Newport daily independent., 1902-10-06
FATE OR FAITH.
The Determination of the Will Counts for More Than Either Heredity
 or Environment.

At the base of action on the part of man is belief This is a strong deter mining factor in what he does or does course He carries with him on this course all the wealth or poverty of his talents and learning.
 At present we are having a revival of belief in fatalism. Men are ac- cepting the doctrines of heredity and environment and declaring that men are bound by them. that they shape mans character and determine the conditions of his life. No man is to be praised by any position to which he may have attained or blamed for any evil eXcesses he has committed or any depths of sin to which he may have descended The sense of personal re- sponsibility is eliminated. Man is de- clared to be an automaton manipu- lated by some unseen master force. He is made up of certain clements; chem ists are now searching for the proper proportions that they may put them together and make man. This mat ter is carried still further: the world is declared to be bound in rigid frame work of law, with no place for the SUI pernatural; God is equally bound, He has no personality but is simply 1t, mighty energizing force. Acceptance of this fatalistic belief, for which so many strong arguments can be and are brought forward, sooner or later leads a man to give up any attempt to direct the course of his own life. Why should he try? He feels that he has no pow CT and would only be attempting the impossible. The question is asked: What chance has the boy or girl brought up in the slums of great city or at the back side of the desert, to amount to anything? The burden of work so presses home upon the working man with small pay and a large family that he has no opportu- nifty for anything approaching the cul- ture of his mind and soul. The use lessness of the fight against fate is realized and men say: What's the use, let us enjoy ourselves the best we can." "The don't care what we do" and the pleasure loving spirit comes in with a tendency to despair, and men easily give up life, by ending it at their own hands.
 But there is another belief that puts men on an entirely different footing with God. the world and themselves. That is, faith in their freedom of thought and action; faith that they have power to direct their own lives; faith in a personal God, who takes ac- count of mems efforts. Heredity and environment while accounting for much, do not account for everything. There is the personal element, the de- termination of the will. that can and does set them aside. Man may rise superior to his circumstances and make them his servants. rather than his masters. The boy born under the worst conditions in the slums or back woods, by the use he makes of his faith in his freedom, often rises above the boy born and brought up under the best conditions, but who makes nc use of them to grasp any better thing. The workingman in the factory by this personal element, faith in his free dom. has come to own the factory in which he formerly worked, or to rise superior to his conditions with se- rene and triumphant spirit. Many q man. steeped in sin and bound by the chains of evil, has come to realize his condition, and through this faith, has turned to his Saviour. Jesus Christ, and has been transformed in life and char acter. Fate is stone wall high and thick which stands directly across mans pathway; but by faith in his free dom, man rises in his might, pulls down that stone wall and goes on his way The wide sea inter- poses a barrier to a free means of communication between the nations,