The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 3, 1904, Page 14

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. ristians pay doxy, they denomi- v attend and balls, wspapers Neverthe- s mot all of and alto- system which * for mearly T i years has held aloft fl onward steps of Ch ip, plow- ing universe end f of a world. ‘I through the cen- tyries € fastened them- selves k s and im- peded ¥ s s she has safled out of thé salt seas.of the past into the- fresk razons of the preseént these off f remote and murky racks of T Yepair vin roast tus Have been unkin- X rs 2 id women of t ren the Pur- b r at the door and the pr were locke Socie the face of him wh to believe that Jon the inter sojourned for three days in r of a whale. M n are now esteems distrust elded the s as powerfully as the stater ason w Jawbone of = some Of his. critics, and ostracism no longer att souls who de sands upon those doubting to concede that thou- Israelites followed Moses around and around for forty years, like blind mu. escape ft boy on a in ore day. of in a k mill, trying to des 0 small that a 1& could have crossed it m a That the growing intelligence of man- kind is banishing 'rom orthodoxy these allegories and fables of the Bible do Dot affect the central truths preached by the Savior any more than the vari- ations of the needle caused by mounds of iron affect the eternal verity of the maegnetic compass. e world of thought moves forward from the dark- ness of ignorance int@the light of prog- ress as surely as the world of matter ruehes onward through space under the lash ‘of the centripetal force. Science has cleared away much of the rubbish that ignorance and fanaticlsm piled eround the altars of Christianity, and the altars are none the worse for the cleansing. Of what consequence is it whether the passage of the Red Sea was the zesuit of a miracle or of a low tide? Of what consequence is it whether or not the world ceased to whirl at the ipse dixit of Joshua? The story of the five loaves and the two fishes may have been a miracle, or ft may have been hypnotism, or it may have been a parable—does that detract from the pose and beauty of the ser- mon on the mount? “America,” said & satirical French- man, “is a country with seventeen re- ligions and only one gravy.” He might have added that each religion is a force for good government, for order, for sobriety, for integrity, for unse!fishness and for truth. Indeed there was never a religion since the beginning of the world that was not better for the world in its time than no religicn at all. From Thor's altars amid the oaks the vir- tues of truth and chastity were ex- tolled. On the cromlechs of the Druids was inscribed the maxim that no liar may enter heaven. . Confucius an- nounced the golden rule. Buddha preached charity and honesty and love. The priests of Isis and Osiris besought their followers to be merciful as well as just. The Greek, who worshiped Vulcan and Minerva, was a better blacksmith and a closer student for his belief. The Roman, who poured upon the earth his libation to Mars, was a braver soldier because of his fzith. The Indian declares that the Great Spirit hates a crooked tongue. His religion keeps the Hindoo clean and the Turk eober, and makes of the Parsee an early riser. And what shall be sald of the up- lifting and advancing and beneficent influence of the religion of progress, the religion of humanity, the religion of Jesus Christ? The answer may be read in the laws and literature and methods and morals and manners of the civilized world. Where the iron barges of commerce smite the abject seas with their conquering fect; where the “milljon chorded lyre of thought” makes music over the land and under the sea; where hospitals and houses of shelter for the sick and needy link their shadows across continents; where academies and libraries swing open wide their doors at the touch of the seeker for learning; where cataracts are harnessed to mighty wheels wh iron arms relieve mankind from toll; where order and law reign; where free- dom abides; where man marches on- ward to & place among the immortals— there the triumphs of Christienity are sung. From his Holiness at Rome, whose spiritual sway extends from the Alps unto the Andes, from the Arctic unto the Orient, down or up to the hum- blest soldier of the Salvation Army, ‘who beseeches his fallen fellow man to / THE ACTOR / wikL EAT WAFFLES BEFORE ATTEMPT- ING CLAUDE \ MELNOTTE / follow the drumbeats out of the slums into a betterflife, every honest follower of the religion of Jesus is a better man, and makes the world a better world because of his bellef, for he is a force for truth, a force for honesty, a force for good. The Protestant preacher constantly impresses upon the members of his congregation the duties of honesty, truthfulness, sobriety and obedience to law. The Catholic priest never ceases to enjoin upon his flock the necessity of righteousness of.life. He says to the clerk,/“Keep your fingers out of the employer's til.” He says to hus- bands, “Keep your feet out of the dead- fall.” He says to the youth, “Keep your presence out of the bagnio.” Every clergyman of whatever denom- ination is, I repeat, a persistent, indus- trious, potential influence for right liv- ing and right thinking. He saves the merchant from loss through the dishon- esty of clerks. He closes the door of the home in the face of the desecrat- ing libertine. He reduces