Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith | Page 5

Prophecies, Thos. Newton, D. D.
An Introduction to the Critical Study of the Scriptures, T. H. Horne, Vol. I.
The Evidences of Christianity, Charles Petit McIlvaine, D. D.
Rawlinson's Historical Evidences.
Modern Skepticism, by Joseph Barker.
Haley's Discrepancies of the Bible, W. G. Holmes, Chicago.
The Superhuman Origin of the Bible, Rogers.
Christianity and Positivism, McCosh.
The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural, McCosh.
Aids to Faith, Appleton & Co.
Modern Skepticism, Randolph & Son.
Modern Doubt, Christlieb.
Alexander's Evidences of Christianity.
CHAPTER I.
DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?
Understand, ye brutish among the people; And, ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not correct? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?--PSALM xciv. 8, 9.
Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not? Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a lie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Whereas, say they, "We know that matter is eternal, and the world is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earth are eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator."
But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we do not know any such thing, and must be allowed to ask, How do you know? As you are not eternal, we can not take it on your word.
The only reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as much as you please, but you can not destroy the substance of anything. Wherefore, as matter is indestructible, it must be eternal."
Profound reasoning! Here is a brick fresh from the kiln. It will last for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousand years past!
The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It is not agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturally indestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them can tell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake to say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child should try to beat the cylinder of a steam engine to pieces, and, failing in the attempt, should say, "I am sure this cylinder existed from eternity, because I am unable to destroy it."
But not only is the assertion of the eternity of matter unproven, and impossible to be proved, it is capable of the most demonstrable refutation, by one of the recent discoveries of science. The principle of the argument is so plain that a child of four years old can understand it. It is simply this, that all substances in heaven and earth are compounded of several elements; but no compound can be eternal.
We say to our would-be philosophers, When you tell us that matter is eternal, how does that account for the formation of this world? What is this matter you speak of? This world consists not of a philosophical abstraction called matter, nor yet of one substance known by that name, but of a great variety of material substances, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulphur, iron, aluminum, and some fifty others already discovered.[2] Now, which of these is the eterna-matter you speak of? Is it iron, or sulphur, or clay, or oxygen? If it is any one of them, where did the others come from? Did a mass of iron, becoming discontented with its gravity, suddenly metamorphose itself into a cloud of gas, or into a pail of water? Or are they all eternal? Have