ATHEISM AS A LOGICAL SYSTEM.

87 "in ethics of confusion in life. I see the influence men "can exert on society, and that life is a calculable process. "But why is it so? There my curiosity is baffled, and my "knowledge ends. In vain I look back, hoping to unravel "the mysterious destiny with which we are all so darkly "bound. That is the channel through which all my con"sciousness seems to pass out into a sea of wonder; and if "ever the orient light of Deity breaks in on me, it will, I "think, come in that direction. The presence of law in "mind, is to me the greatest fact in nature. But no gleam "of explanation ever comes through the churches. All "churches unite to deny the truth, or contradict it. I am "afraid the explanation is in the grave."

No gleam of explanation can ever come through the theologies, because they all assume the immortality of what is perishable; and that is the mind of man. All theists regard the views of the necessarian with alarm and dismay. They make free will their standard, and denounce the doctrine of law in mind as atheistical.

And this, in the very teeth of the Bible they profess to expound, which, as we shall soon see, denies every one of these assumptions.

More especially do we find these traditional doctrines of men denied, both in the teaching and practice of Jesus of Nazareth.

He said, "The Son can do nothing of himself but what "he seeth the Father do." Is that free will? "As I hear, I "judge," said Christ. Is that judging before evidence? Had he, could he, have a mind made up on the subject if he waited to hear before he judged? Again,-"I came not into the world to do my own will; but the will of him that sent me." Is that free will? "The Father sheweth the Son all things "that he himself (the Father) doeth." "This commandment I "received of my Father." "It is meat to me to do the will of "my Father." Is there a shadow of free will in these, or in any of Jesus' sayings? Yet he was a revelation of the absolute and eternal in the man. Now let us study his temptation. He was tempted to exercise his own will, and

work what was contrary to the law, i.e. to make bread from stones for himself without command; not working by obedience, but to prove his power. He puts the rising selfwill down, not once, but many times. Even he, under the special providence or care of the angels of his Father was not at liberty to obey the Satan of free-will. He was not to tempt God; he was to obey. True faith is action, or active obedience; not passive assent to mere traditional belief. Jesus was faithful or obedient even to death. But how did he obey? Not without a struggle, such a struggle as snapped asunder the threads of life.

It was not the cross that killed him. Pilate, a man who knew as well as any living governor what a man could suffer in torture, as well probably as he knew, from boyish experience, the tenacity of life inherent in a cat; this man wondered that Jesus was so soon dead. The truth is, the cross only finished indirectly what was already begun. The contest between Satan or self-will, and the power of death, and the immutable law or necessitation of the Eternal Prepurposer, commenced in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed in piteous tones that if it were possible he might not be obliged to drain the bitter cup of degradation and cruel death to the very dregs. "Ah, Father, my God, my God, if it be possible, let me have my own way." Nevertheless, he says at last, in choking accents, "not my will, but thine be "done." He came to do the will of him that sent him; but his own will shuddered at the task. He would not have been tempted in all respects as we are, if he had not trembled and hesitated. He submits in the end; but it is a submission that draws out one by one the sinews of his frame; he is convulsed from head to foot, and slowly the life ebbs away in terror, doubt, and awful darkness. At last the fearful cry, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" bubbles up from the breaking heart, and the struggle has ended. The Satan of self-will has done its work; and the adversary who has the power of death, has afforded mankind an imperishable record of the contest between duty and inclination or self-will.

SIGNIFICANCE OF JESUS CHRIST'S MARTYRDOM.

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Prayer, says Mr. Emerson, "is a disease of the will." What was the prayer in Gethsemane, but a disease of the will? What was the answer, but strength to do God's will? What indeed is the Lord's prayer, but a petition to overcome self-will, and to seek power to do God's will. For when God's kingdom has actually come, and his will is really done, the religion of action has taken the place of the religion of bead-telling, psalmody, and revolving praying cylinders. And the prophecy is then fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, in the lxv hapter :

"It shall come to pass, that before they call I will answer, "and while they are yet speaking I will bear."

The doctrine of moral responsibility for choice of good and evil, must always, and as a matter of course, uphold the assumption of free will. In fact, the leading terms in theistical teaching are but so many mutually convertible propositions, so that to destroy one is to spoil the entire set.

