From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.”
The latest science hesitates to question the validity of our higher emotional life. It is becoming antiquated to say that, because we are descended from animals, our sense of duty, our feelings of faith and reverence have no more significance than the animal instincts from which they may have developed. There they are in all their refinement, need, and suggestiveness, and, as such, are a proper ground of belief. A late philosophical evolutionist says it is useless to theorize about our impulse to pray, its use or futility—we pray because we cannot help praying. Evolution is undergoing the test of the last stage of a scientific process—in this instance that of fitness to explain the facts of man’s nature. It may not escape the test by denying the facts.
Pardon the seeming digression, but the reasonableness of our faith is the ground of interest. Interest vanishes with the genuineness of our supposed treasure. We do not like to handle counterfeit coin; we do not value antiquities and sacred relics of modern manufacture, or mementos that no longer represent cherished memories. Much that stimulates the higher life would perish did we doubt the truth of our nature; the glory of the world would depart were the soul lost out of it.
Some interests have sacred claims above others; there is a hierarchy amongst our impulses. Analyze the fact as we may, duty still remains. Moral laws and their practical application are progressively revealed by the relations of men in society. We may believe the laws are there in the nature of things, but that our discovery of them is gradual, as is the discovery of the unchanging laws of physics. The moral problem is the old one of the struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil, between duty and pleasure—the problem of responsibility, character, and destiny. In its modern form it is the problem of utility, that is, of life and happiness. But utilitarianism includes, and ever must include, the happiness that comes from the exercise of the higher spiritual functions, from the sense of duty performed, and from belief in divine approbation.
Interests chosen and pursued reveal the character. Men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. “A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” The outward act is but the visible expression of the inner life.
There is something more than a pleasing myth in the Greek conception of choosing the lot of life. Every responsible act of free will is gradually fixing our destiny. The conduct of life is not a series of skirmishes with fate; it is fate itself, and a thing largely of our own creation. We are constructing the future out of the present. For the goal that we may finally reach we are even now running the race, the direction is already chosen, and, if we find ourselves on the wrong road, time is already lost.
Times change, science brings in new conceptions, superstitions vanish, beliefs are modified, new conditions and duties arise. But as the scenes shift and new actors come on the stage, the themes are still human history, comedy, and tragedy. The argument of the play is still the triumph of heroism and the reward of virtue. The spectators still smile at innocent pleasures, weep with misfortune, and applaud sentiment and worth, and the orchestra still plays the triumph or the dirge as the curtain falls on the final scene. The ideals of the saints, the courage of heroes, the sufferings of martyrs still teach their lesson. Reverence for God, justice, benevolence, the ethical worth of the individual are still dominant ideas.