"Relate the inheritance to life, convert the tradition into a servant of character, draw upon the history for support in the struggles of the spirit, declare a war of extermination against the total evil of the world; and then raise new armies and organize into fighting force every belief available in the faith that has descended to you."[423:14]
Evil is here a practical, not a theoretical, problem. It is not to be solved by thinking it good, for to think it good is to deaden the very nerve of action; but by destroying it and replacing it with good.
The Justification of Faith.
§ [216]. The justification of faith is in the promise of reality. For what, after all, would be the meaning of a faith which declares that all things, good, bad, and indifferent, are everlastingly and necessarily what they are—even if it were concluded on philosophical grounds to call that ultimate necessity good. Faith has interests; faith is faith in goodness or beauty. Then what more just and potent cause of despair than the thought that the ideal must be held accountable for error, ugliness, and evil, or for the indifferent necessities of nature?[424:15] Are ideals to be prized the less, or believed in the less, when there is no ground for their impeachment? How much more hopeful for what is worth the hoping, that nature should discern ideals and take some steps toward realizing them, than that ideals should have created nature—such as it is! How much better a report can we give of nature for its ideals, than of the ideals for their handiwork, if it be nature! Emerson writes:
"Suffice it for the joy of the universe that we have not arrived at a wall, but at interminable oceans. Our life seems not present so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty; information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. So, in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in an action. It is for us to believe in the rule, not in the exception. The noble are thus known from the ignoble. So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance and is the principal fact in the history of the globe."[425:16]
The Worship and Service of God.
§ [217]. If God be rid of the imputation of moral evil and indifference, he may be intrinsically worshipful, because regarded under the form of the highest ideals. And if the great cause of goodness be in fact at stake, God may both command the adoration of men through his purity, and reënforce their virtuous living through representing to them that realization of goodness in the universe at large which both contains and exceeds their individual endeavor.
The Philosopher and the Standards of the Marketplace.
§ [218]. Bishop Berkeley wrote in his "Commonplace Book":
"My speculations have the same effect as visiting foreign countries: in the end I return where I was before, but my heart at ease, and enjoying life with new satisfaction."