THE ETERNAL NOPE.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13892, 1 May 1909, Page 3

THE ETERNAL NOPE.

.MAN AND RELIGION

Clarence Book in his review of "The Religion of the Common Man" (Sir H. Wrixon, K.C.), says:— "We kjiow that man .is. by, his conf stitution. a religious animal, and that Atheism is against not only our reason but our instincts." Burke wrote that sentence. It is but the echo of hundreds of millions o{ common men who have thought and wondered. And, while Sir Henry Wrixon is not exactly a common man, he may stand as the representative of the wave of seriousness that is sweeping over us. In this book we nave one of the many selfrevelations of' men who—quite unsuspected by their been wondering what . God is and what does this world mean; this world that swings between atoms invisible, that contain electrons innumerable and stars that are beyond our scientific sight ? "I think, therefore I am!" That is the starting-point of even the common man, and whenever a man has begun to think, he has thought of the uni verse as either an absurdity of a reasonable entity. Its absurdities are obvious, and there come a few, such as Schopenhauer, who regard the world as absurd, and therefore without reasonable excuse.

But the majority of men—these common men of whom Sir Henry Wrixon imagines himself one—are on the other side. Thev- cannot accept their life in this world as a mere joke, or even as a tragedy, or as any kind of nlay between the earthquake and • the bug, between the comet and the sun. The common man thinks. Not only does he think that there must be some power corresponding to his own perception of order, but he wonders why he does not do the immoral things set before him; wonders at the "something-which is different from his animal nature, the obligation upon him, as if imposed by some superior Power, to do the true and just thing, and not to do the false and the base thing." The common man. . . well, let us put. his case as the man who wonders and ponders. He thinks of a life that seems chaotic. life finds, with, the Materialists, that a cause has an effect, and that an effect has a cause. The plunge of the motor-car into a child can be explained—materialistically. But how shall the common man explain—-in terms of religion —the unmerited death of the cliild; how shall he, explain the sin and suffering about us? You may know all about motor cars and the ways of children; yet _ why should the innocent cliild be sacrificed by the innocent car? Well, the common man demands some reasonable explanation of the life he has to live, and even the common man —much more Sir Henry Wrixon -is furious at the suggestion that t|ie world is not, finally reasonable. Not only reasonable, from the movements of the heavenly bodies to the doings of microbes; not only just but, even in spite of manifold appearances, good in its ultimate meaning. For the common man has the common instinct of humanity to look into his own soul; he knows that if he sins against such a light as is in him he suffers; not necessarily in pocket or in body, but in that indefinable portion of him which we call soul. And just as our common man refuses to believe that the world is absurd, he rejects the belief that it is unjust; for, seeing reason without and conscience within, he infers some corresponding intelligence above, about, and around hiin which is neither silly nor unjust . . . and that is the negative side of the common man's belief in God. But the common man lias never been satisfied with the negative. He has always, looking without and within, demanded an affirmative, a final explanation of a life that cannot be composed of injustice and absurdity, since he himself resents absurdity and. hates injustice. And so the common man comes to God. As Locke declared Jong ago. "Everyone that lintli a true idea of God and worship will assent to this proposition ' that God is to be worshipped.' "

And the common man has his belief in the ultimate reasonableness and Tightness of things. That is, he believes in God— having made God in Ins own image to the best of liis capacity. By various steps he comes to tlie belief, that he climbs by curious ways. Sir Henry Wrixon shows the scientific path, and its pitfalls and questionings. There are many others who climb and have climbed since the first intelligent being stretched out his hands and called upon—God. By ways of saints, apostles, martyrs, virgins, they have climbed; by way of fakics and mahdis; by way of any sect that called the man from the world of to-day into the world of always. And by many devious paths they lead the man to that peace of God that —in . a double sense —passetlx all understanding.