Athiest
Atheos, an atheist; godless, estranged from the knowledge of the true God
220. ATHEISM, Refuted by Consciousness
In the height of his culture, the olden Greek erected an altar; and when Paul stood on Mars Hill he could appeal to that presentiment of the Unknown God which lives in the consciousness of mankind. The sable Numidian, however he may symbolize him, however gross his conception of him, worships God. The Persian saw God in the sun, the fire. The colonists of Columbus's newly-discovered Western World found the savage aborigines worshipping God; and Europe, with this her nineteenth-century civilization, with one accord bows before the throne of the Invisible God. Down from the far, far ages, from the infancy of the world and of the human race, comes a voice from the heart of humanity. Its utterances in the past are recorded by the iron pen of history; it thunders in our very ears in the present; it speaks of God. And we are asked to believe that the great heart of humanity lies, has always lied! It does not lie, it has not lied. God exists; and before him have I knelt, and with all the fervor of which my nature is capable have I poured out my soul in gratitude to him for that he has rescued me from the horrible pit, the blinding creed, of atheism.
W. Bebbington.
221. ATHEIST, Difficulty of the
To make this out, that there is no God, he would need to travel abroad over the surrounding universe, till he had exhausted it, and to search backward through all the hidden recesses of eternity; to traverse in every direction the plains of infinitude, and sweep the outskirts of that space which is itself interminable, and then bring back to this little world of ours the report of a universal blank, wherein he had not met with one movement of a presiding God. For man not to know of a God, he has only to sink beneath the level of our common nature; but to deny him, he must be a God himself: he must arrogate the ubiquity and omniscience of the Godhead.
Dr. Chalmers.
222. ATHEIST, Doom of the
Thou that sayest the Christians perish dost perish thyself, and leave the Christians behind thee. Whither go these atheists? I believe not to heaven; for they believe there is no heaven. They shall never have those joys they would not believe. They are not in hell neither: there is no atheist. Where, then? In hell they are indeed, but not as atheists. They no sooner put their heads within those gates, but atheism drops off: they believe and feel now there is a God.
T. Adams.
223. ATHEIST, Unreasonableness of an
He must believe in a thousand anomalies which he cannot reconcile with reason; in contradictions and impossibilities without number; in effects which are greater than their causes, and in the greatest of effects being produced without a cause: and all this that he may escape from the sound and natural conclusions of reason; that he may close his eyes to the light which beams everywhere upon him, from satellite and planet, and sun and system, reflected in the voiceless but soul-speaking eyes of millions of intelligent creatures; that he may shut his ears to the voices that are ever and anon rising up with the sound of Nature's harmonies, in the hum of insects, the songs of birds, the murmur of restless waters, the wild roaring of thunders and tempests, and the thousand thousand articulations of intelligent creatures,—"There is A God who created all things.
T. Ragg.
Startling Judgment
“About a quarter of a century ago,” says Dr. A. T. Pierson, “an infidel got up on one of the heights of the Catskill Mountains, and in the presence of some athiestic companions defied the God of heaven to show Himself in battle. He swung his sword to and fro, and challenged the Almighty to meet him in single combat. The Almighty paid no attention to him, of course, but He just commissioned a little gnat, so small that it could scarcely be seen by a microscope, to lodge in his windpipe and choke him to death.”