stituted from the other; but simply that there is a thin cloud between heaven and the one, and no cloud between it and the other. The latter can not only trace evidence that there is a sun, and that he is up, but has the presence of that sun before his face, and his glory filling his eye. So two men stand in relation to the universal and all-present God. One believes, infers, intellectually

knows, that He is; ay, that He is present; yet he discerns Him not: it is a matter of inference, not of consciousness; and though believing that God is, and that He is present, he sins. Another spiritually discerns, feels His presence; and he learns to "stand in awe, and sin not."

Suppose the case of a cripple who had spent his life in a room where the sun was never seen. He has heard of its existence, he believes in it, and, indeed, has seen enough of its light to give him high ideas of its glory. Wishing to see the sun, he is taken out at night into the streets of an illuminated city. At first he is delighted, dazzled; but, after he has had time to reflect, he finds darkness spread amid the lights, and he asks, "Is this the sun?" He is taken out under the starry sky, and is enraptured; but on reflection finds that night covers the earth, and again asks, "Is this the sun?" He is carried out some bright day at noontide, and no sooner does his eye open on the sky than all question is at an end. There is but one sun. His eye is content; it has seen its highest object, and feels that there is nothing brighter. So with the soul; it enjoys all lights; yet, amid those of art and nature, is still inquiring for something greater. when it is led by the reconciling Christ into the presence of the Father, and He lifts up upon it the light of His countenarice, all thought of any thing greater disappears. As there is but one sun, so there is but one God. The soul which once discerns and knows him, feels that greater or brighter there is none, and that the only possibility of ever beholding more glory is by drawing nearer. Rev. Wm. Arthur.

But

THE ONE CONDUCTOR.-Supposing that a person wishing to send a message from London to Edinburgh by lightning, knows how to construct an electric battery; but when he comes to consider how he will transmit the impulse through hundreds of miles, he looks at an iron wire, and says, "This is dull, senseless, cold, has no sympathy with light; it is unnatural, in fact, irrational to imagine that this dark thing can convey a lightning message in a moment." From this he turns and looks at a prism. It glows with the many-colored sunbeam. He might say, "This is sympathetic with light," and in its flashing imagine that he saw proof that his message would speed through it; but when he puts it to the experiment, it proves that the shining prism will convey no touch of his silent fire, but that the dull iron will transmit it to the furthest end of the land. And so with God's holy truth. It alone is adapted to carry into the soul of man the secret fire which writes before the inner eye of the soul a message from the unseen One in the skies. Other proposed conductors may flash more in the showy light, but they will not convey the invisible fire.

MARKS ON THE HANDS.-" Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls are ever before me." Isa. xlix, 16.

In ancient times, slaves were accustomed to have the names of their masters, soldiers of their captains, and friends the names of their friends written upon their hands. Whether the Jews were accustomed to write the

names of persons on their hands is not very clear; if we may judge, however, from their present practices, they were accustomed to have graven and pictured there the names and representations of Jerusalem, and other loved and fondly remembered places. It is to this practice the allusion is made in the text above quoted. It is customary for persons who visit Jerusalem, to have some such mark, called the "pilgrim's mark," graven on one of their arms, as a memorial of the place and their visit. It was at one time both among heathens and Christians customary for certain persons to pretend to describe the fate, or, as it was vulgarly called, to "tell the fortune" of others, by the lines on the palms of their hands. This art" black art"-was called palmistry, and some suppose that there may have been an allusion in the words above quoted to it. But even supposing the "art" then existed, we do not think it at all probable the allusion was made to it.

THE CLOUD IN THE WEST.-"And he said also to the people, when ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower, and so it is." Luke xii, 39.

For the explanation of this passage to the youngest reader, it can only be necessary to remark that the Mediterranean, or Great Sea, being on the west of the land of Judea, and there being no other sea of any magnitude round it, it is in this quarter that the rain-cloud forms, and from which the rain generally comes. The wind, which blows from this direction, which it does from November till March-the rainy season-is called by the Arabs, "the father of rain." While the west wind brings rain, the north wind interrupts it. "Fair weather cometh out of the north." Job xxxvii, 22. "The north wind driveth away rain." Prov. xxv, 23.

