Sou. Lit. Mess.
Anecdote of an Atheist.—An atheist on his death-bed was addressed by his son,—“Father, the physician says you can live but a few hours.” “I know it, my son. Have you anything to say to me?” “My father, you and my mother have held different creeds; my mother is a Christian—you believe there is no God. Shall I follow her faith or yours?” “My son,” said the dying parent, “believe in the God of your mother.”
Thus it is in the hour of sickness, at the moment when the frail supports of pride and passion are wrecked, that the sinking atheist clutches at the plank of the Christian. Thus it is that the atheist, when he is brought upon the stand before his Maker, confesses that his creed is not one that he would wish to bequeath to his children.
Who made this?
Here is a picture of the bones or skeleton of a horse. What a wonderful piece of mechanism it is! How many bones and joints, and how they are all fitted to each other!
Now, every horse has such a skeleton or frame-work of bones: and who contrives and makes them? Can men make such curious machinery? Certainly not. Men may make steamboats, and ships, and cotton-factories, but they cannot make the bones of an animal; nor can they put muscles and life to these bones. Now, if man cannot do these things, who can? God only: he only can do these wonderful things.
Wisdom of the Creator.—The happy proportioning of one thing to another shows the wisdom of the Creator. Man, for instance, is adapted to the size and strength of a horse. If men were giants, they could not ride horses. If men were either pigmies or giants, they could not milk cows, mow grass, reap corn, train vines, or shear sheep, with anything like the conveniency they do now. If men were pigmies, they would be lost in the grass and rushes, and their children would be carried off by birds of prey. Every one can see, that, other things being as they are, man would suffer by being either much larger or smaller than he is.