To-day at any rate the proverbial “conflict between science and religion” comes in here. And it is not difficult to make out on which side men are prepared to range themselves. In any apparent issue between them there is certainly shown a tendency always to give science the benefit of the doubt. And all along there are assumptions made for a yet lisping science which are denied to the clear and mature tones of scripture's voice. How interesting to discover, for instance, that while we may have no unchallenged dogmas in religion, science may press an unproven theory upon us with all the authority of dogma, and few but are coerced or cajoled into bowing down to it!
Thus one would imagine now that to entertain the novel theory of evolution would be to consign to oblivion this great argument of design in nature. Yet here we are taught that this great discovery of the nineteenth century need not be thought to invalidate the evidence of design, for the divine purpose in view throughout the long age-lasting upward progress to nature's crowning product, man, is, if anything, the more evidenced thereby. Were it not better frankly to avow, if one could go no further, that if this truly epoch-making hypothesis be indeed confessed as a clearly established axiom of science—which is, however, even on its own ground, by no means the case—then that its account and that of scripture being so utterly at variance, the disparity between the two is evident and must be faced. Certainly, in the matter of man's origin, the difference is marked enough between “nature's crowning product” and Adam created in God's image. As to which affords true evidence, not only of design, but of divine care and interest, where is the comparison? One must suppose it is all a question of the kind of God we are content to prove the existence of. If One to whom every one of us must give account of himself; One with whom we have to do; if a God whose goodness unfallen creation proclaimed, whose love has since been manifested, and whose grace is presently offered to all—a theory which delegates the production of all things, and man above all, to the progress of ages through the agency of natural selection, will be as little satisfying to us as the more ancient, and scarcely less worthy, idea of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. No; if God be the God we adore, the God whose word we believe (and what have we, even if nature's witness were increased tenfold, if we rest not there), our universe owes its being to Him, and man infinitely more so, in a far more direct manner than evolution would teach. “He spake and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast.” “God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
But the real worth of such evidence from nature, apart altogether from such modifications of it as have been alluded to as now prevalent, its evidence undiluted, at what estimate shall we take it if what we may see of its weight with, and effect upon, men be the criterion by which we judge? Does nature lead to nature's God inevitably? certain as it is that it points there most truly. What does scripture say of its witness? The first chapter of Romans we may take in its later verses surely as giving an instance of how mankind may be affected by the testimony of creation. It is in no special sphere such as Judaism, remember, that this history of man's attitude towards the knowledge of God is traced; but out in the open, among men at large, the Gentiles. From verse 19 onwards we are shown wherein the “ungodliness” of the Gentiles, previously spoken of, consists. This ungodliness of men against which the wrath of God is revealed, what was it but simply an entire absence of the fear of God, where there was sufficient testimony existing to render such a thing inexcusable? The apostle, in reviewing this testimony, goes back to what is primary. The largest, the most general sphere is chosen first, creation, “that which may be known of God.” Primitive as is its witness, creation is still full of manifestation of God. That which was “knowable” of God, from the testimony of created things, contained a voice for any listening ear, wherever or whenever found. “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead [divinity], so that they are without excuse.”
The works of God truly render eloquent testimony regarding their Author; and “that which may be known of Him,” in respect of His Being and power, finds adequate expression there. His eternal power and divinity, invisible like all His attributes, apart from His disclosure of Himself, visible objects of striking character are eminently suited to proclaim. “The heavens,” we read in Psalm 19, “declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” Above man then appeared, and around Him were strewn, wonders great and innumerable to draw and fix his attention upon that supremely wise and powerful One to whom they silently pointed. That these did point somewhere the most darkened heathen has never escaped the conviction of. To say, however, that such have merely missed, through inadvertence, the right direction in which they might have been dimly seen to point, would be to misrepresent the case. Had the indications been obscure, some such excuse might be found possible, but it is not a mistaken reading of the evidence that we must lay to man's account, but the wholesale rejection of it. The language that “day unto day uttereth” is as little ambiguous as its “pouring forth” is meager. The knowledge that “night unto night showeth” is no esoteric doctrine, but breathes its whisper in the ears of all. “There is no speech nor language; their voice is not heard.” Not in articulate fashion; yet “their line is gone out through all the earth, and their sayings to the end of the world.”
Such widespread, continuous, and eloquent testimony would seem to leave little room for either ignorance or mistake. Yet what are the facts of the case? Take man in the state he now is in of ignorance and darkness as to the knowledge of God. Take, on the other hand, the witness of nature to the Creator we have spoken of as of so great power and certainty. How are we to explain the lack of conviction wrought, the apparent unfruitfulness of this line of evidence? Is it not that the hearts of men have been so desirous after some alternative signification that they have willfully disregarded its true indication? God they will not see it points to. Anyone or anything but Him they would willingly invest with the glory of such handiwork. They say unto God, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” Yet even in face of this want of desire after God, these silent witnesses remain, to be accusers if nothing more; and the sum of their accusation here is that ungodly men are “without excuse.”