THE BOTTLES OF HEAVEN." Who can number the clouds in wisdom, or who can stay the bottles of heaven?" Job xxxviii, 87.

The eastern bottle, which has already been described, is used among other purposes for holding and carrying water. As water is poured from an inverted bottle, so when "the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth." On this account, and perhaps also from some real or fancied resemblance in appearance, Job speaks of them as "the bottles of heaven," and by a kind of double allusion to their pouring out water, and their being inverted by the hand when doing so, he asks, Who can stay them?" or, as it is in the original, "cause them to lie down?"

THE POTTER AND THE CLAY.-" We are the clay, and thou our potter." Isa. lxiv, 8.

During the siege of Barcelona by the Spaniards and English, in the war of the succession, in 1705, an affecting incident occurred, which is thus related by Captain Carleton, in his memoirs: "I remember I saw an old officer, having his only son with him, a fine man about twenty years of age, going into the tent to dine. While they were at dinner, a shot from the bastion of St. Antonio took off the head of his son. The father immedi

ately rose up, first looking down upon his headless child, and then lifting up his eyes to heaven, while the tears ran down his cheeks, only said, 'Thy will be done.'"

BAD PICTURES, BAD BOOKS, AND BAD COMPANY.-Sir Peter Lely made it a rule never to look at a bad picture, having found, by experience, that, whenever he did so, his pencil took a tint from it. "Apply this," adds Bishop Horne, "to bad books and bad company."

PHASES OF ANTITHEISTIC INFIDELITY.

BY THE EDITOR.

SHARON TURNER, one of the great champions of religious truth, justly remarked, "Infidelity is one of the characteristics of the human mind, which, from the days of paradise to our own, has never left it; and till our knowledge is greatly multiplied, will, perhaps, not be universally extinguished, because it is the champion of matter against mind, of body against spirit, of the senses against the reason, of passion against duty, of self interest against self-government, of dissatisfaction against content, of the present against the future, of the little that is known against all that is unknown, of our limited experience against boundless probability." Here then we have the origin and principle of infidelity; nor can it be a matter of surprise that, in some one of its forms, it should be the recurring evil of every age, and that the wise and good are ever called upon to repel its insidious assaults. Its origin is as natural as that of sin itself. The human heart breeds it as the stagnant pool breeds its loathsome reptiles.

Infidelity, however, has not always worn the same garb, nor even always addressed itself to the same principles or passions in human nature. Chameleon like, its hues have been ever changing. It is astonishing with what facility it changes to adapt itself to the new developments of knowledge, taste, and habit. Nor is it even careful to preserve consistency. The infidelity of the present may not only negate revealed religion, but also the infidelity of the past. Of errors in religious faith, it has been well said that, like actors, "they have habiliments to suit the audiences they address, and the parts they have to play. Hence we find the same error at one time in the coarse and scant attire of rude life and feeble intellect; and in another in the silken and flowing robes of culture, philosophy, and genius."

We have used the term "antitheism" to designate one wing of the Satanic phalanx which is warring against God and religion. Atheism is to be "without God." Antitheism is the denial of God. The atheist is simply without God; he may be seeking after him, desiring to find him, feeling after him; yet has he not perceived him; he is filled with doubts whether there be a God, and if so, whether he may be "sought unto." The antitheist, on the other hand, has descended to a deeper depth; his is not professed doubt, the perplexity of uncertainty; with him, as he conceives it, the problem is solved, the question settled; he has ascertained that there is no God, and the denial of his being has become ingrafted as an element in his creed. He does not profess to doubt whether God is, but he assumes to know that he is not.

Some of the phases of this form of infidelity we propose to draw out in this place. Our object will be to show what it is, what are its assumptions and pretensions, rather than to expend any serious force of argument in exposing the baselessness and folly of these assumptions.

One of the first inquiries that springs up in the mind, and one that has awakened the profound interest alike of the sage and the child, relates to the origin of the universe. "Whence came this terraqueous globe, with

its endless tribes of life, and forms of beauty, and unbounded treasures of sea and soil and mine? these awful heavens, stretching far away into the infinite blue, with its blazing suns and stars innumerable, and clouds laden with oceans and coursing with thunderbolts? and this thinking soul within me, which observes, and feels, and reflects, which recollects the past, and trembles at the future-whence came they?" This is the question that comes up and demands solution. You may deny God; but you can not deny the existing universe. You feel its substance; you see its endlessly varying hues; you hear the music of its multitudinous voices; nay, you yourself constitute a part of it. To take refuge in a universal negation, then, is to deny yourself, to abnegate your own

existence.

