Part 15 (1/2)

If a man, for example, believes that he is to please G.o.d by a sacrifice, by an offering, by swinging incense, by going through a certain ceremony, instead of being righteous and true, does it make no difference? Carry out the idea as far as you please, I think I have made plain the thought I had in mind.

So it does make a difference what our thoughts, our theories, may be; and, therefore, there is good in this work of investigation which proposes to sift and test and try things, and find out the real nature of the forces which confront us and with which we have to deal.

Now, then, I come to the positive answering of our question. Are there some things that doubt cannot touch? And are these things the most important ones, the ones that we need to feel solid under our feet?

What do we need? We do not need to be able to unravel all the mysteries of the universe. Any quant.i.ty of the questions we ask are not practical ones. We do not need to wait for an answer to them. Any number of the things that are in doubt are of no practical consequence; and we need not wait for their settlement before we begin to live and to help our fellowmen and to do what we can to bring in the coming kingdom of our Father.

I wish to note now a few of the things that seem to me very stable things, that doubt cannot disturb. And first I will say that which I mean when I use the word ”G.o.d.” I wish you to learn to separate between the word and the reality. Sometimes people are quarrelling over a label instead of the reality that is back of all. I care very little for a name. I care for things, for the eternal truths of the universe. May we then feel that modern doubt does not touch our belief in G.o.d? I ask you to consider a moment, and see. As we wake up, a.s.suming nothing, and look abroad, what do we find? We find ourselves in the presence of a Power that is not ourselves, another Power, a Power that was here before we were born, a Power that will be here after we have died, a Power that has produced us, and so is our father and mother on any theory you choose to hold of it, a Power out of which we have come. Now suppose we look abroad, and try to find something in regard to the nature of this Power. We can conceive no beginning: we can conceive no end. And let me say right here that, as the result of all his lifelong study and thinking as an evolutionist, Mr. Herbert Spencer has said that the existence of this infinite and eternal Power, of which all the phenomenal universe is only a partial and pa.s.sing manifestation, is the one item of human knowledge of which we are most certain of all.

An Infinite Power, then, an eternal Power, shall I say an intelligent Power? At any rate, just as far as our intelligence can reach, we find that the universe matches that intelligence, responds to it, so that we must think of it, it seems to me, as intelligent. Out of that Power, as I have said, we have come; and who are we? Persons, persons that think, persons that feel, persons that love, persons that hope; and we are the children of this Power, and, according to one of the fundamental principles of science, nothing can be evolved which was not first involved, the stream cannot rise higher than its source, that which is produced must be equal to that which produces it.

This Power, then, eternal, infinite, intelligent, must be as much as what we mean by person, by thought, by love, by hope, by all that makes us what we are. Shall we call a Power like this G.o.d? Shall we call it Nature? Shall we call it Law? Shall we call it Force? It seems to me that, if we take any name less and lower than G.o.d, we are indulging in a huge a.s.sumption, and a negative a.s.sumption at that. Suppose that, looking at one of you, I should call you body instead of calling you man. I should be a.s.suming that you are only body, which I have no right to do. If I call this Infinite Power, then, Nature, Force, Law, Matter, I am indulging in a negative a.s.sumption which is scientifically unwarranted. As a reasonable being, then, I think I am scientifically warranted in saying that belief in G.o.d is something that all investigation only affirms, and affirms over and over again, and with still greater and greater force.

I have not time to go into this at any further length this morning; but I believe that we are scientifically right in saying that all the doubt, all the investigation, all the questioning of the world, have only given us a stronger and more solid a.s.surance that we have a divine Power around us, and that we are the children of that Power.

In the next place, to carry the idea a little farther, we want, if we may, to believe that this Infinite and eternal Power manifested in the universe is a good Power. If it be not, we are hopeless. I hear reformers sometimes in their zeal picturing the dreadful condition of affairs socially or industrially or politically, and saying that the world is getting worse and worse, that the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and the republic is becoming more corrupt week by week and year by year, giving the impression that the world in general is on the down grade. If I believed that, I should give it up, I should see no reason for struggle and effort. If an Infinite Power is against me in my efforts to do good, what is the use of my making the effort?

We want to know, then, as to whether a belief in the goodness of this Infinite Power is a thing that doubt and investigation have not touched and cannot disturb. Let us consider just a moment one or two thoughts bearing upon it.

