Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-13
THE AGE OF DOUBT.
Men of All Glasses Are Questioning
the Existence of a God.
NOT ALL ARE MORALLY CORRUPT.
Many Are Led Aside by Sentiment and
Others by Reasoning.
PROGRESS IN MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE
WRITTEN FOR THE p1sPArcH.l

Tue dSSGTllOu VI buS CAlSLSuCc Vi IOO. Inns
assertion is so essential that if it were taken
out of religion there would be no religion
left. 1t is the heart of all the creeds.
This essential assertion cannot be evaded
by declining to deny it. 1t demands state
ment and will not be satisfied with any
thing short of resolute belief. Wherever
this is not given there is an end to religion.
This essential assertion of religion has never
lacked questioners So long as the body is
more tangible than the soul, and the world
is more visible than God, and the interroga-
ton mark continues TO be used in human
speech, there will be people who will be in
doubt about it. There are a good many
such people now. There are three
yates bv which doubt gets en-
trance into the mind: By the gate
of conscience by the gate of sentiment, and
by the gate OF reason. If the watchman by
the gate of conscience proves a traitor, in
comes doubt. That is the testimony of ex-
perience. 4 man who has something the
matter with his conscience is pretty sure to
have something the matter with his creed,
His lips may put the words of it into
speech; he may not falter into ominous
silence, like the demon bridegroom in Mrs.
Browning's poem, when he ventures into
prayer. But his heart is dumb Only the
pure in heart can see God; only the good can
know God.
MORE THAN INTELLECT NEEDED.
Into all the higher judgments which men
have to make there must more be brigh than
acuteness of intellect, if the judgment is to
be Just. The logician is not fitted by
his logic alone to pronounce upon the
excellence of music Something more than
metaphysical shrewdness is needed for the
oc oo4r Il . ThoTo
popular decIaimer against the Christian
faith came back from Europe and declared
that all modern appreciation OF the old art
masters is a delusion. Nobody, he affirmed,
can really see in those dim pictures any
thing to admire. But that did not settle the
matter. The American artists did not evac-
uate Rome. 1t settled only one thing,
namely, that the critics mind was so that
artistic beauty of that kind made no impress
sion upon it. Into all judgments upon the
assertions Of religion the moral nature must
enter.
1t is not true, however, as some say, that
all unbeliefmeans moral defect. Its not true
that doubt always gets in by the gate of con-
science. Padre Agostiro, whom they call the |
modern Sayonarola, began his second lecture |
in Florence two years ago, with these words: |
my brethren, the reasoning faculties OF |
mankind, Christian civilization, the welfare |
of our country are now being subjected to |
very hard trial. They are all alike threat |
ened by the sacreligious attack of atheism
Misguided men, refusing the universally |
accepted tradition of long course of CEN
turies, and the instructive lessons of history,
trampling under foot all the teachings of |
philosophy. the interests of society, the law
OF the land, and the rule of their own con-
science, have declared open war against
God. Day by day they pursue their inIqui-
tous campaign, carrying il with vindtctive
pertinacity and implacable hatred into
every province of the human intellect They
not only refuse to know GOD, but they deny
His existence"
A ONE SIDED VIEW.
Presently he declared that exceptions to
the general rule that all men believe in God
'can only be found among men of corrupt
morals and diseased conscience"
Where this eloquent monk got his ideas
about the character of modern doubt,
whether from books or from men, know
not. But | venture the opinion, from these
words of his, that he has studied more with
his eyes than with his ears, and more by
lamplight than by daylight-unless men are
different Italy from the men whom we all
know. 1t seems as if he must have known
better if he had gone out of his monastic
cell into the streets. Nobody to-day, who
any commendation. 1t would be a happy
state of things if none had doubt about
God except the vindictive, the iniquitous
the ignorant, and the vicious. But we NAV
as well face the plain fact. There are men
and women to- day who are not willing to
affirm that God exists, whose pure, unseIfsh,
helpful. upright lives are evident to every
body. They are Christians in all except
their creed.
There is second gate The gate of senti-
ment One summer morning, under a blue
sky and beside the bluest OF all seas, was en-
acted one of the stTangest ceremonies of
modern times. A dead body lay along the
sand, and a little company of men were
piling up heap of wood beside 1t. They
made the wood into an altar, laid the un-
clothed body on it, poured out wine and oil
as libation to an unknown god, set the
wood on fire, and watched the body burn to
ashes. 1t was pagan sacrifice. But the
dead man had not been even SO much as q
pagan. He who lay there dead had stood once
upon peak Of the Alps, and looked
out over the glories of nature about him and |
up into the illimitable sky above him, and
had set his name in bold letters on the face
of the cliff with title after it-"Percy
Shelley, Atheist"
THE STORY OF PERCY SHELLEY
Shelley was an atheist by stress of senti-
ment He hated conventionalism; he re.
belled against the tyranny of tradition; he !
loved liberty. He wanted to do his own
thinking and to make up his own mind. |
This kind of gate for doubt swings wide in |
the minds of bright young fellows in college, |
end in the minds, also, of a good many |
thoughtful young men and women out OF |
college. They have made the discovery that |
man is a reasoning being, and they want to |
make further experiments. They come |
upon new books and new ideas |
which contradict what they have learned at |
home. They want to be wide-minded. lib
eral, hospitable to new truth. They want to
stand on their own feet, and to work out |
their own conclusions.
That state of mind is, of course, eminently |
hopeful; but its first turn is apt to be toward |
unbelief. The new, for time, drives out |
the old. After awhile, in the experience of |
most young people whose judgment is well |
balanced, the old is recognized as true
after all. The new is not abandoned, but |
rather helps to better understanding of |
the old. That is what makes intellectual |
progress possible. For time, however, as
/ say, through the gate of sentiment comes
doubt This whole generation is in the |
sophomore year. 1t is in the era of |
discovery. Nothing has equaled it since |
that wonderful renaissance time whose four |
hundredth anniversary we are just now get
ting ready TO keep. In such general |
frame of mind, new ideas crowding daily |
upon mems attention, new triumphs daily |
being won-scientiic. political, intellectual, |
ecclesiastie, theological-old theories being
discredited, old confessions of faith being
assailed with hard names. "Whither?"
the universal question, and nobody quite
able yet to answer where-under such men,