Antitheism has always felt the pressure of this question, and found itself compelled to utter a response. The problem is, to exclude a God from the universe, and yet account for its origin and phenomena. What we propose to show in this paper is, how antitheists have attempted the solution of this problem.

I. The first proposition of antitheism denies the agency of mind, intellectual intelligence in the creation of the universe, or the collocation of its facts. This necessarily results from the materialism of antitheism. They who deny God, deny also the being of any spiritual nature. The inevitable downward force of the prime element of their creed necessitates this. With them the phenomena we call mind, intellect, spirit, is only a manifestation of material causes. With them matter and its phenomena comprise every thing-all being, all action, all thought. There is nothing above nor beyond this.

The negation of God, then, is also the negation of any intelligent cause of the existence and order of things.

Hobbes declares that he "could not understand what an uncorporeal God could be." So much for the negation of antitheism. It is a universal negation of all spirit, mind, or intellect-using the terms in their ordinary aeceptation. To show that we have not over-stated this, let us quote the language of Mr. Hume. He says, "Thought, design, intelligence, such as we discover in men and other animals, is no more than one of the springs and principles of the universe, as well as heat or cold, attraction or repulsion, and a hundred others which fall under our observation."

This negation had its ignoble birth among Grecian speculatists of unenviable fame; it was cradled by the revolutionists of France; and has acquired bad eminence in the great work of Auguste Compte--a system which "records the dread sentiment, that the universe displays no proofs of an all-directing mind, and records it too as the deduction of unbiased reason." But the exclusion of an intelligent Cause, and, indeed, the negation of all intellect, still leaves, strange to tell, the universe a veritable existence, whose origin and the collocation of whose parts still demands solution.

II. Antitheists assume the eternity of the material universe. Having denied the existence of a supreme Being, who antedated the existence of matter, and was its first cause, they were shut up to the dilemma of either

* Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion.

So much then gained. The antitheist admits the eter nity of something. Whether it indicates greater credulity to believe in eternal matter, than in an eternal God, let ɛensible minds judge. Gibbon said keenly of Lucretius, "He proves a Deity in spite of himself." Is not this true of every antitheist, when he invests the material universe with the attribute of eternity? Must not that which is essentially eternal be God? "To believe in an eternal existence is to believe in absoluteness, self-existence, independency, omnipotence"-and where these attributes are found, there the antitheist finds "a Deity in spite of himself!"

III. Having assumed the non-existence of spirit and the eternity of matter, the next problem for the antitheist is the collocation of the material universe. How was this mighty frame-work of the universe erected? Whence these minute, and varied, and numberless collocationsshaping innumerable and subtile agencies to specific ends, exhibiting harmonies as numberless and striking as they are complete, and displaying a skill and delicacy of workmanship no human art or ingenuity can equal? Whence all this? This question seems ever to have been the stumbling-block of the antitheist. He could deny God, for he was unseen. But the actual universe he could not deny without an abnegation of himself. Compelled to admit its existence, he found himself necessitated to attempt the solution of its origin. Let us sec how antitheism has succeeded in this.

1. One class assumes that the course of nature has always been what we now see it. Nature has ever been what it is now. The generations of plants and animals, and of men, have eternally succeeded each other as we now behold them. Individuals of the race-whether plants, or beasts, or men-are mortal; but the race is immortal. It never had a beginning; it will never have an end. Lucanus, Zenophanes, and other ancient philosophers are represented as maintaining this hypothesis. Even Aristotle at one period is said to have embraced it. Among later antitheists, it is rarely advocated. The cosmological revelations of geology-contain its refutation; and all the traditions of the race contradict it. Indeed, the very intuitions of the soul reject such an assumption; for after the sophist has exhausted all his logic to prove an eternal series-one that was without beginning, and shall be without end-the certainty of a beginning and the liability of an end to a series, each link of which is finite and failable, is a distinct and emphatic perception. Admit the antitheists' eternal series, and what follows? Why, you have an infinite and independent race, composed of finite and dependent individuals; you have an infinite and independent chain composed of finite and dependent links. If that be philosophy, what is folly?

