For the Sabbath

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 12 (Supplement)

For the Sabbath

CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE. How happy he is born and taught, That serveth not another's will; Whose armour is his honest thought And simple truth his utmost skill; Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied unto the world by care Of public fame or private breath; Who envies none that chance , doth raise, Nor vice; hath never understood How deepest wounds are given by praise ; Nor rules of state, but rules of good; Who hath his life from rumours freed; Whose conscience in his strong retreat ; Whose state can neither flatterers feed, Nor ruin make aocusers great; Who God doth late and early pray, More of His grace than gifts to lend, And entertains the harmless day With a well-chosen book or friend; —This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet hath all. ■Sir H. Wotton. j , FACT AND THEORY. NATURE AND ILLUSION. It is allowed by every one that religious experience must have an object, though the object may frequently be different from that to which the experience is attributed. As is well known, some psychologists deny that it is founded on any reality, but comes from what men suppose ought to be, or what they think they know to be, true. Our notions of God and the spiritual world, it is declared, are based not on facts, but on our fears and hopes, or on our imagination. Those who take up this position attribute religion cither to illusion or hallucination. Illusion is based on something that exists but is misunderstood, while hallucination depends on the creation of disordered minds and has no reality at all. Illusion comes from attributing experience to the wrong source. Hallucination has no origin outside its victim. To suppose that movement is taking place in an object at which we are looking, when as a matter of fact the movement is made either by ourselves or the vehicle in which we are being carried, is an illusion. To create and accept an idea or belief which corresponds to nothing real and has no objective existence is an hallucination. Obviously religion traced to either of these two sources can have little worth. ~ . .. Attributing all religious ideas to the succestion of others or to auto-sug-gestion, it is asserted that religion has no reference to spiritual reality. Thus it is declared — ~,.,,„„ Theological a.nd metaphysical ideas, it seems are not reasoned attempts at 'exploring facts, nor do they originate iu directed thinking at all, but with or without some basis in legend, which is detorted history, are simply the dream-thinking of the herd. To such as accept this account of religion there can be no real meaning either in Christianity's creed or in its standards of conduct. When, foi Stance, they deal with the belief m the resurrection of Christ they regard it as arising from the psychological condition of the Aposlles, who, though honest men, were the victims of their own conception of what ought to have taken place, but which, as a matter of fact, had no historical foundation. The sepulchre may or may not have been empty early on that Sunday morning, but the notion that He who had ben placed in it had risen from the, dead was due to the fantasy of His disciples. The resurrection narratives have, no foundation in facts outside the consciousness of their originators. These men and women only tell us what they thought they saw. not what really look place.

YYe may he ready to admit that illusion may have its influence in the religion of most men. Kven when our faith is baser! on reality and on sound historical evidence we may mistake its significance, or apprehend if only partially, or associate it with ideas which have, little relation to truth. Yel this dues not. imply that then) is no basis of fact, on which faith depends. We need to he. reminded that after all psychology dons not sellle historical problems. It can Qnd no aus.wer on it.-> own pre-

mises to such questions as, Did such a Person as is described in the Gospels live in the first century? Did He do and teach what, is reported by the Apostles? Was He crucified, and did Ho rise from the dead? These deal with facts of history, and as such lie outside the province of psychology. They must he accepted or rejected in the light of reason at work on historical evidence.

Christianity makes its final appeal to facts, but they are facts concerned not only with the realities of nature, but also with the realities of the spirit. Pacts of both orders are equally real, and in our desire to establish one wo may not deny the other. Historical evidence is offered to show that a certain life was lived and ' certain events took place at a particular period of our history. Plainly that evidence must he tested by the methods common to historical inquiry. There is also evidence of facts of "a spiritual order which, though they cannot be separated from the facts of history, are no less real, yet they arc accepted only by those who employ those spiritual faculties which can recognise and apprehend their significance in experience. "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of find: for they are foolishness unto him: and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Fact and theory can never be entirely separated. If Christian apologists had always remembered this they would have avoided much confusion, and the teaching of the Church would haVe been saved from much obscurity and error. "There is no such thing conceivable as a fact of which there is no theory, or even of a fact of which we have no theory: such a thing could never enter our world at all." And the facts on which faith is founded must necessarily come under this law. To put it in another way, fact and value are inseparable in experience. We allow that what we see and make of the facts depends on the psychological conditions of each man who deals with them. Men do not make the facts, but they shape the theory. The latter is therefore subject to all the errors to which the human mind is exposed. This is inevitable, and a thoughtful man will be aware of it, but he has a remedy against error which -wisdom bids him use diligently in the test of daily experience. Sooner or later illusion or hallucination is dispersed in the rough handling of life, and it is unlikely to continue long when it is tested by men of widely different traditions and moral training. He who would reach the facts and know the truth which they express must be anxious to place them in the crucible of daily experience and compare what he finds with what others also find to be their significance. We see how this has worked in human life. The facts of the Gospel have been accepted by myriads who, as a result of their faith's venture, have found them to be living and, powerful. But this is not all. This faith has been bitterly assailed and its adherents have been alternately persecuted and cajoled but it still persists. Not with frail hope in an attractive hypothesis, but with the conviction of a great experience, men have come to a knowledge of truth which they can no more deny than they can deny the reality of "their own existence, and that conviction has inspired our manhood to its noblest work. Illusion cannot be the source of what is most potent for truth, goodness, and moral beauty in human life.