One world at a time; a contribution to the incentives of life

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1 - R . SLICER

Class _3X < l:^4i| Book

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CHAPTER PAGE

I. — The Sceptic . . . . . . i

II. — The Agnostic 24

Chapter I The Sceptic

THE man who never had a doubt never had a mind. Given a mind, a doubt must at some time or other invade it, for the reason that the sceptic is the inquirer. We do not inquire as to that we already know — we inquire where we are in doubt. The inquirer's business is to find things out ; and for the most part, he finds things out for the other man who does not care to find them out. The result is that two classes have been concerned with the bettering of the human mind in its attitude toward the greatest realities, — the sceptic, who has kept the air clear about the fires of devotion, and the mystic, who has fed the fires with fresh fuel that they may flame. These two, — the one who provides the atmosphere of crystalline clearness of inquiry ; the other who provides the sacrifices upon the altars of devotion, — these two have been most concerned with the progress of religious thought.

The sceptic is the inquirer. His inquiry addresses itself to three distinct subjects. For instance, he is conscious of himself. He is a being. Naturally, unless he is content simply to accept his animal sensations, he has to inquire what that being is. He is placed as a being under conditions of life, and unless he is content simply to stay where he dropped, he has to inquire what those conditions are, and whether they can be bettered. He is conscious of himself and his environment. He has a third question pressing upon his attention. It is the question, What is to become of me? He wants to know whether he is to be snuffed out like a candle, never to be relighted ; he wants to know whether there is any other world ; he wants to know what the conditions are that now guarantee to him a hold on life that cannot be killed. He wants to know these things. So, the sceptic, if he has a mind ; if he is not simply a doubting machine. There are intellectual outfits that seem not to be minds ; they are mere interrogation points ; if you were to take a magnifying glass of great power and take off the skull-cap over the brain of that kind of man, I suppose you would find the grey matter of his brain covered over with little interrogation points ; and they would be so knitted together that they would have taken the place of the free matter in his brain. Your chronic doubter is like the chronic complainer. He asks questions for ever as the other man sighs and groans for ever. But the real sceptic — the man who is a real inquirer, who " wants to know," as the Yankees say — is out on a voyage of discovery ; he perhaps does not know whither his ship is going, because we sail the sea of life under sealed orders, and get far out into the deep before we realise which way we are heading, and what our destiny is ; presently we pass over some degree of latitude or longitude that indicates whether we are going north or south or east or west and whither our general direction is likely to take us ; but if he is a real voyager, he is more concerned with the ship than he is with the destination. He understands, in the first place, that the anchor is not the whole equipment of a ship. There are people who continually say to you, " Why do you go on asking questions, inquiring, raising these doubts ? " We do not raise them ;

they are raised in us by the very condition of things that confronts us, whether in ourselves, our environment, or our destiny. We are told if we go on raising these doubts, entering into inquiry, we will lose our moorings ! Think of that being said of a full-rigged ship ! Lose its moorings ! That is the thing it means to do. It means to have its anchor up and sails spread and helm held with a steady hand, its compass true and its bow cutting the sea before it as it goes. That is the description of a ship that is on the business that belongs to the great deep. Lose its moorings ! There are ships that never have lost their moorings in years, and the scum hangs on their sides and barnacles have gathered on their bottoms, and their copper is eaten through, and their timbers are rotten. They have not a sail that is not mildewed. They have not a chart that is not a hundred years old. They have not a compass that will stand the slightest presence of any deflecting agency near it. That is the condition of a water-logged human mind. Now the sceptic is not always wise — I shall not defend him under all conditions ; but I say that the sceptic is an essential element in human society, and his business is to inquire and to have it out with himself, with his environment, and with the questions of his day. Keep those three things in view, if you please, while I am trying to outline the condition of the mind that I am now describing.