2. The second class assume that the eternal matter which constitutes the basis of the universe, is composed of ultimate atoms, and that the collocation of these atoms in the universe as we now find it, is purely casual or fortuitous.

The antitheist who adopts the theory of an eternal series, has not only the gross material, but also the mechanism of the universe already provided to his hand. He holds himself under no obligation to account for the

origin of either; in fact, he ignores the question of origin altogether. But he who claims eternity for matter onlythe gross material of the universe-but not for the mechanism of the universe, is bound to account for that mechanism. If it was not eternal, how has it sprung into existence? If this mechanism had a beginning, how did it begin? If the antitheist admits that this mechanism was the development of any plan, contrivance, or design, he is at once landed upon theism. For plan, contrivance, design, imply a planner, a contriver, a designer; and he who had wisdom to contrive, and skill and power to execute the mechanism of the universe, must be God. What then is left to him? Simply the denial of any plan or contrivance, and the assumption of chance, or his fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

Upon this antitheism fell at a very early date. "Upward of twenty-two centuries ago there was born at Abdera, in Iona, one who in very early life developed both a craving and a capacity for philosophic research. He expended his property, traversed many countries, and devoted his time and powers in search of wisdom. He gathered fruits from the tree of knowledge as it grew in various climes. He was regarded as an intellectual prodigy by his countrymen; they honored him both for his wisdom and his worth. For him popularity had no charms. What little souls have ever courted, he despised; his spirit rose superior to the empty hosannas of the thoughtless crowd; and hence, into lonely caverns he retired to prosecute his studies, and to wrestle with the awful problems of being. The cosmological hypothesis of Democritus-for that was his name was something of this sort. The original and eternal condition of the universe was that of distinct and invisible ATOMS. You have seen the beams of light streaming through the keyhole of a darkened room, and myriads of dusty particles dancing in the illumined roll of air. This universe, with its suns and systems, was at first in a state similar to that of those dusty particles; it was floating in dusty corpuscles through immeasurable space. These atoms, however, through eternal ages, have ever moved in parallel lines. There was no collision between them; each kept a respectful distance from its neighbor. At length, however, by pure chance, these atoms, in their gyrations, came in contact and got entangled; and now commenced a prodigious confusion. There is a battling of atoms; they strike and repel each other, and repel and strike again. It is the dark and stormy night of chaos now. In process of time, however, after innumerable evolutions and convolutions, in which they assume all imaginable shapes and combinations, by a happy contingency, they strike into this magnificent universe, with its countless forms of life and beauty."

It will be well for us to pause here, and consider what this work is, which antitheism ascribes to chance or to the fortuitous concurrence of atoms. That work is no less than the organization of the universe. It says that the vast machinery of worlds, astonishing in their bulk, inconceivable in their distances, and yet all blended into one sublime and harmonious plan, occurred by chance, and is without design or object. It looks abroad upon the earth, its soils, minerals, and plants-the air that surrounds it, the sea that laves the shores of its continent-the phenomena of its winds and tides, its dews and rains, its days and nights, summers and winters-its adaptation to the production and support of vegetable and animal existence, exhibiting the highest order of intelligence and wise and provident adaptation; and yet

regards the whole as the work of chance, and not of a designing Mind. Also the innumerable host of living creatures in the air, the earth, and the sea-each "possessing the most wonderful adaptation of parts, and properties, and instincts, to their peculiar mode of living"it asserts all this to be the production of chance. But still more, man—with his body curiously and wonderfully formed-possessing and exhibiting the most surprising mental phenomena, "the power of consciousness, memory, imagination; the capability of soaring in thought above nature and beyond time"-is only the wonder of accidents, the moral as well as physical enigma of the universe.

