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such books as Professor Fiske's "Nature of God" and "Destiny of Man," and Professor Le Conte's "Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought," have done an incalculable service in familiarizing men with the methods and the general conclusions of modern science in such a way as to connect these discoveries rationally with the great underlying ex periences of life. The gain to the cause of religion itself has been equally obvious. A thoughtful writer has recently observed that "the only thing that is fatal to a religion is the conviction that it has no basis in the nature of things." The fear which arrayed some religious men against the new theories was largely due to a suspicion that religion was threatened with precisely this divorce. Time has gone far to reassure all except those who fancy religion to be immune from the necessities of change and growth.

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Under the changed conditions induced by scientific thought men have refined and enlarged their idea of God. They thought of Him once as a Wonder-worker, or Creator-by-fiat, and they were jealous for Him as one might be jealous for the skill and mysterious resource of a sleight-of-hand performer. They feared lest God might be 'found out.' The last half-century has taught them that the love of rational processes and a determination to use the slow methods of growth are divine attributes worthier of adoration than any mere ability to amaze

1 Prof. John Watson, Philosophical Basis of Religion, p. 174.

and mystify. So far from finding God out, the research of the student has tended rather to widen the horizon of mystery; but to assure him at the same time that wherever he goes along the well-worn paths of the known, or out upon his voyages of adventure into the unknown, he may confidently expect to find Creative Power at work in orderly and reasonable fashion.

This assurance has reacted upon man's estimate of himself in the interests of a higher and saner faith. The discovery that the earth was among the most insignificant of planets tended for a time to make man the object of his own contempt. It seemed the height of presumption that he, who represented but a pinch of cosmic dust, able to retain corporeal shape and unity amid the flux of circumstance for a few brief days, should aspire to knowledge and dominion, or should lay claim to a destiny. Yet the very century which accentuated man's littleness at the same time demonstrated the range of his powers. His mastery of physical nature during the last hundred years will long serve to distinguish that epoch. Its bridging, mining, and tunnelling, its reduction of the sea to a universal highway which men can travel with assurance and in safety, its harnessing of steam and its annihilation of time and space through its very partial acquaintance with electricity, are indubitable history. The inevitable conclusion is being borne in upon him that he will find no region of the Universe foreign to his reason. Whether

he continue to dwell in this little planet, or be transplanted to some more dignified abode, the world about him is likely to see itself still reflected in his mind. Whatever the Creative Power immanent in the world may be, His methods of working appear to be cognate to the mind of man. They often puzzle men by their greatness; they always yield to the mind's attack, however, when a sufficient foundation of experience has been laid for it to stand upon.

This assurance which man has won out of the adventure of science emboldens him to renew certain old claims upon the Universe. He feels that he has a right to his own integrity; that is, to a certain wholeness of life and experience for which three score and ten years do not suffice. Having once tasted food for mind and soul he is as little disposed as was Oliver Twist to be put off with a single helping. Though the beadles of science and religion stare, and conventional voices cry out upon his audacity, he will, often no doubt awkwardly enough, insist that he was made for life instead of death, for faith instead of unbelief, for conquest rather than defeat. He will refuse to be put to confusion by circumstance. He will reiterate as his Magna Charta the passage in Hebrew tradition which bids him "replenish the earth and subdue it"; and persist in regarding his claim to the venture of religion as strengthened rather than invalidated by the teaching of science.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DOUBTERS AND THE MYSTICS

It is said that preachers are most inclined toward themes of loss and sorrow in their youth. Then, more than in later years, they aspire to set forth the contradictions and uncertainties of life, and to bring mourners into vital touch with springs of comfort. In this attempt they sometimes illustrate one of the very contradictions that oppress them, as out of their seemingly unharassed experience they essay to deal with deep and harrowing things. The incongruity, humourous as it often seems, is, however, more apparent than real. Many men who have had a full share of danger and defeat may be found to confess that their days of deepest anxiety came in the relatively sheltered and outwardly placid period of youth. The fears of childhood are often unique in their intensity; its burdens heavier than those of later life; its loneliness more desolating. Nor is the reason far to seek. It is the intelligent child who feels most keenly his inadequacy to circumstance, and it is the youth who is most conscious of the uniqueness of experience. Later on the man learns how great a store of resources and compensations life may furnish; and he per

ceives at the same time that the problems which baffle him are the problems of every age, his burdens are those under which other men have staggered, and his path, however rugged and lonely, yet proves to be —

Worn of frequent feet.

The difficult situations of youth bode irrevocable disaster; those of maturity, with its more philosophic mind, as often whisper between their threats the old Virgilian solace, "Perhaps even these things it will some day be helpful to remember." Children within speaking distance of their parents still sometimes fear the dark; and youth, with years of goodly life before it, has as naturally and as perversely sung of death, parting, and faith's eclipse. It is a part, one suspects, of that revulsion of feeling which all men know who try their 'prentice hand at a new trade,—even the trade of living, only to find the easy tricks of it transformed into vexations at the touch of their inexperience.

Be this as it may, however, the fact remains that the most haunting songs of doubt and disillusion have been sung by men well under forty. Clough and Matthew Arnold in their different styles are eminent illustrations of what I mean. One cannot pass to a consideration of their work and the sources of their influence, however, without regret that lack of space excludes a group of half-forgotten poets, like the Chartist, Ernest Jones, whose "Songs of

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