THE critical and investigating work of the modern world threatens to
shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And there are large numbers
of people who are disturbed and afraid: they are troubled lest certain
things that are precious, that are dear to them, may be taken away. Not
only this, they are troubled lest things of vital importance to the
highest life of the world be taken away. I propose, then, this morning
to run in rapid review over a few of the changes that are caused by the
investigating spirit of the time, and then to point out some things
that are not touched, that cannot be shaken, and that therefore must
remain. And I ask you to have in mind, as I pursue this line of
thought, the question whether doubt has taken away anything really
valuable from mankind. The negative part of my theme I shall touch on
very lightly, and dispose of as briefly as I may.
What has doubt, what has investigation, done concerning the universe of
which we are a part? In the old days, before doubt began its work,
before men asked questions and demanded proof, we lived in a little,
petty, tiny world, which the imagination of the superstitious and the
fear of ignorant men had created. But the cycles and epicycles which
Ptolemy devised, and by means of which he explained, as well as he knew
how, the movements of the heavenly bodies around us, these have passed
away. The breath of doubt has blown upon them; and they have gone, like
mists driven by the wind.
But has doubt quenched the light of any star? Has doubt taken away from
the glory of the universe? Rather, as the result of the work of these
myriad investigators, whose one aim and end was truth, at last we have
a universe worthy to be the home of an infinite God, a universe that
matches our thought of the Divine, a universe that thrills and lifts
us, fills us with reverence, and bends us to our knees in the attitude
of worship.
The same spirit has raised no end of questions concerning God. What has
been the result? We have lost the old thought of God in the shape of a
man sitting on a throne located in the heavens just above the blue or
on some distant star. We have lost the thought of a God as a tyrant, as
a jealous being, as angry every day with his children, as ready to
punish these children forever for their ignorance, for their
intellectual mistakes, for their sins of whatever kind. We have changed
our conception of him; but have we lost God? I will not answer that
question at this stage of the discourse, because I wish merely to
suggest it now, and dwell on it a little more when I come to the
positive treatment of our morning's theme.
Let us glance at the Bible a moment. Doubt and investigation have been
at work there. What has been the result? Have we lost the Bible? No. We
have gained it. We have lost those things about it which were
intellectual burdens because we could not believe them, which were a
moral burden because they conflicted with our highest and noblest sense
of right. We no longer feel under the necessity of reconciling human
mistakes with divine infallibility. Professor Goldwin Smith has told us
recently that these old theories of the Bible were a millstone about
the neck of Christendom, and that they must be gotten rid of if
Christianity was to live. This is all that doubt and investigation have
done to the Bible. They have cleared away the things that no sane and
earnest and devout mind wishes to keep; and they have restored to us in
all their dignity and beauty and sweetness and power the real human
Bible, the Bible which poured out of the heart of the olden time, and
which is in all its truth and sweetness, so far as they go, a
revelation of the divinest things in human thought and human dream.
Preachers tell us every little while that those who ask questions have
taken away our Lord, and they know not where he has been laid. What has
this spirit done concerning Jesus? Has it taken him away from us?
Rather, as the result of all this question and criticism, at last we
have found him, found him who has been hidden away for ages, found the
man, divine son of God, son of man, brother, friend, inspirer,
companion, helper. It has done for Jesus the grandest service of which
we can conceive.
And now one more point. People used to suppose they knew all about the
next world. They knew where heaven was and where hell was, and who were
to be the inhabitants of either place, and why. Doubt and question have
been at work here, and now we do not know where heaven is; and we do
not know where hell is, except that it is within the heart of those
that are not in accord with the divine life. Where the places are, we
know not; but blessed beyond all words be ignorance like this! We know
because we believe in righteousness and truth that there is no hell
except that which we create for ourselves; and that is in this world,
in any world where there is a breach of a divine law. But has the great
hope gone? Has doubt touched that, so that it has shrivelled and become
as nothing? That I shall have occasion to touch on a little more at
length in a moment; and so I leave it here with this suggestion.
