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Prof. James T. Bixby, in a powerful plea for truth-seekers, quoted approvingly the words of an eminent ecclesiastic of the church of England who characterized the present age as “preeminently the age of doubt.” Another writer says that Europe is turning in despair toward Nirvana. The almost unprecedented success of Hartman’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious”–which is little more or less that Buddhism–gives a strong color of truth to the startling assertion. While Europe is sending missionaries to the Ganges, India is planting the black pessimism of Gautama on the Rhine and the Seine! Nineteen centuries of dogmatizing, to end in an “age of doubt” and a cry for the oblivion of Nirvana! Clearly there is something wrong, for doubt and a desire for annihilation is not the normal condition of the human mind. A belief in God, that the universe is the result of design, is inherent in man. It is not a belief that must be implanted and tenderly nursed; it is one that manifests itself in the lowest form of savage life of which we have cognizance–one that is well-nigh impossible to crush out–and complementing this belief, in most instances, is the hope of immortality. No cataclysm of crime into which man can plunge is able to eradicate his belief that he is the creature of a supernatural power and intelligence. The tendency of scientific research is to strengthen it by making more manifest the wondrous works of God. It is doubtful if the belief in man’s divine origin was ever entirely obliterated from any human mind–if there ever was or will be an “atheist.” Many men believe themselves such; but if they will carefully examine their position, they will usually find that they have been carried to this extreme by a powerful revulsion from incredible dogmatism, and that they can only maintain it by a continual and unnatural effort–by a persistent outrage upon that very intelligence of which they boast. The moment they cease to act on the defensive they begin to drift back under the divine spell; to pay homage, conscious or unconscious, to the All-Father.

Those who deny the inspiration of the Bible are, for the most part, but doubting Thomases who ask to see the nail- prints in the hands of their risen Lord; who are disposed to question him, not because they are irreligious, but because they want the Truth, and they know for a verity that it is the truth.

Is it not possible to found a church in which may be gathered the millions who cannot swallow the miracles, the incarnation, the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and other non-essential husks that enshroud the Christian cultus; where that religion which exists, conscious or unconscious, in their nature, may find room for expansion; where honest inquiry may be prosecuted, doubts freely and fairly discussed and perhaps dispelled; where all Truth, whether found in the Bible or the Koran, the Law of Mana or the Zend-Avesta, science or philosophy, may be eagerly seized and carefully treasured? If it were possible to thus bring together and utilize the vast amount of religious energy which lies without the pale of all present churches, unrecognized by the most, warred upon by the many; if it were possible to gather all believers in God together where they may strengthen their faith by communion and worship; extend their knowledge by research in every field, spiritual and material, secular and religious, what a mighty recruit would thus be added to those powers that are working for the world’s salvation!

Let me briefly sketch such a church as I would like to be a member of–such as I imagine millions of others who are not, will never be members of existent communions, would worship in with pleasure. Its chief “essential” should be belief in God–not the God of the Jews, Mohammedans or Christians, but the God of everything, animate and inanimate in the whole broad universe; the God of Justice and Wisdom, Truth and Love; the God seen in the face of every noble woman and honest man, heard in every truth, felt in every holy aspiration. Everyone believing in the existence of such a God–and I doubt if any do not–should be eligible for membership, no matter what their theories regarding his personality, plans and powers. Truth should be sought assiduously, and welcomed wherever found. We should not attempt to make it fit a preconceived theory, but to make the theory conform to it. Science should be the handmaid of the church, philosophy its helpful brother; but its ecumenical council, its court of last resort, should be the religious instinct inherent in man–that perception so fine, so subtle, that all attempts to weave it into words to clothe it so that the eye may perceive and the reason handle it, have signally failed; which logic has hammered at with all her ballistae and battering-rams for thirty centuries or more in vain; which, above all things else, binds the human race in one great brotherhood, has supplied the missing links in every cult, bridged its laches, surmounted its incongruities, comprised its inexpugnable fortress upon which the high flood-tide of worldly wisdom beats in vain.