CHAPTER I.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

THE value of our existence depends upon the existence of God. Unless there is a Being of infinite power and goodness on the throne of the universe, to sustain and bless us, we are mere shadows flitting by accident across the earth, and quickly vanishing away to nothing. Is there a God? How full of solemn and awful interest is this inquiry! The philosophical proof of the existence of God depends upon the validity of the axiom that every effect must have a cause. This axiom is an intuitive truth. It is as evident to a rational mind, without any process of reasoning, that an effect cannot take place without an adequate cause, as that the whole of a thing is more than half of it, or that equals added to equals make equal sums. It is the foundation of all the demonstrations of Bacon and of Newton in the moral and the natural world. It is also proved by our experience. Whether we direct our attention within or without us, we cannot detect a single change that takes place uncaused. All the movements of our minds are clearly referable to their

appropriate causes.

We are conscious that we think, choose, refuse; we hence know that our thinking, choosing, refusing, is not uncaused, but caused or produced by ourselves. So in the world without us. We see changes continually going on in the material creation, and see that none of them come uncaused. So confirmed is this fact by the universal experience of mankind, that it has become an acknowledged principle in natural science, to which no exception has ever been known, that a body placed in any position will continue in that position forever, and that a body put in motion in any direction will continue in motion in that direction forever, unless some change be produced upon it by an extrinsic cause. Moreover, all mankind have ever acknowledged in fact, if not in words, the infallibility of this connection of cause and effect. Every rational man regulates his conduct on the assumption that results never come uncaused. Even the man who affects to deny the connection in question, is compelled to act just as though he believed it. And there is no hazard in the assertion that not an individual could subsist in life a single hour, without practically acknowledging it. It is then as certain as our existence, that every effect is produced by an adequate cause.

Come we now to examine some of the proofs, founded on this relation of cause and effect, of the existence of God. They are found in creation, the marks of design in creation, and our sense of moral obligation.

I. THE CREATION. All changes are effects. Hence the whole created universe is a storehouse of effects,

for it is replete with perpetual changes. Nothing is at rest. Throughout the three great kingdoms of nature, that of inert matter, that of vegetable life, and that of animal life, there is ceaseless activity. From the minutest atom that floats in the air, to the mightiest sphere that rolls in the skies; from the humblest plant, that springs up and dies in a season, to the forest oak, whose rise and decay demand the lapse of ages; from the growth and dissolution of the ephemeral insect's body, to that of him whose years are three score and ten ;—the entire history of all these, is but a history of ceaseless changes. Now as all changes or effects are caused, there is no accounting philosophically for these facts, but by admitting that there is an infinite and eternal Cause. This great first Cause, so termed in the language of philosophy-the Creator of all things, himself uncreated; the primary and efficient Author of all changes, himself unchanging—is in the language of religion, termed GOD. This is that ETERNAL LIFE, before all time and all worlds, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not any thing made that was made.

This is the only rational solution of the problem respecting the things that be; for there are but two possible alternatives. We must suppose that all effects are produced by causes which are themselves effects of antecedent causes, and they again the effects of causes preceding them, and so on ad infinitum; which is only removing the difficulty farther back, and not meeting it :-For after the mind has thus ascended through millions of alternate causes and effects, till

imagination is bewildered and lost in the ages of past eternity, as to solving the problem, it is exactly where it commenced; it has not made an atom of progress. Or we must admit that there is a great first Cause, which is in no sense an effect, but transcendent, selfexistent, eternal, originating and sustaining all subordinate and dependent causes, and all the laws and movements of the universe.

If it be said that it is impossible for us to comprehend an eternal cause, so it is equally impossible for us to comprehend an eternal series of causes and effects. A finite being cannot of course comprehend what is infinite; the less cannot comprehend the greater. But in either case, eternal existence of some kind must be supposed, which is to a finite mind of necessity incomprehensible; and in the one case we do philosophically account for all effects in the universe, while in the other we do not. The believer does not profess to comprehend the existence of God. He sees at once, that from the very nature of God this must be impossible. But by freely admitting his existence, he does account philosophically for the universe, with all its multiform and glorious operations; while the unbeliever, by denying the existence of God on the ground of his incomprehensibility, accounts for nothing, and is after all compelled to admit that in his place which is equally incomprehensible.

We are thus under a necessity, from which escape is impossible, of either allowing the existence of an eternal Cause, or of denying the first axiom of all science, and asserting that effects take place uncaused.

But perhaps it may be said that this argument only proves the existence or an eternal cause, without proving that this cause is an intelligent Being. Let us then proceed to the next point, where the intelligence in question will more distinctly appear.

By

II. THE EVIDENCES OF DESIGN IN CREATION. these we mean the evidences which objects afford, that they were contrived and intended to accomplish a useful end. Reasoning from effects to causes, objects designed prove the existence of a designer. It is thus that we prove the existence and powers of the human intellect; and in precisely the same way do we prove the intelligence of God.

Let us here refer to a single instance the eye. That the eye was designed, by that Cause which made it, for the purpose of seeing, no reasonable mind can doubt. It is constructed on the philosophical principles of the telescope, and is a perfect specimen of mechanical contrivance. The rays of light received into the iris, passing through the chrystaline humor, gathered to a focal point, and diverging thence and painting an inverted image of the object emitting the rays on the optic nerve in the retina, are subjected to precisely the same process as in our best constructed telescopes. And there is, in reasoning from effects to causes, the very same evidence that the eye was designed and made for the purpose of viewing material objects for maintaining intercourse between the kingdoms of mind and matter-that there is that a telescope was designed and made for this purpose. And it were no less ridiculous for a man, on seeing a nicely con