Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1909-06-25

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SAVING TRUTH.

by AACAA OSPS'
"The truth shall make you free. =
John s: 80.
One of the greatest difficulties in re-
ligiouc thinking is that its eXplana-
lions tend constantly to become its
laws. It is hard to keep It's thougnt
flexible, vital, and so developing. EV-
erv age tends to settle back on the de-
scriptions of thevision of the age be
fore it and declare that nothing may
be seen beyond
The creeds are but the definitions
and analyses attempted by the past.
They are accounts OF what men were
able to see and tell of their thoughts
of the ways of the infinite among men.
They differed because no two men can
occupy precisely the same point OF view.
But the Intellectually slothful quickly
seized such descriptions and set them
up as final; they saved them the labor
of looking farther into truth.
Every creed has been at some time
the rankest kind of heresy. 1t owed
it's vitality to that fact; when all can
chant 1t without dissent, it ceases TO
have any power. 1t has memories but
no vision; it recites history but 1t
offers no prophecy.
Then new heretics arise. They are
the men who tell not what their fatn-
ers saw but what they are trying to
see for themselves. They dare to tell
the truth of to-day In the terms OF to
day, Whenever you dare to do that
you may be certain to hear the stormy
protests of those whose slumbers are
disturbed by these new sounds.
No new truth Is at first welcome to
many. Old leaders will fight 1t bitter
ly because it seems to them to neces-
state their doing their thinking all
over again, and usually they are too
old or have too long fallen out OF the
habit of thinking to contemplate that
process with any pleasure. Their fol-
lowers simply echo their alarms be-
cause they are told either to do so or
be damned.
There are two types of mind every
where-those that crystalline an idea
and those that fertilize it. Some view
of truth comes to the first type, and
1t is Immediately packed away in pre-
cisely the form in which it first ap
peared. 1t cannot be changed; 1t must
either stay that way or be utterly
shattered That mind makes such a
form fetch.
The other type of mind receives
truth as a living thing; it's ideas are
ever developing; each vision promises
larger views The explanation that
seems to satisfy to-day is held as
tentative always; it must grow in or
der to explain the larger facts that
open up tomorrow. That mind never
has a creed save as matter of tenn
porary record.
These two TYPES seldom understand
one another; they never sympathize
They are almost sure to clash and the
first will denounce the second as the
treacherous foe of truth. Our theolog.
ical battles lie between these two types
of thinking, between those for whom
truth is delivered in sealed, unbreak.
able packages and those for whom 1t
breaks out in larger meaning every
day
You find these two types everywhere
in life. No one needs even to suggest
which is more valuable in all the at
fairs of the world, which has made
possible scientific discovery and its
adaptation to human comforts and use
fitness The man to whom truth is
living thing is the man who will
steadily seek to apply truth to life to
make it live.
That application of living truth to
vital things is the all important dis
tinction. It is that which we most
need to see clearly in matters of re.
ligion. The great thing is to take such
an attitude to religious truth that we
shall see every vision as meaning
something real, livable, as opening
truth to us only as something to be
realized and lived. Truth saves as ii
is lived Life discovers untruth and
reveals the power and glory of the
true. Be what you believe and put
v0nr croed into c0Ddl1ct and character