ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCIENCE.
It seems strange to us that scientists can be infidels when the results of science-work furnish so many illustrations of the wisdom, power, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. For instance, many can not conceive of a personal God, as truly personal as man; if He is, they think He must be of matter like ourselves; and therefore limited in power and finite in knowledge. If it is said that He is everywhere present by His Spirit, they reply that as Spirit and matter are opposites, “this would make God a dual being.” But who knows whether all substance is identical with that analyzed by earthly chemists, and that it has no property they have not discovered? Again and again it has been thought that the final resolution of atmospheric air had been reached, but in later times new gases are continually being discovered. Just recently a new substance—radium—has been revealed, which pours forth a ceaseless stream of intensely radiant particles, which in no perceptible sense diminishes the mass. How little at the most man knows of corporeal, material, or substantial things! How does man know that matter and spirit are opposites? Powers, energies, that man can not weigh, measure, handle with his crude ideas and still cruder apparatus at its finest, he is wont to call spirit. How does he know? Sunlight and electricity have been called forces, but they have lately been weighed and analyzed. The apostle declares that “if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” 1 Cor. 15:44. Let us not endeavor to limit God by our limited knowledge. The sun is a body nearly 100,000,000 miles away; but its presence is felt everywhere upon this earth, sometimes intolerably. Is God less than a comparatively small creature of His power? Each man—a personality—has a certain degree of influence surrounding him in which his personality is dominant. This is sometimes called his aura. This personality is recognized many times when the man can neither be seen, nor heard, nor felt, nor smelled physically. We feel it after all, tho not by touch. We know there is a presence, a personality, in the room in the profoundest darkness and stillness. If this is possible to finite man in a limited degree how much more so of the infinite God to an unlimited extent? Man now by instruments of his own devising can so use electricity as to speak hundreds of miles away in the ears of a friend, and his voice can be distinguished clearly. Can not God do this at infinite distance with all the forces of the universe under His control? By means of the Roentgen rays and Becquerel rays man can pierce with the light opaque bodies thought once to be impenetrable to light rays. Can not He that formed the eye see everywhere? Now without wires man sends messages many hundreds of miles and receives them; can not the infinite and eternal God do infinitely more? Now men can send the image of a man any distance that he can his message over the electric wire,—telephotography, they call the process. Can not He who is above all else make His personal presence manifest in all parts of His universe? “With Him is the Fountain of life.” That life is not thrown off or thrown out. It is never separate and existent in its onward course, any more than the ray of sunlight can exist independent of the sun. Everywhere in all parts of the great universe of God flow His currents of life. Everywhere in all parts of His universe those in harmony with God have living connection with Him. His power sent through His own instruments, His own channels knows no loss through gravitation, friction, or resistance7to air or ether. All help it on. God is infinite in power everywhere. And yet He is somewhere, and sometime His children shall see His face, and then all will be one.