THE DEFENDER:

a Weekly Magazine,

OF CHRISTIAN EXPOSITION AND ADVOCACY.

"Who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power."-MILTON.

SIR,

WHAT IS GOD?

I proceed to notice other views. 5. If you say that God is an omnipotent Spirit of Holiness, &c., then I must be informed the difference betwixt the organization of deity and of man, for if Theologians select the best traits of man's character, such as intelligence, love, justice, wisdom, purity, or power, and prefix the word infinite before them, and call it God, I must be informed the difference betwixt the laws of God's existence and that of man's; and what is the analogy subsisting between them so as to make one the infinite anti-type of the other. If God is just and man the same in a lesser degree; if God's love is more intense than man's, or He is possessed of more purity and sense of honour, do not those infinite attributes mean an extended power of the same attributes in finite man, and are they not subject to the laws of causation. If there is any analogy betwixt the attributes of Man and God, this must be the case; and it makes God himself a creature of necessity like man. If the reverse-if there is no analogy between the two, then heavenly justice, purity, and love, are a trio of shams exploded by their own vain casuistry. Will you please explain this theory of causation, it may assist us in determining what is God!' 6. If you can tell me 'what God is,' you surely can tell me what he was before the creation of the world; for if he is the same yesterday, to day, and for ever,' you will be able to vouch a little information on this subject, seeing it deeply impregnates our inquiry with its momentous whisperings. If God was spiritual before the creation of matter, and spirit is to be the total abnegation of matter, then does it not appear a contradiction that God could act upon his own immaterial existence, and evoke from this a substance pro

No. 5, Vol. II.

ceeding from something contradictory in its essence from substance, and making of it the universe, which must be a part of God and rank pantheism. This pro cedure, moreover, would destroy God's immutability; it would make him changeable in himself, who is not given to change, and totally destroy our ideas of causation. Or, on the other hand, if you say that matter and God are both eternal, will you not be a disciple of Plato, who admitted the eternity of God and matter, but denied the absolute omnipotence of God. Again, in Genesis, we are told that God made man in his own image; are we not to infer from this that man is the image of God physically, and not figuratively, as you will most probably infer. The words are explicit, and cannot be reconciled with the spirituality of God. 7. Is God Space. I often hear it asked if space is not God, seeing it cannot be matter; and it is said to have a definite existence, which I deny. If space has an actual existence, it must have extension, which is a property of matter, and cannot therefore be God. If space is not possessed of extension, it can have no existence; it is resolved into Nihil, consequently a belief in space as God is a belief in Atheism as God. Dr. Watts says, "If space be God, then all bodies are situated in God, as in their proper place; then every single body exists in part of God, and occupies so much of the dimensions of the Godhead as it fills of space, If space were God, then God, though in the whole immeasurable, yet hath millions of parts, really distinct from each other, measurable, by feet, inches, &c., even as the bodies contained therein; and, according to this notion, it may be most properly said, that one part of God is longer than another part of him, and that twenty-five inches of the Divine Nature, long, broad, and deep, will contain above two feet of solid body, &c." Will you then bring forward space as God? I might include motion as well for motion by many as said to be God. You may deem these remarks irrelevant, but they are not so, for if God exists as you say, then I want to know how you know, for, if your knowledge on the subject is conclusive, you cannot be liable to error; if you are not liable to error on this subject, then you are different from all the men whom I have yet met. But if you are liable to err, may not your knowledge on the subject be fallacious? may you not be the victim of an over-excited imagination? and am I to follow the will-o-thewisp of every theist who holds up his belief in the existence of a God, and calls upon me to do the same under the threat of eternal damnation? You may inform me that to comprehend God you must be God himself, that he is the Intinite--you the finite, and that He is incomprehensible. To give me such an answer is merely a quibble of words. The why and the wherefore of a blade of grass is incomprehensible, but I do not reject its existence because of that. I know of its existence. but why it exists I cannot tell. The knowledge we seek is not of the internal cause of things, but of their order and properties. The same with God. I am not asking you about his inherent properties and attri butes, but what proof have you that He exists. You assert his existence, I call upon you for demonstration of your assertion; if you cannot prove it the case falls to the ground, thanks to that law of logic which makes the onus probandi belong to the affirmer of a proposition. You cannot expect me to disprove the existence of your God--I shrink with natural timidity from accomplishing such a Herculean feat. You have heard of that ancient philosopher who, when asked for an answer to my question 'What is God?' requested a day to think upon it, at the expiration of one day he asked for two, then three, then four, and on being asked why he required so much time to consider the question, he answered, 'Because the more I think of it, the more I am confounded!' And without fear of offence, may I not counsel you to give the same answer? I never yet heard a theist who could define his God aright. I never knew two theists Gods to be exactly alike, and when there is doubt upon the cardinal point of your creed, why do you hesitate to avow your utter ignorance of the subject? If mathematies were as confused in their results as are the ideas of theists npon this ques