For instance, the inquirer wants to know, as to his being, whether he is a mechanism or whether he is a spirit. You have to determine whether you are a body carrying around a soul, as Emerson says, " like a fire in a pan," or whether you are a soul equipped with a body for the holiest uses. That is the question that is before you as to your being. You have to determine whether man has a body and himself is a spirit ; or whether man is a body without a spirit. For practical purposes you can determine that. " The body without a spirit is a corpse. The spirit without a body is a ghost." It is the combination that makes a man. But when you have said that you have only said an epigrammatic thing. The problem still arises, What is due to each of these ? Shall I put all my forces upon the spiritual life and live as a spirit should ; or shall I put all my weight upon the bodily life and live as an animal must live ? For the fact is, the peace of life and the power of life depend upon the place we give these two elements of our being. Given the body as the sum of our concern, you can grow a brute that will be a splendid model for a sculptor, but he would not make a nurse for a sick child. Given the whole emphasis laid upon the spirit and the body neglected, you get what would serve as a significant specimen in morbid anatomy. The probability is that he will have visions of the right that the brutal man never had, but the difficulty with him is he will not have locomotive power enough to carry his vision around. So you see the real business of life for the sceptic is to inquire what he owes his body and his spirit ; and, since he is made up of these two elements, to live his life on terms that will bring the best union between the two.

First, his being. The sceptic has to inquire what he shall do with it. Now the problem having been set, how much he owes his flesh and how much he owes his spirit ; having determined, perhaps, as Browning said, " that flesh helps soul," the sceptic has to inquire how he can get the best out of himself. For the fact is, the business of life is the investing ourselves at the highest rate of interest. One man takes it in terms of work, another man in terms of joy, another man in terms of neither work nor joy, but just plain, unadulterated worry. He joins a 44 Don't

Worry " Club, and then has nervous prostration. The trouble was not with the club ; it was with the applicant who went to join it. He had fallen into a chronic condition of nerves. Everything hit them on the ends and nothing laterally. Now nerves played on laterally will make music like any other stringed instrument. But with the irritated ends exposed from the finger-tips to the soles of the feet, — a man in that condition is only fit to be wrapped in cotton and taken care of by some good woman.

I hope to prove to you before I get through, at least in a sufficiently conclusive way to make a working-theory, that the business of religion is to add zest to life. If it does not do that it does not do much. If you have only enough religion to be thoroughly miserable you had better get rid of the little that you have, and start in business again with better capital for which there is a fairer market. The sceptic's inquiry is, How can I make the most out of myself ? How put myself to the highest uses ? So when we deal with the being of man, we deal with it in the attitude of scepticism. If we do not do this we shall simply sink into a flaccid and pulseless condition which will miss the very joy of life.

But the sceptic also has to do, as I have said, with his place in life. He has to inquire whether it is a fit place ; whether the environment is right. Let me quote to you a saying of Herbert Spencer, which is for its purpose as good scripture as that which was written eighteen hundred or two thousand years ago. Herbert Spencer says, " If there were no changes in the environment except such as there were adapted changes to meet in the thing environed, that would be eternal peace and eternal life." That is true. That is, if you could build up tissue as fast as it broke down, you would have constant being ; if you could feed in fuel as fast as you exhausted it, in running a machine, you would have perpetual motion. For instance, mechanics know that on every machine sit two little sprites, one Rust and the other Friction. Rust says to the machine, " If you stop I will eat you up." Friction says, " If you keep going I will wear you out." That is exactly what happens in the human creature. His study is to get himself into such relation to his environment that he can run at the greatest speed without loss of structure, without a breaking down of the mechanism ; or rest in most complete quietude without danger of rusting out.

That is what we mean by adjustment to environment.

What happens in the Church as the result of this? In the Church men grow restless under conditions of their birth and training, and they begin to move uneasily, just as birds do in the nest when they feel their wing-feathers coming. The bird knows perfectly well that he does not belong in the nest for ever. He sees the flitting of other birds full-fledged upon the wing. The little thing that was hatched in the nest chipped its shell and was a most outrageous looking thing when it came into the world. It had no feathers ; it was just a little blob of meat ; it never suspected it would ever sing. There it is in the nest ; but there comes a time when the pin-feathers begin to grow. The longer feathers follow. Then the wings begin to get a little plumage upon them, and finally are covered. Then there comes a day when it sits on the edge of the nest and falls out, but it does not do that many times. The mother finds it on the ground — this little helpless thing, scared because it has fallen out of the nest. She encourages it to hop a little, to flutter its wings a little, until presently it gets upon the wing and goes from twig to twig~to go back into the nest ?

