Religion is more present among us; but this is a wide term—‘religion.’ If there is a God, then that there is a revealed religion is acknowledged, and that the Christian religion has the best, if not the only claims to be this. Who is to decide for me as to whether there is a God?
If ignorance unfits me to judge this rightly, does not class prejudice unfit others to be the arbiters?
Are not the official exponents of theology liable to be prejudiced in its favour as something that establishes or enhances the position of their order among men?
Are not the votaries of natural science subject to a prejudice against Theism as something that dethrones them from supremacy?
Is there not among these last a writhing invisible agony to escape from the avowal that God governs? And why is this? Perhaps because man proudly relishes freedom, and hates to say that his life is inspected and controlled by another Being who will also judge him hereafter; and because the student of physical science knows that if there is a God, then moral science must be a far nobler pursuit than his own pursuit, even if it is less palpable and popular; also because the scientific man is tempted to do all he can to ignore that anything is outside the ken of science—that there is a Being on quite another plane, far above him and his researches.
But science has no exclusive or even predominant right in the decision of this matter; nor has it any solid success in the long battle, though one or other in its ranks may triumph in a skirmish. When one philosopher demolishes the Bible, an ordinary man cannot convince him he is wrong. But when a dozen savants tilt in the fray, even an ordinary man can see that their weapons demolish each other, and the old Book stands.
This geologist has scratched the varnish on the globe, and forthwith frames his new theory of creation. In ten years he is proved utterly wrong by that microscopist who has detected animal remains in an igneous rock. The simple bystander cannot understand either side, and far less tell which side is true. But when the combatants slay each other, the wayfaring man can understand this neutralization. The philosopher strikes me with awe so long as he keeps aloft beyond my knowledge or comprehension. When he comes down I can love him, but the reverence of his mystery is gone, and he is soon found out to be a brother mite. My friend can walk faster and farther on earth than I can; but when he wades into the water, I find I can swim just as well as he—while if we try to fly in the air, neither of us can soar a yard.
Thus the mind that is great in observing, collating, and even generalizing facts, gets immediately out of its depth a few feet from land in the ocean of hypothesis, and it can be drowned there like my own.
Reaching up higher, in search of First Cause, the clever brain grasps the liquid æther above, and yearns; but it holds nothing, not one atom more than an ordinary mind; nor has all the striving of all the world lifted one man a foot above the plain towards heaven.
If these sentiments are pretentious, they show that one can learn at least forwardness from philosophers, if not wisdom.