Thus the exhibition of an intelligence more profound than man can conceive, a mechanism more glorious than the highest master-piece of his skill, is stripped of all its significance. And then we are coolly told "that though it might well seem strange, that matter fortuitously moved, should, at the very first jump, fall into such a regular frame as this is-having so many aptitudes for uses, so many correspondences between several things, and such an agreeing harmony in the whole; yet ought it not to seem a jot strange, if atoms-by motion, making all possible combinations and contextures, and trying all manner of conclusions and experiments-should, after innumerable other freaks, and discongruous forms produced, in length of time, should fall into such a system as this is." But after we have admitted all this, the grand difficulty will still remain. Where did these atoms come from, and how did they originate? And especially what is the power that originally produced these motions and contortions spoken of? were the particles selfmoved? Did they try experiments on their own hook? How can infidelity answer?

Every instinct of our understanding revolts at so shameless an assumption. I look abroad upon the face of nature and inquire, Has chance, indeed, arched these heavens, and did it appoint to the fixed stars their places, and to the planets their orbits? Did chance form and fashion this mighty globe-giving to the landscape its beauty, and to ocean its grandeur? Was it chance that meted out their nice proportions to the land, and sea, and air? Was it chance that formed, with exquisite skill, the nicely-wrought structures of the animal crea tion, and endowed them with the highest attributes of life? Was it chance that adapted the physical organization and form of the fish to the sea, of the fowls to the air, and of the animals to the earth? Was it chance that modeled the eye, and adapted its structure, in the different animals, to the different elements and habits of each? And above all, was it chance that gave to man his exalted capabilities of thought, and of intellectual action-filling his soul with aspirations high as heaven, and hopes lasting as eternity? Is it possible for a rational being to come to such a conclusion as this?

"O, lives there, Heaven! beneath thy dread expanse,
One hapless, dark idolater of chance!
Content to feed with pleasures unrefined
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind!

And when the gun's tremendous flash is o'er,
To night and silence sink for evermore!"

I was about to appeal to you, what would be the decision of an intelligent and unprejudiced mind, though unenlightened by revelation, upon this subject? But the response is already given. "Can I but be astonished," says Cicero, the ancient Roman orator, "that there are those who persuade themselves that certain solid and individual particles should be borne together by force and gravity; and that this exquisitely wrought and most beautiful world should be formed by a fortuitous concourse of these particles? I can not understand why he who thinks this could be done, should not suppose that an immeasurable number of letters thrown carelessly upon the earth, might form the annals of Ennius, so that they could be read? I doubt, indeed, whether chance would be able to form as much as one intelligible verse. How then can these men assert that the world was formed from the headlong and fortuitous rushing together of atoms, which of themselves possess no lifegiving quality or intelligence? If this concurrence of atoms is able to form a world, why not a portico, a temple, a house, or a city?" Wisely and nobly said! How wide the contrast between the mind and views of this noble heathen, and those groveling wayward spirits that exclude the agency of God from the universe, and find therein "vestiges of creation" in a theory so incongruous and absurd!

An earnest writer-Dr. M'Culloh, 1 believe-remonstrates against this absurd assumption in the most pungent terms. "I know of no vagary in the whole history of mental absurdity equal to that which refers the complicated, orderly, and stupendous mechanism of nature to chance. I am traveling through the streets of a great city, where splendid architecture every-where meets my eye, and I am told all the structures and the streets arose by chance; or, I am standing in a magnificent gallery of art, where I am enchanted with the genius that breathes in the marble and radiates from the canvas, and I am told that each statue was formed, and each picture drawn and colored by chance. Or, yet again, Paradise Lost' is in my hand, and I am entranced with the eternal visions mirrored to my fancy; and I am told that the various letters which composet he lofty poem, entered into the various words, sentences, and paragraphs, by chance. What should I say to the man who would thus speak to me, either in the city, or in the gallery, or with that immortal volume in my hand? why should I not brand him either as a contemptible jester, a brainless madman, or some insolent dolt who sought to insult my reason? Yet what is that city to the architecture of the universe! what that hall of art to the blooming landscape and the brilliant spheres! what that poem to those realms of imagination into which every flower introduces me, and that spirit of poetry which haunts the world, and sets the elements to music! Verily I would sooner believe that chance built Rome than that it constructed an insect's eye."

The process by which men and animals are formed, according to this theory, is worthy of our attention.

They tell us that "this earth at first brought forth divers monstrous and irregular shapes of animals-some without feet, some without hands, some without a mouth or face, and some wanting fit nerves and muscles for the

* Homilist, vol. II, p. 20.