Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-04-23
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THE LIVING TRUTH.
By Henry F. Cope

by henIy E SoPo'
Happy is the man that fndeth wis
dom. Prov. ILL.,, IS.
Christianity Is not q system Of be-
lief, it is a type Of life, trend In
Ideals. There will be always those
who insist on its forms as constituting
its essentials. This is because 1t Is so
much easier to stand by certain fixed
forms than it Is to keep pace with an
ever developing ideal, especially since
that ideal makes many practical de-
mands upon you
The fact that your religious ideas
seem to you often hazy, uncertain, and
unstable need not be source OF I'M
easiness, gives no ground upon which
the self-satisfed Journalist can impeach
your faith and ought rather to suggest
that this Is always the condition Of
ideas which have in them the elements
Of life, which are developing and which
produce development.
One might have the characteristics
Of Christianity and still deny the re-
liability OF some details and narratives
Of the historic faith. Il would be pos
sible to have this faith and be uncer
tain as to many things that some Of
Its friends insist on as fundamental.
It Is also evidently possible to hold
with tenacity and pugnacity the forms
OF those alleged fundamental facts and
still be utterly devoid Of the essential
spirit.
Many q man is q pragmatist who
has never heard Of Prof. James and
still more are Kantians or Hegelians
who would not only deny any knowl-
edge of the great philosophers, but
would also deny absolutely the phtlos-
ophies If they heard them stated in the
precise forms Of their founders. The
most radical motives Of our lives be-
come unrecognizab az soon as we
stop to analyZe them.
The more effective a mans faith and
ideals are the more Elusive they will
be. Only the dead can be classified
here. The greater the virtue in shap-
Ing conduct and the vitality in causing
progress and development the greater
the difficulty in formula ting your faith.
II you tarry by the wayside to de-
scribe your ideal it escapes you, either
vanishing altogether or moving further
on.
The man who can carry his creed in
his cabinet, who can count its pieces,
with whom it never varies, neither de-
veloping nor dying because it is al
ready dead, usually feels superiority
over those with whom faith Is living,
growing, an ideal, an ever changing
hope and an overmastering passion. 1t
is the superiority which a child, happy
with its toys, yet happy with his hope
Or dreams.
The religion that never changes in
itself is powerless to effect change in
us. Few sights are more pitiable than
that Of the man who deludes himself
with the hope Of saving the world by
persuading all men to hold in their
hands sets Of symbols precisely like
the one he holds, pieces Of the gar
ments and forms through which truth
once revealed herself to the eyes Of
men, shreds from which the soul has
fed.
When we talk of the faith of our
fathers we need to remember that
their faith meant 80 much to them be-
cause is was fresh and living, because
they wrested 1t with blood and tears,
from its old forms, from the grip Of
a traditionalism that would have throt-
tied 1t, that each new generation must
see yet farther along the path Of light
and be loyal to the truth Of the past
by leaving It's old tracks for the truth
Of the present.
The most serious heresy Of any age
Is that which calls itself orthodoxy,
the attempt to bind back the new life
in the shells Of the old, to substitute
the footprints that the development Of
truth has made yesterday for the on
ward moving truth itself and to force
all into uniform and meaningless repe-
tttion Of outgroWn phases.
The harm Of this lies in the facts
that such mechanical uniformity sti-
fes originality, makes faith perfume
tory, robs it Of vitality. and 80 of any
virtue in life. 1t substitutes for the
struggle onward into our new and en-
larging ideas the slothful settling down
to content with old forms. 1t brands
Us bad man him who honestly strives
forward into light and commends the
dolt and coward who timorously clings
to the past.
The danger is that we shall be dis
couraged in our own strivings after
truth and our own passion for the
heaven soaring ideal by the vehement
threats and taunts OF those who love
so well the easily gotten forms of ira
ditions. We must be loyal to the best
we know we must have the faith that
says: "Give me rather perdition with
truth than paradise at the price of a
lie"