The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1879-02-21
NO. 8.
A PERSONAL COP.
New York Times.


After prayer by President Seelye, OF
Amherst College, Mr.. Cook undertook
the task of proving by reason the exist
ence of a personal God. He said that
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that be-
lief in Immortality was test of sanity.
Taking this and Shakspeare's sentiment
that conscience doth make towards OF
US all, )" as e text, he passed easily to the
proposition that there Is to be a Judgment
after death. But, he argued, in the ma
ture of things, man cannot be intelli-
gently judged but by being endowed
with intelligence, conscience, and free
will, and such being is a personality.
l have, he said, Il sense of dependence
upon, and of obligation to, a power out
side of myself and consequently vaster
than mine, which is infinite am as sure
of what my moral sense teaches me as of
what / know through my aesthetic or
physical sense. When | touch physlc-
al object, perception and sensation go to-
getheT just SO in the aesthetic case and
in the moral case. Thus come to pos
tive scientific proof of the existence of a
moral order of things regulated by be-
ing outside of me. A distinction should
be made between evident and selfevident
truth. i never had any experience that
the sun ever rose in the west, nor had
up, but can imagine it possible for it
to do so. can't, however, imagine the
humiliation of space. | can imagine
this room to be entirely empty, but |
can't imagine part of the space IN it OBJ
liberated. l can in imagination annihi-
late all the events of the day, but | can t
imagine the destruction of an hour.
Take an hour away, and an hour remains.
So with truths. 1t is so many miles be-
tween here and Boston. That has been
made evident by measurement, but that
the shortest distance between here and
Boston is a straight line is selfevident,
and no amount of experiment can fur
Their convince me OF its truth. 1t is a
sel1-evident truth that every change
must have an adequate cause. My
coming into existence as a mind, free
will, and conscience was change. An
adequate cause is one in which involu-
ton equals evolution. The existence
of intelligence, conscience, and free
will, in change implies the intelligence,
conscience, and free will in the cause
The existence ofintelligence, conscience,
and free will in any being constitutes
personality in that being. Applause |
| am not forgetting all that has been said
about concurrence of causes? A chemi-
cal combination may make man, but
what makes the combination The in
telligence, conscience, and free will al
ways come out. Where did they go in :
The source must be as high as stream.
If | am person | must have originated
with person. The trouble with many
athelses is that they do not believe they
have free will enough to make them re-
sponsible beings. When l say God is a
person, | do not make him man. He
is person, in that he has conscience, in
telligence, and free will. 1t is incon-
ceivable that he could have put those
qualities into me unless he had them to
put in. Stuart Mills logic is dIssipated
here and in England. Matthew Arnold
in his arguments eschews metaphysics
He has not a metaphysical head. 1t is a
physical fact that the upper part of his
forehead is very fiat. Laughter. Most
skeptics are angular and erratic in both
their mental and physical organization.
Bismark would be less respected if his
brain could be seen. | know there have
been angular christians, but the wonder
is that they have been christians.
Laughter. Matthew Arnold answers
objections with the sneer that he has had
no experience in the world building 1t
is as though Chief Joseph, looking at a
train of cars, should say, Il have had
no experience in building railroads.
These must have been evolved" Laugh
ter. / have heard the words anthro-
pomOrphism and dcanthropomoephisa
ton frequently used in argument, for
[ live in Boston. Laughter The
trouble has been that absolute and in
finite have been falsely defined. Abso-
lutte may be unrelated or independ-
ent. In the latter sense God is absolute
Power is power, space is space, and
ri &c
may be drawn out. If mere mechanical
forces could account for the un-
iverse, then there would be no freedom
of will; else how can merit or demerit
be explained. The several parts of the
eye without the unIfying thought
which put them together with the idea
of sight would not be an eye. Thought
must have gone before the structure
Stuart Mill knew this, and he really
knew better than to believe in such
trash as evolution and the survival OF
the fittest. Who had the thought :
Evidently somebody. Thought cannot
exist without thinker, and a thinker
must be person. 1t is objected that
God, according to this argument, must
have had designer, and so on Indcfi-
nitely. The answer is simple and clear.
There cannot be dependent existence
without an Independent cause, and we
must come finally to being who not
only furnishes existence to other beings,
but is the ground of his own being.
Herbert Spencer admits that God is a be-
ing, but denies that He is person. Yet
by that admission he attributed to Him
four traits, viz: existence, causal energy,
omnipOtence, and eternity. He makes
another admission that there is no vice
in the universe. By this he adds two
traits more-wisdOm and love- His
writings are full of ACCOMMODATIONS
and the best answer to them is to read
them. Compared with Kant he is as a
Chinese lantern to fixed star. To
guide me through life, / need a fixed
light that never changes. The flower
does not see the sun or the dew, neither
does 1t hear the streams careering by.
| cannot see the aesthetic and the moral,
but ami / to deny them for that reason :
No, let me feel the sunlight cannot see,
let me drink in the the dew | cannot be
hold, and let me suck up the moisture
from the eternal streams / cannot hear
Mr.. Cook spoke altogether over two
hours, and was listened TO with the
closest attention throughout.
An unpleasant passenger in a street car Is a
crying baby In such cases Dr. t:Hil's Baby