English
" And I cannot conceive of a time beyond which he did not exist. Nor could He create himself. Nor could matter create Him. Some believe that if such a Being exists, there must have been a time when nothing else existed. The argument to my mind is fallacious. Matter is eternal. You may change its form, but you cannot annihilate it. To illustrate; you may take a stone and crush it to an impalpable powder; divide these atoms again and again, until the strongest micro- 371 372 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES scope fails to distinL^iiish the iiifinitesimal particles; still you have not annihilated them. You have only destroyed the stone, but every one of its particles is still here, and cannot get away from the earth. On the other hand, suppose God concludes that He will create or make a new star or planet to revolve around our sun. In the vast space between Uranus and Neptune there is plenty of room — millions and millions of miles intervene between them. Now, can God create or make a world out of nothing? Cer- tainly not ; nothing added to nothing, nothing is. Matter can be changed and is all the while chang- ing, but it cannot be annihilated. Our earth is an illustration. It obeys a law with such precision and exactness that in one thousand years it has not varied five seconds of time in its rapid flight around the sun. Insensible matter did not and could not make the law of attraction or gravitation. But just why God created this world, and created man, and put him here, I am at a loss to know. For man, as we see him today, is a selfish, quarrelsome animal; and his antecedent history is blood stained, all along his path- way. Nevertheless, he possesses infinite possibilities. Section 2. I have purposely used the word cre- ated, repeatedly, just above here, because, to my view, it makes no difference if we came by evolution. For that great intelligence which I call God must have made the law of evolution, which finally produced man. God is therefore responsible for man's being A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 373 here. The insensible clod is not responsible, for it could not make the law of evolution, and bring man forth. A mind somewhere in the universe made that law that produced man upon this earth. But I laugh at the belief that God created the world only six thousand years ago, and finished the job com- pletely in six of our days. ( i ) The man who wrote Genesis evidently had never studied the testimony of the rocks. And he was ab- solutely ignorant of the evolutionary process. Think of the builder of millions of worlds creating Adam, and standing him up by Eden's fence to dry; having forgotten to make Adam a wife, he causes a deep sleep to fall upon him; and while Adam is in that "deep sleep," the Lord cuts him open and takes out one of his ribs and closes up the flesh thereof, (2), and from that rib he constructs Eve. This Adam story is a beautiful little nursery tale, yet it seems to satisfy some minds, so let it stand. Nevertheless, the evidence is convincing that man did not come by way of Eden's gates. But on the other hand, the evidence is strong that life originates or springs from a minute germ or cell with scarcely any apparent structure, which in time absorbs other germs or cells. The first or stronger germ, not only absorbs (1) Herodotus, who wrote about 2,360 years ago, tells us that the Egyptians in his day claimed a long line of Kings, reaching back eleven thousand three hundred and forty years. Add the twenty-three hundred and sixty years since he wrote and we have thirteen thousand seven hundred years, and that is more than eight thousand years beyond Jesus. Herodotus 2, Sec. 142 (2) Gen. 2, v. 21. 374 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES the weaker germ, but it assimilates it, so that it be- comes a part of itself. Yet no nucleated cell has yet been found that did not contain oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and water. The five elements mixed together in a stagnant pool, where there is plenty of warm sunshine, is the place to look for em- bryonic life. Now who, or what, made the carbon, and oxygen, and hydrogen, and nitrogen, and the water, and the sunshine to warm that water? Here now are six things that must accidentally come together, or be brought together, somehow ; else no germ or cell can, or ever could be, formed. Omit the oxygen, and the other five things will not pro- duce the cell ; omit the carbon — no cell. Go back a little further, and tell me who made the sunshine and the oxygen? For you must always reckon with the sun, the oxygen, etc., or you will have no cell, and no life, such as we have on this earth. Now I cannot bring my mind to believe that we live in a world of chance. Nor do I believe every- thing is a careless accident. The minutest life is here under a law, and it dies by reason of a law ; and there was never yet a law without a laiv maker. The minutest insect, the great elephant, and the monsters of the deep, are all here in obedience to a law. Even the learned Cuvier, in his anatomical re- searches, was forced to admit that there are distinct plans of organization — even among animalcules. But how can there be a plan without a planner? Fpr a plan means a contrivance, and that means A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 375 thought; and there is no thought without a thinker. The nucleated cell or germ was not the thinker that finally brought forth man. The cell or germ could not evolve itself in and of its own unaided inherent powers. A power was given to it, and it started upon its mission, and that mission was a vast one; to fill the land and the seas with various and multitudinous forms of life. Section 3. Man finds himself here on earth; he came without his asking; and in a short time he will go hence against his wish and will. He is told that there is a place beyond this life, called Heaven — a place of re- joicing and happiness, which we can reach by prayer and diligence. That there is another place called Hell, where there is an everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels (3), and that in Hell there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. (4) Both soul and body, it is said, may be destroyed in Hell. (5) Buddha also preached that the wicked Hindus would suffer in terrible hells; that sinners would be boiled for a Kalpa, in iron pots. (6) The supposed punishment in both cases, if true, is fiendishly cruel and excessive. To a reasonable mind it is absolutely unbelievable. Consider this a moment; man is born into the world without his knowledge or consent; furthermore, he is born subject to that awful law of (3) Matt. 25, V. 41. (4) Luke 13, v. 23. (5) Matt. 10, V. 23. (6) A Kalpa is a vast period of time, millions and millions of years. lid A QUESTION OF MIRACLES heredity (7) ; and it seems to be true that the iniqui- ties of the fathers are in fact visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation. Is that a just law ? Must you suffer for the misdeeds of a wicked an- cestor? If God, in fact, made that law, then he ought to repeal it, for it is tn'ribly unjust. With that law in force, the child of the drunkard or thief is punished for a crime of his progenitors, back perhaps an hun- dred years. Why weigh him down with crimes he never committed? W^ould it not be more just to re- verse Exodus, and make the ancestor suffer for the sins of his children, than to make the children suffer for the sins of their parents? The progenitor has some control over his posterity; but the children absolutely none over the ancestral tree. Every man placed here ought to have an equal chance in life's struggle. But what opportunity is there for the child of the gutter and the curbstone? His home is a hovel, and he is taught to pilfer and lie even in childhood, and ere long he develops into a highwayman, and his soul becomes stained with mur- der. Matthew's law (just quoted) would burn that unfortunate child of sin in an "everlasting fire." So also would Luke. (8) And Mark is just as severe. (9) Another boy, born perhaps the same day, is raised in an atmosphere of love, with all the advantages of ease and plenty. As he passes along through boyhood (7) Exodus 20, V. 5. (8) Ch. 16, V. 22 to 28. (9) Mark 9, v. 43. Matthew and Mark may have learned this from Buddha, (vol. 20, Sacred Books of the East, p. 254 and p. 268.