Quite as truly, though, it may be, not quite as obviously, religious
questions belong to this second class. Not all questions that are
called religious belong there. With fatal pettiness religious men have
reduced the great faiths to technicalities and some beliefs called
religious a man may hold or not, with utter indifference to anything
he is or does. But on the basic attitudes of religion such as we have
just rehearsed, a man cannot be completely neutral, no matter how he
tries. Bernard Shaw's remark, "What a man believes may be ascertained
not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually
acts," should be taken to heart by any one trying to remain
religiously neutral. For one cannot by any possibility avoid
"assumptions on which he habitually acts." He tends to undertake
social service either as confident cooperation with God's purpose or
as an endeavor to make one corner of an unpurposed world as decent as
possible. He tends to follow his ideals, either as the voice of God
calling him upward, or as the work of natural selection, adjusting him
to a temporary environment. He tends to face suffering either
hopefully as a school of moral discipline, in a world presided over by
a Father, or grimly as a hardship in which there is no meaning. He
tends to face death either as the supreme adventure, full of boundless
hope, or as a final exit that leads nowhere. He may never consciously
formulate his ideas on any of these matters, he may maintain an
intellectual agnosticism, genuine and complete, but his living subtly
involves the confession of some faith. "A man's action," said Emerson,
"is only the picture-book of his creed." And the more thoughtful he
is, the more he will be aware of that unescapable tendency to confess
in his living an inward faith about life.
One practical result of this urgent truth is too frequently seen to be
doubtful. _Those who in religion do not decide, thereby decide
against religion._ Religious faith is a positive achievement, and
he who does not deliberately choose it, loses it. A man who, rowing
down Niagara River, debates within himself whether or not he will stop
at Buffalo, and who cannot decide, thereby has decided. His
irresolution has not for a moment interfered with the steady flow of
the river, and if he but debate long enough concerning his stop at
Buffalo, he will awake to discover that he has finally decided not to
stop there. As much beyond the control of man's volition is the steady
flow of life. It pauses for no man's indecision, and if one is
irresolute about any positive, aspiring faith in any realm, his
indecisiveness is decision of a most final sort.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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