ATHEISM. tor. But we must not be astonished if the Atheist asks: If God made the universe, AN Atheist is one who denies the existence how came a God? It is as easy to imagine of a God; as the word Theos, with a negative a self-creating and self-existing universe, as a particle, imports. self-creating and self-existing Deity. Both It may seem strange that we include Athe-ideas are incomprehensible. I see the uniism among the Religions of the World, since, at first sight, the name appears to belong to such as have no religion; but this is a misapprehension. verse, and observe some of its laws. Where is the use of rendering the matter more complex and difficult, by supposing another Being, whose existence and attributes are just as As a general rule, all men possess the re-difficult to account for? ligious feeling in some degree. They have In a word, the Atheist, lacking some faculty the sentiment of veneration; but this does which you probably possess, is incapable of not dictate as to the object of worship. The seeing and believing as you do. He cannot belief in a God is an act of the judgment, and though it may be influenced by the sentiment of worship, it does not depend upon it. Thus veneration or religious worship is the same feeling, by whoever exercised, and to whatsoever directed. He who adores the Sun, or Brahma, or Jupiter, or Jehovah, or Jesus, exercises the same original, innate faculty. And though a man may be found who cannot recognize the existence of a God, it will be found that he adores, none the less, some vast and incomprehensible idea of nature or of necessity. There was a time when Atheism was considered a crime of the greatest enormity. In almost all ages and countries of the world, men have been severely punished as Atheists. Socrates, upon this charge, was poisoned. The Christian church, for a long time, burned those who were charged with this crime, or were by torture made to confess it. In our own day, and in this country, though we no longer poison or burn men for not believing as we do, in some States they are visited with certain legal disabilities, which amount to a persecution, for opinion's sake. believe in a God-it is possible he regrets that he cannot. This may be a great pity; but there seems to be no good reason for hanging or burning the man on this account, since he may be an upright, conscientious man, and otherwise a good member of society. In fact, were he not an honest man, he would most likely keep his Atheism to himself, since Atheism has had its martyrs, as well as other forms of faith. The word Atheist is used in a wide sense, meaning a man who does not believe in any God; for were it more confined and particular, and should a man charge all with being Atheists who did not believe in the same God he worshiped, he would find few exceptions to his general anathema. Atheism, by some philosophical writers, has been considered dangerous to the State. It can scarcely be so considered. As there is no bond of union-nothing of that positive character which binds men together, Atheism can never be a sect or combination. Its evils are individual. There is simply a lack of that restraining power, imposed by the fear of vengeance; and it is not to be questioned that a belief in temporal punishment or future retributions, may restrain men from crime. On the one hand, it must be considered that Atheists, besides being so rare, that some have denied that any existed, are perfectly isolated, and are generally quiet spectators, students and philosophers; while, on the other hand, fanatics are bound together by the strongest ties, and are very numerous. Thus, while a few Atheists in France were writing metaphysics in their closets, fanatics were deluging the land in blood by the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The great mistake which has been made in nearly all religions, is in considering belief a voluntary act of the mind. If a man could believe or disbelieve as he chose, without regard to the evidence, or his power to judge of it, there might be some sense in censuring and even punishing men for not believing the truth, provided we knew what the truth really was; but it happens to be otherwise. A man cannot say, I will believe this doctrine-I will not believe that. He has no such power; but is forced to believe certain things, according as they are presented to his judgment. To be sure, we have the power of pretending to believe whatever is for our interest-a power which many people, doubtless, exercise. There may be, then, some men so unfortunately constituted as not to believe in a God. Must we blame them? Most certainly not. We are allowed to pity them, and it may be our duty to present the evidences of the ex- "Atheists, for the most part, are men of istence of a Supreme Being to them in the study, but bold and erroneous in their reasonsame light that seems to us so satisfactory.ings; and not comprehending the creation, We may say all nature shows that it is the the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have work of an