Read Ebook: The Christian Foundation Or Scientific and Religious Journal March 1880 by Various Walker Aaron Editor

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The Influence Of The Bible Upon Moral And Social Institutions. The Influence Of The Bible Upon Social Life And Social Institutions. Law, Cause, And Agent. The Inconsistency Of Modern Unbelievers Or Materialists. Materialism In Its Bearings Upon Person And Personality. Was It Right? It Only Needs To Be Seen, And Its Ugliness At Once Appears. Did The Race Ascend From A Low State Of Barbarism? The Flood Viewed From A Scientific And Biblical Standpoint. The Mosaic Law In Greece, In Rome, And In The Common Law Of England. Did Adam Fall Or Rise? Did They Dream It, Or Was It So? Miscellaneous.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE UPON MORAL AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.

It is profitable for us to occasionally survey the dark arena where men have played their part, in lonely gloom, without a Savior and without a God. Pagan morality, being without the motives and restraints of revealed religion, and guided wholly by the passions and the lights of reason and nature, is grossly defective. It has no settled standard of right and wrong. It is vain to look, in all heathen philosophy for any settled principles of duty or motives that commend themselves to enlightened minds.

How much better are the principles of modern infidels? Bolingbroke's morality is all embraced in self-love. Hobbes claims that the only basis of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says all the morality of actions is in the judgement we ourselves form of them. Shaftsbury says, all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice. Have such moral principles ever reformed the world? Do they reform their advocates? Did you ever know a man to reform after he became an advocate of such principles? Did you ever know a man to reform after understanding and abandoning the Christian religion? If any such ever reformed their lives after setting themselves on Pagan ground, by opposing Christianity, I have yet to learn the fact. It is the morality of a wicked world that simply asks for the profitable, and not the right; which inquires not for duty, but for self-interest--for the opinions of men; it is a body without a spirit--a whitewashed sepulchre--splendid only in sepulchral greatness.

It is not enough for a man to have the right spirit and the right motives, unless he does that which is right in itself. Conscience may be warped by malevolence, selfishness, prejudice, or education, until the man is led to do that which is detestable in the sight of God. The time may come when this man will regret his foolishness, and see that he was wrong, like Saul of old.

Right things may be done from a wrong spirit, and wrong things may be done from a right spirit, but the morality of the Christian religion consists in doing right things from right motives and in a right spirit.

If we would reform men successfully we must bring the conscience under the strong bonds of obligation; we must extend the authority of the great Lawgiver over the understanding, over the conscience, over the memory, over the imagination, over the entire inner man. This alone will stop the germinations of sin, and check wickedness in its conception. This is the tap-root of the tree of virtue--the source of virtuous principles, demonstrating the truthfulness of the axiom, "Make the tree good and the fruit will be good." Simple advantage is not the foundation of virtue; it has a nature aside from its tendencies to worldly profit. Otherwise virtue would often cease to be virtue, and vice would often cease to be vice. Anciently there were moral philosophers who plead that utility was the only foundation of virtue. Paul speaks of some who supposed "Godliness was gain." Such a morality would be the most uncertain thing in the world; give it what name you choose, it is mere selfishness.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE UPON SOCIAL LIFE AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS.

Man's entire nature forces him directly into a social state. He is destitute of the strength possessed by many of the lower animals, and naturally unable for want of speed to escape their attacks, so care for life leads him into the closest alliances with his fellows. Childhood and old age necessitate dependence, and his wants, during those periods, bring him under obligations to others during his strength and manhood. The social state is also necessary to the development of his intellectual nature, and some of his natural affections can be exercised only in such a state. Benevolence, gratitude, complacency and heroism are not exercised in an insolated condition--they are called out only in mutual associations with our fellow-men.

