NATURAL RELIGION VERSUS REVEALED RELIGION.
ONE is almost ashamed to repeat so trite an aphorism as the well-worn saying that "history repeats itself." But in studying the course taken by the advocates of what is called "revealed religion," in seeing their disdain of "mere nature," their scornful repudiation of the idea that any poor natural product can come into competition with their special article, hall-stamped by heaven itself, I feel irresistibly compelled to glance backwards down the long vista of history, and there I see the conflict of the present day raging fierce and long. I see the same serried ranks of orthodoxy marshalled by bishops and priests, arrayed in all the splendour of prescriptive right, armed with mighty weapons of authority and thunderbolts of Church anathemas. Their war-cry is the same as that which rings in our ears to-day; "revelation" is inscribed on their banners and "infallible authority" is the watchword of their camp. The Church is facing nature for the first time, and is setting her revealed science against natural science. "Mere Nature" is temporarily getting the worst of it, and Galileo, Nature's champion, is sorely pressed by "revealed truth." I hear scornful taunts at his presumption in attacking revealed science by his pretended natural facts. Had they not God's Own account of His creation, and did he pretend to know more about the matter than God Himself? Was he present when God created the world, that he spoke so positively about its shape? Could he declare, of his own personal knowledge, that it was sent hurtling through space in the ridiculous manner he talked about, and could he, by the evidence of his own eye-sight, declare that God was mistaken when He revealed to man how He "laid the foundation of the earth that it never should move at anytime?" But if he was only reasoning from the wee bit of earth he knew, was he not speaking of things he had not seen, being vainly puffed-up in his fleshly mind? Was it probable, _à priori_, that God would allow mankind to be deceived for thousands of years on so important a matter; would in fact--God forgive it!--deceive man Himself by revealing through His holy prophets an account of His creation which was utterly untrue; nay, further, would carry on the delusion for century after century, by working miracles in support of it--for what but a miracle could make men unconscious of the fact that they were being hurried through space at so tremendous a rate? Surely very little reverence, or rather no reverence at all, was needed to allow that God the Holy Ghost, who inspired the Bible, knew better than we did how He made the world. But, the theologian proceeds, he must remind his audience that, under the specious pretext of investigating the creation, this man, this pseudo-scientist, was in reality blaspheming the Creator, by contradicting His revealed word, and thus "making Him a liar." It was all very well to talk about _natural_ science; but he would ask this presuming speculator, what was the use of God revealing science to us if man's natural faculties were sufficient to discover it for himself? They had sufficient proofs of the absurdities of science into which reason, unenlightened by revelation, had betrayed men in past ages. The idea of the Hindoo, that the world rested on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise, was a sad proof of the incapacity of the acutest natural intellect to discover scientific truth without the aid of revelation. Reason had its place, and a very noble placer in science; but it must always bow before revelation, and not presume to set its puny guesses against a "thus sayeth the Lord." Let reason, then, pursue its way with belief not unbelief, for its guide. What could reason, with all its vaunted powers, tell us of the long-past creation of the world? Eye hath not seen those things of ages past, but God hath revealed them to us by His Spirit. A darkness that might be felt would enshroud the origin of the world were it not for the magnificent revelation of Moses, that "in six days God created the heaven and the earth." He might urge how our conceptions of God were enlarged and elevated, and what a deep awe filled the adoring heart on contemplating the revealed truth, that this wonderful earth with its varied beauty, and the heavens above with their countless stars, were all called forth out of nothing within the space of one short week by the creative fiat of the Almighty.