Dr. Chalmers, in his work on natural theology,[3] has not, we think, correctly apprehended the bearings of the argument for the existence of a God drawn from the fact of the existence of a material world. “We do not perceive,” he says, “how, on the observation of an unshapen mass, there can from its being alone, be drawn any clear or strong inference in favor of its non-eternity: or that simply because it now is, a time must have been when it was not. We cannot thus read in the entity of matter, a prior non-entity, or an original commencement for it: and something more must be affirmed of matter than merely that it is, ere we can discern that either an artist’s mind or an artist’s hand has at all been concerned with it.” Is this either sound reasoning or good philosophy? The fact of the entity of matter does, necessarily and directly, lead to the inference that it had a beginning. It could not originate itself, and just the more as it is viewed in its mere materiality, so much the stronger and irresistible the conclusion that there was no potentiality inherent in itself to cause it to begin to exist. Strip these hills of all their verdure—remove from the mind all consideration of their beauty, variety, and softness of outline—divest that landscape of its ebb and flow of tide—of all that constitutes the scene one of the most charming on the face of the earth, and in its desolation and sterility you would still in idea revert to a period when it was not. These shapeless, inert, barren masses of rock, and soil, and sand, did not place themselves there by any power of their own. Whether on Mount Horeb or Bencleugh, the mind will learn, from its own inner voice, that the traces of Jehovah are there—a Power, beyond and above, that called these rude piles into being—the absence of all form and vitality in themselves the proof and the witness of the Creator’s mind and the Creator’s hand. Death cannot originate anything into life. Matter, as matter, cannot constitute nor begin of itself to be. A scene like this could not now commence its own being, and at no period in the past did it possess a single property of self-existence. The entity and eternity of matter are, therefore, two physically impossible things, as nothing but the one supreme intelligent God can be at once self-existent and eternal, and that which is God cannot be material.
But, if the reasoning here is bad, the philosophy is still worse. It is not philosophy at all to speak of anything in nature as unshapen. Matter is never presented to us in its simple elements. What we see of the visible, material world, is something in combination with something else, substance united with substance, and the union and combination are not accidental or chancework. There are law, order, and definite proportion in every compound body. Things go together by determinate arrangement. When first summoned into being, the elements of the universe had each separately their own communicated properties; they took their places in the mass, each according to their natures; and now the little and the great, the bowlder on the heath and the orbs on high, the concrete rock and our whole planetary system, are modeled upon a plan, and all subservient to a purpose. In decomposition none of them waste or decay. Resolved into their primary atoms, they unite in new arrangements, and collect into new bodies; and in the putrid corrupting mass, the law of order, symmetry, and beauty, reigns in active operation, eliminating new structures and establishing new harmonies.
Men have long been acquainted with the fact, that in all combinations of two or more substances, there are certain proportions which obtain among the different ingredients, and that the best mixtures are those which are regulated according to a scale. The arts have flourished, and improved in one age above those in another, just in proportion as this principle has been attended to, and the degree in which the properties of compounds have been ascertained. We hence learn to imitate the crystal in its clearness, and to rival the colors of gems and flowers. The metals are thus tempered for the use and benefit of society. The acids are neutralized, and salts are formed, and the health of man is restored or preserved. Dalton discovered the law of combination in definite and multiple proportions to be constant in the thin air we breathe—that water, in all conditions and situations, consists of the two ingredients oxygen and hydrogen, and that these in weight are always as eight of the former to one of the latter—that even the most elastic gases are composed of particles of real, ponderable, definable matter—and that through all substances, palpable or impalpable, gross or ethereal, the principle of aggregation, according to the atomic theory, is universal. Science has not, indeed, as yet determined what is the law of connection between the chemical composition and the crystalline forms of bodies; although Sir David Brewster has clearly established that there is an exact correspondence between their optical properties and their crystalline forms,—the law of the transmission of light through specific substances. Sir Isaac Newton had long before cone to the conclusion—and from the heavens brought down a philosophy to explain the theory of the earth—that “All things considered, it seems probable that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable particles, of such sizes, figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as never to wear or break to pieces, no ordinary power being able to divide what God made one in the first creation.” Philosophy such as this, verified, much of it, by an induction of rigid experiments, discovers a universe of matter worthy of its author, and like him—a God, not of confusion, but of order; things framed, every one of them, according to rule and method, and all stamped with the indelible impress of utility, design and loveliness. The “unshapen” has no place in the physical world.
“It is not,” continues Dr. Chalmers, “from some matter being harder than others, that we infer a God; but when we behold the harder placed where it is obviously the most effective for a beneficial end, as in the nails, and claws, and teeth of animals, in this we see evidence of a God.”