The noblest efforts of intellectual strength and of human ingenuity are made under the most powerful influence of society. Thus encouraged, men have collected armies, founded kingdoms and governed them. In such kingdoms the arts and sciences have flourished in a greater or less degree, and imperfect morals have crowned their labors and lifted their minds as high as their unaided powers have permitted. Such has been the best condition in which the Scriptures ever found the social state. The structure has been incomplete, resting upon no solid basis, and only imperfectly cemented together. Such a state of society has always been a proper object for the modifying and controlling influences of a purer system of morality, founded upon a pure religion.

What has been the state of society in times past without the light of revealed religion? There are evils in the social state where the Christian religion exists, but they were there before the Gospel of Christ visited those places. It is very common for unbelievers to charge the calamities of the social state to the Christian religion, but it is a dishonorable mode of argumentation. The proper question is this: Has humanity ever been well organized in the social state without the presence and influence of the Bible? Has it ever been well governed under such circumstances? Have men respected the social rights and obligations or properly understood them in the absence of revealed religion? Has the religion of Christ been a disturber of the social organization where social rights were properly understood and regarded? or has it set aside the rights and obligations of men in social life where men were enjoying peaceable, happy relations? Does its legitimate influence make men more wicked and miserable? An honest answer to these questions will commend the religion of Jesus Christ, and do honor to him as our Lord and Master. The Scriptures have been the means of establishing institutions which have stood for centuries. Where society has been disjointed and out of order, without bonds or adhesiveness, the Scriptures have been introduced, banishing disorder and bringing peace and good will to man. They have silently operated in the social surroundings and gradually elevated Pagan lands out of Paganism. They refine and cleanse the cruel, giving them habits which make them at once superior to all Pagans.

Look at Rome and Persia in comparison with England and America. The Persian's religion was the best of all the uninspired religions. They worshiped their unknown god in the sun, moon and stars. In two reigning principles they sought for an explanation of the present state of good and evil mixed, which is the perplexing problem that has always confounded unenlightened reason. The Persian's creed only exercised his intellect and gratified his curiosity. It brought no power to bear upon his social relations. Persian history is a mass of crimes, suffering and intolerance. The government was a despotism, and polygamy gave laws to the domestic and private relations of the citizens.

Ancient Rome stands foremost in all that moral culture and philosophy alone can do for social institutions. Its religion was gross in the extreme, exerting an unhappy influence upon the masses, while it was disregarded by the priests who taught it, their sole object being to terrify the multitude and keep them in subjection to the authorities of the state. It was said by a Roman, "Our nation exists more by religion than by the sword." But upon an examination of Roman history you will find servitude, despotism, tumult, revolt, revolution and slaughter, peace and war. The ambitions of rivals to the throne, and new schemes of rulers, often deluged the country with blood and carried the sword to remote and peaceable nations, till the horrors of civil war were realized in almost every part of the world. Every now and then the powers of some great mind, irritated by his calamities, having all the vices and none of the virtues of his species, would rise up and wreak vengeance in deeds which can not be thought of without sadness of heart.

How much better was ancient Greece? How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. "The powers that be are ordained of God." The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. Rulers were ordained of God, and are rulers, not for their own exaltation, but for the tranquility, virtue and peace of the governed. Where are the Pagan rulers who were taught this great lesson so as to feel its importance? When have they respected the rights of the people? Where have anti-Christian or Pagan nations, in a single instance, been actuated by any motive save the restless, factious determination to sink one tyrant for the sake of elevating another? In Christian lands a free and virtuous people limit the authority of rulers and assert the rights of citizens. In our country a mass of public virtue and a weight of moral influence, that restrains the wrath of man, keeps us from being involved in an ocean of blood at every popular election. We are not repeating the history of Rome in this respect. We have been taught to "Render unto Caesar the things which belong to Caesar." The apostles of Christ have enjoined upon us the duty of being subject to the rulers of our land, to submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. We have been taught to pray for our rulers. While we do this we can not be rebellious. Who is so blind as to not see that the Scriptures will control our citizens with more benevolence than any other book or any other maxims or set of opinions. When the Christian Scriptures are duly regarded and their divine authenticity respected designing, ambitious, corrupting and aspiring politicians will have but little power to plunge us into crimes and sufferings.

