Our Unitarian GospelSavage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Religion
Our Unitarian Gospel
Savage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Sermons; Unitarianism
The pessimist tells us that the universe is bad all the way through,
that this is the worst possible kind of world. When a man makes a
statement like that, I always wish to ask him a question which it seems
to me absolutely overturns his position, how did he happen to find it
out? If the universe is bad all through, essentially bad, where did he
get his moral ideal in the light of which to judge and condemn it? How
does this bad universe produce an amount of justice and truth and love
to be used as a measuring-rod in order to find out whether it will
correspond with these ideals or not? That one question seems to me
enough to turn pessimism into nonsense.
Let us look at it in another way. As we look back, as far as we can
towards the beginning of things, we find this fact: when man appeared
on the earth, conscience was born, as I told you the other day, a sense
of right came with him, and since that day he has been struggling to
attain and realize an ever and ever enlarging and heightening ideal.
This, then, the conscience, the sense of right, the ideal, must be a
part of the nature of the universe that has produced them. And we
notice that these have been growing with the advance of the ages.
Before dwelling on that a little farther, let me touch another
consideration which is germane to it.
If you look over the face of human society, you get proof positive,
scientific demonstration unquestionable, that good is in the majority,
love is the majority power of the world. How do I know? You draw up a
list of all those things that you call evil, and you will note, as you
analyze them, that they are the things that tend to disintegrate, to
separate, to tear down; and you draw up a list of those things that you
call good, and you will find that they are the things that tend to
build up, that bind human society together, and help on life and growth
and happiness.
Now the simple fact that human society exists proves that the things
that tend to bind together are more powerful than the things that tend
to disintegrate and tear down. Just as, for instance, if you see a
planet swinging in the blue to-night, you will know that the
centripetal power is stronger than the centrifugal, or there would be
no planet there. That which tends to hold it together is mightier than
that which tends to disintegrate and fling its particles away from each
other. So the simple fact that human society exists proves that good is
in the majority.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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