III
The deep need of a worthy interpretation of life is just as urgent in a world where the idea of progress reigns as in any other, and to supply that need is one of the major functions of religion. For religion is something more than all the creeds that have endeavoured to express its thought. Religion is something more than all the organizations that have tried to incarnate its purposes. Religion is the human spirit, by the grace of God, seeking and finding an interpretation of experience that puts sense and worth, dignity, elevation, joy, and hope into life.
A body of students recently requested an address upon the subject: "What is the use of religion anyway?" The group of ideas behind the question is not hard to guess: that science gives us all the facts, that facts and their laws are all we need, that the scientific control of life guarantees progress, and that religion therefore is superfluous. But in such a statement one towering interrogation has been neglected: what about the interpretation of the very facts which science does present? Could not one address himself to the question of those students in some such way as this? You say that science has disclosed to us the leisureliness of the evolving universe. Come back, then, on the long road to the rear on which Bishop Usher's old date of creation is a way station an infinitesimal distance behind us; come back until together we stand at the universe's postern gate and look out into the mystery whence all things came, where no scientific investigation can ever go, where no one knows the facts. What do you make of it? Two voices rise in answer. One calls the world "a mechanical process, in which we may discover no aim or purpose whatever." [2] And another voice says:
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth his handiwork." [3]
That is not a difference in facts, upon which we can get our hands.
That is a difference in the interpretation of the facts.
Or come forward together to look into that mystery ahead, toward which this universe and we within it are so prodigiously plunging on. Do we not often feel, upon this earth whirling through space, like men and women who by some weird chance have found themselves upon a ship, ignorant of their point of departure and of their destination? For all the busyness with which we engage in many tasks, we cannot keep ourselves from slipping back at times to the ship's stern to look out along its wake and wonder whence we came, or from going at times also to its prow to wonder whither we are headed. What do you make of it? Toward what sort of haven is this good ship earth sailing—a port fortunate or ill? Or may it be there is no haven, only endless sailing on an endless sea by a ship that never will arrive? So questioning, we listen to conflicting voices. One says there is no future except ultimate annihilation, and another voice sings:
"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed
of good, shall exist."
That is not a difference in the facts, that eyes can see and hands handle; that is a difference in the interpretation of the facts.
Or from such large considerations come down into some familiar experience of daily life. Here is a man having a hard battle between right and wrong. There is no more impressive sight on earth to one who looks at it with understanding eyes. What do you make of this mysterious sense of duty which lays its magisterial hand upon us and will not be denied? At once various voices rise. Haeckel says the sense of duty is a "long series of phyletic modifications of the phronema of the cortex." [4] That is his interpretation. And Wordsworth:
"Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!
O Duty!"