The feet of progress have always been shod by doubt.
A true man will not join anything that in any way abridges his freedom or robs him of his rights.
The Infinite Purpose
A Christian writer recently said:—“The supreme duty of humanity is to get into touch with the infinite purpose.” This may be so, but we want first to understand just what the infinite purpose is before we subscribe to it. When the infinite purpose is bent on getting up an earthquake we do not care to “get into touch” with it, not much. When this purpose is forging an electric bolt to shoot out of the clouds, we have no desire to “get into touch” with any such thing. It makes a vast difference what this purpose is bent upon, whether or not we want to go into partnership with it. Now, when the infinite purpose is at work on the earth, turning dirt into flowers, or vegetables, or trees, we should feel a joy in sharing its labor, but when it is determined to burn and scorch everything on the face of the ground with a heat that knows no abatement, we should want to sell out our interest in the concern at once.
There is just as much nonsense connected with the use of this phrase “the infinite purpose” as there is with “special Providence” or “Divine love,” or any other religious expression which expresses nothing unless you are religious. Where this “purpose” “makes for righteousness,” as Matthew Arnold delighted to believe, we are willing to catch on to it, but where it is going in the other direction we prefer to go our own way.
This notion of uniting the finite with the infinite [pg 022] purpose is all right, providing the latter does not conflict with the former, but we have serious objection to doing anything that will interfere with the highest development of our humanity. The purpose which is at work in the world does not make for health any more than for disease. It seems to carry a tubercle with as much satisfaction as a ray of sunshine, and lends all its forces to assist the highwayman with no more charge than it makes to the law-abiding citizen.