io One World at a Time

Never. Not until next year when it has a brood of its own and eggs to sit upon and song-birds to hatch out. Next year it will go into some other nest that it has made ; but for this year it is on the wing. That is the condition of the sceptic who finds himself born into a set of beliefs that he cannot possibly hold, if he would fly. Now he simply tumbles out of the nest and wallows around in the dust at the foot of the tree. The fall from the nest was because he did not understand flight ; and you and I in shifting our relations to the things we have been taught get many a fall and bruise by it. God knows how sore we are some days when we have been beaten down below the point of faith and hope, and feel as if " the heavens were rolled together like a scroll to be unread for ever." Let him not disturb himself, this fledgling of the nest of inherited belief. There shall come a day when, by the example of those that have learned flight before him, and encouraged by those that have learned to sing that were in their nests before him, he shall flutter his wings and lift himself, and know the beautiful and splendid experience of being, not a bird on the ground, but a bird in the air. You remember those lines of Victor Hugo :

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" Let us be like a bird, a moment lighted Upon a twig that swings ; He feels it sway ; but sings on unaffrighted, Knowing he has his wings ! "

That is the whole story. The sceptic that only knows how to fall out of the nest has not learned much. He must learn how to fly in his native element.

So with society. People who are busy with the work of life complain that they are not satisfied with their surroundings. They are sceptical as to their environment. You say you think Lessing was wrong when he insisted that this was the best possible world. Being a true sceptic, you say instead, This is the best possible world up to date, but " to-morrow is another day." It is another day, and if the world does not rise to meet it, then it is not the best possible world ; for every day must bring not only its discontent, but its betterment. It is the business of the inquirer to see to it that he fits the environment of the day so well that, like the beetle whose shell you find upon the trunk of the tree, he shall burst it and find wings. That is the business of life — growing to your environment, and then changing it by the expansion of the human mind. I have very little concern with discontent upon the part of those who are discontented with other men's discontent. I say that the struggle of soul that comes to the social state is the salvation of that social state — that there is nothing so bad for the great mass of men and women as to be pulseless, content, sordid, mere lumps of humanity, dropped where they fall, and content to stay where they drop. There is a divine discontent moving in every great nation's heart, by virtue of which it becomes a greater nation ; in the heart of every social state, by which the social state is bettered ; and the business of the sceptic is to find the conditions under which he lives, and to make them better. For instance : The Tenement-House Commission, studying conditions of city life among the poor, convicts the Building Department of the city of neglect and violation of law. Do you suppose it was the business of the Tenement- House Commission to do that ? It was their opportunity. It was their duty. But the business lay with the tenant. He should have been discontented to have an air-shaft that substituted inches for feet. He should have been discontented to have cubic feet of space insufficient for the breathing of God's good air. He should have been discontented to live in rooms that had no approach to the external air. Why, if you were not restless enough to change your place, your mind would fall sick and feeble, as a body gets bed-sores lying supine wherever it may be placed ! Salvation of society lies in the struggle of society for the social betterment.

I will not touch the question of destiny now. That belongs in the discussion of the next chapter, which deals with the agnostic. He knows all about it— or does not know all about it. I am going to deal with him as Izaak Walton says about the minnow, " Put him upon the hook as though you loved him." I think I can show that he has, as the sceptic has, his place in the sum of things, and has done vastly better than he is commonly credited with doing.

Now, what are the conditions under which scepticism appears ?