The pessimist tells us that the universe is bad all the way through, that this is the worst possible kind of world. When a man makes a statement like that, I always wish to ask him a question which it seems to me absolutely overturns his position, how did he happen to find it out? If the universe is bad all through, essentially bad, where did he get his moral ideal in the light of which to judge and condemn it? How does this bad universe produce an amount of justice and truth and love to be used as a measuring-rod in order to find out whether it will correspond with these ideals or not? That one question seems to me enough to turn pessimism into nonsense.

Let us look at it in another way. As we look back, as far as we can towards the beginning of things, we find this fact: when man appeared on the earth, conscience was born, as I told you the other day, a sense of right came with him, and since that day he has been struggling to attain and realize an ever and ever enlarging and heightening ideal.

This, then, the conscience, the sense of right, the ideal, must be a part of the nature of the universe that has produced them. And we notice that these have been growing with the advance of the ages.

Before dwelling on that a little farther, let me touch another consideration which is germane to it.

If you look over the face of human society, you get proof positive, scientific demonstration unquestionable, that good is in the majority, love is the majority power of the world. How do I know? You draw up a list of all those things that you call evil, and you will note, as you a.n.a.lyze them, that they are the things that tend to disintegrate, to separate, to tear down; and you draw up a list of those things that you call good, and you will find that they are the things that tend to build up, that bind human society together, and help on life and growth and happiness.

Now the simple fact that human society exists proves that the things that tend to bind together are more powerful than the things that tend to disintegrate and tear down. Just as, for instance, if you see a planet swinging in the blue to-night, you will know that the centripetal power is stronger than the centrifugal, or there would be no planet there. That which tends to hold it together is mightier than that which tends to disintegrate and fling its particles away from each other. So the simple fact that human society exists proves that good is in the majority.

And then, as we trace the development of human society from the far-off beginning, we find that justice, truth, tenderness, pity, love, helpfulness, all these qualities have been on the increase, and are growing; and, since the Power that has wrought in lifting up and leading on mankind is unspent, we believe that that Infinite Power of which we have been speaking is underneath this lifting, is behind this progress, and that the end may reasonably be expected to issue in that perfection of which we dream and whose outlines we dimly see afar off.

An infinite power, then, a power that is good, a power that we may study, partially understand, at any rate, and co-operate with. We can help on this progress instead of hindering it. We can do something to make the world better. Here are two things then, G.o.d and goodness, that no doubt, no investigation, have ever been able to touch or destroy.

A third thing. We want to believe that there is a meaning in these little individual lives of ours. Sometimes, when we read of pestilences or the great wars of the world, when we think of children born and dying so soon almost as they are born, when we note the brevity of even the longest life and take into account the sweep of the ages, we sometimes find ourselves depressed with the thought that these human lives of ours mean so little. It sometimes seems as though nature cared nothing for us, and swept us away as the first cold and the frost sweep away the millions of flies that had been buzzing their little hour of suns.h.i.+ne.

We need to feel, then, if we are to live manly, womanly lives, that there is some plan, or may be some purpose in our being born, in our little struggle of a few years, in our being thwarted, in our succeeding, in our being sick or well, in our being rich or poor, in our being learned or ignorant. Does it make any difference how we live these lives of ours? Is there significance in them, any purpose, any plan, any outcome, to make it worth while for us to struggle and strive? We need to know this; and what do the investigation and the doubt and the struggle of the world say to us concerning these? If there is anything which science teaches us, it is that the infinite G.o.d, the Power, whatever we name it, that is the thought and life of this universe, is expressed just as perfectly in the tiniest atom as in the most magnificent galaxy. There is no such thing as an imperfect atom in this universe. The infinitesimal atoms below us, and the tiny orbits through which these atoms and molecules sweep, are as much in the grasp of the Eternal Law as the movements of the stars over our heads.

Things are not lost in this universe out of the eternal purpose because they are little. So our apparent littleness, the weakness, feebleness of our lives, need not disturb the grandeur of our trust in this direction.

