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

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DID THE RACE ASCEND FROM A LOW STATE OF BARBARISM?

The fact that the human mind abhors a contradiction is an evidence of the Godlike nature of man, and an objection to the old tenet of total depravity; it is also the secret of the effort, upon the part of errorists, to systematize. One assumption creates a demand for another, and thus men who start wrong, in science or religion, labor under great disadvantages. When an idea is once consecrated to science or religion in the human heart it is hard to eradicate. When you find that you have made a wrong start remember that it is the part of true manhood to make a frank surrender, and start anew.

George Rawlinson says Mr. Pengelly made a similar confession at the meeting of the British Association at Bristol, in August, 1875. So far as this question of evolution is concerned, it is just as easy to establish involution of civilization into barbarism as evolution of civilization out of barbarism. Herodotus gives an account of the Geloni, a Greek people, who were driven from the cities on the northern coast of the Euxine, and retiring into the interior, lived in wooden huts, and used a language half Scythian and half Greek. We follow this people down to the times of Mala and find them fully barbarous, using the skins of those slain in battle as coverings both for themselves and their horses. The Copts, of our times, are degraded descendants of the ancient Egyptians. In North and South America the descendants of the Spanish conquerers are poor representatives of those Castilians who, under Pizarro and Cortez mastered the Peruvian and Mexican kingdoms, and planted the civilization of the old world in the new. Civilization is liable to decay, to wane, to deteriorate, to sink so low that it may be a question whether it is any longer civilization. In the cases we have alluded to we have a low degradation retaining evidences of something higher. In comparative philology we have cases where it is presumed by the best of critics that a higher state of civilization sank to the lowest conceivable state of heathenism. The race existing in Ceylon, known as the "Weddas," is of this type. The language of the Weddas is regarded as a base descendant of the most complete and first known form of Aryan speech, the Sanskrit; and the Weddas are set down as descendants of the Sanskritic Aryans, who conquered India. There are no savages of a more debased type. They do not count beyond two or three; they have no idea of letters; of all the animals the dog alone is domesticated; their art consists in making bows and arrows and constructing rude huts; they are dwindling and threaten to become extinct. See "Report of the British Association for the advancement of science, for the Year 1875," part 3, p. 175.

Civilization and barbarism are states between which men oscillate, passing from one to the other with equal ease, according to the influences brought to bear upon them.

The mythical traditions of almost all peoples place at the beginning of the history of the race, a "golden age," which is the opposite of savagery and barbarism. The Chinese speak of a "first heaven," an age of innocence and a state of happiness, when "all was beautiful and good, and all beings were perfect." Mexican tradition speaks of the golden age of Tezcuco; and Peruvian history commences with two "Children of the Sun," who established civilization on the borders of Lake Titicaca. The Greeks described their golden age as follows:

THE FLOOD VIEWED FROM A SCIENTIFIC AND BIBLICAL STANDPOINT.

Unbelievers usually pass over the events of the flood with mockery. There is something about them that is only reconcilable with the mental condition of the man who says in his heart, "There is no God." The old methods of their interpretation of the Scriptures have been abandoned in many particulars. This is the result of two things: first, progression in scientific knowledge; and, second, the Bible was always ahead of science in its scientific allusions. Now, it is known to scientists that there is, at the lowest calculation, forty-eight times more water in our seas and oceans than Keill was willing to allow when he made the objection that it would require the waters of twenty-eight oceans to give us Noah's flood. The objection was, "there is not water enough." Men seemed to think that the earth contained the water; that the water was standing in the earth. This was very natural, for people generally live upon the land. The Bible, however, presented a different idea, saying, the earth was "standing out of the water and in the water."

When the Scriptures speak upon this subject they refer to the waters just as a man would who never had any misgivings upon the subject of their sufficiency. Their teachings are in harmony with recent scientific discovery, and against old-fashioned unbelief.

Before Galileo's time men would have been regarded insane if they had asserted the gravity of the air, but the Bible contained the fact. It was laid away in Job 28: 25: "For he looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven to make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure."

The same author gives us the following, which will be beneficial to the scholar: "Water is dilated 1-23 in passing from the temperature of ice melting to that of water boiling. An elevation of from sixteen to seventeen degrees Reaumer will then increase its volume 1-111. Now, we find by an easy calculation that the quantity of water necessary to submerge the earth to the height of 1-1000 of the radius of our globe is equal to 1-333 of its entire volume, or 1-111 of its third. If, then, we suppose that the one third of the terrestrial globe is metallic , that the second third is solid , and that the remaining third is water; then, first, the specific gravity of the entire globe will be equal to 5-1/2 ; and, secondly, it will have been sufficient for the submersion of the earth to the height of 6,368 metres, or 1,546 metres above Mount Blanc; that the temperature of the mass of the water in the days of the deluge should have risen to sixteen degrees Reaumer is a reasonable conclusion." This calculation also has reference to the unnecessary idea that the flood was universal. But why is it that a few men recognize the existence of a God omnipotent and ridicule the flood?

