Article November 23, 1912 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

[Christian Register.]

The elder fashion of opposition to the church has become obsolete. Of the bitter antagonisms of the Ingersollian days we hear very little. These serious-minded men are not fighting the church. What is much more significant, they are creating theories and constructive principles of life without reference to the church; and they will not accept as the substitute for the creed any system of institutional activities, any clatter of emotional excitement, any display of mere ritualistic splendor. They will not submit to any intellectual anesthesia, and call its visions "faith." They cannot worship in any temple to which the intellect is denied admittance. But every thoughtful man has his creed. He may discard the name, but he retains the thing. The creed of the architect is in the plan of his building. Into that creed has passed his splendid faith in the stability of those natural laws by virtue of which he constructs his massive structures of stone and metal. One atom of heresy would mean destruction. A creedless architect would be a shortsighted pretender. He might build huts, but not cathedrals. He needs a larger knowledge of the laws of nature; in a word, a better theology.

And so, in creating the greater structure of personal and social life, the wise man knows that he who builds only for today is working by the "rule of thumb," like the sailor who steers only by "dead reckoning." This wise man, as the poet says, "looks before and after." He wants to know the relation of his earnest work to the past and future. He is eager to trace out the laws which will give permanency and dignity to his daily task. He wants to see the plans of the divine architect. As the skilful mariner cannot safely steer without the stars, so the wise master builder finds at last that every law he uses in his daily task is pregnant with divine implications. Every road he takes leads to the portal of that divine science which men call theology.

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