Show infidelity the merely casual observer of life in its various phases must be aware of the fact that infidelity to Is growing to a most alarming extent pamphlets newspapers ors sow the seed in every corner comer of the christian world at many universities infidelity takes the lead even theological professors and not a few clergymen are infidels although pali paid for preaching the doctrines of christianity and among the masses of the people it is quite fashionable to have something to say against god and his word young men and nd women though almost destitute of literary acquisitions quote with admirable radl readiness the quintessence of stupidity exhibited to view by voltaire pos poe seau Fayne Payne and lately by ingersoll while formerly it was a shame to profess infidelity it is now openly boasted it seems to be thought a disgrace to adhere to and advocate the old established truths of christianity ti it is a cause for serious reflection that this state of affairs should exist mostly in io protestant countries germany whose soil is bedewed with the blood of the heroes who fought for the principles of protestantism whose colleges and chapels once re sounded with the voices of luther arndt and is now the very school of religious corruption but the causes of the growing evil are as apparent as the evil itself and are well worthy of consideration the natural tendency of man is to t ibel against god let us break the te bands bandi of god and his anointed oes D arid and east cast away their cords from is a true representation of the vanity anity and rage of the rulers of the ataul obedience to a supreme jer is the very point that haughty men Flen always act to submission 18 38 a 4 virtue not oba desired and not much understood hence infidelity bep mep men take we refu refuge e in the dark caves of this buren ren wilderness wilderness in order to escape god d and his ruling power but this natural depravity of man aee not give the full explanation 1 lu I this lies the fact that christianity was 13 never understood except comparatively ively by very few the high introduced by christ were ere never grasped by the masses of the ue people even the first apostles or of our lord were but partially en Sut ened on many points and the light grows more and more dim as those we bold messengers of god are taken ken away and the ages roll on anybody who will compare the writings tings of the so called apostolic lathers others and later on the church f titters with those of the apostles 1 readily how and t perceive light bence Ue nce gradually faded away until ri lost in the mists of silliness ness once in a while the clouds rouda open en and rays of ouight light break forth upon but again its blessings are aped grasped only by the few the of the world are tb thus us always avide e open to infidelity from the vory y fact that the masses of the world omd never had a right understand K g of the truth aa 41 n illustration of this may be of jofs in D the e miraculous phenomena 1 W christianity there was a time 1 at r lae rl miracles were not objected to bod 0 t was ba not thought impossible for 11 to arrest the i course of the heavenly evenly bodies to divide the of the red sea to feed tg neen hf on a few ew loaves of bread or edtl a blind man with the touch of nand it could not be explained or ather ct rather her the explanation that If ad did d it was thought bought to be suf mal it was looked upon as a artter te of fact that god could do nat ever he desired but science co advanced ced natural laws were disy ly and the assertion was bold made ade that a miracle was an ini im possibility 0 ean ve y on the sund ground that too its S buwe ways tys take tak place accordi according ng ge ari n natural laws now the ends of christianity proved their religion ess ignorance gnor ance of the spirit of their tra tr e by denouncing this as un khatri t th y persisted in holding above abnar cles are against or at least the their j i natural nati ural laws and thus by plaat ww ignorance orance the they y broke down chutney the y pretended to defend if nit I 1 Y could not live without moles teles thus explained christi are have to go 5 and there day davy probably mill ions W of infidels to thit the are 8 so 80 became they y believe with ath gad a of 0 nature is at variance the e god of the bible bibla an as anee n founded on pure egnor the thesa theS bother 4 other 1 instance stance may be found in varr var tion a of the christians to s wan natural philosophy there 4 in at dirae when everybody believed leli eved unseen world a spirit world 12 this was divided into three parts heaven where all the angels and the good people lived M hell where all the devils and the bad people had apartments and hades where those went who were not good a enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell heaven was situated far above the stars in the infinite rei gions of light and bliss hell was situated in the centre of the earth and hades had no clearly defined geographical position in this system the earth was the great centrum of creation the sun and all the brilliant stars were nothing batso but so many lamp for the exclusive benefit of man the earth was a stable habitation and the heavens with all their hosts had to lo revolve round the earth in the short time of twenty four