A Christian writer recently said:—“The supreme duty of humanity is to get
into touch with the infinite purpose.” This may be so, but we want first
to understand just what the infinite purpose is before we subscribe to it.
When the infinite purpose is bent on getting up an earthquake we do not
care to “get into touch” with it, not much. When this purpose is forging
an electric bolt to shoot out of the clouds, we have no desire to “get
into touch” with any such thing. It makes a vast difference what this
purpose is bent upon, whether or not we want to go into partnership with
it. Now, when the infinite purpose is at work on the earth, turning dirt
into flowers, or vegetables, or trees, we should feel a joy in sharing its
labor, but when it is determined to burn and scorch everything on the face
of the ground with a heat that knows no abatement, we should want to sell
out our interest in the concern at once.
There is just as much nonsense connected with the use of this phrase “the
infinite purpose” as there is with “special Providence” or “Divine love,”
or any other religious expression which expresses nothing unless you are
religious. Where this “purpose” “makes for righteousness,” as Matthew
Arnold delighted to believe, we are willing to catch on to it, but where
it is going in the other direction we prefer to go our own way.
This notion of uniting the finite with the infinite purpose is all right,
providing the latter does not conflict with the former, but we have
serious objection to doing anything that will interfere with the highest
development of our humanity. The purpose which is at work in the world
does not make for health any more than for disease. It seems to carry a
tubercle with as much satisfaction as a ray of sunshine, and lends all its
forces to assist the highwayman with no more charge than it makes to the
law-abiding citizen.
It seems to us that it is necessary to divorce the “infinite purpose” from
a lot of intentions that do not work for human interests, before it will
be desirable to assume intimate relations with this purpose. We do not
want to “get into touch” with what is not going our way; that is, the way
of health, of prosperity, of happiness. We do not deny that we need to
give a higher direction to human thought. We affirm this fact as
positively as our most Christian contemporary. But before we advise
mankind to harness its wagon to the infinite purpose we want to be sure
where it is going. Man has to go to mill and market as well as to meeting,
and there is just as good a purpose manifested in getting the most
wholesome food for our stomachs as there is in getting the safest creed
for our souls. We are loth to trust any religious purpose as opposed to a
human one. We believe in man first, last, and all the time.
Now, let us admit that humanity needs a wiser purpose to guide it, but let
us also admit that it can be found in a wiser human head and human heart.
If what is called the infinite purpose is working for the highest end of
human life, there is no evidence of the fact. If there is anything better
than human energy back of a good human thought that will help this world,
we do not know what it is.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The man who accepts the faith of Calvin is miserable in proportion to the
extent he carries it out.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Whatever tends to prolong the existence of ignorance or to prevent the
recognition of knowledge is dangerous to the well-being of the human race.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
A higher respect for man has been one of the chief promoters of
civilization. Advancement has always been toward right and truth when the
ranks were imbued with a proper regard for human hearts and human
happiness.