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THE KING’ S BUSINESS
V . The Declaration of the Christian “I cannot do without a God, without a God I can neither account for the universe around me, nor explain Jesus Christ above me, nor understand the spiritual exper iences within me." 1. Without a God the material universe around the Christian is and remains a per plexing enigma. When he surveys that portion o f the universe which lies open to his gaze, he sees marks o f wisdom, power and goodness that irresistibly suggest the idea o f a God. When he looks upon the stellar firmament with its innumerable orbs, and considers their disposition and order, their balancing and circling, he instinctively argues that these shining suns and systems must have been created, arranged and upheld by a Divine Mind. When, restricting his attention to the earth on which he stands, he notes the indica tions o f design or o f adaptation o f means to end which are everywhere visible,- as witnessed, for example, in the constancy o f nature’s laws and forces, in the end less variety o f nature’s forms, inanimate and animate, as well as in their wonderful gradation not only in their kinds but also in the times o f their appearing, and in the marvelous adjustment o f organs to envi ronment, he feels constrained to reason that these things are not the result o f chance which is blind or the spontaneous output o f matter, which in itself, so far as known to him, is powerless, lifeless and unintel ligent, but can only be the handiwork o f a Creative Mind. When further he reflects that in the whole found o f human exper ience, effects have never been known to -be produced without causes; that designs have never been known to be conceived or worked out without designers and arti ficers ; that dead matter has never been known to spring into life either spontane ously or by the application o f means; that one kind o f life has never been known to transmute itself spontaneously or to be transmuted artificially into another, neither a vegetable into an animal, nor an animal into a man; and when lastly, accepting the
guidance o f science, he perceives that in the upward ascent or evolution o f nature dead matter was, after an interval, per haps o f millions o f years, followed by vegetable life, and this again by animal existence, and this by man precisely as Scripture asserts, he once more feels him self shut up to the conclusion that the whole cosmos must be the production of mind, even o f a Supreme Intelligence infinitely powerful, wise and good. Like the Hebrew psalmist he feels impelled to say, “ O Lord! how manifold are Thy works: in wisdom hast Thou made them all r Should the philosopher interject, that this argument does not necessarily require an Infinite Intelligence but only an artificer capable o f Constructing such a universe as the present, the answer is that if such an artificer,existed he himself would require to be accounted for, since beings that are finite must have begun to be, and there fore must have been caused. Accordingly this artificer must have been preceded by another greater than himself, and that by another still greater, and so on travelling backwards forever. Hence it was argued by Kant that pure reason could not demonstrate the exist ence o f God, but only o f a competent demiurge or world-builder. But this rea soning is fallacious. The human mind can not rest in an endless succession o f effects without a First Cause, like a chain depend ing from nothing. Kant himself seemed to recognize the unsatisfactory character of his logic, since, after casting out God from the universe as Creator, he sought to bring Him in again as Supreme Moral Governor. But if man’s moral nature cannot be explained without a Supreme Moral Law giver, on what principle can it be rea soned that man’s intellectual nature demands less than a Supreme Intelligence? 2. Without a God the Christian cannot explain to himself the Person o f Jesus. Leaving out o f view what the Gospels report about His virgin birth (though we do not regard the narratives as unhistorical or the fact recorded as incredible), and fixing
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