Article September 10, 1904 Issue

The problem of human life and man's relation to his...

Richard P. Verrall

New York Commercial Advertiser

The problem of human life and man's relation to his Creator has certainly been an enigma to thinking men in all ages, and it is generally conceded that what appears to be perfectly rational to one section of the community often seems quite incredible to another. In the knowledge of this fact the great Nazarene Healer said to his grateful beneficiaries, "Tell no man," and again he admonished his students not to cast their pearls before those who were unprepared to receive them. St. Paul, also, said, "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

The religious history of the world points to a constitutional resistance of the human race to spirituality, an element which is indispensable to health and happiness. Since the beginning of time, there has been opposition to both material and spiritual progress, and even in our day we have abundant illustrations of this tendency. Less than a century ago it was considered a thing incredible that iron could be made to float upon water, and an Englishman named Jonathan Hull, who attempted to build an iron steamboat, was considered a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum.

When we think of the tremendous revolutions which have taken place in industry, mechanics, and literature during the brief period of the Victorian era, are we not compelled to be at least hospitable toward the optimism of those who are successfully striving to advance the standard of Christian ethics and scientific religion? Why should not Christianity be capable of practical demonstration, and why should not science have a recognized relation to the Divine intelligence which launched the earth in its orbit, and maintains the order and motion of the vast Copernican system?

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