To many faith simply means denying the reason and relying on emotion.
They have what is called saving faith and are able to feel that the
Almighty forgives their wrong-doings, ceasing to be angry with them;
their faith being perfect when it takes away fear of punishment. To
these faith is that which they pay in the form of credence to whatever
is ecclesiastically asserted in exchange for the complaisance of diety
[Transcriber's note: deity?].
Those who deny all religion assert that it is founded on fear. There
is enough in that assertion to give it the colour of truth. Yet fear
of the unseen is but the survival of savagery. Faith founded on fear
becomes servile, debasing, superstitious. If religion has no higher
motive than that of fear, the trembling and dread before some great
omnipotent unknown, it can give the world neither help nor uplift.
What is there in God to fear? Is the Lord of life also the foe of our
lives? Is the author of a world so fair and lovely, inviting us to joy
and inspiring with feelings of pleasure, the foe of happiness? Has He
made the world a paradise and planted in man's breast the seeds of
kindness, gentleness and sweet thoughts only to glower over His world
in hatred and to damn it with dread of Himself?
All things that can be known argue the goodness of the unknown. As
soon as a man learns to live with nature he loses his fear of forest,
beast, and sea. Familiarity breeds confidence, affection and
reverence. Only the remote and unfamiliar fill us with dread. The
city bred tremble in the woods at night, where the native feels himself
amongst well loved friends.
In the same manner the fear of the divine, born of unfamiliarity,
instead of being an evidence of reverence or of religion, becomes the
mark of ignorance and cowardice. Rectitude of conduct, resulting
wholly from regulating oneself as under an all-seeing critical eye and
in dread of a far-reaching devastating hand, cannot produce enrichment
of character. Hatred never gave birth to holiness.
The souls that in all ages have lived nearest to things spiritual, that
have most enriched the world with thoughts, whose inner visions pierced
our outer clouds, seeing something of the glory of the infinite,
brought back no pictures of a face austere, of a cruel despot, or of
aught for love or truth to fear.
True faith instead of being a compromise to allay our fears of unknown
ills and calamities, ever has been the fearless, reverent search for
the face of the infinite. It does not say: "I believe that God will
let me alone because I did those prescribed things"; rather it says: "I
cannot be satisfied alone and apart from Him, the source and sole
satisfaction of all life."
Science with its passion for truth, art with its passion for beauty,
ethics with its passion for rightness, are all but parts of true
religion, the soul's passion for the infinite heart and mind in which
all ideas of truth and beauty take their rise and find their full
realization.
The soul of man never has ceased to cry out for the living God; the
religion of fear has given it no satisfaction. Its followers have been
too busy building themselves shelters from the heaven they dread,
shelters that become as leaden shields shutting out the eternal
tenderness and beneficence. No man ever found the celestial city or
its glorious king so long as he regarded his religion as a cyclone
cellar.
To those who, with eyes of reverence, seek to find the good in all
things here, believing that love is better and mightier than hate, that
whatever is good, kindly, tender, pure, and ennobling in us, is but the
reflection from the glory of the infinite, traces in our dust by which
we find our way to Him who inhabits eternity, these, through eyes of
faith, have found a presence beyond description or definition.
Fear sets afar off a mighty monarch; faith finds near at hand one whom
it calls "Father." Fear shrinks from the impending wrath, love rests
in the unchanging goodness. Fear imagines a throne and flaming sword;
faith has confidence in a better day ever dawning, in the triumph at
last of right, in the reality of an incomprehensible love that sings in
its joy, soothes in its sorrow, strengthens in its discipline, a life
and love nearer and more real than any of the other facts of living.