I
One of the first effects of the idea of progress, whose development our
last lecture traced, has been to increase immeasurably man's self
reliance and to make him confident of humanity's power to take care of
itself. At the heart of the idea of progress is man's new scientific
control over life, and this new mastery, whereby the world seems ready
to serve the purposes of those who will learn the laws, is the dominant
influence in both the intellectual and practical activities of our age.
That religion, in consequence, should seem to many of minor import, if
not quite negligible, and that men, trusting themselves, their
knowledge of law, their use of law-abiding forces, their power to
produce change and to improve conditions, should find less need of
trusting any one except themselves, was inevitable, but for all that it
is fallacious. Already we have seen that a stumbling and uneven
progress, precarious and easily frustrated, taking place upon a
transient planet, goes but a little way to meet those elemental human
needs with which religious faith has dealt. In our present lecture we
propose a more specific consideration of this abiding necessity of
religion in a progressive world.
How difficult it is to go back in imagination to the days before men
grasped the meaning of natural law! We take gravitation for granted
but, when Newton first proclaimed its law, the artillery of orthodox
pulpits was leveled against him in angry consternation. Said one
preacher, Newton "took from God that direct action on his works so
constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material
mechanism" and he "substituted gravitation for Providence." [1] That
preacher saw truly that the discovery of natural law was going to make
a profound difference to religion. For ages men had been accustomed to
look for the revelation of supernatural power in realms where they did
not know the laws. And as men were tempted to look for the presence of
God in realms where they did not know the laws, so in those realms they
trusted God to do for them what they did not know how to do for
themselves.
Then men began discovering natural laws, and every time they laid their
hands on a new natural law they laid their hands on a new law-abiding
force and began doing for themselves things of which their fathers had
never dreamed. Stories of old-time miracles are overpassed in our
modern days. Did Aladdin once rub a magic lamp and build a palace?
To-day, knowledge of engineering laws enables us to achieve results
that would put Aladdin quite to shame. He never dreamed a Woolworth
Tower. Did the Israelites once cross the Red Sea dry-shod? One thing,
however, they never would have hoped to do: to cross under and over the
Hudson River day after day in multitudes, dry-shod. Did an axe-head
float once when Elisha threw a stick into the water? But something no
Elisha ever dreamed of seeing we see continually: iron ships navigating
the ocean as though it were their natural element. Did Joshua once
prolong the day for battle by the staying of the sun? Yet Joshua could
never have conceived an habitual lighting of the city's homes and
streets until by night they are more brilliant than by day. Did
Jericho's walls once fall at the united shout of a besieging people?
Those childlike besiegers, however, never dreamed of guns that could
blast Jerichos to pieces from seventy miles away. Huxley was right
when he said that our highly developed sciences have given us a command
over the course of non-human nature greater than that once attributed
to the magicians.
The consequence has been revolutionary. Old cries of dependence upon
God grow unreal upon the lips of multitudes. Sometimes without knowing
it, often without wanting it, men are drawn by the drift of modern
thought away from all confidence in God and all consciousness of
religious need. Consider two pictures. The first is an epidemic in
New England in the seventeenth century. Everybody is thinking about
God; the churches are full and days are passed in fasting and agonizing
prayer. Only one way of getting rid of such an epidemic is known: men
must gain new favour in the sight of God. The second picture is an
epidemic in New England in the twentieth century. The churches are not
full--they are closed by official order and popular consent to prevent
the spread of germs. Comparatively few people are appealing to God;
almost everybody is appealing to the health commissioner. Not many
people are relying upon religion; everybody is relying upon science.
As one faces the pregnant significance of that contrast, one sees that
in important sections of our modern life science has come to occupy the
place that God used to have in the reliance of our forefathers. For
the dominant fact of our generation is power over the world which has
been put into our hands through the knowledge of laws, and the
consequence is that the scientific mastery of life seems man's
indispensable and sufficient resource.
The issue is not far to seek. Such has been public confidence in the
efficacy and adequacy of this scientific control of life to meet all
human needs, that in multitudes of minds religion has been crowded to
the wall. Why should we trust God or concern ourselves with the deep
secrets of religious faith, if all our need is met by learning laws,
blowing upon our hands, and going to work? So even Christians come
secretly to look upon their Christianity as a frill, something gracious
but not indispensable, pleasant to live with but not impossible to live
without. Christian preachers lose their ability, looking first upon
their spiritual message and then upon their fellow men, to feel how
desperately the two need each other. Religion has become an "elective
in the university of life." But religion cannot persist as a frill; it
either is central in its importance or else it is not true at all. Its
great days come only when it is seen to be indispensable. We may use
what artificial respiration we will upon the Church, the days of the
Church's full power will not come until the conviction lays hold upon
her that the endeavour to found civilization upon a materialistic
science is leading us to perdition; that man needs desperately the
ministry of religion, its insight into life's meanings, its control
over life's use, its inward power for life's moral purposes; that man
never needed this more than now, when the scientific control of life is
arming him with so great ability to achieve his aims.