All progress in science is made by discrimination. What would be the use of the science of microscopy unless you could distinguish between the white and red corpuscles of the blood ; between those things that in a general way we sum up as microbes, which we fear and call by bad names ? Scientific advance is made, as John Fiske says, when men come to see dissimilarity against a background of uniformity. We know the stars in the sky because they hang out dissimilar against a background of black in the night. The uniform background throws their brilliancy forward in differing radiance to the eye of the observer. All progress is made by discrimination ; and discrimination is the business of the sceptic. For instance, the sceptic is usually the man who, in advance of his time, if he be serious, finds himself holding a losing cause. Socrates was the most believing man in the Greek lands, and they called him an atheist. That is, he was so much an inquirer that he was discontent with little gods, and wanted a god great enough for the soul that entertained him. And if you will read the Dialogues of Plato where Socrates is represented as speaking, you will be struck with the fact that the questioner is really the man of faith. It is the friends who are about him who are nervous about his condition. Take that splendid passage in the Dialogue where Socrates discourses upon his death. He is about to drink the hemlock. He who believed in God ; has been condemned to death as an atheist, as a corrupter of youth, who simply taught them to know themselves at their best. We see him sitting there — a quaint, squat figure, with curious physiognomy, the very face seeming to be one great interrogation — and someone says to him during a pause in the conversation, " Socrates, where shall we bury thee?" He looks about upon them, and finding the questioner, Crito, says : " Crito, have I been so long with you, yet do you speak of burying Socrates ? You shall bury me if you can catch me. But when you have buried my body, do not say that you have buried Socrates." This is the man who was condemned to death because he did not believe ; yet that inquiring spirit was really the only profound believer in the group. For inquiry is essential to real faith. Luther was inquiring, labouring up the great stair at Rome upon his knees, when there sounded a voice to him saying, "The just shall live by faith." Read your New Testament, and see if in all the pages of history there be so radical an inquirer as Jesus of Nazareth. We speak of him in the terms the theologians teach us. We speak of him in terms the doctrinal teachings have inspired. But when we begin to read the book for ourselves, what do we find ? We find exactly the same spirit that was common in the prophets of his own race, — Amos, Nahum, Hosea, and

Joel. We call them the minor prophets ; they were really the great statesmen of Israel. We find in Jesus the same spirit. He confronts those about him with such a statement as this : " Ye have heard it said, ' An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' I say unto you, Resist not evil." That was his practical challenge to the ancient past. Mark those two sceptics as they face each other, — Pilate, the bullet-headed Roman, heavy in the jowl and thick in the neck, set upon the precarious throne in Jerusalem, and standing before him this simple working-man, Jesus of Nazareth, charged with sedition. Pilate asks, " Art thou a king ? " They had been saying, " We have brought to you a king ; so he calls himself." I can see in my mind that figure hardened by work, a young man, a little over thirty years of age, a Galilean carpenter, straightening himself before the throne that represented the power of the Roman world, his hands bound together and the rude sceptre between them in mock sovereignty, and upon his shoulders the cloak of some Roman soldier, cast there in derision, — I can see him straighten himself before the Roman procurator and say, when asked, " Art thou a king?" " For this end was I born, for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Thou sayest it. I am a king." Pilate, the sceptic of the other type, says, "What is truth ?" He turns away without an answer, expecting none, and goes to give judgment against his prisoner. That is the sceptic for whom the world has no use, and who is only remembered, or largely remembered, by virtue of the man whom he condemned. The real inquirer into the truth of things and the secret of Being is a sceptic of quite another kind.

Let me name two or three conditions which the sceptic who is the true inquirer — the man who asks questions and wants them answered — is to observe, if his scepticism would lead to life.

The first is, that he shall never shirk the responsibility of the answer. Now, a man who is simply flipping questions as to his being, his environment, and his destiny, without expecting any answer, who likes the mental agitation, does not care for the responsibility that his question raises. The true inquirer never asks a question the answer to which he is not willing to hear. It is the very essence of his courage. I remember a splendid man, selfeducated, who came to be the President of the Board of Trustees of a great university, a man of business and great affairs, who said to me, " I was taught that God was a God of wrath. 1 was taught that there was such a place as a cureless hell. I was taught this and this and this," reciting the horrible details of instruction in his youth, " and I worried myself with inquiries as to how this could be ; how I could love a God who was not lovable ; how I could care for a God who could consign those I loved to endless ruin. And one night, tortured until early morning by these inquiries of my doubting spirit, I made up my mind that if God was a Being of that sort, He might do just what He pleased with me, but I would never love Him; and I turned over and went to sleep." He took the responsibility of his inquiry, and satisfied himself, not with the answer, but that the answer could not be inconsistent with the sanity and sanctity of human nature. So the responsibility that comes with the inquiry must never be shirked. Otherwise you had much better not ask the question.

