died.” There are none so blind as those who will not see. When we find a promise from the Lord, and it is in the positive form, that is, when its terms are not rested upon an expressed condition, we are authorized to supply the condition which involves the moral element in the divine government, viz: obedience upon the part of man, or men, as the case may be. See Ezekiel 33: 13.

DARWINISM WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES.