godless Epicureanism which Socrates derided, and Paul and Augustine
combated? Do you ask for a confirmation of the truths thus deduced from
the denial of the supernaturalism of the Mosaic Code? I ask you to look
around. I call no names; I invoke no theological hatreds; I seek to
inflame no prejudices. I appeal to facts as incontrovertible as the
phenomena of the heavens. I stand on the platform of truth itself,
which we all seek to know and are proud to confess. Look to the
developments of modern thought, to some of the speculations of modern
science, to the spirit which animates much of our popular literature,
not in our country but in all countries, even in the schools of the
prophets and among men who are "more advanced," as they think, in
learning, and if you do not see a tendency to the revival of an
attractive but exploded philosophy,--the philosophy of Democritus; the
philosophy of Epicurus,--then I am in an error as to the signs of the
times. But if I am correct in this position,--if scepticism, or
rationalism, or pantheism, or even science, in the audacity of its
denials, or all these combined, are in conflict with the supernaturalism
which shines and glows in every book of the Bible, and are bringing back
for our acceptance what our fathers scorned,--then we must be allowed to
show the practical results, the results on life, which of necessity
followed the triumph of the speculative opinions of the popular idols of
the ancient world in the realm of thought. Oh, what a life was that!
what a poor exchange for the certitudes of faith and the simplicities of
patriarchal times! I do not know whether an Epicurean philosophy grows
out of an Epicurean life, or the life from the philosophy; but both are
indissolubly and logically connected. The triumph of one is the triumph
of the other, and the triumph of both is equally pointed out in the
writings of Paul as a degeneracy, a misfortune,--yea, a sin to be wiped
out only by the destruction of nations, or some terrible and unexpected
catastrophe, and the obscuration of all that is glorious and proud among