intelligent cause. The vast ma- recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of chine of the universe must have had a crea- things and of necessity. Hobbes, in England, who was called an Atheist, led a quiet, harmless life, while fanatics were carrying devastation and death throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. The observations of Voltaire on Atheism, are sufficiently curious to be quoted, as the conclusion of this article: "The sensualist and the ambitious have little time for speculation, or to embrace a bad system; to compare Lucretius with Socrates is quite out of their way. Such is the pres ent state of things among us. "It was otherwise with the Senate of Rome, which almost totally consisted of Atheists, both in theory and practice, believing neither in Providence nor a future state. It was a meeting of philosophers, of votaries to pleasure and ambition, all a very dangerous set of men, and who, accordingly, overturned the republic. DEISM. DEISM and Deity are from the Latin word which signifies God; as Theism, Theist, Theology, etc., are from the Greek. A Deist or Theist, therefore, is one who believes in, and consequently adores God. In a wide sense, almost all men, therefore, are Deists; but the word is commonly used in its more confined sense, as meaning one who believes in God, but rejects anything purporting to be a revealed religion. Thus Voltaire, who had a profound belief in, and veneration for God, and who erected a temple to his honor, was a Deist, as he did not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, or in the mission of Jesus Christ. "I would not willingly lie at the mercy of an Atheistical prince, who might think it his interest to have me pounded in a mortar; I am very certain that would be my fate. And, were I a sovereign, I would not have about The Deist believes in a sublime Intellime any Atheistical courtiers, whose interest gence, the presiding soul of the vast universe it might be to poison me, as then I must around him; but he does not believe in Joshevery day be taking alexipharmics; so neces-ua, Moses, Jesus, or Mahomet, as the revealsary is it both for princes and people that ers of his will, unless in a very restricted their minds be thoroughly imbued with an sense. idea of a Supreme Being, the Creator, Avenger, Rewarder. lation, and rejects all that have thus far been presented as quite unworthy of his conception of God. Looking upon the suns and systems of the universe, revolving in sublime order and "There are Atheistical nations, says Bayle harmony, and the developments of life upon in his Thoughts on Comets. The Caffres, the this globe, upon all the laws aud operations Hottentots, the Topinamboux, and many other of nature as so many expressions and records petty nations, have no God. That may be, of Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, the but it does not imply that they deny the ex-Deist denies the necessity of any other reveistence of a Deity; they neither deny nor affirm; they have never heard a word about him. Tell them there is a God, they will readily believe it; tell them that everything is the work of nature, and they will as cordially believe that. You may as well say that they are anti-Cartesians, as to call them Atheists. They are mere children; and a child is neither Atheist nor Theist; he is nothing. Thus the Deist holds that the only revelation worthy of God is found in his works. These, he contends, form an everlasting, changeless, and sublime volume, which cannot be mistaken, whose pages are open to all mankind. A book, pretending to be a revelation of God, which corresponds with the teachings of nature, is useless; if it contra "What are the inferences from all this? That Atheism is a most pernicious monster indicts them, it is false. sovereign princes, and likewise in statesmen, however harmless their life be; because from their cabinets they can make their way to be the former; that if it be not so mischievous as fanaticism, it is almost ever destructive of virtue. I congratulate the present age on there being fewer Atheists now than ever, philosophers having discovered that there is no vegetable without a germ, no germ without design, &c., and that corn is not produced by putrefaction. "Some unphilosophical geometricians have rejected final causes; but they are admitted by all real philosophers; and to use the expression of a known author, ‘A catechism makes God known to children, and Newton demonstrates him to the learned.'" Thus Deists, like all religionists, claim that their own belief is the purest and the best, the one most worthy of God, and best adapted to the dignity of human reason. When the Deist is called an infidel, he denies the accusation. "Instead of believing less," he says, "I believe more than others. I entertain a higher and nobler view of the nature and attributes of the Divine Being; I do not degrade him with human passions and petty interests, nor imagine that this little planet has been favored with his special revelation. The God I adore is worthy