Faith and reason -- Christianity; Immortality -- Christianity; Tragic, The -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
And this personal or rather personifying element in faith extends even
to the lowest forms of it, for it is this that produces faith in
pseudo-revelation, in inspiration, in miracle. There is a story of a
Parisian doctor, who, when he found that a quack-healer was drawing away
his clientèle, removed to a quarter of the city as distant as possible
from his former abode, where he was totally unknown, and here he gave
himself out as a quack-healer and conducted himself as such. When he was
denounced as an illegal practitioner he produced his doctor's
certificate, and explained his action more or less as follows: "I am
indeed a doctor, but if I had announced myself as such I should not
have had as large a clientèle as I have as a quack-healer. Now that all
my clients know that I have studied medicine, however, and that I am a
properly qualified medical man, they will desert me in favour of some
quack who can assure them that he has never studied, but cures simply by
inspiration." And true it is that a doctor is discredited when it is
proved that he has never studied medicine and possesses no qualifying
certificate, and that a quack is discredited when it is proved that he
has studied and is a qualified practitioner. For some believe in science
and in study, while others believe in the person, in inspiration, and
even in ignorance.
"There is one distinction in the world's geography which comes
immediately to our minds when we thus state the different thoughts and
desires of men concerning their religion. We remember how the whole
world is in general divided into two hemispheres upon this matter. One
half of the world--the great dim East--is mystic. It insists upon not
seeing anything too clearly. Make any one of the great ideas of life
distinct and clear, and immediately it seems to the Oriental to be
untrue. He has an instinct which tells him that the vastest thoughts are
too vast for the human mind, and that if they are made to present
themselves in forms of statement which the human mind can comprehend,
their nature is violated and their strength is lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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