the cost of the taxpayer of prisons and hospitals. His life, his example, his precepts are as much an element of material ad- vantage to the community in which he lives as a new water supply or a new trolley line. As humanity has left behind the cave dweller, the fisherman in his dugout canoe and the warrior who made a drinking cup of his enemy’'s skull; as it has come to the use of wheeled ve- hicles and ceiled houses; as it has har- nessed the elements to do its bidding and has called into being slaves with fingers of steel and lungs of steam; as it has climbed out of the swamps up- ward and upward into the radiant sun- shine of the upland, there has stepped out of the wayside shadows a gloomy presence which has croaked to human- ity: “There is8 no God. There is no future. Yesterday you were not, to- day you are;.eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow you die.” Of what value to the community is a carping infidel seeking ever to belittle and deride the religions of the world? Possibly Bulwer may have been right in saying that “all religions are equally incredible to theg philosopher and equal- ly useful to th® statesman,” but with it should have been coupled another saying, to the effect that “all material- istic philosophers are equally incredible to the scholar and equally dangerous to society.”' Anaxagoras said “the first thing is to seem honest, and the next is to be so.” Yet unless there is value in “being” honest there can be no value in “seeming” so. The pseudo scientists who assert that faith in divine justice and divine mercy is a folly, that beliet in an after life is a delusion, that there is no God, and who denounce religion and propose to elevate a tawdry and bedizened Goddess of Reason upon her desecrated altars, are engaged in afls- chievous work. Every advocate of this false philosophy is a moral lunatic standing upon the brink of & whirl- paol and occupied in a malign effort to drive the property, the homes, the free- dom and the happiness of a people into the vortex of anarchy. ‘What ‘would be thought of him who should visit a hot springs resort and make it his business 'to knock the crutches from under every rheumatic cripple who was limping, his way to the healing waters? If yoy make a Jew believe that the Pentatefich is a collec~ tion of fables, that Moses was an in- efficient guide, thaty th_Uten messages of the thunder werc never voiced from Sinai and that the teachings of Levit- jcus ought not to control the rate of interest—will he prove a better citizen for his non-belief? If you make the Christian belleve that the faith of the fathers is but a delusive dream of a Savior who died in vain, that the story of the Virgin Mother is but a sweet, unsubstantial fancy, that the pennants which float from the masts of ships that carry the grain of charity to lift the pulsing crimson once more to the white lips of famine flutter no signals 'to watching angels tq tell that benevolence still dwells in the breast of man; if you tell the Christian all this, and prove it to him by the logic of some professor who has examined a bug under a microscope and with the result assumes to over- THE- < ONE turn the literature and the traditions of 1900 years, will you have made of him’a better citizen, a better neighbor or a better man? Those who preach the creed of eter- nal death are engaged in a harmful task. Remove from man the stays of belief in an after life and accounta- bility there for deeds done in the body and you have deprived him of the props without which he is not strong enough to walk erect and the selfish and savage instincts of the primeval human will assert themselves. Destroy religion and put its priests and preach- ers out of commission and the invisible police will'be disbanded and chaos will come again. According to materialism, there is no .such thing as inspiration and thought is only a secretion of the brain, even as bile is a secretion of the liver. Ac- cording to materialism, man's brain is only a thought producing machine and food is the fuel that generates the mo- tive power. You place food in the mechanism of a Shakespeare and pro- duce a great dramatist; you place it in a Webster and produce a great statesman; you place it in a Grant and produce a great general; you place it in a Captain Kid and produce a great pirate. We are Mrs. Jarley’'s wax works, all of us, and a mutton chop is the crank that winds us up. The next step will probably be the development of a sclence of dietetic thought. The actor will eat raw beef when he is to play Richard III, and waffles before attempting Claude Mei- notte, and the statesman will eat ice- cream before voting on harbor appro- priations, beet sugar before discussion of recivrocity with Cuba and stuffed peppers before he approaches the sub- ject of a Panama canat. ' The lover will say to his adored one: “Matilda Ann, Ilove thee. If thou will consent to be my bride life shall be one long dreamp of happiness.” She ‘will recognize in the tender avowal the food force of the veal which furnished the staple of Alfred’s dinner, and the fmpulse generated by her own evening meal of spring chicken will cause her to reply in dulcet accents of undying 5TATE§/"\AN\- wiLL EAT ICE CREAM EFORE \ VOTING ON | HKRARBOR APPROPRIAT- IONS .. ‘IF THOU wiLL BE <MY BRIDE LIFE SHALL BE LONG DREAM OF HAPPINESS affection. This may not be the ap- proved modern method of love making. It is many years