IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TAf^GET (MT-3) V /. / / <" ^i,^ '%° S C^ #^< IP- :/ 1.0 I.I 1.25 '^IM ilM ■^ lU 1112.2 13 6 2.0 U lllll 1.6 V] P^ ^ / /I / Photographic Sciences Coiporation # iT(inci'! HU I ■f> ,.;> Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Can- ada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty- seven, by Samuel Robert Briggs, in the office ot the Minister of Agriculture at Ottawa. •**' :>% CONTENTS. Introduction I. Chapter I. Creation i " 11. Cosmic Construction. ... 13 " Hi. Period of Earth Crust Form- ation 23 " IV. Orgakization of Species. . . 31 ." V. Cosmic Formation and Organi- zation Miraculous. ... 41 " VI. Elohim 51 " VII. The Miraculous 59 " VIII. The Human Species— Whence.? 65 " IX. The Human Species — in what State Originally. ... 73 " . X. Man and Beast 81 " XL Human Morality put to Proof. 87 • " XII. Wh.at Sin is. . . . . . , . 99 " XIII. The Tempter and the Tempt- ation ... 107 " XIV. Death — Its History. . . .119 " XV. What is Death ? .... 133 " XVL Spiritual Death 147 " XVII. Devils and their Use. . . 163 " XVJII. Temptation — its place in the Economy of Grace 179 WM WM '■'■ '^ ■•) r >'♦ PREFACE. The sole object of this humble volume is the vindication of the veracity of GodV, Word, against the attempts of some great and good men to adapt Genesis to Geology, the essen- tial atheism of Danvinism, Evolution, and those systems of ethics which .gnore or contradict Holy Scripture regarding the origin and penalty of human sin. I do not hope to influence any beneficially, save those who will read what I have written with candour and calm consideration. J. D. • t/ INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION. BEFORE we can answer some of the questions suggested by the title of this volume another enquiry meets us. Have we any statements made by Moses to examine and discuss ? Are those old Jewish documents claiming Mosaic authorship genuine and authentic ? These enquiries can be answered affirmatively only by accepting their true inspiration; for Moses unquestionably pretends to give an historical detail (even to exact verbal utterances) of events that tran- spired long ages before his own birth. Was Moses wrong, or right? No one can tell until he has intelligently settled the question, — What is Inspiration? The Jewish church and the Christian church have always claimed to be in possession of truth inspired by God. Christianity and Inspiration stand or fall together. Until this question, What is inspiration? be satisfactorily answered, saving faith (without which Christianity has no existence) is a moral impossibility, for "Faith cometh by . . the word of God." And it is self-evident that no intelligent person can believe that to be the word of God which he has no sound reason for regarding as really inspired by God. It seems a priori that to moral beings situated as we are the word of God in the shape of inspired truth is necessary ; M. INTRODUCTION. for if it be true that in a world beyond the present we shjtll stand or fall forever according to the judgment of the God who made us, a judgment that is to be pronounced upon our moral condition as evolved in our earthly experience, it is obvious that about the Deity, His nature and His laws, about the true nature, character and destiny of the human soul, about the eternal world and its conditions we must now have information which can be trusted, and it is quite as obvious that no information on such subjects can either be trustworthy or useful except our informant be infallible. All Christendom feels and has ever felt this deeply ; and to meet this necessity there are only three ways: — firsts The infallibility of the Pope and Cardinalate as being officially controlled by the Holy Ghost; second, The infallibility of inspired documents — the Bible ; or third, " he infalli- bility of our own Moral Consciousness — human spiritual intuition. All theories of right and wrong, of the true and the false enunciated by the thinkers of the European and American continents, ( however long they may soar, waver and gyrate in the mid air of abstruse speculation), gravitate finally to one of these three centres : — Truth found and fixed in the decisions of an Infallible Official Head, of an Infalli- ble Book, or of Infallible normal Self What is Inspiration? The question is not : How are we to authenticate the genuineness of any religious documents we DOW possess — this is the business of historical literary criticism ; let us therefore be careful lest we overlap one INTRODUCTION. 111. subject with another altogether distinct and so confuse our apprehension of both. What is Inspiration? Seeking an answer to this question we need not go to dictionaries or commentaries or theological treatises, for we know that learned and pious men differ widely on the subject. The only answer of value and weight we must find in the Bible itself, for, pre-supposing that book in any sense entitled to be regarded as what the Christian church of the first four centuries and the Protestant reformers of the XVIth century held it to be, the only Rule of doctrine and practice and the one Stan- dard of ultimate appeal in all cases of dispute, we are compelled to seek in it the definition of "Ir-^oiration." Refusing this, we consent to drift away out i .1 the dark troubled waters of indefinit^^ and endless metaphysical speculation, of spiritual intuition, of the inner consciousness of aggregate humanity. The Bible undoubt- edly lays claim to divine inspiration. What then is the nature and the extent of this claim ? Among many pr.ssages of the Bible which pretend to give us God's own idea of Inspiration, here is one, 2 Tim. 3: 16, "Every Scripture is God-breathed; and is profitu'ijle for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for discipline in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfected, thoroughly made ready to every good work." The word 6i6irvf.v(TTorlds our sun appears as big as an ordinary shirt button, while to an- other he appears some fifty times larger than to us; one has an atmosphere of thf temperature of red-hot iron, while our own moon is as cold as ice frozen to 100 degrees below zero. I question if Neptune is not colder still. Thus Almighty God has formed and is using the materials He Created, and "none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thoui"' As to the future, doubtless it is a future of mutation and development. So far as our observations extend we see all nature in rapid and ceaseless motion. Heat and cold effect- ing perpetual expansion and contraction, evaporization and CREATION. ZI condensation, gravitation, magnetic attraction and electric force, — all these involve and necessitate change and develop- ment and incessant progress towards new combinations; but that cosmic mass out of which the heaven and earth were constructed and in which these forces work, as well as these forces themselves, are the creation of God. This is what the first sentence of Clod's book, declares; and there has not under the whole heaven been yet produced one sound scientific fact that refutes the statement. The only argument of any strength or respectability against this doctrine of creation by God is that of Agnostic- ism, "We do not know." And Agnosticism may add, "We never can know, for in the very nature of the case we never can go back and gather any reliable evidence." Of all bad methods of getting rest from the trouble of honest enquiry the worst is to seek refuge in ignorance. >■■; sj 1^ I 1 Chapter ii. COSiMIC CONSTRUCTION. ■riiiiMK :■■-" And the earth was uithout form and void, and darkness was upn„ the face of tl>c deep. And tlie Siiirit of ilod moved upon the face of the waters. " 'And God saw everything th.-u he had made, and hehold it was very good. - GliNESIS i: 2, 31. 'if r-r I 5. i I CHAPTER II. Matter having been created^ how and by whom has it been fabricated? Geologists of the greatest research and the highest rep utation (among them Sir Charles Lyell) intorm vis that the stratification of the crust of our globe demonstrates these two facts,— y?rjr//y, the nature of the soil, the arrangement of the surface and the temperature of the elements have certain- ly during long pre adamite ages been such that all animals and vegetation then existing must have been totally different from any adapted to the earth as it now is ; and, secondly, the entire organic life on our earth has been utterly destroy ed many times — twenty times, at least, perhaps thirty times, by volcanic upheavals, by the partial and universal sub- sidence of the land beneath the water, by long ages of ex- cessive and intolerable cold, and by other great changes many succesive races of flora and fauna have been crushed down and swei)t out of existence. The sacred geologic re- cord of Genesis introduces us to our earth at the period of its being "framed," arranged for the accommodation of the /in man P! m i6 WAS MOSES nVRONG ? race and of those vegetable and animal races adaprtc < • cic- to: and these remarkable words, "And the earth \\u-, -vith- out form and void, and darkness wa>> upon the face of the deep" describe its chaotic condition consequent upon the last of those universal pre-adamite destructions which had swept over it, abolishing its geographical features anc. its organized races. How long our earth had existed in this dismal state, we know not; what had been the reason for or occasion of that terrible divine judgment which had abolished every living and organized thing, we know not; but now, the elements having been reduced to their first principles en masse, "the earth was without form and void," — To/iu va boluiy emptiness and confusion — by some tremendous power it had been dashed and crushed into shapeless ruin, the face of the earth had lost its features, all arrangement had been bruised out, all natural laws (such as the laws of chem istry) had been so suspended or overborne that the elements of earth, air, fire and water were now confounded and mixed into one conglomerate pulpy mass, not even an atmosphere remained through which the light of the central sun could be conveyed to its surface; but, like a dark dead cold lump of wet clay, our world sluggishly floated in space upheld in its planetary orbit by sheer force of grpvitation. When Reve- lation raises the curtain this is the condition of the stage upon which the great drama of humanity is to be performed: "The earth was emptiness and confusion, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," Like Sodom and Gomorrah lying be- COSMIC CONSTRUCTION. It? neath the bitter heavy waters of the "dead sea" we behold a dead and desolated world buried beneath a vast ocean upon which light never shines, across which refreshing breezes never whisper. ToJm va Bohii — Cosmos chaotic. The living agent by whom this Chaos was constructed, rather reconstructed, for human habitation, was the Spirit of God. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." * Without a mover the f e can be no motion. All history, all observation, all experience unquestionably, demonstrate that every effect has a cause and that no action of any sort can be without a living agent. Mechanical motion, whether in the human frame or in a chronometer or in the solar system results from relations established and controlled by some living and intelligent agent; not even electricity could ever be manifested until by some living agent it were brought into contact with those chemical affinities in such favorable conditions as will evoke it; not even gravitation could havn once acted unless matter had first been separated into parts *The cxxxiv Psalm is regarded as the shortest chapter of the Bil)Ie. I think it is not. What has been called in our "Authorized Version" the first chapter of Genesis ought to stand thus: — Chap. I. Creation. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (When?) ChaI'. II. Chaos. "And the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." (How Long ?) Chap. III. Cosmic Formation. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," itc, &c. Here begins the chapter of the last cosmic construction by the Divine Hand, i8 WAS MOSES WRONG/ in space by some living agent using power stronger than gravitation. Matter left to itself must certainly sink and set- tle down into the centre (wherever that may be) and lie there forever motionless. Evolution pre-supposes the spon- taneous action of such utterly lifeless and unorganized mat' ter; but spontaneity can not possibly be attributed to such matter, for spontaneity pre-supposes the subtil organization of mind; therefore spofitaneous motion, spontaneous com- bustion, spontaneous generation (every phrase that can make evolution possible) are words devoid cf meaning, except they mean that c<^rtain different qualities of matter brought into combination by living agents and operatevd on by certain laws (laws kept in active force by some living agency behmd them — for laws are absolutely powerless without an executive) produce such effects as motion, combustion, generation. It would be well for both science and religion were men to abandon forever the cowardly habit of seeking refuge be- hind such miserable verbal subterfuges as Spontaneous motion applied to mere matter. Let alone mere matter never can move. Chaos moved in response to the moving upon it of the Divine Spirit, for without such moving power chaotic movement was an eternal impossibility. In the cosmic construction of our world the first effect produced by the action of the Spirit of God upon the slug- gish and dismal waters was Light. — Verse 3rd. K«l COSMIC CONSTRUCTION. 19 Nothing seems to delight scientific men better, especially those of a semi-poetic frame of mind, than to describe how, both before and after the carboniferous period through im- measurable stretches of time, the heavy waters of our globe (agitated by the force of internal heat and attracted by the heat of the sun) began to evaporate, and how through long ages more this steam began to condense in rain and dew, and how they gradually became cooler and still cooler as they fre- quently revisited the cool regions of ether, and of course how the thick vapours became gradually thinner un- til ultimately the sun could force its rays here and there through the dense atmosphere and slowly dry up the cold wet soil. Being no professional scientist, I have not, perhaps, detailed this process of atmos- pheric evaporation correctly, but t*ie broad scientific theory I have stated fairly well. Over against this plausible theory, perhaps I may be allowed a few thoughts suggested by ex- perimental observation — thoughts that have forced me to the conclusion thai, even admitting naturiil law as now in operation to be the only effective power at God's command in creative work, it may not have taken so very \ery long for the fiat, "Let there be light," to be performed by the operation of the great condensers of Nature's laboratory. I have often wondered how our skies can be shrouded with thick and heavy clouds, and then how in a few moments those clouds — hundreds of square miles of them — can be all as it were, licked up like wp.ter off a table-top by the application M 20 WAS MOSES WRONG? of a large soft sponge. This is what we see God doing in the ordinary course of every-day providence, every few days; and, oh how quietly and softly '^ ^.oes it! How much water God Almighty could drav a twenty-four hours, if He would only work the ev" iig machinery of Nature at high pressure, it were h. o over-estimate; an atmos- phere like ours 45 miles deep, put into full absorbing activity by the enormous forces of our sun, operating on a sheet of water a few fathoms deep covering the area of our present land — why the whole work, stupendous as it seems to us at first sight, I feel persuaded might be accomplished even scientifically in a summer'^ afternoon! Have any of our modern scientists been soaked in the dense wet fogs of the banks of Newfoundland and the Bay of Fundy? No doubt they have all groped their way through the famous London fogs. In watching those misty phenomena have they not seriously observed with what amazing rapidity they come and go — appear and disappear as if by the touch of magic? This is what God does without any special effort and in the most ordinary circumstances of our organized and inhabited globe every week. Now let us suppose Scotch mists and Fundy fogs aggravated a hundred thousand fold, and this state of circumambient moisture still further aggravated by a universal London fog intensified an hundred thousand times — (surely this would shroud the deep in dark- ness!) — how long can we reasonably suppose it would occupy the Almighty Spirit of God, working at full COSMIC CONSTRUCTION. 91 power, the mighty apparatus of sun and atmosphere, to absorb and dissipate the entire watery envelope? Not longer, I feel persuaded, than the time indicated to the simplest mind reading these words : "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said: 'Light be;' and light was." "And God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness; and God called the light Day, and the darkness called He Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." If scientists can writ^^ out a more rational account of that atmospheric operation by which Light was let down upon the surface of our dark cold planet, let them try. - 1' ■h' Qlhaptcr iii. PERIOD OF EARTH CRUST FORMATION. Theme : — " 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." — Genesis i: 9, 10. 