Part 7 (1/2)

Suppose you apply the principle in other departments of life. We had a tremendous issue in this city and country last fall over the financial question. Would it have made any difference which side won? If it was just as well one way as the other, why not let the people who clamored for silver have silver, those who wanted greenbacks have greenbacks, and those who desired gold have gold? What was the use of troubling about it? We thought there were principles involved.

Take it in the economic world, the individualist here with his theory, the socialist here with his; theories outlined like those in Edward Bellamy's ”Looking Backward”; a hundred advancers of these different schemes, each contending for mastery. And we feel that the welfare of civilization is at stake; and we stand for our great principles. Take it in politics. What difference does it make whether the theories embodied in the reign of the Czar of Russia prevail, or these here in the United States which we are so foolish as to laud and pride ourselves so much about? What did we have a Civil War for, wasting billions of money and hundreds of thousands of lives? Are these great human contests about nothing at all?

Friends, think one moment. Either man is a child of G.o.d or he is not.

Man fell at the beginning of his history, and came under the wrath and curse of G.o.d, or he did not. G.o.d has sent angels, breaking into his natural order of the world, or he has not. He has created an infallible book or he has not. He has organized an infallible church that has authority to guide and teach the world or he has not. He himself came down to earth in the form of a man once and for all, and was crucified, dead and buried and ascended into heaven, or he did not.

These are questions of historic fact. Does it make no difference what we believe about them? If man is a fallen being, condemned to eternal death, and G.o.d has provided only one way for his escape and salvation, then it makes an infinite and eternal difference as to whether we know it or believe it or act on it or not. If the majority of the human race is doomed to eternal torture unless it escapes through certain prescribed conditions, does it make any difference whether we know it or not?

And, if he is not so doomed, does it make no difference to the heart and hope, the life, the cheer, the courage and inspiration of man, whether or not we lift from the brain and the heart this horrible incubus of dread and fear?

Here are all these churches with their wealth, their intelligence, their enthusiasm, their inspiration, ready to do something for humanity. Does it make any difference whether they are doing the right thing for it or not? We could revolutionize the world if we could be guided by intelligence, and find out what man really needs, and devote ourselves to the accomplishment of what that is. The waste, the waste, the waste of money and thought and energy and time and inspiration poured into wrong channels, unguided by intelligence, directed towards things that do not need to be done, and away from things that do need to be done!

These are the questions involved in discussions as to what G.o.d is and has done and is going to do with his world.

The one thing we need, then, almost more than all others just now, is to be led by the truth, and have the truth make us free from the errors and the burdens of the past, so that we may place ourselves truly at the disposal of G.o.d for the service of our fellows.

O star of truth down-s.h.i.+ning, Through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask but 'neath your guidance My pathway may appear. However long the journey, How hard soe'er it be, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance Can never lead astray, However ancient custom May tread some other way. E'en if through untrod desert Or over trackless sea, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. The bleeding feet of martyr Thy toilsome road have trod; But fires of human pa.s.sion May lead the way to G.o.d. Then, though my feet should falter, While I thy beams can see, Though I be lone and weary, Lead on, I'll follow thee. Though loving friends forsake me Or plead with me in tears, Though angry foes may threaten To shake my soul with fears, Still to my high allegiance I must not faithless be, Through life or death, forever Lead on, I'll follow thee.

DOUBT AND FAITH-BOTH HOLY.

THE object of all thinking is the discovery of truth. And truth for us, what is that? It is the reality of things as related to us. There has been a good deal of metaphysical discussion first and last as to what things are ”in themselves.” It seems to me that this, if it were possible to find it out, might be an interesting matter, might satisfy our curiosity, but is of absolutely no practical importance to us. I do not believe that we can find out what things are in themselves, in the first place; and I do not believe that, if we could, it would be of any service to us. What we want to know is what things are as related to us, as touching us, as bearing upon our life, upon our practical affairs.

Once more: there has been a good deal of discussion as to whether the universe is really what it appears to be to us. They tell us that it is quite another thing from the point of view of other creatures, to beings differently const.i.tuted from ourselves. Again, all this may be.

It might be interesting to me, for example, to look at the world from the point of view of the fly or of the bird or some one of the animals; but, again, while it might satisfy my curiosity, it could be of no practical importance to me. It might be very interesting to me to know how the universe looks from the point of view of an angel. But, so long as I am not an angel, but a man, what I need to know is what the universe is as related to man.

So truth, I say, then, is the reality of things as related to us.

I must make another remark here, in order perfectly to clear the way.

Philosophers and scientific men, a certain cla.s.s of them, are perpetually warning us of the dangers of being anthropomorphic. Some one has said, ”Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is.” This means, as you know, that we look at things from the point of view of ourselves. We see things as men, as anthropoi. This has been erected in certain quarters into a good deal of a bugbear in the way of thinking.

