Read Ebook: The Christian Foundation Or Scientific and Religious Journal Volume I No. 11 November 1880 by Various Walker Aaron Editor

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Editor: Aaron Walker

Scientific and Religious Journal.

THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF OUR RELIGION.

The character which the gospel of Christ requires is made up of all that is lovely, is formed upon the highest model, but it is not composed of the insensibility, the anger, the pride, the egotism, the worldliness, which is so common among men. It is not the cold indifference of modern moralists; it is not the rank and scepticism of modern doubters, nor yet the intellectual rashness and moral phantoms of modern scientists. These have done all they could to take possession of the human heart, and have left it more miserable than it was before. The great author of our holy religion, through the instrumentality of our blessed Savior, brings us into the possession of his own spirit; imparts to us the elements of his own divine excellence; forms us anew in his own image. The idea of "Emanuel, God with us," is composed of the richest elements. It embraces all that is venerable in wisdom, wonderful in authority, and touching in goodness. Human greatness, blended with imperfections and many limitations, is seen only in detached and separate parts; never appears in any one character whole and entire; but in our Lord Jesus Christ these conceptions, or scattered rays of an ideal excellence, are brought together and constitute the real attributes of that Savior whom we worship, who stands in the nearest relation to us, who is the "head of all principality and power," and who pervades all nature with his presence. The object of the Christian religion is to recover man from his degraded, miserable condition, elevate him above his debasement, and reinvest him with the character of Christ, that he may eventually dwell with the angels in the perfections of the Infinite One.

The views and spirit transfused into the soul of the Christian are very different from the views and spirit of the world. The spirit of the world is pride and selfishness, the pride of rank and office, the pride of wealth and worldly accomplishments, which lives for the praise of men. On the contrary, the Savior imparts to all his worshipers the loveliest of all the graces, a heaven-born humility, a modest estimate of one's own worth, and a deep sense of unworthiness on account of human weakness. As Christians we learn to humble ourselves in view of the majesty and perfections of our heavenly Master. "Before honor is humility." The Savior commands an humble religion; its love is humble, its faith is humble; its repentance, its baptism, its hopes, its joys, its raptures are all humble. True greatness is not found except in an humble mind; never is an archangel more exalted, more truly great, than when he bows before the throne of Christ. The spirit of the world is self-will and insubordination, hard-heartedness and impenitence, or inflexible perseverance in sin. The spirit of the world is one of self-indulgence and guilty pleasure. Sinners are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. They are eager for enjoyment and obtain it in dissipated behavior, thought and feeling. Lawless pleasure is the idol of the sinner's heart and the rule of his life; it often leads him to shame, infamy and ruin. The religion of Christ gives, in the place of this, the love of God and duty. The pleasures of the Christian are much broader and brighter than the pleasures of the disobedient; they are far superior to the sinner's day dreams and pleasures of sense. The spirit of the world rejects the truth of God; distrusts his word; has not sufficient confidence in his declarations, or, it may be, love for his praises, and so leans upon self, having no wants, fears, or despondency which it does not presume to relieve for itself. And often it happens when corruptions, doubts and disobedience have kept rule until the poor man is ruined and the hope of a better day is literally exhausted, that the soul under the dominion of sin cries, "Lord, save, or I perish." Have you faith in God and in his word? then let unshaken confidence in Jesus Christ his son and our Savior become the great principle and impulse of action, rise up in the dignity of true manhood or womanhood and obey the gospel and live. It is hard to conceive of a darker, deeper chasm than that which would be made by the absence of this great principle and impulse of action which has formed thousands of characters in the image of the Redeemer.

Jesus said to them, "Ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Acts i, 8. So these disciples were converted and cleansed--saved before they were baptized with the Holy Spirit.

LANGUAGE AND RELIGION.

BY P.T. RUSSELL.

RELIGION AND ITS ORIGIN.

TWO QUESTIONS.