tion, what certainty would there be in the exact sciences ?-there could not be anything exact. If natural philosophy was as confused in its inductions, what would become of our physical knowledge? and does not this show that there can be no certainty in our opinions upon the subject, when our ideas ought to be the clearest in all science? Where is there the same hazard to run in the question of eternal welfare in all science, as in the question of the Being of a God-and where is there a subject so sublime in its aspirations, and so unequalled in its deductions? I will conclude by adopting two syllogisms on the proof we possess of the existence of God.

Syllogism I. 1.-The highest degree of certitude of the reality of an alleged existence is attainable, solely, through the mind's consciousness of a determinate sensation immediately produced by such existence. 2. The mind has no consciousness of a determinate sensation immediately produced by the existence of a God, or Supreme Being. Therefore, The highest degree of certitude of the existence of a God, or Supreme Being is unattainable.

Syllogism II. 1.-The next to the highest degree of certainty csnrerning an alleged existence is to be derived, solely, from strictly reasonable demonstration. 2.-No strictly rearonable demonstration exists of the alleged existence of a God. Therefore, We do not possess even the next to ihe highest degree of certainty concerning the reality of the alleged existence of a God.

Such is the dilemma from which you cannot escape. If you think you can demonstrate' what God is,' then we shall know that he exists, and not before. As soon as you accomplish your work successfully I cannot but own myself a

theist.

W. H. J.

If

REPLY TO LETTER V.-continued.

TO MR. W. H. JOHNSON.

Sir, 5. Intelligence, love, justice, wisdom, purity, and moral power, are all of them attributes which do not belong to matter, and on this account matter' cannot, as you affirm, be God. Man's mental and moral nature permits to those attributes as existing in perfection, in infinitude, in absoluteness somewhere. When you have an idea of their existing in infinite, eternal absoluteness, you have an idea of the moral character of God. In your miserably low materialism, you seem to insinuate that to know God, we must know a divine organisation. you would but listen for an hour to common sense, it would teach you that you do not know man, by knowing his organization. Why sir, when you say that you know a man, you surely do not mean that you know how many stones he weighs or what is the configuration of his body. You will not deny, I suppose, that you know something of me, though you may never have seen my organization In talking, therefore, as you have done, you insult the common sense of our readers. You want to know the difference between the laws of God's existence and that of man's; but if you had remembered, that, by the very supposition, God is above all law, the universal law giver, you would never have asked so foolish a question. In asking if he is the creature of necessity, like man, you coolly take it for granted that man is the creature of necessity, without a particle of proof; and you further enquire the fact, that God's is the supreme and sovereign will in the universe; and this is an idea that assists us in determining what God is? There is a most striking and beautiful analogy between the free moral agency of man, and the fact that all that God does is according to the counsel of his own will. To this, manifestly, does the inspired history refer, when it teaches that God made man in his own image. Heavenly

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justice, purity, and love, are three realities, which will outlive the sham-logic and the sham humanity of secularism, and cannot be 'exploded' by its 'vain casuistry.'

6. For my part I see nothing more contradictory in the idea of causing that to be which had not been before, than in the idea of doing that which had not been done before. I do not profess to know the substraction of anything; but that matter is not mind, and that mind is not matter, is as plain as that contraries are not equivolents. There must be one self-existent, eternal, infinite Being; matter we have already seen is not that Being. How the infinite spirit created all things, I do not profess to know; but that mind should create matter, is scaacely less wonderful than that it should act upon matter. My theory does not destroy the immutability of God, for it supposes that all that God does in the creation, configuration, and organization of matter, as well as in every other sphere of divine agency, he resolved to do from all eternity.

7. In your remarks on space, you have set up a man of straw, in order to have the pleasure of knocking him down. I am in no way responsible for your suppositions, and shall leave you to get out of the labyrinth as best you can. 1 neither want you to be the victim of an excited imagination,' nor to follow a will-o-the-wisp,' but 1 would have you to listen to words of truth and soberness,' to calm reasoning and honest argument,

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The why and the wherefore of a blade of grass is to you incomprehensible, why then do you reject the being of a God, simply, because you cannot comprehend his essence or the mode of his existence.

