“Science has, as I apprehend it—and I would not be erroneous in my judgment, nor willingly harsh—generally impressed the intellects of its votaries in such a manner as to lead them intellectually to find nothing beyond the elemental matter of the Universe as their eyes behold it. Exceptions there have been, and are, to this general charge; but they are rare. To refer in especial to the fact stated (without being ungenerously personal), I may add that the acknowledged highest and most accomplished medical authority in New York to-day (so I am informed) hesitates not to aver, as his best and highest conviction, that when a human body is thoroughly dissected upon his table, he has shown to his class of students all that was or is of the specimen of humanity, save the extinct principle of animal existence.
“This is simply bald, blank atheism!
“It is an undoubted fact that such an opinion may be held by many a man of sincerity; but such products have been initiated by the gross sensuousness of the religious thought, that has given form and substance to what should never have been considered as coming within the range of things designated by and possessing those attributes.
“Let me explain, if I can, to the comprehension of such as may, perchance, read this, the nature of the Faith that is in me.
“I am willing in my elder days to live by it, and to be judged of it by the enlightened convictions of my fellow-men while I live upon this earth, and by that Deity in whom I verily believe.
“I know—we all know—of the imperious forces of nature which rock a continent or roll back an ocean from its shores.
“We also know something of gigantic and of microscopic life; of the intelligence of animated nature, through all its varied and wonderful forms; we know and study the wonders of the human intellect, even from (I might almost say) the first dawn of life.
“We are all, more or less, conversant with the action of principles which inhere in many species of vegetable life, in which we note a rare and exquisite faculty of sensation, which mirrors in its perfection the faculty of human consciousness, and human ingenuity.
“We look, not upward nor downward—for those terms are inadmissible in this connection—but outward from our standpoint; and what do we see? The heavens, as the ancients called what their limited vision revealed to them. Under Galileo’s lead we look again, aided by the telescope of moderate power, and, beyond that gathered in our first field of sight, we find another countless host of stars. Tired with the result we think and rest. Recuperating our wearied eyes, we substitute an instrument of higher power, and again peer into the realm of Infinitude. And again another congeries of stars is opened to our human vision. Repeat the process as we may, and as often as we choose, increase the penetrating power of our instrument, the same fact remains. There is no end, no limitation. But in all these results of our inquisitorial efforts we discover one preponderating law—that of undeviating order. This is the one omnipresent principle by which their movements are governed.
“Law, in this sense at least, must be and is the result of dictation by the highest wisdom, and necessitates the existence of Deity. I use the term because it is the only one which is pertinent to the subject and idea to be expressed. The word God is the outcome of the earlier ages of comparative intellectual darkness. The highest mental status of mankind at that time could not apprehend a Ruler of the Universe except as clothed with a form somewhat analogous to that of a human being, and hence the rather presumptuous declaration that ‘God created man in His own image.’