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in t|e Seiirt of t|e |iii§'§ |ii(iitie§;

OR,

Htheistic Errors of the Day Refuted,

AND THE

DOCTRINE OF A PERSONAL GOD VINDICATED.

BY THE

REV. ALEXANDER W. McLEOD, D.D.„

Miniater of the M.E. Church.

" Infinite Power and Majesty Divine !

Eternal were thy glory and thy throne !
Eternal bliss and glory would be thine,
Were men, and angels, stars, and suns unknown."

TORONTO :
METHODIST BOOK AND PUBLISHING HOUSE.

T8 if §0 KING STREET EAST,

PREFACE.

Indifference to personal religion is an evil of prime
magnitude, as, if persisted in to the close of life, it
must be followed by the loss of the soul ; yet, if the
truth be held even theoretically, that indifference may
give place to deep concern for salvation, which, if car-
ried out to its legitimate end, will secure the happiest
results. There is, however, a more serious and a
growing evil gaining ground. A careful observer of
surrounding movements cannot shut his eyes to the
painful fact that atheism, in one form or another, is
insidiously tainting the minds and corrupting the
hearts of no small number of persons, whose infidel
tendencies are but little suspected by those who should
be the most concerned in their detection. This evil is
creeping into families, the heads of which are mem-
bers of the Church: the serpent is again finding his
way into paradise, seeking to tempt and to betray.

The mildest form of this evil appears in the doubts
expressed of the authenticity and inspiration of the
Sacred Scriptures, and, by consequence, of their obli-
gatory character and of their claim to unreserved obe-
dience. Instead of taking counsel of the Lord by

PREFACE.

searching the Scriptures and obeying their precepts,
the sceptically inclined adopt, without examinations
the opinions of men who are ever talking about the
inconsistencies of the Bible, and justifying their own
laxity of morals by referring to Noah and David, as if
the Bible were the patron of vice and the enemy of
virtue.

Then the opinions of certain men who have a repu-
tation in the scientific world and whose so-called dis-
coveries are said to contradict the truth of the Mosaic
Cosmogony, are readily seized upon by some who are
ambitious, in a cheap way, to be ranked among the
knowing ones, and to be considered associates of those
who pride themselves on being free from old-time
prepossessions in favor of the Christian religion.
Thus taking it for granted, on such flimsy authority,
that Moses has erred in the opening chapters of the
Book of Genesis, they infer, as if proved beyond doubt,
that he has erred in all the subsequent parts of the
Pentateuch ; and as Moses is recognized as a true and
faithful servant of God by Joshua, David, Malachi, and
others of the Old Testament, and by our Lord and
His Apostles of the New, his errors, so the proof
grows ! are carried to their account, and the whole
Bible is by this process brought under suspicion. Fine
reasons ! So tine, that if they were a little finer, there
would be nothing of them left ! The sophistry, thus
so delicately wrapped up, is at once exposed, by deny-
ing that Moses has erred. He has not erred, but has

PREPACK

written the truth, which every successive scientific
fact, not fable, as it becomes known, renders the more
apparent.

Moreover, lectures have been and are still teing
delivered by avowed atheists, in which ridicule of the
Bible, and of the God of the Bible, has been indulged
to an extent disgusting to every one who has regard
for the decencies of society, but in which certain
classes, old and young, have found, judging from ap-
pearances and the applause elicited, great entertain-
ment ! Thus a poison, more deadly in its effects than
that of the worst species of malaria, has be-n diffused
among communities — more fatal, because, whilst the
latter may cause the death of the body, the former
will assuredly destroy first the soul, and then, by re-
action, will result in the destruction of the body also.

Perceiving this increasing evil, and sorrowing over
its pernicious effects, the writer of these pages has
deemed it a duty to lift up a warning voice, and by
confuting atheistic sophistries, seek to reclaim some
at least who have fallen into this " snare of the devil,"
and to guard others who have as yet escaped from
being led away by this " error of the wicked."

To avoid burdening the text with lengthy extracts,
a few appropriate and interesting articles are given in
an Appendix.

Baltimore, Md., U.S., 1881.

CONTENTS,

SECTION I.
Atheism Incapable of Proof 1

SECTION II.
The Universe a Proof of a Personal God ig

SECTION III.
Matter in its Elementary and Modified Forms not Eternal 25

SECTION IV.
The Universe not from Chance 30

SECTION V.
Life Subversive of Atheism 3(j

SECTION VI.
Motion— a Proof of a Supreme Ik-ing 43

SECTION VII.
The Starry Host 55

SECTION VIII.
Argument from Design gg

SECTION IX.
Indictment of Atheism : its Antidote 84

viii Contents.

APPENDICES.

Appendix A. p^^,

God Geornt'trizes 2qo

Appendix B.
The Atmosphere ^w

Appendix C.
The Architecture of the Eye jjg

Appendix D.
Atheistical Bravado : Ingersoll I24

!||

ARROWS IN THE HEART OF THE KM'S ENEMIES.

♦♦

SECTION I.

ATHEISM INCAPABLE OF PROOF.

It is impossible to prove there is no God. Invin-
cible difficulties surround and exclude proof. Before
the sceptic can affirm " there is no God," with the
hope of producing conviction, he mus-i; have previously
visited every portion of space, and by personal inter-
course become acquainted with, and interrogated all
intellectual existencies. Should his exe.mination be
less than universal and minute, his investigation would
be essentially imperfect, and the ground of his want
of faith in the orthodox doctrine fatally defective.
For anything he can show to the contrary, there is a
God, and yet through incapacity or inattention, or
both, his existence may have been overlooked.

"Ere we can say that there is no God, we must have

ARTIOWS IN THE HEART

roamed over all nature, and seen that no mark of a
t^.ivine footstep was there ; and we must have gotten
intimacy with every exir'ent spirit in the universe,
and learned from each, that never did a revelation of
the Deity visit him ; and we must have searched, not
into the ^ eccrds of one solitary planet, but into the
archives of ail worlds, and thence gathered, that
throughout the wide realms of immensity, not one
exhibitioT.i of a reiofuins: and a livinor God ever has
been made. For a man not to know of a God, he has
only to sink beneath the level of our common nature.
But to deny him, he must be a God himself. He must
arrogate the ubiquity and omniscience of the Godhead."
— Dr. Chcdviers.

But what man has ever taken or attempted to take
this serial voyage, or has made or attempted to make
this inquiry ? If such a man has ever lived, his name
has been so carefully concealed, that its form has never
mot human eyes, nor its sound saluted human ears.
Not one of the " Freethinkers," who, not long since,
held a Convention in the State of New York, made
either a verbal or a written report of such a voyage
and of such an investigation for the encouragement
and confirmation of the brotherhood in their belief !
But these are enterprising times. Is there, then, a
sceptic with nerve equal to the trial ? Tlie twelve
labors of Hercules, the voyages of Columbus, La
Perouse, and other well-known adventurous men, are
mere trifles compared with this enterprise; but let

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

him, however, not be discouraged, but act from the
inspiring conviction that the greater the difficulties to
be surmounted the greater the satisfaction attendant
on success. The world waits to do honor to his
courage ; but not until success has crowned his effort,
can he, consistently with honor and the strict
demands of truth, expect his bald and bold assertion,
that "there is no God," to be credited by prudent
men.

Unbelief in the existence of God of necessity ranks
no higher than a mere opinion ; an opinion without a
justifiable foundation ; an opinion assuredly false, the
offspring of prejudice, of defective investigation, of
fallacious arguments, of overweening conceit, of deter-
mined rejection of evidence ; and, in not a few instances,
it has been induced by such obliquity of conduct as
would make the non-c'^tence of God., the Holy and
Omniscient One, the impartial Judge, the Punisher of
the wicked, above all things desirable, thus culminat-
ing in the fatal error, the deadly sin of atheism.

The atheist has no special means of knowing there
is no God. He has no proof — not an iota of proof.
Whence does he derive his assumed knowledge ? He
does not believe in Revelation ; it '^ould not, then,
have been revealed to him. He believes not in any-
thing supernatural ; no spirit, then, has come from the
invisible world to make known to him there is no
God. Has he derived his assumed knowledge from
man V His informer is in the same predicament as

AKROWS IN THE HEART

himself — both alike are under the same disabilities.
One atheist says to another, " Do you believe i-^ the
God of the Bible?" "No." "Neither do I." Instead of
one foolish man, there are, in this case two foolish men ;
and this is all the proof the one can give to the other.
At best there is only conjecture ; but conjectures may
be false ; they form a poor basis for such audacious
unbelief.

All the positive proof is in an opposite direction.
The evidence that there is c God is as clear and as
bright as sunlight ; as convincing as millions of wit-
nesses can make it. The evidence is cumulative, every
winged moment adding to its force. Of old the
general statement was : " The heavens declare the
glory of God ; and the firmament showeth his handy
work;" now, that testimony is still more emphatic.
True science, so far from opposing, corroborates the
sublime doctrine of Deity, by opening to our view
minute and other numberless individual proofs not
apparent but actually comprehended in the general
declaration. On every object, great and small, God
has left his impress. Among his countless witnesses
there are no mutes.

Nor has the sceptic any assurance that, in denying
God, he is right. Doubts and fears, like armed hosts,
will more or less frequently start up to disturb his
false peace. Conscience, unless " past feeling," will at
times utter its drea i accusations. Atheism is not in-
vulnerable. The airows of the Most High are sharp

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

in the heart of the King's enemies, whereby the people
fall under him. In health, in sickness, amid scenes of
revelry, in the midst of the activities of life, in the
darkening hour of death the falsity of atheism has
appeared to scores once strong in its belief. The shadow
of an armless hand has quickened the understanding
and sent fear and trembling into the guilty heart.
Where then was the support that scepticism had
so boldly promised ? Groans, tears, self -accusations,
confessions of guilt, prayers for mercy, are the
reply. Yes! scepticism has proved a failure when
support from it was most needed. With grief, painful
to witness ; with abhorrence, no words can adequately
describe, it has been, in many instances, renounced.
In other cases, remorse, despair, horrible blasphemies,
anticipations of coming doom, have attested the con-
scious and utter abandonment of its dupes. God was
then his own witness, criminating, alarming, punish-
ing the persistently guilty, but showing mercy to
repentant sinners.

We have said that atheism is without an iota of
proof ; but a show of proof has been attempted. Only
two methods of proof are available for this purpose.

There must have been a period when there was not
anything existent, or something must have existed
from eternity. This proposition is self-evident.

Were there no First Originating Cause, there must
have been a period, when, except matter be eternal,
there was not any thing existent — when all was
nonentity.

limmmtwSitxf-iSHmm

ARROWS IN THE HEART

A " No-God " is a nothir'^. Between existence and
non-existence there is no medium. A thing exists or
it does not exist ; it is something or nothing ; it can-
not be nothing and something at the same time.

God is something, matter is something ; but God is
something necessarily different from matter. If he
differs in nothing from matter, if he has precisely the
same properties as matter, neither more nor less, then,
to all intents and purposes, he is matter ; but we claim
that " God is a Spirit," an infinite Spirit, something
altogether distinct from matter.

Prior to the existence of matter, if there were no
Spirit, there was nothing existing — there was no God.
"If there were no Spirit" — this supposition the sceptic
is required to turn into absolute certainty, by proving
its truth. If your neighbor died yesterday he cannot
be alive to-day ; but did he die yesterday ? Whether
he is or is not alive to-day depends upon whether or
not he died yesterday. How, then, does the sceptic
propose to prove the above supposition ? Simply by
taking for granted that there was no Spirit ; that
because there was no matter there was no God !
Assumption is no proof. Grant the assumption and the
argument is complete. Grant that prior to the existence
of matter there was nothino: else existent, and it
follows that there is no God. Deny the assumption,
what then i How is he to prove that there is no God ?
At the threshold of what he would call proof, but we
mere assumption, he meets with an insuperable diffi-

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

culty — a difficulty to which his absolute ignorance of
the subject must yield. Was he present when matter
came into existence ? Does he know from personal
observation how or under what circumstances it came
into being ? If not, what does he really know about
the matter ? Absolutely nothing. Ignorance here is
not "the mother of devotion," but the father of no small
measure of presumption.

Suppose matter existent : here is something. The
second method of proof is, that because there is some-
thing there is nothing else existent ; that is, because
there is matter there is no God. The former method
is an attempt to prove by the non-existence of one
thing the non-existence of another thing ; the latter,
by the existence of one thing the non-existence of
another thing ! " There is a generation, how lefty
are their eyes ! and their eyelids are lifted up." There
is no God because matter exists ! The universe exists,
but God is not the universe, therefore God does not
exist ! About as conclusive as if one, in striving to
prove that there is no sun, were to syllogize thus : The
moon exists, but the sun is not the moon, therefore the
sun does not exist ! We think the existence of the
universe proves quite a different thing as we shall show
hereafter. The legitimate inference is that atheism is
incapable of proof.

ll^i

ARROWS IN THE HEART

SECTION 11.

THE UNIVERSE A PROOF OF A PERSONAL GOD.

We are surrounded by innumerable objects which
strike our senses. Their minuteness, their magnitudes,
their motions, their order, their utility, their beauty
fill our minds with wonder. From the grain of sand on
the sea-shore, from the pebble in the street, from the
blade of grass and the waving corn in the field, to suns
and systems, to the blazing comets that pursue their
eccentric and solitary courses through the profundities
of space, they call forth our admiration and excite our
curiosity. They cannot be ignored. They compel
attention. Whence came they ? Do they furnish
proofs of the existence of a First Supreme Cause ?
Have they a voice ? They have : " There is no speech
nor language where their voice is not heard. Their
line is gone out through all the earth, and their words
to the ends of the world." To an unprejudiced mind
they proclaim the existence of a Being of infinite per-
fections and of inexhaustible resources.

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

ipel
lish
ise ?
iech

leir
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lind

)er-

Note : Atheistic theories are various, being neither
uniform nor infallible. In treating the topics involved
in this discussion we have to adapt our arguments to
the fallacious reasoning employed by the opponents of
the true faith.

On the supposition that there was a period when
there was no matter, does the non-existence of matter
prove that there was at that period no God ? Matter
and spirit are essentially different. Except that they
are substances, they have no attributes or properties
in common. They may exist separately, or, as in the
case of man, in union. How any sane man can doubt
of this essential difference is truly a matter of astonish-
ment. Every man, not insane, is conscious of possess-
ing something which thinks, understands, compares,
judges, wills, desires, loves, hates, fears, «fec. This
something is a simple, indivisible substance, which
to distinguish it from matter, we name spirit or soul
which is incapable of performing any of these acts.
Who ever dreams of a stone loving, fearing, thinking,
willing, or having self-consciousness ? Kick a stone,
it does not resent the act ; throw it into a river, it
fears nothing, but without a groan or complaint sinks
to the bottom and quietly remains there ; take the best
possible care of it, pet it, wrap it up in silk, give it the
best place in the cabinet, offer it the daintiest food, it
shows no interest, it manifests no love ; give it the
choice of a great good or a great evil, it is insensible

to the offer and wills neither the one nor the other ;
2

ARROWS IN THE HEART

\ "

place before it an easy or a difficult problem for solu-
tion, it is dumb ; talk to it about right and wrong, it
has no perception of moral distinctions — without com-
punction on the one hand, or without joy on the other,
it would allow itself to be used by a burglar to commit
murder, or by an honest man to aid in building a
church : and what is true of a stone is true of all
matter.

But may not the power of thinking, &c., be superadded
to matter ? The question is a confession that that
which thinks is diverse from matter, otherwise it would
only be adding matter to matter. Manipulate, refine,
etherealize matter to the utmost, the result is matter
still. The process may change its form but not its nature.
Given — a piece of chalk, crucibles, acids, heat, and
other chemical agents, to endow the resultant with the
power of thought, &c., or to produce anything that
is not matter. To remand the process to God is to re-
mand it to a Being that atheism does not acknowledge.
If the sceptic be as wnse as he pretends to be, he ought
to be able to effect, in the case given, the result required;
if he is not able, he ought at once to confess his ignor-
ance and incapacity, and acknowledge that there exists
a Power capable of creating a spirit endowed with
mental and moral qualities.

We may, in turn, ask, by what or by whom is the
supposed addition made ? Not by the material part of
man, for the very best reason, that being matter it
cannot act, and if it could, there is, according to mate-

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

rialism, no substance diverse from matter from which
the power of thinking, &c., could be derived. All
observation shows that the body without a soul is dead,
and the supposition is, that before the super-addition,
the body was without a soul, or without that specific
something necessary to enable it to think, &c. ;
hence the necessity for the alleged addition. The
argument now shows, that if anything is added to the
body to constitute man as now existing, and ,0 enable
him to perform mental acts, the addition must be
made by a Being, who himself has intellect to know
what to add, and power to carry his knowledge into
effect, which brings us directly to the God of the
Bible. Indeed, if there were only a material God, and
only a material soul in man, how did thought origi-
nate ? How did mental operations come into being ?
Matter is incapable of thought, but we find thought in
operation ; what could have suggested thought, or
how could matter have first conceived the idea of its
necessity and then endowed itself with it ? Questions
which materialism can never answer.

But what is super-added ? A power ? a capability ?
a quality ? These have no existence apart from the
substance in which they inhere. They necessarily pre-
suppose such a substance. Thus, if I think, judge,
choose, reject, will, love, &:c., I must possess something
capable of thinking, judging, choosing, &;c., of which
these are properties ; this something, is not matter
but spirit, for these acts are not the acts of matter but

ARROWS IN THE HEART

I I

of a spiritual being. They are not, and never can be
made, the endowments of matter however refined, but
they demand for their existence a spiritual substance,
and such a substance is the soul. It is, therefore, this
soul or spirit, and not a mere quality, which is united
to the material body in man, and which constitutes
him a thinking being. The phenomena of mental acts
cannot otherwise be accounted for. The spirit in man
is, and nmst be, the gift of a spirit ; only a spirit can
confer a spirit.

