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THE KING’ S BUSINESS
1068 life and force are as to their essence^-all that is understood about them being their properties and effects. Philosophy can expound the laws o f thought, but is baffled to unriddle thè secret o f thought itself, how it is excited in the soul by nerve- movements caused by impressions from without, and how it can express itself by originating counter movements in the body. In ordinary life human beings know each other adequately for all practical purposes while aware that in each are depths which the other cannot fathom, each being shut off from the other by what Prof. Dods calls “the limitations o f personality.” Nor is the case different in religious experience. The Christian, like Paul, may have no diffi culty in saying, “ Christ liveth in me,” but he cannot explain to himself or others, how. Hence the inference must be rejected that because the finite mind cannot fully comprehend the infinite, therefore it can not know the infinite at all, and must remain forever uncertain whether there is a God or not. Scripture, it should be noted, does not say that any finite mind can fully find out God; but it does say that men may know God from the things which He has made, and more especially from the Image o f Himself which has been fur nished in Jesus Christ, so that if they fail to know Him, they are without excuse. 3. It virtually undermines the founda tions of morality. For if one cannot tell whether there is a God or not, how can one be sure that there is any such thing as morality? The distinctions between right and wrong which one makes in the regu lation o f his conduct may be altogether baseless. It is true a struggle may be made to keep them up out o f a prudential regard for future safety, out o f a desire to be on the winning side in case there should be a God. But it is doubtful if the imperative “ ought” would long resound within one’s soul, were the conclusion once reached that no one could tell whether behind the phenomena o f nature or o f consciousness there was a God or not. Morality no more than religion can rest on uncertainties.
III. The Boast of the Materialist "I do not need a God, I can run the universe without one ."—Only grant him to begin with an ocean o f atoms and a force to set them in motion and he will forth with explain the mystery o f creation. If we have what he calls a scientific imagina tion, he will let us see the whole process— the molecules or atoms circling and whirl ing, dancing and skipping, combining and dividing, advancing and retiring, selecting partners and forming groups, closing in their ranks and opening them out .again, building up space-filling masses, growing hotter and hotter as they wheel through space, whirling swifter and swifter, till through sheer velocity they swell and burst, after which they break up into fragments and cool down into a complete planetary system. Inviting us to light upon this globe, the materialist will show us how through long centuries, mounting up to millions o f years, the various rocks which form the earth’s crust were deposited. Nay, if we will dive with him to the bottom o f the ocean he will point out the first speck o f dead mat ter that sprang into life, protoplasm, though he cannot tell when or how. Hav ing startled us with this, he will lead us up the Great Staircase o f Nature with its 26 or 27 steps, and tell us how on this step the vegetable grew into an animal, and how after many more steps the animal became a man, and thus the whole evolutionary drama will be unrolled. Concerning this theory o f the universe, however, it is pertinent to make these remarks: 1. Taken at its full value, with unques-l tioning admission o f the alleged scientific facts on which it is based, it is at best only an inference or working hypothesis, which may or may not be true and which certainly cannot claim to be beyond dispute. 2. So far from securing universal acceptance, it has been repudiated by scientists of the highest repute. “ The Kant-Laplace theory o f the origin o f the
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