9 I CHAPTER III In the fourth article of the Decalogue we are reminded that "in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is," — words which refer to our j resent atmosphere, land and sea. As to these "days" during which our world wvls, framed, (Heb. xi. 3) during which moun- tains rose and valleys sank, and all organized species now extant were "made," like many other disciples of the great Hugh Miller I have for years past been inclined to think that in " prophetic" language they signified indefinitely long periods of time, and in expounding this first chapter of Genesis I have been in the habit of laymg considerable stress upon the apostolic expression, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day ; " but I have been forced to abandon this position as 1 feel it is not a thoroughly honest way of interpreting the Mosaic record. Reading this record with simplicity and candour it cannot be questioned that each "day" mentioned was just one diurnal period of time between night and night. Any other interpretation of the inspired words forces and strains them unfairly. Let it however be carefully noticed that this acceptance of the Mosaic terms in their literal scope does not necessarily involve the assertion that the length of each creative "day" was twenty-four hours according to our present reckoning, as it seems quite pos- I m ■J '*'''¥ 26 WAS MOSES WRONG? I| t sible — to me even probable — that then our earth turned upon its axis much more slowly than it has done within the his- toric human period. Whether this sluggishness of terrestrial motion during the formative period of the earth's crust be admitted or not, let it not be forgotten that my present theme presup])oses the forth-putting of God's personal power, not through the operation of fixed natural law, but directly. "By faith" — not by scientific exphnations based upon what we now see in operation around us, but '"''by faith we understand the world was framed by the Word of God." All the formative work detailed in the first chapter of Genesis we are evidently expected to believe was directly executed by special extraor- dinary and arbitrary exercise of divine power. Moses does not pretend to say in tones of apology becoming agnostic modesty, that our earth and its living races were probably (under general divine supervision) organized out of chaos by the slow and inexplicable operation of natural law, /. ^., by the happy fortuitous combination of atoms and the action of chemical forces and affinities ; on the contrary he tells us distinctly that the successive periods of cosmic formation were periods of direct divine interposition, of supernatural fabrication, — that God "spake and it was done ; He com- manded and it stood fast." This is the point of antagonism between revelation and science. Any one who can thoughtfully study the evolution theory elaborated by the geological department of the Darwinian school, cannot but notice that the principal fault those H) PERIOD OF EARTH CRUST FORMATION. 27 scientific gentlemen have to find with that method of crust formation indicated in the Biblical narrative sui)stantially amounts to this, — The work was done wuiVi too/as^. Yet surely no reasonable man can se?ously maintain that the very slo7V and gradual execution of the work of mundane construction can fairly account for that work's being accom- plished, or de-miracleize the actual accomplishment of it. A magnificently ornate mediceval cathedral, whether built in ten years or in five hundred, demanded for its erection the same amount of human skill and toil, :ir\(l even so that pon- derous work by which the geological features of our earth's present surface were impressed upon it, must have demanded' the forth-putting of the same amount of constructive power and skill, whether the process were long or short. The first chapter of Genesis frankly demands us to believe in a suc- cession of/ast miracles. Evolution, when patiently watched through all its gradual processes, turns out to be a very slow miracle, but a genuine miracle nevertheless — a miracle laboring under special difficulties, and manipulated by very incompetent agencies. For example, — Gentlemen advanced in science cannot bring themselves to believe that continents could rise and rivers begin to flow in one day. "Only grant millions of years for the accomplishment of such great changes, th^n we can easily believe they took |)lace," say they. No doubt continents, mountains, islands and rivers are in your estimation and mine (seeing we, along with our friends the grocer and butcher, generally deal in ounces and J Vs ^ >4 IIF 28 WAS MOSES WRONG ? in I ! n pounds) very ponderous and unwieldly things, and it is not quite easy for us to understand how such (to us) prodigious masses could be moved, heaved up, hollowed out and j)ro])erly adapted to one another in a few hours or days. But permit me to ask, Have we not forgotten inour estimate of sizes and weights that the mightiest mountains of our globe, the llymalayas, Alps and Andes, do not really affect the surface of our earth, in i)roportion to its diameter and circumference, more than the roughness of its coarse skin does an orange ? And in our ideas of the work of creative construction have we not forgotten x\\:\.i/ar )>io>-e actual us without a law-maker ? And who ever knew of laws operating them- selves save in the realm of Science ? "Law" is powerless without executive force — as powerless as mathematical prin- ciples are to work the Calculus or to form the pentagonal crystals of the Giant's Causeway. While I believe that in the strata com])osing our earth-crust there is evidence unciuestionable that vast periods of pre- .\damitetime wen used in laying down the various geologic deposits, there is no evidence sufficient that it required long periods to give to those deposits their pre.'.ent surface form; and it is, let us observe carefully, it is f/ii' present configuration ^ J ''iv'l w it . ; i I 30 WAS MOSES WRONG ? 0/ f/ie surface of our earth-crust the 9th and loth verses of the first chapter of the Mosaic cosmogony refer to. In the name of honest criticism, don't let us make Moses say more than he does. He has said quite enough to keep us busy, viz : that between day the second and day the third the dry land rose above the waters and the waters sank quietly into their sea-basins. No scientific authority will, I precume, dispute that the mere moulding of the earth's surface by upheavals and de- pressions would modify, would disturb the relajtions of pre- Adamite geological stratification. To every thinker it must be instantly obvious that, while the depositation of the strata demands long ages, the raising or lowering of it above or below the water levels does not. To me it seems as if the principle obstacle in the way of the harmonious adaptation of Geology to the Mosaic narrative lies just here. Chapter id. ORGANIZATION OF SPECIES. Theme :" God said, Let the earth l)ring forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it was so. " "And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. " " And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that, creepeth upon the earth after his kind." "God created man in His ov»n image." Gen. t : ii, 21, 25, 27. I; CHAPTER IV. Perhaps the most marvellous mental ])henomenon of our age is an educated, sane and serious man who states that he believes these words of his Bible and the Darwinian theory of evolution too. There can be no doubt at all Moses declares in the plainest possible terms tliat all organized structures on the face of our earth, whether vegetable or animal, were directly "made'' by God, that every different species of herb and tree, fish and fowl, animal and reptile was by Almighty skill and power produced in perfected form "rt/Zf; its kind." While variety of species can no doubt be produced by climatic con- ditions and ingenious breeding, species Moses tells us repeat- edly is of direct divine origin; grass was made grass and trees, trees, each with its specific seed in itself ; fish were made fish, and fowl, fowl; animals, reptiles and man were made by God de novo each "after his kind." This is the statement of Revelation; and all human experiment and ob- servation have demonstrated that no one of these s[)ecies can possibly be transformed radically, for all hybrids are sterile. Yet scientific evolution deliberately brands these Mosaic statements as the legendary fabrication of humanity's infantile ignorance and superstition, and labors to convince us that all the higher organized forms, including man him- wr I III 34 WAS MOSES WRONG ? self, are mere slow developments of the lowest and simplest living things which mysteriously and unconsciously emanated from dead niineral matter millions of ages ago. Mcses declares God was the Creator; Evolution declares Time was.* "Time enough is all we ask," say our scientific friend:, — "In the production of the most complex botanical forms ^rant us only plenty of time and we can explain the whole interesting process rationally and perspicuously, — '- for instance; grass in rich moist places gradually developed into reeds and stout rushes, and some of these rushes and reeds ot account of their peculiar environments and acquired habits (!) diflerentiated slowly into bushes. This stage be- ing readied, it is obvious that it would require but very little favorabU impulse (in the form of more genial climate, for example) to develop such bushes into oaks and elms and cedars o " Lebanon. It is most reasonable to suppose — it can aZ/z/^?.;^ be proved that in certain favorable conditions rose busies gradually differentiated into apple-trees and coarse ha\ thorns into very good plums and peaches." Some enthusiast c evolutionists go further than this informing us "Certain g aibs and birds would doubtless fo.ter and stim- ulate this 1 rogessive evolutionary tendency on the part of bushes to produce the food they preferred by paying special attention to such well-disposed shrubs — the more genial and Listen to t\ is : — *"Tlie cell consists of matter called protoplasm, composed chiefly of carbon with an admixture of hydrogen, iiiirogeu and sulphur. These component p.irts, properly united produce the soul and body of the animated world, and suitably nursed, beconi' man. With this single argument the my.-,tery ol the universe is ex- plained, the Di Ity annulled, and a new era of infinite knowledge ushered in." — Pr wearer, and must have grown with his growth ? Yet the fact was those eyes and that ear were tissues of instantaneous miraculous formation. Whenever we admit that divine interference is possible it becomes obvious that the entire theory of Evolution stands on false premises. Every one who believes the apostolic history of Jesus Christ to be inspired and infallible truth must hold that Man actually was God manifest in the flesh, the Word which was in the beginning with God, and was God, and the almighty Maker of all things, — less th;in this no one can hold without the renunciation of Christianity. This granted, the first chapter of Genesis can b at once explained and accepted as literal verity. Natural effects were directly produced by supernatural wisdom and power. The most simple and at the same time the most rational account of cos- mic organization is that the Lord Christ who instantaneously made (out of pre-existing material, I have no doui)t) the loaves and fishes in the wilderness, had, thousands of years previous, made, composed and constructed the vegetables and fruits, the fish, birds, animals and insects of our world in COSMIC FORMATION AND ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS. 45 the beninning of the present mundane [^;on, and that in the space of six days — each day measuring from night to night. "All intelligent religious men have accepted the principle of Evolution," — to this effect wrote a journal of authority a few weeks ago. If it be so, than I for one di:liberately step out of the respectable and influential order. And yet I claim, and that intelligently, that the first chapter of Genesis inter- preted literally gives us a more rational and credible ac- count of the organization of the flora and fauna around u-} than the science which gravely asserts that the flora and fauna gradually developed themselves by the exer- cise of atomic instincts through an incalculably pro- tracted succession of ever-improvirg generations — and all this out of a very small pellet of inanimate and unconcious albumen — i.e., a fine chalk, something res- embling the white of an egg! ! ! If this be true, then let the grand anthems of ancient Israel to an intelligent Deity sink into silence! Psalm the twenty-fourth is superstitious ignor- ance. Let reptiles, birds and all quadrupeds sing, his:-, snort and bellow, — yea, let monkeys and men chatter and shout, "Glory be to Albumen the almighty, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end!" Returning to those loaves and fishes instantly made by Jesus Christ, w^re they like the genuine, natural articles — the five flat hartl biscuits and the two small fishes furnished by the lad in the crowd? Suppose some of our modtrn geological evolutionists and anatomical scientists, shortly k''i\ I 1 • •• % 1 i\ I! 4 l\ II ^li i'l t».'r*m 46 WAS MOSES WRONG ? after the five thousand men besides women nnd cliildren, had dispersed, happening to take an evening stroll across "the desert place," had lighted upon some fragments of the bread and bones of the fishes, would not they, one and all, !)e prepared to assert most learnedly and most positively, tiiat the grain of which the bread had been composed wusf have taken a million years at the very least to develo}) out of simp':^ graii?,, and that before such grain could possiblv com- pose such bread it //iust have been ground between mill- stones? And would not each savant assert that the fish bones discovered nnisi—hy all the immutable laws of nature and natural selection, must have taken at the very least ten millions of years to have been evolutionized into vertebrata out of patriarchal tadpoles and moncra? Yet we know the stubborn fact that that flour had never grown as grain, and had never passed through mill or oven, and that those fish- bones had never been developed from o\a, or swum in water. Or let us sui)pose our wise men had visited Cana the day after the marriage feast, and had I)een treated to a glass of the "good wine" made by Christ, would not each one of them be pre|)ared to swear in the name of advanced Science that such wine fiuist have been very skillfully made from the very best grapes that had ever drunk Syrian sunshine, grapes develojjcd hy the industry of ten thousand long years from some creeping ()lant of the ]»re-.\.damite world? \'et, after such scientists have delivered their evidence, if we be- lieve our New Testament record at all we know that neither 'v; COSMIC FORMATION ^"WD ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS 47 bread nor fish-bones nor wine had ever been developed or manufactured at all; but made miraculously in a moment by the Creator. "Just give us time enough and we can show you how the whole first chajDter of Genesis could be rationally and scientifically accomplished-how, without the irrational in- terposition of anything like the superstitious idea of divine miracle, the entire mundane cosmos was organized." To this we answer. Gentlemen of Science, we wont give you time, because we can't. To give you the time you require is to deny the inspiration of Genesis and the divinity ot Jesus Christ; and we are not prepared to pay such a price even for your precious science. Beat about the bush as long as we may, this entire con- troversy is forced to this crucial point: Is there a God of in- finite wisdom and power, or is there not.!* If there is not, then every sensible man will close the Bible and dismiss the subject forever, leaving specialists to write and sell their books, leaving scientific lecturers to advertise and discuss their own imaginations in the hearing of people weak enough to pay them for the worthless stuff. Worthless, I say, for what can scientific truth be worth to the lineal descendant of an ape? But if there be an Almighty God, why could not He jjerform all the work specified in the first chapter of Genesis in the space of six revolutions of our earth? And why should He not organize the various species of vegetables and animals in full maturity? What possible object can be 48 WAS MOSIS WRONG? I'li h gained by the incomprehensible and useless procrastination called materialistic evolution? Besides, it is not science, but mere speculation to say that natural selriction wi'l resultin the survival of the fittest. Naturil selection is toward selfishness, vice and consequent degeneracy. The fittest do not survive in the struggle for existence," unless the fittest are the coarsest brutes with thethickest hides and the strong- est fangs. It is not science, but sheer nonsense which neither history nor experience justifies, to say that dead in- sensate matter, such as clay or sand, could generate grass or trees in a hundred thousand years easier than in twenty-four hours. No such growths have ever been traced to any soil without germs: md germs are living organisms. ^Vithout being egotisti' d., I know that /can do far more than sand or clay ever could. I know I could make a full-grown tree or a fish or a horse, or a man in five minutes quite as easily as — in fifty thousand years. To get the first spoonful of sand, clay and oxygen boiled or fermented into animal tissue would take me at least one minute and a quarter or — ten million years, — perhaps a few weeks more or less; the thing is quite simple, when you once get a fair start in the success- ful evolution of the first two or three living germs! As to the nervous system, including the brain and the spinal cord, I would perhaps have to relegate that operation to — Al- bumen possibly! ! Time in immeasurable quantity, nay eternity is two short to condense such insane intellectual COSMIC FORMATION AND ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS. 49 vapor into common-sense. Time — millions of aL;es of time cannot make mindless matter arise to seif-organization, can- not endow dust and water with power and skill to dcvelope themselves into organized thinking animals. If, in the solution of this problem, experience and observation give any light, they tell us that Time 7uears out things — wears them done — reduces them to their original dead elements — the survival of the weakest smallest atoms! Time does not stimulate living development; but Life is in continual con- flict with Time. This is the united testimony of history and experience, and the man who makes theoretical assertions to the contrary either lies or raves. Take an example "La dem ocratic," writes an ex[)onent of materialistic social advance- ment, "demolit Dieu, demolit tout le vieux moade, et une chose scule reste, I'Evolution scientifique. "What ncxt.^ Is scientific evolution a thing'i Let us have an end to all this profane evolutionary in- sanity, whose "discoveries" seem to be nothing more than the manufacture of new nomenclature — Greek, Latin, Ger- man words anglicized. The opening chapter of Genesis is true, if all nature be not a stupendous and incomprehensible lie. All nature asserts that organization depends on mind and that no living forms exist which cannot be traced to living germs — germs never yet extracted by man from dead matter. God Almighty made vegetation and animals in all their different species. He also made man. And all this making was miraculous. This is true, or they made them- U I !». -'» 1 ■ m "i : Hi s ! 