The man who denies the existence of the soul or
spirit, to be consistent, ought to deny that he is the
same person that he was ten years ago. On what can
he rest his identity except it be on self-consciousness,
a principle not in any degree appertaining to matter ?
Personal identity depends upon our spiritual nature.
Owing to changes in the body during the space of
seventy or eighty years, were the substance, in which
consciousness of identity inheres, material, it must have
been several times destroyed, so that no one of ad-
vanced age could be assured he is the same person or
being that he was when he was ten or twelve years
old ; but this is opposed to universal experience. Sup-
pose a man committed a murder several years ago, for
which he was subsequently arrested, and when
arraigned for trial he pleaded that he was not the man
who committed the offence — that he was somebody else,
that he had another body and consequently could not
be the man who was guilty of the deed. Would he be

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

believed by judge or jury, after twenty credible wit-
nesses, bad, under tbe sanctity of an oatb, deponed to
bis identity? His plea would be justly regarded as a
sorry quibble not having tbe sligbtest influence to
arrest sentence and the dread execution of tbe law.
His own consciousness would convict bim of adding
falsehood to his previous crime.

Spirit and matter being essentially different, tbe
affirmation, that " there is no God," because at a cer-
tain period there was no matter, involves as previously
shown, a gross absurdity. The non-existence of
matter at a given time past cannot disprove the exist-
ence of Deity. Matter may not exist and yet there
may be a God.

If, then, at any period of the past there was nothing
existent, there would be nothing now ; from nothing,
nothing remains. This is as true in everyday affairs
as in mathematics. Persons who doubt may try the
experiment for themselves. From an empty purse see
how much good and lawful coin of the realm you can
take out. Sow no seed in the ground and see how
much wheat, corn, oats, barley, or other grain you will
harvest. Common sense teaches that if we would
reap we must plough, harrow, and sow. If we would
live we must eat and drink. If we would see we
must have light and open our eyes. If we would not
appear as persons devoid of common sense we must
use our reason, shun atheism and believe in God.
Between cause and effect there is a correlation that no
really wise man would deny.

M i

ARROWS IN THE HEART

i «

i i

The non-pxistcnce of matter at a given time past,
furnishes a conclusive argument in proof of the exist-
ence of a Personal God. Tlie universe exists. Of
necessity it mu.st he the effect of some cause — a cause
adequate to produce such an efiect ; unless it can be
shown that the universe created itself. But that
which has no existence cannot produce that which has
existence. That wliich creates is a Creator. A creator
must exist before it creates. The material universe
could not have given birth to itself. It could
not have been cause and effect, or, in other words, it
could not have been a creator and a creature, at th '
same time. But the supposition is, that there was
at the same period, neither matter nor spirit. Under
these circumstances it is self-evident, that actual beinf^
would be impossible. There was no power ; nothing
in which power could inhere ; all was blank, vacuous,
and inert.

" Nothing " has no being. " No-being," has no
power, no intelligence. But the universe exists; there-
fore, there must exist something, some cause adequate
to give it a being — that something, that ca^Tse is God.
From this argument there is no escape ; it concludes,
fully and logically against atheism. Until the sceptic
can osent irrefragable proof that fields of wheat
have sprung up spontaneously ready for the harvest,
where ilo seed had been sown, and where there was
no possibility of its having been sown, say from the
surface of the barren rock, unvisited, also, by genial

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

sunshine and fertilizing showers, our argumtjnt holds
good; even the credence of this impossibility were
more reasonable than the belief, that the vast material
universe has come into being without an infinite
Creator. This is comparing small things with great,
but there is nothing great, in any sense, about atheism,
except its folly and its sin, these being truly im-
measurable by human standards.

To create the rude material of the universe required
infinite Power. To set it in order, to endow it with
all the properties it possesses, to beautify and adorn it,
to adapt it in every part to definite and useful pur-
poses, demanded Power and Intelligence to which
no limits can be assigned, to which no appellation
short of infinite can be justly applied.

The mechanism of the heavens and of the earth —
the heavens with their suns and their satellites, the
earth with its atmosphere, oceans, and mountains, with
all its variety of hill and dale, with all its numerous
yet diversified productions, with its animate tribes, and
with man, the crowned sovereign of this vast domain
— required such an intimate knowledge of all arts and
sciences as to fill the loftiest human intellects with
indescribable amazement ; a knowledge so vast, so
perfect, that to obtain even a slight acquaintance with
some of its elements, demands the intensest devotion
of the raaturest minds and a lifetime of the most
laborious study. After all their attainments, they are
standing only on the shore of a boimdless, fathomless

ARROWS IN THE HEART

ocean, and, whi'st dropping into it their little lines, are
compelled to exclaim : " O the depth of the knowledge,
the wisdom, and the power of Him, who has measured
the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out
heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of
the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in
scales, and the hills in a balance — who is wonderful in
counsel and excellent in working — who doeth great
things past finding out, yea, and wonders without
number ! " Let the sceptic answer the questions pro-
posed in Job xxxviii, xxxix, xl, xli, and if he do not
" abhor himself and repent in dust and ashes," it will
be because he has permitted blindness and hardness to
"^eize upon him as their unresisting prey.

'^aw-^

--^r^

OF THE KINGS ENEMIKS.

SECJTION III.

MATTER IN ITS ELEMENTARY AND MODIFIED FORMS

NOT ETERNAL.

Sceptics affirm that the heavcins and the earth, vvitli
all they contain, have existed from eternity, and have
happened in form, order, V>eauty and utility \)y cJucace,
thereby excluding a positive act of creation hy an
infinitely Intel lif^ent and powerful Vjeinf^.

If this theory be adopted to avoid or lessen diffi-
culties, it fails to accomplish its object. The eternity
of matter is, at least, as inconceivable as the eternity
of an infinite Spirit. Were matter eternal it must
have existed everywhere. No valid reason can be
assigned why it should be limited in f[uantity, or
why it should occupy one place rather than anot}if;r.
Ubiquity is one of the attributes claimed for Deity —
his presence is everywhere. Analogically, we infer
that if matter were eternal, ubiquity would be one of
its propel uies — that all space would be occupied by

ARROWS IN THE HEART

solid matter. The universe would be necessarily a
solid mass ; there would be no room for separate or
detached bodies ; iherefore, no possibility of motion.
But matter does not so exist ; hence, it is not eternal.

This is one view of the subject: take another. Admit-
ting that originally matter existed in a chaotic state
— that is, in a gaseous, liquid, and solid state, gases,
liquids, and solids all mixed together — tiien, as eternity
implies the idea of permanency, matter must be un-
changeable in essence and form ; and as the existence
of God, or of an infinite Spirit is supposed to be ex-
cluded, there could have been outside of itself no
power to alter or modify its condition ; therefore,
matter being in itself inert the chaotic state must have
been immiltabie. But that chaotic state does not now
exist ; nor, as far as our world is concerned, has it so
existed for upwards of six thousand years. Whence,
then, the change — all that constitutes the variety of
earth ? Whence order from chaos ; beauty from de-
formity ; utility from comparative nselessness ; this
wondrous frame from an unseemly mass ? Let sceptics
deny the evidence of their senses ; let them, ostrich-
like, hide their heads in the sands of atheism, — infinite
powder and intelligence are conspicuous in all these
forms, in their order and uses. This cannot be denied
without contradicting the testimony of the vast
majority of mankind ; as for the cavils of atheists,
they are captious and fatuous.

A great revolution has taken place. The chaotic

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

condition has been exchanged for a state of order, and
in a way to charm all eyes and gladden all hearts. —
" The earth was without form, and void ; and darkness
way upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. And God said,
Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw
the light, that it was good : and God divided the light
from the darkness. * ♦ * And God said, Let there
be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters. And God made
the firmament, and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were
above the firmament : and it was so. * * * And God
said. Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together into one place, and let the dry land appear; and
it was so. And God called the dry land Earth ; and
the gathering together of the waters called he Seas :
and God saw that it was good." Chaos itself was the
result of divine energy ; subsequently, with the voli-
tion went forth a power from the Creator which chaos
obeyed and the habitable earth with its various ap-
pendages appeared. Hence, neither in its elementary
nor in its modified forms is matter eternal.

Still more preposterous is the theory, if atheistical
theories admit of degrees, that the universe as it now
is, is 3ternal ; implying the eternity of man and of
the present races of inferior animals, as well as that of
every other existent object. Once existing always
existing is the legitimate, logical inference from

.r:

ARROWS TN THE HEART

the doctrine that excludes a creating God and
avows the eternity of the universe. Matter, in its
present forms, cannot change itself any more than it
could have changed itself in its chaotic state. A sub-
stance in itself eternal and yet liable to change is an
impossibility. Were it subject to change, it would be
eternal and not eternal, unchangeable and changeable,
at the same time. If the theory now under considera •

tion be true, it follows that the present forms of
material things must have existed throuofhout the
eternity past to the present time, without change,
without diminution, and without accession of particles,
and that they will so continue for the eternity to come ;
but that they have existed thus, every living man can
contradict, and that a similar contradiction may be
giv'u in the future, is as certain as that atheism is a
ten.- expressive of egregious folly and unparalleled
sin.

Time was when we, our neighbors, and the world's
multitudes were not. A generation ceases to live
and disappears from the face of the earth, on an
average, every thirty years, and another generation
takes its place. Change is stamped on everything
around us. Even the granite I'^ck suffers loss by
attrition. Chemistry opens to us a world of change.
Storms and tempests, floods, fires, and earthquakes
teach us the painful lesson of mundane instability.
Old ocean is not exempt ; its waters are not to-day the
same as they were yesterday; evaporation, rains, and the

Oir THE king's ENEMIES.

flow of rivers are the agents of change. The life and the
death of the vegetable world ; the life and the death
of the animal world, tell the same story. These and
other voices protest against the eternity of matter.

Succession is not permanency. Similarity is not
identity. On this subject geology is not silent; it
"proves that there was a time when man and his
fellow-creatures had no place on earth, and the wild
fiction that they must have existed forever is at once
destroyed."

ARROWS IN THE HEART

1 1

SECTION IV.

THE UNIVERSE NOT FROM CHANCE.

Driven from one position after another, the atheist
still strives to maintain his ground. He has an arrow
in his quiver, which, he thinks, artistically aimed, will
pierce through the orthodox shield. The aim may be
artistic, but if strength to draw the bow fail — what
then ? The arrow may only wound the hand that
would send it forth.

What is the weapon that is to work such dire
destruction ? Listen ! " The present forms and pro-
perties of all things comprised in the universe are due
to chance !"* Say you so ? If not considered obtru-
sive, we ask — how did you obtain this knowledge ?
Were you present and an eye-witness, when this
wondrous transformation is said to have taken place ?
To this question a sufficient answer will be found in

* The atheist does not use the word chance as expressive of a cause
not known, but as synonymous with No cause.

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

your reply to another question, " How old are you ?"
Or had you an informer — one, on whose knowledge
and veracity, reliance may be safely placed ? We
doubt — we more than doubt. There is, however, a
way by which, if you think you can prudently use it,
you can overwhelm us with confusion and save your
own credit. Produce your witness ! Let him stand
forth in the light of day and tell us all about the
matter ! Tell us where he was — what he saw — what
and how chance worked in those primordial times !
Let him tell the whole story, declaring everything,
concealing nothing ! Cross-examination on our part,
we promise, shall be neither very searching nor pro-
tracted.

Chance ! What is chance ? Is it something or
nothing ? Has it a real or an imaginary being ? If a
real being, it must be matter, because atheism does not
admit of spirit. If material, it must be like all other
matter, possessing similar properties — inertia and
impenetrability among the rest. Is it subject to attrac-
tion or gravitation ? For what bodies has it an
especial affinity ? Atheistical ? If it is nothing, only
imaginary, nothing can be said in its favour : it is as
devoid of reason as the skeleton of an ape's head is of '
human brains.

Grant for the moment that chance is somethincf
real ; let us see to what the admission leads. In
opposition to its own inertia it must have exerted
tremendous power, a force so superior as to have over-

ARROWS IN THE HEART

i I
I

It. !

come the inertia of all other matter and set it in
motion. So we are told, in real fairy-story fashion
that " once upon a time," the chaotic molecules —
(whence these molecules ? Who or what gave them
being ? You see you cannot take the lirst step with-
out a Creator) — began a very lively dance, whirling
about in space, whirling in and out, hither and thither,
until somehow, but how is not exactly known, except
the as yet unproduced witness can give the informa-
tion, things by chance took their present forms ! A
whirligig on rather a large scale ! A frightful one —
especially to the eternal men, women, and children,
who could not avoid being participants in those
astounding gyrations, circumvolations, and circum-
volutions !

Think of the whirling and twirling ; of the rushing
and crushing ; of the dashing, clashing, and smashing ;
of the colliding, uprising, and down-falling; of the
squaring, triangling, and rounding ; of the expanding
and contracting ; of the floating and depositing ; of
the thumping, bumping, dumping, and pumping ; and
of every kind of thing necessary to complete the
operations of the chance-force ! O, chance ! chance !
chance ! Thou must have been the greatest of all
giants, immeasurably overtopping the legendary giants
of olden times, who merely "hurled mountains and
forests against Olympus," regardless of the lightnings
of Jupiter ! What are the uplifting and the hurling
of a few mountains and forests to the formation of the

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

innumerable bodies comprised in the universe ! They
played with toys — thou sporte<lst with worlds !

Instead of hearing of the wonderful feats of chance
in the long by-gone ages, we should prefer, had we a
choice, to see it at work now, — framing, not worlds
but something on a much smaller scale ; for instance,
erecting our houses, tilling our fields, cultivating our
gardens, gathering in our harvests, digging our quar-
ries, felling our trees, building our steamboats and
ships, spanning our streams and rivers with good sub-
stantial bridges, doing, in fact, all the heavy outdoor
work that so painfully taxes the physical energies of
our race. This is not asking much; if chance could
and did fashion our solar system and the far-off stellar
orbs, it would be only a trifle for it to finish up these
little matters. Strange, is it not, that chance never
does these diminutive things now ? It must have
expended its force and beggared its wits in framing
worlds !

That chance does not now help us, poor mortals, in

the way indicated, you know by experience. When,

for example, you wanted a house, you did not sit down

and with folded arms wait until chance built it. You

did not go houseless to sleep and wake up in the

morning and find a small or a large house, well or

otherwise furnished, ready built for your occupance.

No. You or your agents builded it. From cellar to

attic chance had no part in the work ; but human

agents and human hands were the instruments by
3

ARROWS IN THE HEART

which the edifice was begun and completed. What
would you think of the man, were he to attempt to
argue you into the belief that your house and its
furniture were the result of the fortuitous coming
together of the various materials of which they are
composed ? Doubtless you would look around for a
way of escape from the possible clutches of a lunatic,
and you would be wise in so doing.

Now if your house required a builder, some Being
was necessary to build the universe ; not a frail being
like yourself, but One possessed of skill and power
competent to the performance. This matter-of-fact
principle accords with the dictwni of an inspired
apostle : " Every house is builded by some man ; but
he that built all things is God." Heb. iii. 4. The
principle is no less worthy of belief because it is
enunciated by a wise man inspired by God. Involving
the self-evident truth, that every effect must have its
appropriate cause, it commends itself to the acceptance
of every unprejudiced mind. But sceptics ignore God.
Their denial of his creatine: acts is the height of incon-
sistency and unreasonableness. They are compelled
to admit the fact that a house cannot build itself, but
that it is the workmanship of competent human
agents, but here they stop. But why stop at this
point ? They cannot deny that in its construction the
universe displays unrivalled skill and power ; but
when pressed for the Cause, or asked for the name of
the Architect, they assign the fortuitous collection of

: !

OF THE king's ENEMIES. 35

material atoms floating about in space from the
eternity past, and which, settling down at last, divided
off into sun, moon, stars, land, oceans, seas, rivers,
lakes, atmosphere, superior and inferior animals, trees,'
fruits, flowers, and all things else appertaining to these
wondrous works ; and to this unbaptized notling they
give the senseless name of chance ! If this be not
the quintessence of folly and absurdity, where shall
we look for it ?

I »

ARROWS IN THE HEART

SECTION V.

LIFE SUBVERSIVE OF ATHEISM.

The problem of life has never been solved ; the
opinions of physiologists have been and still are
various and vague. " Bichat defines ' life as the sum
of the functions that resist death,' — Cuvier, as * the
combined result of all the organic functions,' —
Richerand, as the ' assemblage of the properties and
laws that govern the animal economy,' — Kant, as *an
internal faculty producing change, motion, and action.'
Here, then, as Mason Good observes, 'we have not only
the employment of terms that have no meaning, but
properties, laws, and powers without any source, — a
superstructure without any foundation. — effects with-
out a cause.' " — Metcalfe.

The most learned atheists have never accounted
satisfactorily for the existence of living beings on our
globe. Did they exist in the chaotic state ? Were
they co-eval with the rude elements of inanimate
matter ? If so — how did they obtain life — how^ did

OF THE KINGS ENKMIKS.

ited
our
'^ere
late
did

they live — on what did they live ? Tf not — we still
ask — how did they obtain life ?

Is life an essential propurty of matter ? If it wcre^
all matter would have life; everything', without excep-
tion, would be animate. Oceans, mountains, rocks,
trees, farms, houses, in the exuborance of the living
principle, might move from place to place, and at
tinjes not at all convenient to the inhaljitants ! Espe
cially inconvenient would it prove, were the oceens
and rivers to leave their he(h durinjj- nifdit or even
during day ; and if by chance, these and other mate-
rial things should move simultaneously, old chaos
would re-visit the earth ; confusion, a thousand-fold
confounded, would be the prevailing o'^'der ; scarcely
would there be a Deucalion left to cry over a Pyrrha,
" O femina sola superstes !" The destruction would be
fearful. Thanks to the loving Father, life is not an
essential property of matter, but in every instance in
which it is possessed, it is somthing superinduced. If,
then, there were no spirit — if all things were simply
and purely material, we still ask, — whence came
animal life '( How was it superinduced ; by what or
by whom was it superinduced ? Plain questions which
demand a plain intelligible answer. By chance ?
Chance has no existence, except it be found amid the
chaotic "molecules" or "germs" of atheism — its only
befitting lodging-place.

