J. H. Ward

“ Herschel says, "It is evident that the most unsubstantial clouds which float in the highest region of our atmosphere must be looked upon as dense and massy bodies compared with the filmy texture of a comet."
Thus Reason declares, that the world did not make itself. The soul of man did not make itself. The body of man did not make itself. They must have had an intelligent Creator, who is God. The work is not the workman; the house is not the builder; the watch is not the watchmaker. The maker is always distinct from the thing made and superior to it. ”

“ There is the sun whose bulk is so great that, if its center was placed where the center of the earth is, its body would extend in every direction as far as the moon. Nay, farther, it would extend beyond the moon a distance of twenty-four times the diameter of the earth. This vast sun, still in the fiery vigor of its youth, imparting light and life to all that dwell on the planets which revolve around it, is only one of the numberless orbs that shine in the abyss of heaven. ”

“ A religion is wanted that will enlist upon its side the whole nature of man, and command his willing and devoted homage; a religion that, bearing the full impress of its Author's image, shall carry its own credentials with it; and which, clothed with all the elements of truth and righteousness, beauty and grandeur of love and power, shall be revered by all those who love the truth, and dreaded by all who love it not.
This is the religion that the gospel reveals. There is no antagonism between philosophy and faith, between science and religion, whatever the seeming oppositions of the present ”

“ God's prophecy is not merely His foretelling something which will certainly happen at some future time, but over which He has no control—as an astronomer foretells an eclipse of the sun, but can neither hasten nor hinder it—but it is the revealing of a part of His plan of this world's affairs, to show that God and not man is the sovereign of it. Infidels feel the power of this manifestation of God in His word; and are driven to every possible denial of the fact. They feel, instinctively, that the Bible prophecies are far more than mere predictions. ”

“ To preach another king, one Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of Grecian philosophers, than to speak of the resurrection of the body. Nor could any plan be devised more certain to arouse the fury of the pagan priesthood than to denounce that by which they had their wealth. The most degraded wretch who perishes on the scaffold is not more contemptible in our eyes than the crucified Redeemer was to the Jewish and Roman peoples. ”

“ These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to Him only. Men attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law; but all nature rises up against them in their presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone-bearing wood, a fish's skull, the skeleton of a reptile, the tooth or jaw of a quadruped, all or any of these things— weak and insignificant as they may seem—when found imbedded in the strata of the rocks, become evidence too strong for man and all his theories. ”

“ Now, this earnest, active, thinking age demands a religion that has life and power in it. Not a religion of cold formality and narrow sectarianism, but a religion that will satisfy the intellect with its truths, touch the heart with its love, sway the will with its persuasiveness, gratify the taste with its beauties and fill the imagination with its sublimities. ”

“ Geologists have been unable to invent a better, and have borrowed from the Bible this very form of speech, to designate as the primary formations, those strata beyond which human knowledge cannot penetrate. This phrase, in Bible language, marks the last promontory on the boundless ocean of past eternity: the only positive phrase, by which we can express the most remote period of past duration. It expresses not a date—a point of duration; but a period—a vast cycle. But one boundary is perceptible to mortals: that where creation rises from its abyss. Created eye has never seen the other shore. ”

“ Thousands of miles of the earth's surface must once have presented the lurid glow of a vast furnace of melted granite. Even at a far later period of its history, it may have shone with a luster little inferior to that of the sun; for lime, of which unknown thousands of miles of its strata consist, when subject to a heat much less than that produced by contact with melted granite or lava, emits a brilliant, white light of such intensity that the eye cannot support its luster. ”

“ A faith in God is the very fountain head of everything that is desirable in our civilization, and this civilization is the flower of time. Humanity has reached its noblest thrift, its highwater mark, its loftiest flight of excellence through the influence of this faith.
{215} And now we are told by infidels, in the most complacent language that the gospel is a myth, and that the Old Testament, which holds a relation to the New Testament and all other divine records as the blade holds to the ear, the bud to the flower, is a huge batch of absurdities with no valid claim to our respectful faith. ”

“ Now will the infidels presume to tell us, that the fifty-eight primary elements danced about till the air, sea and earth somehow jumbled themselves together into the present shape of this glorious and beautiful world, with all its regularity of day and night, Summer and Winter, with all its beautiful flowers and lofty trees, with all its variety of birds, beasts and fishes, not to speak of the beauties of the morning, the gorgeous dyes of sunset, or the silent glories of the midnight sky. ”

“ No amount of learning or skill, wealth or commerce, power of arms, or extent of territory, has ever secured a wicked nation against the sword of God's justice. Read the black record of the past. Where is the greatness of Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon and Petra? Tyre had ships, colonies and commerce, Rome an empire of half a hemisphere; Greece had philosophy, arts and liberty secured by a confederation of republics, Spain the treasures of the earth's gold and silver? ”

“ According to their ideas, a poor, naked, shivering, table-rapping spirit, obliged to fly over the world at the sigh of any brainless fop or silly, sentimental girl, or the bidding of some brazen-faced strumpet, is all that ever shall exist of all the great and good men and women that have lived upon the earth. To such wild unreason does the mind of man descend when it rejects the gospel, for only through it life and immortality are brought to light. A year or two since, the leader of American infidels, Robert Ingersol, was called to deliver a funeral oration over the body of his brother. ”