The sufficiency of the ark is also called in question. Buffon says the various species of four-footed animals may be reduced to two hundred and fifty. And Dr. Hales shows conclusively that the ark had the capacity of bearing forty-two thousand four hundred and thirteen tons. He says: Can we doubt of it being sufficient to contain eight persons and about two hundred and fifty pair of four-footed animals, together with all the subsistence necessary for twelve months, with the fowls of the air and such reptiles and insects as can not live in water? Besides places for the beasts and birds and their provisions, Noah might find room in the third story for thirty-six cabins occupied by household utensils, instruments of husbandry, books, grains and seeds, for a kitchen, a hall, and a space of about forty-eight cubits in length to walk in. In addition to all this, it is conceded, by the very best minds conversant with ship building, that Moses' description of the dimensions of the ark are the descriptions of one of the very best floating vessels that ever rested upon the waters. This fact has puzzled the minds of many unbelievers who seem to think there was but little scientific knowledge in that early period. They do not believe that God was with Noah. HE WAS.

THE MOSAIC LAW IN GREECE, IN ROME, AND IN THE COMMON LAW OF ENGLAND.

During the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, who was the brother of Darius, and who ascended the throne of the kingdom of Persia in the year 465 before Christ, the Jews were scattered all over the kingdom of Persia, and their laws were the subject of conversation and notoriety. Haman speaks of them to the king as differing from the laws of all other people.

Sir Matthew Hale says: Among the many preferences which the laws of England have above others, the two principal ones are, the hereditary transmission of property and the trial by jury, which originated with the Jews, for, by the law of Moses, the succession in the descending line was to the sons, the oldest having a double portion. If the son died in his father's lifetime, the grandson heired the portion of his father. Trial by jury was first suggested in the administration of penal justice among the Jews. Such trials came off publicly in the gates of the city, and their judges were elders and Levites, taken from the general mass of the citizens. "A part of the common law, as it now stands, was first collected by Alfred the Great, youngest son of Athelwolf, or Ethelwolf, King of the West Saxons, who took the crown in 871. It is asserted by Sismondi, in his history of the fall of the Roman Empire, that when the above named prince caused a republication of the Saxon laws he inserted several laws taken from the Judaical ritual into his statutes to give new strength and cogency to the principles of morality. So it is a common thing in the early English reports to find frequent references to the Mosaic law. Sismondi also states that one of the first acts of the clergy under Pepin and Charlemagne, of France, was to introduce into the legislation of the Franks several of the Mosaic laws found in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. It is truthfully said that the entire code of civil and judicial statutes throughout New England, and throughout the States first settled by the descendants of New England, were the judicial laws of God as they were delivered by Moses. From God himself one nation, and one only, received their laws, and they are worthy of being regarded as models for all succeeding ages. The learned Michaelis, who was professor of law in the University of Gottingen, says that a man who considers laws philosophically, who would survey them with the eye of a Montesquieu, would never overlook the laws of Moses."

Goguet, in his learned treatise upon the origin of laws, says: The more we meditate on the laws of Moses the more we shall perceive their wisdom and inspiration. They alone have undergone no changes, amendments or retrenchments for more than three thousand years, while all others have been receiving amendments and additions.

Milman, in his history of the Jews, says: The Hebrew law-giver exercised a more extensive and permanent influence over the destinies of mankind than any other individual in the annals of the world. The late Fisher Ames, a distinguished statesman and jurist, said, "No man can be a sound lawyer who is not well read in the laws of Moses." The seat of this law is the bosom of God, and her voice is the order, peace and happiness of the world.

DID ADAM FALL OR RISE?

The old scholastic ideas of "total hereditary depravity, and miraculous conversion," with their correllates, have driven more minds into doubt and skepticism than most of men are apprised of. The reasons are evident. First. Common sense shrinks from them as ideas which are destructive of every principle of human responsibility. Second. They are opposed to the testimony of consciousness which asserts the soul's freedom. Third. They are opposed to correct ideas of justice as it is administered in all governments, both human and divine.