Then as we study ourselves, as we see the good that has been growing through the ages, and as we note the fact that I hinted at a moment ago, that we can plant ourselves in the way, and hinder the working of the Divine, so far as our tiny strength goes, or that we can study the conditions of this growth and co-operate and help it on, and so be just as truly a builder of the highest and finest humanity of the future as G.o.d is himself, as we note this, are not our little lives raised into dignity and touched with glory? And why should I cringe and humiliate myself in the presence of a planet a thousand times larger than our earth, or a sun a million and a half times larger than the planet that shakes to its centre as I stamp my tiny foot? I, or one like me, has measured the sun, weighed it as an apothecary can weigh a gram in his scales. I have untangled the rays of his light, and am able to tell the substances that are burning those ninety millions of miles away, in order to send down that ray of light to our earth. I have untangled the mysteries of the heavens, and find these only aggregations of matter like those of which my body is composed; but I deal with all these and overtop them, speeding with my thought with the rapidity that leaves the lightning behind. And I know that, because I can think G.o.d and can trace his thoughts after him as he goes through his creative processes, so I am more than these,-- a child of the Creator. I may feel as a little boy feels who stands beside his father who is the captain of some mighty s.h.i.+p. The s.h.i.+p may be a million times greater than he; but the captain's intelligence and hand made it, shaped it, rules it, turns it whithersoever he will. And I am the captain's child, like him, and capable of matching his masterly achievement.

And so I may believe that I, as a child of the infinite Father, am of infinite importance to him in this universe of his; and I can live a grand and n.o.ble life. n.o.body can harm me but myself. Place an obstacle in my path, and, whether it be insurmountable or not, I may show myself a coward or a hero as I face it. Tell me I have made a mistake, I can repair it. Tell me I have committed some moral error, am guilty of sin, I confess it. But I can make all these mistakes and sins stairways up which I can climb nearer and nearer to G.o.d. You may test me with sorrows, affliction, take away my property, take away my health, take away my friends; and the way in which I receive these may either make me n.o.bler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun s.h.i.+nes upon the earth. It turns one clod hard, makes it incapable of producing anything. It softens and sweetens another, the same sun: the difference is in the way in which it is received. So these influences may touch me, may make me hard and bitter and mean and rebellious, or I may stand all, and say, as the old Stoics used to, ”Even if the G.o.ds are not just, I w ill be just, and shame the G.o.ds.”

So man may say, Whatever comes upon me, I will meet it like a man, and like a child of the Highest, and so make my life significant, a part of the divine plan, something glorious and real.

One thought more. When we have got through with this life, and stand on the sh.o.r.e of a sea whose wavelets lap the sands at our feet, and the s.h.i.+ps of those that depart go out into the mist, and we wonder whither, what has doubt done, what has investigation done, touching this great hope of ours, as we face that which we speak of as the Unknown? So far as the old-time and traditional belief is concerned, I hold that doubt has been of infinite and unspeakable service. Certainly, I could rather have no belief at all than the old belief. Certainly, I would rather sink into unconsciousness and eternal sleep than wake to watch over the battlements of heaven the ascent of the smoke of the torment that goeth up forever and ever. But is there any rational ground for hope still? I cannot stop this morning even to suggest to you the grounds for the a.s.sertion that I am about to make. I believe that, if we have not already demonstrated eternal life, we are on the eve of such demonstration. I believe that another continent is to be discovered as veritably as Columbus discovered this New World. As he, as he neared the sh.o.r.e, saw floating tokens upon the waters that indicated to him that land was not far away, so I believe that tokens are all about us of this other country, which is not a future, but only a present, unseen and unknown to the most of us.

But grant, if you will, that that is not to be attained, modern investigation and doubt have done nothing to touch the grounds of the great human hope that springs forever in the breast, that hope which is born of love, born of trust, born of our dreams, born of our yearning towards the land whither our dear ones have departed.

Let me read you just a few lines of challenge to those that would raise a question as to the reality of this belief:

What is this mystic, wondrous hope in me, That, when no star from out the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O Death, If that thou rul'st the earth, if ”dust to dust” Shall be the end of love and hope and strife, From what rare land is blown this living breath That shapes itself to whispers of strong trust, And tells the lie, if 'tis a lie, of life? Where did this wondrous dream come from? How does it grow as the world grows?

It must be a whisper of this eternal Being to our hearts; and so, in spite of all the advance of knowledge, all the criticism, it remains untouched, brightening and growing. And so there is reason, as we gaze out on the future, why we should look with contempt, if you will, upon the conditions that trouble us in this life, the burdens, the sorrows, the illnesses, when all that life means at its highest is that out of the conditions, whatever they are, I should shape a manhood, cultivate a soul, make myself worth living, fitting myself for that which gleams through the mist a promise, if you will, of something there beyond.