“ His laws sway the universe, and link together sin with misery, and crime with punishment, in the brazen fetters of eternal justice. These nations have been hurled down from the pinnacle of their greatness, to dash themselves in pieces against each other in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, naught remaining, save some shivered fragments of former greatness, to show that they once existed and were the enemies of God. ”

“ We are, in effect, told that by means of a stupendous cheat, men are trained to goodness, purified of their passions, filled with love to one another, prompted to the highest heroism, inspired to sacrifices of life and fortune for the public good, and are built up into a civilization which is immeasurably superior to all that human nature, assisted merely by human reason and false religion, ever dreamed of! ”

“ Man with all his learning and skill cannot solve the problem of his own being.
And so with all other sciences. Many a wild hurricane has spent its force on this tree of life, but has only caused it to strike its roots deeper. The day is hastening when men of science will be the very first to recognize the authority of God. Already it is largely so. What infidel names can be placed over against Raphael, Reynolds, Rubens, Trumbull, West and Cole as painters, or what against Canova or Thorwaldsen in sculpture, or Christopher Wren in architecture, or Michael Angelo in all three? ”

“ Infidel philosophy can boast no names like Bacon, Newton, Locke, Stewart, Davy, Herschel, Cuvier, Whately, Hamilton, Proctor, Winchell or Le Conte. Jesus was in His appropriate place when among the doctors; and the wise men of the east were never wiser than when they brought their royal gifts to Him.
If the Being who made man has not had consideration enough for him to reveal to him His will, then he is not of the slightest consequence. These horrible wars which drown nations in sorrow, are the mere squabbles of a crowd of insects too insignificant for the divine notice. ”

“ Among the works of human hands, the traveler gazes with amazement at the ponderous bulk of the pyramids. But what are the pyramids to the Alps, which have been lifted by some power to an altitude thirty-three times the hight of the largest pyramid? And yet the Alps are little more than half the hight of the Andes, and not more than a hundredth part of their mass. These ponderous mountain chains have been upheaved bodily, tearing their way through masses of solid rock miles in thickness, uplifting, crushing, tilting and dislocating the solid floor of half a continent. ”

“ How vain, how arrogant the babblings of the sectarians who tell us that the book of revelation is forever closed! That man, in this puerile state, has already taken possession of the whole treasure of divine truth! That the human mind with its poor plummet has already sounded the depths of the divine oracles! ”

“ Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen. i, 26) . Thus from scripture we learn that the closing and completing work of the creation was man.
Geology triumphantly confirms the revealed fact that submarine animals, land vegetation, reptiles, birds and quadrupeds, were all of them in existence, successively and collectively, before the first of the human race. ”

“ The denial of the miracles of the gospel is a modern invention. The Scribes and priests, emperors and philosophers of the first century, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were unable to do so. Why, then, it may be asked, did they not all become Christians? Because a miracle cannot convert a man against his will. The religion of the gospel is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of Christ and a life in conformity with His commands.
The labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves furnish strong proof of the facts of gospel history. ”

“ All scientists agree that "protoplasm is the physical basis of life." Now whence comes this wonderful principle which endows the protoplasm with the "essential conditions of life," and presses into its service the atoms and the laws of the material universe? Its effects are too palpable to allow a denial of its existence, while its power over earthly matter proves that it is distinct from it. Although too subtle to be analyzed by the philosopher, its existence is suggestive of the highest truths. ”

“ Thus, when geology began to upheave its titanic form it was eagerly greeted by skeptics; but now that they have discovered the proofs it gives of a Creator they are getting shy of its acquaintance.
It is, therefore, worth while to enquire, is science really so positive as these persons pretend? Or, is it true that the students of the physical sciences have no certain knowledge of their theories? We need not here speak of the disputes between Herschel and Ferguson, Newton and Brewster, La Place and Lionville. Rather let us begin with the most positive of all sciences. ”

“ We are told in effect that out of an ingenious lie, out of a cunning delusion, out of a baseless myth, out of a systematized falsehood has sprung all that there is in this life worth living for—the grandest motive of human progress in purity and power! ”

“ In gazing through these instruments we are made to feel most sensibly that not merely this world which constitutes our earthly all, and yon glorious sun which shines upon it, but all the host of heaven's suns, planets, moons and firmaments, which our unaided eyes behold, are but as the handful of sand of the ocean shore, compared with the immensity of the universe. ”

“ Whatever may be the answers to these questions, they give no light on the formation of this world, which is not a shapeless mass called matter, but a beautiful building composed of a variety of substances. Has this earth existed as it is from eternity? No man who ever was in a quarry or gravel pit will say so, much less one who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. ”

“ Poor, blind science!
Further still, all our dearest interests lie beyond the domains of physical science, in the regions of faith. Science treats of things—faith is confidence in persons. Take away the persons and of what value are the things? The world becomes at once a vast desert, a dreary solitude. I can live, and love, and be happy without science ”

“ While we are amazed at the manifestations of power in creation, let us not forget the indications of intelligence and design that exist all around us. For example, I see a friend walking along the street in the rain, with an umbrella over his head, and I feel that somebody contrived that instrument with the design of keeping off the rain. In one word, it was intended for that purpose. In like manner we perceive marks of design and intelligence in the countless contrivances and instruments used in every-day life. ”