They are these: First, was Polytheism or Monotheism the primitive religion? Second, is religion human or Divine in its origin? In answering these questions I shall gather facts, and from them deduce my conclusion, after the inductive method. First, universal history and tradition as far back as they can be traced, without one dissenting voice, locate the origin of man in Asia. From this point men migrated in every direction. Here, in Asia, their language and religion, if they had any, would be one and the same. This would, in the nature of the case, be true, whether religion was at first human or Divine. Again, as all derivative languages are found to be shaded by one primitive language, so all derivative religions will, on examination, be found to be shaded by the one primitive religion. That is, the leading or fundamental idea will be found more or less unclouded in all the more modern religions. Now, which is it that shades all religions? Is it Polytheism or Monotheism? Is the fundamental thought of either found in all the others? Will any one pretend that Polytheism is the primitive religion? Is its leading thought of many gods, found in all religions? It is not in Judaism, Christianity, nor Mahomedanism. These are one in their advocacy of one living and true God. This fact breaks the chain of Polytheism and ruins its claim to be considered the first religion. Here we must leave Polytheism and look after the claim of Monotheism. If this is the first form of religion, it must, according to our rule, shade all other religions; if it does not, then, from this stand-point all is yet in the dark.

MONOTHEISM TESTED.

Gentlemen skeptics, you boast of free and fearless thought. Make your vaunting good. Examine, if you dare, and let us have your strong reasons, if you have any.

The nature of man made revelation a necessity. This will be the theme of my next. Truth never fears the light, but known error is a coward, and loves the dark.

FORCE AND LIFE.

DR. J.L. PARSONS.

The origin of force and life in the universe is a great puzzle to materialistic scientists. In the azoic period of our earth there was no life on it. The living creatures now on the earth must, therefore, have had some origin. That origin is not due to spontaneous generation, according to the testimony of the most enlightened scientists, Professor Haeckel to the contrary notwithstanding. The various vital manifestations and exhibitions of force in the universe are due to some cause. The intuitions of mankind, as well as the teachings of science, declare there must be a cause lying behind the universe which has produced it.

Again, man is possessed of a mind and a religious element in his nature. If man's origin be due to the monkey or the tadpole, then the monkey or the tadpole must have a mind and a religious nature; for all effects are contained in their causes. The monkey must have a mind superior to that of Newton's, and the tadpole must be more religious than man; for the stream can not rise higher than its fountain!

Man has a religious element in his nature. That element seeks to be satisfied religiously, as the eye instinctively seeks for light, the ear for sound, or the body for food. Until the constitutional elements of man's nature are changed, he will instinctively seek for a God capable of satisfying this element of his being. This part of man is satisfied in the Bible and in the God of the Bible. Hence I conclude that the race as a race will never go into atheism.

The body of man was formed of the dust of the ground according to Moses, and no mistake; Mr. Ingersoll to the contrary notwithstanding. Moses further says that the Lord God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." According to this author, life did not result from organization. What the Almighty breathed into his nostrils was not atmospheric air; for the air was in his nostrils before Jehovah breathed the breath of life into them, and yet it did not make this body live. Using the term breath in the sense of air that we breathe, the old adage that "men die for the want of breath" is not true; for the body dead is surrounded with the same air as when it was living. When the Creator breathed the breath of life into the newly-formed body, and man became a living soul, he imparted more to it than simply air; and when the body dies, something more than simply air or breath has departed from it. Solomon was wiser than the average wise acre or the conceited materialistic doctor when he said concerning death: "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was; and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it." "The body without the spirit is dead," says Inspiration. It is the presence of this spirit in the human body, imparted to it by the Almighty, which vitalizes the body, which produces the vital force, by which force the body is builded and its operations carried on.

Chemical and other physical forces never produce vital manifestations. "Gravity is that species of force by which all bodies or particles of matter in the universe tend toward each other." The reason why bodies are drawn towards each other in this manner is because God has endowed them with a force which compels them to act in this way. To call it the force of gravity is no explanation of either the origin or nature of this force. To say that gravity makes the apple fall down instead of up is a polite way of expressing one's ignorance of such questions. To say that nature makes a seed grow, that nature heals a wound, is only to make a show of learning. God made the worlds and upholds them by the power of his word. God energizes nature. All the physical and vital forces of the universe are but the manifestation of his power. God has endowed all things that grow with the germ of life. Atheistical philosophy starts without God and ends without him. It seeks for spontaneous generation, but never finds it. It would have a stream without a fountain, and an effect without a cause, and a world without a Creator. I have no use for any theory of life, or of medicine, which denies the existence of God, whom I regard as the source of all the forces in the universe. Nature is only the manifestation of his power and wisdom. There is nothing supernatural in the universe unless it be God himself. All the wonderful phenomena of the human body are the result of a living force with which he has endowed it, and are to be explained, if explained at all, by a better knowledge of the intentions and workings of this force. This knowledge will be obtained by a more careful study of nature, by a more intimate acquaintance with him and his works. Anatomically, physiologically, and intellectually, "man is fearfully and wonderfully made"; and every wonderful thing connected with him is worthy of our careful consideration.

"ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS."

ANSWERED, PERHAPS THE THOUSANDTH TIME, BY REQUEST FROM LOGANSPORT.

N.B.--Friends who wish to engage our attention and space must remember the important rule among editors, and send their name along with their requests and articles.

SOME THINGS THAT NEED THOUGHT.

It has been said of past nations, that side by side have grown in their midst the elements both of greatness and of ruin. There is one phase of our society, as Americans, which is more to be dreaded than all others known to the philosophic mind, that is the reckless licentiousness which characterizes many politicians during political campaigns.

In ancient times a grand safeguard against this debasing practice was found in the law that said, "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of my people." This evil, like all others, when it becomes a strong habit, is well calculated to stir up anger, and wrath, and hatred; to stir up the passions, and destroy confidence, which is always and only disastrous to the social state. This growing evil needs to be checked by some means, otherwise our country will experience tumults growing out of maddened party ambition, and party interests, which will cause disaster and grief. The ballot-box needs to be guarded with wise and severe laws, because it is the pivotal wheel in our government. And next to this, because of the relation it sustains to our government's welfare, is the reputation of our public officials. I would not screen them from their just deserts, but I do say that the leaders in political affairs should be, in common with all others, too high-minded to indulge in slandering each other, as many are in the habit of doing. It reminds me in some of our political campaigns of the cursing-matches of the Popes, in some of the councils that were held during the dark ages. It is possible that we have in Indiana, and perhaps in some of the other states, sufficient law upon the subjects of slander, but law that is disregarded, being seldom enforced, amounts to nothing. Then, there is a disposition growing out of the pride of character to disregard the slanderer's tongue. Yet licentiousness tends to civil and social ruin all the same. That is to say, it destroys confidence, breeds retaliation and corruption, and inflames all the baser passions known in the dying agonies of a civil government. As an American citizen I would warn our people to manufacture all the public sentiment possible against this low, vile, and debasing practice, by pleading with our countrymen against it. And let us never hold our peace until we shall have thrown such safeguard around our ballot-box as will put an end to all the abominable corruptions that now threaten our existence as a free people. Is it true of us, that we carry the seeds of our own destruction as a nation in our own bosom? Are we to die as a nation, over the ballot-box? Shall we be so foolish? Let statesmen and politicians look well to the essential elements of the nation's life, by the advocacy of reform at this point where reform is most needed. And let Christians of every name plead for morality as an essential qualification for a place at the head of so great affairs as belong of right to the people of counties, states and nation. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. It is time for us to look after the moral elements of every man's life who proposes himself as a candidate for office in our midst, but we can well afford to be satisfied with the truth. Shall we look to this?

While we pray as Christians for such rulers and authorities as will look to the permanent and lasting interests of our country, let us vote as we pray. Do we pray one way and vote another? If so, let us repent. Do we pray for righteous rulers and for a good government and then vote for profane, wicked men; for men of intemperate habits, men who are perfectly indifferent to the moral welfare of our country; men who will disregard the welfare of the nation by neglecting the elements of national greatness? If political parties triumph in this government through slander, trickery, whisky and corruption, and continue to do so, the time will inevitably come when we will realize the facts of national ruin. We might as well think of a man having good health and living long upon the earth who takes poison into his stomach continually, as to think of future glory as a nation if we carry out our purposes by dishonest, illegal measures and by railing, in a slanderous and unjustifiable manner, against the best men of the nation. It has been said that political parties are necessary as checks to corruption, but when parties themselves indulge in all manner of corruption in order to succeed as parties, they are no longer checks, but abettors of corruption.