1 'iP I -i £ I ;! li lii 50 WAS MOSES WRONG? selves, and this is /nore tlian miraculous^ nay, utterly and hopelessly incredible. When we speak thus, advanced thinkers will no doubt smile or sneer at what they deem our innocent mediaeval credulity, — perhaps benevolently pity our ignorance. We are not ignorant of Darwin's, Huxley's and Hceckel's assert- ions; and we intelligently regard their evolutionary theories as the fanciful and unfounded speculations of presumption and impiety. We do not think, after we have heard these gentlemen, and after we have thought our best on their scientific assertions and theories, that to believe the first chapter of Genesis just as it stands written is indicative of either mental weakness or superstition: — God said "Light be, and Light was-',' God commanded the earth to rise from beneath the waters, and it ?ose\ the atmosphere to float, and it floated; the grass and trees to grow, and they grew. By God's fiat, fish, birds and animals were inade^ in- stantly made — why not.^ And as for man and woman, God made tbem perfect, — why not? Surely the omnipotent God could do in five minutes what a quadrur'"i.nnous anthro- pomorphous ape might do in fifty thousand years, and that without any special effort. ''I believe in God, Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth." Is it not quite as rational and respectable and philosophicwil to subscribe to this creed as to deify Evolution, Anthropomorphoids, Darwin (^ Co. ? QThitptcr t)i. ELOHIM. y v w m m ffi Theme:-!,, the beginning God created." "And God said.'- Genesis ,: I. 3. CHAPTER VT. Who summoned substance from nothing ? Who pro- duced the marvellous effect we call "Creation" in all its in- scrutable combinations and laws, in all its countless depart- ments and species? — God. A hundred times the reply is re- peated — God. What is God? Explain the mystery as w" may theologically, it cannot be disputed that the original Semetic word wc translate by this singular Saxon monosyllable is plural — the plural form of a word we find elsewhere in its singular form — a plural word we find also very frequently in combination with the essentially singular noun Jehovah. Is it not at once startling and most suggestive that these old- est of all religious documents, the Pentateuch, which so sol- emnly assert and re-assert the indivisible and immutable unity of the "One only living and true God" should open their statements by attributing to Deity constitutional plurality! Much that metaphysical theologies advance about God being a simple uncompounded Entity, an Essence without parts or passions, the Absolute witliout form or limit or ideal progression, must be rejected as presumptions attempts to find out God by searching, to finally exhaust what is and must remain incomprehensible. Inspiration reveals but does not explain. Let us never forget that revelation is one thing, explanation another. To our consciousness there is nothing I- : I! m. 54 WAS MOSES WRONG ? ¥ s more manifest or real than sunlii^ht — one and seven, seven in one — and nothing more mysterious or inexpHcai)le, except the God who made and sustains it. This name Elohim is the germ term of Trinitarianism. "God is Light." To my mind it adds not a Httle to the trustworthiness of this old Book that it begins with the frank utterrnce of an incomprehensible and inexplicable mystery, and goes on courageously repeating that same mystery to the end. In our present theme we are informed that the divine Creator is a Composite, and in the twenty-sixth verse the pronouns *'us" and "our" confirm the doctrine beyond all sound de- bate. Subsequent revelation teaches us that God the Son and God the Spirit were the deity by whose personal agency the creation was both evolved and constructed; but here the divine Trinity is revealed in the mysterious unity of the plural term "Elohim," indicating that creation became a sub- stantial fact and assumed certain forms, qualities and re- lations according to united purpose and plan, and as the direct effect of combi.ied divine power. In the beginning, the combined Elohim created ex nihilo; in the construction of that created matter the divine Spirit was the efficient power executmg the will of Another, that Other the New Testament affirms being the d'vine Son The Voice we hear in these opening paragraphs of histoncal revelation commanding is THf-: Word ( John .' : i), the skill we see working is thf. WisnoNr, and the effects produced emanate from THE Power, (i Cor. i: 24) — this I understand to mean #^ • ELOHIM. 55 that the divine Spirit was directed and operated by the Son, the Son executing the plan, purpose and will of the triune Rlohini. My explanation may not be very perspicuous, for, after we have uttered our last and wisest word on this sub- ject, still "great is the mystery of godliness" neverthele's these passages I quote are plain enough as a confirmation of this first utterance of Inspiration, viz.: Elohim created all things by Jesus Christ. "For in Him were all things created, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things have been created by Him and for Him ; and he is before all thiugs, and in Him alt things subsist." One thing connected with this mysterious doctrine of the tri-unity of Deity is what may be called the successful man- ner in which the writers of " holy Scripture have handled " it. Just think: nearly forty different authors, covering a chron- ological period of i,6oo years, resident in different countries and speaking different languages, write about the nature and character, plans and purposes, doings and sayings of a divine IJciu'^ who is in essential substance one and indivisi- ble, yet three in hypostatic constitution and distinct mani- festation, — they write historically, prophetically and phil- ^ .ophically, they write in plainest prose and in loftiest poetic metaphor, yet there is not one statement thev make con- cerning this most mysterious Being which im[)Ugns, con- tradicts or even obscures this doctrine of His constitutional I \h ■m V. |) 56 WAS MOSES WRONG ? 1 ! IS I 'I .:1, . i ])lurality. The sacred writers never once involve themselves in the inextricable mazes in which their definitions of the InfinUe and Absolute involve modern metaphysicians. In one place they enunciate His absolute Unity as contrasted with the number and \ariety of false Gods, in another they extol Him as a Si)irit, invisible unapproachaljic and incom- jjrehensible, while in another they speak of a Man among men as ''the express image of His person" — the Father ''declared"' in the Son ; but through all this sui)er-rational dogmata there runs the harmony of perfectly adjusted truth. In the grand doxology of all this multiform revelation to the 'ihree-One there is really neither contradiction nor even dis- cordancy. We do not understand the principle in pneumatics by which three different notes blend into one harmonious chord; but the actual harmony is none the less i)roof of the pneumatic principle. Is not the harmony of all the sacred writers on this doctrine of the divine Plurality weighty proof of the doctrine it ielf .^ I think so. Amongst the various names of the Most High why should Elohim alone be us^.-d throughout this Mosaic narrative o{ the creation? Many of the learned have been not a little puzzled to answer, and have felt themselves driven to invent l)lausil)le reasons, notably that of two authors (called technically the Elohist and the Jehovist) of these few early paragraphs of Genesis. Perhaps one who dares not pretend to Semetic scholarship may humbly suggest a very sim])le way of escape from the jxrplexitiesof such hyi)er-rritical theor- ELOHIM. 57 izing, viz: Is not the radical meaning of this name "Elohim' omnipotence ? If so, what other title of the great Creator could have been so appropriate as this one in this connect- ion? Surely this is reason sufficient for the use of this divine name without our resorting to the speculations of a cool and daring philology which presumes to reduce the first book of the Pentateuch to a collection of ancient fragments and degrades Moses from the status of an inspired author to that of an industrious collector of old and curious manuscripts. I cannot lay down my pen on this theme without saying a little more about what this word Elohim directly suggests : — If the doctrine of the divine Trinity be true, what a wonderful Personage is the Man Jesus Christ ! If the Creator of heaven and earth be identical with the Saviour we are commissioned to proclaim to ruined sinners, oh, with what confidence and earnestness should our proclamation be characterized! His law-keeping righteousness — is not that more than amply sufficient both in quality and quantity to clothe such worms, such insects as we are in perfect moral beauty ! His vic- arious death under the doom of human guilt — was not that powerful enough sacrificially to exhaust our legal penalty and cleanse away our moral turpitude forever! His resurrection life — His divine vitality — O who can for a moment question whether this can endow our small souls with life everlasting! "Who can debate whether that living Light which at first kin- dled and until now hath sustained all those suns which blaze I Vim ■* I 1 1! 58 WAS MOSr" WRONG ? ' in the darkness of empty space can enlighten and bless us forever ! When we proclaim the Gospel, of Whom do we speak? to Whose love and grace, righteousness and power do we point? "To us a Child is born, to us a Son ''s given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father (the Father of the endless ages,) the Prince of Peace.' When you and I believe the gospel of grace, to Whom do we trust? To Him whose titles are the Truth, the Word, The AV'isdom, the Power of God. And Who can this be but the Almighty Creator mentioned in these opening utterances of revelation — He who is an essential element in that in- effable Unity which constitutes that ineffable Plurality Elohim? In the history of modern theoiogy is there not one fact suggested by this theme, and worthy of serious consideration, viz.: Socinianism has offered the most genial soil, the most fertile field for the evolution theory of Creation : those who deny the divine Trinity (the Ciodhead of jesus Christ) also deny the veracity of the Mosaic Cosmogony. Noxious weeds mutually foster one another. Error stimulates the de- velopment of more error. Heresy breeds heresy. 'f Chitptcr ijii. Ii:i THE MIRACULOUS. Theme :-"And it wns so. "-Genesis i: 7, „, ,5, 24. llll m I ji' : i 'i I ■ { : ■ - i ' I'. r >. 1 ! 4^' 1 1 V CHAPTER VII. What all our rationalistic interpreters of the Bible aim at is the getting quit of the miraculous, the supernatural. God, say they, if he does work at all, must in subordination to natural law, for this law is eternal and immutable, because constitu- tional and fundamental, etc. Without debating the logic of this argument, what does getting quit of the miraculous in- volve ? — Jehovah Hunself must be the product of Law, and Law must have originated without any origin. Jehovah is not absolute in authority and infinite in power, but limited in his purpose, will and power by pre-existing supreme natural Law ! Natural Law cannot be superceded — ergo : The birth of Isaac and the gracious covenant based upon it, the super- natural events in the history of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, their pilgrimage through the sea and the wilderness and their settlement in Canaan cannot be true ; the nativity of God's own wSon, all those miraculous works to which He appealed in authentication of His doctrines, the atoning value of His sacrifice in substitution for sinners. His resur- rection, His ascension to heaven and His predicted return to earth, the regeneration of the spiritual nature of mankind and the actual resurrection of their bodies from the grave, as well as all that characterizes the revelation of the ever- lasting future — all these are simply impossible. In other i' i\ ' HI ' KPi -1' « wmmmm I: I'! Hi ■J'f V H 3i 5' • r. 62 WAS MOSES WRONG ? words, If we accept no more of revelation than what can be accounted for on the principles of materialistic science and can be traced to the operation of nature's laws we must for- ever abandon all .the essentials of our Christianity ; our faith is superstition, nothing more, our hope nothing better than beautiful delusion, "the baseless fabric" of a diseased imagination. Are we prepared for this awful sacrifice? If not, 7C'e must continue to itisist upon and tenaciously adhere to the Miracu- lous. Many learned and excellent men appear to think that some modification of the orthodox views on the miraculous may be practicable, that in some happy way divine Revela- tion may be accommodated to and harmonized with advanced scientific Rationalism. But this, I am sure, is utterly hope- less. Revelation is in substance miraculous ; the warp and woof of the entire Bible are the supernatural. Not to enter on the criticism of such biographies as those of Moses and Elijah, Jonah and Daniel, it is enough to point to these broader and deeper facts, viz : The formation and nature of Adam the first and of Adam the second, and all those doctrines of Ruin and Restoration founded thereon ; the resurrection of spiritual human nature from the death-state of sin, and of physical human nature from the corruption of the grave, and all the promises and hopes based thereon — these all are not admissible within the limits of the possible if the miraculous, the supernatural be denied. THE MIRACULOUS 63 The more carefully and profoundly I study this subject in all its bearings the more fully am I convinctd that between implicit faith in the Miraculous of the Bible and Atheism there is no choice for any one. I am aware that not a few learned and earnest souls hopefully imagine that from the Bible the supernatural may be eliminated, still retaining all its moral essentials ; but this involves a most destructive contradiction, for how can we accept as our unerring guide through darkness a record for which we have to make apologies to human science, and whose statements we have first to rectify according to our own judgment ? how can we receive that book as infallibly true which we first declare to be mainly composed of impossible fiction ? The case, I think, stands thus : — 1. Jesus Christ was the Personification of the Miracul- ous, or He was not the Son of God ; 2. Jesus Christ was the Truth, or an impostor ; 3. Jesus Christ declared the Jewish Scriptures, Moses and the Psalms and the Prophets divine truth. 4. If, on the authority of Jesus Christ the Scriptures be God's truth, christian science must accept the anomalous phenomena of the Miraculous, and christian philosophy must bow to faith. " We walk by faith ; not by sight." ! =li \% '■ il 1 I > ,r (tluiptcr bill. THE HUMAN SPECIES— WHENCE ? Theme : — "And God said. Let us make man in our own image after our own likeness: and let them ha\e dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." " And God blessed them, and (iod said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."— Genesis i; 26.28. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." — Gk.nksis 2: 7. i IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 1132 1^ 1.8 1-4 111.6 .^ ^ /i <9 /a ^\ VI c^. e-. y^. /A / o / Photographic Sciences Corr oration 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.y MSBO (7*6) 872-4603 <\ Kf'. * fr' mp< w. % t^ 1 * , I CHAPTER VIII. No language imaginable could more flatly and emohati- cally contradict the evolution theory of the "Descent of Man" than does the history of Man's creation given m Gen- esis. Evolution was not (as scientific Biblical expositors think) the mode of Man's creation. Man is not the gradual and improved development of lower forms of animal life> but "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . So God created the man in his own image; in the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them. And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and the man became a living being." This re-iterated statement of Revelation modern Science pre- sumes to pronounce actually untrue — the erroneous deliver- ance of the most primitive and ignorant age. And why ? Be- cause by comparing the anatomical structure of a man with that of a gorilla scientists perceive a close resemblance, and by comparing the skeleton and brains of a dog with those of an ape there appears remarkable similarity, therefore argue they — Therefore the apes and gorillas must have descended from, or rather ascended by upward evolution from the dogs, and mankind from the apes and gorillas. Want of space forbids my illustrating how this theory applied to Other subjects rapidly developes into unmistakable argumen- SSSB 68 WAS MOSES WRONG? turn ad absurdam. Science signifif^s knoiukdge. Scientists by the very assumption of this name bind themselves to confine themselves severely and scrupulously to ichat they positively kno7u, diwd. io ^ \>\!X\n 2inr)i true statement thereof; but the moment they leave the solid ground of actual dis- covery and venture forth on inferences and suppositions, probable causation, connections and issues, they become speculators, inventors, poets, atid have forfeited their right to the name of Scientist. Speculative philosophy is Science on the 7C'i»^ in the aerial regions of imagination. On the theme now under consideration, the Origin of Man, I assert that no Scientist kno7vs or ever has known from observation or history that dog ever became monkey, or monkey man. Not a solitary case of any such evolutionary transition has been authenticated although there are now colonies of monkeys that have been developing undisturbed since the days of Noah. If such monkeys did, by natural selection and the survival of the fittest, spontaneously evolutionise into men a million years ago, how is it that we cannot now discover in all the tropics one specimen so evolutionized ? or even one far advanced in the process of evolutionization? Surely a few thousand years more must have improved the species in the direction of humanity. Just astiiere is (for a very obvious reason, apart altogether from any idea of connection between the things) a remark- able resemblance between the wheel of an ancient Assyrian or Roman chariot and the wheel of a Pullman car, just as there is a smgular similarity between an orange and its rind and the world and its crust, THE HUMAN SPECIES — WHENCE ? 