The matrimonial institution of Rome was a compromise between the right and the wrong. The institution was considered in the light of a civil contract, entered into for expediency, and protected by the magistrates because it was deemed a blessing to society; by the law of the twelve tables it continued during the pleasure of the husband. The result was that frequent, and often, rapid succession of divorces and marriages took the place of polygamy, and introduced many of its evils.

The private history of Roman ladies of first rank is a succession of marriages and divorces, each new marriage giving way to one more recent. Octavia, the daughter of the Emperor Claudus, married Nero, was repudiated by him for the sake of Poppaea; this woman was first married to Rufus Crispinus; then to Otho; and at length to Nero, by whom she was killed.

Nero murdered Thessalina's husband, and married her for his third wife. Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was first the wife of Marcellus, then the wife of Agrippa, and then the wife of Tiberius. Such examples are found almost without number in the annals of Tacitus. The extent to which this evil was carried may be learned from the poet Martial, who informs us, that, when the Julian law against adultery was revived as a prevention of the corruption of the times, Thessalina married her tenth husband within thirty days, thus evading all the restraints which the law imposed against her licentiousness. What is the marriage bond worth in such a state of society?

Where is the state of society essentially better in the absence of the Christian religion?

The Bible teaches us that the institution is of Divine origin, established by the Lord himself. It inscribes upon every marriage altar, "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder." It definitely defines marriage to be the act of uniting two persons in wedlock, and only two. According to the Scriptures, this union can only be dissolved by crime or death. With great tenderness the Bible prescribes the duties of this relation. "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church." This love is not the cold hearted affection that is after the fashion of free-love philosophy, but it is after a model that has touched heavenly hearts, and caused more admiration than all other things combined.

Let any man compare society in our country, or in any protestant country, with the state of society under the reign of the Caesars, and he will see what the Christ has done for our race. The spirit that sustains our social institutions does not grow cold even at the grave, but is felt beyond death. How is it in heathen lands? The sweetest loves of life give way to suspicion and envy; the jealousy of love, the thirst for power and ambition, drives them away, often as soon as the flowers and beauty of youth are gone. Where Christ reigns it is not so. Yet there are those who would have us believe that the religion of Christ is an unsocial, selfish religion. If it is unsocial and selfish to have no sympathy with wickedness, to promote all that is virtuous and kind, pure and true, to take pleasure in all that subdues the malignant and beastly, the ambitious and cruel, then it is an unsocial and selfish affair. If it is unsocial and selfish to take pleasure in that which elevates and moulds character in the image of God, and fits it for angelic society hereafter, then it is truly unsocial and selfish.

LAW, CAUSE, AND AGENT.

The word law denotes the unceasing, regular order in which an agent or force operates. It should, consequently, be distinguished from cause or efficiency; it being only the manner, or mode, according to which an agent or cause manifests itself. Therefore law is neither cause or agent. Yet it implies an agent, or an energy; for without these law is nothing--does nothing. The laws of nature had no existence until nature existed. That is to say, the laws of water did not exist until water existed, etc. So it is easy to perceive the truth that the laws of nature created nothing. Nature is said to be the aggregate of everything; therefore nature created nothing. The laws of nature, being the rules according to which effects are produced, demonstrate the existence of a cause or agent which operates. As the rules of navigation never steered a ship, so the law of gravity never moved a planet. A bare order or law of nature was not the cause of nature. To confound order or law with cause is to speak unadvisedly--unintelligently; it is perfectly irrational. Would you cut off executive authority in a government and continue its existence without a person or society to exercise, judge and execute according to law?

