No Refuge but in Truth | Page 4

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 and national, will be produced; a variety ranging from the highest human grandeur down to the very verge of the grotesque. But these characters, with all their variations, will go beyond their sources and their ideal only as the rays of light go beyond the sun. Humanity, as it passes through phase after phase of the historical movement, may advance indefinitely in