1.D 06. The World's Advancement Thought

The World’s Advancement in Thought.

There is another consideration that we cannot blink, and that is, that we are in danger of having the intelligent part of society go past us. The study of human nature is not going to be left in the hands of the Church or the ministry. It is going to be a part of every system of liberal education, and will be pursued on a scientific basis. There is being now applied among scientists a greater amount of real, searching, discriminating thought, tentative and experimental, to the whole structure and functions of man and the method of the development of mental force, than ever has been expended upon it in the whole history of the world put together. More men are studying it, and they are coming to results, and these results are starting, directly or indirectly, a certain kind of public thought and feeling. In religion, the psychological school of mental philosophers are not going to run in the old grooves of Christian doctrine; they are not going to hold the same generic ideas respecting men. And if ministers do not make their theological systems conform to facts as they are, if they do not recognize what men arc studying, the time will not be far distant when the pulpit will be like the voice crying in the wil derness. And it will not be “ Prepare the way of the Lord/ either. This work is going to be done. The providence of God is rolling forward a spirit of investigation that Christian ministers must meet and join. There is no class of people upon earth who can less afford to let the development of truth run ahead of them than they. You cannot wrap your selves in professional mystery, for the glory of the Lord is such that it is preached with power through out all the length and breadth of the world, by these investigators of his wondrous creation. You cannot go back and become apostles of the dead past, drivel ling after ceremonies, and letting the world do the thinking and studying. There must be a new spirit infused into the ministry. Some men are so afraid that, in breaking away from the old systems and original forms and usages, Christianity will get the go-by! Christianity is too vital, too really divine in its innermost self, to fear any such results. There is no trouble about Christianity. You take care of yourselves and of men, and learn the truth as God shows it to you all the time, and you need not be afraid of Christianity; that will take care of itself.

You might as well be afraid that battles would rend t> the sky, or that something would stop the rising and setting of the sun. The power of divine love and mercy is not going to be stopped, and will certainly not be stopped by the things that are true.

You cannot afford to shut your eyes to the truths of human nature. Every Christian minister is bound to fairly look at these things. Every scientific man who is studying human nature is bound to open his eyes and ears, and to study all its phenomena. I read that Huxley refused to attend a stance of Spiritualists. He said, contemptuously, that it was a waste of time, and gave expression to other sentiments of disdain. I am not an adherent of the spiritual doctrines; I have never seen my way clear to accept them. But phenomena which are wrap ping up millions of men and vitally affecting their condition are not to be disdained by scientific men, whose business it is to study phenomenology of all kinds. No scientific man can rightly refuse to examine them. He may say that he has no time to do it, and that some other man must investigate them. That would be right. All men cannot do all things. But to speak of anything of this kind with contempt is not wise. I am not afraid to look at this thing, or anything. I am not afraid that we are going to have the New Testament taken away from us. We must be more industrious in investigation, more honest in deduction, and more willing to take the truth in its new fulness; and we must be imbued with that simplicity in faith and truth which we inculcate in our people.