# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S200
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

200 Materialism, or the So-Called Results of Modern Natural Science.

street, to the substances of the mineral kingdom — to flint, to copper, to iron, to lead, to silver, to gold, to sulphur, to oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, and the like, as the materialists now do in the darkening of their hearts. To the materialist these substances are the eternal, unchangeable beings; these substances possess, so he believes, the eternal and divine power through which everything good, beautiful, purposeful, and useful has been brought forth and is constantly being brought forth; the glorious works of creation, the thousandfold artful forms of plants and animals, the crown of nature — man, endowed with spirit and reason — it is all their work alone; it is they who maintain the universe in eternal order and harmony; it is they who, rewarding and punishing, blessing and cursing, guide the destinies of individuals, the destinies of nations; the whole cosmos, the wonderful book of nature, the deeds of history, the revelations of the Gospel, proclaim their glory alone; everything divine is merely their property. For nothing happens except what they do; nothing exists except they alone. The materialist would worship every puddle, for it is his god, if he did not know that this his god indeed made the eye but cannot itself see; made the ear but itself does not hear; gave life but is itself dead; prepared spirit and reason for man, but is itself without spirit and consciousness. He would sink upon his knees before a dungheap, were it not that his own inherent dignity confronted him there and reminded him that he, himself consisting of such substances, is, equally with this, a god, and that one god does not bend the knee before another. At times, however, a holy awe overcomes even him, and a kind of worship forces itself forth, which he offers to his gods, the substances, under another name — that of Nature — as homage. — Thus the extremes touch one another: the supposedly highest culture of the nineteenth century and the crudest stupidity of the fetish-worshippers, who now revere some secret object as a god, now throw it away as common matter.

If we seek a natural explanation of this remarkable fact, the following reflection might perhaps shed some light. God has impressed the traces of his eternal power and Godhead upon his creation in such a way that no contemplation of nature can evade them. If man, through his uncomprehending, darkened heart, has let himself be seduced into denying the divine essence, then he is compelled to attribute the divine attributes to the creature, to make it into a god. An example will illustrate this. Eternity — that is, complete beginninglessness — is one of these traces of the divine essence in creation. It is a divine attribute, for not only is it utterly incomprehensible to the creature, and thus points to something that cannot be a creature, but it also includes within itself the most complete self-sufficiency. What was, without beginning, from eternity, depends on nothing, cannot exist as a means to an end, must be a being that defies every estimation by comparison with