Prophecy Speaks (E.A.Rowell).pdf

“I do,” said Mrs. Emerson, also smiling. They turned to her for explanation, but
checked their questions when they saw the lecturer mounting the platform.
“It is with reluctance that I approach this subject,” said David Dare. “I do not relish
attacking the beliefs of another; I should much rather present the affirmative side of
Christianity. But I really see no escape from considering what the unbeliever offers us when
he endeavours to destroy Christianity. Since he sets himself up as having something superior
to Christianity — or he would not try to destroy it — we must carefully examine what he
proposes in its place, and weigh it thoughtfully.”
Mr. Emerson arose, and turning to the audience spoke: “I know we are all pleased
with this very courteous attitude of the speaker, and I for one assure him that he need have no
hesitation in speaking his mind.”
Hearty applause followed Mr. Emerson’s words.
“Thank you,” smiled the lecturer in recognition of this expression of friendliness.
“You all know that Robert Ingersoll, the renowned sceptic, had a brother whom he dearly
loved. Standing by the side of his brother’s grave, Robert preached the funeral sermon,
uttering in the course of his remarks what has been admired all over the world by his brother
sceptics, as the acme of his genius.
“In the face of the majesty of death, in the presence of the unknown, the veil of the
sceptic’s mind was torn aside, his suffering soul laid bare, and there were wrung from his
blanched lips these famous words that have circled the earth:
“ ‘Whether in mid-sea or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark
at last the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and
every moment jewelled with joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy, as sad, and deep, and
dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. . . . Life is a narrow vale
between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the
heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.’
‘To me, sadder words were never uttered. Life, to Ingersoll, after he had plumbed its
depths and scaled its heights, was only a cold and barren tragedy, its highest aspirations but a
hideous mockery. He faced ‘the blackness of darkness for ever,’ as Jude 13 has it.
“Whatever else scepticism is, it is not and cannot be the truth. It does not even
profess to be a truth. It is admittedly only a negation, a putting out of the candles of others
without lighting any in their place.
“Let us now turn to another great unbeliever, Herbert Spencer. After having written a
score of volumes, in all of which he either attacked or ignored Christianity, he sat down at the
close of a long life to write his autobiography in two large volumes. Near the end of the
second volume he talks of death, and writes with evident horror of his own end. He goes on
to lament the fact that in death ‘there lapses both the consciousness of existence and the
consciousness of having existed.’ In other words, one cannot be ‘consciously dead,’ as
Lecky puts it in his ‘Map of Life.’
“In fact, Herbert Spencer so yearned for rest for his soul that immediately following
his words about death he goes on to say: ‘Thus religious creeds, which in one way or the
other occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the
more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based on community of need, feeling
that dissent from them results from inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the
wish that solutions could be found.’ — ‘Autobiography,’ Volume 2, page 549.
“A number of important conclusions follow:
“First, Spencer knew his own solutions had failed, that they were not solutions. He
says so. For fifty years he had used his giant mind in an endeavour to solve the riddles of
existence apart from the Bible. At the end of his life he admits how utterly futile have been
his efforts.
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