The battle between materialism and religious faith is not a battle in
which facts are arrayed on one side and inferences and dreams on the
other. The array is of facts against facts, as we have said, and with an
immense difference of value. Is it an established sequence that when the
electricity in the clouds is not in equipoise with that of the earth,
under certain conditions there is a thunderstorm? It is surely a
sequence of higher moment that when the sense of righteousness seizes
the minds of men they rise against iniquity and there is a revolution.
There natural forces operate, here spiritual. But on which side is the
indication of eternity? Which of these sequences can better claim to
give a key to the order of the universe? Surely if the evolution of the
ages, so far, has culminated in man with his capability of knowing and
serving the true, the just, the good, these facts of his mind and life
are the highest of which we can take cognizance, and in them, if
anywhere, we must find the key to all knowledge, the reason of all
phenomena. Evolutionary science itself must agree to this. In the
movements of nature we find no advance to fixity and finality. Nature
labours, men labour with or against nature; but the flux of things is
perpetual; there is no escape from change. In the efforts of the
spiritual life it is not so. When we strive for equalness, for verity,
for purity, we have glimpses then of the changeless order which we must
needs call Divine. Here is the indication of eternity; and as we
investigate, as we experience, we come to certitude, we reach larger
vision, larger faith. That which endures rises clear above that which
appears and passes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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