Article December 22, 1917 Issue

The Lectures

with contributions from Blanche Anderson Rittenhouse, F. S. E. Amos, Arthur E. Jennings, Jerome N. Moran, James T. Piggott, William Clair Johnson, Edward L. Root, Homer F. Chase

Santa Cruz, Cal. (First Church).—Charles I. Ohrenstein, lecturer; introduced by Mrs. Blanche Anderson Rittenhouse, who said in part:—

Many times in the past five years has memory brought before me a certain familiar and well-loved scene. It is the advanced research room of a great university, and around its long table, strewn with maps and documents, is gathered a group of earnest workers—teachers of history, economics, and sociology—many of them bearing distinguished names in the great world of scholarship.

Many topics were discussed around that table, but the question which arose spontaneously to the lips at the close of every debate, in every attempt to formulate a law or enunciate a principle, sounded simple enough: "Is there, can there be, a science of history?" It was very far from being either simple or academic, for in reality it means this: Is this life of man on the earth governed by any discoverable law? In all his varied activities can we discern any central Principle which explains his past or governs his future? But however far the question was pressed, however eager or impassioned the debate, in the end all leaned back, beaten and baffled, to acknowledge that of all the creatures in this world, man, who alone can conceive of law—the beneficence of law—cannot govern his own life by law and is the helpless product of chance and circumstance. It was a reluctant and very sorrowful admission; for to declare that there is no Principle governing this life of ours is to declare that there is no God—an admission that confounds the thought of man in its very utterance and shuts every door of hope and deliverance in his face.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

I had never heard much about Christian Science until...