of the universe-such a being as all the laws of nature bespeak him." The ancient philosophers were for the most part Deists. It is evident that they paid little So writes Voltaire, who had so much rever-attention to the forms of worship observed ence for his idea of a Supreme Intelligence, that he fought all his life against what he thought the base and dishonoring creeds and practices of the prevailing religious systems of his time and country. The religious world is greatly indebted to the infidel Voltaire. by the common people. There is reason to suppose that a vast number of men of all educated and enlightened nations, Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, and of Mohammedan and Christian nations, are, strictly speaking, Deists. Such, to a great extent, are the sect of Unitarians. A vast number of them, believ- and other human passions, and by supposing that he would select one nation of this earth as his peculiar people, to the neglect of all mankind, as well as of the whole universe; to the Christian he says, You destroy the sublime unity of God, you make him a man, and you seem to think that the human race alone is worthy of his protection; while, addressing the Mohammedan, he says, You are better than the others, and but for your absurd belief in your prophet and his Alkoran, you would be quite right. Thus, though there is no formal association We are not considering any form of faith A pure Deism is the simplest of all religions and simplicity is an element of the sublime; so that this very simplicity may have made Deism attractive to severe and philosophic minds. It has but two elements-God and nature; nature being looked upon as the material expression or manifestation of God. So nature, the Deist contends, is the direct, visible, and eternal revelation of God-the only one that is or can be, by which our ideas of him are not degraded. The illimitable vastness of the universe speaks his power; its order, harmony, and perfect laws, his wisdom; its beautiful adaptations to the use and happiness of all his creatures, his goodness. Such a being, so infinitely great, wise and good, the Deist contends, must, without any other revelation, be adored by every intelligent being in the universe. Deists, guided by nature, recognize the religious sentiment in man; they see it developed in every form of faith and worship; but, as they contend, developed imperfectly and impurely; degraded with puerile conceits, low ideas, and vulgar superstitions. In this the Deist is doubtless very sincere; and be finds fault with every other belief, as the adherents of every other do with his, Deism, then, whatever its merits or demerdoes not differ from other isms in this respect. The Deist thinks that everybody is wrong, just in proportion as others differ from his own belief. PANTHEISM. This word is a compound of pan, all, and theos, God. Pantheism is that form of philosophical Deism which consists in a belief that God is the soul of the universe, and that all nature bears the same relation to the universal soul, that the bodies of men and animals do to their spirits. Pantheism is one of the most ancient of religious doctrines. It was taught by Orpheus, and by several of the schools of Greek philosophers, and in modern times by Spinosa and Hobbes, as well as by many other writers on metaphysics and theology, of lesser note. Pantheism is often confounded with materialism, and the latter doctrine, in its purity, makes all cogitative or mental power and action to depend on matter, while the former may suppose the reverse, holding that matter is but the unfolding of the Deity. Pure Materialism is Atheism-Pantheism makes all nature God. No writer has spread pantheistical ideas so widely as Pope, because nowhere are they so beautifully expressed as in his poems, especially in his "Essay on Man," which, strangely enough, is used in our common schools throughout the United States. Never was Pantheism taught more perfectly than in the following lines: "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Considering attentively these lines, we see how fully Pope had adopted the Pantheistical philosophy, which is fully expressed in the line "Whose body nature is, and God the soul." Thus, to the Jew he says, You degrade the succeeding verses; and the same is stated in Epistle Third: "Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole; One all extending, all preserving soul Connects each being," &c. The idea that man is a microcosm, or the world in little, favors the doctrine of Pantheism, or teaches it rather by analogy, for if the body of man represents the material universe, his mind or soul corresponds to the "All-extending soul," the great soul of the universe, from which all other souls are made. If matter, as appears to us, fills all space, a Deity as infinite must pervade all matter, and this is the commonly recognized doctrine of God's omnipresence. If God be everywhere present, it follows that he is everywhere active, because we cannot conceive of a passive deity; and if everywhere