Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/328

 arose Creation? To this, those who say in their hearts, there is no God, may reply, that all the objects in the three kingdoms of nature, animal, vegetable, and mineral, are results of the combinations of particles of matter, brought into active being by the law of natural cause and effect; but this is an evasion, and no answer. How came un-intelligent and dead particles of matter to form these combinations, and to produce, with astonishing sagacity, life from death and stagnation? By what law of philosophy can death be the cause of life, and life the effect of death? Nature, we are told by the materialist, is another word for continual motion, and motion is in herself! This speaks plain, and asserts nature to be the fool's God. Nature is not a word denoting continual motion, but a word signifying to be born, to be produced, or brought forth. That which is brought forth, or begins to be, necessarily implies a time when it was not. That which is not, could never cause itself to be, since out of nothing, something could never arise. The atheistical phrase "matter is eternal," is both weak and worthless. We shall, therefore, turn away with pity and horror from the fool's declaration, and assert with Scripture, that there is a God, who is the One only Life, and that from Him all creation is born or produced, and by Him is momentarily filled with His life and blessing—Man, God's image and likeness, being gifted with faculties receptive of the life of love and wisdom from deity, is thereby rendered immortal; the death of his earthly body is no extinction of being, but a change in his mode of existence, since the recipient of His life that is immortal, must, by such recipiency, become immortal; and this makes that marked