The Irish standard., 1908-09-26
'|l|'E TIE PRINCE Of PEACE
Extracts From William j
Bryan's Noted Lecture.
Belief in Immortality and Its
Powerful Influence.

do not carry the doctrine of evolu'
tfon as far as some do. / have not yet
been able to convince myself that man
is a lineal descendant of the lower an
tmals. do not mean to find fault with
you if you want to accept it. All
mean to say is that. while you may
trace your ancestry back to the mon
key If you find pleasure or pride in
doing so, you shall not connect me
with your family tree without more ev'
idence than has yet been produced
4 Go back as far as we may, we
cannot escape from the creative act.
and it is just as easy for me to believe
that God created man as he is as to
believe that millions of years ago he
created a germ of life and endowed it
with power to develop into all that we
see today. The Darwinian the
ory represents man as reaching his
present perfection by the operation of
the law of hate-the merciless law by
which the strong crowd out and kill off
the weak. If this is the law of our de-
yelopment, then, if there Is any logic
that can bind the human mind, we
shall turn backward toward the beast
in proportion as we substitute the law
of love. How can hatred be the law
: of development when nations have ad-
vanced in proportion as they have de-
parted from that law and adopted the
law of love? The miracle raises
two questions, "Can God perform a
miracle?" and "Would he want to?'
The first is easy to answer. A God
who can make a world can do anything
he wants to do with it. The power
to perform miracles is necessarily i'm
piled in the power to create. But
would God want to perform miracle?
This is the question which has given
most of the trouble. The more have
considered it the less inclined I am to
answer in the negative. To say that
God would not perform a miracle is
to assume more intimate knowledge
of Gods plans and purposes than can
claim to have. I Will not deny that
God does perform a miracle or may
perform one merely because l do not
know how or why he does 1t. The
fact that we are constantly learning
of the existence of new forces sug-
gests the possibility that God may op-
crate through forces yet unknown to
us, and the mysteries with which we
deal every day warn me that faith
is as necessary as sight Who would
have credited a century ago the sto-
ries that are now told of the wonder
working electricity? For ages man
has known the lightning, but only to
fear it. Now this invisible current is
generated by a man-made machine,
imprisoned in man-made wire and
made to do the bidding of man. The
miracle is not more mysterious than
many of the things with which man
deals. 1t IS simply different.
1t is sometimes said that God could
not suspend one of his laws without
stopping the universe, but do we sus'
pend or overcome the law of gravita
tion every day? Every time we move
4 foot or lift a. weight we temporarily
interfere with the operation of the
most universal of natural laws, and
yet the world is not disturbed.
&! Science has taught us so many
things that we are tempted to con
clude that we know everything, but
there is really great unknown which
E., is still unexplored and that which we
have learned ought to increase oul
reverence rather than our egotism
Science has disclosed some of the ma
chinery of the universe, but science
has not yet revealed to us the great
secret-the secret of life. It is to be
I found in every blade of grass, in every
insect, in every bird and in every ami
mal as well as in man. Six Thousand
years of recorded history, and yet We
know no more about the secret OF life
than they knew in the beginning. We
live, we plan, we have our hopes, ou1
fears, and yet in moment change
I may come over any of us, and this
body will become a mass of lifeles.
clay. What is it that, having, we live
and, having not, we are as the cIod
1 We know not, and yet the progress O
i the race and the civilization which wi
/ now behold are the work of men ant
women who have not solved the mys
]. terry of their own lives.
And our food-must we understan,
1t before we eat it? If we refused t,
u eat anything until we could under
stand the mystery of its growth, W,
4 would die of starvation. But myster,
does not bother us in the dining room
1 Only in the church is it an obstacle.
was eating piece of watermelon
Il |, anroo ,,oonths ooo ond xvoc c&r,,ol, ,,,,%1