69 SO there is between the physical construction of a frog and a dog, an ape and a man ; but such structural resemblance proves no more than this that the same almighty Designer and Artist constructed the four species on a similar model as best adapted for animal life in the same world. Amongst all kinds of sailing vessels, great or small, there are certain necessary points of common resemblance, because whether mere row-boats or stately ships they are all designed to float and move in water, — even so in this world all vertebrate mammals have been provided with heart, lungs and brain, because a heart is the machine best fitted to pump blood through such physical structures, the lungs a machine best adapted to utilize atmospheric air, and the brain a machine best fitted to operate tiie system of nerves. Here in the book written by Tyloses, which Jesus of Nazareth received and endorsed as the veritable Word of God, we are repeatedly a^.surcd that God Himself directly created and /raide man. If evolutionary science be right this book must be wrong. Who amongst those pretending to be Christians dare incur the responsibility involved in assuming this attitude of modern science ? But is no reconciliation between Evolution and Revelation possible? j\Iay not Rev- elation intend only to give us a short, graphic outline, couched in language adapted to the early and ignorant in- fancy of humanity, of the great and slow progressions of Evolution? May not "God said" really mean nothing more than tlie gradual condensation oi attenuated ether into 70 WAS MOSES WRONG ? primordial atoms and the unconscious conglomeration of those atoms by spontaneous gravitation into conscious self-acting organisms? May not "God created and made" really signify the survival of the fittest amongst some highly differentiated apes, differentiated into humanity by some happy accidental combination of environments ? If so, surely it would have been quite as easy for the sacred writer, instead of using such misleading terms as "God said," "God created and made," to have honestly stated, "And it came to pass at the end of many days certain dogs became apes, and after many generations some of the wiser apes became men," or " In process of time out of the wiser apes man and woman slowly grew." If this really was the historical process then the statements regarding the creation of man and woman made and re-iterated in the first and second chapters of Genesis, far from being correct, are mis- leading and untruthful, and Jesus Christ in accepting and quoting the book of Genesis as inspired revelation endorsed what He must have known to be false. Who is prepared to take this monstrous position out of deference to the in- genious inference of scientific philosophizing .?=Darwin and Haeckel are right, ergo, Moses and Christ are wrong ! ! Up till to-day not a solitary specimem of anthropomorphic transition has been produced in the open court of science. If we are asked, Hov.' was man made? our answer is, "The Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives ; and the man ...,*r.sj 3: M » » J » THE HUMAN SPECIES — WHEN'CE ? 71 became a living being." His body was formed or "made" out of the dust as directly as Jie yjotter forms pitcher or platter of clay; his soul was "created" by God's breathing into that body He had just made out of dust ''Hhe breath of lives" — animal life, mental or intellectual life and spiritual life, so that man became that living trmity, that trichotomy described by the apostle, "Body, Soul and Spirit," — thus man became, like Elohim his Maker, constitutionally a trini- ty in unity, as is plainly predicated in the words: "Let us make man in our image, alter our likeness." What we know^ on inspired authority is this: the human species originated thus, (i) Man's body was skilfully con- structed by God out of dust; (2) Into this body God breathed lives; (3) During a deep sleep from the side of man God took a rib, and of that rib He made woman. Here is the only act approaching to evolution; but it is the de- velopment of a rib by the miraculous power of God. These three statements I am aware are utterly unscientific and im- probable — by the operation of any natural law impossible, — very amusing and childish, — oriental and biblical, etc., etc. I know it sounds ridiculously simple in the cultured ear of this generation for any one to say that almighty God in manu- facturing the first human body acted like a potter ; but is not this the express statement made by the prophet, "Now, O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou our Potter, and we all arc the work of Thine hand ?" and does not the apostolic thought run in the same direction. sm 72 WAS MOSES WRONG? <'\Vho art thou, O man, that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, \Vhy didst thou make me thus? Or, hath not the Potter power over the clay?" So thus it stands, deny it who may, (iod almighty wade man directly out of dust and directly breathed into him life. God himself, without any interposition from lower animals, was the direct Manufacturer of thi. human body and Ancestor of the human soul. If the narrative of creation in Genesis be not a men- dacious fiction Man was originally Man in perfection, made after the matured divine ideal of humanity. Adam's coun- tenance was NOT the highest improvement of an ape's, his brain was not the refined and enlarged development of a sing- ularly intelligent gorilla's ; but his prototype was Divinity in image and likeness. Once and again, and yet again Scrip- ture makes this positive statement; and it is in the face of this statement modern Scientists presumptuously and blasphe- mously assert, "Evolution made man in the image of a monkey; in the likeness of a gorilla Evolution created him; male and female diflerentiated it them." Darwinism con- tradicts Mosaism directly and emphatically. There is no possibility of harmonizing Science and Revelation without unscrupulously misrepresenting both. God's Spirit declares one thing. Science declares the opposite, and what shall we say? In this contest we have no choice — "Let God be true, and every man a liar." f Chapter ix. THE HUMAN SPECIES— IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLY ? '"" H^r;;;:.fa.stSc;ls&;fcr^s^i::.i^;nr^^^°^ ^^^^---^ •- ^ CHAPTER IX. Evolution asserts that humanity is the highest develop- ment of the brute; and that the man of to-day is the highest development of humanity which originally was of course only one remove above the brute. Revela- tion asserts that the first man as he came direct from the hand of his divine Maker, was the most perfect specimen ol all humanity. In true and complete manhood, Revelation also tells us, the human race has vastly deteriorated from its original. Here the antagonism between Mosaism and Dar. winism is irreconcilable beyond the possibility of mutual accommodation. Adam was the best man of mankind. Eve the best woman of womankind, for they were made in the likeness of God by God Himself. But let us remember what "best" means here. It does not mean that Adam was the best chemist or carpenter, tailor or sailor, nor Eve the best cook, modiste or musician ; they were not the most skilled in occupations occasioned by the fall, they were not the most enlightened in that knowledge which inquisitive science drags out of nature by the aid of microscope and crucible, nor in those things which frivolous fashion and philosophy still more frivolous regard as important advances in the march of civilization; they did not stand foremost of 76 WAS MOSES WRONG? their race in those arts inaugurated by.the inventive ingenuity of Tubal-cain and Jabal and Jubal, in petty pohteness and genteel deceit, in bric-a-brac and milHnery and lying com- pliments; but in true and real manhood and womanhood, in all that is pure, simple and noble never since they fell into sin has one of their children approached their standard of glorious physical and moral perfection. When they were created they stood in the image of God. Within the boards of the Bible there cannot be found any assertion less equivo- cal or more emphatic than this: Since his creation man has deteriorated physically and morally. It is frankly ad- mitted that he "hath found out many inventions" in intellectual subtilties, in mechanical apparatus, in art, language and dress, in methods of locomotion and in gas- tronomic combinations, in the classification of natural materials and facts and in the utilization of natural laws it cannot be denied he has made marvelous progress. If these constitute the true development of humanity, humanity has developed very creditably indeed. But — query, Are such inventions of civilization really in the best sense any advancement on man's original and normal condition ? On the contrary, are not by far the greater number of his boasted inventions the mere outcome of man's selfish struggle to make himself comfortable in a body blighted and diseased b) sin and in a world whose atmosphere has been poisoned and whose soil has been soured by the Divine curse ? Are not the majority of our THE HUMAN SPECIES — IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLY? 77 mechanical inventions the mere instriimentahtics of selfish- ness in its desperate effort to outrun and overreach others ? Leaving the mechanical and commercial spheres of human enterjjrise, and coming to the professional, what does thoughtful observation teach us ? That humanity is strug- gling with disease and death, with moral derangement and ruin. The medical profession by whose incessant study and effort diseases are checked and death staved off, — the legal profession \\ ose existence is a standing demonstration that mankind are stupid and greedy, quarrelsome and insane, — the military profession whose very training and implements humanity should be ashamed to tolerate, much less admire and applaud, — the clerical profession whose entire work and aim proclaim all mankind disgracefully alienated from the Most High and lost in moral blindness and perversity — these professions have been for ages and are now the glory of civilization. Are they not rather proof, — glaring and humiliating evidence that man is out of harmony with himself and his kind, with his Maker and the laws of the universe around him ? 0\ir gloryl Are they not rather our shame ? In final proof that true and perfect Manhood has not been evolutionized upward by long experience th ^h long ages, has not been bettered, dignified and enobled by what is called advancement in higher civilization, by what men gen- erally believe to be vast improvements on the simi)licity of quiet pure primitive life, Jesus Christ "the brightness of God's I I 78 WAS MOSES RIGHT ? glory and the express image of His person" is called "the second man" or Adam, /. e., the second Beginner of humanity. Now, what description of life was His ? — I speak not now of His official life after His public baptism, but of His private / nan life for the previous thirty years. Jesus Christ lived not in a world of Edenic simplicity and innocent ignorance. From babehood to manhood He dwelt in our v orld when the Roman empire had reached the zenith o" its greatness ; it was the Augustan era of learn- ing; Law was never better defined nor more effective in its administration ; Military organization had been perfected into a mighty machine of irresistible power ; Architecture and Art had attained their highest perfection and splendor ; but Jesus Christ never once attempted by taking advantage of any of these things to "make the most of Himself,"' as the much cherished saying goes — to " make a man of Him- self." No. His idea of manhood differed from ours, oh how far ! Mighty and magnificent as were those native talents of His which had He so chosen, could have been so easily developed into brilliant pre-eminence in any one or in all of these directions, artistic or literary, legal or military, — glorious as was that earthly fame He could easily have gained had He only thrown His transcendant mental abilities into the sphere of (Irecian fine arts or philosophy, or into the splen- did open arena of Roman enterprise and aggression, yet He neve- once attempted the pursuit of wealth and power, learn- ing or high art. So lived and acted "the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven '' From this fact in Christ's life the infer- I . THE HUMAN SPECIES — IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLV ? 79 enceis direct, inevitable and irresistible, t'/s:; — Perfect manhood is NOT t/ie result of artificial human development^ of natural selection and successful conpetition. Both in the case of Adam the first and of Adam the second, perfect Manhood was likeness to God, created directly by God. The first man at his very origin was the very best and most perfect specimen of simple humanity^ because he was "made" by divine skill and power "in the image" and "after the likeness of Deity." At this point, some solution of this problem is desirable, — Seeing that " God is a Spirit," from what image and like- ness of Him could Adam have been copied ? To this enquiry the reply of Scripture is unmistakeablc — namely this : Jesus Christ was the Image of the Invisible, the express likeness of the divine Person. The Only-Begotten Son manifested God in the fashion of a man. Phil.2.6-8. This is»^rue if Christianity be what we know it is, a historical fact. But, it may be object- ed, Jesus Christ had not assumed human form when the fiat issued from Deity, " Let us make man in our own image" — how, then, could Adam have been made in the likeness of Him who had not yet physical form ? Here v/e touch the profound mystery of the Divine experience, but holy Scrip- ture leaves us in no doubt or difficulty as to the correct doctrinal answer to our enquiry. In the immutable decree and design of the divine mind both the constitution and the form of the Christ were already fixed long before man's creation ; the Christ of the future has ever been a present real- h' I 80 WAS MOSES WRONG ? ity, nay, the primal and central reality in Jehovah's a}iprehen- sion and i)urposo. Willi (lod therein no variableness or shadow of turning, no past or future ; but before His eye and from all eternity the great Messiah ever stood revealed in all the perfection of His humanity, and in all the success of His redeeming work, "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the Man wearing divine glory and wielding divine power. Speaking of Him the apostle declares that Adam was made " the image of JTim which was for to come." If I may presume to illustrate the doctrine, to me it appears thus : God is the Artist, man the Statue, and the process of creation is this : — ist, There is the divine Ideal — the spirit- ual Christ extant in God's purpose and plan ; 2nd, There is then the clay model of this divine Ideal — Adam ; 3rd, Then the perfect Statue, not in marble or metal, but in the flesh — Jesus Christ. In this case, as in every other of artistic work, the original Ideal is the reality of which the visible and tangible is only a copy. Thus, I conceive, Adam was made in the likeness and image of God Hii. Creator, the second Person of the divine Trinity being his actual Maker. — John i: 1, 2. ! ! 1 (!rhaptcr x. MAN AND BEAST. I Theme:— "Ami Clod blessed them, and (lod saiil unlo ihem. . . have domininii over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every livin):r thing that moveth upon the earth.'' — (Ienksis i: 28. " For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor." ' Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet :" " .Ml sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ;'' "The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. "— Fsalm 8: 5-8. w^ 11 ' i 4 CHAPTER X. Speaking of man's original relation to all the animal races, insect and reptile, fish, fowl and mammalian quadruped, this old Hebrew record deals another heavy and deadly blow at the very foundations of modern Evolution. Thus that record runs : "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth ui)on the earth." Man was originally absolute lord over all nature, mineral, vegetable and animal. Anthropomorphous apehood never existed. Man never was " the survival of the fittest " in " the struggle for existence." He never Lad any such initiatory upward struggle. All his struggle has resulted from the loss of his original .moral caste, and the authority pertaining thereto. That day man was made he was absolute master of his situation and his surroundings ; and was competent for the mastery. The root doctrine of Evolution is that man is the highest result of bruL self-assertion, that he has gradually attained to his present mundane supremacy by having happily turned to the very best account all his past chances as a vertebrate and a mammal — as a reptile, a dog, and a baboon. Over against this ingenious but excessively coarse theory of man's development out of lower species stands the 84 WAS MOSES WRONG ? most ancient historical document infonning us that /;/ /lis original condition man ijossesscd absolute domin- ion over reptile, fish, fowl, and quadruped ; and that as the result of sin against his Maker he lost it, so that he now holds his own • ith difficulty. In other words, the modern science of Evolution and the Bible so flatly contradict one another there is no possibility of patching up any explanatory harmony between them at all. The Genesis of Revelation is the deadly adversary of the Genesis of Evolution, and one of them must perish. It cannot for a mordent be questioned that if this old history (which Jesus of Nazareth sanctioned as divinely inspired truth) he not a wild fable, that man, instead of working his way ujjward in the scale of being, fell from his i)rimitive state of lordship into a condition of deadly struggle with the once subordinate brute creation. Every brute seems now instinctively conscious of his fall, and of his unworthiness to rule ; his hand is against every animal and every animal's faculties of defence are against him. Origin- ally, unfallen man's dominion over the inferior creation con- sisted of their spontaneous submission to him as their rightful lord and best friend, whereas now his dominion is only the domination of a tyrant c. . slave-owner whose super- ior intelligence and skill restrain and control the inferior creatures by fear and force, whose personal safety depends largely on killing them out — a very horrible way of settling the difficulties of the situation. Nothing, methinks, can be more interesting than an [ MAN AND BEAST. 