Faith and Practice. Frank E. Wilson

world into that which is over-natural. For this life is a training school for more life to come. Such a purpose dignifies science far beyond any mechanical interpretation which ignores man’s spiritual qualities. Religion has nothing to fear from science. Science has no cause to shun religion. If in times past religion has sometimes been timidly suspicious of scientific achievement, it is equally true that science has sometimes misconstrued religion and disparaged a straw man of its own invention. Fortunately a better day has come and such occasions of friction are rapidly disappearing while each learns to esteem the other more highly.

      Even so one still meets, here and there, the superficial rejoinder that after all we know something about this world while we know little or nothing about any other; therefore the sensible course is to devote ourselves to what is here and decline to be concerned with any possible hereafter. If that were really the case, there is only one logical conclusion. Moral values promptly become extinct. Mercy, sympathy, self-control, good-will—all these become so many sentimental oddities. The practical mode of life is to seize all you can before someone else beats you to it. Gather the rose-buds while they are fresh because soon we will all be dead, sunk in an oblivion of endless nothingness.

      The trouble is, there is something within us which shouts an emphatic No! Try as we will to be hard, and merciless, and indifferent to the claims of others, we cannot escape the innate conviction that there is a real difference between right and wrong. The worst men have their tender moments when they simply cannot be entirely selfish. The more thoughtful materialist will say it is because of future generations. We must maintain ideals, practice self-control, adhere to certain moral principles in order to make the world better for our children. We are beneficiaries of our fathers and we are thereby under obligation to improve what we have received for the sake of those who come after us. That is our future life. We must cultivate a long-range perspective and consider our descendants for whom we are literally responsible.

      But there again our reason emerges into unreason. There is something appealing in the idea of self-sacrifice for the benefit of those who come after us until we are brought up abruptly to face the fact that someday nobody will be coming. It is all well enough to labor for future generations, but what about the time when there will be no future generations? Let us go in for a really long-range perspective. The day arrives when this world comes to an end. Just when or how is a matter of no consequence. It may be next week or a million years hence. Some scientists think the earth will eventually be absorbed into the sun and vanish in vapor. Others suggest that it is more likely to cool off and become a dead world incapable of sustaining life. Either way the conclusion is the same. Some day this world ends and there will be no future generations. Then what becomes of our carefully-guarded ideals and principles? What is the good of our labors and sacrifices if finally they all end in nothing? We are simply pyramiding futilities.

      Christ’s way is more credible to our intelligence and more creditable to our efforts. We may die but we shall not perish. “God hath given to us eternal life.”³ The best efforts we can put forth here will never be lost because there is a hereafter. Human life is not a temporary illusion. It has a meaning which outstrips time. That is why the faith and practice of a Churchman becomes of paramount importance. The Christian Gospel offers a way of life in this world which finds its bloom in the world-to-come. How we live now determines how we shall be prepared to live then. If this be not true, there is no sense in submitting to the injustices, trials, and indignities which our daily experience visits upon us. We might better call the whole thing off, turn out the light, and be decently obliterated. But “now is Christ risen from the dead,”⁴ and “thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”⁵

      ¹ Ecclesiastes 1:18.

      ² St, John 17:3.

      ³ I John 5:11.

      ⁴ I Corinthians 15:20.

      ⁵ I Corinthians 15:57.

      II

      BELIEF IN GOD

      Nothing can ever be proved absolutely. Everything in this world is related to everything else. Therefore if you are to understand anything completely you must be able to understand everything. For the same reason, to prove any one thing absolutely means that you must be able to prove everything. That is rather a large order for human intelligence.

      Nevertheless, when we tell one another that we can prove this and that, our statements do really have a meaning. We do not say that we have complete proof for anything, but that we have enough for working purposes. It is not absolute evidence that convinces us, but a preponderance of evidence that one thing is more true and accurate than another.

      It is important to keep this distinction in mind when we are considering religious matters. There is a good deal of loose popular clatter to the effect that religious convictions rest upon wishes and imagination while legal, logical, and scientific conclusions are based on demonstrable facts. The latter, we are told, constitute proof while the former is not much more than charitable conjecture.

      Yet it is a matter of common knowledge that many things are known to be true which can never be legally proved. Conversely, the court records are full of instances where something has been legally proved which turns out later to be entirely false.

      Similarly our systems of logic are of human contrivance and are therefore bound to be vulnerable. For example, there is the classical bit of logic taken from the Psalms of David:

      David said, “All men are liars”;

      Therefore, David, being a man, was a liar;

      Therefore, what David said is not true;

      Therefore all men are not liars.

      Of course, it is nonsense but it is logical.

      Scientific proof is generally considered more dependable and, on the whole, it is. But there also the footing may become slippery. The recently promulgated theory of relativity and the whole scope of the “New Physics” show clearly that many points which were considered scientifically established a generation ago are called in serious question today.

      So when someone bluntly demands that we should prove the existence of God, we reply—what do you mean by proof? In the first place there are different kinds of proof. You don’t prove a material fact in the same way that you prove a mathematical formula. You may demonstrate to your own satisfaction that a stone is hard by feeling it, but you do not convince yourself that two and two make four by touching the numbers. Evidence for the existence of God is of a different quality than either of these, and you must not expect to prove God by some laboratory experiment. And in the next place, nothing can be proved absolutely, leaving no possible question unanswered. But we do believe we can produce a preponderance of reasonable evidence that God does exist. If you say that this is a call upon faith and merely begs the question, we reply that the proof of anything begins with a call upon faith. In the cleanest scientific experiment you must start by assuming that you have a mind which will work and that there is reliability and uniformity in the laws of nature. At the outset you cannot be sure of either of these points, but you must assume they are true if you are to make any beginning at all.

      Well, then, let’s see about God. I start with myself and the world in which I live. Where did we come from: We are the product of preceding ages. But where did these preceding ages come from? They are the result of still earlier ages. But there must have been something before them and something else still further back. So we continue to retreat into a past ever more dim and distant until our reason explodes and our minds stop ticking. Somewhere we must come to a pause and say—here is the origin of things. There must be a First Cause. Otherwise common sense collapses and all our thinking loses its validity for want of an anchor. We would be like a man reaching off into thin air for a foothold and ending up in a crash of nothingness. Of course, you can’t explain it but you can’t explain anything else without it. The alternative is to try to live in a delirium of unreason. That First Cause we call God—the Creator—the Source of all things—and our very existence demands Him, unless we prefer to question our own