Article June 10, 1911 Issue

PROGRESS, NOT REGRESS

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK.

Certain metaphysical thinkers are employing the phrase, "the eternal regress," to designate the supposed futility of pursuing a class of metaphysical questionings. The thinker who tries to solve certain primary problems, for example, the origin of sin, the origin of falsehood, the origin of what Paul calls the carnal mind, the origin of what Mrs. Eddy calls mortal mind, is told that such questions involve a process which always merely regresses but never gets forward. One metaphysician likens this to the futile efforts of an animal trying to jump out of too deep a hole, and always falling back to the place from which it seeks to escape.

However welcome such a summary disposal of difficult problems may be to those who think they have neither the time nor the patience to linger upon them, it may be useful to consider, nevertheless, whether it does not involve an unsuspected species of agnosticism. And it ought never to be forgotten that agnosticism has its origin and its end in mental discouragement. Besides, agnosticism is essentially illogical; for it involves the contradiction that in affirming that certain things are unknowable, it thereby affirms that they are knowable in at least one respect, namely, their unknowableness. If there is one thing, however, upon which more emphasis is laid in the Bible than any other, it is the fact that God may be known and His law demonstrated.

We have the right certainly to declare that we do not know, or may even venture to declare that no one now pretends to know, the answers to some questions; but all this is quite far from justifying the assertion that at some future time no others can know such answers. It is the indefensible "begging the question" which is so frequently encountered; as, for example, in the classification of certain physical sicknesses as "incurable." Materialistic physicians have the plain right to say that according to their discouraging experiences there seem to be certain incurable diseases, but this does not excuse their pronouncement that these diseases can never be cured by some method distinct from their own, especially since we have the unequivocal statement that Christ Jesus healed "all manner of sickness and all manner of disease" and even overcame death.

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