The Latest Infidelity.pdf 487KB May 19 2009 - R.L. Dabney Archive

632 THE 1ATE8T INFIDELITY.
debate will then be happily ended for them as well as for us.
One more point remains of this branch of my reply. I make
it by asking them what will be gained for them and their fel-
low-men if they establish their indictment? What will they
have proved? This: that the theistic scheme of the universe is
incredible, because of the prevalence in it of this dreadful mass
of natural and moral evil. That is, the doctrine of a personal,
rational God is abolished. What hypothesis of the universe is
left us? Only the materialistic and mechanical one. The flow
of events in the universe is not directed by any personal or
moral will at all. (Certainly our wills are impotent to control
it.) All is governed by natural laws, which can mean nothing
more than the irrevocable methods of blind natural forces.
These forces are unknowing and reasonless; they are resistless;
they are eternal; they are unchangeable. They can no more
be prayed to than the whirlwind can. Thus the agnostic, in re-
jecting theism, unavoidably gives us the scheme of a universal
mechanical fate. His universe is but an immense machine.
Now, I solemnly ask him: By forcing upon us this ghastly
doctrine, has he diminished one iota of this volume of miseries,
the conception of which so distresses us all? Does he stop the
flow of a singje tear? Does he arrest a single pang of disease?
Does he diminish by one unit the awful catalogue of deaths?
Does he take anything from the reality of any single human
bereavement? Is there one particle of agency in this doctrine
to check in any soul that sinfulness which is the spring of all
ouf woes? None. Even agnostic arrogance does not dare to
claim it. On his scheme every evil which he so bitterly objects
against God's scheme remains. All that he has done is to rob
suffering humanity of its sole true consolation, which is found
in that fact the gospel alone shows us, that it is the darling
prerogative of the Father of mercies to bring good out of this
sore evil for all who will accept his grace and make it work
out, bitter as it may be now, "a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory." Thus their doctrine can take nothing from
the miseries of mankind; all it can do is to rob men of the only
possible solace, and to tell them while they suffer that their
woes are as futile of better results as they are inevitable. In
a word, they give us as the true conception of our existence this
somber picture, which F. D. Strauss substantially avows at the