Read Ebook: The Truth of Christianity Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion by Turton W H William Harry

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Of the Necessity of the daily bearing of the Cross of Christ.

What the Cross of Christ is.

What the great Work of the Cross is.

Of unlawful Self in Religion and Morality.

Of Pride, the first capital Lust, its Rise, Definition, and Distinction.

Of Avarice, the second capital Lust, its Definition and Distinction.

Of Luxury, what it is, and the Mischief of it to Mankind.

The Testimonies of several great, learned, and virtuous Personages among the Gentiles, urged against the excesses of the Age.

The Doctrine and Practice of the blessed Lord Jesus and his Apostles, the primitive Christians, and those of more modern Times in favour of the Discourse.

The serious Apprehensions and Expressions of several aged and dying Men of Fame and Learning.

An Exhortation to all professing Christianity, to embrace the foregoing Reasons and Examples.

NO CROSS, NO CROWN.

On the whole, then, the eye appears to be an optical instrument of great ingenuity; and the conclusion that it must have been made by someone, and that whoever made it must have known and designed its use, seems inevitable.

These conclusions, it will be noticed, like the similar ones in regard to the watch, are not affected by our ignorance on many points. We may have no idea as to how an eye can be made, and yet feel certain that, as it exists, it must have been made by someone, and that its maker designed it for the purpose it serves.

Nor should we feel that the eye is explained by being told that every part of it has been produced in strict accordance with natural laws, and could not have been otherwise; in fact, that there is no design to account for. No doubt every single part has been thus produced, and if it stood alone there might be little to account for. But it does not stand alone. All the various and complicated parts of the eye agree in this one remarkable point, and in this one only, that they all help to enable man to see; and it is this that requires explanation. We feel that there must be some connection between the cause which brought all these parts together and the fact of man's seeing. In other words, the result must have been designed.

Nor is this all, for even the world itself bears traces of having been designed. Had it been a mere chaos, we might have thought that the Creator was unaware of what would be the result of His action. But a planet like our earth, so admirably adapted for the support of life, can scarcely have been brought about by accident.

THE EVOLUTION OBJECTION.

Now by the term Evolution is meant to be included the processes of Organic Evolution, Natural Selection, and the Survival of the Fittest. The former may be described as meaning that all the different forms of life now existing, or that ever have existed on this earth, are the descendants of earlier and less developed forms, and those again of simpler ones; and so on, till we get back to the earliest form of life, whatever that may have been.

How then would this theory affect our previous conclusion that the Creator designed all the organs of nature, such as the eye, and hence presumably the whole of the universe? As we shall see, it only confirms it. For to put it plainly, if all free will on the part of the organisms is excluded, so that they were all bound to act exactly as they did, it is clear that the earth and all it contains is like a vast mass of machinery. And however complicated its parts, and however much they may act on one another, and however long they may take in doing so, yet if in the end they produce an organ showing design, this must have been foreseen and intended by the Maker of the machinery. In the same way if a mass of machinery after working for a long time eventually turned out a watch, we should have no hesitation in saying that whoever made the machinery, and set it going, intended it to do so. And is the inference less clear, if it not only turned out a watch, but a watchmaker as well, and everything else that exists on this planet?

Nor is the conclusion altered if we carry back the process of evolution, and assume that the earliest form of life was itself evolved from some previous form of inanimate matter; and this again from a simpler one, and so on till we get back to the original form of matter, whatever that may have been. For if the results as we now see them show design, then the argument for a Designer is not weakened, but our ideas of His skill are still further increased, if we believe that they were already secured when our earth was merely a nebula.

Now, in the case before us, as the organs showing design in nature, such as the eye, always conduce to the welfare of their possessor, the objection is certainly worth considering. But as we shall see, it is most improbable, while the chief argument in its favour cannot be maintained. It need scarcely be pointed out that we are not assuming that the organisms have free will, but merely admitting that they may have it; and if anyone denies this, the objection, as far as he is concerned, falls to the ground at once.

This is apparent because low down in the scale of nature , the free will of the organisms, if they have any, must be extremely limited; yet they bear unmistakable marks of design. While, in higher beings which have an undoubted free will, it is hard to believe that it can effect anything like what is required. Would, for instance, wishing to see or trying to see, even if blind animals were capable of either, have ever given them eyes? And the same applies in other cases. It is hence most improbable that the marks of design in nature are due to the organisms themselves, rather than to their Creator.

