Works of Creation Insufficient

Works of creation insufficient — Knowledge of God not innate — In¬ visible things of God — What the Scriptures teach — Opinions of ancient philosophers — President Edwards’ argument — Reason in¬ sufficient — Roby’s conclusion on the subject — Ian’s responsibility — Native ceremonies — Customs originating with Doctors and Rain-makers — An unpleasant ceremony — Native poets or eulogists — Natural theology — Systems of idolatry — Their various grades — How Africa was colonized — Physical variety in man.

The preceding chapter contains facts from which important deductions may he drawn; and the writer has involuntarily been led to incpire, Are we compelled to enter the gloomy recesses of heathenism? If we look at home — a land of light — shall we not find individuals whose ignorance would equal that either of Hottentot or Bechuana? Have not our noble band of home missionaries brought to light instances of the grossest darkness? How many are there who have resisted the force of every argument on the subject, and even laughed to scorn every article in our creed, and have died martyrs to atheism! Let us go to the asylums for the deaf and dumb, and we shall find there persons having eyes to see and gaze on the infinitude of wonders in creation, and possessing minds capable of reasoning from effect to cause, who, previous to their being instructed, were perfectly ignorant of a Divine

Being. While then, we have these facts before us, we feel compelled to differ in opinion from those who would have us believe, that the volume of Nature ‘affords the primary and entire proof of God’s existence and ‘Go vindicate his claim to he, he leaves to the heavens which declare his glory, to the firmament which showeth his handy work, to the days which utter knowledge, and the nights which pro¬ claim wisdom.” The preceding examples exhibit to our view sentient beings, whose minds, notwithstanding the indications of Divine wisdom, power, and goodness in creation, are unconscious of any existence beyond what they see and feel. This demonstrates that all the knowledge of Divine things existing in every nation, from the refined Greek down a thou¬ sand gradations, through the numberless shades of polytheism to the rude barbarian, is to be traced to Divine Revelation, whether written or traditional, and not to innate or intuitive ideas. This view of the subject we shall find, on more minute inquiry, in perfect accordance with the declarations contained in the inspired volume. For “it is He that teacheth man knowledge. I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the heavens by myself.” These are the declarations of the great “I AM;” and without such a revelation, the world by wisdom could never have found out God. It is recorded by some author, that there were two periods of the world in which the knowledge of God was universal. This was at the creation, and during the days of Noah, after the flood. At the former period the revelation must have been made known by God himself; and at the latter by the preacher of righteousness in his own family. Kee])ing this in mind, there is no difficulty in under¬ standing the following declaration of the Apostle, “For the invisible things of Him (His eternal power and Godhead) revealed or made known at the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead.””^ That the stupendous earth and heavens, the endless variety of order and change, and the dazzling beauty and grandeur of every thing touched by the finger of Jehovah, do testify with a voice, loud as the thunder’s roar, clear as the noon¬ tide beam, there can he no question; but surely not by uttering speech to a previously uninformed mind, and conveying the primary idea of the existence of God. This, in my humble opinion, is not what the Apostle intended to convey, but simply that God originally imparted the knowledge of his own being to man, and that tradition has circulated the report through the nations of the earth, which has under-

* Romans i. 20: — “For (y«p, nam, siquidem, forasmuch as) the invisible things of him, his eternal power and godhead, as afterwards explained, /rom not tK, but a-rrh, ever since, the creation of the world, when they were fully communicated, are clearly seen, because after a declaration of his nature and existence, the Divine attributes are plainly evinced, being understood voovfitva, explained to the under¬ standing, by the things that are made, Troihgaffi the wmrks of God, or things which he had done, not only of creation but of providence, in the deluge, in the wonderful preservation of the church, and destruction of his enemies, in bis many appearances, miracles, and interpositions with mankind, wliicli, through all ages, had been related to them, and were a sensible demonstration of omniscience, omnipotence, invisibility, and immateriality, even his eternal power and godhead, which alone could elfect such wonderful things.” — Ellis on Divine Things.

gone, by Satanic influence on the minds of fallen creatures, all those modifications presented to us in the pantheon, or in the minds of savages.

