"You can tell more about a man's character by trading horses
with him once than you can by hearing him talk for a year in
prayer meeting."
--American Maxim.
A FORM of thought which has no certitude can command no intelligent
trust. Unless capable of verification, no opinion can claim attention,
nor retain attention, if it obtains it.
If a sum in arithmetic be wrong, it can be discovered by a new way of
working; if a medical recipe is wrong, the effect is manifest in the
health; if a political law is wrong, it is sooner or later apparent in
the mischief it produces; if a theorem in navigation is erroneous, delay
or disaster warns the mariner of his mistake; if an insane moralist
teaches that adherence to truth is wrong, men can try the effects
of lying, when distrust and disgrace soon undeceive them. But if a
theological belief is wrong, we must die to find it out. Secularism,
therefore, is safer. It is best to follow the double lights of reason
and experience than the dark lantern of faith. "In all but religion,"
exclaims a famous preacher,* "men know their true interests and use
their own understanding. Nobody takes anything on trust at market, nor
would anybody do so at church if there were but a hundredth part the
care for truth which there is for money."
* W. J. Fox.
Mr. Rathbone Greg has shown, in a memorable passage, that "the lot of
man--not perhaps altogether of the individual, but certainly of the
race--is in his own hands, from his being surrounded by _fixed laws_, on
knowledge of which, and conformity to which, his well-being depends. The
study of these and obedience to them form, therefore, the great aim of
public instruction. Men must be taught:
"1. The physical laws on which health depends.
"2. The moral laws on which happiness depends.
"3. The intellectual laws on which knowledge depends.
"4. The social and political laws on which national prosperity and
advancement depend.
"5. The economic laws on which wealth depends."
Mr. Spurgeon had flashes of Secularistic inspiration, as when engaging
a servant, who professed to have taken religion, he asked "whether she
swept under the mats." It was judging piety by a material test.
There is no trust surer than the conclusions of reason and science. What
is incapable of proof is usually decided by desire, and is without the
conditions of uniformity or certitude.
Duty consists in doing the right because it is just to others, and
because we must set the example of doing right to others, or we have no
claim that others shall do right to us. Certitude is best obtained by
the employment of material means, because we can better calculate them,
and because they are less likely to evade us, or betray us, than any
other means available to us.
Orthodox religions are pale in the face now. They still keep the word
of material promise to the ear, and break it to the heart; and a great
number of people now know it, and many of the clergy know that they know
it. The poor need material aid, and prayer is the way not to get
it; while science, more provident than faith, has brought the people
generous gifts, and inspired them with just expectations. What men need
is a guide which stands on a business footing. The Churches administer
a system of foreign affairs in a very loose way, quite inconsistent with
sound commercial principles. For instance, a firm giving checks on
a bank in some distant country--not to be found in any gazetteer of
ascertained places, nor laid down in any chart, and from which
no persons who ever set out in search of it were ever known to
return--would do very little business among prudent men. Yet this is
precisely the nature of the business engaged in by orthodox firms.
On the other hand, Secularism proposes to transact the business of
life on purely mercantile principles. It engages only in that class of
transactions the issue of which can be tested by the experience of this
life. Its checks, if I may so speak, are drawn upon duty, good sense,
and material effort, and are to be cashed from proceeds arising in our
midst--under our own eyes--subject to ordinary commercial tests. Nature
is the banker who pays all notes held by those who observe its laws. To
use the words of Macbeth, it is here, "on this bank and shoal of time"
upon which we are cast, that nature pays its checks, and not elsewhere;
which are honored now, and not in an unknown world, in some unknown
time, and in an entirely unknown way. By lack of judgment, or sense, the
Secularist may transact bad business; but he gives good security. His
surety is experience. His references are to the facts of the present
time. He puts all who have dealings with him on their guard. Secularism
tells men that they must look out for themselves, act for themselves,
within the limits of neither injuring nor harming others. Secularism
does not profess to be infallible, but it acts on honest principles. It
seeks to put progress on the business footing of good faith.* Adherents
who accept the theory of this life for this life dwell in a land of
their own--the land of certitude. Science and utilitarian morality are
kings in that country, and rule there by right of conquest over error
and superstition. In the kingdom of Thought there is no conquest
over men, but over foolishness only. Outside the world of science and
morality lies the great Debatable Ground of the existence of Deity and
a Future State. The Ruler of the Debatable Ground is named Probability,
and his two ministers are Curiosity and Speculation. Over that mighty
plain, which is as wide as the universe and as old as time, no voice of
the gods has ever been heard, and no footsteps of theirs have ever been
traced. Philosophers have explored the field with telescopes of a longer
range than the eyes of a thousand saints, and have recognised nothing
save the silent and distant horizon. Priests have denounced them for
not perceiving what was invisible. Sectaries have clamored, and the
most ignorant have howled--as the most ignorant always do--that there
is something there, because they want to see it. All the while the white
mystery is still unpenetrated in this life.
* See Secularism a Religion which Gives Heaven no Trouble.
But a future being undisclosed is no proof that there is no future.
Those who reason through their desires will believe there is; those who
reason through their understanding may yet hope that there is. In the
meantime, all stand before the portals of the untrodden world in equal
unknowingness. If faith can be piety, work is more so. To bring new
beauty out of common life--is not that piety? To change blank stupidity
into intelligent admiration of any work of nature--is not that piety? If
our towns and streets be made to give gladness and cheerfulness to all
who live or walk therein--is not that piety? If the prayer of innocence
ascend to heaven through a pure atmosphere, instead of through the
noisome and polluted air of uncleanness common in the purlieus of towns
and of churches, and even cathedrals--is not that piety? Can we, in
these days, conceive of religious persons being ignorant and dirty?
Yet they abound. If, therefore, we send to heaven clean, intelligent,
bright-minded saints--is not that piety? It is no bad religion--as
religions go--to believe in the good God of knowledge and cleanliness
and cheerfulness and beauty, and offer at his altar the daily sacrifice
of intelligent sincerity and material service.
We leave to others their own way of faith and worship. We ask only
leave to take our own. Carlyle has told us that only two men are to be
honored, and no third--the mechanic and the thinker: he who works with
honest hand, making the world habitable; and he who works with his
brain, making thought artistic and true. "All the rest," he adds with
noble scorn, "are chaff, which the wind may blow whither it list-eth."
The certainty of heaven is for the useful alone. Mere belief is the
easiest, the poorest, the shabbiest device by which conscientious men
ever attempted to scale the walls of Paradise.