It is argued, that if the doctrine of the necessarian be pushed to its logical consequence it will usurp the throne of God himself. Of course it will, if the throne upon which God sits is the judgment seat of theological good and evil. But how can Deity sit in judgment upon what he ignores ?— He knows not evil. His son says he is of purer eyes than to behold it. His kingdom is "free gift" of immortality, not as a reward for good, for Deity alone is absolutely good; can he reward himself? Punishment for sin, or rather sin's own punishment, is eternal death. Nature's punishments are all inherent, and the sins of the parent are visited upon enfeebled offspring by hereditary transmission, but all is confined to this mortal state nothing left for eternal punishment, which is metaphorically used in relation to the immortal privileges of the sons of God.

It will be useful to review the arguments of "Good and Evil" theologians. Here, for example, is Mr. Isaac Taylor, the great evangelical champion, in his "Logic in Theology," speaking of Jonathan Edwards' work on "Freedom of the "Human Will." He says:

"In modern times no instance of the misapplication of

mere logic to the solution of a physical problem has been "more signal, or has had so wide and lasting an influence, as "that of the inquiry into the modern prevailing notions "respecting the freedom of will.' Jonathan Edwards has "held his ground as a master in morals and theology, almost 66 unquestioned, from our times to these."

Mr. Taylor characterizes this celebrated Essay as being an instance of exact analysis of penetrative abstraction and philosophic calmness, and to get out of the meshes of its iron network of reasoning, he contends that, "This firmly jointed "chain of demonstrative reasoning is logic, but is not fact!" What the Essayist's precise notion of logic really is, it would be worth something to know. He does not regard it as the deliverance of judgment upon evidence, but an arbitrary set of rules of mental arithmetic to cheat folks into some dreadful verdict that had better not be spoken in court.

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Mr. Taylor says:

"Let it be allowed, then, that the unsolved problem concerning the alleged liberty of the human mind, and its "exemption from the stern conditions of physical causation, "does affect, or ought to affect, not only our religious opinions, but also our notions, feelings, judgments, and "conduct in every day life."

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But if duty be a leading end of action, why should the necessarian be less able to follow out that principle of duty as a leading end of action than the upholder of free will, who regards consequences as it pleases himself, or the man who obey God because he fears his hell fire?

Mr. Taylor is horrified to find that:

:

"Jonathan Edwards, the Christian theologian, and the de"vout Calvinistic teacher, has been hailed as a master in philo"sophy, and a powerful coadjutor, by the chiefs and apostles "of modern unbelief, and even of atheism," and he "finds "this Christian writer travelling in company with the latest "of the modern champions of materialistic pantheism upon "the same road."

That is to say, that Jonathan Edwards' predestination, as a foundation for salvation, is nothing more or less than a

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THEISTIC CRITICISM UPON J. EDWARD'S PHILOSOPHY. 91

scriptural account in biblical phraseology of the doctrine of philosophical necessity. At page 24, Mr. Taylor confesses, that "necessity," or what he calls fatalism, "holds its ground as a theory of the universe." And Jonathan Edwards and Diderot, the great French encyclopædist, agree in their doctrine of universal law alike ruling in mind and matter; and subsequently we find the Essayist confessing the inability of a religious man to rescue the argument of "Edwards from its apparent connection with the fatalism of "pantheists and atheists." He says, that if this logical deduction of Edwards, or "If Calvanism were exploded, a "long time would not elapse before evangelical doctrine of "every sort would find itself driven into the gulf that had "yawned to receive its rival."

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The only argument that Mr. Taylor is capable of following is just the everlastingly debated one of the positively inscrutable nature of the human mind, and because of this, it is assumed to be immortal and endowed with a theological principle not possessed by the brute creation. The distinctive prerogative of the human mind is assumed and affirmed to be its initiative activity. This is taking it for granted with a vengeance, because as Mr. Taylor confesses at page 75, "The ultimate fact in human nature is not susceptible of analysis, and must for ever defy our endeavours to set it "forth in intelligible propositions."

And yet it is coolly and dogmatically insisted upon, that the ultimate fact in human mind is its immortal nature, and its absolute initiative activity or free will.

The wind up of Mr. Taylor's Essay, reminds one of Cruikshank's caricature of an Irish shillalegh, of which he says:

"This is a stick of Rhetorick;

To know its uses and intent,

Wid a howl and a screech,

'Tis a figure of speech

Oft used in a knock-down argument."

The following is the Essayist's shillalegh, and he labels it Atheism!