James 2:19

James 2:19

Atheism.

I. For the vast majority of mankind, two phenomena have been in all ages, and I believe will be to the end of time, the all-sufficient proof that there is one God. One is the universe; the other is the conscience: one is the starry heaven above; the other is the moral law within. To every good man a true conscience not only tells of a God above us, but is a god within us. It is the categoric imperative which says to a man direct from heaven, "ought" and "must."

II. For nations there can be no morality if they know not God. In a brief tormented existence, ungoverned by any laws save their own appetites, the character of a world deprived of a holy ideal may be summed up in two words: heartless cruelty; unfathomable corruption. I say that any nation which denies God becomes by an invariable law a degraded nation at last, and any age which denies God sinks in great measure into an abominable age. If atheism continues for a time to kindle its dim torches at the fount of life, those torches soon die out in smouldering flames. A nation may walk for a short time in the dubious twilight left on the western hill-tops when the sun is set; but the twilight soon rushes down into the deep, dark night when God is denied, when faith is quenched, when prayer has ceased. It is never long in a nation before the holy warfare of ideas is abandoned for the base conflict of interest, never long before hatred and envy usurp the place of charity, and lust takes the place of honourable love. When once Christianity is dead, the world will be twice dead, a wandering star for which is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxi., p. 177.

Reference: James 2:24. F. W. Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 58.