Westminster Sermons | Page 5

the facts of History prove it--that as it is among the races of plants and animals, so it has been unto this day among the races of men.
The natural Theology of the future must take count of these tremendous and even painful facts. She may take count of them. For Scripture has taken count of them already. It talks continually--it has been blamed for talking so much--of races; of families; of their wars, their struggles, their exterminations; of races favoured, of races rejected; of remnants being saved, to continue the race; of hereditary tendencies, hereditary excellencies, hereditary guilt. Its sense of the reality and importance of descent is so intense, that it speaks of a whole tribe or a whole family by the name of its common ancestor; and the whole nation of the Jews is Israel, to the end. And if I be told this is true of the Old Testament, but not of the New: I must answer,--What? Does not St Paul hold the identity of the whole Jewish race with Israel their forefather, as strongly as any prophet of the Old Testament? And what is the central historic fact, save One, of the New Testament, but the conquest of Jerusalem; the dispersion, all but destruction of a race, not by miracle, but by invasion, because found wanting when weighed in the stern balances of natural and social law?
Think over this. I only suggest the thought: but I do not suggest it in haste. Think over it, by the light which our Lord's parables, His analogies between the physical and social constitution of the world, afford; and consider whether those awful words--fulfilled then, and fulfilled so often since--"The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof," may not be the supreme instance, the most complex development, of a law which runs through all created things, down to the moss which struggles for existence on the rock.
Do I say that this is all? That man is merely a part of nature, the puppet of circumstances and hereditary tendencies? That brute competition is the one law of his life? That he is doomed for ever to be the slave of his own needs, enforced by an internecine struggle for existence? God forbid. I believe not only in nature, but in Grace. I believe that this is man's fate only as long as he sows to the flesh, and of the flesh reaps corruption. I believe that if he will
Strive upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die;
if he will be even as wise as the social animals; as the ant and the bee, who have risen, if not to the virtue of all-embracing charity, at least to the virtues of self-sacrifice and patriotism: then he will rise towards a higher sphere; towards that kingdom of God of which it is written--"He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him."
Whether that be matter of natural Theology, I cannot tell as yet. But as for all the former questions; and all that St Paul means when he talks of the law, and how the works of the flesh bring men under the law, stern and terrible and destructive, though holy and just and good,--they are matter of natural Theology; and I believe that here, as elsewhere, Scripture and Science will be ultimately found to coincide.
But here we have to face an objection which you will often hear now from scientific men, and still oftener from non-scientific men; who will say--It matters not to us whether Scripture contradicts or does not contradict a scientific natural Theology; for we hold such a science to be impossible and naught. The old Jews put a God into nature; and therefore of course they could see, as you see, what they had already put there. But we see no God in nature. We do not deny the existence of a God. We merely say that scientific research does not reveal Him to us. We see no marks of design in physical phenomena. What used to be considered as marks of design can be better explained by considering them as the results of evolution according to necessary laws; and you and Scripture make a mere assumption when you ascribe them to the operation of a mind like the human mind.
Now on this point I believe we may answer fearlessly--If you cannot see it, we cannot help you. If the heavens do not declare to you the glory of God, nor the firmament show you His handy-work, then our poor arguments will not show them. "The eye can only see that which it brings with it the power of seeing." We can only reassert that we see design everywhere; and that the