Now, although at first sight freedom of action seems inconsistent with any foreknowledge of what that action will be, yet on closer examination this will be found to be at least doubtful. For our own experience seems to show that in some cases, at all events, it is not in the nature of things impossible to know how a free being will act.

And this is precisely what we had to show. The marks of design in nature afford what seems to be overwhelming evidence in favour of the foreknowledge of the Creator. The objection we are considering is that, in spite of all this evidence, we must still deny it, because some of the organisms in nature, such as man, possess a free will; and therefore any foreknowledge is in the nature of things impossible. And the instant it is shown that such foreknowledge is not impossible, the objection falls to the ground.

MEANING OF THE TERM GOD.

The Personal Being who designed and created the universe.

TWO OF GOD'S ATTRIBUTES.

Wisdom and Power. He is also Omnipresent.

THE OBJECTION THAT GOD IS UNKNOWABLE.

This is partly true; but everything is unknowable in its real nature, though in each case the partial knowledge we can obtain is all we require.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT.

The position in the argument at which we have now arrived is this. We showed in the last chapter that the Creator designed the universe; in other words, that when he created it, He foreknew its future history. And from this the next step, as to the existence of God, is quite plain; in fact, it is merely a question of words.

MEANING OF THE TERM GOD.

. TWO OF GOD'S ATTRIBUTES.

THE OBJECTION THAT GOD IS UNKNOWABLE.

But, strictly speaking, it is the same with everything. Man in his true nature is also unknowable, yet we know something about man. So, again, the forces of nature are all unseen and unknowable in themselves, yet from their effects we know something about them. And even matter when reduced to atoms, or electrons, or anything else, is still a mystery, yet we know a good deal about matter. And in each case this knowledge is not incorrect because it is incomplete. Why, then, should the fact of God being in His true nature unknowable prevent our having some real, though partial, knowledge of Him? In short, we may know something about God, though we cannot know everything about Him.

And it should be noticed that Natural Religion and Natural Science are alike in this respect--they are both founded on inferences drawn from the observed facts of nature. For example, we observe the motion of falling bodies, and infer the existence of some force, gravity, to account for this. Similarly, we observe the marks of design in nature, and infer the existence, or at least foresight, of some Being who designed them. In neither case have we any direct knowledge as to the cause of what we see. And in some respects Religion is not so unknowable as Science. For our own, real or apparent, mind and free will do give us some kind of idea as to the existence of a personal being, apart from what he does; while of a natural force, such as gravity, apart from its effects, we can form no idea whatever. Thus our knowledge of every subject is but partial, and it finally leads us into the Unknowable.

Moreover, though our reason may be to some extent unfit to judge of such matters, the vast importance of the subject seems to demand our coming to some conclusion one way or the other. This is especially the case because important results affecting a man's daily life follow from his deciding that there is a God, and to leave the question undecided is practically the same as deciding that there is not a God. In the same way, if a ship were in danger of sinking, and a steamer also in distress offered to take off the passengers, for one of them to say that he did not know whether it was safer to go in the steamer or not, and would therefore do nothing and stay where he was, would be practically the same as deciding not to go in the steamer. So in the case before us. To refuse to decide the question because of the supposed inadequacy of human reason is practically the same as to deny the existence of God.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT.

THAT MAN IS A FREE AND RESPONSIBLE BEING.

MAN'S MENTAL ATTRIBUTES.

Man possesses a mind as well as a body; the opposite theory, materialism, has great difficulties.

MAN'S MORAL ATTRIBUTES.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANIMALS AND MEN.

CONCLUSION.

Man consists of three parts, body, mind, and spirit: his unique position.

MAN'S MENTAL ATTRIBUTES.

This theory then cannot possibly be accepted, and we must abide by our inherent conviction that we have a mind as well as a body. This is an ultimate fact in human nature; and we are as certain of it as we are of anything, though like some other ultimate facts it has to be assumed, because it can be neither proved nor doubted.

MAN'S MORAL ATTRIBUTES.

We pass on now to man's moral attributes, which we will consider in detail.

Now the great argument in favour of free will is, again, our own inherent conviction. It is one of the most universal, and one of the most certain, beliefs of mankind that he has free will. This belief is forced upon him by his own daily experience. He feels, for instance, that he is free to raise his hand or not. And what is more, he can verify the fact by actually raising it, whenever he likes; so it is literally true to say that the conviction rests on the daily experience of the human race. And to many, this argument alone seems conclusive.

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