On the supposition that our earth were co-eval
with eternity past, living beings could not have

ARROWS IN THE HEART

been co-eval with it. Estimating the entire surface of
the earth in round numbers at one hundred and
ninety-sevei millions of square miles, only forty-seven
of those are land, whilst one hundred and fifty mil-
lions a,r3 water ; that is, the land is to the water as one
to four. Were every portion of the land fertile, and as
densely populated as China is now, its capability to
sustain population can be approximately calculated.
Suppose, also, that generation after generation ap-
peared and disappeared, as to years, just as they have
done since the time of Adam and Eve, we are justified
in affirming, that the earth could not provide, at this
time, for the wants of the number of human beings
that would have accumulated by natural increase.
Take into your calculation the fact that eternity past
is a period extending so far back as to render it strictly
incomprehensible by human minds. Divide, in ima-
gination, an infinite number,- a number to which no
limits can be placed, by thirty, the average period of a
generation, the quotient would be to us equivalent to
an infinite number, showing, if the expression be
allowable, an infinite number of generations, each one
adding to its number of individuals by natural increase,,
so that the number of persons, comprised in the present
existent generation, would be literally beyond compu-
tation. Is this the case ? Does the present population
warrant the assumption that human beings have been
co-eva ' with the past eternity ? So far is this from
being tne ^ase. that the wisest men have come co the

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

unavoidable conclusion, that man could not hav^e
existed farther back than, the period assigned by the
Mosaic account recorded in the first chapter of the
book of Genesis. We ask, then, the atheist to account
for human life in accordance with his avowed opinions
and with the known properties of matter.

To conclude our argument : Life is either an essen-
tial property of matter or it is not. If it is essential,
every part of matter must be instinct with life. The
largest mass is composed of atoms. The parts, how-
ever numerous, must partake of the nature of the whole.
If a mass, as a whole, possesses life, every particle of the
mass must possess life also. As the mass may be divided
into parts, so, if any of the parts have not life, these
lifeless parts show that life is not necessary to their
being. But certain species of matter, such as granite,
gneiss, limestone, sand, every one knows, have not
life ; therefore, these exist without a property, which,
according to the supposition, is essential to their
being ; thus involving the palpable contradiction that
lite is essential and not essential to matter at the same
time. If life is not essential to matter, a fact placed
beyond doubt, then, as certain portions of matter are
animated, there must be of necessity something out-
side of matter to produce life, as every product
requires a producer.

That which produces life must be a livinsj being, as
it cannot confer what it does not itself possess. That
living Being is the true and living God. He has

ARROWS IN THE HEART

h }

i i

life, and only he has life, in himself. Having life in
himself, he is " eternal " and " immortal " — the " I
Am " — " from everlastinoj to everlastinoj " — the Cause
of all other beings. He " maJe the earth, and created
man upon it." He made man's body from the dust of
the earth ; here was inert matter ; had God stopped
here, that body, like all other matter, would have
remained without life. But God designed to com-
municate life to the inanimate clay ; he finished his
work by breathing into it " the breath of life, and man
became a living soul." This, we are bold to say, is the
only rational account of the beginning of human life.
This event took place at a definite period, about six
thousand years ago. There was no "evolution," no
"development" from a lower to a higher grade of
being — (away with the nonsense of man's oyster or
monkey-paternity ! — ; but a positive act of creation.
" If you ask me," says a judicious physiologist, " for
the cause of the first life, I answer your question by
another : — What is the cause of gravitation, chemical
affinity, &;c., but the Causa Causaru'ni ? t?te Deity
himself f So also in regard to all other living crea-
tures peculiar to the Adamic period, their creation is
traced to the same Cause, as abundantly appears from
the divine record.

" Fools make a mock at sin." We hold it to be a sin
of the first magnitude to deny God, to scoff at the
S-icred Seiptures and ridicule the Christian religion.
' One sinner," especially of this class, " destroyeth

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

much good," and effects much evil — particularly among
the young and those ot* riper years, whose religious
principles are not firmly established, — when he has
his own way and there is no person present inclined
to "answer a fool according to his tolly." Some-
times he meets with merited rebuke and is put to
shame. The following incident speaks for itself,
and is only one out of many that might be cited
to show the empty-headedness of the blatant scorner:
Some time ago a number of persons were journeying
in the old-fashioned way of riding in a coa,ch. Among
the passengers was a young man, who strove to enter-
I .^x the company with his crude and rude atheistical
opinions ; among other things, denying the existence
of God and ridiculing the idea of creation by an
Almighty Being. He was very bold in advancing his
undigested theories, making the sacred Scriptures an
especial object of his silly witticism. There was also
present a young lady, to whom his ribaldry was very
offensive. Enduring it with much patience for some
time, and no one else seeming disposed to arrest the
blasph-: ■ v I's vicious effusions, she modestly asked him
— "If 1: . • t'^ knew an egg produced without the agency
of a hen, x.: a hen produced without the use of an eggV
He unhesitatingly answered " No." Then said she —
"Which was first, the hen or the egg ? " This question
he did not answer — indeed, he did not attempt to
answer it. " If the hen was first," proceeded she, " we
have a hen independent of the egg, and so the egg is

i> ■ I

I! fl tf

ARROWS IN THE HEART

not necessary to the production of the hen : if the egg
preceded, then the egg is independent of the hen, and
so the hen is not necessary to the production of the
egg. Now all observation shows that without the hen
there is no egg, and without the egg there is no hen.
It follows that one or the other was first, in other
words, was created. How would you account on your
principles for the facts in the case ? For my part, I
am old-fashioned enough to believe the Scriptures have
solved the problem, when they say — * God created
every winged fowl after his kind,' and that he provided
for their increase, when he added — 'Let the fowl
multiply in the earth.' "

The young man was silenced. He obtruded no
further remarks on the company. He did not even
cackle I Thus ended this chapter in the experience of
this free-thinker, who prided himself on his free-
thinking, atermw^hich has been aptly defined as "free
from thinking." Ever after this rencounter, one
would suppose, the sight of a hen would awaken un-
pleasant associations, and his appetite for eggs would
be effectually spoiled.

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

SECTION VI.

MOTION — A PROOF OF A SUPREME BEING.

Archimedes, it is said, boasting of the power of the
lever and fulcrum, exclaimed — " Give me a place to
plant my fulcrum and I will move the world ! " No
place could be found ; the experiment, therefore, was
not made. We cannot but regard the failure of the
Syracusian mathematician as a very fortunate circum-
stance ; it may have saved the earth and its inhabitants
from a dreadful catastrophe !

Modern science has greatly improved mechanical
forces. Why do not some of our enterprising un-
believers attempt to discover the place that Archimedes
failed to find ? If successful, they might move the
world to some purpose ; perhaps, reverse the j)oles, or
turn the world upside down. They might then boast
of their god-like powers, and enter into a contest with
Nature's God, with a fractionally better prospect of
success than their present imbecility warrants. We

T-

ARROWS IN THE HEART

) !

candidly confess that we w^ould prefer the world to be
" turned upside down " by the means used by Paul
and Silas (Acts xvii. 6), rather than by the aid of the
lever and the fulcrum; the former we know would
save — what dire calamities might follow in the train
of the latter, we leave to imagination to depict.
Calmly considering the arguments for and against
dangers to be apprehended from this quarter, we have
concluded there is no jjround to fear.

Notwithstanding man's imbecility, the earth moves,
and with great rapidity and regularity. It rotates
daily on its own axis, and it has never failed to ac-
complish its annual revolution around the sun. To the
former we are indebted for our days and nights ; to
the latter for our varied seasons.

What thus moves the earth or causes it to move ?
Nothing or something ? Nothing has no power ; it
cannot, therefore, be moved by nothing, or by that
which has no beinof. Somethinof, or some being must
move it or cause it to be moved — that something, that
Being is God, acting directly, or indirectly through
forces he himself has established for that specific pur-
pose. " No," says the atheist, " the earth revolves
around the sun in consequence of the centrifugal and
centripetal forces, therefore, not by the power of God."
The premises we grant, the inference we deny. What
are these forces ? They had a beginning. Time was
when there was no sun. Time was when the earth
was a chaos. Do not forget that there was a time

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

Lt
IS

when, according to atheistic notions, the molecules
were flouncing her^^ and there and everywhere where
chance led them ! Whence, then, came these forces ?
Who or what assigned to them their power, and set
exact limits to that power ? Who or what Urst sent the
earth forth in space and gave it its diurnal rotary
motion ? Nothing or something ? Nothing has no
power. Something must have been the cause, and
that something is God.

Respecting the motion of the earth, is it not mar-
vellous, that the atheist's god. Chance, should have
eventually fixed the inclination of the earth's axis to
the plane of its orbit at 23° 28', causing thereby
the different lengths of day and night, and, in its
annual revolution around the sun, the pleasing and
healthful variety of the seasons ? Had chance hap-
pened to have left it perpendicular to the plane of its
orbit, we need not say, the earth would have been a
very different place for man's residence from what it
is at present. The inhabitants of Jupiter, had we
access to them, could give us a little light on this sub-
ject — could impart information that would make us
contented with our lot, and effectually rebuke the pre-
sumption of the man who dare affirm that our world
is a " blunder." Is it not unaccountable that chance,
amid all its vagaries, should have just hit the right
inclination, the best adapted, all things considered, for
the comfort and advantage of man, and has had the
good manners, giving everything its due, let us say,

ARROWS IN THE HEART

1^ '

the kindness, not to meddle with the arrangement
since ? Let the sceptical mathematician calculate the
number of probabilities* there were at first, before the
present inclination of the earth's axis was definitely
determined, against chance leaving it at 2^^ 28', — the
calculation, if correctly made, would afford, we think,
something new in his experience ; he would see, as the
result, an array of figures that would startle him ; and,
if open to conviction, would cause him to pause and to
ask — " Is this the work of chance ? Rather is it not the
decision and the work of an Infinite Intelligence ? "

To the uneducated mind, the rotundity of the earth
is a puzzle. We have read of an Irish fisherman who
was " somewhat bemazed by the information that the
world was round, yet were his reasoning faculties not
overwhelmed. 'Round is it?* said he; 'it is hard
enough to go down hill by land, but it must be the
very mischief to go down-hill by water.' He came to
the conclusion that ' any man who attempted it must
go sliddherin away entirely.' "

Notwithstanding this alarming prediction, the earth
is a large globular body rolling in space. What up-
holds it ? Nothing or something ? Nothing has no
power ; it therefore cannot uphold the earth. The
earth, it is true, is hung upon nothing, a fact announced
as far back at least as the time of Job (xxvi. 7).
Having no material solid support, it must be upheld
by some existing power — by an infinite power ; and

* See Appendix A, p. 108.

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

ced

7).
eld
md

that power is the infinite power of God. Resolute in
his unbelief, the sceptic, as before stated, ascribes its
suspension and its motion to the conjoint operation of
the centrifugal and centripetal forces, thereby seeking
to hide his denial of God under the flimsy covering of
a verbal phrase, " the Laws of Nature," overlooking
the fact, that the laws of nature^ is only another phrase
for the laivs of God — of God " upholding all things by
the word of his power."

All matter is indifferent to rest or motion. A body
at rest will remain at rest unless some force put it in
motion. Anything that produces motion is, in tech-
nical language, called a force. Throughout the universe
at large potent forces, silent and invisible, are con-
stantly at work. Surrounded by these, touched by
these forces almost at every point, the majority of
men live and die without giving a thought to these
wondrous agents, and, by consequence, have all their
lifetime been insensible to the power in activity with-
out a moment's cessation. How few realize that they
are living on a globe revolving on its own axis at the
rate of one thousand miles an hour at the equator, and
pursuing its unwearied course in its orbit around the
sun at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles every
hour ! How few, looking to the heavens on a cloudless
night, think of the stars otherwise than so many
bright points, unmindful that they are revolving
worlds, many of them larger than the sun ! How few
think of the power that originally gave them motion,
and which keeps them in their courses !

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

The discoveries of astronomers prove that these
forces, under the direction of infinite wisdom, have
been calculated and arranged according to strict
mathematical principles, showing a Master Mind at
work, necessarily excluding all possibility of chance.

We have spoken of the motion of the earth, but the
sun itself, besides its rotation on its own axis, has a
"periodical motion, in nearly a circular direction
around the common centre of all the planetary bodies,
never deviating from its position more than twice its
diameter." It is also supposed to be moving and
carrying with it the planets and satellites of its own
system, in a vast orbit, around a distant centre.

The earth is distant from the sun ninety-five millions
of miles ; late observations make the distance some-
what less. The sun is about one million four hundred
thousand times as large as the earth ; but being only
one-fourth as dense, its matter is only three hundred
and fifty thousand times as great as that of the earth.

The moon, the earth's satellite, is distant from the
earth about two hundred and thirty-eight thousand
five hundred and forty-five miles, and is about the
same distance from the sun as the earth ; it is one
seventy-millionth part as large as the sun, and one
forty-ninth as large as the earth.

Reference need not be made to the other planets and
satellites, the dimensions of which, and their distances
from the earth and the sun, may be learned from
astronomical -works. The same forces are at work
with them as with the planet w^e inhabit.

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

The masses of globes are proportional to the cubes
of their diameters. Diameter of the moon 2,160
miles ; of the earth 7,912 miles ; the mean diameter of
the sun 886,000 miles. The mass of the moon is to
that of the earth as 2,160' is to 7,912'; the mass of
the earth to that of the sun as 7,912' is to 886,000=*.

The projectile or centrifugal force is that impulse
given to the earth by the Almighty Creator when he
first sent it forth in space.

Gravitation, which prevails among all bodies, large
and small, is a force which attracts bodies toward
each other, and, in general terms, is in proportion to
their density, and the quantity of matter they contain.

Bodies, put in motion, would move in a uniform
straight line in the direction in which the force is
applied, unless some force intervened to alter its direc-
tion. Thus, the earth, once set in motion, would pro-
ceed in a straight line, were it not for the mutual
attraction between it and the sun, which causes it to
gravitate towards the latter. The force is called
centri'petal.

Every body revolving in an orbit is under the influ-
ence of a centripetal and a centrifugal force ; the cen-
trifugal is a tangent to the orbit, the centripetal is in
the direction of the radii.

These forces vary according to "the weight, the
length of the radii, and the squares of the velocities "
of the respective bodies ; hence, " the centrifugal forces
of any two bodies are in the compound ratio of their

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weights, their radii and the squares of their veloci-
ties;" but "the force with which bodies gravitate
towards each other is in direct proportion to their
respective masses and in inverse proportion to the
squares of their distances from each other." If, there-
fore, the centripetal force were suspended, the earth
and the other planets would fly off into space ; if the
centrifugal force were suspended, they would fall to
the sun. In the words of an eloquent author — " The
mechanism of the solar system strikingly displays the
wisdom of the great Creator. The centrifugal force
depends, of course, upon the rapidity of the revolution ;
and in order that these forces might be exactly
balanced, God has imparted to each planet a velocity
just sufficient to produce a centrifugal force equal to
that of its gravitation. Thus they neither fall to the
sun on the one hand, nor fly off beyond the reach of
his beams on the other, but remain balanced in their
orbits between these two forces, steadily revolving
from age to age."

Kepler's three great laws, governing the movements
of the planets, may be here cited, affording further
proof of the working of an Intelligent Cause : —

1. "The orbits of all the planets are elliptical, having
the sun in the common focus." ^ The planets, therefore,
move with different velocities, in the different parts of
their orbits.

2. "The radius vector of a planet," (an imaginary
line joining the centre of the sun and the centre of the

OF THE KINOS ENEMIES.

planet, in any part of its orbit), " describes equal areas
in equal times."

3. " The squares of the periodic times of any two
planets " (that is, the squares of the times they take
to make a complete revolution round their orbits), "are
proportioned to the cubes of their mean distances from
the sun."

These astronomical principles and laws, though on
our part designedly limited in number, yet justify the
following arfjument : —

To adjust to a nicety all these various and apparently
conflicting influences, so as to produce the results now
apparent to every beholder, required imperatively in
the Adjuster a knowledge of the principle^ of what
lay be called the Natural Sciences, to which no
-jated intellect, however capacious, can lay claim.
Before there was an atom of matter ; before there was
a sun, or the earth, or the moon ; before there were
other planets and their satellites ; before a line was
stretched and a foundation-stone laid ; before the
waters were measured and the mountains and hills
were weighed, — all the necessities of the case, all the
actual and possible influences, all the danger of collision,
all the provisions for safety, harmony, and continued
order, all the purposes to be answered, must have been
present, as ideas, in His mind. The most comprehen-
sive yet minute knowledge, and a power to execute
equal to that knowledge, must be pre-supposed on the
part of the Being who gave this solar system birth.

ARROWS IN THE HEART

The denial of such knowledge and of such power
argues a folly so great, a perversity of intellect so
monstrous, that it would defy even Satanic cunning
to work out a deliverance from the justice of the
charge.

There is no wish on the part of Christian philo-
sophers to deny that the universe is influenced by the
laws of gravitation or attraction ; but it is altogether
another matter, when atheists, in their vain effort to
banish God from his own universe, assign these laws
as a sufficient justification of their unbelief. Their
plea is a shallow subterfuge. Laws, as they well
know or ought to know, necessarily pre-suppose a law-
maker. They do not make or formulate themselves.
If wise and useful they imply intelligence to frame
and power to execute.

Gravitation is a force, but it can be neither seen nor
felt, nor be perceived by any other of the senses.
How do we know it exists ? Only by its effects. In
the case before us we have admitted effects, which
must have an efficient cause. The laws in question
like all other laws, must have a framer and an
executor ; laws not executed, or incapable of being
executed, are a dead letter ; they are worthless. Who
or what, then, is the framer of these laws ? Who, or
what, is the executor ? No-being or an actual Being ?
No-being has no intelligence, no power ; therefore,
that which has no existence could neither have
framed nor have subsequently executed these laws.

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

;ing

h or

ore,
lave
iws.

They have been framed and subsequently carried into
effect by a Being capable of thinking, foreseeing,
planning, adjusting, and executing — of using the best
means to secure the object proposed to be attained.
This Being is no other than the living God. Human
agency is here an absolute nullity.

Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Euler, Laplace,
Olbers, the Herschells, Sir William Smith, and a host
of others, have achieved great celebrity in the depart-
ment of astronomical science ; but as much as they
deserve to be admired for their intellectual capacities,
and as highly as they are worthy to be esteemed for
their astronomical contributions, it should not be
forgotten, that they were only discoverers or inter-
preters, not the originators, of the laws by which our
earth and the heavenly bodies were influenced cen-
turies before these astronomers saw the light.

