CHAPTER III.

The whole Subject Divided and Arranged under Ten Heads-Atheism Considered-Its Origin-Authenticity of the Old and New Testament Scriptures-Jesus the Christ.

HAVING, for the present, disposed of the four different theories of the human soul mentioned in the first chapter, as preliminary to that propounded for consideration in this work, let us now, in the fear of God and love of His truth, approach that august subject.

That the reader may be conducted by regular advances to and through the main question, and be thereby the better enabled to give to it a more systematic and satisfactory investigation, the whole is here subdivided for discussion in the order and under the heads following, to-wit:

1. That the heavens and the earth are the workmanship of a Divine Architect, and not the fortuitous productions of accident.

2. That the heavens were created and inhabited by myriads of happy, angelic beings long before this world was made, as recorded by Moses.

3. That all rational creatures were originally made by God "very good," and endowed with powers of volition, locomotion, and action, for the glory of God and individual happiness, and were free agents to serve and glorify their Creator or not, just as they chose.

4. That the narrative found in the Apocalypse, although brief, figurative, and mysterious, is nevertheless a faithful and true history of "WAR IN HEAVEN," and of the expulsion of Satan and his deluded followers from the immediate presence of God and His holy angels.

5. That after they were so "cast out," a covenant of grace

and mercy was made between the Father and Son, in and by which it was provided that the Son should follow after those lost spirits and offer them, on specified terms, pardon and restoration to that holy and happy estate from which they had fallen.

6. That pursuant to that Divine Covenant, and for the purpose of carrying it into effect, this world was created, or adapted to its present use, and God "made" man and placed him here for probation.

7. That the body only was then created, "formed," and the soul which was "breathed" into it was a pre-existent spirit-A FALLEN ANGEL.

8. That the bodies, not the souls, the physical and not the spiritual part of subsequent generations, were created in Adam.

9. That the account given in the Bible of the temptation and fall of man in Eden, although literally true, is also a clear symbolical and allegorical representation of his real temptation and fall by and with Satan in heaven.

10. That this arrangement will be continued until all who were embraced in that Divine antemundane covenant, have, or shall have had, a probationary time here; then will come the final judgment, when all will be restored to their primeval favor with God, or doomed to that final punishment which is due for individual sin by each committed.

Our first proposition then is: "That the heavens and the earth are the workmanship of a Divine Architect, and not the fortuitous productions of accident."

This being merely a preliminary question, yet necessary to the truth of the main proposition before us, and having already attracted the attention and received the careful examination of the best thinkers of all past ages and nations, whether Christian or Pagan, the writer will content himself with giving the extracts which follow from the writings of others, with but few remarks of his own:

Atheism, in its primary sense, comprehends, or at least goes beyond every heresy in the world; for it professes to acknowledge no religion, true or false. The two leading hypotheses which have prevailed among atheists, respecting

this world and its origin, are that of Ocellus Lucanus adopted and improved by Aristotle, that it was eternal; and that of Epicurus, that it was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms. That the soul is material and mortal, Christianity an imposture, the Scriptures a forgery, the worship of God a superstition, hell a fable, and heaven a dream, our life without providence, and our death without hope, like that of asses and dogs, are part of the glorious gospel of our modern atheists.'

The being of a God may be proved from the marks of design and from the order and beauty visible in the world; from universal consent; from the relation of cause and effect; from internal consciousness; and from the necessity of a final as well as an efficient cause.

Of all the false doctrines and foolish opinions that ever infested the mind of man, nothing can possibly equal that of atheism, which is such a monstrous contradiction of all evidence, of all the powers of understanding, and the dictates of common sense, that it may be well questioned whether any man can really fall into it by a deliberate use of his judgment.

