Psalm 14:1-7 The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that does good.… In David's time it was "the fool" who said there was no God; in ours, it is the philosopher who proclaims it upon the housetop, and invites us all to bask in the mild light of the science which has made this as its last and highest discovery. Some may think it out of our way to advert to discussions which touch the very foundations of our faith and of all religious belief whatsoever, because we feel our faith to be too firmly fixed that we should be perplexed by any such questions. But we can never tell how near us these questions may come, or in what shape we may find them meeting us. You may have seen a coat and hat which at their beginning were articles of handsome clothing, and were worn on Sundays and in good society, descending through various vicissitudes, until at last, perched on a stick in a turnip field, they performed the disingenuous function of a scarecrow; and just so an opinion or a theory which was at first started on a solemn occasion, and by a philosopher, may filter down through minds of less intelligence until, half understood and misapplied, it serves only to mislead, and fulfils purposes altogether different from those which it served originally. I have found far down in the ranks of society such distortions of opinions and speculations which were safe enough in learned hands, but full of practical mischief in those that are unlearned. Now it is religion that is at stake in this question of modern materialism; religion not only as a faith but as a morality. If it be true, all religions are mere impostures. Note its theory of the origin of life. You know the theory the Bible teaches, that God is the Lord and giver of life. And it would not be essentially contradicted even were the theory of development fully proved, as it is not yet. Suppose that man is developed from a baboon, and differs from it not in kind but only in degree. Yet you could not mark the stage at which the spirit of God was inbreathed. But that makes all the difference. There may have been inferior types before man's outward organism was complete, before God said, "Let us make man." Development does not deny Scripture truth. But the new theory is different. It ascribes all to "matter," affirms that it contains within itself "the promise and the potency" of all life, and that it is eternal; that there is, in fact, no such thing as an eternal mind but that which we call "matter," which we can see, handle, weigh, analyse, is that and that only which is from everlasting to everlasting, and is Divine if anything is to be so called. They who say all this set aside Scripture as incredible and irrelevant, for they do not believe in God and a spiritual world; nor in anything which their scales cannot weigh, their process analyse, their figures calculate. "But," we ask, "why is eternal matter more credible than an eternal mind?" Both cannot be, but why should we be shut up to the materialist's creed? We find it easier and better to believe in an eternal and Holy Spirit which devised all the forms and laws of life than in an eternity of senseless atoms, without spirit, without intelligence, without life, coming together somehow, and somehow forming this world and all things we see. And it and it only provides a basis for religious life. Materialism is the death of morality. For it gets rid of the idea of God, and so of His judgment to which I am accountable, of conscience and my spiritual nature by which I was in some sense a law to myself. Farewell to all dreams of a higher life, to all aspirations after the Divine. "Let us eat and drink, for," etc. This the natural conclusion. All our Christian ideas are fictions, "the baseless fabric of a vision" which ought to and which will fade utterly away. It is easy for a man, a man possibly of dull spiritual perceptions, standing amid all the light of revelation and on the safe and serene height of Christian civilisation, to follow out physical investigations to the point to which his knowledge can conduct him, and then to turn round and say, "I have tracked life almost within sight of its very source, and I see no hand of any God in it, and no indication of any spirit; but let us pursue our researches in a pure and just temper, and let us strive to elevate our life and to live nobly"; but he forgets that, but for the revelation of that God whose existence he denies, purity and justice would be as little known among men as among the lion and the tiger, and the higher life as impossible an idea to a human creature as to an ostrich or an ape. But the history of man shows that the elevating power has been the spiritual, and that his belief in the unseen has been the parent of the noblest achievements of his life. Take these away and he sinks at once. Ponder, therefore, much ere you abandon the Bible for the teachings of this new science. (R. N. Storey, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good. |
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