These laws have in themselves no intelligence.
They know not their own existence, nor are they con-
scious of the part they have in the immense panorama
which the heavens and the earth present to our
wondering gaze. Gravitation, attraction, motion are
blind unintelligent powers with which the Creator
endued matter, when he gave being and form to the
universe ; these powers in their unwearied operation,
affording irrefragable proofs of the existence and
marvellous attributes of God and of his continued
superintendence of all his works. The supreme Law-
giver is invisible, but existence and the exercise of

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power are compatible with invisibility. No sane
man denies the power of gravitation and of the wind,
because they are invisible.

" Law," says Professor Nichol, " is not merely the
Almighty's minister : the order of the world is not
merely His ordinance : the Forces, if so we name
them, which express order, are not powers or inferior
energies He has evoked from the silences, and to
whose guardianship he has entrusted all things, that
so he himself might repose. No ! above, below, and
around, ihere is God, there is his dread Omnipresence,
speaking to Finite Creatures through finite forms a
language which only the Living Heart can under-
stand ! In the rain and sunshine, in the soft zephyr,
in the cloud, the torrent, and the thunder, in the
bursting blossom and the fading branch, in the
returning seasons and the rolling star — there is the
Infinite Essence, and the majestic development of
His Will."

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

m *^

SECTION VII.

THE STARRY HOST.

Passing from our Solar System, which is only a
speck amid the vast universe, and merely glancing at
the unnumbered orbs which adorn the arch of heaven,
visible to the eye and seen through telescopes, we ask
— "What testimony do these silent but eloquent
witnesses give to our argument ? " We rtply — " The
further we advance in our explorations of the distant
regions of space, and the more minute and specific our
investigations are, the more august and astonishing
are the scenes which open to our view, and the more
elevated do our conceptions become of the grandeur
of that Almighty Being who 'marshalled all the starry
hosts ' and of the viultiplicity and variety of arrange-
ments he has introduced into his vast creation. And
this consideration ought to serve as an argument to
every rational being, both in a scientific and a religious

ARROWS IN THE HEART

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i ^'

point of view, to stimulate him to a study of the
operations of the Most High, who is 'wonderful in
counsel and excellent in working,' and whose works in
every part of his dominions adumbrate the glory of
his perfections and proclaim the depths of his wisdom
and the greatness of his power."

The nocturnal heavens present to the naked eye a
magnificent sight ; by the aid of the telescope that
gorgeousness is immeasurably increased. The con-
stellations are the ensigns of God's majesty ; in the
telescopic stars may be seen his sign-manual, attesting
his government throughout the furthest depths of
space. Literally, he sways his sceptre over worlds
innumerable. We cannot judge of the extent of his
domain by what is seen ; the greater number of his
works occupy regions to us invisible. Wherever
the telescope has pierced worlds on worlds appear.
Whilst viewing the Milky Way, Sir W. Herschell
estimated that, by counting the stars in a single field
of his telescope, not less than fifty thousand had
passed before his vision in the short space of one
hour ! The estimated number of stars in our firmament,
visible to the naked eye, is — 5,623, visible through
telescopes, 854,296,000 ; " if we suppose that eack of
these sums is accompanied by as many planets as are
embraced in our solar system, we have nine thousand
millions of worlds in our firmament; but even these
form a very minute and comparatively insignificant
portion of the boundless empire which the Creator has

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

reared and over which he reigns." There is fitness
in the bold questions of Young :

" Where, ends this iniglity building ? Where, begin
The suburbs of Creation '{ Where, the wall
Whose battlements look o'er into the vale
Of non-existence ? Nothing's strange abode !
Say, at what point of space Jehovah dropp'd
His slacken'd line, and laid his balance by ;
Weigh'd worlds, and measur'd infinite, no more ? "

Those bright patches, seen in various parts of the
heave is, are clusters or groups of stars — some visible
to the naked eye, others, made known by aid of
the telescope. Of these, the most illustrious are
Pleiades and Hyades in the constellation of Taurus,
Praesepe or the Bee Hive in Cancer, the gorgeous
cluster in Coma Berenices, and another in Hercules.
Sir John Herschell pronounced that of Berenice's
Hair " the most magnificent object he had ever
beheld ; " of that in Hercules, Professor Nichol says, —
" Perhaps no one ever saw it, for the first time, through
a telescope, without uttering a shout of wonder."
There is reason to believe that " the individual stars
of these clusters are suns like our own, the centres of
so many distinct systems, and that their mutual
distances are equal to those which separate our sun
from the nearest fixed stars." The nearest of the
fixed stars is not less than tiventy billions of miles
distant from the earth ; the distance of some of the
telescopic stars is, in comparison, without hyperbole,
immeasurable,

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:lil

The constitution of the Nebulce, those hazy appear-
ances of light in the heavens, was long a matter of
interest to astronomers and others ; the telescope has
resolved them into numberless small stars. A nebula
in the Sword of Orion, especially, held the astronomical
world in doubt, but at length it was resolved by Lord
Rosses telescope.

" Thus doubt and speculation," says Professor Nichol,
" on this great subject vanished forever ! And now, if
only for a moment, contemplate that Stellar Creation
in its unveiled magnificence ! Restrained no longer
by the consideration of probabilities, freed from the
necessity of discerning among its mighty forms only
resemblances of those developments of power which
more closely surround us, we can recognize no limit
either to its stupendous extent or inconceivable variety.
The nebulous spots resolved into stars, is a fact which
of itself vastly modifies our conception of the magni-
tude of that Creation ; but how hopelessly does imagi-
nation strive to enlarge itself that so we realize tHe
interior gorgeousness of these distant groups. In the
nebulous stars, circular or compact galaxies of all
orders of glory may now be traced, leading from the
splendid cluster in Hercules, as their loivest point, up
through schemes of being in which sun is nearer sun
until their entire skies merge into one blaze of light
and one throng of activities ; not like ours, coldly
studded with points far apart, whose mutual influences
are sundered by huge abysses ! But high above all

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

stands Orion, the pre-eminent wonder and glory of
the Sidereal Universe. Considering it as so remote
that its light cannot reach us in less than sixty thou-
sand years, and at the same time as occupying so large
an apparent portion of the heavens, how stupendous
must be the extent of that Nebula ! It would seem
almost, that if all the clusters hitherto guaged, were
collected and compressed into one, they would not sur-
pass this mighty group, in which every wisp, every
wrinkle, is verily a Sand-heap of Stars ! There are
cases in which, though Imagination has quailed. Reason
may still adventure inquiries and prolong its specula-
tions ; but at times we are brought to a limit, across
which no human faculty has the strength to penetrate,
and where, as now — as if on the threshold of the very
Infinite — we can only bend our heads and silently
Adore ! "

The following quotation is from Professor Mitchell,
who, from the greatness, the glory, the order, the har-
mony of the material universe, gives a sublime and
striking view of the Divine Attributes : —

"If there be anything which can lead the mind
upwards to the Omnipotent Ruler of the universe, and
give to it an approximate knowledge of his incompre-
hensible attributes, it is to be found in the grandeur
and beauty of his works. If you would know his
glory, examine the interminable range of suns and
systems which crowd the Milky Way. Multiply the
hundred millions of stars which belong to our own

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'island universe/ by the thousands of those astral
systems that exist in space within the range of human
vision, and then you may form some idea of the in-
finitude of his kingdom : for, *lo ! these are but a part
of his ways.' Examine the scale on whicli the universe
is built. Comprehend, if you can, the vast dimensions
of our sun. Stretch outward through his system, from
planet to planet, and circumscribe the whole within
the immense circumference of Neptune's orbit. This
is but a single unit out of the myriads of similar
systems. Take the wings of light, and flash with im-
petuous speed, day and night, and month and year,
till youth shall wear away, and middle age is gone,
and the extremest limit of human life has been attained
— count every pulse, and at each speed on your way a
hundred thousand miles, and when a hundred years
have rolled by, look out, and behold! the thronging
millions of blazing suns are still around you, each
separated from the other by such a distance that, in
this journey of a century, you have only left half a
score behind you.

" Would you gather some idea of the eternity past
of God's existence, go to the astronomer, and bid him
lead you with him in one of his walks through space ;
and, as he sweeps outward from object to object, from
universe to universe, remember that the light from those
filmy stains on the deep pure blue of heaven, now
falling on your eye, has been travelling space a million
of years.

!■ )

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

" Would you gather some knowledge of the Omnipo-
tence of God, weigh the earth on which we dwell, then
count the millions of its inhabitants that have come
and gone for the last six thousand years. Unite their
strength into one arm, and test its power to move this
earth. It would not stir it a single foot in a thousand
years ; and yet, under the omnipotent hand of God,
not a minute passes that it does not fly far more than
a thousand miles. But this is a mere atom — the most
insignificant point among his innumerable worlds. At
his bidding, every planet, and satellite, and comet, and
the sun himself, fly onward in their appointed courses.
His single arm guides the millions of sweeping suns ;
and around his throne circles the great constellation of
unnumbered universes.

"Would you comprehend the idea of the Omnis-
cience of God, remember that the highest pinnacle of
knowledge reached by the whole human race, by the
combined efforts of its brightest intellects, has enabled
the astronomer to compute approximately the pertur-
bations of the planetary worlds. He has predicted,
roughly, the return of half a score of comets ; but God
has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of
suns, and planets, and comets, and worlds without
number, through the ages that are past, and through-
out the ages that are yet to come, not approximately,
but with perfect and absolute precision. The universe
is in motion — system rising a-bove system, cluster above
cluster, nebula above nebula — all majestically sweep-

ARROWS IN THE HEART

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ing around under the providence of God, who alone
knows the end from the beginning, and before whose
glory and power all intelligent beings, whether in
heaven or on earth, should bow with humility and awe.

" Would you gain some idea of the wisdom of God,
look to the admirable adjustments of the magnificent
retinue of planets and satellites which sweep around
the sun. Every globe has been weighed and poised,
every orbit has been measured and bent to its beautiful
form. All ^is changing; but the laws fixed by the
wisdom of God, though they permit the rocking to
and fro of the system, never introduce disorder, or
lead to destruction. All is perfect and harmonious,
and the music of the spheres that burn and roll around
our sun is echoed by that of millions of moving worlds."

The capacity of Lord Rosse's telescope is such, that,
it is said, if a star of the first magnitude were removed
to such a distance that its light would be three millions
of years in reaching the earth, this telescope would,
nevertheless, show it to the human eye. But has
this most powerful telescope reached the utmost limits
of creation ? Is there nothing beyond its revelations ?
Let Professor Nichol answer : —

" However potent the telescope no man dare reckon
that all things are taken in by its vision, or that it has
penetrated to the outer battlements of this majestic
Stellar Creation, any more than that previously all
things were seen by his unassisted eye. Nay, the
telescope itself, in every stage, has made very different

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

declarations — ever proclaiming how far it lingers
behind a comprehension of the riches of Existence,
even when unfolding such unexpected wonders. What
mean, for instance, those dim spots, which unknown
before, loom in greatei and greater numbers on the
horizon of every new instrument, unless they are
gleams it is obtaining, on its own frontier, of spheres
ever stretching beyond, also studded with glories, and
enfolding what is seen as a minute and subservient
part ? I shrink below the conception that here — even
at this outskirt of the attainable — bursts forth on my
mind ! Look at a cloudy speck in Orion, visible,
without aid, to the well-trained eye ; that is a Stellar
Universe of majesty altogether transcendent, lying at
the very verge of what is known. Well ! if any of
these lights from afar, resemble in character that spot,
the systems from which they come are situated so deep
in space, that no ray from them could reach our earth,
until after travelling through the intervening abysses
during centuries whose number stuns the imagination.
* * * Often overpowered by the dread contempla-
tion ; beneath such majesties, feeling as in faintness,
that surely I must be lone and forlorn, I turn over
with a cheering delight to that sweet home-picture of
Luther s^ when he speaks of the little bird, that on
summer evenings came to his pear-tree at sunset, and
sang, ever melodiously and without one note of mis-
giving, because though dread Eternity was above,
below, and around it, God was there also ! "

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So felt the Psalmist wlien he exclahned : " When I
consider thy lieavons, the work of thy fingers, the
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what
is man that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of
man, that thou visitest him?" "Whither shall I go
from thy Spirit ? or wliither shall I flee from thy
presence ? If 1 ascend up into heaven, thou, art there :
if r take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand
lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say,
surely the darkness shall cover me ; even the night
shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not
from thee ; but the night shineth as the day : the
darkness and the light are both alike to thee." It is
both a comfort and a strength to know, that " though
the Lord be high, yet hath he respect to the lowly."
To the Christian believer God is everywhere ; in the
heights and in the depths ; in the wilderness and in
" the city full ;" in the cottages of the poor and in the
mansions of the rich ; in the crowded marts ai.d in the
solitary chamber ; by the couch of the living and by
the bed-side of the dying. " Am I a God at hand,
saith the Lord, and not a God afar off ? Can any hide
himself in secret places that I shall not see him ? saith
the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the
Lord."

Look at the atheist ! If any one has just cause to
feel " lone and forlorn," it is he. Amid the splendors
of Creation; surrounded by incontrovertible proofs

OF THE king's ENEMIES. 65

of the existence of an All-wise, an All-powerful a
Gracious, and a Loving God,--he, of his own accord
cuts hnnself oft' from union with all that is great and
good in heaven and earth. Choosing the darkness of
the present and renouncing all claim on the inheritance
ot the future, he is an orphan amidst a vast brother-
hood-an object of pity to angels -to devils an object
or scorn !

ARROWS IN THE HEART

SECTION VIII.

ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN.

;i ii

Design implies a designer.

Is it possible to indicate design ? Can it be made so
clear as at once to challenge belief ?

Design signifies intention, plan, adaptation, contri-
vance ; and is the direct opposite of chance — the term
being used in an atheistic sense.

Take the following illustrations, easily understood
by the most illiterate : —

I received a letter from my brother, informing me
that, being on his way to pay me a long-promised
visit, he would bo with me in the evening. He arrived,
his countenance beaming with pleasure, and after
sundry affectionate salutations and inquiries, he said —
" You received my letter ?"

" Is that it ? " T replied, pointing to the letter.

" Yes ! that is it. I thought you would be pleased
to hear of my coming."

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

1-
H

31"

" Then you intended to write that letter ?"

He looked at me curiously ■.

" The letter itself is proof of my intention. Why
such a question ?"

" I have a reason ! a strong desire to know if you
did really intend to write to me before you actually
wrote."

" Of that there can be no doubt. I have a shrewd
suspicion, brother, that you would not have received
the letter, had I not had a previous intention of
writing it ! "

" You then affirm, without equivocation or mental
reservation, that the letter did not write itself — did
not post itself — did not find its way to me itself — in a
word, that chance had no connection with its pro-
duction or with its reception by me."

" As far as its production and its having been posted
are concerned, I answer — Yes ! How you received it
you yourself best know. Did it drop from the sky ?
Did it fly through the window or come down the
chimney into your hands ? "

I was compelled to acknowledge I had received it
through the agency of the postman.

"Are you satisfied? Is your desire gratified?" asked
he.

" Yes ! I am satisfied."

I could not but observe, however, that he watched
me furtively or suspiciously for some time during our
subsequent convex'sation.

r^'

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

Ui^~,

I '

I called on my tailor and requested him to make me
a suit of clothes. He measured me carefully. Seven
days afterwards he sent the suit, with a note sfcating
he would call in the afternoon to see how the garments
fitted. On his arrival I asked — " Did you intend these
clothes for any one in particular ? "

He replied — " I. intended them for you. They fit
you admirably."

" They fit very well ; but did you design them
especially for me ? "

'' Design them for you ! For whom could I have
intended them if not for you ? "

" Why did you measure me ? "

" To secure a fit."

" Could you not have made them just as well without
a measure ? "

" Not to fit you."

" Did you make them according to the measure ? "

" Certainly."

"Then the measure was a plan or contrivance to
secure a fit ? "

" Undoubtedly."

" You are sure, that, having laid the cloth on your
cutting-out table, the shears did not of their own
accord, without your aid, cut the suit out regardless of
the measure, and that the needles and silk and lining
and buttons did not spontaneously finish the work,-—
you, in the meantime, standing or sitting as an unin-
terested looker-on; you are sure, that these clothes,

OF THE KING^S ENEMIES.

fitting, as you say, so admirably, were not fashioned
by chance ? "

" My answer," said he, in quite a soothing manner,
with fear apparent in his eyes, — "is — send for the
doctor ! " On saying which, he darted out of the room
quite hurriedly.

I am wearing vhe clothes ; my wife admires them,
and frequently exclaims — " What an admirable fit, my
dear I "

I have a piece of ground attached to my dwelling.
I employed a person to prepare a garden, leaving to
him the entire arrangement. In about ten days he
requested me to look at the garden.

" What garden ? " said I.

" The garden you engaged me to make. Come out,
sir, and see if it please you."

I went out — the sight was beautiful — the change
wonderful.

"What do you think of it, sir ? "

" It is beautiful ! But what had you to do with it V

" Only to make it according to your request."

"Did you prepare the ground, lay out the beds, and
arrange the walks ani flowers according to a pre-
conceived plan, or is tht whole an accident of chance ?"

" I scarcely understand you, sir. Chance ! If this
garden is chance-work, it is the first time I have been
so highly-favored. This garden cost me time, thought,
labor, and care."

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

" You are quite sure, all these things did not trans-
sport themselves here and arrange themselves in their
present order without your aid ? "

He seemed bewildered, rubbed his forehead, then
looking straight into my eyes, said —

"You are the strangest gentleman I ever saw-
What is your meaning, sir ? Do you wish to know if
I worked by plan or at hap- hazard ? Look at this
paper and let it speak for itself," and he handed me a
paper.

I looked at it — it was a plan of the garden. I com-
pared the two, and giving the paper back to him, said
— " I am satisfied. You deserve credit for the plan
itself and for executing it with such fidelity."

He went away, apparently not very well pleased ;
and as he shut the gate I thought I heard the word
" Queer ! "

ill

? .*!.

It was raining; the roof of my house began to leak.
I sent for a carpenter, and said — " there is a leak in
the roof." He replied, " I will soon stop it." Some-
time afterwards I heard a noise as if somebody were
sawing wood and driving nails. I went out, and
looking up, shouted —

" What are you doing up there ? "

" Stopping the leak."

Half an hour after, he came down. Said he —

" Had you forgotten that you had requested me to
stop the leak ?"

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

" Had you a design," I replied, " in taking the board,
saw, hammer, and nails up there ! "

'■ What a question ! I do not mind, however, telling
you that I took them up premeditatedly, purposely,
with the full design to stop that leak."

