No Refuge but in Truth | Page 4

to be said in this connection of man's aesthetic nature, of his
sense of beauty and melody? Can they be the offspring of material
evolution? As they meet no material need, we might almost take them
for the smile of a beneficent and sympathizing spirit. The basis of the
gifts no doubt is physical, but we cannot easily understand how they
can have been developed by a purely physical process.

To ghosts and apparitions of all kinds, spiritualism included, we bid a
long farewell.
We turn to the universe, of which while we believed in the Incarnation
our earth was the central and all-important scene, but in which it now
holds the place only of a minor planet. We see order and grandeur
inexpressible, but with some apparent signs of an opposite kind--the
conflagration of a star, a moon bereft of atmosphere, errant comets and
aerolites. In our own abode we have variations of weather, apparently
accidental and sometimes noxious, atmospheric influences which beget
plagues, ministers of destruction such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
The plan, if plan there is, transcends our sense and comprehension.
Still, be it ever borne in mind, of the human race, progress, moral and
mental, is the unique characteristic, and the one which suggests a
divine plan to be fulfilled in the sum of things. It distinguishes man
vitally and immeasurably from all other creatures. Fitful, often arrested,
sometimes reversed, it does not cease. It may point to an ultimate
solution of the enigma of our chequered being such as shall "justify the
ways of God to man." This may be still the world's childhood, and the
faith which seems to be collapsing may be only that of the child.
Whatever trouble, moral, social, or political, a great change of belief
may bring, there is surely nothing for it but to seek and embrace the
truth. Whatever may become of our creeds and of the dogma, so plainly
human in its origin, of some of them, we have still the Christian ideal
of character, which has not yet been seriously challenged, does not
depend on miracle or dogma for its claim to acceptance, and may
continue to unite Christendom.
Superstition can be of no use morally; even politically it can be of little
use, and not for long. In the Christian ideal we still have a rule of life.
Robinson, the good Puritan pastor, taking leave of the members of his
flock who were embarking for America, bade them not confine
themselves to what they had learned from his teaching, but to "be ready
to receive whatever truth might be made known to them from the
written word of God." If there is a God, are not all truths, scientific,
historic, or critical, as much as anything written in the Bible, the word

of God?
September 20th, 1908.

II.
NEW FAITH LINKED WITH OLD.
A preacher cites a lecture of mine, delivered nearly half a century ago,
a part of which has had the honour of being embalmed in the work of
that most eminent theologian, the late Dean Westcott, on "The Historic
Faith." I turned rather nervously to the lecture to see what it was that I
had said. Not that I should have been much shocked had I found that
my opinions had even been completely changed. Since that lecture was
delivered science and criticism have wrought a revolution in
theological belief, likely, as it appears to me, to be regarded hereafter as
the most momentous revolution in history. With the whole passage
cited by Dean Westcott I will not burden the columns of The Sun, but
part of it is this:--
"The type of character set forth in the Gospel history is an absolute
embodiment of love, both in the way of action and affection, crowned
by the highest possible exhibition of it in an act of the most
transcendent self-devotion to the interest of the human race. This being
the case, it is difficult to see how the Christian morality can ever be
brought into antagonism with the moral progress of mankind; or how
the Christian type of character can ever be left behind by the course of
human development, lose the allegiance of the moral world, or give
place to newly emerging and higher ideals. This type, it would appear,
being perfect, will be final. It will be final not as precluding future
history, but as comprehending it. The moral efforts of all ages, to the
consummation of the world, will be efforts to realize this character and
to make it actually, as it is potentially, universal. While these efforts are
being carried on under all the various circumstances of life and society,
and under all the various moral and intellectual conditions attaching to
particular men, an infinite variety of characters, personal