The Heavenly Father: Lectures on Modern AtheismNaville, Ernest
Religion
The Heavenly Father: Lectures on Modern Atheism
Naville, Ernest
Atheism; God -- Proof
Let us pass to the study of animals. I had the wish, some years ago, to
procure the best of modern treatises upon physiology. I was directed to
the work of Professor Mueller, of Berlin. This book has not lost its
value,--for, this very morning, a student of our faculty of sciences
came to me to borrow it, by the advice of his masters. Mueller was a
great physiologist, and he made an open profession of the Christian
religion. Have we not the right to conclude that he believed in God? In
France, I could cite more than one name in support of my thesis; I
confine myself to a single fact. The attention of the scientific world
has very recently been occupied with the discoveries of M. Pasteur. M.
Pasteur has ascertained that the decomposition of organized bodies,
after death, is effected by the action of small animals almost
imperceptible, the germs of which the larger animals carry in
themselves, as living preparatives for their interment. The design of
Providence reveals itself to his understanding, and he writes: "The
immediate elements of living bodies would be in a manner indestructible,
if from the beings which God has created were taken away the smallest,
and, in appearance, the most useless. Life would thus become impossible,
because the return to the atmosphere and to the mineral kingdom of all
that has ceased to live would be all at once suspended."[110] In other
words: I have studied facts hitherto incompletely observed, and my study
has revealed to me a new manifestation of that Divine wisdom of which
the universe bears the impression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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