" Why did you go up ? Could you not have stopped
the hole down here ?"

" That is the best joke of the season ! I could have
stopped the hole down here, had the hole been down
here — but it was up there — and as the hole could not
come to me, I had to go to the hole. You know tlie
reason why Mahommet went to the mountain ? "

" That is an old story. Seriously, could not tlie
board, hammer, saw, and nails have taken themselves
up and covered the hole without your help ? "

"I will answer your serious question ])y asking
another question equally serious — Could another man
eat your breakfast or dinner so as to satisfy your
personal hunger and thirst ? "

" Certainly not."

" So I answer — certainly not. Have you ever seen
such a feat performed as you suggest ?"

" No."

" Nor ever will."

" Then you really had a design in what you did ? "

" Yes, sir ! A lofty design — a design as high as the
roof of your house."

" I am compelled to acknowledge it."

He replied — " You are a funny man ! "

!ii

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

A short time ago, I went to the Academy of Music
and heard my intimate friend, Professor Matthew
Matics, deliver a profound, elaborate, and eloquent
lecture on " The Importance of the Unit." His ideas
were strikingly original, clothed in appropriate
language, and, judging from the countenances of the
audience, one could see the lecture was highly ap-
preciated. The style combined the argumentative
with the ornamental. Frequent bursts of applause
greeted the Lecturer, which were gratifying to him
as well as to his especial friends. At the close, and
on the dispersion of the audience, I took his arm and
we proceeded homewards.

" Matthew !" said I, " Had you thought of your
subject, before you delivered it ? Had you a plan, or
sketch, or skeleton of it, in your mind ? or did you just
open your mouth, and let the words roll out as they
might chance to come ?"

He stopped short, and said : —

" What do you mean ? Did I talk nonsense ?"

" Far from it ! — the lecture exhibited deep thought,
and was copiously illustrated by appropriate similes,
tropes, and other rhetorical figures. But was the
composition mere chance-work, or was it the result
of due deliberation on your part ; in other words, did
you design to treat the sub>iect as you did, before
you appeared before your audience ?"

The feelings of my friend seemed to be wounded.
A few minutes elapsed before he replied : —

or THE king's enemies.

" Well, I never expected such questions to be pro-
posed to me by any sensible man, much less by you,
my friend. I can but repeat the question, " What do
you mean ?"

" Matthew ! Did you not affirm, during an argu-
ment with our mutual friend, Elec Tricity, that there
was no such thing as design in any one of the
departments of Nature ? I merely wished to know
whether or not you extend your affirmation to the
departments of Mind and Oratory. If your lecture of
an hour, worthy of commendation, as it is, required
thought, arrangement, say, intelligence, on your part,
and to appreciate it, like intelligence on the part of
your audience, is it reasonable to affirm that, in
Nature, design is not design, or that the undeniable
marks of design, so conspicuous in the ten thousand
objects by which we are surrounded, do not indicate
the existence of the operation of an Intelligent Mind?

For some time my friend was silent, apparently
lost in thought ; at length he said : —

" Was I such a fool as to make that statement ? I
must have strangely forgotten myself and gone counter
to my deepest convictions. That I should have done
so, shows how far a person may go, in the heat of an
argument, in thoughtless expressions against truth,
and in favor of error, which, in his calm moments, he
would be the first to decry. I thank you, my friend,
for your just rebuke, and will profit by it. Hear, now,
my recantation, and lelief : — Design implies a designer,
just as Thought pre-supposes the existence of Mind."

Ill

ARROWS IN THE HEART

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" When the whole universe seems to present to us, on
whatever part of it we may look, exactly the same
appearances as it would have presented, if its parts
had been arranged inteutiomdly, for the purpose of
producing the results vfhich are now perceived, — when
these appearances of adaptation are not in a few
objects out of many, but in everything that meets our
view, and innumerable, therefore, as the innumerable
objects that constitute to us the . universe, — we feel an
absolute impossibility of supposing that so many
appearances of design exist, without design. * * *
A few types may be thrown loosely together, and
some of them may form a word. This we can believe,
without any suspicion of contrivance. If many such
words, however, were to be thrown together, we
should suspect contrivance, and would believe contri-
vance with the most undoubting conviction, if a
multitude of types were to be found thus forming one
regular and continued poem. * * * Such is our
nature, that it would seem as truly impossible, that a
number of types thrown together, should form the
Iliad or Odyssey, as that they should form Hosier
himself. * * * What should we think of any one,
who should ascribe to chance the combination of
letters that form the Principia of Newton ! and is the
world which New^ton described, less gloriously indica-
tive of design, than the mere description ?". — Prof.
Thomas Brown.

Proofs of the existence of a Personal God, from
design, are everywhere manifest. The difficulty is not

^ OF THE king's ENEMIES. 75

to enumerate, but to select. There is not a branch of
Science, that does not teem with instances of adapta-
tion ; and what is Art but the practical use of design ?
Without adaptation, there could be neither science nor
art. The whole universe is a vast repertory of design.
Turn where you may, look at the vast, or the most
minute, design meets you at every point ; the more
circumstantial the scrutiny, the deeper the conviction.
Destroy adaptation, and there would be no world, no
life, nothing by which life could be sustained.

Glance at the atmosphere.* The principal elements
of atmospheric air, are che two gases, Oxygen and
Nitrogen, not in chemical union, but forming a uniform
mixture, being spread through each other. In 100
parts of atmospheric air, oxygen is to nitrogen, in
round numbers, as 20 to 80. Oxygen is the vital
constituent, but in a pure, unmixed state, it is so cor-
rosive, so violent in action, that it would destroy, in a
short time, all who breathed it ; but in the atmos-
phere it is just so diluted with nitrogen, as to render
it suitable to sustain the life of animals, and to answer
other important purposes.

There are other compounds of these two elements : —
Nitrous Oxide, laughing gas N O
Nitric Oxide, suffocating, . . . . N Og

Hyponitrous acid, N Og

Nitrous acid, N O4

Nitric acid, aquafortis, N O5

The gases are here chemically united.

*See Appendix B, p. 111.

ARROWS IN THE HEART

A very slight, permanent change in the relative
proportions of these gases, it may be seen, would
render the air unfit for the sustentation of animal life,
as at present existing. Is, then, the composition of
the air attributable to chance, or has it been definitely
determined by a Being of Infinite Knowledge, by One
intimately acquainted with the nature of these gases,
and who adapted them intentionally to secure the
ends proposed ?

According to our knowledge of other gases, could
any two, three, or more, of them be substituted for
those selected ? What says the expert chemist ?

On what grounds can the atheist account for the
uniformity and the permanency of the prop oionate
parts of the gases that compose our atmosphere ? If
chance be pleaded, the most obtuse must perceive
that it manifested great intelligence in the selection,
and that there are no possible guarantees against
frequent, if not constant deviations. Under atheistic
chance-work, it is marvellous, that the composition of
the atmosphere should continue the same under all
circumstances, by night and by day, in heat and cold,
in the valley and on the mountain-top ! Analyze the
air at any time, and in any place, the proportions of
oxygen and nitrogen will be found ever the same.
Without Divine Arrangement, this would be just as
impossible as that water would continue unaltered in
form, when exposed to the intense frosts of winter,
the warm influence of summer, and the heat of strong,

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

continuous fires ! " The power, wisdom, and goodness
of the Sovereign Ruler of the universe, are no less
strikingly displayed in the delicate adjustment of the
inappreciable air, than in poising and regulating the
ponderous orbs that circle through illimitable space."

The physical structure of man shows in every part
undeniable marks of design. Man stands erect at the
head of the animate world, furnished with all the
appliances necessary to secure his supremacy. The
head, the ear curiously constructed, the eye,* the
spinal column, the ribs, the heart, the lungs, the liver,
the entire digestive apparatus, the gall-bladder, the
shoulder, the fore-arm, the wrist, the hand, the knee-
pan, the ankles, the foot, the joints, the muscles, the
nerves, the processes, the articulations, the arrange-
ment for the circulation of the blood by means of the
arteries and veins, — indeed, the entire physical economy,
— all proclaim with united voice, that man is not only
" fearfully " but also " wonderfully made." " A slight
alteration in the structure of the eye," says Dr. D. W.
Gordon, " would make every ray of light be felt, like
devouring fire ; a slight change in the structure of the
ear would make every sound like the deafening roar
of a cataract, and a similar change in the nervous
system would make every touch like the stab of a
sword." — Indeed, all pain is caused by the disturb-

* For an interesting article on TJie Architecture of the Eye, see

Appendix C, p. 115.

ARROWS IN THE HEART

fif

ance or interruption of the natural functions of the
living body. " Throughout the entire frame, we have
surprising examples of economy of material to the end
designed ; combining lightness, force, firmness, elas-
ticity, leverage, motion, resistance, security, and grace.
These contrivances are so numerous, and so wonder-
fully constructed, that a volume would be insufficient
to describe them." The automata, which the utmost
skill of man, with the human skeleton before him as a
model, has been able to fashion are contemptible
caricatures of the man of God's creating.

A man of ordinary size has from 25 to 30 pounds of
blood in his body. The labor of the heart, through
which this blood has to pass in ceaseless rounds, is
enormous. Its average beats are about 72 in a minute,
equal to about 4,000 in an hour, or one hundred
thousand in a day, or thirty-eight million in a year,
which, were a person to live sixty years, would give
the immense number of twenty-two hundred and
eighty million bc^ts ! Estimating, according to modern
physiologists, the quantity of blood expelled at each
contraction of the v. ^utricle as four ounces, two
hundred and eighty-eigbt ounces, or eighteen pounds
would be expelled in a minute, or one thousand and
eighty pounds in an hour, nearly thirteen tons in a
day, or upwards of for.r thousand tons in a year, which,
multiplied by the number of years, would give the
number of tons in a life-time. This circulation of the
blood through heart, arteries, veins, and lungs is inces-

OF THE KINGS ENEMIUW,

sant whilst HIV hiHin. Tho inovoinen(,N of this machinery
are, dnviwg houlth, hd smoothly perfornuul that we are
unc()nscio\is ot* th<»in.

Tliiiik, thrn, of tho IftUir (»t' tlu^ \wMi. Hidden from
sight, it contiuwoM ui^rht and thiy it«< Involvintary, un-
ceasing, untiring labor. r«M'(Mvinm and discharging the
pahuhin\ of lift*, in sonvo instamM^M, Hyh»\igh a period of
more than a hundvud years 1 Terpotual motion, un-
attainable as yet by human skill, is manifest in the
revolutions of our earth, and of the celestial orbs, and
is exliibited, on a smaller scale and for a shorter period,
but in an equally w^ondrous manner, by the action of
the heart. The utmost eftbrts of man, in this direction,
are stamped with futility, when brought into com-
parison with the effects produced by the simple
volition of the Divine Artificer. " The wisdom of the
Creator," said the physician Hambergher, " is in
nothing seen more glorious than in the heart."

Sir Charles Bell thus concludes his Treastise on
Animal Mechanics: —

" A man possessed of that humility which is akin
to true knowledge, may be depressed by too extensive
a survey of the frame of nature. The stupendous
changes which the geologist surveys — the incompre-
hensible magnitude of the heavenly bodies moving in
infinite space, bring down his thoughts to a painful
sense of his own littleness. He is afraid to think
himself an object of Divine care ; but when he regards
the structure of his own body, he learns to consider

(•'

(

i : I

ARROWS IN THE HEART

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■1

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space and magnitu-ie as nothing to a Creator. He
finds that the living being, which he was about to
contemn, in comparison with the grrat system of the
universe, exists by the continuance of a power, no less
admirable than that which rules the heavenly bodies ;
he sees that there is a revolution, a circle of motions no
less wonderful in his own frame, in the microcosm of
man's body than in the planetary system ; that there
is not a globule of blood which circulates, but possesses
attraction as incomprehensible and wonderful as that
which retains the planets in their orbits. The economy
of the animal body, as the economy of the universe, is
sufficiently known to us to compel us to acknowledge
an Almighty power in the creation."

The adaptation of light to the eye and of the eye to
the light ought not to be overlooked. To man light
would be useless without the eye, and the eye would
be useless without the light. This adaptation \s
mutual and bespeaks design. No one, unless reduced
to a stat3 of positive idiotcy, can, with any show of
reason, deny a fact sc palpable. The number and the
position of the eyes, also deserve attention. Can the
sceptic assign a good reason, in accordance with his
doctrine of chance, why he has not three, four, or more
eycc, or even but one eye, instead of two ; and in case
of only one, why that is not found on the top of his
head or at the tip of his nose ?

Light, whatever it may be in itself, is essentially a
creation. Before sun, moon, or stars were created — ■

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

bhe

while as yet " darkness was on the face of the deep" —
"God said, Let there be light and there was light." Its
velocity proves it to be the product of an infinite
power. It travels at the rate of two hundred thousand
miles a second, or to bring the calculation more within
our grasp, its velocity " exceeds that of a cannon-ball
by one million five hundred and fifty thousand times."
What aggregation of human force could propel the
lightest object throu^n space at such a rate ? Talk of
light, one of the most important, one of the most
widely diff*used, objects in Nature s domain, happening
by chance ! The idea is absurd to an extreme ! sur-
passing in foolishness that of the monkey-paternity of
man ! Its properties exhibit infinite wisdom — its uses,
infinite beneficence.

The eye is equally the handiwork of God. Its con-
struction baffles human skill. The variations of that
construction as seen in the eyes of different pnimals,
according to their necessities and to their modes of
living, show infinite intelligence, m a manner adapted
to display the unlimited resources of the Creator and
to call forth the admiration of all intelligent beings.
Nor is design less conspicuous. If all things happen
by chance, the sceptic will please explain why fishes
have no " eye-lids and lachrymal apparatus," and why
the mud-crab that " seeks its food in mud and turbid
water," has " a little brush near its eye, to which the
prominent horny eye can be raised, and against which
6

wtm^m^mmmBsmi^mmiiwmimmm

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V-B

it is wiped, with an action as intelligible as that of a
m?t.n wiping his spectacles."

" It has been well said that in the Book of Nature
is written in the plainest characters the existence of a
God which Revelation takes for granted — of a God how
full of contrivance ; how fertile in expedients ; how
benevolent in his ends ! At work everywhere — every-
where, too, with equal diligence ; leaving nothing
incomplete — finishing ' the hinge in the wing of an
insect ' as perfectly as if it were all he had to do —
unconfounded by the multiplicity of objects, undis-
tracted by their dispersion, unwearied by their
incessant demands on him, fresh as on that day when
the morning stars sang together and all nature shouted
for joy." — Jesses Gleanings in Natural History.

Search the world of Nature throughout, and there
is but one intelligible conclusion, that adaptation or
design is manifest in all its departments, pointing with
the brightness of a sun-beam, to a Supreme cause,
infinite in goodness, wisdom, and power. To this
conclusion the wisest and the best men, ir every age,
have given their unqualified assent, to the shame and
confusion of the mentally distorted specimens of
humanity, yclept atheists.

"Reason — through number, time, and space ;

Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye,
And learns, from fads compared the laws to trace,
Whose long procession leads to Deity. "

^' c aeed not further pursue the subject of design

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

in the works of creation ; sufficient has been adduced
to prove it to be not a chimera but a reality. More
elaborate works abound with instances in which
adaptation is apparent. Our unpretending pages may
awaken in the minds of our readers, especially of
youth, an anxiety to continue their inquiries into this
most interesting and profitable subject. Of one thing
they may be assured, that the more they examine
into particulars, the deeper will become their conviction
of the existence and personal acts of the God of the
Bible, and of the falsity of atheistic theories.

jign

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;l \

' ' \ 'i'

SECTION IX.

INDICTMENT OF ATHEISM: ITS ANTIDOTE.

Coleridge asks a pertinent question : " How did
the atheist get his idea of the God whom he denies ? "
The idea of God is not innate — it is not born with
us. Were it innate, it would be as much an inalienable
a part of our mental constitution as any faculty of the
mind ; and, as such, we could scarcely imagine such a
thing as atheism existing in the world. " Suppose ?.
person," says Mr. Hare in his Preservation Against
Socianism, " whose powers of argumentation are
improved to the utmost pitch of human capacity, but
wiio has received no idea of God by any revelation,
whether from tradition, Scripture, or inspiration, how
is he to convince himself that God is, and whence is
he to learn tvhat God is ? That of which as yet he
knows nothing, cannot be a subject of his thought, his
reasonings, or his conversation. He can neither affirm
nor deny till he know what is to be affirmed or denied.

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

Ansi
are
but
tion,
how
;e is
t he
his
irm
lied.

Whence then is our philosopher to divine, in the first
instance, his idea of the infinite Being, concerning the
reality of whose existence he is, in the second place, to
decide ? " " We owe the knowledge of the existence
of God, and of his attributes, to revelation alone ; but
being now discovered, the rational evidence of both is
copious and irresistible ; so much so, that atheism has
never been able to make much progress among
mankind where this revelation has been preserved.
It is resisted by demonstrations too numerous, obvious,
and convincing ; and is itself too easily proved to
involve the most revolting absurdities." — Watson's
Theological Institutes.

If then the atheist's idea of God accords with the
revelation God has given of himself, it is evident, that
to that revelation, directly or indirectly, he is indebted
for it ; and, it is the only true idea of a First Can se he
has, though, foolish and wicked man, he repudiates its
truth. But if his idea does not coincide with that
revelation, it is equally evident, that he is denying a
fictitious being, the product of his own or some other
silly person's brain ; and that in denying the existence
of ^ach a beincj he is contendincj with a shadow of his
own projection. Well would it be for those who have
settled dovvu into an atheistic belief, and for those
who are hovering over the brink of infidelity, to ponder
on the solemn warning, uttered in tones that should
send fear and quaking into the inmost recesses of their
deceived hearts : " Woe unto him that striveth with

I h

AEROWS IN THE HEART

h *'

his Maker!" "Shall he that contendeth with the
Almighty instruct Him ? he that reproveth God, let
him answer it."

" Atheism is an unnatural monstrosity." It is the
climax of ignorance, incredulity, and ingratitude ; it
violates reason, unphilosophises true philosophy, sub-
stitutes the greatest errors for the sublimest truths,
and ignores the scientific deductions of thousands of
the brightest minds that ever adorned our world.
Atheism is tlie madness of sciolism — the very spirit
and body of egoism. It degrades man to the level of
the brute, while it does not improve the condition of
the brute. It not only denies but defies God, contemns
everything sacred, darkens and undervalues the
present, and would fain blot out the future.