The Scriptures, so far from teaching us that we may infer the being of a God from the works of creation, assert that our knowledge of the visible universe as the production of God’s creative power, is derived, not from the deductions of reason, but from a belief of the Divine testimony revealing the fact: Through faith we understand that the worlds

were made by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”* Such as advocate the dignity of human reason may spin a fine theory, but let them go to the hut or the den of the sunburnt African, and ask if any such a system has been spun by these children of nature. It is easy to detect the borrowed plumes with which the heathen moralists bedecked their bright effusions. Philosophers and poets find no difficulty in follow¬ ing nature to nature’s God, when they have revelation to lead the way, but let them point out to us nations who have found the Almighty without other aids than their own resources. It is to this that Tertullian refers, when he asks them, ‘‘ Which of your poets, which of your sophisters, have not drank from the fountains of the prophets?” and thus, as Dr. Ellis expresses it, their noblest flights took wing from the gospel.” Many heathen philosophers, who possessed advantages vastly superior to any of Africa’s sons, instead of inferring from works of creation, the existence of a Supreme Being, generally

Heb. xi. 3. maintained that the matter, and some even that the form of the world itself was eternal, and others again substituted parts of the visible universe for God him¬ self. Even no less a person than the learned philosopher Dr. Clarke, the defender of natural religion, admits, that ‘‘ of the philosophers themselves, who should have corrected the errors of the vulgar, some argued themselves out of the belief of the very being of God.” The following from President Edwards’s

Miscellaneous Observations,” will be found to throw additional light on the subject: —

“If the most sagacious of the philosophers were capable of doing this, after hearing so much of a first cause and a creation, what would they have done, and. what would the gross of mankind, who are inattentive and ignorant, have thought of the matter, if nothing had been taught concerning God and the origin of things; but every single man left solely to such intimation as his own senses and reason could have given him? We find the earlier ages of the world did not trouble themselves about the question, whether the being of God could be proved by reason; but either never inquired into the matter, or took their opinions upon that head, merely from tradition. But allowing that every man is able to demonstrate to himself, that the world, and all things contained therein, are effects, and had a beginning, which I take to be a most absurd supposition, and look upon it to be almost impossible for unassisted reason to go so far; yet, if effects are to be ascribed to similar causes, and a good and wise effect must siqipose a good and wise cause; by the same way of reasoning, all the evil and irregularity in the world must be attributed to an evil and unwise cause. So that either the first cause must be both good and evil, wise and foolish, or else there must be two first causes, an evil and irrational, as well as a good and wise principle. Thus man, left to himself, would be apt to reason, ‘ If the cause and the effects are similar and conformable, matter must have a material cause, there being nothing more im])ossible for us to conceive than how matter should be produced by spirit, or any thing else but matter.’ The best reasoner in the world, endeavouring to find out the causes of things by the things themselves, might be led REASON INSUFFICIENT.

into the grossest errors and contradictions, and find himself, at the end, in extreme want of an instructor.

“What instance can be mentioned, from any history, of any one nation under the sun, that emerged from atheism or idolatry into the knowledge or adoration of the one true God, without the assistance of revelation? The Americans, the Africans, the Tartars, and the ingenious Chinese, have had time enough, one would think, to find out the right and true idea of God; and yet, after above five thousand years’ improvement, and the full exercise of reason, they have, at this day, gone no farther in their progress towards the true religion, than to the worship of stocks and stones and devils. How many thousands of years must be allowed to these nations to reason themselves into the true religion? What the light of nature and reason could do to investigate the knowledge of God, is best seen by what they have already done. We cannot argue more convincingly on any foundation than that of known and incontestable facts.”

All this, and much more that might be said on the subject, goes to prove, that reason, whose province is not to invent, but to collect, arrange, and deduce, cannot discover first principles; and that unless these are supplied by the law and the testimony, the mind must wander as it has done in the bewilderina: maze of uncertainty, and darken instead of seeing more clearly the reflected beams of revealed truth, which tradition has conveyed like a glimmering ray to the minds of most of the inhabitants of our globe.

