The Golden Censer Part 34

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."

LET US LOOK DOWN BROADWAY

some Sat.u.r.day forenoon. Myriads of vehicles confuse the common mind with their din and their movement. A horse comes along, walking on a hoof that is no longer a hoof. What stops every team within two blocks for twenty minutes? Why, an officer has rushed into that torrent of traffic, has grasped that poor beast by the bridle, and has sent a bullet on a mission of mercy through its brain. How is it that the frightful objurgations of the high-charioted host fall so lightly on that officer?

Why does he not get killed himself? Because he is in the second largest aggregation of human beings in the world, where the voice of religion is strongest, and where that voice cries in unmistakable tones,

"WELL DONE!"

It could not be done in Leadville! It could not be done even in Chicago!

Not enough religious education; not enough development; not enough of the voice of duty! Let not the atheist say that there is a child in the back alley dying. So there is, but society will get there in time. Let not the atheist criticise society; it is too big an affair. Inside of a thousand years it will be a necessity of society as well as it now is of religion, to be kind to humanity as well as to the brute creation.

Society will then attend to it. When a victim fell before Achilles or Diomedes, that victim begged for mercy. The spear then went through his bowels. The times demanded it. They knew no mercy. There is no mercy in the Iliad. The Barons, also, were a crowd of thugs. To-day, in New York, or London, or Paris, they would each get twenty years on general principles. We have no sluggers who are not their superiors. The atheist should know it, and does. The world moves.

THERE MUST BE THOUGHTS

which reach beyond the human body. I remember well a day of serious mental depression which I once suffered. But out of my sadness came peace. Points in our memory lose their coloring rapidly, of course, yet the feelings of that day and night still cause a thrill of pleasure in my mind. I had been for days convinced that there were no real joys in life. As my peace came, I began laboriously to pick out some chords on a piano from the opera of "Lucretia Borgia"--the finale of the second act. My labor was rewarded by the most pleasing sounds I had ever made with my own fingers, and there was a general ebullition of pleasure and expectation of future harmonies through my whole body for many hours afterward. That night I went to hear a great scientist lecture on astronomy.

THE SUBLIMITY OF HIS SUBJECT,

the idea of a universe of stars as yet unbounded, the higher idea of an infinitude of such universes, each but a handful of mist in the greatest telescope, raised me to a point of feeling which made life an ineffable delight. I went to my bed, and thanked a Creator out of a boundless thankfulness. I have thought that the twenty-third Psalm (beginning, "The Lord is my shepherd)" is a hymn of thanksgiving inspired with the same high quality of satisfaction. Surely,

MAN IS NOT THE VICIOUS LUMP OF CLAY

which the atheist would have him when he is able to command that picture of Faith which Wordsworth wrote:

I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped sh.e.l.l; To which in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely, and his countenance soon Brightened with joy,--for murmurings from within Were heard, sonorous cadences! whereby, To his belief the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea.

Even such a sh.e.l.l the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things.

No! No! To found the problem or the actions of man on any one agent, and to cut him off from G.o.d, is peurile! The reason of man necessitated the discovery of gravitation, and it is to-day the best-established physical fact before our view. The reason of man also demands a Creator, to endow us with motives above our own development, and that reason, in the soul of every man, atheist and Christian alike, must and will, secretly or openly, have divine satisfaction.

The atheist, in these days, is the champion and the leader of a scrubby lot of social and religious ideas. He should not "march them through Coventry that's flat."

THE BIBLE.

Those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross.--Shakspeare.

Your little child, on Christmas day, may give you a beautiful copy of the history of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of G.o.d that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue.

The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed from its simplicity of speech only to return in riper years for rapt tuition. The wise have lingered over its perfect sentences, striving to catch the art which was showered upon those una.s.suming translators who gave its pages to the English-speaking world.

One of the brightest wits of his time was Sidney Smith. His love of the Bible, not only as his guide and his strength, but as the greatest of all literary works, was pa.s.sionate. He once impressed a circle of friends very deeply with this n.o.ble veneration: "What," said he, "is so beautiful as