hours satan and his angels governed the air to a large extent and caused much trouble among the children of men they would have done a great dei deal more had it not been for the good angels who guarded and preserved men in their doings on earth this system crude as it is satisfied theologians and philosophers hil 0 hers OF alike the students of th the e bible found no better information in the sacred volume nor was platonic aristotelian scholastic philosophy at variance with it for 1500 0 years it predominated but suddenly the monk copernicus appeared with mighty arm he threw the earth out of its supposed position as the centrum of creation and put in the sun as such instead of the earth this paused caused a wonderful revolution in the general modes of thinking the stars became suns and the earth itself was reduced to a mere atom rolling its course in space to commence with the defenders of the faith gave the copernican discovery no heed at all but after a while the system was further developed and proved in all its details then the conflict between science and christianity commenced the christians understood their religion as imperfectly as possible and philo philosophers hers attacked them mercilessly 1 two points were made this little earth of ours it was said cannot be the chief point of creation gods cods son could not choose such an insignificant spot of the w world orld to live and to die in the thought is preposterous this was the first point the second was that it was a ridiculous idea to fan fancy cythe the spirit world heaven hades and hell with all its angels human souls or devils should turn round in twenty four hours or following the law of gravitation with the earth run round the sun in a year the idea was a laughable one but ther th christian world stood almost without an answer the catholics continued to sell admission tickets to heaven and the protestants said nothing christianity was not u understood der stood and human wisdom had it all its own way SubR subsequent quent researches led to fur ther reaching conclusions matter was subjected to the closest scrutiny and when nothing more than matter could be discovered there came the too hasty conclusion that nothing more existed that matter was its own originator governed by fixed immutable laws the whole world became nothing more than a working machine and when everything happened according to laws inherent in matter so was the idea of god totally abandoned pot fok in a world moving according to its own laws a god had clearly nothing to do thus men succeeded step by step to form a system wherein god had no DO room but man existed yet as a being endowed with will understanding and conscientiousness how could his free will harmonize with the unchangeable laws of the new system when everything happens upon fixed laws how is a free agent possible the answer to this came soon the creator whoever he was had foreseen everything even the special sets acts good or bad E Z of men ana adf the world had been made so that all these acts could fit into it and the whole work together to the furtherance of the general plan thus it wai thought that a free will and unchangeable laws were made to fit into each other and again there was no room for god for everything is foreseen it can consequently not be otherwise than as it is what is is the only thi thing ng that possibly could be it is therefore idle to talk of freedom responsibility sin or virtue what is is right no god can make it otherwise to these conclusions the system of leibnitz necessarily led and to such fearful conclusions human wisdom has ever led the defenders of faith have stood powerless because they did not as a rule understand the religion they professed the word of god in the bible in nature in history were all illegible hieroglyphics to them hence there was nothing to prevent the flood of infidelity from inundating the world to all this comes another mighty factor which is by itself the originator of more infidelity than all the rest put together I 1 refer to the inconsistency which many professed christians have shown in professing one thing and practicing another look at the christian world the they claim to believe in christ aud and try v to demonstrate that claim by innumerable religious performances the spires of their gothic temples and cathedrals of magnificent and curious workmanship workman shi P significantly point towards the sky s the e heavens 11 their CC priests es ts officiate in gorgeous apparel a re adorned ad r ned with gold embroidered embro idere crosses and the nations bow in adoration adorata on but a little nearer acquaintance with the w whole hole show discloses the fact that this same christian world including pope priests bishops etc does not believe one single word of what christ has spoken not one om word this is a fearful charge and must be substantiated christ taught holiness as the condition upon u which aich alone man can obtain 0 the e t privilege P of seeing god the I 1 christian world practices in various ways and says god is and will always be invisible and incomprehensible christ taught love towards god and towards his fellowmen fel the love that rules the christian world is love towards ones one Is own self and what belongs thereto selfishness is the leading power in the world a selfishness