Chapter 19

Thou who didst wrap the cloud Of infancy around us, that Thyself, Therein with our simplicity awhile Mightst hold on earth communion undisturbed; Who from the anarchy of dreaming sleep, Or from its deathlike void, with punctual care, And touch as gentle as the morning light, Restor'st us daily-- Thou, Thou alone. Art everlasting!

The poet Young, driven by sorrow to God's foot-stool, addresses his Creator in the same nobility of language:

Thou, who didst put to flight Primeval silence, when the morning stars, Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball; O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck That spark the sun, strike wisdom from my soul; My soul which flies to Thee, her trust, her treasure, As misers to their gold, while others rest.

"Come unto me, ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Therefore, accept this boon. Take your own child by the hand, and pray, and pray:

The way is long, my Father! and my soul Longs for the rest and quiet of the goal; While yet I journey through this weary land, Keep me from wandering, Father, take my hand.

THE ATHEIST

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place, (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings, athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringed lids and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious Sun in heaven, Cries out: "Where is it?"--Coleridge.

The laugh of the foolish infidel and the sneer of the solemn atheist are abroad in the land. The awful draught they hold to the lips of humanity is well honeyed with some of the adjuncts of religion itself, else the perilous cup would be rejected. Let us see how the atheist secures his victim, for he is never content to enjoy alone the extravagances of his folly. I have noticed that when a Democratic editor receives dispatches containing news of a Republican victory, he is frequently expert enough in the guile pertaining to his profession to put a displayed heading on those same dispatches which clearly saves the day for the Democrats--or _vice versa_. And I have also noticed that it takes true mental pluck to rightly scan, first, that rooster of roosters (invented during the last few years), then the ten lines of Democratic Io Paians which follow, and lastly, the small type containing the real facts.

MAN IS SO MUCH LIKE A FISH

that certain bait is sure to catch him. The morning after the election the most astute Republican or Democrat in the country trembles before the terrors of a ten-line Democratic or Republican displayed heading, as the case may be. Now the crafty atheist has a way of laying down fallacies which often terrifies one into involuntarily believing that those fallacies are facts, until one stops to think that the atheist is but a man, after all, and that there is an appeal from his findings. It is, therefore, in the defense of humanity that I advance against him,

HOPING TO HIT HIM BECAUSE HE IS SO BIG,

and to escape his blows because I am so small. "What though the day be lost, all is not lost!" Though man have glaring faults, he is still a problem far beyond the fiat of any atheist. He still has a destiny. The atheist lays down dogma after dogma. In this changing world, where even the little balance-wheel of a watch must be "compensated," it is clearly as impossible for any atheist to lay down an undeviating dogma as it was for the Cretan to truly say that all Cretans were liars! "Broadly, an unselfish deed is impossible. There never was a human thought that reached beyond the human body." Let us capture those two atheistic dogmas and take off their displayed headings.

AWAY BACK ON THE PLAINS OF CHALDÆA,

in the youth of the world, there lived men who watched their flocks by day and the hosts of heaven by night. Their study of the heavens lifted them out of themselves, in my belief, and their observations of celestial phenomena led them to the discovery of the fact that eclipses of the great heavenly lights happened in a regular rotation of eighteen years and ten days. This discovery has been very useful in purging the idolatry from eclipses--as, had it not been for the Chaldæans, perhaps the mother of the atheist might have offered him as an oblation in

THE FIRST TOTAL ECLIPSE

after his birth! Again, Proctor and Airy have been for ten years mapping stars for the use of humanity 25,868 years after the map is done--that is, that period will furnish the first opportunity for the utilization of a truly laborious task. There is no glory in it. The difference between glory and hard work in astronomy is just the difference between Ptolemy and Hipparchus. The one made a great noise in the world and got up an atheistic solar system which put science back a thousand years, while the other stayed on his island and mapped stars to the best of his ability, rendering possible some of

THE GODLIKE DEDUCTIONS

of Kepler, Halley, and Newton. The affairs of this world are managed in the light of history. It is technically called precedent. There is yet no history of astronomy. In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history. By the character of those movements, the force, speed, heat, and

OTHER QUALITIES OF GRAVITATION

might possibly be determined. Now I cannot connect the idea of selfishness with this view of the aspirations of humanity. Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of God's works as the coral reef attains continental proportions--that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day know the truth. Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?

THE ATHEIST

says: "First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above, or superior to these curious bodies of ours. The highest flight of genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body of man." These statements are false. They should not be accepted by anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence. They lead the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime. Philosophy of this kind forgets the "still small voice."

THE NOBLE "IT BEHOOVETH ME!"

rings in every intelligent mind. "I have not done that which I ought to have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest." Where does this thought come from? Why do I sit in judgment on myself? The atheist says it is selfishness. A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of the distressed, is it not? At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death. The child died, and perhaps they all died. They were taken to the hospital. The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the sidewalk.

WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL

which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply: "O, ignoble! you do not lift your finger to succor this poor man! Have shame upon you!" Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears? Surely it is not selfishness. Listen to a short colloquy:

Immanuel Kant--Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?

The Atheist--I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original you seek!

FURTHER FALLACIES.

In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism: "While we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word 'selfishness' is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin. In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either. To-day, all of society has the precise motive of the old Robber-Barons."

LET US LOOK DOWN BROADWAY

some Saturday forenoon. Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with their din and their movement. A horse comes along, walking on a hoof that is no longer a hoof. What stops every team within two blocks for twenty minutes? Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic, has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a mission of mercy through its brain. How is it that the frightful objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer? Why does he not get killed himself? Because he is in the second largest aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,

"WELL DONE!"

It could not be done in Leadville! It could not be done even in Chicago! Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of the voice of duty! Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying. So there is, but society will get there in time. Let not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair. Inside of a thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation. Society will then attend to it. When a victim fell before Achilles or Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy. The spear then went through his bowels. The times demanded it. They knew no mercy. There is no mercy in the Iliad. The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs. To-day, in New York, or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general principles. We have no sluggers who are not their superiors. The atheist should know it, and does. The world moves.

THERE MUST BE THOUGHTS

which reach beyond the human body. I remember well a day of serious mental depression which I once suffered. But out of my sadness came peace. Points in our memory lose their coloring rapidly, of course, yet the feelings of that day and night still cause a thrill of pleasure in my mind. I had been for days convinced that there were no real joys in life. As my peace came, I began laboriously to pick out some chords on a piano from the opera of "Lucretia Borgia"--the finale of the second act. My labor was rewarded by the most pleasing sounds I had ever made with my own fingers, and there was a general ebullition of pleasure and expectation of future harmonies through my whole body for many hours afterward. That night I went to hear a great scientist lecture on astronomy.

THE SUBLIMITY OF HIS SUBJECT,

the idea of a universe of stars as yet unbounded, the higher idea of an infinitude of such universes, each but a handful of mist in the greatest telescope, raised me to a point of feeling which made life an ineffable delight. I went to my bed, and thanked a Creator out of a boundless thankfulness. I have thought that the twenty-third Psalm (beginning, "The Lord is my shepherd)" is a hymn of thanksgiving inspired with the same high quality of satisfaction. Surely,

MAN IS NOT THE VICIOUS LUMP OF CLAY

which the atheist would have him when he is able to command that picture of Faith which Wordsworth wrote:

I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely, and his countenance soon Brightened with joy,--for murmurings from within Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby, To his belief the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things.

No! No! To found the problem or the actions of man on any one agent, and to cut him off from God, is peurile! The reason of man necessitated the discovery of gravitation, and it is to-day the best-established physical fact before our view. The reason of man also demands a Creator, to endow us with motives above our own development, and that reason, in the soul of every man, atheist and Christian alike, must and will, secretly or openly, have divine satisfaction.

The atheist, in these days, is the champion and the leader of a scrubby lot of social and religious ideas. He should not "march them through Coventry that's flat."

THE BIBLE.

Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross.--Shakspeare.

Your little child, on Christmas day, may give you a beautiful copy of the history of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of God that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue. The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed from its simplicity of speech only to return in riper years for rapt tuition. The wise have lingered over its perfect sentences, striving to catch the art which was showered upon those unassuming translators who gave its pages to the English-speaking world. One of the brightest wits of his time was Sidney Smith. His love of the Bible, not only as his guide and his strength, but as the greatest of all literary works, was passionate. He once impressed a circle of friends very deeply with this noble veneration: "What," said he, "is so beautiful as

THE STYLE OF THE BIBLE?

what poetry in its language and ideas!" and taking it down from the book-case he read, with his clear, manly voice, and in his most affecting manner, several of his favorite passages; among others: "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of an old man;" and part of that most beautiful of Psalms, the 139th: "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night shall be light about me; yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike unto thee." And thus he would charm his hearers, visiting their ears, perhaps, with the first true knowledge of Biblical beauty which had ever sounded upon them. Listen to

THE MERITED EULOGY

of a Roman Catholic, in the Dublin _Review_, of June, 1853: "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvelous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. Nay, it is worshiped with a positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose gross fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the man of letters and the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it The potent traditions of childhood are

STEREOTYPED IN ITS PHRASES.

The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath the words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. It has been to him all along as the silent, but oh! how intelligible voice of his guardian angel; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

WHAT A PANEGYRIC

from an avowed opponent of this translation! And to whom are we principally indebted for this lovely poem of God? To William Tyndale. Says Froude, the historian: "The peculiar genius, if such a word may be permitted, which breathes through the Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern scholars--all are here, and bear the impress of one man, and that man William Tyndale."

