Article May 25, 1912 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

[New York Observer.]

The doubts which at one time or another sift, more or less, the faith of all of us, do not in the case of the vast majority penetrate beneath externals. Painful as they may be, nothing really vital is threatened. When a man's faith has settled itself on what is vital, it is probable that out of a period of doubt he emerges with an appreciable gain to his religious life and experience. But there are forms of doubt, or rather of denial, abroad, respecting which it is right to speak more seriously. It is impossible, for instance, to witness without a pang the havoc which is made in the religion of many good people just now by the materialism which has grown so outspoken and so apparently confident. That [natural] science cannot discover God is true enough. No wise man would expect that it should do so. The heart of the eternal is not reached along that way. But when men in the name of science aver that they find no place for God in the universe, and that consequently He does not exist at all, or if He does, is undiscoverable and unknowable, they are not only scientifically dogmatic and illogical, but they attempt the perpetuation of a cruel robbery, against which it is needful to protest in the name of reason as well as of religion.

The number of minds that actively embrace atheism is probably small. But the number of studious and candid persons among us who, while not convinced that there is no God, are yet so far shaken in their practical belief in Him and in the revelation of Himself in Christ as to draw from that belief little support or comfort, is probably pretty large. Undoubtedly doubt has many degrees short of sheer denial. But in every degree it acts as an enfeebling poison on the religious. A man may not venture to fling openly away the cherished beliefs of his youth, while yet these beliefs have ceased to be nutritive and retain no longer their old-time sustaining power. When a man has been reduced by the philosophy of materialism to this point, that the God of his fathers and of his own children has lost all effective certainty, vitality, influence, preciousness, or helpfulness in his eyes, so that he no longer dares cling to or worship or live with the God of revelation as his God—then, say what you please, that man has suffered an incalculable loss and is spiritually beggared.

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