SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7222, 10 January 1885, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

CHRIST IN THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE. ' BY REV, W. H. .PALLINOEB, LL.D., '.7 F.R.S., ETC. . ■ , , " I came that they may hive life, and may have it abundantly."— x. 10. ' . „ •"For 1 He miut reign till He hath put all His enemies under His feet,'"—l Cor. xv. 25. These passages express the Divine character, spiritual purpose, and everlasting object of Christ's advent to the human race. - The appearance of Christ in human history is eminently the advent of a new moral power, a new formative factor for the higher spiritual development of man. ■ It is assumed by some profoundly practical masters of science, and others, that any miraculous interposition in the sequences of nature is inconceivable, and therefore impossible ; that all that we know of nature shows that all the phenomena that do present themselves, or that ever have presented themselves, are the result of rigid adhesion to inflexible law. An "interruption" of this at any point in physical development, it is urged, cannot be thought. But, in passing, it may be observed that there is much even in the physical universe that, with the latest 'attainments of our science, we do not know; and, granted a Divine and personal Creator as the power that produced the Cosmos of phenomena, it is equally unthinkable that He should so order and cause the laws of phenomena, as to be unable evermore to alter them ; that, in short, by creating them, He should have surrendered to them His omnipotence, and made Himself the slave—the absolute subject—of His own laws. However difficult it may be for us, in the present state of our knowledge, to explain how the Infinite Originator. of all the phenomena of the universe can modify the sequences of laws in the finite area which we are able to observe, without disrupting all the universe, it is equally difficult to suppose that He cannot —that His creation has made Him its captivethat He has imprisoned Himself for ever by His very omnipotence. But I desire to show that the analogies which modern science enables us to make, render even the miracle of the . Divine advent of Christ not only possible, but morally inevitable, and carry with them the eternity of His moral Kingdom. To pursue the argument we must follow modern science without fear. Even to-day men differ widely in results as to their hypothetical explanations of the origin of the universe. Facility of explanation becomes manifestly greater a3 the knowledge of facts and the application of true logic and the principles of science diminish. The vast majority, however, agree that the universe must havo had its origin in an infinitely powerful Creator. THE FIRST "MIRACLES" SCIENCE RECOGNISES. We cannot explain the origin of matter; it must be to finite minds a mystery for ever. We cannot think of it as eternally existing; and we cannot conceive—i.e., picture to ourselves—how even limitless power could have called it into existence from nothing. But matter exists; we know that by its properties ; extension, impenetrability, and figure belong to it everywhere. But we have the strongest modern evidence that all varieties and forms of matter are similarly composed, being made up of an incalculable number of inconceivably minute and indestructible particles, which, because they cannot be conceived of as admitting of further mechanical division, are called atoms. .. Matter ia ultimately atomic; and matter has different properties and qualities, because the ultimate atoms of various forms of matter are differently endowed. Thus gold differs from hydrogen, because the properties of the atoms th\t constitute these bodies respectively are qu : fee different. Now, the highest point made by modern mathematics and philosophy is this : that the properties of these atoms could not have been acquired by accident and time, or even by force and law for one factor, and time for the other. The properties of the matter, and the splendour of the universe, depend, wholly on their stability. There can be no change. In living things there is generation, variation, and destruction. But in the.case of atoms there iB no generation, no new atom is ever produced, and no destruction occurs;* no single atom can ever disappear.

Therefore there can be no atomic evolution. There never can be now, and there never could have been in the past. . If atoms had ever been without permanence of property, a universe' with permanent phenomena and laws would have been impossible. Instead of a Cosmos, Time would have reigned over Chaos. Properties acquired a thousand millenniums since would have no existence now; and there could have been no onward movement from the simple .to the complex—from the lower to the higherthe very demand of science. The atom, then, at the first, was made. The " beginning" was when Infinite Power and Mind gave shape and endowments to the atoms. The mathematics of Clerk Maxwell compelled him to declare that they were " manufactured articles." Not a property that uow exists iu the matter of earth or heaven but was folded at the beginning in the atoms. Now, with such atoms created by God, could He not cause law, force, and tiino to evolve into the splendour of Heaven and earth ? THE " MIRACLE" OF LIFK. No! New factors were wanting. The material atom did not, as science proves, contain all the properties of the world as it now is. Life is nod in any atom, or any combination of atoms that we know. The properties of living things are endowments that lift them infinitely above the properties of what is not living. Life is always found in a certain kind of matter, highly complex ; and we know of what elements that matter is made up. But we also know that no properties of the elements that make it up can account for the properties of life which the compound possesses. In what lives, we face a new factor in the universe, not a property of any atom, and more wonderful than all the properties of the not-living atoms taken together. How, then, did this come ? Only by a competent Power. We cannot now change matter that does nob live into matter that lives by all the powers of chemistry and physics combined. They will not be so changed. There is no power in visible nature to change them. Only the living genders the living. How, then, did the living matter of the world, as distinct from tho dead matter, first arise ? Surely by the immanent action of a Powei; competent to bring it about. And what is that Power but God ? Neither nature nor science even suggests any other. Then observe, we have, by the admission of honest modern science, two miracles; the "beginning," when the atoms were formed and endowed witb their " properties and the epoch when living matter, with an infinitely higher endowment than dead matter, first appeared upon the globe. Now, as 1 can imagine that with manufactured atoms God could cause law and force and time, so as to work at His bidding to evolve the dead universe, so I nan imagine, should science show it to be required, and in the absence of any stronger evidence to the contrary, that with living matter and its marvellous properties, once introduced into this world by His power, He could cause laws of variation, laws of survival, and laws of change, of environment, to go on operating, and reaching higher and higher, until even man himself was by this process " created of the dust of the earth." THE "miracle" of THE SOUL.

