"What is man that thou art mindful of him?" So far as we know, as a pure animal, he is the highest product, the climax of the processes of organic evolution. In addition to this, he is the only known creature on earth, or elsewhere, endowed with those God-like faculties of mind, thought, reason, will,—soul. As far as man's moral character and destiny are concerned, it matters as little how he came to be here, as it does who Cain's wife was. We are confronted with the serious fact that we are here; and that we are endowed with these supreme faculties that differentiate us from the lower forms of life about us, and consequently entail upon us, not thru some supernatural revelation, but by natural instinct, certain moral and social responsibilities and obligations, not only to our own kind, but to all those myriad forms of life below us,—obligations and responsibilities which we cannot avoid or escape, except at our peril.
And as to these responsibilities, it is not material whether man is immortal or not. I once had serious doubts of this. But while I now believe it with a firm conviction that in my own mind amounts to moral certainty, yet I recognize that it is beyond the pale of ocular proof or physical demonstration. It pertains exclusively to the realm of faith.
"Strange is it not? that of the myriads who,
Before us passed the door of darkness thru,
Not one returns, to tell us of the road,
Which to discover, we must travel too?"
And yet this faith is one of the most comforting and inspiring of all the objects of faith known to man. But he that is governed in his life and conduct, solely by the fear of some dire punishment in the after-life, or some hope of bribing the Infinite to give him a comfortable berth in heaven, is at best but a little and weak soul.
No need to go into any argument here upon the question of whether, "If a man die shall he live again?" Our social and moral obligations to live right with our fellowmen are none the less, whether there is an after-life or not. In fact no man can be right with God,—a part of whose life he is,—while wrong with his fellow-man.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
This brings us to a consideration of the problem of evil. "Ever since human intelligence became enlightened enough to grope for a meaning and purpose in human life, this problem of the existence of evil has been the burden of man." (John Fiske.) Out of some attempt to solve it, every religion on earth was born. I do not offer to solve this problem; but to try to take a rational view of it.
Good and evil are relative terms. How could we know anything about the one but thru its contrast with the other? If there were no such thing as evil, how could we be conscious of the good? How could we know that it was good? We cannot know anything except by its contrast with something else. Some element of unlikeness must appear before we can distinguish anything from something else. To quote again from Fiske: "If there were no color but red, it would be exactly the same thing as if there were no color at all." There could be no music except for variety and contrasts in sounds. If we had never tasted anything but sugar, could we know what bitterness is? But having tasted the bitter we then know what sweetness means. Likewise, if there was no such thing as moral evil in the world, we could not possibly know what moral goodness is. We could not know what happiness is if we did not have some knowledge of sorrow and pain. Just why this is so, I do not pretend to know. I am only stating facts as they are; and the great Creator, who is the author of both, if of either, knows; and we may know in proper time. Another pertinent question from Fiske may be asked here: "What would have been the worth of that primitive innocence portrayed in the myth of the garden of Eden? What would have been the moral value or significance of a race of human beings ignorant of evil, and doing beneficent acts with no more consciousness or volition than the deftly contrived machine that picks up raw material at one end, and turns out some finished product at the other? Clearly for strong and resolute men and women an Eden would be but a fool's paradise. How could anything fit to be called character ever have been produced there? But for tasting the forbidden fruit, in what respect could man have become a being of higher order than the beast of the field?"
The point is that the same law of evolution applies in the moral world as it does in the material. As the highest types of life have been developed only thru the processes of struggle with adverse elements, in which only the fittest, strongest and best adapted to its environment survived, so moral character is only developed thru the struggle with moral evil. Just as one cannot learn to swim on a parlor sofa, but must get in the water and struggle, so one must come in contact with, combat, struggle with, and overcome moral evil in order to develop the highest and strongest type of moral character.
"Heaven is not reached by a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And rise to its summit round by round."