The Art of Public Speaking
resting upon religion that they cannot frame a system resting upon
reason alone. Second, as it rests upon argument rather than upon
authority, the young are not in a position to accept or reject. Our laws
do not permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he is
twenty-one. Why this restraint? Because his reason is not mature; and
yet a man's life is largely moulded by the environment of his youth.
Third, one never knows just how much of his decision is due to reason
and how much is due to passion or to selfish interest. Passion can
dethrone the reason--we recognize this in our criminal laws. We also
recognize the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the jury every
man, no matter how reasonable or upright he may be, who has a pecuniary
interest in the result of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality
rests upon a nice calculation of benefits to be secured spends time
figuring that he should spend in action. Those who keep a book account
of their good deeds seldom do enough good to justify keeping books. A
noble life cannot be built upon an arithmetic; it must be rather like
the spring that pours forth constantly of that which refreshes and
invigorates.
Morality is the power of endurance in man; and a religion which teaches
personal responsibility to God gives strength to morality. There is a
powerful restraining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye
scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the individual.
There is wide difference between the man who is trying to conform his
life to a standard of morality about him and the man who seeks to make
his life approximate to a divine standard. The former attempts to live
up to the standard, if it is above him, and down to it, if it is below
him--and if he is doing right only when others are looking he is sure to
find a time when he thinks he is unobserved, and then he takes a
vacation and falls. One needs the inner strength which comes with the
conscious presence of a personal God. If those who are thus fortified
sometimes yield to temptation, how helpless and hopeless must those be
who rely upon their own strength alone!
There are difficulties to be encountered in religion, but there are
difficulties to be encountered everywhere. If Christians sometimes have
doubts and fears, unbelievers have more doubts and greater fears. I
passed through a period of skepticism when I was in college and I have
been glad ever since that I became a member of the church before I left
home for college, for it helped me during those trying days. And the
college days cover the dangerous period in the young man's life; he is
just coming into possession of his powers, and feels stronger than he
ever feels afterward--and he thinks he knows more than he ever does
know.
It was at this period that I became confused by the different theories
of creation. But I examined these theories and found that they all
assumed something to begin with. You can test this for yourselves.
The nebular hypothesis, for instance, assumes that matter and force
existed--matter in particles infinitely fine and each particle
separated from every other particle by space infinitely great.
Beginning with this assumption, force working on matter--according
to this hypothesis--created a universe. Well, I have a right to assume,
and I prefer to assume, a Designer back of the design--a Creator back
of the creation; and no matter how long you draw out the process of
creation, so long as God stands back of it you cannot shake my faith in
Jehovah. In Genesis it is written that, in the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth, and I can stand on that proposition until I
find some theory of creation that goes farther back than "the beginning."
We must begin with something--we must start somewhere--and the Christian
begins with God.
I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as some do; I am not yet
convinced that man is a lineal descendant of the lower animals. I do not
mean to find fault with you if you want to accept the theory; all I mean
to say is that while you may trace your ancestry back to the monkey if
you find pleasure or pride in doing so, you shall not connect me with
your family tree without more evidence than has yet been produced. I
object to the theory for several reasons. First, it is a dangerous
theory. If a man links himself in generations with the monkey, it then
becomes an important question whether he is going toward him or coming
from him--and I have seen them going in both directions. I do not know
of any argument that can be used to prove that man is an improved monkey
that may not be used just as well to prove that the monkey is a
degenerate man, and the latter theory is more plausible than the former.
It is true that man, in some physical characteristics resembles the
beast, but man has a mind as well as a body, and a soul as well as a
mind. The mind is greater than the body and the soul is greater than the
mind, and I object to having man's pedigree traced on one-third of him
only--and that the lowest third. Fairbairn, in his "Philosophy of
Christianity," lays down a sound proposition when he says that it is not
sufficient to explain man as an animal; that it is necessary to explain
man in history--and the Darwinian theory does not do this. The ape,
according to this theory, is older than man and yet the ape is still an
ape while man is the author of the marvelous civilization which we see
about us.
One does not escape from mystery, however, by accepting this theory, for
it does not explain the origin of life. When the follower of Darwin has
traced the germ of life back to the lowest form in which it appears--and
to follow him one must exercise more faith than religion calls for--he
finds that scientists differ. Those who reject the idea of creation are
divided into two schools, some believing that the first germ of life
came from another planet and others holding that it was the result of
spontaneous generation. Each school answers the arguments advanced by
the other, and as they cannot agree with each other, I am not compelled
to agree with either.
