Los Angeles herald., 1909-08-30
FOSTER UPHELD
BY MINISTER OF
L.A.FELLOWSHIP
DENOUNCES ATTACK MADE
BY DR.. A. C. DIXON
SAYS WHOLE BOOK BREATHEs
A LOFTY SPIRIT
Presents Vital Conception of Religion,
Declares Speaker, Holding Best
of older Ideas in Harmony
with the New

"The savage attack by DR.. Dixon Is
only another incident in the struggle
between progress and reaction, be-
tween freedom and authority, between
science and a discredited theology"
declared Reynold E. Blight yesterday
morning in his address before the Los
Angeles Fellowship. He reviewed Rev.
A. G. DiXon'S recent attack on Prot.
George Burman Fosters book, 1.-The
Function of Religion in Mans Strug-
gle for Existence" warmly defending
Prof Foster against the attack of his
critic.
1.-THE whole book" said the Fellow
ship minister, displays ripe scholar
ship, a profound moral conviction and
lofty spirit. 1t presents vital con-
ception of religion, holding the best
that the older ideas possessed, but
harmonized with the fuller knowledge
of this scientific age, satisfying both
heart and brain.
Truth is all-powerful, and the dead
dogmas, moribund churches and out
grown customs must vanish before the
bright light of the larger knowledge.
Stamped as Reactionary
"Dr. Dixon's bitter denunciation of
the doctrine of evolution sets him in
antagonism to the scholarship of to-
day. to every scientist of repute, and
to the teaching of all the leading uni
versities of the world. By that act
he stamps himself a reactionary and
puts himself out of harmony with the
times in which he lives.
To-day science shows us the world
in process of development, slowly and
painfully evolving from simple to COM
pleX forms, from inertia to power, from
helplessness to mastery, from the shud-
dering jelly fish to the proud, asplr-
ing, ideal-haunted, thinking machine
we call man; and man sees himself
the creature and master of evolution,
the climax of millenniums of growth
in which he has run the gamut of form
and sense and experience, carrying in
himself reminiscence of reptile and
bird, jackaI and ape, savage and saint,
until he stands upon the highest peak
of physical being, dreaming of psychic
achievements that shall minimize the
conquests of the past; and in the deep
est part of him reaching toward in
fnity.
Through cons of time, by infinite
toll, agony and conflict, through infin-
ite perseverance, man has reached his
present high place, and he knows him
self not only as body to be fed and
protected, nor a mind to be cultivated,
but a living soul. This living soul in
the process of its own development has
created functions and organs for its
own preservation and it's self-effectu-
alton. 1t is ever reaching forward
toward that which is higher, nobler,
completer. 1t is ever making for itself
ideals which it strives to assimilate
and make it's own.
Quotes Or. Foster
"Dr. Foster says: The evidence of
experience is that the structure and
function of the universe are such that
ideals are by us achievable. But that
which supports and comprehends with
in itself all ideal values, that which is
seen to be the origin and consumma-
ton of all values, must be the object
of deepest feeling on our part-the OBJ
ject of our highest trust and love. The
word God is a symbol to designate the
universe in its ideal-achieving capacity.
Our vocation is to achieve ideal val
ues; religion is the conviction that
such values are by US achieVable, in
virtue of our constitution and of the
constitution of that whole of which
we are q part. Religion is self-effec-
tuatiou.'
1.-The authority of such a religion
must be the truth as demonstrated to
us in our own lives. All external au-
horities-churches, priests, bibles-are
superseded by the voice of God speak
ing in the soul of man. 1t Is in this
connection that DR.. Foster uses the
phrase, Were he (Jesus) alive today
he would not copy the Jesus of that
time ard place. To copy even him
is to kill the SOUL Why should a
man copy even the Great Nazarene
when the power of goodness that
caused that life to glow with moral
splendor streams in cleansing energy
through the soul of every one of us
from that source of all goodness, i'm
manent in the universe?
prof Fosters book closes with a
series of exhortations of matchless elo-
quence and power. He says: 1T is
plain unbelief in the living God, plain
dishonor to the life of his modern
children, to pry into the dead exper-
fences of a plumbless past for the
traces of the eternal and at the same
time turn a deaf ear to the voices and
visions of your own soul and to the
mighty movements of modern society.
1t is not that God was not there-he
vast is that he is also here"