It appears evident, then, from what has been written, that all the relics of theology to be found in heathen lands, are only the remaining fragments which have been handed down by a vitiated and defective tradition. But more than this, we find people not only in Africa, hut in other parts of the world, from whose intellectual horizon the last rays of tradition have fled, — proving what the Scriptures affirm, that man’s roby’s conclusions on the subject. depraved nature is such, as to choose darkness rather than light, — and who have now most emphatically forgotten God. The late Rev. William Rohy, in his ‘‘ Lectures on Revealed Religion,’’ from which some hints have been taken, makes the following remarks:

“With respect to ourselves, it must be admitted, that we de¬ rived our knowledge of the truth from instruction; and wherever it exists, it may be traced through antecedent generations, to the first parents of the human race: and they could derive it from no other than their Creator. The advocates of human reason and natural religion, may talk and write on these subjects, hut their systems ‘are radically defective in various respects. They are not only obscure and confused; inadequate and imperfect; different and contradictory; but are all of them merely hypothetical. They are founded upon nothing but presumption, they cannot justly yretend to certainty, for they acknowledge no infallible standard; present¬ ing no evidence of Divine authority, they have no claim to religious obligation. Acknowledging no positive rule, no decisive testimony, no superior tribunal; one individual pretending to reason, exercising his judgment upon them, has as great a right to deny, as an¬ other has to affirm.”

Since the publication of my sermon, preached be¬ fore the Directors of the London Missionary Society, many questions have been put to me on the preceding subjects, which has induced me to proceed at greater length in this discussion. As to the question of man’s responsibility, according to these views, the same question may be put with equal propriety, in reference to the idolater, whose too superstitious” parents taught him from earliest infancy to venerate a block of wood, or reptile deified; or in reference to the deaf and dumb, or many others, whose senses are entire, whose minds were never cultivated by those who might have saved them. “Ye knew your duty,

but ye did it not will be the great condemning charge brought against the wilful transgressor, by the Judge of all the earth. The issue of the principles inculcated by Him, who shall come in flaming fire to take vengeance on those that know not God, will be, that He who knew his Lord’s will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he who knew not his Lord’s will, and committed deeds worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” The apostle Paul asserts to the Athenians, that the times of pagan ignorance, “God winked at, but now commandeth all men every where to repent.” The same apostle, feeling the full weight of the Saviour’s commission, adds to the fearful list of iniquities and flagitious sins committed by his own countrymen the Jews, that of “forbidding him and his colleagues to preach to the Gentiles, that they might be saved.” Thus, if the apostle is to be our example, and the commands of the Saviour are to be our guide, our duty is as plain as if written by a noontide ray, to make known to perishing heathen, whether at home or abroad, the words of eternal life.

Before concluding this general review of the prevailing notions which exist among the tribes of Southern Africa, which throw some light on their origin, and present the most formidable barriers to their evangelization, a few remnants of tradition may be noticed. Among the tribes, and especially those nearer to the coast, some customs remain which are thought to have a reference to sacrifices, offerings, and purifications; such as might be expected to be found among people descending from the East, as all the Bechuana tribes appear to have done. In many instances, their slaughtering of animals on occasions of a tree being struck with lightning, or to procure rain, or to restore the sick, may be easily traced to the inventive brain of wily rain-makers, who in such a case, as at their public festivals and ceremonies, never lose sight of their stomachs. One will try to coax the sickness out of a chieftain by setting him astride an ox, with its feet and legs tied, and then smothering the animal by hold¬ ing its nose in a large bowl of water. A feast follows, and the ox is devoured, sickness and all. A sorcerer will pretend he cannot find out the guilty person, or where the malady of another lies, till he has got him to kill an ox, on which he manoeuvres by cutting out certain parts. Another doctor will require a goat, which he kills over the sick person, allowing the blood to run down the body. Another will require the fat of the kidney of a fresh slaughtered goat, saving, that any old fat will not do; and thus he comes in for his chop. These slaughterings are prescribed according to the wealth of the individual, so that a stout ox might be the cure for a slight cold in a chieftain, while a kid would be a remedy for a fever ‘among the poor, among whom there was no chance of obtaining any thing greater. The above ceremonies might with little difficulty be construed into sacrifices, if we felt anxious to increase the number of traditionary remains. Is it, however, to be wondered at, among a’ pastoral people whose choicest viand is broiled or boiled meat, and to whom fat of any kind is like the richest cordial, that they should solemnize every event or circumstance with beef? hen a covenant is made between parties, or a mutual

