The Inner Life: Part 3 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VIIWhittier, John Greenleaf
Religion
The Inner Life: Part 3 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII
Whittier, John Greenleaf
American literature
It was Thomas Story, a minister of the Society of Friends, and member of
Penn's Council of State, who, while on a religious visit to England,
wrote to James Logan that he had read on the stratified rocks of
Scarborough, as from the finger of God, proofs of the immeasurable age
of our planet, and that the "days" of the letter of Scripture could
only mean vast spaces of time.
May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding
fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall
yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible
investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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