If, then, this motion endures with fixed laws; if, in so great a diversity of infinite bodies, I recognize a system according to which no one interferes with the other, but all agree in a supreme harmony of mode; if, for instance, the destruction of one of the celestial bodies would discompose the marvellous structure of the universe; if from the alteration of the orbit of a planet the man of science can conclude the existence of another, thousands of miles distant, it is not the holy fathers but Voltaire who will exclaim, "If the clock exists, there must necessarily be a clock-maker." It is impossible to kill a moral being, a universal sentiment, by arms, or books, or declamations.
The Deity does not offer himself to sensation, observation, or experience; hence the sensists and perceptionists see in him but a hypothesis, and reject all theology and all metaphysics. They abuse the method of observation by applying it to what is not observable. No object of experiment can be God; nor can any perception reach him in this world, since he can only manifest himself to us ideally; that is to say, by the reflection of thought on itself, under the pure form of an idea; and an idea necessarily supposes an existence. Reason must come to God through the medium of the idea of God: whence an illustrious writer defending religious philosophy adopted the appropriate title of "IDEA OF GOD."
Nowadays, when the series of generations are brought to laugh and dance at the funeral of God and the evaporation of Christ, it is not superfluous to accumulate psychological and social proofs on the existence of a first necessary Cause, on its reality, and on its divine life reverberating in the great labor of creation; on those laws of phenomena which others call the ideas of nature, and we call the Creator. The word must be personified, and substantiated to express something real.
Among these laws I have always found that those regarding the origin of language had great influence on me and are of great help against the atheists. The more we study, the more we are convinced that the languages have a common source. How did man ever discover that ideas could be represented with sounds, or real thought by the medium of words, and then invent symbolical, phonetic, or alphabetic signs to represent both ideas and sounds? Or is the word only the means of expressing our thoughts, or the essential form of them, the indispensable condition necessary to our having them? Can sensation draw anything out of a word but a material sound? How is it that all the human races—Iranic, Semitic, Gallic, or Black—speak, and only men speak? How is it that although there is a common element in all languages, yet such diversity exists among certain groups? The more we study this indispensable complement of creation, this condition of our intellectual development, the more we are led to confess that there are mysteries in the human word as well as in the divine word; and all this reveals the name of God.
When we have proved the reality, we must investigate the essence of God. And here we meet the mystery of unity and trinity, which, considered in itself, explains being; considered outside of itself, explains beings. Because, if we repudiate a supernatural God, we must substitute another in his place—a being of reason and abstraction, or a material god, or a god of pleasure. But these insane hypotheses must be made to explain the existence of the universe. They are either the eternity of matter or emanatism. Life put into matter we know not how; born, we know not how, we have spontaneous productions, or transformations of species, as Lamarck and Darwin maintain; but the learned show that these theories are impossible both as to soul and body. And then no one of these naturalists explains the end of man, nor his most precious gift—liberty.
The God of the Bible alone contains the true explanation of man and the universe. He who, spontaneously putting his omnipotence into activity without material elements, drew the world out of nothing; and this because he is good, and wills the good and the beautiful.
IV.
The most prodigious part of creation is man, destined for eternity; nor could there be in him a tendency without a scope, an end without a means, nor a merit without a recompense. The world is for his use, but he must not forget that eternity is his destiny. For the purpose of proving the material origin of the human intellect philosophers reject all who would give to life a distinct principle, isolated from organism, supposing that life, at least in its rudimental form, could spring from the bosom of organic liquids. Virchow praised the little cell, the only one of the anatomic elements which Milne-Edwards called organical, and which is a nucleus of various forms, surrounded by a protoplasm of organic matter without figure. From the cell are formed the embryos, which gradually become perfect and form animals, until the ape changes into man.