Atheism is as weak in argument as it is wicked in
principle ; it often corrupts by its immoralities and
!in. settles unfortified minds by its sophistries. Breaking
down the sanctity of an oath, it introduces confusion
and every evil work, annihilates the safeguards and
upheaves the foundations of society. Being "without
God " it is "without hope in the world." By denying
the guilt and power of sin, it hardens the heart and
stupefies the conscience. By denying the vicarious
sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, it abnegates the
only ground, and ruthlessly destroys the last hope of
salvation for our race both here and hereafter. By
denying the immortality of the soul, the future
judgment, the rewards of the righteous, and the

or THE KING S ENEMIES.

lOUS

the

3 of

ture
the

punishment of the wicked after death, it takes away
all TDotives to virtue and proves a prolific source of
incibements to vice. Atheism, therefore, is a sin
aganst God, a sin af]fainst the individual, a sin against
mariiind. Thomas Watson, one of the non-conformist
divines, has a pithy saying : ** He that saith there is
no (rod is the wickedest creature there is ; he is worse
thai a thief, who doth but take away our goods from
us, mt the atheist would take away our God from
us."

Atheism is a dark, bottomless abyss. Over it hangs
a pall of dense blackness ; no ray of light relieves the
fearful gloom. Having no sitn, though it may have
howers — showers of tears — it can have no rainbow of
lope.

Atheism is a lie. Bad as Satan is, he himself has
lever had the audacity to say — *' There is no God ; "
out as the "father of lies" he prompts several of
his " children " to utter this grossest of all falsehoods.
There is not an imp in the infernal regions that does
not know it to be a falsehood and laugh at the silly
dupe. That must be a foolish fish that is caught with
a naked hook ; but the atheist allows himself to be
deceived and ensnared without even the semblance of
one.

The atheist with all his pride of skill, is no match
for the devil. Satan, so to speak, always plays with
loaded dice. Some men see the cheat and escape.
Satan stakes nothing and loses nothing ; the atheist

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

stakes his soul and loses his all. The determined atheist
plays against fearful odds ; the consequence is, he is
cheated out of his eyes, out of his soul, out of his God.
All he gets for his tremendous losses are scorn hud
taunts from the very beings by whom he has teen
deceived — a hazardous game in which no pruaent
person would engage.

Notwithstanding this true indictment of athefem,
we admit that there may be instances, of rare occur-
rence however, in which an atheist, living in \he
midst of a Christian, God-fearing community., alfecisd
by surrounding influences, may exercise restraint ovei
his passions, and especially, if a member of a respect-
able family, may cultivate an external morality, just
as he would cultivate his garden, and pay respect
to an enlightened public opinion by abstaining from
the grosser immoralities, and in this way live above his
avowed principles; but this is no commendation of
atheism any more than abstaining from theft would be
a vindication ci murder. The taint still remains.
The " whited sepulchre which appears beautiful out-
ward," has the foulness within. Denial of God, the
crowning sin, is cherished in the heart. No external
paint can efface this hideous blot ; it shows like the
crimson-stain of unavenged blood.

The only fair way of judging of the spirit, the
tendency, tfie working of atheism, is to examine its
inf.uence and operations in a community of professed
infidels, in which the restraints of Christianity had

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

.89

I u

never been known and felt, or, if known and felt, had
been superseded by atheistic teachings. Tlie nearest
approach, in modern times, to this deplorable condition,
was realized in France, during " ihe reign of Terror,"
when the reins of government wero seized by avowed
atheists, monsters in human shape, who, having full
sway, led thousands of their deluded followers into
the commission of all manner of crimes, drove hun-
dreds and thousands into undeserved exile, deluged the
land with innocent blood, thereby affixing an indelible
stain on the escutcheon of their country.

"The excesses and enormities of this period of French
history are almost, indeed, too incredible for the sober
pen of history to record. A new calendar was formed ;
and in order to obliterate the remembrance of the
Christian Sabbath, ea,ch month was subdivided into
three decades, the first days of which were festivals
or days of rest. A few days after, the nmnicipal
authorities of Paris appeared in the Convention,
attended by the bishop and clergy, decorated with
caps of liberty, who publicly renounced their off s
of Christian pastors. The bishop of Moulins threw
down his mitre, and preached the doctrine that 'death
is an eternal sleep.' Various allegorical creations, such
as Liberty and Equality, were deified, and a young
woman of abandoned character was enshrined as the
Goddess of Keason on the altar of Notre Dame, to
receive the adoration of the multitude. * * * The
guillotine was in constant action, and thousands were

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immolated. Royalists and republicans indiscriminately
felt the axe." — Maunder. Then went up to heaven
a cry whose piercinor tones " entered into the ears of
the Lord of Sabbaoth" — a peal of warninpj penetrated
all lands, whose vibrations are still heard, and which
will continue to be heard as age after age rolls on.

Pitiable, indeed, is the condit,ion of the atheist.
Without hope in his own future, and equally without
hope respecting the future state of his nearest and
dearest relatives, he is necessarily destitute of all
consolation. Annihilation at death is, in its dreariest
aspect, his summu7)i huiiuTn. 4.s a dog or cat perishes,
so he believes he and they will perish. His beloved
ones die, and as he looks for the last time on the face
of a father or a mother, a sister or a brother, a wife or
a child, endeared by a thousand fond associations,
nature feels and weeps — whilst he, in his cold unbelief,
overlooks tho fact that he is indebted to the Universal
Father for his susceptibility of these natural emotions.
But what a blank is their existence ! According to
his views, their sun has set never again to rise ! They
have gone to the grave never to be revived ! The
parting he believes is for (-ver! Melancholy thouglit !

The grasses and the flowers of the field, after winter's
drear reign is over, may, by the visitation of the genial
sunshine and soft showers of spring, revive, but man
once dead can be visited by no resurrection-power —
the grave holds its prisoners in a perpetual grasp. So
sang Sicilian Moschus, in his melodious Idyl on the

OF THE king's ENEMIES.

death of Bion, and the mournful, hopeless strains have
been repeated by tlie atheist through all time. In
vain for him have " life and immortality been brought
to light," He is deaf to the voice, now wooing him to
mercy — that voice, which, when time shall be no more,
shall sound through death's dark charnel-houses, com-
manding the dwellers therein to " come forth," each
soul tenanting its own transformed and deathless body
— thus rendered once more complete, they shall live
for ever.

The sceptic will not rise to the height of this great
truth, but he grovels in gloomy error. The light
shines but he will not see ; consolations abound but he
will not participate; the Friend of Sinners, the Lover of
Souls, invites but he will not accept ; Christ proclaims
— " I am the resurrection and the life : he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live," but he, in the most repulsive sense, says to
" corruption, thou art my Father : to the worm, thou
art my mother and my sister '" and my brother.

To the Christian the future is luminous with the
Saviour's presence and glory. The commendation of
" Well done, good and faithful servant," the crown of
life, the palm of victory, "a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens," an eternity of activity
and bliss, during which there will be constant progress
in knowledge and holiness, await him beyond this
rolling sphere ! At death he enters upon his inherit-

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

ance and is " for ever with the Lord," an associate of
all the holy and happy in the universe.

The cutheist dies, and like Judas Iscariot, goes to his
" own place," — a truthful exemplification of the solemn
words of Christ — " Ye shall die in your sins : whither I
go, ye cannot come." Here the curtain drops, not to be
raised until the Archangel's trump shall sound, calling
the quick and doad to judgment. Then every eye
shall see God in the person of the Judge. They who
denied as well as they who crucified him shall look on
him whom they had pierced — pierced with thought,
with tongue or pen, as well as with sptars — on him no
longer a gracious Mediator but an inexorable Judge — a
Judge on whose impartial decisions depends everlasting
happiness or everlasting woe. What a change from a
" No God " to a living, personal God ! What a change
from the "meekness of Christ" to the "wrath of the
Lamb !" What a change from the darkness of error to
the unsullied light and pungent convictions of eternal
truth ! What a change from the proud, defiant atheist
on earth to the shrinking, quailing, cowardly being at
the Judgment ! * To what place of refuge shall he
turn — to whom, in his fear and anguish, shall he
appeal ? No place of refuge — no advocate among
the numberless multitudes surrounding him — can be
found ! The final Court has passed irreversible sentence :
the righteous shall go from the judgment-seat into
''eternal life," the condemned into "eternal punishment."

* See Appendix D, p. 124.

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

These disclosures should arouse the sceptic to a
searching examination into the ground of his unbelie^.
His interest in the subject ought to be increased, and
his prejudice against Christianity lessened, by the
consideration, that the Christian can lose nothing, at
the same time he has nothing to fear, if atheism he true.
His belief in divine Revelation, in its humbling and
elevating doctrines — his personal experience of its
blessings, his hopes stretching into the limitless future,
if all false, can give the atheist no advantage ; whereas,
if true, whilst the gain of the Christian cannot be
computed, the loss of the atheist may be set down as
infinite. The first flash of light, as emerging from the
" dark valley " he enters into the spirit-world, will
reveal the utter groundlessness of his reckless con-
fidence. In black despair he will meet the dread
realities of eternity. All that his voluntary error and
his persistent rejection of truth involve, he must suffer
in his own depraved nature, whilst he can put in no
valid plea to bar the inexorable sentence of condem-
nation. The Book he now rejects contains warnings
upon warnings to alarm those who say in their hearts
" there is no God," who determinedly reject overtures
of mercy through the mediation of the Lord Jesus
Christ, repulse the aids of the Holy Ghost and quench
his influences. The atheist, therefore, cannot plead
unavoidable ignorance, nor can he have just grounds
for surprise when called upon to suffer the consequences
of his wilful, resolute course of infidelity. God will

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ARROWS IN THE HEART

be justified when he speaks and be clear when he
judges. Have you, who are now reading these pages,
ever examined carefully and impartially the proofs in
support of Divine Revelation, with a sincere desire to
arrive at the truth, and with an interest commensurate
with the issues at stake ; or hav- you been led to
doubt and to deny by the flippancy, the sacrilegious
wit, the sly innuendoes, the bold assertions, the
unfounded charges, the stale objections of some super-
ficial, egotistical, and, it may be, eloquent advocate of
infidel principles ?

If any bias be allowable it should be in favor of the
Bible. Indeed, every sincere seeker after truth should
wish divine Revelation to be true, because the Bible
is the only book that states clearly the nature of God
as a Spirit, and invests him with attributes or perfec-
tions, which even our limited minds recognize as
worthy of the Supreme Being. All other gods — gods
so called — are of human origin and necessarily partake
of the defects of their manufacturers. The Bible alone
shows man's relationship and responsibility to the one,
true God — exhibits his infinite love to our race in the
gift of His Son, proclaims His method by which a
sinner can be justified, sanctified, and finally saved,
reveals a future and an eternal state of being — every-
thing, in fact, that concerns man's duty and happiness,
and his safety in both worlds. If, then, the Bible
were really a book of human and not of divine origin, if
it were divested of its character as an authentic

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OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

revelation from God to man, there would nowhere be
found an authoritative guide in matters of faith and
practice. All moral and religious subjects would be
enveloped in darkness impenetrable by human reason,
and our race left to stumble on through life in that
darkness, not knowing whither to go for direction,
comfort, and security. Were this truly the case, it
would imply that God, who had made man, had
abandoned him to the vagaries of his own ignorance,
and left him so circumstanced as to render his ruin
inevitable and irreparable. Such an implication, if
well founded, would be an impeachment of the justice,
the goodness, and the wisdom of the all-perfect One.
But this is not the case. God has not thus abandoned
mankind, but in His Revealed Will has provided fully
for all their necessities.

The claims of the Bible, as a Revelation of God's
Will to man, are justified beyond reasonable doubt by
Miracles, Prophecies. Doctrines, and Personal Experi-
ence. These furnish an array of proof sufficient to
challenge implicit belief. Every one may know
whether the Book be of God or not. There never has
been a serious objection made against these proofs
from any quarter, that has not been repeatedly and
triumphantly answered. But what avail replies — if
not read and duly considered — if there be not a will-
ingness to admit conviction ? But atheism interposes
a thick veil between its dupes and the truth, so that
they will not see what is so obvious to others

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Darkening the understanding and warping the judg-
ment, it so perverts, that they have eyes but they see
not — ears have they but they hear not. Had the
Greek and Latin Classics been subjected to the same
crucial tests as its enemies have employed against
Christianity, we doubt that a single page would be
acknowledged to-day as genuine or found in a readable
condition. The preservation of the Bible, through so
many centuries,subiected to so many violent, persistent,
and malignant attacks by individuals of so various
calibres of mind and occupying such different positions
in life, can be accounted for on no other ground than
that it has been watched over and preserved by Him
by whom it was inspired.

The Bible is not a book merely, containing so many
pages and so many words. So to speak, it is a living
book — a book of permanent and increasing influence.
It has always been a book of life and of influence. To
its entire contents will apply the words of Jesus : "The
words that I speak unto you, they arc spirit, and they
are life." " The word of God," says St. Paul, " is quick,
and powerful, and sharper than any tw^o-edged sword,
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner
of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

The Bible is the great teacher of Morals — the great
and efl^ective agent, promoter, and upholder of civili-
zation. Take the Bible away, — the civilized parts of
the world would ere long relapse into barbarism j

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OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

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nations and individual men would become no better
than so many wild beasts, the stronger preying upon

the weaker, robbery, bloodshed, and death being their
every-day diversions. This is not a mere rhapsodical
assertion ; facts show it to be a sober reality. Look at
those nations that have not possesse<l the Bible ! Look

*at their everyday life, their customs and pastimes
Select the most favored — Ancient Greece and Rome —
nations and peoples that occupy so conspicuous a niche
in the world's temple of fame ! What teach they ?
Sad lessons, indeed. Their portraiture is drawn by a
master-hand — by an inspired apostle in the lirst
chapter of his epistle to the Romans. A dark but true
picture, certified as such by contemporaneous history.
Their very sports were those of cruelty and blood !

What better, at the present day, are those portions of
the world, into which the light of Christianity has not
penetrated, — in which " gross darkness has covered
the minds of the people, and whose habitations are
full of cruelty "(0 Their deplorable condition is not
imaginary — it is not a picture drawn with fancy's
pencil. The formerly alleged innocence of modern
Paefan nations was never more than a dream of the
night, floating through the brains of visionary enthu-
siasts, from which they have been rather roughly
awakened by the potency of truth.

The people, among whom this gross corruption of
manners does not prevail are they, and only they,
who possess God's Word, and practically acknowledge

ARROWS IN THE HEART

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its authority, who have imbibed its spirit, yielded to
its restraints, and experienced its aids. Their laws,
reaching to all classes, are conformed to its precepts,
and administered in the spirit of justice, mingled with
mercy. Pastimes of blood and cruelty, worship of
sanguinary deities, are banished. The culture and
practice of a high-toned morality are encouraged.'
These are general characteristics. Individuals are
yet to be found in the best communities who fear
neither God nor man.

The Bible leaves its god -like impress on private life,
and on public institutions. Broad and distinct is the
line of separation it makes between those who submit,
and those who do not submit to its authority. Atheists,
living among Christian people, are receiving the
benefit of its refining, civilizing influence, though
denying the source whence it springs. In any other
case than that of Christianity, such denial would be
stamped by themselves as the blackest ingratitude.
One of the most lamentable exhibitions of human
depravity, is the opposition manifested by individuals
to such a Being, as the Bible reveals God to be —
opposition carried, in their madness, to the full extent
of denying his existence. Such denial is causeless,
useless, ruinous. But " there is a way which seemeth
right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
death." This is true of the atheist, whether he deny
God altogether, or deifies humanity or the universe.

Unaided reason has ever exhibited its weakness and

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

ed to
laws,
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its proneness to err when employed on purely religious
subjects. These defects are especially conspicuous in
that phase of modern infidelity, which substitutes
man himself, or the material universe, for the true,
and living God of the Sacred Scriptures. Indeed, it
differs but little from the pantheism, and the hero-
worship of the ancients, only it is more pronounced,
and daring.

Man, his own God ! We speak advisedly, when
we say, A very shabby god ! A weak, sleepy, ignorant,
contracted god ? A god liable to sickness and pain, —
subject to death and decomposition ! A god, to whom
these modern materialistic noodles deny a spirit, a
hereafter ! A god, who, according to their own
theory, differs from an ape in no other way than
that he is a little more intelligent, and, while he lives,
is capable of doing more mischief in the world ! A
god, when he dies, that is the end of him ! Honor,
with supreme worship, such a god as that ! In the
time of need, pray to — trust in — expect succors from
— such a god as that ! Not while the warning words
stand on the divine record : " Cursed is the man that
trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose
heart departeth from the Lord." This is the curse of
the true God, who " is able to destroy both soul and
body in hell." A curse, which, like a sword of flame,
presents its sharp edge and sharper point to the
pantheistical sophisms of the German Grun, the
atheistical socialism of the French Proudhon, the

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100

ARROWS IN THE HEART

infidel vagaries of the metaphysical Comte, and others
ot* the same class. Against this curse, sceptics of all
shades set themselves in vain. " He that sitteth in
the heavens sha 1 laugh ; the Lord shall have them in
derision.'

We honor Man, as a creature of God, exhibiting, in
the curious workmanship of his bodily conformation,
the skill and power of the Creator ; in his intellectual
and moral nature, as originally created, a modified
transcript of the image of his Maker ; and as a being,
who, even amid the ruins of his fallen condition, is
not divested of a certain degree of his pristine
grandeur and glory ; but he cannot be permitted to
invade the domain, or assume the prerogatives, of
Deity. The thought of such an invasion, unclothed
in words, is a horrible sin ; expressed in definite terms,
such as : — " God is not" — "God is nothing more than
our own image reproduced in a wondrous mirage " —
" It is time that humanity should know himself —
should become conscious of his own divinity" (M.
Fuerbach), is a blasphemy of the deepest dye.

The daring of some modern apostles of infidelity is
beyond adequate description, verging on the very
borders of the infernal, sufficient, one may well sup-
pose, to cause the mind of the most timid believer in
the orthodox faith to thrill with horror : " If any one
has deserved hell, it is God," is the impious declaration
of M. Proudhon ! " We hold God," says another of
these reckless blasphemers, " to be the refuge of

OF THE king's ENEMIES.

