The skeptic dreamed of life, and he dreamed that he was the god of his own destiny; he could map out a future for himself and make life serve his ends. And upon the portals of his heart he wrote, “I believe what I see, and naught beside.” Eternity to him was a jest, the Bible an old woman’s book, God an old idea engendered in men’s mind through their ignorance of organic laws. Heaven was a poet’s dream, and hell a superstitious creation to frighten nervous people.
He married, and over the cradle of his firstborn child he repeated his life’s creed. Time passed on, and the tendrils of the child’s life twined themselves about the father’s heart. He would train the boy up a child of nature. No superstitious nonsense should warp his mind; no old woman’s tales from the Bible should be told to him. He should learn to believe in himself and none beside. He will teach him the mightiness of matter, the triumphs of civilization, and the progress of thought, and the child says: ―
“Father, who made those beautiful stars that shine in the sky?”
And the man says: “My boy, they came of themselves; ages ago they were formed of dust.”
“Father, who made the bright sun?” And the father-answers: “The particles of dust were set in a glow by the velocity of their rotary motion, and thus the sun was formed.”
“Father, who made the trees and the flowers I love so well? I should like to know where they come from, they are so beautiful.” And the answer is still the same: “Nature, my boy; these animated particles took this form.”
“And who is Nature, father?” is the question of the young spirit putting forth one soul tendril after another, longing for the sunlight of eternal truth. “My boy, we cannot tell.”
“Father, what is Death?” “Death, my boy, is the dissolving of the particles one from the other again; thus they go back to their original state and form other substances.”
By-and-by the child is ill, and the wings of the soul are fluttering close to the shores of eternity. The father’s heart is breaking at the thought of losing him; there is not one single hope to cheer — the future is as black as the present.
“Father, where am I going?” says the little sufferer, tossing about in the agonies of death. “It’s all dark, father. I had a dream last night. I thought I saw a beautiful land with gates of pearl, and golden streets, and beautiful people in white with shining wings were there, and they wanted me to come to them. Where is that land, father? I always see it when I sleep. Who made it? The trees were more beautiful than ours; the light was brighter, and everyone looked happy there. Tell me, father, who was that upon the throne whom the angels worshipped. Did Nature make THAT land, father? Was that Nature on the throne?”
The father’s answer is his tears. The boy had groped his way blindly through the darkness of nature up to nature’s God. Through the rent veil of skepticism he had seen at last the dawning light of heaven; and the man, gazing at the dead face of his child, with the hush and awe of eternity around him, can find no hope or comfort in his skepticism at all. He knows nothing of the realism that gave such infinite pathos to David’s words, when he said, speaking of his dead boy: “Though he can never come to me, yet I am going to him.”
Ah! my friends, the skeptic’s dream is, colored with the fires of hell. What can life be to the man who denies his God, whose soul is wrapt about with the shroud of a moral death, who, moving in the narrow circle of his own distorted ideas, dwarfs his soul for time and destroys it for eternity?
“Where is a God?” loth weary reason say,
“I see but starlit skies.”
“Where is the sun?” so calleth at noonday
The man with sightless eyes.
Thou, little child, from thee God is not far;
Look inwards, not above;
Thou needest not to roam from star to star,
For God is love.
We live in awful days of infidelity and doubt, and on the pages of many a life is written the fearful words, “There is no God.” And some believe in God, and deny the deity of the Lord Jesus. From the hands of devils the seeds of unbelief have been sown all over the world, and what a terrible harvest has come up!
Heyman Wreford.