Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1876-01-26
THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIA NIFTY

From the n. I. Times.
There never was time when the me-
cessity for bringing home to the mind
the sacred associations OF the Christmas
season was greater thanit is now. Men
of unquestionable learning and ability
are everywhere striving to destroy the
of the Christian religion.
They insist that God cannot and does
not exist, but that the universe is gov
erned by some unknown laws, which
are the result of spontaneous evolution.
First came atoms, and then the atoms
assumed a shape, and then the shape
began to turn round the sun and
then germ with life ap-
peared on it, and the germ
gradually became man. The same pro-
cess is always being continued In other
planets. Worlds come into existence,
live out their day, and then perish, with
all the countless myriads of genera
tions which pass to and fro upon them;
and this vast tragedy goes on without
design or plan, without even designer.
There is a "Law," but who made the
law, or how it came into existence, the
philosophers acknowledge that they
cannot even conjecture. Some of them
will go SO far as to admit that
there must be a ssFirst Cause"
but they regard it as a mere philo-
sophical abstraction, inconceivable to
the finite sense, and inexplicable in all
the operations which can be traced to
it. But the belief in wise and benef-
cent God, or III Eternal Wisdom ruling
all things according to its own immuta-
BILE DEGREES, or in any dealings of the
Creator with man, Or III q life hereafter
all this is summary rejected b. the
philosophers. It almost seems at times
as though the present aim of science
was not so much to enlarge its own
boundaries and fields of knowledge, as
to convince the world that Christianity
is an imposture and that it's founder was
merely an amiable enthusiast.
To protest against this warfare of
science upon religion would be worse
than useless, for the leaders of the
new scientific school are not disposed to
listen to any remonstrance. They will
give no quarter to Christianity. It is
an old wives fable, and those who be-
lieye in it barely surrender their reason
to superstition, or are creatures desti-
tute of reason. This is the tenor, often
the very language, of modern science.
One is sometimes inclined to wonder
that philosopher, who is obliged to
announce at frequent intervals that
some fresh "discovery" compels him to
make very complete change in
his ''views'' concerning his new
creed. or no-creed-that such q man
should be presumptuous enough to de-
clare that he, at length, has found out
what God is, and that it is nothing more
than a fetch of mans own imagining.
There is nothing fixed Or permanent in
modern science. When Eozoon was
lately found In the Laurentian rocks,
the accepted theories as to the age of
life on this planet were overturned.
Geology itself is but in its infancy.
That quarter of the world in which
philology gives us good reason for be-
ieving that man made his first appear
ance is still totally unexplored. Geolo-
gists have but scratched the surface of a
very limited section of the earth. AS
tronomy, also, has but just begun to
tell its story. It may almost be said
mer looks at the heavens through a
telescope, he observes something which
modifes the conclusions or discoveries
of his predecessors. Science is not
positive, although. it's professors are.
There is nothing in our day which can
be compared with Newton's discovery
of the law of gravitation. He brought
to our knowledge one of the supreme
laws of the universe; and yet Newton
was Christian, and what he detected
in the "great ocean of truth " only led
him to believe more firmly than ever
in the God of Revelation. We have
lost in our day two great Christian phi
losophsrs-Faraday and Agassiz-and
that loss is one which it would be diff
fcult to overestimate. The weight OF
their names was a perpetual check to
the assumptions of the new school
which now rushes forward once week
to announce to bewildered world that
there is no God. They are satisfied
that all the universe sprung from sin
gle germ, but how the germ was made,
or why they cannot make one like 1t,
are questions left unanswered. In all
essential respects, the religion Of the
germ is much harder to reconcile with
reason than the religion of Christ.
Matthew Arnold insists that we shall
not believe in anything which we can
not understand. Can anyone, then,
understand his mystical revelation con-
corning the unknown "essenoe, " which
he laboriously manufactures into a
Deity? It surely is no harder to be-
Iieye that Almighty God made
the universe than that this won
drous and glorious system is the result
of the spontaneous evolution o. mat
ter. There must be a beginning to
everything, evaa to law and germs, to
matter and essences. What U0s the
beginning. The philosophers reJec1
what they call the Incredible teacnme
of the Bible for something teHfold more
Incredible. Man dashes himself IN