101

ihers
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otber of
fuge of

stupidity. We consider him to be the greatest evil of
the world, and therefore we declare war against God."
(See The Wedeyan Mdhodid Mmjdzhie, Nov. 187H,
p. 840.) An overdose of poison sometimes works its
own cure. From these disgusting, profane impugners,
we turn to the Lord — to Him " that frustrateth the
tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad ; that
turneth wise men backward, and maketh their know-
ledge foolish."

If man cannot be metamorphosed into a God, these
audaciously irreverent handlers of sacred things confer
the honor on the universe. They avow themselves
the advocates ot Pantheism. The material universe is
God!

This theory is ridiculous, " The Universe !" What
is the universe ? What is its extent ? What are its
precise bounds, and how much does it actually compre-
hend ? Who can tell ? Some persons see only what
is visible to the naked eye ; others, in addition, what
microscopes and telescopes of different powers further
reveal — (those born blind see nothing, their knowledge
being limited to what they can acquire through other
senses than that of sight) ; what lies beyond these
discoveries, no human being knows. Is the Universe,
as I know it, or as others know it, God ? If I only
know one-millionth of the Universe, I know only one-
millionth of God ; if another knows only one-
thousandth of the Universe, he knows only one-
thousandth of God ; if another knows only one-

102

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hundredth of the Universe, he knows only one-
hundredth of God , and so on through the various
fractional parts. What kind of worship am I — is he —
are others — to offer ?

The Universe, as a whole, whether visible or
invisible to the naked eye, is made up of parts. Every-
thing, from the largest to the smallest, is a part of the
Universe. If, then, the Universe be God, God can be
divided, because the Universe can be divided, and
divided too, into as many parts as there are separate and
separable objects therein. Who can count and tell the
number of the infusoria, the grains of sand, the fishes of
the sea, the trees and leaves oi the forests, the drops of
water in the oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams, tiie
atoms in the mountains, and in the earth generally, tiie
stars of heaven, etc. ? Whether countable or not, if the
Universe be God, then he can be divided into as many
fractional parts as there are atoms in the Universe !
The advocates of this Pantheism may label this
image they have set up, " Philosophy — Science " —
but the superscription is a libel on true Science or
Philosophy — one thing is evident, in the whole theory
there is not one iota of religion ; it bear? the marks of
the rankest Paijanism. To avow the Universe to be
tne Supreme God, is not only ridiculous, but, also, in
the highest degree, impious.

The most superficial observer must have noticed
that there is no theory on Religion, however puerile
and absurd, which, if started and promulgated by a

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OF THF<: KINfj's EXEMIKS.

10.S

man with a bold tonguo or a ready pen, supported by
low wit — wit generally as pointless as the arguments
employed are unsound — will not find persons ready to
embrace and ext(;nd it. Uy some, the mon? absurd
the doctrine, the greater tenacity with which it is held,
— the greater the zeal with which it is advocated.
Poor human nature ! Any resource rather than comply
with the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ ! There is,
however, something so moastrous in the daring impiety
of certain phases of modern infidelity, that the relig-
ious mind instinctively shrinks from contact with
such developments of human depravity.

A conscience unpardoned is restless. With such a
conscience persons turn every way, except in the right
way, in search of rest. Tossed to and fro, like the
troubled sea, they alas ! in too many instances, seek
deliverance from conscious guilt from forbidden sources.
Throngh the uneasy multitudes of men, the voice of
the Lord is calling — " Stand y in the ways, and see,
and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and
walk therein, and ye shall tind rest unto your souls ! "
The call is graciously repeated by our Lord Jesus
Christ in words of tenderest sympatliy and love —
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in
heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For
my yoke is easy and my burden is light." In obedience
to these gracious calls can the only remedy for all the

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curable ills of life be found. Not until men turn from
atheistical and other erroneous opinions, and froui all
false deities, to Him who was lifted up on the cross
for the world's redemption, to Him who "once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring
us to God," and comply with the conditions He has
affixed to personal salvation, can tney be delivered
from the burden and disquietude of guilt, and become
partakers of a peace which passeth understanding.

That such will be the actual result of obedience, is
placed beyopd the possibility of doubt, verified as it
may be by the testimony and experience of hundreds
of thousands of living witnesses. As in majesty and
power Jesus commanded the winds and waves, "Peace,
be still," and these boisterous elements, obedient to his
command, sank in immediate calm, so will he spe?^ to
the warring passions of all who unreservedly confide
in him, and cheir weary souls shall find rest. Being
at peace with God, at peace with themselves, they will
be at peace with one another. The universal brother-
hood of mankind will be practically recognized ; " love
to God and to our neighbor " will become the pre-
dominant prixiciple of action ; and as tribe after tribe,
and nation after nation, yield to Christ's gracious
sway, hobtile banners will be furled, the liilis and the
valleys will no more resound with the war-trumpet's
discordant tones, the fierce tumults of the people will
cease, and " the kingdom of God. which is righteous-
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost," will enter

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OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

105

ieous-
enter

and reign in every heart. Atheism and every other
corrupt system will vanish as a dark vision of the
night; divine Truth will shme as the sun in its
meridian brightness, and the predicted triumph of our
Lord, as the Prince of Peace, will be complete. Earth
will re-echo the strains of the " great voices in heaven'
— " The kingdoms of this world are become the king-
doms of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign
for ever and ever."

In all we have said, we do not wish to be understood
as underrating the strength and subtlety of the great
enemy of God and man. Six thousand years' ex-
perience has nearly if not quite perfected Satan in the
art and practice o( temptation. He knows well what
instruments to use, and under what circumstances to
use them, for the best advantage of his cause. Seldom
has he overreached himself. He is never idle. He is
a pattern of industry — an example of ceaseless activity.
His numerous armies are trained to do his bidding.
Prompt obedience is their motto. Though a mutineer
himself, we do not know that any of his subjects in
the infernal regions have ever rebelled against his
authority.

The Scriptures forewarn us of a tremendous conflict
to take place in the world. Were Satan assured, as we
suppose he is. that he could not ultimately succeed, his
malignity would prompt him to maintain the struggle
to annoy, baffle, and destroy all along the ages. Human
emissaries, themselves deceived, will unite to deceive

ill

jir

IP::

u iiji

!•■;

I ii

i'si ■: ?i !

i 1

106

ARROWS m THE HEART

others, and so aid him in his destructive work. Among
other things, literature, science, the pulpit, the lecture-
room, the press, the bar-room, and example will be
pressed into his service. What cannot be effected, in
accomplishing his designs, by open hostility, will be
sought by opposition carried on in secret and in the
dark. No effort will be neglected or relaxed that
promises to aid in the ruin of souls and to thwart the
redeeming purposes of Christ. The devil seems to
entertain an especial hatred towards Jesus, the Son of
God, who passed through his fiery temptations un-
scathed.

More deeply than ever should the preceding facts
be impressed on the minds of the pastors and the lay-
members of the Christian Church. Through their
instrumentality our Lord carries on the warfare with
the powers of darkness. Indifference and inactivity
on their part will more effectually assist the enemy
than either the open or the secret hostility, or both, of
his emissaries. If the sentinels sleep at their post, the
hostile forces can easily enter the camp. To secure,
then, the ground already won, and to push forward
the victories of the Cross into as yet unconquered
territories, boldness, courage, alertness, watchfulness,
zeal, and unwearied action are required. Every soul
saved is a gain — every soul lost, a disaster irrecover-
able. While you are reading, souls are passing from
time into eternity. Whether for life eternal or death
eternal, the die with them is cast. Brethren ! Let U3

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

107

long
,ure-
11 be
d, in
ill be
n tbe
that
rt the
ns to
)on of
IS un-

facts
le lay-

their
:e with
,ctivity
enemy
Doth, of
ost, the
secure,
forward
fiquered
ifulness,
ery soul
Tocover-
ing from
or death
! Let U3

familiarize our minds with the value of immortal souls
for whom Christ died ! If we have prayed for their
salvation, let us, from this time forth, pray more
fervently and put more faith into our prayers. If we
have worked for their salvation in the past, let us
work more zealously and more persistently for the
future. If we have given of our means to send the
Gospel to the " regions beyond," let us increase and
multiply our gifts for the time to come. Let not the
reproach come upon us, that Satan is more industrious
to ruin than we are to save souls.

The millions now in the Christian Church ought,
with God's aid, soon to capture the world. With the
foothold they already possess, with the resources,
human and divine, at their command, advance and
victory ought to be speedy. Why should they not ?
Has this question pressed upon you with due weight ?

" The wheels of time go not backward." The past
cannot be recalled ; the future is in the keeping of
every one that shall be permitted to live. The giant.
Atheism, is doomed at some time in the future to meet
with a David. Whether that time be hastened or
retarded depends greatly on this generation. May it
be hastened ! May you and all under your influence,
and thousands of others, join sincerely in this prayer !
And while you are praying, let each ask — " What does
the Lord require of me ? "

108

ARROWS IN THE HEART

APPENDIX A.

1^'

GOD GEOMETRIZES.

, 1 '■

I '4

•R

III: I

I I

The following extract, from the pen of Mr. Arling-
ton, of Texas, is taken from the Democratic Review : —

" The construction of the following argument, in my
mind, originated in the necessity of my nature :
Some years ago, I had the misfortune to meet with the
fallacies of Hume, on the subject of causation. His
specious sophistries shook the faith of my reason as to
the being of a God, but could not overcome bhe repug-
nance of my heart to a negation so monstrous ; and
consequently left that infinite restless craving for
some point of fixed repose, which atheism not only
cannot give, but absolutely and madly disaffirms.
' One beautiful evening in May, I was reading by the
light of the setting sun, in my favorite Plato. I was
seated on the grass, interwoven with golden blooms,
immediately on the crystal Colorado of Texas. Dim
in the distant west arose, with smoky outlines, mossy

-H

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

109

^rling-
<iew : —

i,mmy
nature :
dth the
Q. His
311 as to
i repug-
ns; and
ing for
lot only
Lsaffirms.
g by the
.. I was
L blooms,
as. Dim
es, mossy

and irregular, the blue cones of an offshoot of the
Rocky Mountains.'

" I was perusing one of the academician's most
starry dreams. It laid fast hold of my fancy without
exciting my faith. I wept to think it could not be
true. At length I cane to that startling sentence,
* God geometrizes.' ' Vain reverie !' I exclaimed, as I
cast the volume on the ground at mv feet. It fell close
by a beautiful flower that looked fresh and bright, as
if it had just fallen from the bosom of a rainbow. I
broke it from its silvery stem, and began to examine its
structure. Its stamens were five in number, its great
calyx had five parts, its delicate coral base five, parting
with rays expanding like rays of the Texas star.
This combination of five in the same blossom, appeared
to me very singular. I had never thought of such a
subject before. The last sentence I had just read in
the page of the pupil of Socrates, was ringing in my
ears— ' God geometrizes.' There was the text written
long centuries ago ; and here the little flower, in the
remote v/ilderness of the west, furnishes the com-
mentary. There suddenly passed, as it were, before
my eyes a faint flash of light. I felt my heart leap
into my bosom. The enigma of the universe was
open. Swift as thought I calculated the chances
against the production of those three equations of five
in only one flower, by any principle devoid of reason,
to perceive number. I found there was one hundred
and twenty-five chances against such a supposition.

110

ARROWS IN THE HEART

I extended the calculation of two flowers, by squaring
the sum last mentioned. The chances amounted to
the large sum of fifteen thousand six hundred and
twenty-five. I cast my eyes around the forest: the
old woods were literally alive with these golden blooms,
where countless bees were humming, and butterflies
sipping honey-dews.

" I will not attempt to describe my feelings. My
soul became a tumult of radiant thoughts. I took up
my beloved Plato from the grass where I had tossed
him in a fit of despair. Again and again I pressed
him to my bosom, with a clasp tender as a mother's
around the neck of her sleeping child. I kissed
alternately the book and the blossom, bedewing them
both with tears of joy. In my w^ild enthusiasm, I
called to the little birds on the green boughs, trilling
their cheery farewells to departing day, ' Sing on,
sunny birds ; sing on, sweet minstrels ; lo ! ye and I
have a God.' "

■J,.

Note : — For a doubter to find a God is a step 'in the
right direction; the next step, and one essentially
necessary, is, by repentance and faith, to find Jesus
Christ as a personal Saviour. Here Plato must give
place to the sacred Scriptur s, which testify of Jesus ;
and for "God geometrizes," we would substitute —
" God loves and saves me now."

OF THE king's ENEMIES.

Ill

APPENDIX B.

THE ATMOSPHERE.

" The atmosphere rises above us with its cathedral
dome arching towards the heaven of which it is the
most familiar synonym and symbol. It floats around
us like that grand object which the Apostle John saw
in his vision — * a sea of glass like unto crystal.' So
massive is it that, when it begins to stir, it tosses about
ships like playthings, and sweeps cities and forests
like snowflakes to destruction before it. And yet it is
so mobile that we have lived years in it before we can
be persuaded it exists at all, and the great bulk of
mankind never realize the truth that they are bathed
in an ocean of air. Its weight is so enormous that
iron shivers before it like glass, yet a soap-ball sails
through it with impunity, and the tiniest insect waves
it with its wings. It ministers lavishly to all the
senses. We touch it not, but it touches us ; its warm
south wind brings back colour to the pale face of the
invalid : its cool west winds refresh the fevered brow

fll

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112

ARROWS IN THE HEART

and make the blood mantle in our cheeks : even its
north blasts brace into new vigor the hardened children
of our rugged clime. The eye is indebted to it for all
the magnificence of sunrise, the full brightness of mid-
day, the chastened radiance of the gloaming, and the
clouds that cradle near the setting sun. But for it
the rainbow would want its triumphal arch, and the
winds would not send their fleecy messengers on
errands round the heavens. The cold ether would not
shed its snow-feathers on the earth, nor would drops of
dew gather on the flowers. The kindly rain would never
fall — hail, storm, nor fog diversify the face of the sky.
Our naked globe would turn its tanned, unshadowed
forehead to the sun, and one dreary monotonous blaze
of light and heat dazzle and burn up all things.
Were there no atmosphere, the evening sun would in
a moment set, and without warning, plunge the earth
in darkness. But the air keeps in her hand a sheaf of
his rays, and lets them slip but slowly through her
fingers ; so that the shadows of evening gather by
degrees, and the flowers have time to bow their heads,
and each creature space to find a place of rt-st and
nestle to repose. In the morning the garish gun would
at one bound burst from the bosom of night and blaze
above the horizon ; but the air watches for his coming
and sends at first but one little ray to announce his
approach, and then another, and by-and-by a handful,

draws aside the curtain

gently

night.

slowly lets the light fall on the face of the sleeping
earth, till her eye-lids open, and like man, she goeth

"'I*

I !

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

113

1 its
flren
n* all
mid-
l the
'or it
:l the
s on
d not
ops of
never
e sky.
[lowed
5 blaze
things,
uld in
3 earth
heaf o£
gh her
her by
: heads,
bst and
1 would
id blaze
coming
mce his
landful,
;ht, and
sleeping
le goeth

forth again to her labor until the evening." — English
Quarterly Review.

" The winds, which we are sometimes apt to view
as the disturbers of the tranquility of nature, and as
the ministers of vengeance, are employed in wafting
from distant countries the productions of varied climes,
and form an important means of dispersing over the
world its comforts and conveniences. They also serve
thb necessary purpose of conveying clouds through
the atmosphere, and imparting moisture and fertility
to countries which otherwise would be parched by
uninterrupted drought. Even the dread tornado,
whose resistless sweep carries desolation in its course,
is not without its use in clearing the atmosphere of
pestilential effluvia, which, when the air becomes
stagnant, contaminate the vital fluid, and spread disease
and death.

" The atmosphere serves as the abode of birds, and
the medium of transmitting the light which cheers
and illuminates. It acts as the great repository of
clouds and rains, which perform so important a part in
the economy of nature. Vapors ascend by means of heat,
become condensed in the upper regions of the air, float
about in the form of clouds, which refresh by the cooling
shade, and descend upon the earth as fertilizing showers.

" It is also the medium of sound, which enables us

to correspond by spoken language, and delights us by

the sweet cadence of music. The faculty of speech

would be useless unless something were provided to

i .

1. fl

if)

til '

f
t

114

ARROWS IN THE HEART

cause and communicate sound. Man would be almost
as unable to impart a knowledge of his wants and
wishes as the dumb creation ; we would not experience
the overpowering influence, the thrilling interest, and
inspired bursts of the accomplished orator ; the divine
melody of the groves, the living tones of the lyre, and
the melting accents of the voice, but for the air would
never fall on the raptured ear.

" One of the most important purposes of the atmos-
phere is in supporting respiration and combustion. It
is ascertained that animals and vegetables, when
excluded from the air, soon decay and die ; that it is
the food which nourishes our fires and lamps, and
enables them to impart heat and light. It is, more-
over, remarkable that the oxygen of the atmosphere,
which is consumed by the respiration of animals, is
evolved during the day by vegetables; and that
carbonic acid gas, which is rejected from the lungs of
animals, and which, when breathed, proves destructive
to them, is inhaled by vegetables, and rendered subser-
vient to their growth. The nice equilibrium of the
gases is preserved, and animals and vegetables are
rendered dependent upon each other for that which
constitutes in no inconsiderable degree the means of
their support.

"The tenuous air, invisible to the eye, and imper-
ceptible to the touch, of whose existence we require to
be made aware by the researches of science, is no less
requisite to our existence than the food which we eat."
— Anonymous,

OF THE KINGS ENEMIKS.

115

most
and
ience
, and
ivine
5, and
vould

.tmos-

n. It
when
at it is
IS, and
more-
sphere,
iials, is
i that
mgs of
iructive
subser-
Q of the
3les are
i,t which
leans of

I imper-
Bquire to
s no less
1 we eat.

APPENDIX C.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE EYE.

Martyn, in his Philosophy of Nature, has the follow-
ing sentence : " A truly cunning artisan shall construct
many things equally deserving of admiration with
anything we see in Nature."

