ISTHERE ° = A GOD? By
Rev. Thos. Whitelaw, M. A., D. D. Kilmarnock, Scotland
HETHER or not there is a ■supreme personal intelligence, infinite and eternal, omnipo tent, omniscient and omni present, the Creator, upholder
hardly do to pass by this bold and confix dent negation by simply saying that the theoretical atheist is an altogether excep tional specimen o f humanity, aijd that his audacious utterance is as much the out come o f ignorance as o f impiety. When one meets in the “ Hibbert Journal” from the pen o f its editor such a statement as this: “ Society abounds with earnest and educated persons who have lost faith in a living personal God, and see their fellows and foresee themselves passing out o f life entirely without hope,” and when Blatch- ford in the English “ Clarion” writes: “There is no Heavenly Father watching tenderly over us, His creatures, He is the baseless shadow o f a wistful dream,” it becomes apparent that theoretical atheism is not extinct, even in cultured circles, and that some observations with .regard to it may still be needful. Let these observa tions be the following: 1. Belief that there is no God does not amount to a demonstration that no God is. Neither, it is true, does belief that God is prove the truth o f the proposition except to the individual in whose heart that belief has been awakened by the Divine Spirit. T o another than him it is destitute o f weight as an argument in support o f the theistic position. At the same time it is o f importance, while conceding this, to
and ruler o f the universe, immanent in and yet transcending all things, gracious and merciful, the Father and Redeemer o f mankind, is surely the profoundest pro blem that pan agitate the human mind. Lying as it does at the foundation o f all man’s religious' beliefs—as to responsi bility and duty, sin and salvation, immor tality and future blessedness, as to the possibility o f a revelation, o f an incarna tion, of a resurrection, as to the value of prayer, the credibility o f miracle, the real ity o f providence—with the reply given to it are bound up not alone the temporal and eternal happiness o f the individual, but also the Welfare and progress o f the race. Nevertheless, to it have been returned the most varied responses. The Atheist, for example, asserts that there is no God. The" Agnostic professes that he cannot tell whether there is a God or not. The Materialist boasts that he does not need a God, that he can run the universe without one. The (Bible) Fool wishes there was no God. The Christian answers that he cannot do without a God. I. The Answer of the Atheist "There is no God."—In these days it will
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