Gospel Philosophy / Showing the Absurdities of Infidelity, and the Harmony of the Gospel with Science and History

by J. H. Ward

In like manner we might observe the marks of design and mechanical skill displayed in the formation of the eye. First, there is the cavity in which it is placed, composed of seven little bones nicely fitted and glued together, lined with the softest fat and enveloped in a tissue, compared with which the softest silk is only coarse canvas. Then the cavity is so shaped as to exactly fit the eye, while the brow projects over like the roof of a veranda and the lids close down over it to protect it from injury. Again, we find that the ropes and pulleys used in the rigging of a ship are simplicity indeed as compared with the nerves and muscles used in the movements of the eye.

Most persons have seen a ship, and know the way in which the yards are moved, and the sails squared by means of ropes and pulleys. Now, there is a tackle called a muscle to pull the eye down when you want to look down; another to pull it up when you have done; there is one to pull it to the right, and another to pull it to the left. There is one fastened to the eyeball in two places, and so arranged that it will move the eye in any direction, as when we roll our eyes; and a sixth fastened to the under side of the eye to keep it steady when we do not need to move it. Then the eyelids are provided with suitable gearing, and it needs to be durable too, for it is said to be used thirty thousand times a day, in fact, every time we wink.

Not less wonderful is the construction of the eye itself. The optic nerve is the part of the eye which conveys visions to the mind. Suppose instead of it being where you observe it, at the back part of the eye, it had been brought out to the front, and that reflections from objects had fallen directly upon it. It is obvious that it would have been exposed to injury from every floating particle of dust, and we would always have felt such a sensation as is caused by a burn or scald when the skin peels off and leaves the ends of the nerves exposed to the air. Also the tender points of the fibres of the optic nerve would soon become blunted and the eye of course useless. How then is the nerve to be protected, and yet the sight not obstructed? If it were covered with skin as the other nerves are, we could not see through it. For thousands of years after men had eyes and used them, they knew no substance at once hard and transparent, which could answer the double purpose of vision and protection. To this day man knows no substance clear enough for vision, hard enough for protection, and elastic enough to resume its form after a blow. Now observe in the eye, that forward part, called the cornea, is as it were the watch-glass. It it is made of a substance at once hard, transparent and elastic; something which man has never been able to imitate.

It may be asked, what is the use of so many lenses in the eye? Light when refracted through a lens, becomes separated into its component colors—red, yellow, green, blue and violet. So that if the crystalline lens of the eye alone were used, we should see every white object, bluish in the middle, and yellowish and reddish at the edges. This difficulty perplexed Sir Isaac Newton all his life, and he never discovered the mode of making a refracting telescope which would obviate it. That remained for M. Dolland, a celebrated physician, to do; and he did it by studying and imitating the formation of the eye. Now what absurdity to say that a law of nature, such as gravity, or electricity has such a knowledge of the principles of optics and mechanics as the eye proclaims its Former to have! In all this we see marks of the most admirable design. The eye is fitted both to gaze at the stars millions of miles away and minutely examine objects only a few inches distant. In the brightness of sunshine the pupil contracts in order to protect the optic nerve from injury; in twilight it expands so as to admit a greater amount of light. When we wish to regulate the admission of light to our rooms we have recourse to very clumsy contrivances. A self-acting window which shall expand in the twilight and partially close of its own accord as the light increases towards noon, has never been manufactured by man. In short, anatomists have already observed more than eight hundred contrivances in the dead eye, while the greatest contrivance of all, the power of seeing, is utterly beyond their ken.

Similar arguments might be brought from every department of nature to prove the marks of design in creation. The question therefore returns with double force, had the world a creator or did it make itself? There are persons who say it did, and with a brazen-faced impudence declare that the Bible tells a falsehood when it says that, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." "Whereas," say they, "we know that matter is eternal, and the world being wholly composed of matter, therefore, the heavens and the earth are eternal—never had a beginning nor a creator." Profound reasoning indeed! In the same manner we might say, "Here is a well-burned brick, fresh from the kiln, which may last for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has always existed."

Again, it is claimed by some that matter is indestructible. The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. Who knows that fact? for the very reason that no one can tell what matter in its own nature is. We may heat water to a certain degree and change it into steam, but it is all there in the steam. We may burn coal and thus change is appearance, but its particles are all there, in the form of gas, ashes or tar. All that any one can say is, that matter is indestructible by any power or agency known to man. But to assert that matter is eternal, because man cannot destroy it, is as if a child should try to beat a locomotive to pieces with his stick, and failing in the attempt should say, "I am sure this locomotive existed from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."

But, supposing that matter is eternal, how does that account for the formation of this beautiful world? The earth consists not of one substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material substances as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, and some fifty-two or three others already discovered (see Turner's Chemistry, section 341). Now which of these is the eternal matter referred to? Is it iron, or sulphur, or carbon, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did the others come from? Did a mass of iron, for example, becoming discontented with its condition, suddenly change itself into a cloud of gas or a pail of water? Or are all the elements eternal? Have we fifty-eight eternal substances? Are they all eternal in their present combinations, or is it only the simple elements that are eternal? Whatever may be the answers to these questions, they give no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless mass called matter, but a beautiful building composed of a variety of substances. Has this earth existed as it is from eternity? No man who ever was in a quarry or gravel pit will say so, much less one who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. If the elements which compose the earth have not always existed as we now find them, then how came they to put themselves in their present shapes? Matter has no power of putting itself in motion when at rest, nor of coming to rest when in motion. A body will never change its place unless moved, and if once started will move on forever unless stopped. For example, if we leave our room, and on our return find a book missing, we know that some one has taken it—the book could not have gone off at its own suggestion.

Now will the infidels presume to tell us, that the fifty-eight primary elements danced about till the air, sea and earth somehow jumbled themselves together into the present shape of this glorious and beautiful world, with all its regularity of day and night, Summer and Winter, with all its beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its variety of birds, beasts and fishes, not to speak of the beauties of the morning, the gorgeous dyes of sunset, or the silent glories of the midnight sky. Or to bring the question down to the level of the intellect of the most stupid atheist, tell us in plain English, did the paving stones make themselves?

Absurd as it seems, there are persons claiming to be philosophers who not only assert that they did, but will tell you how they did it. One class of them think they found it out by supposing everything in the universe reduced to very fine powder, consisting of very fine grains, which they call atoms; or, if that is not fine enough, into gas, of which it is supposed the particles are too fine to be perceived, and then by different arrangements of these atoms, according to the laws of attraction, electricity, or some other law, the various elements of the world were made, and arranged in their present forms. But then the difficulty is only multiplied millions of times. Each bit of paving stone, no matter how small you break it, can no more make itself or move itself, than could the whole stone composed of all these bits. So we are landed back at the sublime question, did the paving stones make themselves?