We are told we can never know the universe really, because we shape everything into our own likeness, we are anthropomorphic, we look at everything from the point of view of men.

I grant the charge; but, instead of being frightened by it, I accept it with content. How else should we look at things except from the point of view of men, since we are men? We cannot look at them in any other way. Let us be, then, anthropomorphic. The only thing we need to guard against is this: we must not a.s.sume that we have exhausted the universe, and that we know it all. This is the evil of a certain type of anthropomorphism. But I cannot understand why it is important for us to be anything else but anthropomorphic. I want to know how things look to a man, what things are to a man, how things affect a man, how I am to deal with things, being a man.

This is the only matter, let me repeat again, which is of any practical importance to us, until we become something other than men.

Truth, then, the truth that we desire to find, is the reality of things as related to us. Now doubt and faith are att.i.tudes of mind, and are neither good nor bad in themselves, either of them. They are of value only as they help us in the discovery of this reality about which I have been speaking. If a certain type of doubt stands in our way in seeking for truth, then that doubt so far is evil. If a certain something, called faith, stands in the way of our seeking frankly and fearlessly for the truth, that is evil. If -doubt helps us to find truth, it is good: if faith helps us to -find truth, it is good. But the only use of either of them is to help us discover and live the truth.

The att.i.tude of the Church and by the Church I mean the historic Church of the past towards doubt and faith is well known to us. It has condemned doubt almost universally as something evil, sinful. It has extolled faith as something almost universally good. But in my judgment and I will ask you when I get through, perhaps, to consider as to whether you do not agree with me the trouble with the human mind up to the present time has not been a too great readiness to doubt: it has been a too great inclination to believe. There has been too much of what has been called perhaps by the time I am through you will think miscalled faith; and there has been too little of honest, fearless, earnest doubt. This is perfectly natural, when you consider how the world begins, and the steps by which it advances.

Let us take as an ill.u.s.tration the state of mind of a child. A child at first does not doubt, does not doubt anything. It is ready to believe almost anything that father, mother, nurse, playmate, may say to it.

And why? In the first place it has had no experience yet of anything but the truth being told it; and in the next place it lives in a world where there are no canons or standards of probability. In the child- world there are no laws, there are no impossibilities, there is nothing in the way of anything happening. The child mind does not say, in answer to some statement, Why, this does not seem reasonable. The child's reason is not yet developed into any practical activity. The child does not say, Why, this cannot be, because there is such a force or such a law that would be contravened by it. The child knows nothing about these forces or laws: it is a sort of a Jack- and-the-Beanstalk world. The beanstalk can grow any number of feet over night in the world in which the child lives. Anything is possible. If father and mother and nurse tell the child about Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a pack of toys on his back, it does not occur to the child to note the fact that the chimney flue is no more than six inches in diameter, and that Santa Claus and his pack could not possibly pa.s.s through such an opening. All this is beyond the range or thought of the stage of development at which the child has arrived.

So in the childhood world. As I said, anything may happen. But you will note, beautiful, sunny, lovely as this childhood world is as a phase of experience, as a stage of development, sweet as may be the memory of it, yet, if the child is ever to grow to manhood, is ever to be anything, ever to do anything, it must outgrow this Jack-and-the- Beanstalk world, this Santa Claus world, this world in which anything may happen, and must begin to doubt, begin to question, begin to test things, to prove things, find out what is real and what is unreal, what is true and what is untrue, must measure itself against the realities of things, learn to recognize the real forces and the laws according to which they operate, so as to deal with them, obey them, make them serve him, enable him to create character and to create a new type of civilization, new things on the face of the earth.

Now what is true of each individual child has been true of the race.

The world started in childhood; and for thousands of years it believed very easily, it believed altogether too much for its good, it believed altogether too readily. Naturally, perhaps, necessary in that stage of its development; but so long as it remained in that stage there was no possibility of its becoming master of the earth.

Note, for example, the state of mind of the old Hebrews, I use them merely as an ill.u.s.tration, because you are familiar with their story as told in the Old Testament. Similar things are true of every race on the face of the earth. They knew nothing about the real nature of this universe. They knew nothing about natural forces working in accordance with what we call natural laws. Consequently, they lived in a child- world, a world of magic and miracle, a world in which anything might happen. It did not trouble one of the people of that time to be told that, in answer to the prayer of one of the prophets, an axe-head which had sunk in the water rose and floated on the surface. There were no natural laws in his mind contradicted by an a.s.serted fact like that. It never occurred to him to be troubled about it. There was nothing very startling to him in being told that the sun stood still for an hour or two to enable a general to finish a battle in which he was engaged. He did not know enough about the universe to see what tremendous consequences would be involved in the possibility of a thing like that.