Let the preachers, whose business it is to reprove sin, and who have been kept from taking the risk of being shut out of Paradise, by being kept out of politics open their mouths and be heard all over this country against all these immoral, vile practices indulged as a means of political success. The ignorant, fossilized partisan who looks no higher than party will perhaps raise a yell of indignation against them, but at the same time he will continue the use of the same old argument, viz: the pool of politics is too filthy for preachers to meddle with. Is it a filthy pool? Then let us bring all the purifying elements of the nation to bear upon it and see if there is anything in it besides corruption. If there is not, the sooner we find it out the better, and if there is, the sooner we get it separated from its corruption the better.

THE RELIGION AND SOCIETY OF GREECE.

HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH OURS.

From the Egyptians and other nations to whom the Grecians were indebted for their earliest laws, they derived their established religion. To the worship of the twelve principal divinities the gratitude of the succeeding ages added the deification of heroes and legislators renowned for their important services to society. Various degrees of adoration were paid to the gods and to the souls of departed heroes. Temples were erected, festivals were instituted, games were celebrated, and sacrifices were offered with more or less pomp and magnificence to them all. A regular gradation of immortal beings was acknowledged to preside throughout universal nature from the Naiad, who was adored as the tutelary guardian of a stream to Jupiter, the father of gods and men, who ruled with Supreme power over heaven and earth.

The religion of the people extended little beyond the external honors paid to the gods of their country and the attendance upon sacrifices and processions. The sacred ceremonies were magnificent and public, except that the votaries of Bacchus and Ceres were indulged in their secret mysteries. The festivals were observed with every circumstance of pomp and splendor to charm the eye and please the imagination. A sacrifice was a feast attended with gayety and even licentiousness. Every temple was the resort of the idle and the dissolute, and the shrines of the Cyprian Venus and the Athenian Minerva could attest that devotion, far from being a pure and exalted exercise of the mind, was only the introduction to dissoluteness and debauchery.

The northern regions of Greece were particularly renowned for temples from which oracles were issued. The temple of Apollo at Delphi, situated upon a lofty rock near Parnassus, and that of Jupiter in the groves of Dodona, were celebrated for the responses of the Pythia and the priests; they were held in the greatest veneration for many ages, and their oracles were consulted even in the most enlightened times by philosophers themselves, who, in this instance, as well as many others, conformed to the popular superstitions.

The spirit of the religion of ancient Greece was included in these principles, that the worship of the gods was of superior obligation and importance to all other duties, and that they frequently displayed their power in this world in the punishment of the bad and the prosperity of the virtuous. Such were the opinions inculcated by the most celebrated philosophers and poets but the common people, more gratified by the fictions of the received mythology, than by tenets of pure morals, found in the actions recorded of their gods and goddesses a sufficient justification of every species of licentiousness. With respect to a future state of existence, the philosophers themselves appear to have fluctuated in uncertainty, as may be collected from the sentiments of Socrates. The poets inculcated a belief in Tartarus and Elysium. They have drawn a picture of Tartarus in the most gloomy and horrific colors, where men, who had been remarkable for impiety to the gods, such as Tantalus, Tityus and Sisyphus, were tormented with a variety of misery ingeniously adapted to their crimes.

The prospect of Elysium is beautiful and inviting, as described by Homer, Hesiod and Pindar. In that delightful region there is no inclement weather, but the soft zephyrs blow from the ocean to refresh the inhabitants who live without care and anxiety; there the sky is always serene and the sunshine is perpetual. The earth yields delicious fruits for their sustenance three times per year. But these enjoyments were confined to the persons who were of rank and distinction. Their Elysium was a sensual heaven. How very different is the Christian's future happy home?

Proteus informed Menelaus that he would be conveyed to the Islands of the Blessed, because he was the husband of Helen, and the son-in-law of Jupiter. No incentives to goodness from the consideration of a future state are held out by the older poets to the female sex, or to the ignoble or common people, however pure their conduct or exemplary their virtue. In later times we find that Pindar extends his rewards to good men in general; but Euripides is sometimes skeptical, and Iphigenia without hesitation expresses her disbelief of the popular mythology.

The learned Jortin says, It gives us pleasure to trace in Homer the important doctrine of a supreme God, a providence, and a free agency in man, supposed to be consistent with fate or destiny; a difference between moral good and evil, inferior gods or angels, some favorable to men, others malevolent, and the immortality of the soul; but it gives us pain to find these notions so miserably corrupted that they must have had a very weak influence to excite men to virtue and deter them from crime.--Jortin, Dissertation vi, p. 245.

