THE REACTION: A NEW CONFESSION OF FAITH
At this time I knew nothing of a liberal church. If I had, I doubt if I was in a condition of mind to consider it. I was so utterly disgusted with ecclesiasticism as I knew it that I was but little prepared if at all, to give anything of the kind fair consideration. The pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme. I abandoned everything but God. I never doubted for a moment the existence of a Supreme Being. Nature and instinct taught me this. But who, or what, or where, this Supreme Being was, or what his attributes or characteristics were, I did not pretend to know, or care. I relegated it all to the realm of the unknown and unknowable.
For a while I went to church occasionally, merely for the sake of respectability, and not because I took any interest in common with it. I listened to the preaching with such patience and fortitude as I could command. I heard only the same old platitudes about a dying Christ and the flames of perdition I had heard all my life and preached for eight years myself. I often felt as if I would like to help the preacher out in his struggle to "divest himself of his thoughts." I finally quit going to church altogether, until I located where I had an opportunity to attend a Reformed Jewish synagogue, which I did quite often, and always heard broad-gauged, intellectual discourses.
As I have before said, up to this time, and for years thereafter, I had never read a distinctively "infidel" book, nor even a liberal religious one. My change of opinions had all come from an honest effort to seek proofs for the faith of my fathers, which I inherited. But I never ceased to be a student. My temporary antagonism to the church soon vanished. I simply viewed it with utter indifference, and somewhat of sympathy. I had no more creed to defend, and none to condemn. I had no desire whatever to propagate my own ideas or disturb any one else in theirs. I felt that if any one got any satisfaction out of his religious beliefs he was welcome to it. I would not disturb him for anything. I looked upon it as a harmless delusion, and if it made one any better, society was so much the gainer. But to me it was as "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals." But I cannot say that I was satisfied with my position. Man is a social as well as an emotional animal. Agnosticism is neither social nor emotional. It is cold-blooded and indifferent at its best. It is simply a bundle of doubts and negations. Men are bound together in social and fraternal ties by what they affirm and believe in common. But they care nothing for what they deny.
But having no creed to defend and no preconceived opinions to prove, and being of studious habits, I was now prepared to study in search of abstract truth for truth's own sake, ready to accept it from whatever source it might come, and follow it wherever it might lead.
Without arrogating to myself any special merit or credit for taking this course, I wish that all people would do the same. As I said in the very beginning of this book, most people inherit their religious beliefs, and there they stop. We are Baptists, or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Catholics, because we were born so. We transmit our beliefs to our children, from generation to generation, each following the faith of his ancestors, without ever stopping to inquire why, or seek a reason. And if a thought is ever given to it, or any search made, it is but rarely for abstract truth, but for the proofs that support the inherited faith, the preconceived opinion. It is like one going into his house and bolting the door on the inside. Nothing is ever given out and nothing ever permitted to come in. This is exactly why for centuries the world was drenched in Christian blood, shed by Christian hands. Each had its infallible creed, to which all the world must bow—or take the consequences.
It took me several years to get myself settled with anything like a definite "creed of my own," tho I was never in the least disturbed about it, and only gave it such time as I could spare from a busy business and professional life. By this time I had reached such definite conclusions as satisfied my own mind, tho I never,—after my "crisis,"—held any opinion, and do not now, that I am not willing to change at any time that evidence is furnished to justify it. In my search for truth I found myself confronted with certain facts that Agnosticism did not satisfactorily explain. These were facts of Nature, of Man as a part of it, of man's nature, habits, history, thoughts, conduct, and social relations,—in fact, all that pertains to the phenomena of Nature and Human Life and Relations. The conclusions I reached constitute.
MY NEW CONFESSION OF FAITH
THE UNIVERSE AND GOD
The first of these was the physical universe. I had accepted the theory of evolution in a general way; yet I could not account for the marvelous organism of millions of worlds and suns and systems, of which our earth is but a mere atom, filling the infinity of space, beyond all human comprehension, revolving and whirling thru space, each in its alloted orbit, with such perfect order and regularity, and all in the most perfect harmony, governed by such immutable, perfect and universal law, upon the theory of the operation of blind, unintelligent force upon inert matter. Here was an effect. There must be a cause. The effect cannot be greater than the cause. Here is an infinite universe; there must be an infinite cause; and that cause cannot be less than Infinite Eternal Intelligence. This cause, for the want of a better name, we call God. I could thus easily account for the universe thru the processes of evolution, directed by eternal, intelligent will, operating thru eternal immutable and perfect law, upon eternal and indestructible matter. Whether correct or not, this satisfied my mind as to God and the universe.