85 authoritative answer to the enquiry : Is this sad state of ruin and distrust, tyranny, slavery and misery to be per- petual ? Is the further scientific survival of the fittest in the universal struggle for existence our only hope for the future ? Thank God ! No. As this old Mosaic record tells us how man fell from his original majesty, and as all history since tells us how unsuccessful his efforts to regain the majesty of manhood have been, even so the records of ancient Jewish prophecy and the New Testament tell us how he is to be regenerated and re-installed in dignity and dominion. How is this to be accomplished ? Thus : — As in the beginning God made Adam the first in His own likeness with domin- ion over all things terrestrial, so He has made Adam the second the First of a new race of mankind who shall all bear His likeness both spiritually and physically — the like- ness of their perfect divine Prototype, the Son of God — "the express Image of His Person." Humanity once being thus restored to the likeness of God, morally, mentally, and cor- poreally, everything connected with humanity and properly subordinate to it will naturally fall into its right relative posi- tion ; man being then in perfect harmony with God, all God's laws and works will be in perfect harmony with him, and all the wretched experience of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest (the old fiendish doctrine of "Might is Right" rehabilitated in scientific phraseology) will become the fading memory of the present troubled dream of sin. Perhaps the philosophical reader, if one such has patiently read my papers thus far, will condescend to J r 86 WAS MOSES WRONG? M examine thoughtfully Isaiah's prophecy, chapter nth, verses I, 2, 4-9. In my simplicity I regard this passage as an inspired prediction that the beautiful paradise and noble manhood which have been so long lost shall both be actually restored — estored, not by any gradual process of self-evolu- tion either physical or mental, but by the exercise of direct supernatural pov that same power by which man was made perfect in the beginning. The future millennium in which Man shall be re-instated in his original supremacy shall be at once the triumphant vindication of divine Revelation and the tremendous final refutation of those atheistic scientific theories to which many good but weak men are now vainly labouring to accommodate their religious creed. ■ ii (Chapter .xi. HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF. Theme:— "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden tliou niayest freely eat. " "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shah not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shah surely die.'— Genesis 2: 16, 17. ; CHAPTER XI. Against the Test described in the Mosaic narrative of our first parents' loyalty to their Creator captious complaitits have for generations been common. " Why should God have deliberately put such a temptation in the way of Adam and Eve ?" demand many in the tones of righteous remonstrance defending injured inno- cence. *' Why should their natural curiosity and cupidity have been provoked by such an object kept continually before their eyes ? Was this fair? Was it kind and gen- erous ?" To a person having no natural and instinctive bias toward wTong, I answer, that solitary Tree, among so many trees, could neither be a provocation nor a temptation. It was nothing more than the smallest possible assertion of Divine right, the simplest imaginable means of testing the intelligent loyalty of man to his Maker and the mstrumen- tality by which his moral nature could be kept in living exercise through a course of quiet spiritual education, with- out which I cannot easily see how it was possible to prevent his moral deterioration, his inevitable subsidence to the low level of mere animal existence. To me it is not even imagin- able how Ciod Almighty could have manifested His sovereignty on earth and how the human family could have enjoyed the priceless advantages of moral training except by some such visible sign of His supremacy and test of their . 1 i 90 WAS MOSES WRONG ? loyalty as "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" afforded. That one tree was the royal standard (and what a very modest one indeed ! ) of the great King displayed over His earthly dominions — the solitary stgnal of the Divine empire over the whole world. Think out the subject as carefully, reason it out as closely as you can, then answer. How could Adam and Eve, being endowed with intelligence and freedom of the will and dig- nified by conscious moral responsibility, have had their nature developed, strengthened and matured had they not daily in some way felt their sense of right and wrong exer- cised ? had they not been compelled in some way and at some point to use their will in controlling and restraining their desires ? For in his Edenic state man really did possess a free will so perfectly poised as to be capable of acting ac- cording to choice and not as now a will under the strong bias of depraved appetite and the pressure of adverse, at least defective moral surroundings. If our first parents had had every possible wish instantly indulged, if there had been nothingatall within theirreachtoexercise theirdaily conscious- ness of right as contrasted with wrong, if their propensities, appetites and passions, whether sensuous or intellectual, had been permitted to roam everywhere and appropriate every- thing within reach without restraint or limit, what could have prevented the human race from slowly degenerating into more animals ? almost into mere vegetables — animals vegetating ? According to our constitution as moral living I HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF. 91 intelligences our moral nature must either expand and strengthen, or contract and dwarf down. Living beings with changeful environments by which they are necessarily influ- enced, must change for better or worse — must grow upwar! His divine rights — 07ily one tree / IS n "Only a tree !" cry many in tones of indignant irony, "Why should God make such ado, attach so much import- ance to the sacredness of a single tree ? ^Vhy could He ever stake such serious, such tremendous spiritual and physical issues on the eating or not eating of the fruit of one particu- lar tree ?" Some lugger test would evidently have satisfied the requirements of such objectors much better. Suppose we ask them to explain themselves, I presume they might reply somewhat after this fashio*"., — "Well, for instance, had God said. If thou dost cut down or burn down all the fair orchard I have i)lanted, — or had God drawn around four- fifths of the entire garden of Eden a line of daisies and vio- lets, leaving Adam tjnly a small patch for present necessi- ties and telling him, This entire garden is mv private do- main, and you can enlarge your patch into one like it by culti- vating the bare ground oiTtside ; but if you appropriate one of my luscious fruits or fragrant flowers I shall punish you se« verely for criminal trespass. If, after such a prohibition as this, Adam and his wife had rushed over the flower borders and made general havoc of the beautiful place, then for such gross disobedience and deliberate ruthless wanton wicked- 'V I! Kli 94 WAS MOSES WRONG ? ness God might reasonably have exacted a very severe pen- alty ; but all the moral sentiments of humanity rebel against such a terrible penalty as death being exacted for such a trivial offence as our first parents committed," etc., etc. In answer to this line of staple objections I can but answer, My friend, you seem to forget, in the first place, that "all the moral sentiments of humanity" are fallen and depraved, so much so that it is. a grave question whether in the discus- sion of this theme you and I can trust them at all. After inspecting any extremely minute organism through a scratched and dirty microscope we should be hardly justified in dogmat- ising very strongly on its misproportions and defects ; after having weighed some gold in scales that had been seriously damaged by a fall we should hardly be justified in pronounc- ing very positively on the exact quantity to a scruple. In the second place, Your remarks, friend objector, indi- cate that you misapprehend the rights of God and the char- acter of Law altogether. Just think the subject out, and you will see. ^lost generously and graciously the Almighty Maker planted the garden of Eden Himself and placed man in it and said, All this beauty, abundance and luxury is yours to enjoy and use, with the solitary exception of one tree which I reserve as belonging to myself. Now, because He was so wondrously kind as to reserve so little to Himself, was Adam's sin therefore little ? I think just the reverse. I think it would not be hard to prove that while sin commit- ted for a large stake is great, the same sin committed I, r HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF. 95 for a small stake is all the greater, — e. r., "Thou shalt cbM not steal" is God's positive command. Now, suppose I can by breaking this Divine command once gain 10,000 dollars, my conduct is bad (because I deliberately dishonor and offend God for that amount); but suppose I break this same Divine commandment for the sake of ten cents,my conduct, far from being less bad, obviously is just one hundred thous- and times worse ; for in this case I presume to dishonor and offend almighty God by trampling on His holy law for the paltry trifle of ten cents ! ! Again, God's command runs thus, "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy — thou shalt not do any work therein." By doing some work for one hour on Sabbath a man can make ten dollars — a bad tran- saction ; but is my conduct worse or better, my sin against the fourth commandment greater or less if I desecrate the holy day to gain half a cent by selling a penny newspaper ? Worse and greater dtcidedly my sin isascompared with his — indeed just inasmuch as is the profit on the sale of my news- paj^er compared with his ten dollars. And so also if I waste and desecrate the day in selfish indolence or vain secular , talk ; for surely it is an aggravation of my offence if I dare trample on this positive command of the only wise God from such a very low motive as indefinite idleness. This line of thought, if closely pursued in quietness,, will aid us in under- standing the real character and the propriety of that test imposed by God on our first ])arents, as well as the aggra- ^ vated guilt of trampling on a command so easily kej)!, and «; J|l 96 WAS MOSES WRONG? all for ihe gratification of a desire so mean a, . selfish as the enjoyment of a mouthful of fruit. On the one hand, In testing their obedience by this very trivial trial God mani- fests marvellous kindness, on the other hand the very fact that ""^d asks so little of them aggravates their sin, deepens ah irkens their guilt beyond calculation. About this moral Test imposed by God on our first parents there is another important characteristic : The command was only prohibitive^ and the duty of obedience only negative. ^^Thou shall not eat of it. Is it possible to imagine how the Creator could have maintained toward His creature the relation of King more tenderly and graciously ? Had God demanded from the original pair legal obedience in the form of so much positive performance every twenty-four hours — so much distinctively religious work, so many prayers, so many canticles of thanksgiving, so much ritualistic self-denial every week, we perhaps might make out a fair apology for their transgression of law on the plea of possible tiredness with the monotony of ceremonial re-iteration or thoughtless forgetfulness of their task. But God imposed no such positive and acti^'e duty, but the sole condition of the creat- ure's perfect life under the Creator's perpetual smile was, "Zf/ alone that one tree ; out of respect for Me, out of rever- ential filial obedience to Me, let almie that solitary tree.'' Surely, if it be admitted right that the God of heaven should have any sign at all of His regal supremacy on earth, this I HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF. 97 negative requirement, this //vV/Z/'/Vi^^^ command wn?; as little as He could imjDOse. To me it seems that this was law re- duced to the finest visible point— passive negation. One or two imaginative people I have met who have in- dulged the supposition that the prohibited tree of Eden was doubtless in form the handsomest and in folia2;e, fruit and fragrance the most attractive on earth ; but for an}- such sup- position there is no warrant whatever. The God who was content with such a very small recognition of His sover- eignty in His great and beautiful world never made severe exactions, I feel morally sure. Indeed, from the entire character and color of the Mosaic narrative I feel justified in stating it as my conviction that "the tree of the know- ledge of good and evil"' was a specially modest and unosten- tatious tree, a tree very similar to those around it. The probability is that it was neither so large nor so handsoine as many others around it, and that its fruit and fragrance were in no degree specially alluring. It was not until Satan by his lying temptation had invested the tree with fictitious and mysterious value and attractions that Eve first "saw (/'. t'., noticed) — "saw that it was good for food and a tree to be desired to make one wise." As neither Eve nor her husband had ever tasted the fruit or experienced its effect.s on the mind, it must have been only through the colored medium of falsehood she thus '■'saio"' how very desirable it was. i!l' \ 98 WAS INIOSES WRONG ? When we have taken into consideration all the circum- stances of the case I doubt if a more suitable moral test can be imagined, a test at once so simple and decisive, so tenderly small on the part of God and so easily respected on the part of man. \ Chapter xii. WHAT SIN IS. TME.Mii :- " Sill is Lawlessness."— John the Apostle. ^11 , P: , CIIAl'TKR XII. Volumes have been written by proibund thinkers on the subject of human moral depravity, its mysterious origin, its consequences and its cure. lUit after they have taxed their metaphysical ingenuity to the utmost and exhausted their skill in philosophic argument what have theydemonstrated be- yond that taught in what manyof themconsider anantiquated oriental legend, the third chapter of Genesis, that sin con- sists of the disobedience of divine law by the indulgence of natural desire, of human reason presuming to exercise its will against the express will of God — /. s about evil. ]\Iay we now philosophize a little ? Let us try. Unless we admit sin as an element of our philosophic system, /. <'., a deliberate and voluntary act of transgression like this attributed to Adam, how can we account for the present evident derangement of our world both physically and morally ? Granting for argument's sake that the human ' SIN IS LAWLESSNESS. 105 species has been slowly evolutionized from albumen rhloro- phyl and i)rotoi)lasm by the ojjeration of natural law, grant- ing that Wij are nothing more or less than what 'rresistible laws have constituted us and that we are still only law-organ- ized matter operated by law, how then is it possible that we can have (by any exercise of faculties so evolved and operated) transgressed law ? Can eternal law in its own direct effects and necessary products transgress itself? Sound Rationalism cannot state such a case ; even imagin- ation cannot find combinations of fancy ojt of which to create it. Atoms, passively congregated and arranged, dif- ferentiated, organized and operated directly and solely by fixed laws, such atoms somehow getting out of constitutional harmony into a state of persistent active friction and deadly conflict ! ! — why, such a theory is self-contradictory, for any such effect issuing from the absolute reign of law over passive ma:ter is simply impossible. A positive act of voluntary sin ])erpetrated by a being endowed with the law-breaking powerof free moral agency is not merely necessary to this old narrative of Eden ; but is as necessary to the explanation of all the historical phenomena and experimental facts of humanity. Sin stands written across all human history as plainly as across the third chapter of Genesis. And sin is not the evolution but " the transgression of the Law." The unquestionable fact of Sin and everything belonging to a "struggle for existence" among the products of Evolu" tion — these make the entire theory of Evolution not only io6 WAS MOSES WRONG. I li impracticable but even unthinkable. Reason with ban- daged eyes, and mounted on the Pegasus of unbridled imagination may Darwinize for a few years, but the quiet and logical study of the fact Sin, will very soon force any thoughtful mind to seek solid footing on the old fash- ioned rock, Divine Revelation. i i' Qlhaptcr xiii. THE temptp:r and the tempta- tion. Theme :— " Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman. Vea, hath God said, Vc shall not eat of every tree of the garden? ' And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of rfie fruit of the trees of the garden : " "Hut of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath saul, Ve shall not -eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." " And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die." " For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened anil ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. " And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleas- ant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she tixik of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." Ganesis 3: i-6. i H^mp 1l CHAPTER XIII. " Unreasonable ! absurd ! incredible ! ! Read such a story to the credulous simpletons of the nursery or the imbeciles of the work-house ; tell that yarn to the marines I* methinks I can overhear many modern "thinkers" exclaim. Thinkers are they? I fear they do not think quite as closely and seriously as they ought, to earn the noble title. Those who deny the authenticity and veracity of the old document I "have quoted on this subject have to deny also a good deal more. For instance, have they thought out the fact that among heathen nations over the entire globe, serpent worship has long held the pro- minent place ? I think it can without much difficulty be demonstrated that no other species of worship has been so universal as Ophiolatry, /. reason for the decay of such a vital organism as the human body at its fiftieth or seventieth year any more than at its fifth or seventh. Even after the deterioration of "the fall," before human habits, per- sonal and social, had become so abnormal as they be- came by and bye, and before the accumulated weaknesses and disease-germs of a hundred generations of law-breakers had debased and poisoned the aggregate constitution of hu- manity, the human organism possessed vitality enough to brave a thousand winters and summers. And why not ? No sound natural philosopher will take pains to dispute that a self-renewing machine which can run for a decade may not as easily run for a millennium, and if for a millennium, why not forever ? Decay, disintegration, dissolution are certain- ly not in the nature of the thing necessary. On the con- trary, to me it seems incontrovertible that the living process of perpetual renewal of the constituent humours and tissues of the human frame and system which we know now goes on steadily for so many septennial periods, ought, (if not un- happily interrupted by some unfavorable circumstances.) to go forward indefinitely. According "o my very limited scienti- fic knowledge it appears very plain that no cause for the ulti- mate decay and dissolution of the corporeal organism can even be conceived except unnatural friction arising from the maladjustment of some of its parts, or the introduction into its system of some noxious foreign substance tending to in- duce and perpetuate such friction. The human body now does suffer from such destructive friction ; and the occasion SESSS 130 WAS MOSES WRONG? I I 'I of this friction in the corporeal machine, the Bible tells us, is Sin, /. e., non-harmony with perfect constitutional law. It needs no argument to prove that a machine like the human body, constructed by perfect Divine wisdom and perfectly adjusted io perfect law cannot possibly suffer from such fric- tion, and must, if endowed with I'fe-force be capable of "perpetual motion" in the fullest scientific sense of that phrase. These remarks I make, not sc inuch for the purpose of proving anything, as of showing that on this subject "Death" both infidels and philosophers still require to produce proof of the attitude they have rashly assumed against the state- ments of old Revelation. 