The Creator and His Creation
By Marion E. Cady
The Great Scientist Newton and Atheism—The Intelligence Displayed in Creation—Could It Come by Blind Chance? DR. BREWSTER gives expression to the following as to Sir Isaac Newton’s views of the Creator in His relation to His creation: “He admits that gravity might put the planets in motion, but he maintains that without divine power, it could never give them such a circulating motion as they have about the sun, because a proper quantity of a transverse motion is necessary for this purpose; and he concluded that he is compelled to ascribe the frame of this system to an intelligent agent.” “In the third letter [to Dr. Bentley], he [Newton] states that the hypothesis that matter is at first evenly diffused through the universe, is, in his opinion, inconsistent with the hypothesis of innate gravity without a supernatural power to reconcile them, and therefore it infers Deity. ‘For if there be innate gravity, it is impossible now for the matter of the earth and all the planets and stars to fly up from them, and become evenly spread throughout all the heavens, without a supernatural power; and certainly that which can never be hereafter without a supernatural power, could never be heretofore without the same power.’”—“Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton.” Dr. Brewster also quotes from Newton, giving his views on atheism: “Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped (except in their bowels), and just two eyes and no more, on either side of the face, and just two ears on either side of the head, and a nose with two holes, and either two forelegs or two wings or two arms on the shoulders, and two legs on the hips and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes, but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom, and the only transparent members in the whole body, having on the outside a hard transparent skin, and within transparent humors, with a crystalline lens, all of them so finely shaped and fitted for vision that no artist can mend them? Did blind chance know that there was light, and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner, to make use of it? These and such like considerations always have and ever will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, and has all things in His power, and who is therefore to be feared.” It is to be hoped that this great scientist will be appreciated by the scientists of to-day, not only for his discoveries and writings on scientific subjects, but also that his belief in the origin and supervision of the works of creation may be accepted by them. Newton, in his writings, and in his life, vindicated the great truth that creation and Christianity have one and the same God.