But it never could be man as he is. Man is conscious of himself as distinct from all others ; that is not a property of even living matter. Tyndall, Huxley, Hseckel, and all others, tell us that they are bound to admit that it 'is inconceivable and unthinkable that &ny action of the material atom should produce consciousness. It may, under the agencies of the properties of life, produce a vital machine that can feel hunger, and thirst, and desire, but never a person that can say, "It is 1," as distinct from you—or even know, "I am."

But more : that I has a sense of right and 4 rong, true and false, good and bad. This ls not a property of atoms —nor of even the living compound. Then it must have been imparted? , Yea, just as the atom had to be manufactured and the living matter made. Then, ib this another miracle—another intrusion into the rhythm of Evolution— with which modern science seeks to make us acquainted ? < , / Yes and -the best phraseology for formulating it is : And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul."

I have r made no departure from, or expansion of, strict science in all this. Then, , if evolution be ' granted .as the means by which God created the earth and maD, and the vast circumference of Heaven,

yet there have been 1 at least three great miracles instances in which we see the direct and special operation of His power: the - production of the original atoms;' the origin of life } and'' the production of - man's soul. Why, if need be, may there not be another and even vaster miracle ? The world, with man in it, contains a vast moral element, and that element is not self-balanced. It -involves man, by his own action, in pain, sorrow, and unrest, and scathes him with the blast of ' degradation. If God would come down to make the man, whom He had created from the dost, into a son, endowed with a spirit created out of 'Heaven, need philosophy lie averse to see, in Christ, God appearing ones more— stupendous miracle—to lift the human race up ? Should it*surprise us if in a world of physical life we find all needful arrangements to support and ennoble it, that we find in a moral world special means provided for its uplifting in truth, and purity, and freedom ? CHRIST THB SUPREME MIBICL2. Surely not and this is what Christ Is: God's farther miraculous interposition," for the mora! salvation of our race. Therefore I revert to my earliest sentence : the appearance of 'Christ in history is the advent of a new moral power for the salvation and higher development of the human race. His purpose was to disclose God ; to "show us the Father," but simply on the side of His moral splendour His character. It was not God's infinitude He came to reveal; the vast arch of Heaven, the awful abysses of space lit up with constellations and galaxies, and streams of suna, had already done that. It was not so much God's wisdom and power He sought to disclose ; the dancing atom, the flying bird, the rolling plan6t, the forces of Heaven and earth, and the rhythm of each with all, had already revealed that. Nature is transparent to all the glory and beauty of the mental light and power of God. But in all the star-lit heavens, in all the light and loveliness of the sunset and the sea, there is no moral radiance. Earth and Heaven are opaque to the resplendent light of character. A star can speak of mind, but not of morals. A solar system can tell of mental perfectness, but not of moral purity. It must be a moral nature to reveal, and to receive, a moral revelation. - And, therefore, Christ disclosed, and man received, the highest disclosure of God upon earth. And that disclosure was that " God is a Spirit;" an awful Power, but yet a Father, tie is truth, He is purity, He is rectitade; and, as His mental dominion was absolute throughout the whole domain of being, so He sent Christ to set up and establish for ever His moral dominion, and to give imperishable permanence to right, to goodness, and to truth.