14 f I: So far as our present world is concerned, Revelation plain- ly tells us these three things, viz : — 1. Death ivas not first introduced into the luiiverse in Eden, but had prevailed over a preceding creation. Why, we cannot tell ; although we may fairly infer that it was the penal effect of law transgressed somehow. 2. Death in the human period of our world's history is the penalty of the first transgression. The transgression having introduced the curse, the soul of man in relation to the spiritual laws of his being became deranged, the atmos- phere was poisoned, the soil and its products were blighted. 3. Death, in the very nature of things can have no power upon a perfectly sinless organism, whether physical or spirit- DEATH, ITS HISTORY. 131 ual. At this moment Jesus Christ is a man having flesh and bones, and He, because all in perfect harmony with the divine nature and the perfect laws of a sinless world, is not subject to decay and dissolution. The incormptible body bestowed on the redeemed at the resurrection shall be at once material and immortal,— ^r^^.- A material organism can be deathless. n % *ii ^f ^1 ■—rr-r:^. — " ■'■'• -- n *^ ^ssmi i '. (Thaptcr xb. WHAT IS DEATH, !(.■ ' Si ! ^>; Thicme :— "In the day thou eatest thertof. dying thou shalt dit." (Heb.) Genesis 2:17. "These shall go away into everlasting piinishnient." Matt. 25 : 46. "Who shall be punished with everlasting ilestruction." 2 Thessalonians i : 9. 'gS . i MJ]WM.U ' lJ «» Ml« wi^ w ^ HI; P It'*' fll, ■i 1 1 1 r * CHAPTEF X:V. In reply to the interesting question, What is Death ? materialists give us definitions which substantially amount to this, Death is the cessation of conscious animal existence. To this plausible and apjarenlly exhaustive definition I take exception, for Death is the opposite and antithesis of Life, but life and conscious existence are not interchangeable words, are words that do not express the same idea. Allow me to explain what I mean, thus: — (i) A person may be alive physically without being at all conscious. (2) While life includes existence, the reverse is not true, — existence does not necessarily comprehend life. (3) Life is the con- scious existence of an organized being ni the state of perfect harmony with its own entire constitution, with the laws of its nature and its surroundings. (4) In the case of the human being, true life, life perfect and normal consists in the entire faculties of body, soul and spirit being in perfectly adjusted interdependent balance and healthful activity, the affections, the intellect and the physical propensities and members answering their true end — /'. tf., being occu- pie 1 in i>erfect unanimity with their appropriate objects and in absolute subordination to all the laws of the universe of which the human being is a part and a factor. Such was the nature and state of innocent Adamic Hfe. I' *« IP ;ut God's fixed laws go on asserting themselves, and to them we must ultimately sue- WHAT IS DEATH? 139 cUTib, however long we may maintain the struggle. As spiritual disease is the result of sin (lawlessness), deranging our spiritual relations, so bodily disease is that destructive derangement of the tissues of our physical frame resulting from our being out of perfect and harmonious adjustment with tie divine laws. This derangement of the tissues and processes of our corporeal constitution (involving very seriously the mental also) produces friction — friction is noth- ing m )re than want of perfect fitness. We oil machinery to make it go smoothly because its parts are not perfectly fitted to each other, for were every part of an engine or a watch perfectly fitted so that there would be no mal-adjustment 01 rDughness at all, oil would be unnecessary. Our physical frame deranged by sin in its absolute fitness to itself and its surroundings, we also, when we are conscious of any pain- ful friction and that consequent over-heating we call fever, "oil"' with cordials and emulsions, and polish into temporary smoothness by electric applications and stimulants. But all this friction we feel and try to modify is really slow de- struction — the disintegration of the material tissues; and this process of wear and tear with its accompanying fevei and pain and decay is Death. After standing a certain amount of this Teath-grinding, some vital part of the body wears out; this w .'aring out is Death's weary work done, and bodily Death ends that very moment the last resisting frag- ment or film yields. The following action of the chemical forces — corruption, disintegration, evaporation, "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," — this action is not u m 140 WAS MOSES WRONG? Death, but natural chemistry busy reducing a compound of earth, liiue, ammonia and gases back to its elements. * To this conclusion I think we are led by observation, ex- perience and reason, not to say Scripture, in answering the question, what is death ? ) I I' The materialistic school of modern theology feel much fortified in their theory on this subject by the phrase ' ever- lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power," one party of them interpreting these words so as to make them teach the instant burning up of the wicked in the final conflagration of our world, and another party of them interpreting them as teaching physical suffering prolonged far into the coming eternity — suffering more or less severe, longer or shorter according to the quantity or quality of the sinner's sins, but both parties agreeing that the punishment, whether instantaneous or pro- tracted, shall terminate in the total extinction of their per- sonal conscious identity, i.e. in absolute annihilation. On these opinions, permit these few remarks : — 1^ * Recently I lighted upon some remarks which I think well worth rej)eating here ; they were to this eflect: The word Death derived from the Latin, signifies to fall from or fall out of., that is separation. The expressions the "fall of man" and "the death of man" are therefore really synonyn.s. Death and life are simply different conditions of being ; they do iiot mean being and non-being, as many ignorantly assert. "Die" und "dye" come both from the same root ; to dye a garment is to charge its condition (perhaps its use) by staining it ; and so it was with man when he sinned — his condition was changer! by dying. When, by the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing away our sm, we are restored to God's favor the separation (death) no longer exists — we are restored to God. " In His favor is life." WHAT IS DEATH r H* (a) This word "Z^^struction' signities tt\e rorced reabc- tion to its original constituents of a thing that has Occn ..al nature in the attitude of revolutionary rebellion asserting the mastery, his spiritual nature resenting the coarse mater- ial tyranny and ever struggling to regain the supremacy it m SPIRITUAL DEATH I5» had abdicated and from which it had fallen, his intelkctual nature in perpetual perplexity trying to restore the true nor- mal relations and consequent peace and prosperity between the animal and spiritual parts, but, alas, ever leaning towards the lower propensities in every decision between the claimants — (because it is so much easier to yield to a downward tendency than to support an upward effort — ) giving the animal nature "the full benefit of the doubt,'* and thus only aggravating the mischief. There can be no question at all that this sad state of moral derangement and consequent destructive conflict now obtains in the human constitution, and this is the true philoso- phy of moral Death — divine Law working on steadily against the perversity and rebellion of human nature, while that nature maintains the hopeless struggle against divine Law. While endeavouring to simplify this momentous verity may I crave the reader's close attention to what I say? Music is the harmony of different sounds in accordance with strict and immutable law, Light the harmony of different prismatic colours, Beauty the harmony of different Shanes and shades. Love the harmony of two per- sons in affection, wish, will and act, and Human Life the harmony of all the constitutional parts and facul- ties of a man's personality with each other and with his environments whjrcver these environments touch his con- sciousness. This Harmony constitutes the Life of Music, Light, Beauty, Love and Human Existence. Now, what is i;t , .ill :fe^ : if I ^1 T_^2 WAS MOSES WRONG ? their Death ? Annihilation ? No ! Not silence, but discord- ancy is the death of Music. Silence is the absence of all sound whatever. Total darkness is not the death of Light, but only its absence. Deformity, not mere vacancy, is the death of Beauty ; for vacancy is the absence of all form what- ever. Hatred is the death of Love — positive hatred spring- ing from diversity in taste and antagonism in affection, wish, will and act. In each of these cases we see Death is not mere negation, not mere annihilation or utter absence of being, but active opposition to harmony in the elements of the thing itself and antagonistic friction with its necessary surroundings. Such is the Death of man's Life. It is not the cessation of conscious existence, it is not the total ex- tinction of personal consciousness, — that would be simply blank non-existence, the unthinkable absence we call non- entity, presenting nothing whatever for Death to act upon. Death is the derangement of the different parts of a man's nature and their disagreement with their surroui. ungs, pro- ducing constant ^/Vharmony and friction, and the misery resultant therefrom. The spirit of man consciously at war with God and out of harmony with his normal self — this is Death. From these considerations it is obvious that Spiritual Death (which constitutionally involves physical death) con- sists of I. Death Under Law. Law reigns, no sane man will disiiute. Law, if perfectly right, o.'ght to assert and maintain its authority. God's ^ SPIRITUAL DEATH. 153 ■d- all l^t, the nat- mg- :ion, :h is ence aents ;ssary .s not al ex- iimply 1 non- upon. man's s, pro- misery at war -this is Spiritual Lth) con- y perfectly God's Law is perfect and God's power is amply sufficient to main- tain His administration ; and the well-being of the universe demands such rigid administration of perfect Law. If God can maintain it but does not, He endorses and sanctions evil, and Himself must be numbered among transgressors. This can never be. Death was the legal penalty of Adam's first transgression — Genesis 2: 17. This state of spiritual death after his fall became his vioral nature constitutionally ; and we his natural descendants necessarily inherit his moral nature in its spirit- ually dead state, our dead moral nature having propensities, preferences and desires precisely in accord with Adam's in his depraved condition. Therefore we are naturally under death in Law — dead forensically. As, in common current parlance, we say of a man incarcerated under sentence of death, "He i^ .". dead man," /. ^., the man is dead in law-dead to all the relations of life, to all its responsibilities social and commercial, to all the rights pertaining to human liberty and free citizenship — dead to human life in all its interests, hopes and aspirations, — evenso are we arelegallydcad; our sentence having been already pronounced upon us by Supreme Law we now are shut up to the day of public execution. Our natural life, as we like still to call it, is really nothing b3tter than prison existence ; this world is our "condemned cell" out of which we can be delivered only by passing under death onward to the public judgment-seat, not really to have our case tried, but only to have sentence formally and pub- % I ' i i;5 W- 1 i i 7' ' 1 '^ 1 I ■ '! 1 1 1 1 ,, ■ i lij 1 'h, ' ^1 r 154 WAS MOSES WRONG. licly pronounced and executed with all the terrible dignity becoming the execution of Divine Law. "The Law is spiritual," but our spirits are naturally in a state of chronic antagonism to its requirements. "Thou . shalt love the Lord thy God v.-ith all thy heart and mind and strength ; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" — this is the law of Life, but we unquestionably love ourselves much better than either, and so we lie under Death's doom — dead forensically. Death consists of 2. Death in Practice. Materialists and Annihilationists call this a contradiction in terms. "Dead people don't and can't practise anything," say they. But what saith holy Scripture on this interesting subject ? To that man who, on the amiable pjea of re- spectfully attending his own father's funeral, proposed the postponement of active discipleship, Jesus Christ said, "Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach." These words have no meaning at all to those who dispute that the mourners at that funeral were in a spiritual sense as truly dead as was the corpse of the old gentleman in a phy- sical sense. Again, Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians uses these strange words, "You hath He quickened which were dead in tresspasses and sins." If it be enquired, when had those Ephesian christians been "dead ? " I point you to the narrative in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, for I venture to aver that never were they so dead as when, their I w SPIRITUAL DEATH. 155 said, lispute ^nse as phy- lesians superstitious fanaticism roused to frenzy, they threw the whole city into an uproar, bawling for the space of two whole hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " This their mental and physical active rage against the gos- pel of God 7C'as spiritual death in its 7i>orst and deadliest form. Again, in his directions to the evangelist Timothy, Paul alludes to certain lively young widows, thus, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth."' This passage is itself enough to drive any honest materialist from his theological moorings, for where could we find a more strik- ing specimen of mental and physical life than just such a young widow presents ? A sprightly, keen-witted, sharp coquette like her may be regarded as the veritable standard of vitality — the personification of physical vigour and in- tellectual vivacity. Yet, saith Paul, of such an one, "She is dead." Dead! If ^//^ be dead indeed materialism may set about reconstructing its theological definitions. Once more in the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelation we read, "And I saw the dead small and great stand before God." These "dead" are obviously contrasted with the living referred to in the preceding verses who had been rais- ed in the glorious first resurrection of life. Well, these "dead" stand before the great white throne, and while they stand there they are described as '■^dead.'' Although they had for years consciously existed in this world previous to their bodily demise and burial, and although now by resur- rection from the grave they consciously exist again, they have never yet been living. In their case it is very mani- 12 't !• 1. I. 1 i f I i'ii !ii!i M * 1 I 156 WAS MOSES WRONG ? fest that "life" and 'conscious animal existence" are two things totally different and even opposite. Cut off from fel- lowship with the one living and true God, both l)y original depravity and wilful persistency in moral rebellion, they never possessed genuine human life (according to the primitive quality of life and according to the radical signifi- cation of the word,) neither have they yet ; standing before God with all their mental and physical faculties keenly sen- sitive and active they are still spiritually "dead," dead in affections toward God, in mind alienated from God, in attitude and purpose in antagonism against Him, dfad tn law; thus "dead" they stand before their supreme Judge, to have their legal death-doom formally pronounced and pub- licly executed. Further illustration from Scripture might easily be added, but let these four illustrations suffice to prove that sinners in the full and vigorous enjoyment of conscious animal and mental existence are in a state of practical death. Merely to show how correct this moral principle is, allow me to remind you thatto-day no language is commoner among ourselves or better understood than lan- guage such as this : — concerning a married man or woman that neglects domestic duties, we say, " He, she is dead to all sense of parental responsibility; '^ concerning those that have no taste for poetry, painting, sculpture and scenery, we say, "They are dead to beauty and to aesthetic sentiment;" con- cerning a young scape -grace sowing wild oats and rushing headlong to ruin, we remark, "To his parents' reputation and authority and to his own highest interests he is totally mif " SPIRITUAL DEATH. 