Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-08-18
SUNDAY THOUGHTS
ON
MORALS MANNERS
BY A CLERGYMAN.

WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPArcH.1
The tendency everywhere to-day Is
toward unity. Thinkers are busily occu-
pied in seeking single force or cause out
of which multiplicity has been developed.
Take ethnology. We find numerous and
diversified races. Yet students have dis
covered that many of these have sprung
from a common stock, and that the differ
ences are owing to climate, habit, etc.
Hence the conviction is forced on US that man
kind had common origin.
Take chemistry 1t used to be imagined that
the chemical elements were innumerable. Re-
Gently science has reduced these to two or
three, while all the probabilities indicate one
primal element drawn out into infinite
varieties. Strange to say, the combination of
the same elements often produces the most
opposite results. A nugget of coal and dia-
mond are exactly alike chemically-yet how
unlike! Starch and sugar are the same thing
yet who would confuse them in household use,
putting starch in coffee and sugar in shirts
We know there is difference, but we do not
know where it lies. Is it in the arrangement
of the.particles
Philosophy now holds that the whole uni
verse is the outcome of single substance. The
great question is as to the nature of this one
substance. Scientific materialism claims that
it is matter. Thus Prof. Tyndall asserts that
matter contains within itself "the promise and
potency of every form of life." Christianity,
on the other hand. teaches that sin the begin.
ming God created the heaven and the earth"
There are three unanswerable objections to
the philosophy of materiaiism.
First-lt cannot explain the fact of life. An
able scholar assures us that mo scientific man
has ever yet been able to trace the origin of the
lowest form of life to anything except some
pre-existlng form of life-life the parent of life
always and everywhere. Indeed. the wisest
scientists admit this. They say that while
thought corresponds to and, so tar as we know,
is inseparable from certain molecular move
ments in the brain, nevertheless the thought is
no part Of these molecular movements does
not seem to be the product of them, and is
utterly inexplicable in the light of these move
ments"
Second-Tbe moral sense in man is unac.
counted for by this theory We have within us
consciousness of right and wrong. The sense
OF justice is universal If man is a clod OF the
valley how comes it that he goes about utter
ing and dominated by this tremendous word
oughtf The trees do not criticise each others
actions Cattle have no courts. Mountains
never appeal for justice. The dust in the road
never cries out for improvement nor aspires to
nobler uses.
Third-Scientifc materialism cannot explain
the universal longing for immortality. You
cannot get out of a thing what was never put
into it. Matter cherishes no high ideals. The
sod does not point Godward, soulward, heaven
ward. Man does. Hence we inevitably con-
clude that man differs from matter-that some
intelligent and adequate power breathed into
him these hopes and expectations which find
such constant and worldwide expression.
Christianity explains all this by saying: God
created man in his own image" This explana-
ton accounts for the facts. What more do we
want?