This was considered as an atheistical challenge ; it
was accepted by a correspondent of the Tutor, whose
reply bears the title of — Architecture of the Eye. The
extract though lengthy is exceedingly interesting :

" Hear with what swelling words of vanity man
proclaims the majesty of his intellect, and the might
of his single arm ! The 'cunning artisan ' shall do it,
and shall be lifted up to everlasting honor ! The clay
has laughed to scorn the skill of the potter ; the
creature, offspring of yesterday, has dehed his Creator,
whose being is eternity !

" Go to, thou boaster ! make ready ! for the God of
Nature accepts the challenge, and demands the trial.

I'-

116

ARROWS IN THE HEART

No Space is left whereon to build another universe ;
but the eye is a little and familiar thing, which an inch
will more than span. Upon this * inch ' let the wager
be laid, and all earth shall stand umpire, while our
hopes, of a final resurrection and a blessed immortality
we plight against the bold adventure.

'* Build first the walls of defence, the socket, the
cheek, and the nasal bones, and the projecting arch
above, which shall guard the eye from external
violence. PJnnt the eyebrows in just proportion and
arrangement, like tiles so overlapping, and of such
exact form and length, as that the acrid perspiration
which distils from the brows shall be turned upon the
open temples , dye them with some dark pigment ;
and for those who dwell under the vertical rays of a
tropical sun, give a darker hue. Attach a muscle of
curious workmanship in mold and fixture, so that at
your bidding its thousand fibres shall contract and
depress the overhanging thatch.

*' Work now the lids, of materials soft and pliant ;
adtpt them accurately each to the other, and to the
smooth convexity of the eye. Place also the cords
which, moved by the intellectual actor behind, shall
enable him to raise the curtains, and looking forth,
read in the face of his auditors applause or censure ;
to be again dropped when the performer needs repose,
or when the last great drama is wound up.

" Dig a foundation above the outer angle of the lids,
where, fed by perennial streams, it shall overflow and

OF THE king's ENEMIES.

117

and

wash the adjacent plains. From the foundation draw
ten thousand secret wires to the surface of the eye, so
watchful and obedient as that, when touched hv the
smallest mote, they shall suddenly spring the tearful
gates, and bear off the offending particle. Let it also
be to the mind a safety-valve, to be lifted when
pleasure or pain moves the soul to excess ; the closure
of which, when the passions are in hot ebullition, sliall
produce disorganization and permanent derangement
of the brain.

" Excavate at the inner angle a shelving lake, and
throw up from its base a rocky islet, well covered
with brambles and an oily exudation, designed, when
the waters are agitated and cast upon its shores, by
the action of the lids, to catch and retain .-.uch
particles as would obstruct its narrow outlet.

" This outlet build of cement finer than purest
porcelain, and of capillary dimensions, to absorb the
fluids which approach its mouth ; endow it with a
consciousness of its office and importance ; make it
irritable and impatient of insult, that when provoked
it shall bar its entrance and refuse admission to all,
until its tiny wrath is appeased.

" Arrange along the slender border of each lid
minute sacs, stored with unctuous matter, which shall
constantly pour their contents from narrow mouths, as
oil is laid upon the edge of the brimming bowl to
prevent its overflow. Still farther, plant outside of
these a double row of lashes, that when the lids are

It :f

! M

It ■
i

118

ARROWS IN THE HEART

11?

1 1:

ii ilr

I \

nearly closed, they shall, by interlacement effectually
exclude all particles of dust, and yet admit the light.

" Ah ! it is a weary and vexatious task for such
unpractised hands ! Then rest awhile ; for this inch
of creation, which at fiist seemed unworthy an artist's
hour, is scarce begun! You have raised the walls and
built its towers ; the gates are hung ; you have dug
the foundations and the water-pools ; you have
sheltered all from baneful dews and the scorching
sun ; but of the beautiful temple within, not a stone is
laid nor a timber hewn.

" Now mix your ores. Buy silver, gold, platinum,
iron, lead, and brass ; gather here all your metals, rare
and costly, of all degrees of consistency, and strength,
and malleability ; and when you have carefully
selectee' fuse them together, and from your crucible
mold a crystal like the cornea, transparent, tenacious,
flexible, smooth, and polished, with the exact convexity
and density necessary to a proper refraction and
convergence of the rays of light.

" Next, form of opaque and stronger materials a
case, in which the beveled edge of the cornea shall
be rect d, like an optician's lens. Within this globe
thus conste' i.cted, pour fluids of different densities, as in
the perfect ^achromatic telescope, to combine the rays,
and prevent the imperfection of colors.

" In the anterior chamber of the eye, let the fluid
be thin and pellucid and enclosed in a fine, transparent
capsule, while the posterior chamber must be filled

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

119

with a more consistent material, like melted glass, and
divided into a multitude of minute cellules, by inter-
secting septa. Between these two, place a double
convex lens, of perfect form, its posterior surface the
arc of a lesser circle than its anterior. Construct the
lens of radiating and concentric fibres, the inner
laminae dense, the outer soft and pulpy. The whole
invest with a delicate capsule.

" Now mark ! if you err in any point, with all these
lenses and humors, if there be one minim of fluid too
much, or if the lens be one line too convex, or its
structure one grain too dense, or the relative proportion
of each be changed one fraction, all your labor is
vain. You may as well expect with imperfect rules to
ascertain eclipses, or the course and return of the
eccentr^'c comet. l

" Be not faint and discouraged ; for, remember, the
load to fame was never a 'swift highway,' but always
sadly rough and wearisome, and covered with 'difficul-
ties thick as rocks upon the mountain-sides. Yet it
is cheering to know that the diamonds in your crown
shall be numbered by the obstacles you have encoun-
tered and overcome.

" Gird on, for another is before you. I .u lest your
laboring senses rebel at being over-uasked, and
suddenly depart, leaving your skull an empty cobbler's
shop, and this curious work, so well begun, half
wrought, you shall invite fresh aid.

" Call the shrewd mechanic and cunning artizan ;

120

ARROWS IN THE HEART

ii.

Ill

Pi:"

i ;4fr
i p.

ft'

11 W^

ask counsel of the learned, the mathematician, the
geometrician, the chemist ; invoke the mysterious
science of the Rosicrucian, the sorcerer, and the
magician. From all demand knowledge how to weave
an iris, the inner curtain, with its changing pupil,
formed of circular and diverging fibres, and floating
freely in the fluid of the anterior chamber, prompt to
dilate when the nerve of vision demands more light,
and as prompt to contract when the light is too
intense; never moved or excited by the direct
infringement of the luminous rays upon its own
fibres, but ever faithful and obedient to the calls of
the retina ; and so made that, through the threescore
years and ten that it shall serve, watching the while,
both night and day, with attentive care, every cloud
and shade of the inconstant light, not a string shall
loosen nor a thread need repair.

" The retina form of finesi? texture, and spread it
broad within the back of the eye, like th3 white
canvas of the camera obscura. To absorb the rays
and prevent their reflection after they have impinged
upon the retina, line its posterior surface with a paint
which light, however long it may act upon it, shall
never fade — an art in coloring not yet attained.

" Supply the whole eye with nerves, arteries, veins,
and absorbents, for the purpo^.es of growth and
reparation ; place it upon a nicely -adjusted axis, and
give the power of motion and rotation, in every con-
ceivable direction ; and, last, bestow the strange, and

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

121

hitherto inimitable power of adapting its vision to
different distances, without any perceptible change in
the form of the organ.

"Have you done ? And does your careful eye
detect no flaw or fissure, no failure or imperfection ?
Hold it up ! It is beautiful and wondrous, indeed !
But one thing more, and the pledge is yours — now
make it see ! 'For truly the light is sweet, and a
pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.'

"Let it at one glance receive and recognize the
extended landscape, with all it varieties of feature,
and color, and distance ; the valley, and mountain
with its hoary locks ; the forest, and the rich harvest-
fields ; the meadow, the pearly lake, the rippling,
ever-babbling brook, the village —

* Dim described in yonder plain ;'

the clouds — airy messengers, which come and go in
ceaseless procession, like spirits sent from heaven on
hasty errands.

" Animate it with life, intelligence, sentiment, and
passion ; make it the door and window of the soul,
through which 'all without may look in, and all within
may look out,' —

'The gay recess of wisdom and of wit,
And passions' host, that never brook'd control.'

In sorrow, let it be dimm'd and sad ; in terror, wild
and restless. But to the eye of the angry man, give
fire ; let a savage brightness shoot from its dark and

122

ARROWS IN THE HEART

f \

91:

ii'i

.2,1!

m 1

ill'

stormy surface, like lightning amid the blackness of a
tempest ; and when despair seizes the soul, knit the
brows convulsively, and fix the eye in a fierce and
sullen glare.

'•' Imprint, also, the finer sentiments. In joy, teach
it to sparkle and beam with a mild and radiant light ;
in love and deep aff^ection, to glow with a warm and
melting softness. Here paint innocence and modesty
with a sweet and lovely harmony, such as angels look.
Benevolence, kindness, charity, patience — the choicest
virtues — all holy passions and unholy, both good and
evil, must be here depicted ; and give it not the
blank look of your dumb automaton, until death
approaches.

" All flesh must perish ; and as the soul lessens from
its mysterious connection, fasten the sightless ball in
(:he gaze of insensibility, and let a cold dampness
distil from its surface to dim its lustre. Lighten it a
moment with a celestial splendor, as if to announce
the spirit's departure ; then let its brightness cease
for ever. Oh, foolish man ! How vain are all your
boastings, and how dwindled your greatness, when
compared with Him 'who laid the deep foundations of
the earth, and spread the heavens abroad ! ' * * *

" Thou hast listened to the song of a siren, and it
was the song of Lucifer, ' bright son of the morning,'
who warring for the throne, and sceptre of God, was
hurled from the battlements of heaven. Thou hast
listened until thine own harp is attuned with most

OF THE KINGS ENEMIES.

123

of a

■j the
and

leach
Lght ;
and
iesty
look.
Dicest
i and
b the
death

\ from
Dall in
ipness
3n it a
lounce
\ cease
1 your
when
ions of

, and it
Drning,'
od, was
)u hast
h most

discordant strains ; and thy erring feet have been
lured to almost where the portals ot eternal night
shut out the day.

" But a new harp is struck, and another song comes
gathering upon the air ; it is the song of Nature. From
the woodlands and the heath, from hill-top and seques-
tered dell, it comes, and it saith, 'There is a God 1' It is
heard in the rustling of the forest leaves, in the
warbling of the morning birds, in the whispers of the
evening breeze, in the 'warm hum of the insects by
the side of the babbling brook,' in the waterfall,
in the rushing of the tempest, ard the hollow
murmur of the ocean-tide ; and in all it saith, 'There is
a God !' It speaks in the booming thunder, and is
echoed by the broad mountain-side — from all around,
above, beneath, a choral anthem is raised, and the
voice of everything is heard to say, in harmonious
melody, ' There is a God, the Maker and Ruler of all
things.' "

124

ARROWS IN THE HEART

i' I

I 1(1

APPENDIX D.

ATHEISTIC BRAVADO.

A Mr. Robert G. Ingersoll, a lawyer by profession
has been for some time past delivering lectures in
various cities of the United States, against Christianity
in general, and the God of the Bible in particular, in
which he has indulged in a species of bravado not
common among the inlidels of this country. One of
his favorite expressions is — " If God, the God of the
Bible, should arraign me at his judgment-bar and
condemn me, I will tell him to his face, he is a worse
being than I thought him to be ! " This grossly offen-
sive sentence, strongly emphasized, is delivered in a
boastful manner, with a look of expected triumph, as
if what he has the hardihood to say is to be numbered
among indisputable facts ; as if, with all the uncan-
celled guilt of infidelity hanging as a dead weight upon
his soul, he will be as calm and as self-possessed before
the Judgment-seat of Christ, as if standing in an
earthly court and before an earthly judge !

Mistaken man ! A worm of earth confronting the
Omniscient Judge, before whom all nations shall be
gathered — before whose apocalyptic glory even holy
men of old fell down as dead ! One glance from those
eyes, which are like flames of lire, will take all the
courage out of the boldest infidel that ever lived and
cause him to quail and shrink away more hastily and

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

125

more timorously than a coward before a brave man
He will tell the Judge to his face ! Why not say, he
will demand of the Judge to come down from his
throne, lay aside his robes of office, and meet him on
the plains of Ether, and decide the contest in deadly
conflict ? There is just about as much probability of
his doing the one as the other. Let him read Matt,
xxii. 11-13, and see the fate of one, who, — though only
guilty of neglect, not having vilified his King, as Mr.
Ingersoll has been in the habit of vilifying his God, —
thought he could tell the King to his face, that, for
sundry reasons, he was excusable, but who, when the
King looked at Him and asked him only one question,
was "speechless!" This just meets Mr. Ingersoll's
supposed case. Should he persist in his present course
and die an impenitent infidel, he will have at the
Judgment-bar such a demonstration of the reality of
what he has spent his time here in ridiculing, as will
leave him no disposition to lecture the Judge on that
solemn day. We have heard of another brave " Bob,"
but his surname was not " Ingersoll " — it Avas " Acres "
— a name which has become a by- word for courage ;
but alas! his courage "oozed" away, or failed, just
when it was most needed ! The application is not hard
to make.

At best a braggadocio is a poor specimen of man-
hood. Men of strong minds, engaged in a good cause,
never brag — never boast of what they will do or
of what they will not do. They instinctively dis-
trust a cause that requires to be upheld by boast-

',*'

If
•ii.

f t

126

AKROWS IN THE HEART

ing; there is nothing in it is the quick verdict.
When Voltaire boasted that he would "crush thft
wretch," meaning Christ — a boaot reiterated by his
infidel confreres — did he, did they, crush him ? When
Tom Paine boasted that he had destroyed the authority
of the Bible — did he succeed ? Is the authority of
the Bible less now than it was when he had finished
his virulent crusade ? When Julian, the apostate, in
his malice and vanity, ordered by an edict that the
name of Christian should be abolished — was it
abolished ? When, in the same spirit, he attempted
to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem to falsify the pre-
diction of Christ — was he successful ? Rather, was he
not compelled to cry out — " O Galilean ! Thou hast
conquered ? " Have not " the kings of the earth set
themselves, and the rulers, taken counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointed ? " Have
not philosophers and statesmen, mountebanks and
ignoramuses, beardless boys and masculine women,
waged war against God and Christianity ? And what
have they accomplished ? What great victories have
perched upon their banners ? What glorious triumphs
have signalized their march ? Has the God of the
Bible fewer worshippers, or has Jesus, the Anointed
One, fewer followers to-day, than they had when these
enemies were boasting, spouting, writing, publishing,
blaspheming, fulminating, and persecuting ? It is more
than probable that, through their instrumentality,
some souls have been lost and others ensnared, but
atheism, pure and simple, has not, on the whole,

OF THE KING S ENEMIES.

127

realized the sanguine hopes of its adherents. Still
there is danger. On the other hand, it may be said
without boasting, that the history of the Christian
Church, during nearly nineteen centuries past, and the
state of Christendom to-day, show that the enemies
of the God of the Bible, the enemies of Christ,
and his religion, are waging an unequal war, and
that they will eventually sustain an ignominious
defeat — for, " he," Christ, " must reign, till he hath put
down all enemies under his feet."

Meantime Mr. Ingersoll is, jpar excellence^ the cham-
pion of infidelity on this side of the water. Not
content with lecturing in this world, he boasts of
his intention of making a little speech at the Judgment
Day. If condemned at that tribunal, he will tell God
to his face that he is a ivorse being than he, R. G. I.,
whilst in the body, having a good supply of flesh and
blood, and before these were devoured by greedy grave-
worms, leniently thought he was ! How had he thinks
God is now he does not sav, but notwithstanding all
that has been done to save him, unavailingly it appears,
he is sure, if condemned, that God will be a great deal
worse, and he is determined to tell him so, not behind
his back but to his very face ! Bravely said, but it is
only brag ! He does not believe in a general Judgment
Day, nor in any of the cardinal doctrines of the Bible;
he can, therefore, venture to boast — to threaten the
God of the Bible, in whom, be it remembered, he says
he does not believe, with an altered opinion, an opinion
bad enough now but which will be a great deal worse

!; 1

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la:

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1 -I.
'Ill

^2, AEBOWS IN THE HEART,

tUe.; and t.. ...do, -J-r;\tXw
effect on his audiences J ^ ^^^^ ^is avowa

these people he is -*j^ ^ „ 1- '^"^iences. an effect
ought to have a great cffo t ,^, to retire, d.s-

so great as to '^'^^f? f "'" LeW-respect, a due regard
gied with his riba dry. SeU P^ ^^ indebtedness

for sacred things, a J"^ '^W ^^a the blessings and
to Christianity for Pubhorde^ ^^.^^^^_ ^^^^^^

amenities of life *f f j^^ J .manifest, by pronipt
composed entirely "* -^P^^^^'^ ,, ,ueh unparalleled
action, becoming '^^l^^^^^ed by this missionary
audacity as that P^^^dy J^ „ity that prizes is

of atheistic scurrility. !^° ^^^^^^ tolerate

corporate P"f ^^^^ ^^t of atheistic bombast,
i„ its midst the o'^^P"^;^"^ ^viich it flows is sur-
whether the condw\X^° eovered with the coarsest
rounded with broad-clo* or CO ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^,^^, ^

material. Does not ^', =t, of Christ would imply
Tppearance at the 3"dg.ne-t ^J ^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^, , ^
hi resurrection from the grav^, ^^^^^^ ^^ ^he

in fact, all the great, g™'^'^- "^^^^^ „f all his assertions

^^Ue,andthe utter groundle-es.^ ^^^ *-«- ^J,

to the contrary » " «»' ^^at cv,t-and-dried

that he would not tore \o t^- ^.^ ,oast? 5r«,

little speech of ^^ichjie ha ^^^ ^^^^^^ ^ a.

may pass here but ^f.^^'''^ ^ ,oll to consult his
^esl'therefore, we adv.e m IJ ^^^^^ ^, .^,_ .^e

most important ^^ter^J^ ^^ whilst he has time and
appointed judge, his friend,
opportunity for so doing.

e an

show
T^owal
effect
e, dis-
regard
edness
gs and
ipt one
prompt
ralleled
isionary
rizes its
tolerate
Dombast,
3 is sur-
i coarsest
that his
aid imply
I of being,
.hs of the
assertions
iher know
■and-dried
ist ? Brag
imost kind-
consult his
i Christ, the
a.s time and