treaty entered into, one animal or more must be killed; and, like Jacob and Laban of old, they eat together. All this is very natural, but the following is not so agreeable a part of the business. When Sibonelo, a chief of the Barolong, made a covenant with Buys, who fled to him from .Kafir-land, the paunch of a large ox was taken, with its contents, and an incision being made in each side of the stomach, the one forced his body through it, and the other followed, intimating by this ceremony that they were henceforward one people. But, beyond these, there is something more like sacrifice among the Zoolus, or what may with more propriety be viewed as honouring the manes of the dead, to which reference will be made in my journey to Moselekatse. However, it never appeared to me that they deified them, any more than the thoughtless in this country do, when they swear by St. George. The distinguished and heroic deeds of those who have signalized themselves in aggrandizing the nation are the theme of their songs, like those of Ossian the son of Fingal. Their poets and public eulogists, to please their vain monarch, work themselves up to a state of enthusiasm bordering on phrenzy, and attribute the most ‘ unbounded powers and achievements to personages of royalty and fame. Similar customs, doubtless, gave rise to the deified heroes of antiquity.

Is it surprising that ignorant, and, not unfrequently, feeble-minded chiefs should yield to a kind of superstitious veneration and regard for the names of those who have distinguished themselves by deeds of valour, until by frequent contemplation and eulogy they become most exaggerated and extravagant, so as to foster pride and vain glory, and awaken the suspicion of something more than human? This has been the custom of all ages and has been the fertile means of throwing an impenetrable veil over the history of many characters and events, when the absence of letters prevented their being handed down to posterity in their naked form.

The ceremonies to be found among the Bechuanas, apparently of Mosaic or patriarchal origin, are I’ound upon examination to be like shells without the kernel. Whatever may have been their origin, they have merged into the ordinary habits of savage life, and centuries ago lost the last vestiges of the tradition of their original design. Happy for us that we have not been left to feel after God among the distant orbs of heaven, or amid the diversified dis¬ plays of power and skill in our own world. “If, therefore, natural theology is rightly defined to be that which is attainable by the light of nature only, then all who have the light of nature, and the use of reason, are capable of attaining it; otherwise, the definition will be false and imperfect. The general character of man will hold true that he is without knowledge till he receives instruction, and without conscience till informed what the will of God is.”*

The multitude of ignorant savages to he found in the world corroborates this statement, and the means by which some have sunk lower than others in the depth of ignorance, may be easily traced. Nations who have the sacred monuments of the past before their eyes from age to age, have the mementos of what they are intended to represent, and are constantly

* Ellis oil Divine Things.

reminded by this means of the religion of their ancestors.

If we look over the map of the Gentile world, we find the victims of all the grades of idolatry, from the most refined and abstract to the most savage and de¬ based, involved in the gross darkness described in the preceding pages. Some nations from time immemorial have been under the domination of systems so cruel, that their tenets may be read in characters of blood. Those of others are involved in so many labyrinths, that we cannot ascribe their contrivance to even a host of the most inventive minds, or to the experience of a succession of ages. If we examine those idolatrous structures which crush so many millions of our race in the East, which have endured for ages, and with their multiplied ramifications, have tried the faith and zeal of the churches of Christ, the most legitimate conclusion at which we can arrive is, that Satan, the god of this world, has been most successful in aiding the minds of men completely to transform ‘‘ the invisible things” first revealed to man. Although it must be admitted that the Hindoos are highly intellectual, and their system is indicative of superlative cunning, yet, such is the delusion of its votaries, that they give themselves up, as if reason had reeled from its pivot, to a worship at which a babe might shriek with terror, or smile at as a toy.