It is humble and honest in you to admit that disproof of the existence of God is a Herculean feat which you cannot accomplish,' especially since your dogma of the eternity of matter has been exploded, and Berkeley, whom you claimed on your side, has shown you that by the very same process by which you come to know your fellow-man, you may attain the knowledge of God.

But

1 need not answer you as ignorantly as you wish me, or as the heathen philosopher, when it is written,-God is a spirit. God is light. God is love. to think if so glorious a being pesters you!

There is certainly no subject so momentuous in its bearings, and of such sublime interest as the being of a God; therefore you should not treat it with the dogmatism, and temerity, which have too much marked your statements hitherto.

You scarcely need have said that you have adopted the two syllogrims which stand at the close of your letter. In their ambiguity, and their dogmatism, they bear marks the plainest and surest of their parentage. And the assurance with which you tell me that 1 am placed in a dilemma, is positively amusing, especially when it is remembered, that at the commencement you hesitated to admit of our discussion, that 'consciousness is the highest evidence.' lt is pleasing, however, to find that you are getting a little more knowledge. Only 1 would advise you to be chary of syllogisms. The major premise of your first, needs proving; and the minor of your second, supposes you to be omniscient.

1 am not afraid to give you a scientific account of my belief in the existence of God. The argument is teleological, ontological, and moral. The first, alone, 1 can briefly render at present; and will do so, in the striking language of one who was once a sceptic:

'Some years ago, I had the misfortune to meet with the fallacies of Hume, on the subject of causation. His specious sophistries shook the faith of my reason, as to the being of a God, but could not overcome the repugnance of my heart to a negation so monstrous; and, consequently, left that infinite restless craving for some point of fixed repose, which atheism not only cannot give, but absolutely and madly disaffirms.

'One beautiful evening in May, I was reading by the light of a setting sun in

my favourite Plato. I was seated on the grass, interwoven with golden blooms, immediately on the crystal Colorado of the Texas. Dim, in the dittant west, arose, with smoky outlines, massy and irregular, the blue cones of an off-shoot of the Rocky Mountains.

1 was perusing one of the Academician's most starry dreams. 1t laid fast hold of ry fancy without exciting my faith. 1 wept to think it could not be true. At length I came to the startliug sentence: God geometrizes.' 'Vain reverie! I exclaimed, as 1 cast the volume at my feet. 1t fell close by a beautiful little flower, that looked fresh and bright, as if it had just fallen from the bosom of a rainbow. 1 broke it from its silvery stem, and began to examine its structure. 1ts stamens were five in number; its great calyx had five parts; its delicate coral base five, parting with rays, expanding like the rays of the Texas star. This combination of five in the same blossom appeared to me very singular. 1 had never thought on such a subject before. The last sentence 1

had just read in the page of the pupil of Socrates was ringing in my ears"God geometrizes." There was the text, written long centuries ago; and here this little flower, in the remote wilderness of the west, furnished the commentary. There suddenly passed, as it were, before my eyes a faint flash of light— 1 felt my heart leap in my bosom. The enigma of the universe was open. Swift as thought 1 calculated the chances against the production of those three equations of five in only one flower, by any principle devoid of reason to perceive number. 1 found that there was one hundred and twenty-five chances against such a supposition. 1 extended the calculation to two flowers by squaring the sum last mentioned. The chances amounted to the large sum of fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five. 1 cast my eyes around the forest: the old woods were literally alive with those golden blooms, where countless bees were humming, and butterflies sipping honey-dews.

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'1 will not attempt to describe my feelings. My soul became a tumult of radiant thoughts. 1 took up my beloved Plato from the grass, where 1 had tossed him in a fit of despair. Again and again 1 pressed him to my bosom, with a clasp tender as a mother's around the neck of her sleeping child. kissed alternately the book and the blossom, bedewed them both with tears of joy. In my wild enthusiasm 1 called to the little birds on the green boughs, thrilling their cheery farewells to departing day-Sing on, sunny birds; sing on sweet minstrels! Lo! ye and 1 have a God.'

MILTON ON THE POETIC FACULTY.

These abilities, wheresoever they are found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate, in glorious and lofty hymns, the throne and equipage of God's almightiness; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion or admiration; in all the changes of fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to point out and describe; teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue with such delight, that, whereas the paths of honesty appear now rugged, they will then appear to all men both easy and pleasant. And what a benefit this would be to our youths may be guessed by the bane which they suck in daily from the writings of libidinous and ignorant poetasters, who, having scarce ever heard of that which is the main consistence of a true poem, do for the most part lay up vicious principles in sweet pills to be swallowed down.

RELIGION is that hope which is the resource and the comfort of the patient and the sovereign balm for all the evils of life.