active, all nature must be the subject of this activity, and the manifestation of this pervading power-and this deduction is Pantheism. This doctrine is so near to Atheism, that it is not very easy to distinguish the difference. It is charged that every Pantheistical theory tends to the same result; but it is scarcely safe to follow any theological doctrine very far; at least it would not be if we had the Inquisition. Perhaps the best thing connected with what may be called the philosophical creeds of religion, is their toleration. Philosophers never persecute; they never burn men at the stake for a difference of opinion, or involve whole nations in bloody wars. Even the worst enemies of the doctrines of Spinosa and Hobbes admit the excellence of their characters; and it must be admitted that a mild and benevolent Pantheist is a better man than a fanatic who hates and persecutes his fellow men for a difference of opinion, in regard to matters which we know very little about, and which, possibly, do not much concern us. BUDDHISM. Pantheists hold, with Plato, to the eternity There are in the world four millions of of matter, because they cannot conceive of a Jews, 111 millions of the followers of BrahGod as separate from his attributes and man-ma, 120 millions of Christians, 252 millions ifestations. Their minds cannot grasp the of Mohammedans, and 315 millions of the idea of a spirit existing in a void of infinite professors of Buddhism. Some estimates make space, in an infinite past eternity, without any the numbers of the latter faith much greater. conceivable exercise of any one of his attri- As the religion which is believed by nearly butes. They therefore believe that matter is or quite half of the human race, we have as eternal as God; that both are inseparable, chosen it to occupy nearly the beginning of and necessarily dependent on each other, so this series. that there could be no more a God without a universe, than a universe without a God. It is objected that this connection of God with nature, making him the active agent in all her operations, is degrading the Deity. It makes him the author of all evil as well as all good-performing the meanest as well as the grandest operations. But if this doctrine is objectionable, it is taught by those who would not confess themselves Pantheists. Thus it is said that it is "in God we live, move, and have our being; and the omnipresence and omnipotence of God, as recognized by the most orthodox sects, present the same objections. There are Pantheists who recognize what they term a cogitative quality of matter, and who consider the universal soul rather as an eflect than a cause, making God inferior to nature. According to the most reliable accounts, this faith had its origin in India, about one thousand years before the Christian era. It had been preceded for ages by the Brahmanic faith, which it to a great extent superceded, and to which it bears a similar relation with that of Christianity to the religion of the Jews. At the period mentioned, Sarvarthasiddha, who was also called Godama, was born of a virgin, and, according to his followers, is believed to have been an incarnation of the creative power, thus descended to teach a true religion to mankind. A few days after his birth, on being presented in the temple, the image of a deity bowed its head in token of the divine approbation. In his tenth year he was placed at school, and soon after he astonished his teachers by the most wonderful powers and gifts; nor was the beauty of his form the less remarkable. When he was about twenty years old, he retired to a cave, to reflect upon the miseries of mankind, and at the end of seven years he came forward as Thus they say, all the great laws and principles of nature are eternal and self-existent. Such are all the mathematical principles and geometrical combinations. Such also are the laws of chemistry, optics, &c. It no more re-a religious teacher. quired God to make these self-existent principles, than for him to cause that two and two make four, which it is not even in the power of God to alter. They hold, then, that God and nature, as the united body and soul of the universe, are the necessary result of certain positive principles, always existing and always active. The most extraordinary miracles are related of Godama, who was afterwards called Buddha-a name signifying sage, or one possessed of superior wisdom-which we need not repeat, as nearly every religion ever propagated in the world has been supported by the real or pretended miracles of its founders. We therefore proceed to give some brief ac count of the doctrines of this, the most widespread and hitherto successful of all modes of human faith. Buddhism, whatever may be its intrinsic merits, is a much more refined, benevolent, and philosophic system than that of the Vedas, which, to a great extent, is superceded. Buddhism teaches that there is one God, self-existent and eternal, manifested as the Creator and Preserver, making a Trinity or triple manifestation of one Deity. The Unity