“You musn’t think, doctor, that I am not glad to have read these books,” said Susie; “they are very interesting, as showing the taste of a century ago. It must be that we are now much more refined than people were then.”
“Certainly we are,” said the doctor. “With the invention of the steam-engine and the telegraph, our means of communication with each other all over the world are immeasurably greater, and this is the proximate cause of modern culture. Isolation of the community, the family or the individual favors the savage state, while aggregation tends to stimulate urbanity, generosity, and all our higher faculties. See, therefore, how false the religious teaching that exalted hermits and ascetics of all kinds. Self-torture the church considered praiseworthy, and even to-day we hear of the ‘mortification of the flesh,’ for God is still a being to be propitiated by the agonies of his creatures. Wherever that conception of Nature or God prevails, we may recognize the traces of the savage, and the absence of any real vitalizing faith. The only living faith to-day you will find among those called unbelievers or infidels—men devoted to the discovery of scientific methods. To them Nature is never inimical to man.”
“Is Nature never inimical to man?” queried Susie. “Does not the cold freeze him, the sun scorch him, the water drown him, wild beasts devour him, the earthquake and the lightning destroy him, as well as disease and accident?”
“Ah!” said the doctor. “What do we mean by man? Do we mean the savage who has command of a few of his forces, or the integrally-developed human being, commanding all his forces, and through this command, setting himself in harmony with Nature,
“‘Like perfect music unto noble words?’
Man has not accomplished this, hence the use of faith. The best thinkers to-day have the strongest faith that we are to obtain further and more complete control over the elements; that we are to control the weather, the climate, and make the planet a stately Eden, fit for the emancipated human race. Is not that a sublime faith?”
“A much more difficult faith,” said Mrs. Buzzell, “than any I know of.”
“To me it is very simple; simpler far than all others,” said the doctor. “No one can deny that the whole history of human beings on this planet is a history of extending and harmonizing their mutual relations and interests. See the savage. He is at war with all his kind, like the beast, except, perhaps, a chosen female of his species; then, when he has risen a little higher, he establishes a harmony of interest in the family, the tribe, then throughout the race constituting the different tribes, and so a nation is developed—at war, of course, with all other nations, and calling all foreigners barbarians. Then nations recognize each other, and evolve codes of international law, and cease preying upon each other. Have we reached the acme of human progress? So doubtless the savage thought when he had invented a stone knife to scalp his neighbor. When the steam-engine was utilized, who was not satisfied when news could fly over the country at the rate of thirty miles an hour? Who then, except the scientist, would have believed that we should literally ‘put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes?’ To me, and many others, this increase of harmony among different peoples, points unerringly to the time when the higher nature of man will rule, when his intelligence will come to comprehend the harmony of all human interests, and his affections embrace all mankind as brothers. This is our millennium, Mrs. Buzzell—the reign of peace, harmony, and love.”
“Amen!” said Mrs. Buzzell, who was holding the sleeping Minnie in her arms.
“We cannot really disagree,” said Susie, “whatever our different creeds, if we only love God in the right way, and that is through faith in humanity. It is because we have not sufficient faith in humanity, that we are so selfish and dishonest.”