since I had occasion to make love to anybody except my wife and fashions change with times. Maybe the proper course to pursue would be to say: “WIill the darling compacted molecules which constitute your consciousness consider the advan- tage of permanent affiliation with the development and developed protoplasm which now places itself at your dis- posal?” Accept the doctrine that man Is a machine and there is an end of con- sclence, there is an end of inspiration, there is an end of moral accountability and there ought to be an end of ac- countability to law, for no man ought to be held responsible for the structure of his brain or the overation of food upon it. and if he can evade human consequences, why may he not burglar- ize & bank, murder his mother-in-law, hate his neighbor and love his neigh- bor’'s wife as he may be impelled by the operations of his dinner? Materialistic philosophers may sneer at the errors and conflicts of theology, but their creed of eternal death is a creed that makes criminals. Bellef in God and belief in an after life consti- tute a great reserved vigilant, though unseen, armed guard, which ever lays arresting hands upon the selfish and savage impulses of man, and which ever aids to keep society in order. No thief ever comes away from the con- fessional unimportuned to make resti- tution, and there the scarlet woman is warned to sin no more and the sorrow- ing are comforted. ‘When I have seen in frontier camps a Catholic priest riding forth into the storm and night to smooth the passage of a dying soul; when I have seen man and women Wwearing the Salvation Army uniform, feeding the hungry, succoring the distressed, I, who belleve not implicitly in any creed, and who yet believe in the truth which underlies all creeds, take off my hat in homage to every soldier of Christ. Tl ,REFLECTlON S Tromas FiTcA. Discussion between the orthodox and the unorthodox is usually profitless, for on such a subject men will reason in & circle, and I am not sure that such idle discussion may not best be terminated as it was once ended by an old Baptist divine. There a conference meet- ing and an Infidel farmer from an ad- joining county rode over to argue with and discomfit the preacher. Placing himself in front of the an of God, he poured forth the arguments he had cribbed from Voltaire. The preacher listened scornfully, but patiently, and when the infidel paused he replied: “Well, my friend, I won't discuss the matter with yo. Your infidelity 1s grounded in you. You can keep your belief and I will keep mine. You live your life and I wiil live mine, and by and by, when we leave this worll, I will go to heaven and you cam go to hell.” One reason why polemical discussion is usually profitless is because it is the spiritual sense of man that perceives “his spiritual life. It is related of Tyn- dall that with a companion he once passed a night on the summit of the Alps in order to obtain a‘view there of sunrise. When the rays of the morn- ing sun lit cryst:l domes and pinnarets with prismatic rays, Tyndall's com- panion said to him: “Now, Professor, don’t you feel that there is a God?” “Yes,” replied the great materialist, “it you don’t try to prove it.to me.” Happlly the greater part of mankind are born with the spiritual semse. Oo- casionally there is a moral malforma~ tion who comes into the world without it. You cannot reach such. You may instruct in many things one who is born blind. You may instruct him in math- ematics, In odors, in form, in taste and in musie, but you cannot, with any system of raised letters, cause him to comprehend the difference between pink and blue. The truth of the after life is borne In upon each of us by the testi- mony of his own soul and thought is & witness never subpenaed. : For myself I do not, I cannat, I will not belleve that this life ends all. The body of the unborn babe was death un- til lite pricked. the inoculating germ of immortality into the pulseless, colorless mass hurrying on in obedience to unde- virting law into the voiceless, reachless eternities. The body of the man must be death again before life’'s work be- gins anew. We know that the body will pass on into the foliage of forests and the plash of streams, and who shall say that the life, freed from its earthly body, may not journey on in immortal youth “unhurt amid the wreck of mat- ter and the crash of worlds”? I decline to believe that I am an in- telligence unfit to survive the death of my body. You may accuse me of be- ing merely & bundle of molecules de- veloped out of a protoplasm and pro- gressing Into a gas, but all the same I know with an intuition that is higher than reason—I know with a conscious- ness that scorns your scalpel and defles your microscope and defies the caleula- tions of your pencil—that while you may bury or cremate my body you can- not thus dispose of me, for I am— The wearer, not the garh; The inmate not the room: the plume Dt the falcon, not the bars That keep him from the splendid stars, I know that the time will come when not the voice that speaks, not the arms {hat gesture, not the brain which is only the poor loom on which unseen fingers weave fabrics of Imperfect thought, but the life which shall sur- vive them all will go out into broader flelds of effort, into grander cycles of time, into worlds before which. this world shall pale as a star pales in the presence of the morning. Copyright, 1903, by Thomas Fitch,