selfish ness that is hardly greater or stronger among the brutes in the woods than in christian communities and so ao hardened in this sin has the world become that it has almost forgotten that it is a sin a great rea tsin sin christ taught humi humility lity re the christian world teaches pride ride and vanity in word and example the standing armies of the world with the millions of uniformed uniform soldiers every sword made for the butchering of human beings every cannon ball are a protest against christianity every act of oppression every dollar made by direct or indirect cheating proves that christianity is heyd held as a mere theory and the official divine services with all their idolatry meaningless formalism and caricatures of worship are so many blows in the face of christ and his teachings the world does not believe one word of the pure admirable doctrines of our blessed savior popular christianity is nothing but a theatrical pince a kind of burlesque and a very poor one too the world know this in many minds the term christian is synonymous with hypocrite 11 it was a common saying among people in my childhood that the professed christians were the greatest scoundrels for taking undue advantage of their fel they professed to live for heaven but knew not when they had got enough of this thi earth asif as if thelex they expected that heaven was a very poor place after all it has always been a mystery to me how priests knowing each others tricks could refrain from smiling when they met for they know they are nothing but impostors from a religious point of view this tremendous imposition this world spread hypocrisy this professing one thing and practicing another is the most potent promoter of infidelity infidelity like the poisonous fungus grows only where the soil and atmosphere are favorable this ed christianity is the very soil favorable to an alarming extent for far all that is evil A misunderstood and horribly perverted christianity sown in human hearts by nature inclined to disobedience bedi ence towards god is the only and real cause of infidelity As in cases of bodily sickness the causes when known often suggest the remedies so with this mental disease to know the real causes of infidelity infidel infidelity it cerep is to know how it must be cured let it once oe de understood that human wisdom in itself is insufficient to comprehend those things which belong exclusively to the domain of revelation and infidelity is doomed it has no longer any soil to grow in the supposed contradictions between revealed religion and science must b explained be so that their nature may be understood and then it will be seen that there to is no such thing at all true some men man who thought that they knew a great deal of nature have advanced their theories as if these were facts others who thou thought lit that they knew a great deal of re religion gon have put forward their doctrines as revealed articles of faith prom from these sources all the contradictions arise A science too green to be properly digested and theology dead and rotten form together a dish which anyone will be only too glad I 1 to spit out they contradict each other but true science and true religion are never contradictory they never can be science deals with facts and tries to arrange and explain the facts which we perceive around us with our natural senses As lung long as she deals only with such facts arranges them properly and explains them correctly she is a true science but if she treats as facts what are mere suppositions or only appearances she is both deceived and deceiving religion Be ligion too deals with facts with such facts as are known only from immediate revelation science and religion as far as they are pure and free from human errors are therefore both true and can never be at variance the complement one another and are both necessary for our advancement in knowledge and eternal happiness true religion then based as all true religion is on revelation from god is the antidote to infidelity but this religion must be honestly and consistently carried out in practice if there were a community where true religion was constantly practiced by every one and this not only during the sunday services but every day of the week and every hour of thedac the day a community where every prayer offered came from the heart where every home was a little temple of god every act an act of bO honesty Desty every word a word of truth every sin and imperfection honestly dealt with according to the word of god if there were I 1 say such a community and an infidel came and tried to persuade the people that religion is nothing he would be laughed to scorn and considered crazy he would not be able to make one proselyte if he tried a life time for honesty sincerity and integrity are infallible able preventives against infidelity it would be just as emy easy to keep a piece of ice without melting when exposed to the heat of the midsummer sun as to keep infidelity in contact with honest truth such truth would melt it in a moment although the will of man asnat is naturally against god yet our faculties have such a relation to each other that bhat when it has been made clear to the understanding that religion is real and for our good temporally and i spiritually the will must submit |