NO ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THE PHILOSOPHIC QUEST.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 113, 8 November 1913, Page 13

NO ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY THE PHILOSOPHIC QUEST.

Speaking recently to a gathering of ministers, Professor L. P. Jacks, the editor of the Hibbert Journal, gave an interesting chapter from his spiritual autobiography, or, as he put it, from his " philosophical biography." He enumerated his past pliilosophic doubts and the stages of his spiritual evolution/ And all his travels through the land of doubts have not brought him to the realm of certainty. Listen to his own words : " Life is a choice among difficulties. We have tt» stake our existence on something. Let us be content therefore to choose the risk which has the better reasons on its side. If you go on the principle of merely counting heads you will always find that doubts are in the majority. But it doesn't follow that they ought to rule. Perhaps they are there to be ruled. " Where is absolute certainty to be found ? ■ The answer is, Nowhere. And the answer may be given with entire lightness of heart. There is no need to make a long face over it, as though some cherished ideal were being abandoned. Absolute certainty is, for beings constituted as we are, simply a meaningless phrase — a phrase which expresses no human ideal, which represents nothing we cherish and nothing that we suffer by giving up. Were truth of that kind to arrive upon the earth the mind of man would simply be put out of commission, and the curtain would fall irrevocably on the drama of human life. " All ages, all races, are involved in the task of bearing witness. Great is the company of the preaohers. All nature is involved; the whole universe is confederate. So that you who have vowed " yourselves to the service of Truth have grappled to the central purpose of the world. You have hitched your wagon to the stars ; you are marching in step with the cosmic forces; the ark of the testimony goes before you; and there is- not a flower by the wayside, nor a bird singing among the branches, but wishes you god speed as you pass. " Better be wrong with the eagles than right with the owls. If fall we must, let us fall with the loyal. Absolutely certain ? No ! But tell me, if you can, of anything that is more certain than this."