The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1895-06-17

work in which he, an unearthly individual.
can have absolutely no interest the wonder
Is that any are willing 20 submit to the neces'
sary stress. Sef-interest can never supply
the spurs for that sort OF effort. Whence do
tho needful indictments and encouragements
conner The answer Is that the impulses and
the rational considerations prompting men
resolutely to entor into the fight OF life, re.
sisting for themselves and the race the tend.
ency TO run down, are at bottom religious.
They proceed from belief in spiritual world,
and in a living God Whose we are, and Whom
IL is at once our duty and our glory to serve.
IL is fact that when the logic OF scienceis
scrutinized, science is found To have no
validity save upon the assumption, essentially
religious, that Nature Is Gods work. II
science is reasonable, religion is moro 10.
Tho proposition Of naturalsm, that the
things apparently confronting our senses are
the sole movable realities or the realities
most certainly known is an out and out as
sumption. Practically sure as we may be
that there is a world outside us. we have
nothing which can DO called proof that thore
Is.
Some might say the fact of world outside
US may after all be inferred from our revised
idea Of what seeing and hearing mean. our
sensations must have some cause; the sugges-
tion Of a world out there plying such a
cause is natural and we are Justified in ac-
copting that hypothesis when We find that IL
enables us To foreiudge the stream of percep-
tions which IL is put forward TO explain. But
the hypothesis Of IA world outside cannot be
shown 10 account better than any of dozen
others fer the actual stream of thought con
stituting our conscious life. Nor can the
skeptical theory save itself by appealing to
the fact that everybody is forced TO belief in
external matter. That inevitableness of COM
mon thinking about the universe is no argu-
ment. Save by effort we can never, and with
effort we can only half way and under pro-
test, help believing that the sun actually
rises Yet who would infer from this that
the sun does really rise.
Thus the empirical view of tho world
utterly and hopecssly breaks down. The
materialist, trying 10 form just judgment
concerning the original causes which produced
his premises, is in painful care With Mr.. Bal
four, 81 do not believe that any escape from
these perplexities is possible, unless we
prepared TO bring 20 the study of the world
the presuppositon that il was the work of a
rational Being, who made IL intellgible, and
at the same time made US, in. however. feeble
a fashion, able to understand it, This con-
cepton does not solve an difficulties, far from
1t. But at least II Is not on the face Of IL in
coherent. IL does not attempt the impossible
task of extracting reason from unreason; nor
does IL require Us TO axcept among scientific
conclusions any which effectually shatter the
creditability of scientific premises"
To show the emptiness Of materialism is to
show the primacy Of spirit. Mnd-matter is
It,t f,r all IN, all nd
there can be no such thing as mind in the
abstract. Matter there is but IL is Gods
creature, His visible speech. Evolution there
is, and has been. but it is Gods method of
creation; therefore, science there is: true,
tenable. fruitful; for the reason that, dig deep
as you will into reality yea, 10 the uttermost
end of the infinite universe and you shall find
aii-faet- movable, because into mental
moulds.
Suppose that naturalism really does that
all our convictions go back TO irrational
causes, which convey no assurance that they
confound right opinion. the causes begettng
convictions, touching conduct and religion
are no more irrational than those which make
US believe our senses. But rejecting that the
infinite prime, the source OF all things, the
ultimate cause Of all our impressions, as of
life itself, is not irrational at all, but the
eternal spirit we perceive that our soul-life
not matter is in all probability our essential
universe.