1069
THE KING’ S BUSINESS
molecules, formerly supposed to be ulti- mates and indivisible, have now been proved by science to be manufactured and capable o f being analyzed into myriads o f electrons; and* it is hardly supposable that they manufactured themselves. Moreover, one would like to know how these atoms or electrons came to attract and repel one another and form combinations, if there was no original cause behind them and no aim before them? I f even matter be con strued as a form o f energy, or force, the difficulty is not removed, since force in its last analysis is the output o f will and will implies intelligence or conscious person ality. From this conclusion escape is impossi ble, except by assuming that matter and force existed from eternity; in which case they must have contained in themselves the germs o f life and intelligence—in. other w ordi must themselves have been God—- in posse, if not in esse, in potentiality if not in reality. 'But against this pantheisti cal assumption must ever lie the difficulty o f explaining how or why the God that was latent in matter or force was so long in arriving at consciousness in man, and how before man appeared, the latent God being unconscious could have direcfed the evolutionary process which fashioned the cosmos. Till these inquiries are satisfac torily answered, it will not be possible to accept the materialistic solution o f the universe. IV. The Desire of the (Bible) Fool “I wish there was no God.”- —Only a few words, need be given to this rejoinder, as the fool does not say in his intellect, but only in his heart, there is no God. In his case the wish is father to the thought. Secretly persuaded in his mind that there is a God, he would much rather there had been none. It would suit him better. But the fact that he cannot advance to a cate gorical denial o f the Divine Existence is an indirect witness to the innate conviction which the human heart possesses, that there is a .God in whom man lives and moves and has his being.
solar system by the whirling masses o f nebulous matter, till rings flew off and became the worlds we see,” says a German writer, “can no more be defended by any scientist (Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 1905, p. 957). The attempt to explain in this way the origin o f the universe, says Merz, can be described as “belonging to the romance o f science” (European Thought in the 19th Cent., p. 285). Indeed Laplace himself put it forward “with great reserve, and only as a likely suggestion” (ibid., p>285). As regards the derivation o f man >from the lower animals, it is enough' to remember that' the late Prof. Virchow maintained that “we cannot des ignate it as a revelation o f science, that man descends from the ape, or from any other animal” (Nature, Dec. 8, 1877) ; that Prof. Paulsen, speaking o f Haeckel, says “ he belongs already to a dead generation,” and calls his theory o f materialistic evolu tion “an example of incredible frivolity in the treatment o f serious problems” (see Princeton Review, Oct., 1906, p. 446) ; that Prof. Von E. Pfenningsdorf declares “the materialistic explanation o f the world to be untenable” (see Theologische Rund schau, 1905, p. 85) ; that Fleischman in his book, “ Die Desendenz Theorie,” denies evolution altogether; that Dr. Rudolph Otto admits that “popular Darwinism (Darwinisms Vulgaris),” by which he means “that man is really descended from monkeys,” is “theoretically worthless” (Naturalism and Religion, p. 94) ; and that Prof. Pettigrew o f St. Andrew’s Univer sity writes: “There is, it appears to me, no proof that man is directly descended from the ape, and indirectly from the mollusc or monad” (Design in Nature, Vol. Ill, p. 1324). , 3. Conceding all that evolutionists de mand, that from matter and force' the present cosmos has been developed, the question remains, whether this excludes or renders unnecessary the intervention of God as the prime mover in the process. I f it does, one would like to know whence matter and force came. For the atoms or
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker