God gets written in our soul, complete Beauty drives out partial ugliness, and perfect Love casts out all partial fear. II. OF PRACTICAL ATHEISM, REGARDED AS A PRINCIPLE OF ETHICS. INCREASE OUR FAITH.-LUKE XVII. 5. LAST Sunday I said something of Speculative Atheism, that is, of atheism considered as a theory of the universe; with some of the effects on the feelings, and the views of Nature, and individual and general human life, which come thereof. To-day I ask your attention to a sermon of Practical Atheism; that is to say, of Atheism, considered as the Principle of practical Ethics. If a man starts with the idea that there is a body and no soul, an earth without a heaven, and a world without a God, that idea needs must become a principle of practice, and as such it will have a quite powerful effect on the man's active character; it will come at length to be the controlling principle of his life. For as in human nature the religious is the foundation-element of man, as I showed the other day, so any misarrangement in that quarter presently appears at the end of the hands, and affects the whole life of man. Speculative Atheism will not be fully reduced to practice all at once, but in the long run it will assuredly produce certain peculiar results; just as certainly as any seed you plant in the ground will bear fruit after its own kind, and not after another kind. You and I are not very consistent, it may be, and we therefore allow something to come between our first principle and the conclusion which would follow from it; but the Human Race is exceeding logical, and carries out every principle into practice, making its earnest thoughts into very serious things: only the idea is not carried out at once, but in -a mother that devours her young. No voice cries thence to comfort me; it is a force, but nothing more. Its history tells of tumult, confusion, and continual change; it prophesies no future peace, tells of no plan in the confusion. I look up to the sky, there looks not back again a kind Providence, to smile upon me with a thousand starry eyes, and bless me with the sun's ambrosial light. In the storms a vengeful violence, with its lightning sword, stabs into darkness, seeking for murtherable men. There is no Providence, only capricious, senseless Fate. Here is the marble of human nature, the atheist would pile it up into palace or common dwelling; but there is only the fleeting sand to build upon, which the rains wash away, or the winds blow off; nowhere is there eternal Rock to hold his building up. No, he has not daily bread, nothing to satisfy the hunger of his mind, his conscience, and his heart, the famine of his soul, only the cold, thin atmosphere of fancy. Does he believe in immortality, it is an immortality of fear, of doubt, of dread. Experience tells him of the history of mankind, a sad history it seems,—a record of war and want, of oppression and servility. He sees that pride elbows misery into the kennel and is honoured for the merciless act, that tyrants tread the nations underfoot, while some patriot pines to oblivion and death; he sees no prophecy of better things. How can he in an earth without a heaven, in a soul without a body, a world without a God? Atheism sits down on the shore of Time; the stream of Human History rolls by, bearing successively, as bubbles on its bosom, the Egyptian civilization, and it passes slowly by with its myriads of millions, and that bubble breaks; the Hebrew, Chaldean, Persian, Grecian, Roman, Christian civilization, and they pass by as other bubbles, with their many myriads of millions multiplied by myriads of millions. Their sorrows are all ended; they were sorrows for nothing. The tears which furrowed the cheek, the unrequited heroism, the virtue unrewarded,-they have perished, and there is no compensation; because it is a body without a soul, an earth without a heaven, a world without a God. "Does not that content you?" asks our atheist. No man can ever be content with that. Few men ever come to it, "Thanks to the human heart by which we live!" Human nature stops a great way this side of that. I am not a cowardly man; but if I were convinced there was no God, my courage would drop as water, and be no more. I am not an unhopeful man; there are few men who hope so much; I never despair of truth, of justice, of love, and piety; I know man will triumph over matter, the people over tyrants, right over wrong, truth over falsehood, love over hate; I always expect defeat to-day, but I am sure of triumph at the last; and with truth on my side, justice on my side, love on my side, I should not fear to stand in a minority of one, against the whole population of this whole globe of lands: I would bow and say to them,-"I am the stronger; you may glory now, but I shall conquer you at last." Such hope have I for man here and hereafter, that the wickedest of sinners, I trust, God will bring face to face with the best of men, his sins wiped clean off, and together they shall sit down at the table of the Lord, in the Kingdom of God. But take away my consciousness