All nature so clearly points out, and so loudly proclaims, a Creator of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, that whoever hears not its voice, and sees not its proofs, may well be thought willfully deaf and obstinately blind. If it be evident, self-evident, to every man of thought that there can be no effect without a cause, what shall we say of that manifold combination of effects, that series of operations, that system of wonders which fill the universe, which present themselves to all our perceptions, and strike our minds and our senses on every side? Every faculty, every object of every faculty, demonstrates a Deity. The meanest insect we can see, the minutest and most contemptible weed we can tread upon, is really sufficient to confound atheism and baffle all its pretensions. How much more that astonishing variety and multiplicity of God's works with which we are continually surrounded! Let any man survey the face of the earth, or lift up his eyes to the firmament; let him consider the nature. and instincts of brute animals, and afterward look into the

operation of his own mind, and will he presume to say or suppose that all the objects he meets with are nothing more than the result of unaccountable accident and blind chance? Can he possibly conceive that such wonderful order should spring out of confusion? or that such perfect beauty should be ever formed by the fortuitous operations of unconscious, inactive particles of matter? As well, nay better, and more easily, might he suppose that an earthquake might happen to build towns and cities; or the materials carried down by a flood fit themselves up, without hands, to a regular fleet. For what are towns, cities, or fleets, in comparison of the vast and amazing fabric of the universe! In short, atheism offers such violence to all our faculties that it seems scarce credible it should ever really find any place in the human understanding. Atheism is unreasonable, because it gives no tolerable account of the existence of the world. This is one of the greatest difficulties with which the atheist has to contend. For he must suppose either that the world is eternal, or that it was formed by chance and a fortuitous concourse of the parts of matter. That the world had a beginning is evident from universal tradition and the most ancient history that exists; from there being no memorials of any actions performed previously to the time assigned in that history as the era of the creation; from the origin of learning and arts, and the liability of the parts of matter to decay. That the world was not produced by chance is also evident. Nothing can be more unreasonable than to ascribe to chance an effect which appears with all the characters of a wise design and contrivance. Will chance fit means to ends, even in ten thousand instances, and not fail in a single one? How often might a man, after shaking a set of letters in a bag, throw them on the ground before they would become an exact poem or form a good discourse in prose? In short, the arguments in proof of Deity are so numerous, and at the same time so obvious to a thinking mind, that to waste time in disputing with an atheist is approaching too much toward that irrationality which may be considered as one of the most striking characteristics of the sect."

Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his " Demonstration of the Being

of a God," says, that "atheism arises either from stupid ignorance, or from corruption of principles and manners, or from the reasonings of false philosophy;" and he adds, that "the latter, who are the only atheistical persons capable of being reasoned with at all, must, of necessity, own that, supposing it can not be proved to be true, yet it is a thing very desirable, and which any wise man would wish to be true, for the great benefit and happiness of man, that there was a God, an intelligent and wise, a just and good Being, to govern the world. Whatever hypothesis these men can possibly frame, whatever argument they can invent, by which they would exclude God and providence out of the world, that very argument or hypothesis will, of necessity, lead them to this concession. If they argue that our notion of God arises not from nature and reason, but from the art and contrivance of politicians, that argument itself forces them to confess, that it is manifestly for the interest of human society that it should be believed there is a God. If they suppose that the world was made by chance, and is every moment subject to be destroyed by chance again, no man can be so absurd as to contend that it is as comfortable and desirable to live in such an uncertain state of things, and so continually liable to ruin, without any hope of renovation, as in a world that is under the preservation and conduct. of a powerful, wise, and good God. If they argue against the being of God, from the faults and defects which they imagine they can find in the frame and constitution of the visible and material world, this supposition obliges them to acknowledge that it would have been better the world had been made by an intelligent and wise Being, who might have prevented all faults and imperfections. If they argue against providence, from the faultiness and inequality which they think they discover in the management of the moral world, this is a plain confession that it is a thing more fit and desirable in itself that the world should be governed by a just and good Being, than by mere chance or unintelligent necessity. Lastly, if they suppose the world to be eternally and necessarily self-existent, and consequently that everything in it is established by a blind and eternal fatality, no rational man can,