You had much better be satisfied where you are. Inquiring what you are, be satisfied just to know you are alive and no more. Inquiring where you belong, that you are just where you are put, and no other where. Inquiring what is to become of you, put your hand in somebody's hand, and ask him to look out for you as you go through the deep waters. There is no other way unless you are willing to take the responsibility of the inquiry. It is a serious matter to raise a doubt in your own mind, unless you are going to follow it to the end. The other sort of man is what we mean by the " doctrinaire." He appears in all fields of inquiry in the scientific and the practical world as the theorist. I was once with a number of people who were all going down to the shore together, and somebody remembered that one of the young men in the party probably was not safe in the water. He said to him, " Can you swim ? " The young man answered with perfect calmness, " I understand the theory of swimming." We did not let him take to the water. We kept him on shore, because the man who " knows the theory of swimming " belongs on land. It is the condition of inquiry that you shall follow it clear through, not in the doctrinaire spirit, the spirit of the theorist, but in the spirit of the practical, hard-headed inquirer, dealing with life as the most serious thing we have to deal with. Why, what is your business compared with your being? What is your daily occupation compared with the

2o One World at a Time betterment of your environment ? Is there any question so serious as the question of the destiny that awaits you ? What are you fit for ? I say to you in absolute confidence, The thing you are fit for, you will get. You do not believe that you will get it here ? No, not always. Daily destiny does not apparently take the lines of fitness. But I have known thousands of people, and most of those that did not get placed in life had not prepared themselves for any place. I admit the artificiality of society. I admit the unnaturalness of some of the conditions. I admit the fact that sometimes men have not the opportunity that other men have, and men are not equal in opportunity or power. But, I believe, given a good body and a good brain, the whole business of life is making one's self fit. Destiny takes care of itself.

The second condition is, not only that he shall not avoid the responsibility of the answer, but that he shall not shun the struggle of soul. If the sceptic is a serious inquirer, if he is an inquirer intent upon the answer, not afraid what the answer shall be, prepared to take his share of the risk of having raised the question, then he must not shun the struggle of soul. It is struggle of body that brings health. It is struggle of mind that brings intelligence. It is the faculty of thought exercised that makes it easy to think and a delight to think. It is struggle of soul that saves. " We must so trust the order of Nature as to believe that whatever questions the universe inspires us to ask, the universe can answer." So said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Someone said to Father Taylor, the Methodist chaplain of seamen in Boston, when Emerson had uttered such a sentiment, " He is a wonderful man, but he will surely go to hell." Father Taylor had a kind of mild belief in the pit, I suppose, but he turned to the man who said Emerson would go to that place and answered, " If Emerson should go to hell, he would make a change in the climate, and migration would set that way." As to this view of destiny what has happened ? The people who have been consigned to cureless ruin have somehow banked the fires and slowed down the motion of the world's hate.

If the sceptic be serious, not a mere trifler, the final condition he must fulfil is that he shall not shirk the discipline of life. It is of no use for you to go out with a question on your lips unless you will take the responsibility of the answer and be prepared for struggle of soul — unless, above all things else, you are willing to stand up to the discipline of life. Suppose a conviction seizes upon a man's mind that a certain course of life is the only one for him to follow ; he may be a doubter as to the social standard ; perhaps all society is running the other way ; perhaps the whole trend of mind about him is taking another course. He may be utterly wrong, mistaken, but his mind is dealing with things at first hand. To him that course seems to be the only course to take. Let him hold that course to the end. It may be that he shall find, as we do in the Adirondack and Maine waters, that he has only taken a short cut across the bend, and comes out with his companions who have gone a more circuitous way around. He has found the short cut to the end ; and conviction, and resolution, and struggle of soul, and sense of responsibility, and verve and power and energy of the individual mind have driven him through obstacles that would have impeded men of more timid soul.