Now, this is precisely what has been done in the construction and disposition of the several parts of our planet. The hardest matter is placed where it can subserve a beneficial end, on the bottom of the sea, the shores of a continent, the hills that border the valleys of a country. The framework of the globe is in itself of the most durable materials, and these materials have been all so arranged as to render the earth solid, fertile, and beautiful diversity of climate, combined with diversity of soil, moisture, and shelter. These rocks may have been molten in the depths beneath; but no innate powers of nature raised them unto mountains, and separated the hard from the soft, lifting the heavier substance into the highest places, and scooping out the hollows for the lighter. These are acts, all of them, of divine might, directed to a purpose, and what alone could render this world a fitting abode for living things. Wonderfully made are all the creatures of our earth,—every bone, sinew, and muscle in its appropriate place—and so constructed as best to perform their respective functions. But equally wonderful the adjustment and adaptation, through all its parts, of that earth on which they are domiciled, and which ministers so admirably to the various wants and requirements of its diversified tribes of plants and animals. Not more significant of design, nor more effective for a beneficial end, the bony heads and enameled scales of the finny inhabitants of the period, the cephalaspes and holoptychii of the stratified rocks, than the indurated texture of the traps as a solid casement in which their waters were to be retained, and a storehouse of well-assorted materials, whence substance and nutriment were to be extracted for the land. The argument, in short, so far as fitness and utility are concerned, is one and the same in both classes of objects—the house and its inmates alike illustrative of contrivance and skill—equally eloquent in praise of the artist’s mind or the artist’s hand.
And in this way it is, that the story of our earth should be read, and the course of creation should be traced. In the first ordering of things, we see the interposition of a great First Cause; and the farther back we go in our geological researches, the more closely do we discern the chain that connects our globe, and all that is in it, with the throne of the Eternal. The everlasting hills, we are constantly reminded in Scripture, are the witnesses of his power. They are appealed to as the evidences of his ever-active, ever-sustaining presence. What wonderful manifestations of his might and wisdom have they been called to testify! Mount Ararat, the symbol of his saving interposition—Mount Sinai, for the giving of the law, and surrounded with the thunder and terror of his great name—Horeb, proclaiming his mercy and the gentleness of his love—Gilboa, drenched in the blood of his swift vengeance—Hermon, a token of the minuteness of his care and the sweetness of his grace—Tabor, Olivet, and Calvary! scenes of the mystery of incarnation and awful purity of inflexible justice.—And these very hills and mountains around, standing memorials through all ages and their revolutions, that at his bidding they arose, and by his sustaining agency they are still upheld and preserved on high.
We regard as utterly untenable the doctrine, therefore, that from the “entity” of matter we cannot infer the existence of a God. Matter, as mere matter, we do not see, and know nothing of. All the matter that is brought under our notice, is either organized or elaborated into arrangement and disposition of parts, as nicely harmonized and adjusted as organic shape and form.—The organic and inorganic structure may differ, but the difference is one of degree, as much as of kind. The argument, from the existence and composition of the atmosphere, the salubrious mixture of gases in the formation of water, the capacity and adaptation of soils for the germination of seeds and the growth of plants, is equally pointed as to the proof of design and beneficial end, as that which is derived from the fleece of the sheep, the feathers of the bird, and the silicious coating of the wheat-stalk. The uses of these things are obvious, and seen and appreciated at once.—But so is every molecule of matter and aggregation of rock, in the largest amorphous mass as in the polished crystallized gem, assimilated by law and indurated for use. And when we see the structure of the entire globe so directly conducive to the well being of its numerously diversified families, we have the argument the same in the whole as in the parts, in the lumpish mass as in the order and symmetry of the bones, muscles, and organs of the animal frame. But for these hills the rain would fall perniciously, and the dews distill in vain. Of what use the return of the seasons, with no variety of climate? and while the ocean encompassed the globe, where would be the courses of the rivers, the mists and exhalations of the valleys? We may often mistake the uses of things, the end and purpose of particular arrangements; but the doctrine of Final Causes we ought never to leave out of our calculations. They pervade all nature. They permeate all bodies. The world as constituted, the creation which we contemplate and admire, is in all its parts and dispositions a system of means and ends, a combination of instruments end skillfully-balanced agencies, a bright ever-discoursing record of the Eternal Mind, which yet shrouds itself in light inaccessible and utterly unfathomable to the comprehension of all created, finite intelligences, whether human or angelic.
Thus geology takes us up to the beginnings of creation—shows us the ingredients and arrangements of matter—lays bare the foundations of our earthly dwelling, the divisions and conveniences of its apartments—and seeing wisdom in adaptation, design in endurance and suitability, we infer, upon equally irresistible grounds, that the earth is of God, and manifests in everything the perfections of its Author. The scheme of creation, in all its parts and relations, we may never know; its course and order we can distinctly trace through many of its arrangements.