To say the world is governed by the laws of nature, without rising up in our thoughts to the efficient cause and superior reason, or, that which is always implied in the term law, viz., a legislator and executive putting in force, is to play the Atheist and take things by halves; is to suppose the laws of nature are beings, and imagine fabulous divinities in ignoring or setting aside the Christian's God, who is the source of all the laws of nature, and who governs all things according to them. "The laws of nature are the art of God." Without the presence of such an agent--one who is conscious of all upon which the laws of nature depend--producing all that the laws prescribe--the laws themselves could have no existence. The intelligence, or, if you prefer it, cause, which gives the laws of nature their power, and by which they are kept in action, must be everywhere present and always present; otherwise the whole machinery of nature would be deranged--inertia is a property of matter. The universal presence of God is the one great and overwhelming condition of the existence of life and motion throughout the vast universe of nature. The laws of matter are the laws which he has prescribed for his own action. His presence is the essential condition of any natural course of events in the history of matter. His universal agency is the only organ of power adequate to the accomplishment of the wonders of nature--the only solution of its great problems which lies within the reach of human reason. Some fools still say in their hearts there is no God.

THE INCONSISTENCY OF MODERN UNBELIEVERS OR MATERIALISTS.

The materialistic unbeliever is necessarily bound up in a contradiction from which there is no escape short of a denial of the eternity of matter, space and duration, on the one hand, or a denial of the materialistic philosophy, upon the other.

His reasoning is this: Space exists. I know it exists. I can't set bounds to space, therefore it is infinite.

Matter exists. I know it exists. I can't annihilate matter, therefore matter is eternal.

Duration is. I know it is. I can't set limits to it; therefore duration is infinite.

Now, it is easy to discover that the conclusion in each case rests upon two thoughts. First, Conscious knowledge expressed in the phrase "I know." Secondly, Want of power to set bounds to space, to limit duration and annihilate matter.

The other and contrary side is brought up in the following arrangement: Mind exists. I know it exists. I can't set limits to mind; therefore mind is infinite, mind is eternal.

Life exists. I can't comprehend or set limits to life; therefore life is infinite, life is eternal.

The time was when there was no life or mind associated with or in matter, the matter belonging to our planet. From whence came life? From whence came mind? Do you say from the laws of nature? Well, laws are rules by which agents act. Laws are nothing unless there is an agent to act in harmony with them or by them. There is consequently something lying behind the laws of nature, acting by them. What is that something? Do you say it is force? Force is the manifestation of energy--a mere attribute. There is something behind energy, to which it belongs. Do you say it is matter? Inertia is a property of matter? From whence came life and mind? The time was when they were not here.

MATERIALISM IN ITS BEARINGS UPON PERSON AND PERSONALITY.

Paley says: The seat of intellect is a person.

Lock says: Person stands for a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, ... which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it, it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive.

Thompson says: Person as, applied to Deity, expresses the definite and certain truth that God is a living being and not a dead material energy.

Jouffroy says: Personality, in jurisprudence, denotes the capacity of rights and obligations which belong to an intelligent will.

A person is a being who is intelligent and free. Every spiritual and moral agent, every cause which is in possession of responsibility and consciousness, is a person.

Webster says: Person is an individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings possessed of a rational nature; the body when dead is not called a person.

The Biblical ground nature of the word person is in these words: "What man knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of man which is in him."