If I were compelled to accept one of these theories I would prefer the
first, for if we can chase the germ of life off this planet and get it
out into space we can guess the rest of the way and no one can
contradict us, but if we accept the doctrine of spontaneous generation
we cannot explain why spontaneous generation ceased to act after the
first germ was created.
Go back as far as we may, we cannot escape from the creative act, and it
is just as easy for me to believe that God created man _as he is_ as to
believe that, millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and
endowed it with power to develop into all that we see to-day. I object
to the Darwinian theory, until more conclusive proof is produced,
because I fear we shall lose the consciousness of God's presence in our
daily life, if we must accept the theory that through all the ages no
spiritual force has touched the life of man or shaped the destiny of
nations.
But there is another objection. The Darwinian theory represents man as
reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate--the
merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If
this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can
bind the human mind, we shall turn backward toward the beast in
proportion as we substitute the law of love. I prefer to believe that
love rather than hatred is the law of development. How can hatred be the
law of development when nations have advanced in proportion as they have
departed from that law and adopted the law of love?
But, I repeat, while I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not
quarrel with you about it; I only refer to it to remind you that it does
not solve the mystery of life or explain human progress. I fear that
some have accepted it in the hope of escaping from the miracle, but why
should the miracle frighten us? And yet I am inclined to think that it
is one of the test questions with the Christian.
Christ cannot be separated from the miraculous; His birth, His
ministrations, and His resurrection, all involve the miraculous, and the
change which His religion works in the human heart is a continuing
miracle. Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely a human being
and His gospel is stript of divine authority.
The miracle raises two questions: "Can God perform a miracle?" and,
"Would He want to?" The first is easy to answer. A God who can make a
world can do anything He wants to do with it. The power to perform
miracles is necessarily implied in the power to create. But would God
_want_ to perform a miracle?--this is the question which has given most
of the trouble. The more I have considered it the less inclined I am to
answer in the negative. To say that God _would not_ perform a miracle is
to assume a more intimate knowledge of God's plans and purposes than I
can claim to have. I will not deny that God does perform a miracle or
may perform one merely because I do not know how or why He does it. I
find it so difficult to decide each day what God wants done now that I
am not presumptuous enough to attempt to declare what God might have
wanted to do thousands of years ago. The fact that we are constantly
learning of the existence of new forces suggests the possibility that
God may operate through forces yet unknown to us, and the mysteries with
which we deal every day warn me that faith is as necessary as sight. Who
would have credited a century ago the stories that are now told of the
wonder-working electricity? For ages man had known the lightning, but
only to fear it; now, this invisible current is generated by a man-made
machine, imprisoned in a man-made wire and made to do the bidding of
man. We are even able to dispense with the wire and hurl words through
space, and the X-ray has enabled us to look through substances which
were supposed, until recently, to exclude all light. The miracle is not
more mysterious than many of the things with which man now deals--it is
simply different. The miraculous birth of Christ is not more mysterious
than any other conception--it is simply unlike it; nor is the
resurrection of Christ more mysterious than the myriad resurrections
which mark each annual seed-time.
It is sometimes said that God could not suspend one of His laws without
stopping the universe, but do we not suspend or overcome the law of
gravitation every day? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we
temporarily overcome one of the most universal of natural laws and yet
the world is not disturbed.
Science has taught us so many things that we are tempted to conclude
that we know everything, but there is really a great unknown which is
still unexplored and that which we have learned ought to increase our
reverence rather than our egotism. Science has disclosed some of the
machinery of the universe, but science has not yet revealed to us the
great secret--the secret of life. It is to be found in every blade of
grass, in every insect, in every bird and in every animal, as well as in
man. Six thousand years of recorded history and yet we know no more
about the secret of life than they knew in the beginning. We live, we
plan; we have our hopes, our fears; and yet in a moment a change may
come over anyone of us and this body will become a mass of lifeless
clay. What is it that, having, we live, and having not, we are as the
clod? The progress of the race and the civilization which we now behold
are the work of men and women who have not yet solved the mystery of
their own lives.
And our food, must we understand it before we eat it? If we refused to
eat anything until we could understand the mystery of its growth, we