CHAPTER III.

LECTURES.-THE EVIL RESULTS OF ATHEISTIC AND SEMIATHEISTIC LECTURES.-DR. CARPENTER AT SION COLLEGE.-PROFESSORS TYNDALL AND HUXLEY AT BElfast. -PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S EXPLANATION.

A GOOD deal of useful information is circulated now-a-days by lectures. This form of instruction is most suitable to particular subjects—such, for instance, as admit of illustration by plates and diagrams, or by experiments. Such lectures afford most useful and interesting instruction when the lecturer thoroughly enters into his subject and keeps himself to it.

But there are some lecturers who are not satisfied by this great triumph of their art, but must needs intrude themselves into matters beyond their ken. Physicists aspire to be psychologists. Lecturers on natural objects fancy themselves qualified to give instruction on religion and morality, and the world too often allows the intrusion.

Perhaps the most ludicrous and incongruous instance of this sort of absurdity was the recent

DR. CARPENTER.

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case of the London clergy assembled at Sion College to hear Dr. Carpenter, a well-known physicist, explain to them his views on the subject of prayer! Men who have received God's commission to teach all nations to observe and do what He hath commanded, (and surely He has commanded that all His people should be taught to pray,) must needs go to a secular philosopher to ask his opinion on the subject!

The same sort of thing, however, is going on all over the country. Everywhere secular philosophers are taking upon themselves to interfere in the matters of religion. The members of the British Association, whether in London or in their annual provincial gatherings, besides a host of local lecturers at Mechanics' Institutes and such like places, all more or less mar the real value of the information which they are well able to afford, by mixing it up with moral and religious considerations for which they are quite incompetent. They know a great deal more about the creation of the world forsooth than Moses-at least they fancy so. The first chapter of Genesis is a mere myth. Ask them what account they have to substitute for it, and they cannot tell; it is " unknowable," " unthinkable." So far at least they are honest enough to confess that they know nothing at all about the matter. All they can say

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WHY DO CHRISTIANS

is, with Topsy, that they "s'pose things growed," or, in more scientific language, were evolved out of something or other-what they cannot say. It is quite a mistake, they tell us, to suppose that GOD created man in His own image. He was evolved out of an ape, or as, I believe, is supposed by the most advanced philosophers, out of a dog. Miracles are impossible, altogether out of the question. Why? Because things go on according to fixed laws. But surely He who first gave the laws could change them? No answer. denial of miracles, of course, at one stroke sets aside the whole of the Bible, which is simply the record of God's miraculous government of the world. This your physicist does not seem to care for.

The

Why have I brought forward these common-. places? Simply because it is these very proceedings which are exercising so pernicious an influence on the national faith; and also because the remedy for the evil is easy and obvious. Why on earth do Christian people go to hear these sceptical lecturers, who would bring atheism and infidelity into their families? The spectacle, ordinary as it is, yet considered seriously, is one of the most pitiable and unaccountable which can well be conceived. Here is a crowded lecture room, with a thousand or more respectable people, paterfamilias and his wife and family, assembled

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of their own accord to listen to a man whose object is under the plea of philosophy, to perplex and rob them of their faith. They have themselves no doubt whatever of the truth of Christianity; and yet they give ear to a man who derides the Bible, and laughs at Christian doctrine. Now, the lecturer will either persuade his audience or he will not. If he does not persuade them, and they see plainly that he is a very ignorant person on most important subjects, they have merely lost their time in coming to hear him. If he does persuade them, and shakes their faith, even in a small degree, it is no use mincing the matter, he may have destroyed their immortal souls, robbed them of their inheritance in heaven; and this risk they have incurred for the sake of having their ears tickled by some amusing straws of science. They are like geese coming of their own accord to be killed, or they may be compared to a number of unsuspicious persons sitting quietly. to have a mitrailleuse discharged upon them; only that the mitrailleuse could only rob them of their present life the lecturer would destroy them for eternity. What is the remedy for this absurd and dangerous state of things? Simply to avoid such lecturers as you would avoid pitch. If you are a man of influence in your neighbourhood, use your influence to obtain the services of honest and conscientious Christian lecturers, who can

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PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S

really give you information on matters of scientific interest, without meddling with matters in which they have no concern.

Since the above was written, an illustration of my subject has occurred in the opening lecture, delivered by Professor Tyndall before the British Association at Belfast. The Professor describes the progress of science in early times. All was going on very well before the Christian era. Epicurus and Lucretius had developed the right principles. What, then, stopped its victorious advance? Christianity had appeared, and with it obscurity of thought, servility, intolerance of disposition, enthusiasm of temper. The Professor cannot deny that in its moral results Christianity was beneficial to the human family. But to it he clearly attributes the two millennia in which the human intellect lay dead like an exhausted soil. Only there was a brief interval at the time of the intrusion of the Moors into Spain!! With that exception, until recent times, philosophy has languished. Now this theory is perfectly true, postulating only that philosophy is the same thing as atheism, pure and simple. The doctrines of Epicurus were simple atheism. The Gospel cast them into the shade by revealing to mankind the true GOD and His SON JESUS CHRIST. The present revival of philosophy, according to Professor Tyndall and his friends, is neither more