Intelligence is an essential attribute of person, but it is not a property of matter. If intelligence is a property of matter, then the distinction between person and thing is of a necessity a distinction without a difference. But no greater absurdity could possess the human mind for one moment than the thought that intelligence is a property or quality of matter. Nothing short of the fact expressed in Bible language that the spirit of man is a gift from God, will account for the distinction between person and thing. Man in his physical nature is enslaved to the laws of physical nature in common with all organized things; is subject to the laws that control matter. The law of organic existence is such that he can not live without a continual supply of food, which the nutritive process continually provides in order to make up for the wastage consequent upon disintegration of parts. But there are impassible limits fixed to the nutritive process by the most certain of all laws, viz: those of gravity and chemical action. To abolish these laws would insure the destruction of all organic existence, because it would be the abrogation of the essential conditions of organized being. Yet it is true that when a certain point is reached a change and dissolution of the molecules always takes place, and this change is the sure introduction of death. Hence, nothing short of union with God, through his own appointed means, by which he brings his own omnipotence to bear for the purpose of controlling the essential condition of organic existence, could ever be an antidote of death. Man in his original innocence enjoyed such means in the fruit of the tree of life. Being removed from this he dies by the essential laws of his existence. So man in his physical nature is enslaved in common with all things that are under the reign of physical laws. Yet he is a free intelligence. He is conscious of his freedom. There is in his history an abundance of evidence to demonstrate his freedom. There is also a sufficient amount of evidence to demonstrate the slavery of his physical nature. But why refer to evidence here? These are facts of consciousness. Man's personality is, in view of all that has been said, grounded upon his mental or spiritual nature, which was always free, otherwise his identity is lost forever in the grave. I have said, if the attributes of person are properties of matter, there is no distinction between persons and things; in such a case persons would be things and things would be persons. Here it is easy to see that the materialistic philosophy upon the subject of man's identity changes the ground nature of personality, and destroys all distinction between persons and things.

WAS IT RIGHT?

Scientists are the last men upon the earth that should deal unfairly with the Bible. They profess to investigate, to analyze, to demonstrate. In one word, they profess to be in the lead of thought in a very progressive age; therefore we expect just a little more from them than from the unscientific. But, alas! many of them are mere socialists, and many who are scientists have never investigated the Bible, do not understand its facts, and are also averse to its claims.

"Science takes account of phenomenon, and seeks to understand its law." Now let us apply the test to some of the objectionable facts of the Bible, and note the result.

What was the law governing in the case? The answer is in these words: The course of conduct which is for the greatest good of the greatest number is right. This law is known in the science of civil government. It has its place in the history of all civil governments. Without it we are unable to account for the facts known in the history of our own government. It is a law that lies at the foundation of all moral and social institutions. Those wicked tribes in the land of Canaan, and upon its borders, were in the way of the establishment of any civil institution. It is to be remembered, also, that the children of Israel did not forfeit their rights in the land by going down into Egypt in the time of a famine.

The land was theirs by right of preoccupancy and by gift. Upon their return from Egypt they found no civil institutions in the land, but, on the contrary, the people were burning their own children in the fire. They were also guilty of every abominable thing that was hateful in the sight of God. They were utterly unqualified for citizenship in any civil state, so they were cut off as cankers upon the body.

To the same end, the greatest good to the greatest number, our government has cut off thousands of better men. When the children of Israel went into the idolatrous worship of those wicked heathen and burned their sons and daughters in the fire to Molech, the Lord gave them statutes and laws which were not good, and whereby they might not live. He served them right. How can civil government be perpetuated, or even exist, in the midst of such heathenish idolatry? If infidel objections, based upon the destruction of such wicked hordes as were put to death in Canaan, are worth anything they are worth enough to sanction, by the protection of civil government, all manner of abominations that are known among barbarous heathen.

Let us ever remember that the eternal laws of right, sometimes, necessitate the destruction of human life. The greatest good of the greatest number is an object that should always govern the action of a nation. This law should never be disregarded. Murder, having no connection with the general good, is a very different thing. When an individual is put to death by an individual to gratify malice its relations are not with the general good.

All sensible men, who are acquainted with the Bible, know that the facts of the Bible, known in the ancient wars of the nation of Israel, like the facts known in the wars of our own nation, would look terrible in the relations of murder. Things out of their relations are always ugly. A man and a woman living together as husband and wife outside of the marriage relation, would be in adultery, while others living in the same manner, but inside of the matrimonial relation, would be in a grand and praiseworthy union. Why is it that sensible men will wrest the Scriptures, taking things out of their proper relations, and do it to their own condemnation? "Happy is the man who condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth."

IT ONLY NEEDS TO BE SEEN, AND ITS UGLINESS AT ONCE APPEARS.

DID THE RACE ASCEND FROM A LOW STATE OF BARBARISM?

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