The possible attainments of a religious nature were very different from ours. In the times of Lycurgus there were two hereditary kings or presidents; their power was controlled by Lycurgus, through the gift of equal authority to twenty-eight senators. The two kings commanded the armies and high-priests of the temples. The senators were the executive and legislative council of the state; with them the laws originated. The assembly of the people elected the senators by saying yes or no to the measures proposed to them, but had no right to discuss their propriety--were not allowed the privilege.

Lycurgus allowed every family an equal amount of land; prohibited the use of gold and silver, and made iron money the only currency of the country, in order to check the avarice of the people. He forbade foreign travel in order to retain the morals of his people, or keep them from the corruptions of other nations. To produce a hardy people, he required the women to indulge in all the athletic exercises of his government. The children were inspected as soon as they were born, and those considered worthy were handed over to the public nurses, and the unworthy, that is, the deformed and sickly, were taken out and left in the woods and upon the mountains to perish. All the children of the Spartans were considered as the property of the state, and their education consisted in accustoming them to endure the cravings of hunger and thirst, with the scourge of discipline and every degree of suffering. The business of Spartans consisted in preparing themselves for war. They were disciplined in such a manner that it was necessary to curb them constantly, lest they should rashly undertake to make conquests. Out of this character of the Greeks arose that old saying, "When Greek meets Greek then comes the tug of war."

Many of the laws of the Spartans would, in this country at least, destroy all the finer feeling, and inaugurate a reign of despotism utterly at variance with Christianity. God's time to give to the inhabitants of the earth the glorious system of our holy religion was not until our race was educated, so as to be no longer the slaves of the reigning ambition and passion of such men as Lycurgus. The Savior's hour was several centuries from Lycurgus. Here it is appropriate to remark that God, in his providence with the nations of men, has during all the ages given to men just as fast as they were able to receive.

THE RELATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY TO HUMAN GREATNESS.

Infidels claim that cultivated literature is incompatible with religion. It has been said that a man of ardent piety can not produce a work that will live in after ages. This is a libel upon the truth, and upon him who said: "I am the truth."

THE THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL FREE-THINKERS.

REMARKS.

The above dictionary is in my possession. It was published in 1817 by James Eastburn & Company at the literary rooms, corner of Broadway and Pine streets, New York, and by Cummings and Hilliard, No. 1 Cornhill, Boston. The author credits the above article to the above-named magazine, so we may rely upon it as the freethinker's own presentation of his theory in its early history. It will be of great interest to all our readers, as it will enable them to see, at once, the origin of so-called free-thought. It had its origin with Calvinistic errors upon the subject of the Trinity, a vicarious atonement, and kindred ideas concerning human redemption. It will be of interest also to mark the improvements of free-thinkers, who are always boasting of being in the advance guard in warring with error and ignorance.

In their beginning they repudiated the idea of the inspiration of the Bible; to this they have held without change. Further than this, they acknowledged that the Bible was an authentic history, but now they calumniate the idea, and blaspheme the Bible and its God. In these respects they have grown backwards; and they no longer claim to "worship one God, eternal, just and good," nor to "obey the commands of Jesus," "rejecting sacraments, forms, ordinances, parade and show, along with song and prayer." Perhaps they cast up their accounts, and found that there could, in the very nature of things, be no worship outside of all these elements of worship, and then determined to be more honest at least, and endeavor in the future to people the earth with a non-worshipping, Godless, Christless, praiseless, prayerless, non-hoping set of inhabitants, who would give all up in death for the sake of free thought.

WHAT A MAN MAY BE AND BE A CHRISTIAN IN THE ESTIMATION OF COL. INGERSOLL.

We find the following in the Colonel's speech, which was delivered at Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday, October 5, 1880. We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. Correllate it with the hollow utterances of Colonel Ingersoll, which are so often repeated by him in other addresses directed wholly against Christianity, if you can. Here it is:

SUM OF POSSIBILITIES.

We have hope that Colonel Ingersoll will yet find his way into the temple of truth, which reveals the glory and grandeur of the perfect harmony that exists between Christianity and all that is truly great and good--since he has pronounced the word "Eureka."

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