says the poet. And elsewhere, "Faith, very old now, scared away by
science"--by the daylight science lets in upon our miserable, inadequate,
idolatrous conceptions of God and of His works, and on the
sophistications, subterfuges, moral impossibilities, by which we have
endeavoured to reconcile the irreconcilable--the coexistence of omnipotent
Goodness and an absolute Power of Evil--"Faith must be brought back by the
same power that caused her departure: restored with new sway, deeper,
wider, higher than ever." And what else, indeed, at bottom, is science so
busy at? For what is Faith? "Faith," to borrow venerable and unsurpassed
words, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." And how obtain evidence of things not seen but by a knowledge of
things seen? And how know what we may hope for, but by knowing the truth
of what is, here and now? For seen and unseen are parts of the Great
Whole: all the parts interdependent, closely related; all alike have
proceeded from and are manifestations of the Divine Source. Nature is not
the barrier between us and the unseen but the link, the communication;
she, too, has something behind appearances, has an unseen soul; she, too,
is made of "innumerable energies." Knowledge is not faith, but it is
faith's indispensable preliminary and starting ground. Faith runs ahead to
fetch glad tidings for us; but if she start from a basis of ignorance and
illusion, how can she but run in the wrong direction? "Suppose," said that
impetuous lover and seeker of truth, Clifford, "Suppose all moving things
to be suddenly stopped at some instant, and that we could be brought
fresh, without any previous knowledge, to look at the petrified scene. The
spectacle would be immensely absurd. Crowds of people would be senselessly
standing on one leg in the street looking at one another's backs; others
would be wasting their time by sitting in a train in a place difficult to
get at, nearly all with their mouths open, and their bodies in some
contorted, unrestful posture. Clocks would stand with their pendulums on
one side. Everything would be disorderly, conflicting, in its wrong place.
But once remember that the world is in motion, is going somewhere, and
everything will be accounted for and found just as it should be. Just so
great a change of view, just so complete an explanation is given to us
when we recognize that the nature of man and beast and of all the world is
_going somewhere_. The maladaptions in organic nature are seen to be steps
toward the improvement or discarding of imperfect organs. The _baneful
strife which lurketh inborn in us, and goeth on the way with us to hurt
us_, is found to be the relic of a time of savage or even lower
condition." "Going somewhere!" That is the meaning then of all our
perplexities! That changes a mystery which stultified and contradicted the
best we knew into a mystery which teaches, allures, elevates; which
harmonizes what we know with what we hope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account