Mr. Reason, who was an atheist, opens the discussion as follows:
"Mr. Christian, we have held a council on the subject under discussion, and our conclusion is that you are right. There must be, and is, such a being as God. Were this not so, we never could have had the idea of him. We are now deists. We deny that he has ever imparted knowledge to man by revelation."
Christian—Gentlemen, do you think your present position is a scientific one?
Deists—We think it is both scientific and invulnerable, and we also think that if you continue this investigation with us you will find it so. How did you obtain this idea? Have you seen God? No. Have you heard him speak? No. If we had we could not be honest without being Christians?
Christian—Gentlemen, have you not contraband goods in your warehouse? As your eyes have not seen, nor your ears heard, nor your powers of observation perceived him, and as you acknowledge that every one of your ideas entered the mind through the aid of one or another of the five senses, now, I ask, are you logically any better off than before you found yourselves obliged to relinquish your atheism? Do you not now, as well as then, occupy unreasonable ground? Having rather conceded that atheists are fools, and turned deists, are you really any better off? Can you give a reason for your present infidelity? Out of your own mouths you stand condemned as unreasonable and foolish. You pretend to venerate reason, while you discard her first principles. You need not try to evade me at this point by an appeal to nature. Here you can find no aid, for nature tells us of no first cause. The apple tree, before this window, now so richly laden with fruit, tells not of its first cause. If you say it came from an apple-seed, and that from an apple, and that from another tree, another seed, and another tree, and so on, in a circle you may always go, for nature does not tell you of a first tree as a cause uncaused, nor of a Creator, a God. She does not go behind herself. Gentlemen, have you any reply? If you have, I would like to hear it.
Reason timidly says: "Mr. C., in your very severe strictures on the deists, are you not condemning yourself? You pretend to place full confidence in the teachings of your Bible, and does it not say: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork?' Can nature thus declare and not make known?"
Christian—Yes, your quotation tells the truth; yet in this also you have taken too much for granted. There stands a clock; it keeps correct time, but does it declare the glory of any one?
Deists—Yes, that of its maker.
Christian—But who was its maker. You say you do not know. That is true, and, for ought you know, or can learn from its mechanism there might have been several makers connected with its origin. If you had stood by and seen it made, then you might have told me all about it. In that which you call the works of nature, neither you, nor I, nor any of our fellows, are instructed by actual observation consequent upon being present when they were made—we were not standing by when the heavens were made; so that source of information is closed up. There is now but one resort left to us—but one reasonable means of information. That is, the maker of all things must, necessarily, have told man that he created all these things. Then, with David, he could sing, "The heavens declare the glory of God." Man first learned from God that he was the creator of all things, for God alone could tell it. Gentlemen, the Christian is the only reasonable being upon the earth, and the only fearless free-thinker. The atheist, you see, is proved a fool, and the deist is no better. Think this over, then call again.
Deists—We will. Good evening.