God in Nature by Prof. Shedd

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1864

God in Nature.

By Prof. Shedd

When Napoleon was returning from his campaign in Egypt and Syria, he was seated one night upon the deck of the vessel under the open canopy of the heavens, surrounded by his captains and generals. The conversation had taken a skeptical direction, and most of the party had combatted the doctrine of Divine Existence. Napoleon sat silent and musing, apparently taking no interest in the discussion, when suddenly raising his hand, and pointing at the crystalline firmament, crowded with its mildly shining planets and its keen glittering stars, he broke out in those startling tones that so often electrified millions: "Gentlemen, who made all that?" The "eternal power and godhead" of the Creator are impressed by "the things that are made;"; and these words of Napoleon to his atheistic captains silenced them. And the same impression is made the world over. Go to-day into the heart of Africa, or into the center of New Holland; select the most imbruted pagan that can be found; take him out under a clear star-lit heaven, and ask him who made all that, and the idea of a Superior Being, superior to all his fetiches and idols, possessing eternal power and godhead, immediately immerges in his consciousness. The instant the missionary takes this lustful idolater away from the circle of his idols, and brings him face to face with the heavens and the earth, as Napoleon brought his captains, constitutional idea dawns again, and the pagan trembles before the Unseen Power.—Prof. Shedd.