I wish you now to note, and to note with a great deal of care, that
doubt, criticism, question, investigation, have no power to destroy
anything. People talk as though, if you doubted a thing, it
disappeared, as though doubt had magical power to annihilate in some
way a truth. If you really do doubt an important divine truth, it may
disturb and trouble you for a while; but the truth remains just the
same. I remember some years ago a parishioner came to me, an
intelligent lady, and said, "Mr. Savage, I have about lost my belief in
any future life." I smiled, and said: "I am sorry for you, if it
interferes with your comfort and peace; but remember one thing, neither
your doubt nor my belief touches or changes the fact." The eternal life
is not something to be puffed away with a breath, if it be real. So
rest right there in the firm assurance that whatever is true is true,
and rests on the eternal foundation of the permanence of God; and
asking questions about it, digging away at its foundations, testing it
in any and all sorts of ways, cannot by any possibility injure it.
Enforce thus this idea, simple as it seems, because thousands of men
and women at the present time are made to tremble by utterances from
the pulpit, as though doubt were really a destroyer. Of course, it
seems commonplace the moment you think of it; and, still for your peace
and for the restfulness of your mind as you look on the things that are
taking place about us, hold fast to this simple idea.
There is one other point which I wish to raise. What is the use of
criticism? What is the use of all this investigating? Why indulge in
all this doubt? And now let me give you an illustration which will lead
me to answering this question and enforcing the point I have in mind. A
farmer, if he selects a favorable piece of ground, plants good seed,
cultivates it properly, if the rain falls and the sun shines, and the
weather is propitious, will have a successful crop. Does it make any
difference now whether the farmer has correct ideas about soil and seed
and cultivation? Does it make any difference whether he has any true
conception of the nature and work of the sunshine in producing this
crop? In one sense, No. In another, a very important sense, Yes.
Suppose the farmer, having gotten into his mind the idea that the sun
is the source of all the life and growth of the things that he plants
and the crops he cultivates, should say, "Well, now, it does not make
any difference whether I have correct scientific theories about the sun
or not: the sun carries on his work just the same." I have heard people
say, over and over again, using an illustration like this: "What
difference does it make what your theories are about the spiritual
life, about the origin and nature of religion, about morality? If you
live a good life, the results are just the same, whatever your thinking
may be." And I grant it. But now suppose the farmer should say to
himself: "The sun is the source of all the life that I am able to
produce, that I see growing around me; and now I will worship him as a
god. I will pray to him, I will sing songs of praise to him, I will
bring birds and animals and burn sacrifices to him; and so I will win
his favor, and get him to produce these wonderful results for me."
Suppose he should so seek his results, and pay no attention to the
character of the soil, to the kind of seed he planted, or to proper
cultivation: would that make no difference?
Do you not see that theory may be of immense practical importance in
certain contingencies? Whether he has any knowledge of the sun or not,
if he complies with the laws, the conditions, if he is fortunately
obedient, then his results will be produced. But, if his ignorance, his
superstition, lead him to neglect the natural forces with which he
deals, then it may make all the difference in the world. So, as I study
the history and development of religious thought, I see everywhere that
men and women, through their ignorance in regard to the real nature of
the universe and of God and of their own souls, are going astray,
wasting time, wasting thought, wasting effort, misdirecting all these
instead of complying with the real natural universal conditions on
which these noblest and highest results which they desire depend.
If a man, for example, believes that he is to please God 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 quantity 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 "God." 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 God? I ask you
to consider a moment, and see. As we wake up, assuming 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 passing 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 God? 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 God, we are indulging in
a huge assumption, and a negative assumption at that. Suppose that,
looking at one of you, I should call you body instead of calling you
man. I should be assuming 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 assumption which is scientifically
unwarranted. As a reasonable being, then, I think I am scientifically
warranted in saying that belief in God 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 assurance 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
analyze 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, God 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
sunshine.
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
God, 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
God 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 God 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 ship. The ship 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 noble life. Nobody 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 God. 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 nobler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun shines 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 gods are not
just, I w ill be just, and shame the gods."
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 shore of a sea whose wavelets lap the sands at our feet, and the
ships 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
assertion 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 shore, 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.
Now I wish simply to call your attention to the fact that doubt does
not touch this eternal Power, does not touch the fact that this is a
good Power, and that it is on the side of goodness, does not touch the
fact that we are the children of that Power and may co-operate with it
for good and share its ultimate triumph, does not touch the great hope
that makes it worth while for us to suffer, to bear, to dare all
things. And these great trusts, are they not all we need to be men, to
be women, to conquer the conditions of life and prove ourselves
children of the Highest?