Now, on the theory of inexorable law* instead of a beneficent Providence, we are not surprised that a ship which is not strong enough to ride the storm should go to the bottom, even though five hundred bishops and clergymen be aboard supplicating an unknown God for succor. On the theory of inexorable and merciless law in which we are fast bound, we are not "puzzled" that millions of human beings should starve to death when these laws or conditions of Nature are violated in over-population and a false political and social economy. Or when a Tay bridge goes down with its living freight under the pressure of train and tempest, the Atheist is neither surprised nor puzzled: but the Christian, who worships a benevolent (?) God and believes that not a hair falls from his head without His notice, can only look at such a malevolent horror in dumb silence and amazement—he has no explanation. Our theory of the presence of evil in the world is, therefore, at least rational; but, is the Christian theory rational? Is it rational to-suppose that all the pain, sorrow, and evil in the world have been caused by the puerile circumstance of a woman eating an apple? This would be as monstrously unjust as it is irrational and absurd.
As to the origin and maintenance of life "without God," it is quite as comprehensible and rational without God as with one with the Christian conditions and qualifications. An universe of matter containing the "promise and potency of all forms and qualities of life" is as intelligible and comprehensible as a God outside the Universe embodying the potency of all life. From the time that Lucretius declared that "Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the Gods," and Bruno that matter is the "universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb," down to Prof. Tyndall, who discerns in matter "the promise and potency of every form and quality of life," scientists have never been able to discover the least intrusion of any creative power into the operations of
* Materialists, in using the phrase "law of Nature," use a
popular expression, but not in the popular sense as
presupposing a law-giver. By "law of Nature" we simply mean
natural sequence—the uniformity of Nature's operations.
Nature and the affairs of this world, or the least trace of interference by any God or gods. In the primeval ages of ignorance and barbarism the gods were supposed to do everything, from the production of wind, rain, tempest, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, &c, down to dyspepsia and potato-bugs. Science now explains all these things and a thousand others. Indeed, in modern philosophy there is no room for the gods in the Universe, and nothing left for them to do. And there cannot be any room beyond it for them, for "above Nature we cannot rise."
The Materialistic theory (and to it we subscribe) is that there is but one existence, the Universe, and that it is eternal—without beginning or end—that the matter of the Universe never could have been created, for ex nihilo nihil fit, (from nothing nothing can come,) and that it contains within itself the potency adequate to the production of all phenomena. This we think to be more conceivable and intelligent than the Christian theory that there are two existences—God and the Universe—and that there was a time when there was but one existence, God, and that after an indefinite period of quiescence and "masterly inactivity" He finally created a Universe either out of Himself or out of nothing—either one of which propositions is philosophically absurd. And in either case, to say that God would be infinite would be equally absurd.
Respectfully,
ALLEN PRINGLE.
Napanee, Ont., April 23, 1880.