Article March 28, 1914 Issue

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[Christian Register]

To have all the sincerity ever in man, and all the confidence of a heavenly revelation, avails nothing if the matter itself has no such mark. The day is not past when a sense of immutability, a demonstration of eternal reality, and an exhibition of those truths which have outlasted time and "shine today, forever new," are welcome and effective. The thing of which stone and graven words are the symbol, is the thing we need today, and it seems as if no time were readier for it and more open-minded. Such a demand and such a resort is the logical outcome of conditions which breed in some minds a deep despair. When confidence has been blighted, it is specious logic which says henceforth no one is to be trusted. When trickery triumphs, it is trumpery wisdom which says that to succeed every one has to play the same game. When hopes are disappointed and from the heights of exulting realization one is hurled down to levels of human nature, untouched by light, it is no real conclusion to say the struggle naught availeth. Sadder than the failures of a time to make good the pledges of its prophets, is the failure of the prophet to keep his faith bright and his ideals in commission.

To succumb to an agnosticism out of intellectual stress is unfortunate, but it has no such tragic regret in it as has the abandonment of God because so many needs of Him suddenly come to the front and deny spiritual realities and their eternal life, because one after another of the faiths in human nature have been dishonored. The more seems the moral law to be written not on stones, but in dust, the more should men and women write it on the tables of their hearts and lives. The more poor props fail, the more should we value and cling to those whose adoption we have tried, the more should we keep faith with those who remain faithful.

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