And, taken in the mass, this is all the fruit the witness of nature has produced in man! There is no clearness lacking, no inherent weakness in, its testimony to a divine Creator. Rather might it seem an inference from which there was no escape. Yet the fact remains that, as the rule, man has not drawn that inference. Man being what he is, God is not in all his thoughts, however much creation seems to press Him upon his attention. Faith truly perceives creation to be His work, as Hebrews 11:3 declares-"Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” But were we left with the bare fact of nature's witness, not so much after all that “God is” as that “God must be,” as the basis of appeal to men, we possess but little. Besides, at best, as has been said, to prove the existence of God is to descend to the very elementary.
On two occasions, noted in the Acts, the apostle Paul found it necessary to make primary truth such as this the subject of discourse. Acts 14:8-18, and 17:16-34 give the account of them. It is particularly interesting to us to-day to notice who the hearers respectively were of these similar addresses. The philosophic Athenians would no doubt consider themselves far removed from the ignorant Lystrians; but such is the debased and darkened state of the natural mind that each needed the same first lesson to be taught them. Both are, as many to-day need to be, “set to spell the alphabet of creation.”
To refer now to the second of those great evidences to the existence of one God and Father Almighty, the “universal sense of God,” as it is called-something corresponding to that term we must allow does exist. Account for it as we may,
no fact in this world is more prominent or undeniable than the universal prevalence of religion. Religious beliefs and practices of some sort pervade the entire human family. Our lecturer correctly enough insists on this as remarkable. No community yet discovered, as he says, no people, however remote or secluded, but has its religion. The most barbarous and ignorant, and the most civilized and intellectual among the races of mankind, however widely severed in other respects, are alike in this, that there is that in them which prompts veneration of some higher power. It may be they worship they know not what; but still they worship. “To the unknown God” even they may raise their altar, and it may be difficult to say whether it is a “what” or a “whom” they “ignorantly reverence.” The fact remains they do revere.
Patent to all as this is, there are not wanting those who would fain explain it away on rationalistic grounds. Of the frankly materialistic school there are still many with us. And it is these in particular against whom is directed a somewhat elaborate disquisition on the origin and roots of human religion. If we follow here, as we must so far, we shall do so on our own lines. The most convinced materialist, then, cannot deny the fact of man's seemingly essential religiousness, however he may attempt to explain it. They confess to having a task in hand in eradicating that idea so strangely prevalent in man, which postulates supernatural agency for phenomena which in any sense are obscure. It may also be conjectured how much of a problem they find it satisfactorily to account for what seems the universal impulse of men to so attribute such phenomena. The materialist, in fact, is involved in difficulty all round. His quest after the roots of religion in man's nature has hitherto been attended with scant success. The conflicting testimony from investigators in that field is notorious. From Hume to Herbert Spencer there has been nothing but diversity. Each part of man's nature, is intellectual, his emotional, his imaginative faculties, has in turn been singled out as the sphere in which religion takes its rise. An unclassified sentiment is really all that psychological analysis can as yet pronounce the religious instinct to be. We may not be so far off after all from seeing advanced in good earnest that sarcastic paraphrase of F. W. Newman's definition which the late J. N. Darby suggested-” a phrenological bump.”
At present at all events the shallower species of materialists' favorite term, “superstition,” does not approve itself to the more thoughtful; and, while carefully avoiding the term, all such seem unable altogether to escape some slight contamination of the theory of the innate consciousness in man of a power and personality higher than human. Thus Haeckel, while finding the crude beg innings of religion to spring “partly from the hereditary superstition of primate ancestors, partly from ancestor-worship, as well as from habits which have become traditional,” concludes his formidable list with the very indefinite phrase, “and various emotional impulses.” Yes, just somewhere in that latter region will be found the solution of the problem—Why is religion such a universal feature, so inseparable from man wherever found? Exploration, discovery, the progress of your ethnological study have but multiplied the instances of its occurrence, without solving the question of its origin. No solution seems possible but that which explains its unexceptional appearance and ineradicable nature, in the first place, by some inherent impulse in men, by an ingrained consciousness of a higher power.
Conjoined with this also, or a component part of the same instinct, there is the sense of moral accountability indelibly imprinted on the heart of every man. This is so plainly the case that no denial is possible. It is so realized to be part and Parcel of our very nature as men to feel accountable for thoughts entertained and actions performed. We can understand no normal human being without it, and as matter of fact we find none. Man is essentially a moral creature, from the beginning was so. A consciousness of responsibility, dim it may be, or uncertain to whom it refers, pervades the mind of even the most benighted, however distorted his ideas of the unknown Supreme may be.
In every human soul, too, scripture testifies, since the fruit of the forbidden tree in Eden was partaken of, the voice of conscience makes itself heard. “Knowing good and evil” describes the new moral outlook of man in his fallen state, come under the power of evil now, alas! though his “conscience hearing witness” as we read in Romans 2:15-not in regard to Jews, not in that sphere where the light of revealed truth shone, but among “those of the nations,” “the heathen.” Instances of commendable ethics among the Gentiles, rare enough no doubt, were sometimes in evidence. This does not prove, however, “the law” to be “written on their hearts.” It is “the work of the law” of which this is affirmed, conscience bearing corroborative witness therewith. The thoughts of accusation or extenuation that flit across such dark minds, show them capable, inherently so, of moral exercise, and evidence clearly enough the sense of moral accountability, and the witness of conscience to be, both of them, universal features. All this in its own way we must allow is testimony to the existence of God.
[ J. T.]
(Continued from page 368)