My Religious Belief
I believe in that system of religion which produces, in its practical operation, the best man and the best woman, the best husbands and the best wives, the best fathers and the best mothers, the most affectionate and obedient children, and the more honest and patriotic citizens and public functionaries. I care not what you may call it; by its fruit or practical results it should be judged. This is the Bible rule, and it is eminently practical and just.
I further believe in the existence of an allwise Creator of all things—the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. I do not believe in him as a Supreme Ruler located at some distant point in an immense Universe, but as an omnipresent God.
I believe in the immortality of man—not of his physical nature, but of that divine emanation breathed into the nostrils of man by his Creater that made him a living soul. It was an emanation from God and cannot die.
I do not intend to state more than one reason among many for my belief in the existence of God; but the immortality of man, founded on reason, outside of the Scriptural declarations, I shall present more elaborately.
When I take a survey of the Universe and find all things running in the rhythm of order and harmony, I ask myself the question: What is it that produces this universal order and harmony? No answer can be given other than that it is the result of law. Now, we can have no more conception of law outside of a lawmaker, than we can have of an agent without a principal or an agency. Law and lawmaker, as well as agent and principal, are inseparably interlocked. The one cannot exist without the other. Therefore since we must admit the existence of law, the existence of a lawmaker is a necessary logical sequence: that lawmaker, is God. As to the immortality of the soul, I offer the following reason, founded principally on grounds outside of the Bible's declaration of the fact.
Ever since the poetic Job uttered the profound question, "If a man die shall he live again?" the inquiry has been ringing down the pathway of time with increasing interest. Man's immortality is usually proven by the declarations of the Bible, which are supposed to reveal it as an ultimate truth. The immortality of the soul is susceptable not of demonstration, but of reasonable proof by reason itself. If we concede the existence of God with the attributes usually ascribable to such a being, and which He must necessarily possess in order to be God, such as infinite wisdom, goodness and Almighty power, and if we concede further that He is the Creator of man, man's immortality results as a logical sequence from such concessions. The desire of immortality, if not universal among all conditions of men, at least approaches universality. This universal desire may be called an innate property, or attribute of man's moral constitution implanted in him by his Creator. It can not be true that a being with the attributes which we ascribe to God, could create man with such a desire, to tantalize him through life, and to disappoint him in death. Consider the fact that nowhere in nature, from the highest to the lowest, was an instinct, an impulse, a desire implanted, but that ultimately were found the conditions and opportunities for its fullest realization. Consider the wild fowl that, moved by some mysterious impulse, start on their prodigious migrations from the frozen fens of the Pole and reach at last the shining South and summer seas; the fish that from tropic gulfs seek their spawning-grounds in the cool, bright rivers of the North; the bees that find in the garniture of fields and forests the treasure with which they store their cells; and even the wolf, the lion, and the tiger that are provided with their prey. Look in this connection to the brevity of life; its incompleteness; its aimless, random, and fragmentary carreers; tragedies; its injustices; its sorrows and separations. Then consider the insatiable hunger for knowledge; the efforts of the unconquerable mind to penetrate the mysteries of the future; its capacity to comprehend infinity and eternity; its desire for the companionship of the departed; its unquenchable aspirations for immortality—and let me ask: "Why should God keep faith with the beast, the bee, the fish, and the fowl, and cheat only man?" But the logical sequence from the concessions mentioned above is not the argument in proof of man's immortality which I desire to present.
The account of the creation of man as given in the Bible is remarkable for its statement of the distinguishing difference between man and the rest of creation. When man was created, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. He created the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, the fishes in the sea and the creeping things on the earth, but none of these became living souls. This language, whether inspired or not, states the difference which now exists and which has ever existed between man and the other created things. What do we understand by soul? By soul is meant the power to think, to reflect, and to judge of the moral quality of actions and thoughts. Let me take the sceptic's standard of what we should believe, and what we should not believe; that is, we ought not to believe that of which we have no evidence, and for which we can give no satisfactory reason. I proceed by a process of elimination, as will be readily seen. My first proposition, interrogatively stated, is this. Is the power to think and reflect and to judge of the moral quality of thoughts and actions, a property of matter or not? If it is a property of matter, then the sands and rocks and the earth think and reflect and judge of the moral quality of actions and thoughts; but we have no reason to believe that sand, or rock, or earth thinks, or that either possesses the ability to judge of the moral quality of actions or thoughts; hence we ought not to believe it. Thus we see that the general proposition is not true, and ought not to be believed.
Secondly—Is thought and the power to judge of the moral qualities of thoughts and actions a property of organized matter? The grass and shrubs and trees are organized matter; but we have no reason to believe, and no evidence upon which such a belief can be founded, that the grass, or trees, or shrubs think, or possess any power to judge of the moral quality of things; therefore, according to the standard which we have adopted, we ought not to believe it; hence the more limited proposition is not true.