Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1906-06-15

rious assurance that it is true NAM
ma" To him what he has imagined is
true" He is as ready to believe in
Santa Claus as in Jesus Christ, in the
Arabian Nights as in the miracles of the
New Testament. The reindeer and the
sleigh-bells are as real to him as the
Wise Men and the Shepherds. Do not
undeceive him, Life will undeceive him in
due time.
But do not envy him. Do not try to go
back and recapture that nursery expert
ence. The faith of manhood is of diff
ferent sort. 1t is not an unQuestioning
but a questioned faith. 1t is not founded
on reason; but 1t dares submit itself to all
the tests to which reason can subject II.
The crucible never yet created gold; but
It tries the gold and rejects the dross.
Reason never yet created faith; but 1t
separates the true from the false. After
the crucible appears but little gold. but
II is pure. After the reason there appears
a shorter creed. but it is vital. Credulity
has done the world more harm than skep-
ticism. The only way to know anything
Is to dare to question everything.
We look back across the years and re-
call our childhood piety. Heaven was
close at hand. just above the clouds,
which were it's draperies, or just above
the starry dome, which was its floor. In
heaven was the great white throne, and
the great God, awful or benignant as our
fancy happened to paint him, and to him
we addressed our childish petitions, some
times wondering how he heard them,
sometimes audaciously wondering whether
he heard them at all. This vision of our
childhood Imagination is gone. 1t were
as easy to reconstruct the castellated
glory of the sunrise after the sun had
reached the meridian as to rebuild this
tabled heaven of our childhood faith.
Some try to retain 1t, and seek in an i'm
aginary world. which they know has no
= -
which they are too painfully aware. Some
abandon their faith with the imagination
with which II was connected, and live as
best they can, ruled by conscience but
not inspired by faith. But some look
back without regret, because the faith of
their early fancy has given place to the
stronger and more inspiring faith of their
manhood. To them God has become the
Perpetual Presence; the One who is
never so far as even to be near" the
Great All and in all. Their childhood
faith in a Celestial God has grown into
the Hebrew psalmist's faith in the Ever
Present God:
whittier shall 1 go from thy spirit?
Or whittier shall fee from thy presence?
II ascend up into heaven. thou art there;
If make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
If take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts OF the
sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me-"
The vision Of a celestial city and a
seeptered and enthroned God has faded
and will never return; but In its place has
come Whittier's spiritual vision:
Il know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know 1 cannot drift
Beyond His love and care"
Such souls would not exchange the faith
of their manhood for their childhood faith.
This manhood faith is indefinable because
1t is infinite; II is mystical because II is
spiritual; 1t is real because 1t Is unseen
suous.
If ones education has been almost ex-
clusively In courses which have whetted
his analytical faculties to exceeding
sharpness and left his spiritual nature
atrophied he cannot undo the mischief by
endeavoring to retrace his steps and go
back to his childhood experiences nor
yet by turning from natural science to
theological science. that is, by under
taking new and enlarged course In ar
gumentative literature. He will best find
his way to a real, a manly faith by ming
ling in literature and in life with men of
faith and by always being obedient to,
such heavenly vision as is afforded to
him. So doing, he will find the light with
IN him, which neglect has dimmed but
not wholly extinguished, gradually, and
to him almost unconsciously, reviving to
re-hlumine his life.-tThe Outlook.