The affirmation is, that "He -must reign" until all His enemies are beneath His feet. Christ was the Revealer of the Father ; that is, He was the moral beauty of the Creator shining through the thought, and action, and suffering of a human life. The eternal sovereignty of God was assured in the physical universe; but His sovereign dominion was disputed in the mtyral. Christ came to establish that kingdom, that, once inaugurated, -it should triumph through time, and then endure for ever when time should be no more. This is the affirmation of a principle ; all moral being rests upon it as a basis: it is the ultimate victory of right, the final enthronement of goodness, and freedom, and truth. Dominion was His, for of His kingdom there should be "no end ;" but His right to reigu conflicted with no earthly monarchy. It was not of earth, but of Heaven; it was goodness, purity, and truth. Its progress would not be seen in bannered host, and gleaming retinue, and spreading city; its advent would not be heard in trenchant warcry and shouts of carnal victory. It comes, but like the spring that swells and widens into Bummer; none from day to day can measure its progress; but the summer splendour comes. It comes, but like the life within the seed that ultimately opens into the grandeur of a mountain-cedar: the accession of strength is " not with observation."

The grandeur of God's Kingdom was the grandeur that was seen in Jesus. His regal jewels were righteousness, freedom, and purity. In the establishment of this kingdom, He was first hailed, and then scorned. They cried "Hosanca," and they cried "Crucify Him," but they did not move Him. His convictions carried Him through smiles and execrations. He was God's only Son ; He had come to establish God's moral kingdom upon earth, and no weapon formed against Him could prosper. They took Him from His fellows, marked Him out Ktr kinjj.lom ; on a nation's worship sat 1 His glittering throne, and crowned Him with * shout. But yet alas ! but yet Gcd was not mocked. The woiid could not disarm The silent enemy within th-. breast, That undfrunning of th-j uuse-n ncrji — The worm that will noi rest. They cast 'Jim out in anger; call id Him mad, Sccrntd Him, una made ills :euder heait a whet To sh*r,.tn iaio wit. L", it was sad! But yet, thank Heaveu ! liut yet Hj was not fr er.dleßj, 'or where'er He trod Warm wo-xis ft 1. Him ju sweet summer sl o v r , Down ir m the starry siietcai of God, Up fro2: the 'ipj ci dowcts. In solitude, but not alone, He planted the Kingdom of Gun, and by His cross ratified the covenant of salvation .for man. And from then unt.il now that Kingdom has grown, and no fury of militant forces, no combination of power?, can stem the irresistible tide of its widening spread. It is immortal, for it is right. God's highest rights as sovereign are moral. His Kingdom of kingdoms is the Spirit. Christ, by His life. His passion, His cross, and victory of resurrection, has brought that Kingdom here. And God's sovereignty must fail, or this Kingdom most triumph. To us the victory seems tardy; the leaven seems to act but slowly ; the seed makes but feeble progress towards the tree. But to those whose faith is strong, whose lives are true, whose hearts are loyal, these are but stronger impulses to labour; they provoke but a sublimer resolution that all the forces of love and duty shall be made to take their mightiest momentum. THE VICTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

Christianity has been scorned, and reviled, and hated. With flame, and sword, and rack it has been hunted in city and on moor, in catacomb and homestead. But the rack has not torn it, nor the flame scorched it, nor the sword slain it. It is Divine purpose, and none may stay it. It is imperishable principle, and it must conquer. Go 3" is Supreme Ruler in the physical universe ; ultimately He must be in the moral. He must reign in Christ His Son and manifestation until he has made His enemies His footstool; and this because it is a Kingdom "not of this world." Whenever intellectual teaching, imperishable by its own immortal truth, has been planted even by man, in the minds of man, it not only does not perish, but, like the swelling seed and the multiplying leaven, it deepens its power and widens its influence for ever.

Did the name ,and thought of Socrates ever exert a broader influence than now Did Plato ever touch so large a sphere ? or what is true in what he wrote ever command so large an audience as now? Did ever Shakspere sway the deep feelings and thoughts of men as his piercing insight into our common heart sways them now ? No ; and it must ever be so even of truth discovered and enunciated from man to man. But here is • truth from Heaven, and . a Divine life to bring and in Himself by life and death expound, it; and shall it not swell as the river, and grow as the day from the dawn?

In what zone has not the cross cast its shadow, and the saving name of Christ been heard You cannot name it. Under every meridian, in every language under the arch of heaven, light, truth, purity, and freedom, as brought by Christ, have been proclaimed. The citizens of His Kingdom are gathered out of every kindred, nation, and tongue. _ Then it is ours to work, to spread the light and truth, to disseminate the principles and powers that make this Kingdom, and to leave, in faith, the rest to God. You have opportunity to-day. Christ must reign. Nothing can prevent it; but you can aid it, you can foster, you can further its interests, and, by it, the welfare of the world. Are you working? Will you work? Are you living ? Will you live Are you giving? Will you give? The world lieth in darkness, but the light is breaking, and blessed are we if we can hasten the scattering of the darkness and the coming of the great moral and spiritual noon. ' .. ; ; -