“To find a stronger faith his own,
And power was with him in the night
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone.”[2]
Observe, a great character is not built up by doubting. There is weakness, not strength, in doubts. Nor is it necessarily a mark of intelligence to doubt. Any scanty mind may doubt, just as a fool may hold a penny-piece to his eye, and say he has hidden the sun. On the subject of Christianity, there is a very common mistake which I would guard you against. Christian faith is not a mere assent to an orthodox creed; not a mere acceptance of a speculative system of opinion. Christian faith is a thing of will, of ingenuousness, of candor, and of loyalty. The unbelief that will be visited with judgment at the last day is, the wilful, stubborn, uncandid, prevaricacious, unpersuadable unbelief. Easiness of temper does not make a just man; no more does easiness of credence make a believing man.
Conceiving then that you are honestly anxious to arrive at truth, I will endeavor in this address to meet some of the difficulties which once perplexed my own mind. The being of God, or the mystery attaching to the Divine existence, not unnaturally disturbs the mind upon the very threshold of religious inquiry. Assuredly a God eternal, all-knowing, and everywhere present is a mystery; but to stand in the midst of a universe with endless marks of a designing hand, and to say there is no God, would be a greater and more appalling mystery. Lord Bacon says: “I had rather believe all the fables of the Talmud and Koran than that this universal frame is without a mind.” May you not exaggerate this difficulty? Have you not the image of God in nature? Look at the light of the sun. It sends its rays through every cottage, every stream, and over every living thing, and yet it never contracts a stain, and takes no soil. It awakens the germs of life in organic nature, and they emerge in an endless variety of forms; it clothes the forests with a robe of verdure, paints the fields with countless flowers, and calls forth the song of thousands of birds. It unchains from their icy bands the mountain-snows, and sends myriad rills to make music through the valleys. It makes the gladness of childhood, and cheers the gloom of age. At the same time, it can photograph every mental emotion and every change of moral feeling. No subtlety can deceive it; it pierces beyond the false look; it images the character with startling justice. It is no labor to the sun to do this. Endow this sun with mind; conceive that its rays not only pervade and photograph every object, but do so consciously. Have you not here an emblem of Him who takes this image of light?
Let me, my friend, guard you against the young man who whispers in your ear that he does not believe in God. You will mostly find one of two things—either that the creed of the atheist has been adopted by him without two hours’ reflection on the matter, or is an after-thought to make him comfortable in sin. How unreasonable would a man appear to you who should have come home from the Paris exhibition of industry, affirming that the edifice itself, its pictures, fountains, and manifold products were the falling together of chance, or self-developed. But he would be wise in comparison with the man who should see the myriad proofs of design in the atmosphere, the soils, the foliage, and his own frame, and affirm that there was no Almighty Designer. Out of ten thousand proofs equally remarkable, let me mention one or two. Think of the egg of a bird, so made that wherever it is placed the chick shall float uppermost, so as to be near the warm bosom of its mother. Think of the adaptation of the camel to its life in the desert. Its feet, not like the hoofs of a horse, but cushioned with elastic pads, that do not sink into the sand, but spread over it; its stomach set round with water-sacs, from the supplies of which it can journey for days without coming to fresh water; its eyes overhung with eyebrows, and nostrils that can be firmly closed, whereby it is not incommoded with either the hot sand-clouds or the glare of the desert. Think of a gulf-stream, sixty miles broad and three thousand feet deep, which comes from the tropics every winter, which secures an equable temperature for the fishes, and prevents the seas at Stockholm and Norway from becoming a block of ice. While this is so, there is a polar current which rises in Greenland, and hastens to cool the tropics. These are single evidences of design out of millions. And these myriad evidences in the heavens and earth, in every bird and insect, every flowering shrub and blade of grass justify the assertion that a man is a “fool” who says there is no God. I indeed admit to you that, to men oppressed with sin and darkness, it is difficult to know and trust God as the Creator. His immeasurable vastness seems to place him far from us; but I shall soon show to you that God is made known to his creatures through Christ. He who has not thought it unworthy to unfold to man in the heavens the magnificence of his works, has not thought it unworthy of himself to win back his creatures’ obedience and love by sending his Son as a man. Christ has interpreted God to us. We understand God in him. We know how to seek him, to find him, to trust him, to love him.
After the existence of God, that of an immortal spirit, possessed by every human being, lies at the basis of all religion. The argument would be too metaphysical to prove here the immortality of the soul. I can only suggest to you one or two considerations. There has been a universal consent among the wisest philosophers of all times and nations, that the soul remains after the body. “The consent of all,” said Cicero on this subject, “is the voice of nature.” Observe also, that it is by the soul we know of the existence of a universe. All sensation is the recognition of effects on our senses, but that recognition is through consciousness or mind. Note also, that the body changes, but the spirit remains. A man may lose his hands or eyes, and the loss may have no effect whatever on the soul. Consider again, that matter never perishes. If there is one axiom in philosophy that is certain, it is this, that while particles of matter may pass into new combinations, they never cease to have existence. You may well, then, ask with Dr. Young:
“Can it be,
Matter immortal, and shall spirit die?