tlieb.

_Alexander's Evidences of Christianity._

CHAPTER I.

DID THE WORLD MAKE ITSELF?

_Understand, ye brutish among the people;
And, ye fools, when will ye be wise?
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
He that chastiseth the heathen, shall he be not correct?
He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not know?_--PSALM xciv. 8, 9.

Has the Creator of the world common sense? Did he know what he was about
in making it? Had he any object in view in forming it? Does he know what
is going on in it? Does he care whether it answers any purpose or not?
Strange questions you will say; yet we need to ask a stranger
question: Had the world a Creator, or did it make itself? There are
persons who say it did, and who declare that the Bible sets out with a
lie when it says, that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." Whereas, say they, "We know that matter is eternal, and the
world is wholly composed of matter; therefore, the heavens and the earth
are eternal, never had a beginning nor a Creator."

But, however fully the atheist may know that matter is eternal, we do
not know any such thing, and must be allowed to ask, How do _you_ know?
As you are not eternal, we can not take it on your word.

The only reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion
is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally
indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it
is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it
is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as
much as you please, but you can not destroy the substance of anything.
Wherefore, as matter is indestructible, it must be eternal."

Profound reasoning! Here is a brick fresh from the kiln. It will last
for a thousand years to come; therefore, it has existed for a thousand
years past!

The foundation of the argument is as rotten as the superstructure. It is
not agreed among all philosophers that matter is naturally
indestructible, for the very satisfactory reason that none of them can
tell what matter in its own nature is. All that they can undertake to
say is, that they have observed certain properties of matter, and, among
these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be
subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the
surface of the globe."[1]