It makes our religion a byword with honest
unbelievers. And if they are honest scientific minds, waiting for
evidence of the practical value of our religion, why should they
believe, when we live so successfully down to the religion which we
would scorn to openly profess? Our fathers may have been narrow or
straight-laced; they were not cross-eyed from trying to keep one eye
on God and the other on the main chance. What is the use of
whispering, "Lord, Lord," Sundays, if we shout, "Oh, Baal, hear us,"
all the rest of the week. Let us at least be honest, and "if Baal be
god, follow him," and avow it. And worst, and most hideous, of all,
we are not so much hypocrites as self-deceived. Let us not forget
the old Greek doctrine of Ate, goddess of judicial blindness, sent
down only upon those who were living the unpardonable sin of
indifference.
But supposing that there is in environment something more and other
than material, can we possibly know anything about it?
I am in a boat near the mouth of a river. The boat is tossed by the
waves, driven by currents of wind, and now and then temporarily
turned by eddies. I seem to look out upon a chaos of apparently
conflicting forces. But all the time the wind and tide are sweeping
me homeward. Now the wind, which sometimes indeed does shift, and
the great tidal wave are steadily bearing me in a certain direction,
though wave and eddy and gust may often make this appear doubtful to
me.
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