The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1906-11-07

Without faith in sense-impressions
we become idealists. Without faith
IN self-lmpressions we become ag-
nostlcs. Without faith in religious
Impressions we become materialists.
Faith is impossible without evidence,
and as sound and valid evidence Is
needed for our faith in God as for
our faith in the world. But the evil
dence faith demands is not such as
the reason presents, but such as the
intuitions present.
Nature, man and God, the three
terms which represent the entire sum
of reality, must each be taken at the
outset on faith based on the evidence
of sense-intuition, self-intuition and
religious intuition. Physical science
is the knowledge of nature; but be-
fore the intelligence can make use of
the cognitions of sense out of which
to form it, nature itself must be ac-
cepted by faith. We must believe
that God Is before we can ever use
the intuitions Of Him to make theo-
logical science.
Faith is an affirmation and an act,
Which bids eternal truth be present
fact"
In denying the existence of God to
begin with, we close the door of the
spirit through which God manifests
Himself. If we start out with the
understanding that there is no God,
religious perceptions are strangled in
their very birth. Of course, we can
have no perceptions Of God If we mu-
tilate the noblest part of our nature
by putting out the eyes of the relig-
ious sense. We have it within our
power to destroy our physical senses.
We can plug up our ears and shut
the windows of vision and close all
the doors through which the outside
world impresses US. But one foolish
enough to destroy his physical senses
would be doubly stupid II he imag-
ined afterWard that he had more
commerce with reality than those
who kept open all the gateWays of
the body and soul.
Haeckel says that human nature
which exalts itself into an image Of
God has no more value
for the universe at large than an ant
or the fly of summers day."
Unless the knowledge man gets OF
himself and the world and God by
the reaction of intelligence on per-
ceptions is valid and trustworthy,
Haeckel is right; man is not Of more
value than the ant, or the fly of a
summers day. He is not of as much
value as the bee, or the beaver, or
the tailor bird; for they are all art
lists without the trouble of learning
how to be, while he is left to accumu-
late knowledge as best he can by the
use of his faculties. They know at
the beginning what it has taken him
thousands Of years to find out, and
even now the bee surpasses him in
the application Of the principles Of
mathematics.
knows, of the world and himself and
God is illusion, then the lower ami
mails have the advantage Of him. The
knowledge built into their bodies
does correspond with the facts with
which they have to deal. They are
not disappointed and deceived. The
flock of wild geese from the Northern
lakes have always found the South
they felt in their blood was there.
The beaver has always found the
mud responsive to his tail, and the
wood of the tree no harder than his
teeth could cut. But, If the cogni-
tions of man do not correspond to
things, but are hallucinations, phan-
tasmal forms of his own conscious
ness, then the bears and tigers and
beavers and bees and ants and gnats
have the advantage of him. Human
beings who have exalted themselves,
as Haeckel says, into images Of God,
are the greatest fools, and the only
fools, on earth. The universe puts
a higher value on genuine flat-footed
tigers, who find as they roam on all
fours the jungles matching their
every want and anticipating their
every item of constitutional knowl-
edge, than upon the so-called lords OF
creation, who have only climbed to
the top of animated existence in their
conceit. They are like company OF
plain laborers, imagining themselves
to be King Georges, and, instead or
occupying thrones, as they think they
do, they are perched upon STOOLS III
the different rooms of an insane asy-
lum. It were better to be q good,
healthy tiger in the tall cane of the
swamp any time than to be a crazy,
self-infated, self-conceited descend
ant of Adam, running at large in the
high places Of existence. 1t were bet
ter to be a real COW, grazing IN the
meadow, than an unreal human
biped, walking with his head full OF
delusions in paradise OF fools.