The fruit of the tree of life was for man's physical nature; was to control the law of organic being, regulating waste and supply so as to prevent the present effects of old age, and keep man in perpetual conditions of youth. After man had sinned, with the knowledge of good and evil, he was master of his position, and now, lest he "put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat and live forever," subjected to shame, to torment, to anguish and tribulation, mental suffering, a lost being in the state of abandoned fallen angels, with a possibility of corrupting his conscience until it should be past feeling, seared as with a hot iron, and so glory in his shame; or, otherwise, be beyond the motive power of life and the restraining power of death, the Infinite One placed him beyond the reach of the tree of life. All of these ways or doings of the Heavenly Father were right, were merciful, were best for man. THE WAYS OF GOD ARE RIGHT. THE WAYS OF GOD ARE BEST. Farewell to "total hereditary depravity, and farewell to all its necessary correllations, such as miraculous conversion," etc.

The soul's free, voluntary service is that which constitutes the requirement of religion in all the ages.

DID THEY DREAM IT, OR WAS IT SO?

That there was such a person as Jesus Christ living in the land of Judea at the time allowed by all Christians is no longer disputed by unbelievers. That he lived a life far superior to the lives of all other men is also conceded. If the powers of life and death were under his control he was more than human. If he rose from the dead he was the Son of God. Did he rise? This is a question upon which the whole Christian scheme hinges. What was the nature of the fact? Was it one about which men could be mistaken? Was it a fact which, occurring, addressed itself to the senses? If it was the witnesses could not be mistaken. There is not a court in the universe that would allow it.

There are things about which wise men may be mistaken, but they are not things which address themselves to the senses. Those are things in which fools may not, can not, be mistaken. It is impossible for my wife to be mistaken about my presence at this moment, but it is just as possible as it was for any of the first witnesses of Christ's resurrection to be mistaken. They were not, they could not be mistaken. Then what becomes of Strauss's mythical idea. What folly it is to allow that those witnesses were perfectly honest, enthusiastically and proverbially honest in all they said, and yet mistaken.

This moral honesty and enthusiasm which Strauss and others allow to the credit of the witnesses is undoubtedly designed as a feeler--a mere catering to the views of Christians upon the character of the first Christians. Very good fellows after all. How is that? If one of my neighbors would go into a court room to-morrow and testify under oath that he was with me yesterday, and the court was in possession of the fact that I was not with him, or near him at all, would it allow honesty to the witness? Would not every sensible man say, in his heart, he is a perjured witness? If he was with Walker he knew it; and if he was not with him he knew it.

Gentlemen, exercise all your shrewdness, adopt Strauss's idea of a mythical origin of the gospel of Christ, both as respects his miracles, which were either seen or not seen, and as respects his resurrection, then spread the blanket of honesty and warm-hearted enthusiasm over those men who sacrificed everything, life not excepted, for the testimony which they bore, and the next day any well-instructed judge of our courts would say, it is nonsense; they could not be mistaken about any fact which addressed itself to their eyes and ears. Christ rose from the dead if the witnesses told the truth; and the witnesses told the truth if they were honest men; and if they were not honest, labor, toil, suffering and martyrdom are no evidences of sincerity.

Can you believe in harmony without believing in a harmonist?

Can you believe that all things in nature adjusted themselves to each other?

Can you believe that life, and mind, and moral nature, each and all came from where neither existed?

MISCELLANEOUS.

Voltaire built a church to God at Ferney.

Can you believe that your great ancestors were apes?

Do you oppose the Bible and prefer its legitimate effects?

Huxley wants the Bible introduced into boarding schools.

Can you believe in design without believing in a designer?

Tyndal says the theory of evolution of species is utterly uncredited.

Can you believe that the type which made these letters set themselves up?

Can you believe that mind is the result of blind, unintelligent, mechanical forces?

Tyndal says spontaneous generation is the one essential pillar of evolution of species.

Tyndal says the failures to produce spontaneous life by experimenting are lamentable.

Collins insisted on his servants going to church "that they might not rob or murder him."

Can you believe that worlds hung themselves together and move themselves, as one grand whole, through space?

Can you believe that the correllation of things in nature was without design? that such adaptations as light to the eye was unintended?

Can you be honest in exerting your influence against the religion of Jesus Christ while it is your candid conviction that a country is better off with it than without it?

Do you sometimes say you prefer to live where there are churches and Sunday-schools, and all their appliances for the bettering of the condition of humanity, and at the same time constantly find fault with the Bible and religion which creates such things? If such is your course, are you strictly honest?

CREDITS

February 14, 2009

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