Levels of Living / Essays on Everyday Ideals

by Henry Frederick Cope

There are temperamental types which never reach any conclusion by pure reasoning; intuitions, emotions, and inspirations take the place of intellectual processes. It would be the height of folly to attempt to make such natures reduce their religion to syllogisms, or to ask them to bring to the bar of the head all the findings of the heart.

The emotional nature does not comprehend the manner in which the average mind must wait for its own light. These souls that move by great tides often reach sublime heights. The world would be poor, indeed, without their all-compelling enthusiasms, their glorious visions, and their dominant convictions. But such ones must not forget that there is no royal road to truth; that human nature is not cast in one single, unvarying mold; diversity is not necessarily heresy.

There are other natures, not less necessary to the world, not less glorious in their records of leaders, martyrs, and masters of men. These are those that find truth by the slow steps of reasoning; that seek the way of right, with hearts of reverence and feet of faith, in the light of the faculties heaven has given them. They do not feel, they do not understand the winds that, sighing round them, convey such mighty meaning to other souls; they cannot buy progress at the price of blindness. They are the intellectual type.

The conclusion that the emotional type must, after all, be the right one is a common one. This is because it makes the most noise and the most easily apprehended demonstration. And, therefore, some tell us that the man who seeks to find the way of truth by the light of the intellect must, without fail, wander into the pit of error; that the only way to come to religious truth is to shut the eyes of the mind and yield to emotion.

The thinker constantly is being warned that he cannot apprehend God with his intellect; that he cannot see the way to heaven with the eyes of reason. He is urged to give up the use of his head that he may develop his heart. He even is told that faith is incompatible with reason, and love with logic. So strong is the emphasis on this that he is led to suspect that indolence is seeking to deify ignorance, and that men whose intellectual faculties have atrophied by their subjection to the emotional now are envious of those who retain the power to think clearly, and would have them also deprived of these powers.

Nothing could be more clearly opposed to the way of truth than the notion that religion can be bought only at the price of reason, or that the consequence of using the intelligence is the losing of the power of affection for the divine, the good, and the true—of the warmth of heart and feeling that often determine character and conduct.

If the faculties are God given they are given for working purposes. If man has a mind and yet may not think concerning the deepest and highest things of his own nature and destiny, then the giving of that mind or the permitting it to develop is the most cruel mockery known to human history.

But the simple law of nature that every faculty has some purpose, that no power is without its duty, is the answer to all this. The mind is as sacred as the heart; it is as much a sacred duty to think as it is to aspire. There is nothing too holy for men to think about, to reason about. The mind must serve the truth—must with reverence lead to larger truth.

No man is religious who represses any of his reasoning faculties. Every one of the higher powers must be brought to their greatest perfection. Not by dwarfing but by developing themselves do men glorify their Creator. Just as the finest tree in the forest speaks most eloquently of the bounty and beauty of nature, so does the gigantic intellect glorify the intelligence that ordered its being.

Fear not to think of sacred things; nothing is sacred because it is mysterious; reverence does not dwell apart from reason. Faith does not reach its perfection in the fool; it shines most glorious where wisdom dwells. There still are the superstitious souls who confound darkness with divinity; who cry aloud against the light of knowledge. But they can no more stay the discovery of truth than the bats can hold back the dawn.