Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

God will not be satisfied until the perfect is reached. It shows us the incomplete world, a world in the making, everything just begun, not finished. So, it puts its idea of incompleteness over against the old thought of a world that has fallen from some estate, and says, this is the truer thought. No fallen world, but an incomplete world, a world moving on toward more beauty, more truth, more happiness, more happy men and women, better laws, better churches, everything better.

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

It tells us of the one unseen event towards which the whole creation moves.

These are the great inspiring ideas of the modern thought, that give to the intellect its essentially pious character. Will any one then tell me that the tendency of an intellect which is silent and reverential, which is revealing to us all the while deeper and deeper things about the God we worship, which is showing us the principle of order, and assisting us to adjust our lives with less friction and less pain is atheistic? That the intellect which shows us the purpose in creation and the place which each thing occupies, the progress in creation from simple to complex, from coarse to fine, from ugly to beautiful, from ignorance to knowledge, and at last continually shows us the perfect, the perfect government, the perfect State, the perfect church, the perfect school, the perfect thought, the perfect body—will any one tell me that that has anything infidel or dangerous in its tendencies?

Or let me turn this thought again and say this, as I close: There is a temper of the intellect which gives it its essentially pious character. The temper is

the atmosphere in which ideas work. In religion it is Faith, Hope and Love. What is it in science? Where do we get our deep convictions of the enduring laws of God? Where do we get our thought that we can plant to-day and reap to morrow? How dare a farmer put his seed beneath the sod and wait for it to push away the clod? How dare a man send his ships across the water, thinking they will come back again? Science gives us our deep, unalterable conviction that the laws of God will not fail us; that the Creator will not play fast and loose with us; that two and two are always four. I lift the water to my lips which quenches my thirst; it never occurs to me to doubt that his ancient formula God keeps true, and that the very chemical elements that entered into the water that slaked the thirst of Adam are those that are in the water that slakes my thirst. Such deep convictions I have. It is the temper of the scientific spirit. This is the pious attitude toward things. It believes in these things. Its convictions are deep; its trusts and confidences are not shaken. Or hope-what is it that bids us hope? What is it that leads us to overcome depression, to gather up the scattered forces again? What is it that helps us to readjust ourselves when we make a mistake? It is hope. Science tells us continually the new thing that is coming. Try again, all things are possible; and we go on and on, and recall life and light and hope again.

Then if we ask is there any loving thought in the scientific spirit, we question, what makes love? First, devotion to the idea, counting it above the cost of the work. For the most part, all men of science and physicians are poor men. They are men who do not seek to make fortunes. The greatest physician in all this world, the most skillful, the most renowned, can not make in all his life, perhaps, so much money as a great

That is not

magnate of a railroad can make in a year. what he is after. He is pledged to a sacred vow. God has chosen him to eradicate disease, to bring comfort where is sorrow, and ease where is pain. No where do you find that men of science or physicians are rich men; nor are they men that are primarily seeking money. No honorable man does, but, like the ascetics of old, they pledge themselves by a vow to comparative poverty. I do not mean wearing poor clothes always; but I do mean they have taken practically the vow of poverty. They have forgone the rewards of the world which are offered to the great captains of industry or the great railroad workers.

Faraday laid the foundation of modern electricity. Tyndall tells of him that all that come after him, as they go into the field of electricity, can only glean a little here and there which he has left scattered behind him. It was Faraday who said, when asked to be the chemist of a great corporation, "Science is not a cow to be milked; science is a sovereign mistress whose behests and commands one obeys to seek the truth." It was Agassiz who said, when offered one thousand dollars a night for lectures, "I have not time to make money." He does not despise the money, only he has just so much time in this world and there are a great many things that he must do and know; he has no time to lecture and prepare for it when there are so many secrets just trembling on the lips of God for him. to read. Again and again you find this devotion. It is an essential element of piety. The vow of poverty is on the man of science.

Will you take this self-sacrifice as have so many martyrs? They shall come before us: Kepler from his prison, Galileo loaded down with chains, Copernicus dying just as the sheets of his book are ready to be published, Bruno dying at the stake and Roger Bacon

dying in prison-these, and many another, are martyrs of science to whom self-sacrifice was a duty. We look upon self-sacrifice as being the one great mark of the religious spirit. Here are these-counting no cost, asking no wages, seeking no reward, demanding no approval; simply the privilege of going on and working. And with what wages have they been paid! Talk of the martyrs of early Christian time-of Joan of Arc, St. Agnes, St. Catherine and St. Elizabeth. We are glad that they lived; but we talk of Bruno, Bacon, Kepler, Jenner, Priestly, Aggassiz, Faraday, Tyndall, and Spencer-men who cared nothing for life except as it is this devotion to God's truth. Should not they also be apotheosized?

And now if we measure by helpfulness, what has it not done, dear friends, to make life glad, soothe its sorrow, quiet its pulse of pain, enlarge life for many? Measured by every test, then we may maintain the essential piety of the intellect. Who clothest himself with light as with a garment. We see a little way and know a little. We build our systems which are not worth the mortar it took to put them together, because we must tear them down. "We have but faith, we can not know, for knowledge is of things we see," but knowledge grows from more to more with each day, and as one after another the truths of God swing into the field of a man's vision he finds they bear a practical relation to his daily life. "The Lord is wonderful in council and mighty in his working." We may bring all these varied products and trophies of the intellect and say they are God's contribution for the helpfulness of man. They have been searched for and found by men who vowed themselves, in a pure spirit of religion, to search the secrets of God and wring them mightily forth.

THE NEW VOW OF POVERTY.

« AnteriorContinuar »