Let us take the other hypothesis. Suppose there is no God; suppose Mr. —— has satisfied me that there is no supernatural revelation, and no personal God to make one. Has he made it well for me hereafter? Has he delivered me from all fear for the future? Has he saved me beyond question from "the serpent of eternal pain"? If there is no God, does that make it certain that there will be no future suffering for any man? Let us see. We are here in a world of suffering. How came we here? and how did suffering come here? If we came without a God, who will prove that without a God we may not go elsewhere, and that suffering may not go with us? Here we are—by natural law, by evolution, by chance—as part and particle of the one eternal unity; however it may be, we are here, and we suffer. We know what pain of body and pain of mind are. We have felt the sting of death, and no law of nature, no power of evolution, has ever lighted up for us the darkness of the grave. Now, the question we want answered is this: If "Nature" has brought us into this state where there is so much of what we call sin, and so much bound with it that we call suffering, how do we know that the same "Nature" may not continue the same facts hereafter? Nay, what assurance can Mr. —— give us that "Nature" is not a power that may in some future frenzy cast us into a state far worse than the present? Is he so far possessed of all the secrets of "Nature" that he knows the time will never come when she may strike us with a force more terrible than any retributive judgment of God? If "Nature" works now in storm and fire, in earthquake and pestilence, in disease and torture and death, in the sorrows of memory, the horrors of remorse and dread forebodings of coming woe, how do you know that she may not manifest herself thus hereafter and through the ages to come?
If Nature is, as Mr. —— says, the mother of us all, there are times when she manifests her motherhood appallingly. And when are these manifestations to end and how are they to end? If under her regal sway we find that, as a fact, sin and suffering are connected here, can any man prove that it may not be a law of "Nature" herself that sin and suffering shall be connected eternally? If in the imperial reign of "the mother of us all" there are chains and scourges, prisons and scaffolds, thunderbolts and flames, cyclones and famines and ocean-graves, will any man prove that somewhere in the darkness and mystery of the future there may not be, in the long outworking of this reign, something worse than a hell, worse than an undying worm, worse than a quenchless fire?
It is, I admit, a fearful thing to fall unprepared into the hands of the living God; but if I must choose, give me that, a thousand times, rather than the terrific possibilities that overhang us all if we are to be eternally at the disposal of a blind, inexorable, soulless, merciless "Nature." The Judge of all the earth will do right; at the worst we shall receive no more at his hands than we deserve; but no created being can tell us what we shall receive at the hands of an irresponsible, pitiless "Nature" though she be "the mother of us all." There is nothing so dark and terrible in all the woes of the Bible as the possibilities that Mr. —— offers us in his gospel; and there is this difference: the Bible opens wide a door of hope for all who care to enter it; Mr. —— leads us out into the outer darkness and leaves us there. Is it worth while for any man to spend his life in persuading us to make this exchange of despair? And is it worth our while—yours or mine—to make it?
Truly yours,
C——.
[LETTER III.]
My Dear A——: In the note in which you kindly acknowledge my former communications you say that, whatever Christianity may be to me, you cannot see it as I do; its excellences, as they appear to my mind, do not impress you at all, and as long as they do not you cannot be expected to accept it. I admit the conclusion: you cannot receive as good and true what does not seem to be so. But does it follow that a thing is not good and true because you do not see it? The question still comes, Is the cause in the thing or in you?
You remember the Beethoven concert we once attended together in B——? To you it was an occasion of exquisite enjoyment; to me it was nothing. The difference was not in the music: it was in us. You have a musical taste; I have not. I tried—not very sincerely, perhaps—to persuade you that there was nothing beautiful in it; you smiled, but attempted no argument. You were wise. You knew the music was beautiful, for you had experienced it; you had felt its power. If I chose to deny it because I had not felt it, so it must be; you could only pity me.