AND WHO WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE?

He was a gentle clergyman of great piety and learning. He was born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1477. He endured great persecution and was forced to quit England. He visited Luther in Germany. He printed his New Testament at Antwerp. Its beauties were at once recognized in England, although to read it was illegal and punishable with death. Cardinal Wolsely did his best to entice the translator to England, to destroy him. An assistant in the work, named John Frith, was lured back and burned to death. Finally Henry the Eighth of England procured Tyndale's arrest at Antwerp. He was given a "trial," at Vilvoorden, near Antwerp, and pronounced guilty. In September, 1536,

THEY STRANGLED THIS INSPIRED SERVANT

of God, and then burned his body. At the stake he cried: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes!" Upon Tyndale's version of the Bible the King James translation is solidly based. "It is astonishing," says Dr. Geddes, a profound scholar, "how little obsolete the language of it is, even at this day; and, in point of perspicuity and noble simplicity, propriety of idiom, and purity of style, no English version has yet surpassed it." Of course our language has changed greatly in 400 years. Yet

THE LORD'S PRAYER

does not contain, in Tyndale's exact language, one unrecognizable word. It ran as follows: "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth, as hit ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspases, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen."

THE MARKED POETICAL SUPERIORITY

of the Protestant over the Catholic Bible may be shown in the twenty-third Psalm, and elsewhere. The first says: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want;" the second: "The Lord ruleth me; and I shall want nothing." The first says: "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul;" the second: "He hath set me in a place of pasture; he hath brought me up on the water of refreshment; he hath converted my soul" (thus completely losing the original metaphor of the shepherd). The first says: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;" the second: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils." In Job v. 7, the first says: "Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward;" the second: "Man is born to labor, and the bird to fly." In Job xiv. 1, the first says: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;" the second: "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries." These examples will suffice to show the differences which pervade the two translations.

"INTENSE STUDY OF THE BIBLE

will keep any one from being vulgar in point of style," says Coleridge. "There are no songs," says Milton, "comparable to the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the scriptures teach." "The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified simplicity of language," says Pope, "is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer." "I use the Scriptures," says Boyle, "not as an arsenal to be resorted to only for arms and weapons, but as

A MATCHLESS TEMPLE,

where I delight to contemplate the beauty, the symmetry, and the magnificence of the structure, and to increase my awe and excite my devotion to the Deity there preached and adored." "There never was found, in any age of the world," says Bacon, "either religion or law that did so highly exalt the public good as the Bible." "It is the window in this prison of hope," says Dwight, "through which we look into eternity." "How admirable and beautiful," says Racine, "is the simplicity of the Evangelists! They never speak injuriously of the enemies of Jesus Christ, of his judges, nor of his executioners. They speak the facts without a single reflection. They comment neither on their Master's mildness, nor on his constancy in the hour of his ignominious death, which they thus describe: 'And they crucified Jesus.'" "Men cannot be well educated without the Bible," says Dr. Nott. "It ought, therefore, to hold a chief place in every situation of learning throughout Christendom." "I am of the opinion," says Sir William Jones, "that the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever age or language they have been written." "I will answer for it," says Romaine,

"THE LONGER YOU READ THE BIBLE

the more you will like it; it will grow sweeter and sweeter; and the more you get into the spirit of it, the more you will get into the spirit of Christ." "The greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with," says Sir Richard Steele, "are to be found in the Bible; and even the style of the Scriptures is more than human."

THE BIBLE IS AUTHENTIC.

It is old. It is beautiful. It is the only hope we have. If we cast it away we become as the brutes of the field, both in spirit and in body. The strong take from the weak and perish into nothing--this is all that is offered us by those who reject and revile the Bible. Such have exceeding deep ignorance, exceeding ill manners, exceeding bad taste, and exceeding great folly. "I find more sure marks of the authenticity of the Bible," says Sir Isaac Newton, "than in any profane history whatever." We use the word "secular" nowadays where "profane" was formerly written. "Profane" meant "before" or "outside" the "fane," or "temple."

THE BOOK OF JOB

is older than any other writing on earth. It antedates the Chinese Empire. It is lost in the mist of years. The histories of Moses are as old as the pyramids, and the pyramids and obelisks proclaim the integrity of the Hebrew leader and chronicler. So let us prize this greatest gift of God to man. Let us humbly thank Him for the liberties and comforts it has brought us--for even the Atheist himself refrains from robbing us of our property through the influence of the Christian religion. Let us thank God for the schools, and the hospitals, and the charities which have

THE BIBLE AT THEIR FOUNDATION,