of God, and of the whole creation as a part of his sublime being, is maintained in all the religious writings of Buddha, and the multiplication of images and individual objects of worship, can only be compared to the adoration of saints or heroes in other faiths. Buddha taught to his disciples the maintenance of the utmost purity of life, justice, benevolence, and peace. He taught that the soul of man is a part of the Divine essence, and consequently immortal, and happy or miserable in a future state of existence, according to its deeds on earth. The summit of happiness and heaven he taught to be a re-absorption of the soul into the perfect bliss of the Divine essence; and to this sublime existence men were to direct all their thoughts and hopes. est, are to be torn with red hot pincers, and then exposed to intense cold. Their bodies are then brought together again, and again torn apart during five hundred infernal years. Slayers of oxen, swine, goats, etc., hunters, kings given to war, and oppressive rulers, are for the space of two thousand infernal years to be ground between four burning mountains. Those who will not assist their neighbors, but deceive and vex them; who are drunkards or guilty of immodest actions; robbers by fraud or force, corrupt judges, and they who use false measures; incendiaries and assassins, etc., each endure an increased and protracted torment; while those who slay their fathers or mothers are doomed to the most dreadful and longest punishment. While these punishments and purifications, according to Buddha, await the wicked, the delights of heaven are for those who reverence their parents and the aged; who respect God, the law, and the priests; who abhor dissensions and quarrels, and who are charitable, especially to religious teachers. The priests of Buddha are bound together in religious communities, like those of the Roman Catholic Church, and for hundreds of years before the Christian era they had their While the pure, the just, and the benevolent monasteries and orders. Every one gives are thus to be rewarded with the joys of hea-way when a priest approaches, and though ven, and a participation in the very being of the Creator, the wicked are threatened with protracted though not eternal torments in a series of hells, whose punishments and their duration are in proportion to the enormity of their offences. But there are lesser punishments, or rather extended probations, for those who are not fit for heaven, nor have yet merited hell. Those who do not restrain their tongues, nor check irregular desires, and who omit giving alms, are sent after death into the bodies of inferior animals, to resume after this penance their probationary state. Those who fail in respect to the teachers of religion are punished with a very low degree of animal transmigration. Those who in this life are of quarrelsome disposition, and who use deadly weapons in their quarrels, are after death consigned to desolate mountains, on the shores of a boisterous ocean, to suffer from hunger, thirst, and wretchedness. Those whose crimes are of a deeper dye are consigned to a hell of eight degrees of punishment and duration, to which the souls of those who die in their wickedness are consigned by judges, who weigh their offences against their good deeds in balances. Of the eight hells, four are hot and four cold, and in the computation of infernal time, one day is equal to a thousand years-a computation which is also recognized in the Scriptures. In the first sphere or compartment of hell, the cruel, irascible, quarrelsome, and dishon they are treated with such respect, their manners are simple and their morals uncorrupted. Their benevolence is said to be active and unaffected; the prisoner, the stranger, and the poor are sure of receiving their assistance. Though willing to make converts and extend their own doctrines, they are perfectly tolerant, and never persecute for opinion's sake. Formerly female convents were common as well as male, and they still exist in Thibet. Into these convents women are received with imposing ceremonies, taking upon them vows of perpetual celibacy. It is but natural to suppose that a religion spread over India, Ceylon, China, Japan, and almost all Eastern Asia, and believed at one time by a majority of the human race, which has, moreover, existed for nearly three thousand years, should be divided into various sects and schools, which differ to a greater or less degree upon certain portions of their religious faith. This is the case in regard to Buddhism, as well as other religions. Another school supposes that God exerted a more active agency, and created five elements, endowed with consciousness, and that from these proceed all things. Another sect holds that all souls, first pure and free from matter, became gradually clothed with it, by first conceiving material desires and passions, making these the causes and not the results of organization. Another teaches that creation is simply the result of the Almighty will—a manifestation of divine volition. |