The immense structures that have been raised to perpetuate these strange commixtures of heaven and hell, and the puzzling dogmas of their shasters, only serve to retain the minds of millions in the grossest idolatry.

We might select other grades, such as are to be found in the Eastern Archipelago, the South Sea Islands, or America, diverging, according to their respective positions, still farther from the original symbols of divine worship. As we traverse the more sequestered sections of the great human family, we find the glimmering rays of tradition still less conspicuous. Some even have before their eyes the sacred remains of former ages in gigantic busts, or broken piles of ruined grandeur, which once echoed to the tones of idolatrous devotion, where hecatombs were slain, and which were perfumed with the incense of votive offerings, while myriads there shouted, “Great is Diana.” Ask their descendants or successors what these things mean, and they are silent as the lifeless deities before their eyes. Among some a few shadows seem still to linger, which the fancy of a sorcerer employs to feed the mind of the populace with ideas more gross than could have arisen from the absence of all tradition. Thus we find in the downward scale of human degradation, men who, as the apostle says, “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” turn the truth into a lie or an idol. These again become varied according to the fancies of their votaries: others are content with fetiches and charms, and finally, some, from their nomade life and isolated position, have lost all idea of the being of a God.

If we find in some parts of the world those who, though reclining under the very shadow of edifices of idolatry, are ignorant of their origin or use; what are we to expect from Africans, whose progenitors, I am led to suppose, were not very civilized themselves

when they first began to people their vast continent? Africa, doubtless, was originally peopled by each family or tribe of its first settlers becoming too numerous for its locality; some branching out to the more sequestered parts; and, not unfrequently, communities rent asunder by intestine broils, have sought separate settlements elsewhere; others, again, have been driven to take refuge from a superior force in the recesses of the wild champaign; and, lastly, little communities have probably arisen, from rebels and murderers, whose crimes have compelled them to seek shelter among beasts of prey. We can readily perceive from these circumstances, how easy it was for a people during such a lapse of time, descending from Mizraim and Phut, and migrating through Egypt; or descending from Cush, and passing from Arabia to the eastern and southern parts of the African continent, from the fierce and restless tribes of Ishmael, to forget every vestige of the creeds of their progenitors. It is easy for men to degenerate in religion and civilization, especially when compelled to lead a wandering life, which is by no means favour¬ able to the cultivation of devotion in the soul; but numberless examples prove, that nothing less than a divine lever can raise them. In all ages hunger and ignorance have been the great brutalizers of the human race and, if we look at the large tracts of barren country inhabited by some of the African tribes, it is not surprising that they are what they are, — ignorant, filthy, and sometimes very disgusting in their appearance. Degraded as they are, they merit not the epithets which have been heaped upon them, by those who are unmindful that their position only has prevented them from becoming Hottentots and Bushmen themselves.

We close our remarks on this subject by a quotation from ‘ ‘ Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” by Dr. Prichard,

“If these tribes are, as I have endeavoured to prove, not a distinct class of nations, but only the offsets of stems, differing widely from them when existing under more favourable circumstances; if the apparent inferiority in their organization, their ugliness, thin, meagre, and deformed stature, are usually connected with jdiysical conditions unfavourable to the development of bodily vigour, — there will be no proof of original inferiority in any thing that can he adduced respecting them. Their personal deformity and intellectual weakness, if these attributes really belong to them, must he regarded as individual varieties. Similar defects are produced in every part of the human race by the agency of physical circumstances parallel to those under which the tribes in question are known to exist. If these were reversed, it is probable that a few generations would obliterate the effect which has resulted from them.” — Vol. ii. p. 349, &c.

It may also be here added, from the same learned author,

“That they have not indeed contributed towards the advancement of human art or science, but they have shown themselves willing and able to profit by these advantages when introduced among them. The civilization of many African nations is much superior to that of the Aborigines of Europe, during the ages which preceded the conquests of the Goths and Swedes in the north, and the Romans in the southern parts.”