Part 34 (1/2)
that certain bait is sure to catch him. The morning after the election the most astute Republican or Democrat in the country trembles before the terrors of a ten-line Democratic or Republican displayed heading, as the case may be. Now the crafty atheist has a way of laying down fallacies which often terrifies one into involuntarily believing that those fallacies are facts, until one stops to think that the atheist is but a man, after all, and that there is an appeal from his findings. It is, therefore, in the defense of humanity that I advance against him,
HOPING TO HIT HIM BECAUSE HE IS SO BIG,
and to escape his blows because I am so small. ”What though the day be lost, all is not lost!” Though man have glaring faults, he is still a problem far beyond the fiat of any atheist. He still has a destiny. The atheist lays down dogma after dogma. In this changing world, where even the little balance-wheel of a watch must be ”compensated,” it is clearly as impossible for any atheist to lay down an undeviating dogma as it was for the Cretan to truly say that all Cretans were liars! ”Broadly, an unselfish deed is impossible. There never was a human thought that reached beyond the human body.” Let us capture those two atheistic dogmas and take off their displayed headings.
AWAY BACK ON THE PLAINS OF CHALDaeA,
in the youth of the world, there lived men who watched their flocks by day and the hosts of heaven by night. Their study of the heavens lifted them out of themselves, in my belief, and their observations of celestial phenomena led them to the discovery of the fact that eclipses of the great heavenly lights happened in a regular rotation of eighteen years and ten days. This discovery has been very useful in purging the idolatry from eclipses--as, had it not been for the Chaldaeans, perhaps the mother of the atheist might have offered him as an oblation in
THE FIRST TOTAL ECLIPSE
after his birth! Again, Proctor and Airy have been for ten years mapping stars for the use of humanity 25,868 years after the map is done--that is, that period will furnish the first opportunity for the utilization of a truly laborious task. There is no glory in it. The difference between glory and hard work in astronomy is just the difference between Ptolemy and Hipparchus. The one made a great noise in the world and got up an atheistic solar system which put science back a thousand years, while the other stayed on his island and mapped stars to the best of his ability, rendering possible some of
THE G.o.dLIKE DEDUCTIONS
of Kepler, Halley, and Newton. The affairs of this world are managed in the light of history. It is technically called precedent. There is yet no history of astronomy. In the desired actual placing of the present positions of the stars there would be a record which, 25,868 years hence, would enable the observer of those times to accurately measure movements of the earth now beyond mortal ken for lack of history. By the character of those movements, the force, speed, heat, and
OTHER QUALITIES OF GRAVITATION
might possibly be determined. Now I cannot connect the idea of selfishness with this view of the aspirations of humanity. Proctor and Airy absolutely know that they will be forgotten so far out in on-coming time, but still they drudge away, in the belief that man can only acquire knowledge of G.o.d's works as the coral reef attains continental proportions--that is, by the infinitesimal contributions of countless unselfish individualities. They are desirous that man should some day know the truth. Is there any unselfishness in the aspiration?
THE ATHEIST
says: ”First and last of all, we have no idea of anything beyond, above, or superior to these curious bodies of ours. The highest flight of genius in art, religion, or invention has never reached beyond the body of man.” These statements are false. They should not be accepted by anybody as true, for they tend to a lower grade of existence. They lead the pardoned convict back to his hatching-house of crime. Philosophy of this kind forgets the ”still small voice.”
THE n.o.bLE ”IT BEHOOVETH ME!”
rings in every intelligent mind. ”I have not done that which I ought to have done; I therefore am disturbed and in unrest.” Where does this thought come from? Why do I sit in judgment on myself? The atheist says it is selfishness. A peculiar selfishness is that voice of duty which cries to those whom we rightly call good to go forth to the bedside of the distressed, is it not? At the corner of Lake and Paulina streets, in Chicago, a man, his wife, and his child were nearly burned to death. The child died, and perhaps they all died. They were taken to the hospital.
The next day a thrifty landlord tumbled their goods down-stairs to the sidewalk.
WHAT WAS IT IN MY SOUL
which, when I saw the young barbarians all at play tearing and destroying those meagre comforts, cried out so sharply: ”O, ign.o.ble! you do not lift your finger to succor this poor man! Have shame upon you!”
Why is it that that voice still sounds in my ears? Surely it is not selfishness. Listen to a short colloquy:
Immanuel Kant--Duty! wondrous thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, nor flattery, nor by any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law to the soul, and so extorting for thyself always reverence, if not obedience; before whom all appet.i.tes are dumb, however secretly they rebel; whence thy original?
The Atheist--I am glad to inform you that selfishness is the original you seek!
FURTHER FALLACIES.
In the interest of an advancing Christian humanity, I call attention to still further fallacies as I hear them in the mouth of atheism: ”While we cannot quite hold that the idea expressed by the modern word 'selfishness' is new to mankind, we can safely say that it is only recently that selfishness came to be held a very sin. In the day of lance, and fort, and mailed right hand, the Knight took what he could, and held what he could, and there were no mealy-mouthed words about the rights of others, and a broad Christian charity, either. To-day, all of society has the precise motive of the old Robber-Barons.”