In time he tired of the husks of materialism and started back to his
Father's house. It was a weary journey but as he plodded along, his
appreciation of the heart's part increased until, on pages 152 and 153,
he says, "It is a fact that we all feel the intellectual part of man to
be 'higher' than the animal, whatever our theory of his origin. It is
a fact that we all feel the moral part of man to be 'higher' than the
intellectual, whatever our theory of either may be. It is also a fact
that we all similarly feel the spiritual to be 'higher' than the moral,
whatever our theory of religion may be. It is what we understand
by man's moral, and still more his spiritual, qualities that go to
constitute character. And it is astonishing how in all walks of life it
is character that tells in the long run."
On page 150 he answered Huxley's attack on faith. He says, "Huxley,
in 'Lay Sermons,' says that faith has been proved a 'cardinal sin' by
science. Now this is true enough of credulity, superstition, etc., and
science has done no end of good in developing our ideas of method,
evidence, etc. But this is all on the side of intellect. 'Faith' is
not touched by such facts or considerations. And what a terrible hell
science would have made of the world, if she had abolished the 'spirit
of faith,' even in human relations."
In the days of his apostasy he "took it for granted," he says on page
164, "that Christianity was played out." When once his eyes were
reopened he vied with Paul himself in recognizing the superior quality
of love. On page 163 he quoted the eloquent lines of Bourdillon:
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of a whole world dies
With the setting sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Having quoted this noble sentiment he adds: "Love is known to be all
this. How great then, is Christianity, as being the religion of love,
and causing men to believe both in the cause of love's supremacy and the
infinity of God's love to man."
But Romanes still clung to Evolution and, so far as his book discloses,
his mind would never allow his heart to commune with Darwin's far-away
God, whose creative power Romanes could not doubt but whose daily
presence he could not admit without abandoning his theory.
His is a typical case, but many of the wanderers never return to the
fold; they are lost sheep. If the doctrine were demonstrated to be true
its acceptance would, of course, be obligatory, but how can one bring
himself to assent to a series of assumptions when such a course is
accompanied by such a tremendous risk of spiritual loss?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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