157 two fel- ,inal they the gnvfi- lefore ,' sen- :ad in od, in lead tn idge, to id pub- i might ifhce to ent of state of moral guage is than lan- ^vomall ead to all that have y, Nve say, 2nt;"con- d rushing reputation > is totally 1 dead." But such people are thus " dead " simply because they are all alive to other pursuits. Mark this particularly, intense application to what is wrong involves deadness to what is right. The reason why a man is dead to parental responsibility is because he is absorbed body and soul per- haps in money-making or politics or dissipation; the dead- ness of some women to domestic and maternal duties is caused by their intense pursuit of other things, — company, dress, amusements for instance; the reason why so many are dead to poetic sentiment and beautiful form is because they are so earnestly grovelling and grubbing after something else ; the reason why the prodigal is dead to the claims of all that is right is simply because his entiie being and ener- gies are bent upon indulgence in what is wrong. Even so the reason why any sinful soul is spiritually dead to God and godliness, to heaven and holiness, is because the world, the flesh and the devil absorb all his thoughts wishes and ener- gies, displacing and excluding the Divine Trinity. There- fore SPIRITUAL DEATH IN PRACTICE IS THE AIMS OF THE HUMAN SOUL MISDIRECTED AND ITS ACTIVITIES MISEM- PLOYED. ^^ Dead in tresspasses and sins." This Spiritual Death utiarrested runs oji itito 3. Death Perpetual. Unless ne*v spiritual life be imparted by the "one liv- ing and true God" to the "dead" human soul, it must neces- sarily remain helplessly in this state of spiritual Death for- ever. Death can never produce self-revival. Life alone I Ih 158 WAS MOSES WRONG ? can cause and perpetuate life. Th£ philosophy of eternal Death is neither profound nor obscure. Grant that man is naturally a spiritual indestructible entity, that in origin he is fallen morally, and that out in eternity his character remains fixed beyond the touch of miraculous grace, and we must accept the tremendous and appalling doctrine that Death is eternal. Out there he that is unrighteous must be un- righteous still and he that is filthy must be filthy still. If there be beyond this world no system of purgatorial cleansing and restoration, if in the regions of the lost there be no message of divine mercy and no gracious regenerating power exercised, then it is plain, awfully plain, that the soul spiritually dead 7nust remain in that condition forever, out of harmony with Jehovah, the Life-Essence, and in antagonism with fixed law. ".Sin is lawlessness,'' declares the inspired John, and sin and death are inseparable. Sin is m&ral disease, and moral disease in active prpgress is spiritual Death. I need not here repeat what I have already demonstrated beyond all rational debate that Death involves conscious existence and that everlasting destruction is, not a state, but a process never-ending. It is futile for any one to waste strength and ingenuity to contest this doctrine. In the plainest language He ever used the Lord Jesus tells us that the doom of sin is everlasting p>unishment, /. e., conscious penal suffer- ing ; nay, that even in the intermediate and disembodied state, mankind reprobated as really as mankind regenerated have conscious existence. In His plain statement of the dismal experience of the rich man immediately after the SPIRITUAL DEATH. 159 death of his body, He certainly informs us that he was conscious of misery — of misery as real as was the happiness of his poor neighbour Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. And hjw could it be otherwise, if man has been endowed with continuity of conscious and sentient existence? I know what has been said and written both eloquently and earnestly by such men as Canon Farrar and Mr. Beecher against everlasting torment, but after we have calmly and critically analysed all this eloquence and argu- ment (?) we find the residuum nothing more than the fervid vituperation and protest of the human feelings against per- petual misery, totally unsustained by Revelation. Is not all this pretentious rhetoric of sentimental hum.an tender- ness a farce ? Surely Jesus Christ was quite as tender in His sentiments and as refined in His language as either of these distinguished preachers ; but He was " the Truth." And He told the truth terrible as it was. But why all this indignation and disgust at the doctrine of everlasting punishment? In a world where, even during this dispensation of Heaven's richest grace, neuralgia, rheumatism, sciatica, cancer, delirium tremens and maternal agonieswhere warfare and fevers are so common as the result of sin, need we wonder when we are told that troubles as -severe and even worse are the result of sin in the world to come? Here we have the numberless agonies of the hospital and the unspeakable torments of the insane asylum, and yet over both asylum and hospital brood and watch ihe long-suffering mercy and providental compassion of God. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 1.25 IP 12.5 llli m U 11112.2 1.4 2.0 1.8 1.6 V} % ^;. o e}. c* '^2 .% o 7 Photographic Sciences Corporation ■% ^4 -^■v V \ \ '% 6^ ^I^ 73 WEST MAIN STRICT WEBSTER, NY. )4S80 (716) 872-4503 ^1> 4f> £?x &?- i6o WAS MOSES WRONG? What may we reasonably expect to be the condition of those who have forever sinned away all the mercy of God, who have rebelled against His love and trampled their way down to darkness over the heart's blood of His only begotten Son ? Is it likely or is it not likely that they sufler there more severe- ly than we do here? Jesus Christ positively and repeatedly assures us that the unsaved and unbelieving go away into endless damnation where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth — where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. Death eternal in its full sense is nothing m^e than de- praved people remaining forever depraved and developing naturally toward deeper depravity. Eternal death is simply the >" sires of the unregenerate granted. They desire to sin on and on forever. This God grants. They like to hate God's holy law and nature. This God grants. They de- sire to be separated from God's holy presence and authority and to conduct their own affairs. They are granted such separation and self-government. They dislike the Bible ; and it is taken away, every page of it. They resist and reject the Holy Ghost ; and He just leaves them altogether and permanently. They desire deliverance from the fellowship, the example, the rebuke of christians ; so christians and they are finally separated. They wish to associate with sinners V4:f ♦hemselves. This also is granted ; and they are all put in circumstances in which their favorite vices shall have full, unbridled swing. Now, this is Death — perpetual alienation SPIRITUAL DEATH. i6i from God, successful rebellion against God, and sinners forever inning with sinners without any restraint. • . Much more might be said on this awful theme, but let , this suffice. Of all I have spoken this is the sum : — ' I. Death is not the cessation of conscious animal exis- tence but the continuation of it. II. Life is not the same as Existence. While Life in- cludes Existence, Existence may exclude Life and still be con- scious. Life is conscious existence happily in harmony with Divine nature and laws. III. Death is not Annihilation. Annihilation is not con- ceivable, and there is no phrase in Scripture to correspond with it. IV. Death essentially is the human being out of his nor- mal condition with reference to God Almighty and His im- mutable Law. V. Death, if unarrested by Life, must reign and work in a man forever. Life consists of the re-harmonization of man with Law and God. These conclusions may not suit our natural tastes or secure the approbation and acceptanceof our moral instincts — -for our moral instincts are fallen, but whether shall we rely on these tastes and instincts as t* e ground of our convictions, or on the plain word of God ? To this question there is but One reply, — "Let God be true, and every man a liar.' x62 WAS MOSES WRONG ? ^11 Does the sin of the creature against the Law of the Al- mighty Creator — does unbelieving rejection of divine blood-bought Grace deserve anything less than everlasting Death, terrible as it is ? Is sin such a small and light thing that the orthodox hell is a punishment too severe for it ? Is ,not advanced rationalistic modern theology really an exten- uation of and apology for sin ? You and I are not qualified to say what sin is and what it deserves until we can teii all that God is and a// that the preservation of the integrity of the moral universe requires. \S mmmmam 1 / > Chapter xbit. DEVILS AND THEIR USE. '^"^r!Hr^!l^'°^'^^'rP^"'-'^''''"°''^ '"''''' *'^=^"^"y "^^^^ beast which the Lord Uod haa made. — Genesis 3:1. •-■"•" "That old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan."— Revelation 20 : 2. CHAPTER XVII. In loyalty to the simple veracity of the entire Bible we are bound to maintain the reality and personality of Devils. Satan is such an important factor in the Old Testament that his removal from its pages would radically change them both historically and doctrinally. The soil of the New Testament (if I may use a geological metaphor) is just as rich in the dark deposit of demonology as in the priceless treasures of soteriology. Among the numerous Biblical refinements wrought by the busy intellectualism of to-day, this doctrine of the real per- sonality of Satanic beings, as something too gross and barba- rous for modern theology has been banished to that dismal region of monstrous shapes and wild religious fancies, the mediaeval ages. Sadducee-ism revived stands before us arrayed in the modern costume of western Europe and more western America. The devils of Scripture, we are told, are the personification in the figurative language of the ancient east of evil human dispositions and passions. If this inter- pretation of the demonology of the Bible be accepted, with- out venturing into anything allied to metaphysical specula- tion, it is evident that Adam and Eve fresh from the fingers of their Creator must have been liberally endowed with evil dispositions and passions, /. e., they were morally fallen before they fell ! To admit this would be serious enough, but 1 66 WAS MOSES WRONG? something much more serious must follow. When coming to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke we are informed that Jesus Christ was for forty days tempted by the devil m the wilderness, we must understandthe statement to mean that He was tempted, not by a personal devil outside of Himself, but by His own inherent evil dispositions and passions ! When, moreover, the Holy Ghost by the instrumentality of three evangelists gives us as a sober historical fact such a statement as is contained in Mark 5 : 1-20, on this principle of inter- pretation it is our duty as intelligent people to receive as truth its moral and mental teaching, while we relegate the story itself (so far as its demonology is concerned) to the limbo of baseless legend and fable. To such demands of "advanced thought" we cannot con- , sent. The New Testament is neither fable nor mysticism. The men who wrote it were plain men giving a plain narra- tive of what they saw and heard and handled (i John t : 1-3; Luke i: 1-4.) When they say "boat" they mean a real ves- sel called a Ifoaf, when they say "ass" they mean a veritable animal of that species, and when they say "devil" it is a per- sonal devil they mean — not a moral disposition nor a pecu- liar depraved idiosyncracy, nor a strong mental bias toward ethical obliquity. Perhaps I may be pardoned for saying I think a thorough-going simple devil, bad as he may be, would be much more easily handled by any one trying hon- estly to do well than such slippery and impalpable shades of' mischief as "Mental-bias-toward-obliquity" or "Depraved- idiosyncracy." K DEVILS AND THEIR USE. 167 There is no doubt v,hatever the Bible means to tell us that devils are real and actual persons. Just look at the New Testament story to which I have made reference j no sane and simple man reading it can doubt that Gadara with its mountains and tombs was a real place geographically, that the lake Jesus and His disciples crossed and the boat in which they crossed it were real water and real boat, that the deranged man and the grazing herds of swme and the excited multitudes of the Gadarenes gazing at their property floating on the lake were all real and substantial people and animals ; but the devils — Well, what are they ? They speak, they manifest fear, they shrink from penal suffering, they im- plore permission to stay in this world and to go into the swine, they evacuate the maniac and he becomes instantly sane and docile, they invade the swine and they presently become furious, ungovernable and suicidal. Are those devils real persons, or Mental-bias-toward-moral-obliquity — instantly — inspiring — two thousand — honest graminivorous swine ! We dare not thus trifle with and pervert God's word. If we admit that six-sevenths of a narrative be actual fact, by what rule of fair interpretation can we arbitrarily transmute the remaining seventh into mere metaphor ? Upon this terrible doctrine of the reality and personality of devils in these days our testimony cannot be too explicit and emphatic. Object to it as men may, shrink from the "very thought of such a thing" as "cultured" minds may, -if the Bible be true, devils are real and true persons — powerful, ] i68 WAS MOSES WRONG ? sleepless spirits ever bent on evil. Whether or not we are able to harmonize the fact of their existence and behaviour with our ideas of the government of a God wise, good and omnipotent, it is nevertheless a fact that our world is inhabit- ed by devils, and mankind are possessed by devils. How can we rationally account for many cases in our lunatic asylums, for the reckless speculations of Wall Street, for the insane vanity of many women, for the appalling statistics of alcoholic drinking, for the diabolical efforts at political reform by dynamite, for the deplorable ecclesiastical travesties of pure primitive Christianity in doc- trine, in forms of worship and in methods of work, except by accepting the doctrine that people (contrary to their better nature and sober judgment) are^ being coaxed and wheedled led and driven down to perdition by malignant, subtle, pow- erful spirits of evil, possessing all the experience of the past ages of human history ? The sooner we fully realize our danger the better, Satan's last move is to persuade men that all the Bible states about him and his emissaries is nothing more than unfounded legend traceable to the i-eligious Jewish imagination, the creations of morbid fancy, mere gloomy superstitions which are now rapidly vanishing before the superior light of mod- ern intelligence. Nothing is more congenial with modern scientific thought than to turn into ridicule what Scripture states about devils, "The days of witches, ghosts and demons are past," we are DEVILS AND THEIR USE. 169 are our and ibit- ivils. 5 in 5 of r the olical arable I doc- eptby better ^edled ^. pow- le past Satan's about ounded ion, the s which of mod- thought t devils, we are told cheerfully by our girls and boys. "If there ever was such a thing, there is no real diabolic possession now any- way. The most eminent physiologists and physicians are prepared to account for all mental hallucinations and violent derangement on natural grounds, while all advanced theolo- gians assure us that devil-possession was permitted only dur- ing the public ministry of Jesus Christ to afford Him an opportunity of proving the divine authority of His mission." So say the young people ; and what say the Scriptures on the same subject? Christ tells us that in these latter days Satan shall exercise such special power amongst our race, work- ing such "signs and wonders" that if it were possible he will deceive even the elect ; Paul assures us God will send (by whose agency ?) such "strong delusions" among people who have pleasure in unrighteousness that they may believe a lie; and in the Book of Revelation we are assured that, as the effect of Christ's ascension through the air to heaven, the devil has come down amongst mankind, having great wrath, because his time is short. No passage of Scripture even leans toward the notion now so popualar that demoniacal possession has ceased or even been modified, but many pas- sages plainly state the contrary. That the power and number of satanic spirits are immense the narrative of Gadara shows. No mere abstract doctrinal statement could convey so vivid an impression. The wretched man they so long had possessed was utterly savage, superhuman in strength, and such a terror to the entire neighborhood that no one would pass near his haunts. Christ Jesus deals with his case in such a way as to lift the 170 WAS MOSES WRONG i* veil of the unseen world and give us a glimpse of how things really stand — of our terrible surroundings, terrible danger and utter helplessness. Look at that great herd of swine, two thousand in number, quietly feeding on the lower slopes of the mountain. Instantly while we gaze, they are ill simultaneously inspired with ungovernable wildness ; down the slope they all rush impetuously past us, and impelled over the rocks they plunge violently into the lake and perish. What can be the cause of this catastrophe ? The vast herd ^r swine was possessed by ^evils and that whole legion of malign spirits issued from one man! Oh, can it be true that you and I live in a world where such powerful spirits of cruelty and in such numbers roam and plot and work, where such combinations of mischief and malice could toil for years to hold even one man in bondage, and yet can it be possible that we are totally indifferent to our perilous circumstances, that we can tamper with satanic temptations, eat heartily laugh gaily and sleep soundly all the while exposed unprotected to their power? Those who desire to prosecute the investigation of this part of our subject further have only to study the first and second chapters of the book of Job where they will find that the atmospheric forces of wind and fire, the marauding hordes of the desert and even physical disorder manipulated by diabolic agency. Such are God's words of w^arning, yet it is both fashionable and religious to mock at the Biblical doc- trine of devils! It smacks of superior scientific intelligence and quiet philosophy to do so, and Satan quietly smiles in his sleeve. DEVILS AND THEIR USE. 171 ly all this t and dthat lordes ed by et it is al doc- ce and sleeve. OiiC noteworthy characteristic of both those Mesopo- tamian and Gadarene devils was their harmony of purpose and faithful co-operation. Long and world-wide experience has taught them that union is strength, whether in plan or practice. It is therefore obviously their policy to keep good men in ail their efforts at social and political reform and in all religious enterprise divided. Division insures weakness, and weakness defeat. Parties in the political world are bad, denominational sects in the church universal are worse, but worst of all is independent individualism, because it is weakest of all. Oh when shall we ever see in the church of Christ so many minds combined in aim and purpose and so many individual energies honestly co-operating toward the salvation of the lost as we see here bound in unholy com- pact for the ruin of one soul 1 So long as this contrast be- tween the modus operandi of devils and Christians obtains, the former must succeed and the latter fail. Must? Yes, for the mathematical laws of dynamics in the realm of both physics and morals say. Must. God's fixed law is that close combination insures weight and force. # The Gadarene narrative shows us very vividly what the awful state of Chrisdess men now is. In the plainest pos- sible language the New Testament tells us that in the chi. .n dispensation in which we are living Satan "goeth about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, that as the prince of the power of the air he now worketh in the children of disobedience, that the unregenerate are taken captive by him at his will, that he is the god of this world by i3 t^a WAS MOSES WRONG ? whom the eyes of them who believe not are Winded, lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine into them," and so forth. Thus Satan through his subordinates is fiow prose- cuting his work of ruin on individuals, and they think it not. His ways of working are characterized by variety perfectly suit- ed to the hereditary bias, the climatic and social circumstances of his victims. His skill consists in the wise adaptation of his methods of working and his instrumentalities to the civili- zation, the education, the natural or acquired tastes and the religious ideas of individuals. Thus skillfully accommo- dated and indulged Christless souls are blinded, deceived, controlled and manipulated. Oh, how terribly sad is the spectacle! (i) As the wretched Gadarene dwelt out of choice among the tombs, so do the unregenerate ; for is not this world literally a place of graver, and morally what is it but a vast necropolis ? Yet here the unsaved dwell in their affections, aims and hopes — their only home "among the tombs" — their only treasures laid by " among the tombs!" Here they are happy; here they wish to stay. The land of the living beyond the shadow and the odour of these graves has no beauty, no charm for them ! (2) As the poor demoniac was a self-destroyer, so are all unregenerate souls. Study the long dismal records of savage and civilized heathenism where satanic suggestion constructed the religious and moral codes. Look at the history of nation •] wars, at modern records and statistics of alcohol, at the records of social and secret immoralities, at the history of our insane institutions and our fast livers. True, men and women in DEVILS AND THEIR USE. 173 the I so •ose- not. suit- inces of his civili- id the mmo- eived, is the out of is not vhat is well in 'among ombsl" le land Df these As the generate civilized religious wars, at cords of ur insane vomcn in British and American society are not destroying themselves in the demoniac's savage way, "Crying out and cutting them- selves with stones;" but they are suicides notwithstanding. Morally (many of them physically) are slowly killing them- selves. Spiritually fatally diseased, they push away from them and seal their lips against the only Remedy for sin and death. " What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Mo'^'' High God ? We adjure thee by God that thou torment us not !" is their cry. Civilization they all welcome, religious ritualism they can enjoy, but the Saviour from sin they fear and shun. Against that life which dwells in light, against that peace and joy which spring from purity they manifest the antipathy of an indwelling devil. Like the friends of the Gadarene demoniac who en- deavored to bind him back from the haunts of darkness and corruption with chains and fetters, our political and moral reformers try to control and restrain sin; but sin, driven from its grosser and more revolting courses, will certainly take to courses more polished, refined, aesthetic, and all the more deadly. The devil can become a gentleman and ])hilosopher and preacher when occasion requires. Whether in the first century or the nineteenth, whether on the southern shores of the sea of Galilee or the northern of Lake Ontario, Jesus Christ Himself is the solitary anti- dote for Satan. Not only with the vulgar piety but with the intelligent or- thodoxy of our day, if I mistake not, the notion is nearly universal that the relation of the divine to the satanic very 174 WAS MOSES WRONG? closely resembles that of Ormuzd to Ahriman in the ancient religion of Persia, /. ility manliness. Man, even in his state of primal TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 87 perfection, was so constituted (so fearfully and wonderfully made) that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with the tempting fruit upon its boughs and the divine prohibition and threatening suspended over it, had to be planted in the garden as the main ingredient, the prmciple factor in his moral culture. That tempting tree untouched was Adam's ladder to the skies. Nay, more — it was absolutely necessary in order that this temptation should be sufficiently effective that the most malign and subtil spirit in the universe should lure man on with fair and false promises to partake of the inviting but forbidden fruit. In the face of all that Holy Scripture hath said on this subject it is simply preposteroi";; if not profane to suppose the temptation of our first parents was superfluous or unfortunate or accidental or contrary to the holy will of God. He himself designed they should be so tempted. His hand and no other planted the beautiful tree for the purpose ; His hand and no other could untie the fetters which bound Satan down in the regions of darkness, and remove the bolts and bars by which his prison was secured, in order that he might visit the garden of Eden on his r."iission of mischief. To credit Satan with the honor of being his own master and independent is to endow him with the divinity of Ahriman, insult God's sovereignty and give the lie direct to the Word of inspiration ; to imagine (as Milton's splendid epic seems to teach) that Satan crept into Eden unobserved and unpermitted is to say that Jehovah fell asleep one day and was out-witted and overreached by the superior vi^lance qC the devil. The bare and honest truth is, >-■ M il ;' ' ti 3'1 !; i88 WAS MOSES WRONG? God sent Satan to Eden to cest Adam's fidelity. The truth is, had not Adam passed through the ordeal of such a temptation, had it been lawful for him to have freely and fearlessly indulged in everything around him, had no divine prohibition been placed upon some very desirable object within his reach and had no tempter tested his loyalty, so far as we can see man would have been an anomaly, a grand blunder in the Creator's work, for his circumstances would have borne no suitable relation to his constitution, human virtue could never have been born or bred, man's moral nature would have sickened, shrunk into utter decrepitude, and soon died out for want of air and exercise. A mere mental and moral fungus, man . would have vegetated — a stationery unprogressive fruitless growth, slowly and surely degenerating to the reproach of his Maker. Aye, and to this hour, were there no forbidden green fields and balmy meadows smiling right and left of the straight uphill path of truth and right, were there no flowers of bewitching col- our and odour blooming fair on the other side of God's fence, were there no forbidden fruits of enticing relish persuading us to loiter and invitmg us to stray, there certainly would be no moral benefit, no enlargement of soul, no invigorating development of virtue, no growth in godliness derivable from treading in the narrow way. (Query : Would there be any "narrow way " at all ?) And were there not in that way here and there rough places and hard spots of danger and steep ascents of difficulty, tempting the pilgrim to seek some softer path of easier grade, and were there not to be TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 89 met within it now and again some worthless hypocrites, some spiritual vagrants and impostors who render even the way of truth both disagreeable and dangerous — were there none of these things and many others ever attracting and repelling, then it must follow that, constituted as we are, for want of exercise for want of moral drill our virtues and our graces would (to take the very best view of the case) be just as weak and diminutive on our arrival at the pearly gates of the King's palace as they were when we first emerged from the strait gate of regeneration — certainly not very like those scholars and witnesses spoken of by Jesus Christ, or those soldiers and athletes, / e., wrestlers, pugilists and run- ners, spoken of by Paul. Teniptation is the crucible in which the almighty Alchem- ist tests the quality of our religion, whether it be standard gold or not. This is the test-method of training God adopt ed with his ancient people, as is plainly stated by Moses in his farewell address — Deuteronomy, "And thou shalt re- member all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to^humble thee and to prove thee and to know what was in thine heart" Again, "if there anse among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder; and the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying, let us go after other gods which thou hast not ' 'n, and let us serve them ; thou shalt not hearken unto the d of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God WAS MOSES WRONG ? I with all your heart and with all your soul." This same probationary method God adopted to test Abraham's faith when He "tempted" his natural paternal feel- ings to rebel against the stern command to offer up Isaac in sacrifice. Thus Job was tempted by his wife under the immediate influence of Satan, who we all know was commissioned by God to test most severely the patriarch's fidelity. Thus was Peter given into the hands of the devil by Jesus Christ, in answer to the devil's special request, to sift him as wheat. Thus even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was driven of the Holy Spirit into the wilderness for the ex- press purpose of being "tempted of the devil." In this re- markable instance God's Holy Spirit Himself used Satan as His instrument for severely trying the Redeemer's virtue — self denial — capacity of moral endurance — power of spiritual resistance. "He was tempted in all points like as we are'' the natural desires of His true humanity were subjected to a strain, it is no exaggeration to assert when all the conditions of the case are carefully considered, a thousand times greater than that before which the first and perfect Adam fell. Ifthe divine Man needed this severe moral training for the thorough develojiment of His proper humanity, do not we ? Hath not God predestinated believers to be conformed to the image of His Son'? Let not the child of God think Temptation a misfortune or calamity. On the contrary, "Blessed" — yes, ^'Messed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he hath been proved he shall receive the crown of life which God hath H TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. I9I promised to them that love Him ;" and "all things work together for good to them who love God: to them who are the called according to His purpose" — the Devil himself among the number. That old adversary and arch- tempter is, I am sure, kept out of his prison (in which his written destiny is again to be "shut up") for the express pur- pose of doing God's dear children good. Were it not for the plausible lies he is ever insinuating, they would not be so frequently forced to manifest their preference for the truth of God, all rationalistic arguments to the contrary not- withstanding ; were it not for the beating brushing and scrubbing he gives them, soon their spiritual armour would become as rust-eaten rickety and useless as Don Quixotte's, the sinews of their soul becoming soft as a Sybar- ite's, their whole spiritual manhood would shrivel into the utter weakness and smallness of selfishness — the very opposite of what the heroic race of heaven ought to be; were it not for those sudden storms "the prince oi the power of the air" raises on the sea of life, the disciples would forget altogether the^-alue of Jesus Christ in the ves- sel, and would begin to think that their safety and success de_ pend entirely upon their own toiling in rowing. Nothing can be plainer than that this is the apostle Peter's opinion, (and he is an experimental authority upon Temptation) in these words he addresses to " the strangers scattered abroad," "Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations; that the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried 192 WAS MOSES WRONG? 'St; i ' H I f i ' lii m '.y'A with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." And this is certainly the opinion of James when he writes, ''Count it all joy when ye fall into ( — not go into, not fall de/ore,or fall under — ) manifold temptations, knowing that the trial of your faith worketh patience ; and let patience have (by this process) her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing." In other words. Christian perfection is attainable only by our being kept painfully conscious of our imperfection. For ex- ample, long after he has perhaps thought he has gained the mastery over his carnal nature, a strong new temptation sud- denly assails the believer, and what is the consequence? Although he may not yield to its pcwer outwardly he certain- ly emerges from the trial sadly convinced at least that there still lurks in his nature corruption enough to ruin him forever, but for the pardoning mercy and sustaining power of the Most High — he emerges feeling the full for e of the exhortations "Be not high-minded, but fear. Let him who thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." That is from temptation he emerges a wiser, humbler, stronger man. When any believer feels an inward yielding to the draw- ing of temptation it is proof indisputable of indwelling sin somewhere — of something which naturally responds to the allurement. The apostolic James assures us that "every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his otuu lust and enticed. And when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." This is the entire nrocss of the production of sin and its conse- TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 93 quences. And is not the potency of this process continually lurking within believers, although sometimes it may be in a latent, dormant state ? And were there no other proof avail ' able, this itself is proof sufficient of how useful, nay how indispensable Temptation is in the sanctification of moral beings constituted as we are. - • Temptation alone, with all the certainty of a chemical test, detects and demonstrates the presence of corruption, for every time the drawing power of lust toward forbidden ob- jects is felt and successfully resisted the lust must be weak- ened and the virtue which overcame it correspondingly strengthened. Every such struggle which issues in the triumph of virtue brings off the resisting and dominating power of faith much increased in present strength, as well as in courage for future enterprises against sin. To sum up : 1. Everything God permits or employs in the moral uni- verse is useful, Satan not excepted. " All things work to- gether for good." " I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, (compare this with Eph. 6:12) . . . nor any other creature shall be able( — they will try their best) — to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 2. Temptation is a sin and crime to the tempter, but not to the tempted one, except in as far as his desires and acts respond to it. a ! 194 WAS MOSES WRONG? 3. Temptation, when successfully resisted, is to the tempted a priceless blessing. " Blessed is the man that en- dureth temptation." By the grace of God, temptation con- stitutes the gymnastic apparatus and curriculum by which the inner man is made healthy tough vigorous robust, by which the growing child of God is trained in moral heroism — is drilled into the glorious military spiritual condition of Christ-like self-denial and self-control — is daily developed "into the_ measure of the stature" of perfect God-like man- hood. Temptation when it spreads around May seem a field of woe ; But there, by Grace, the blessed fruits Of holiness do grow. -'/M i I What a glorious Subject did Jesus, the second Adam present to the contemplation of Jehovah when emerging from the desert the conqueror of Satan 1 /^ I ■ The Faithful \Aiitness. Semi-Monthly— 16 Pages, 9 in. by 12 in. — 48 Columns. Published on the first and third Saturday of each month. Terms ONE DOLLAR, in Advance. EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS. Rev. S. H. Kelloih;, D.D. Rev. N. West, D.D. Rev. Rev. Rev. Rev, Rev, Rev, Rev. Rev. Rev. Rev. Rev Rev. Rev, Rev Rev. Rev. Rev. 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