Article March 27, 1902 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Frank D. Bentley, L. S. McCollester

Reason and faith are in the minds of most people much at variance. They will either "love the one and hate the other, or else they will hold to the one and despise the other." There generally is no room in the same mind for the activity of both faith and reason: the one will exclude the other. Sometimes one or the other will either be weak by nature, atrophied from want of use, or asleep in indifference; and such mind will be at ease. In others, as in the celebrated Faraday, the deep-going difference between faith and reason is fully recognized, and harmony is established by strictly separating their respective spheres of activity. We find this state of mind especially among men who, after a careful and thorough religious training in their youth, have given all their thought and energy to either study, research, business, or art. They recognize the gulf fixed between faith and reason, but they have neither the time nor the inclination to bridge the same. Yes, they even despair of its possibility by other minds. They sit, therefore, quietly on that side of the great chasm to which nature or education inclines them most. But this is a peace of mind dearly bought; it is indeed only a make-believe peace. Such men are spiritually divided in themselves. True peace will never exist in a soul until reason and faith have become reconciled, have joined hands across the chasm.—The Christian Register.

Living in the past and worshiping the dead and departed are not exclusively Chinese characteristics, according to the Rev. Johnson Henderson of Armour Mission. Prejudice against the new, he asserted, is often one of the greatest barriers to progress.

"The onward march of civilization," continued the pastor, "is everywhere marked by the struggle between the old and the new. Science advanced only as it was able to overthrow those theories that the people had accepted implicitly for centuries. Mechanical science is a continuous story of the sacrifice of the old for the new, and so deeply seated is the prejudice against such innovations that many men are still foolish enough to contend against the introduction of improved machinery.

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