of God, and I have no hope; none for myself, none for you, none for mankind. If no Mind in the universe were greater than Humboldt's, no ruler wiser than presidents, and kings, and senates, and congresses, if there were no appeal from the statutes of men to the Laws of God, from present misery to future eternal triumph, on earth, or in Heaven,-then I should have no hope. But I know that the universe is insured at the office of the Infinite God, and no particle of matter, no particle of mind shall ever suffer ultimate shipwreck in this vast voyage of mortal and immortal life. I am not a sad man. Spite of the experience of life, somewhat bitter, I am a cheerful, and a joyous, and a happy man. But take away my consciousness of God; let me believe there is no Infinite God; no infinite Mind which thought the world into existence, and thinks it into continuance; no infinite Conscience which everlastingly enacts the Eternal Laws of the Universe; no infinite Affection which loves the world; loves Abel and Cain,-loves the drunkard's wife and the drunkard; the Mayors and Aldermen who made the drunkard; which loves the victim of the tyrant, and loves the tyrant; loves thể slave and his master; loves the murdered and the murderer, the fugitive and the kidnapper,-publicly griping his price of blood, the third part of Iscariot's pay, and then secretly taking his anonymous revenge, stealthily calumniating some friend of humanity; convince me that there is no God who watches over the nation, but "forsaken Israel wanders lone;" that the sad people of Europe, Africa, America, have no guardian,-then I should be sadder than Egyptian night! My life would be only a shadow of a dimple on the bottom of a little brook,-whirling and passing away; all the joy I have in the daily business of the world, in literature and science and art, in the friendships and wide philanthropies of the time, would perish at once,-borne down in the rush of waters and lost in their headlong noise.. Yes, I should die in uncontrollable anguish and despair. A realizing sense of atheism, a realizing sense of the consequences of atheism,-that would separate our nature, and we should give up the ghost; and the elements of the body would go back to the elements of the earth. But God be thanked!—the foundation of religion is too deep within us. There is a great cry through all creation for the Living God. Thanks to Him, the evidence of God has been ploughed into Nature so deeply, and so deeply woven into the texture of the human soul, that very few men call themselves atheists in this sense. No man ever willingly came to this conclusion: no man; no, not one! Those men, who have arrived at this conclusion,-we should cast no scorn at them; we should give them our sympathy; a friendly heart, and the most affectionate and tender treatment of their soul. Religion is natural to man. Instinctively we turn to God, reverence Him, and rely on Him. And when Reason becomes powerful, when all the spiritual faculties get enlarged, and we know how to see the true, to will the just, to love the beautiful, and to live the holy,-then our idea of God rises higher and higher, as the child's voice changes from the baby's treble pipe to the dignity of manly speech. Then the feeble, provisional ideas of God which were formed at first, pass by us; the true idea of God gets written in our soul, complete Beauty drives out partial ugliness, and perfect Love casts out all partial fear. II. OF PRACTICAL ATHEISM, REGARDED AS A PRINCIPLE OF ETHICS. INCREASE OUR FAITH.-LUKE XVII. 5. LAST Sunday I said something of Speculative Atheism, that is, of atheism considered as a theory of the universe; with some of the effects on the feelings, and the views of Nature, and individual and general human life, which come thereof. To-day I ask your attention to a sermon of Practical Atheism; that is to say, of Atheism, considered as the Principle of practical Ethics. If a man starts with the idea that there is a body and no soul, an earth without a heaven, and a world without a God, that idea needs must become a principle of practice, and as such it will have a quite powerful effect on the man's active character; it will come at length to be the controlling principle of his life. For as in human nature the religious is the foundation-element of man, as I showed the other day, so any misarrangement in that quarter presently appears at the end of the hands, and affects the whole life of man. Speculative Atheism will not be fully reduced to practice all at once, but in the long run it will assuredly produce certain peculiar results; just as certainly as any seed you plant in the ground will bear fruit after its own. kind, and not after another kind. You and I are not very consistent, it may be, and we therefore allow something to come between our first principle and the conclusion which would follow from it; but the Human Race is exceeding logical, and carries out every principle into practice, making its earnest thoughts into very serious things only the idea is not carried out at once, but in |