Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/113

Rh those of fallible men only? Does it furnish to the earnest and fearless seeker for moral truth an undeviating path to the object of his search? Is he not constantly invited to depart from his course on journeys through the pathless wastes of theological speculation, where each man thinks his diverging creed marks the true highway to heaven?

There are various reasons why the earnest seeker for truth who is without religious belief can not feel content with the Church as a teacher of moral duty. The energy, the time, the money which should be devoted to building up character, to a recognition of the duties of man to his fellow-man, to the relief of the afflicted, to an intelligent dealing with the great problems of this life—he sees devoted largely to building up, promulgating, or seeking excuse for dogmas and theories from which his intelligence revolts. With want and suffering appealing for relief, with ignorance demanding enlightenment, with a thousand duties at our doors which scarcely receive a passing notice, we are asked to follow these blind teachers of the blind away from the things of this world, and to enjoy with them their irrational conception of what is to us the unknown—perhaps the unknowable.

Of what value is a sermon on the duty and efficacy of prayer, to one who looks upon the question of the existence of a Divine Being as an insoluble problem? Of what use or benefit to him is a discourse on the nature of the Trinity, or the theory of the atonement?

The rationalist is compelled to look upon the books which make up the Bible as simply the work of fallible men, of varying degrees of intelligence, and representing the thought of widely differing periods of human development. To him, what is there of interest in attempts to reconcile their contradictions and inconsistencies—attempts to establish the untenable theory that they embody and set forth the plan and design of an all-wise Author of the universe?

If the rationalist would support and uphold the ethical school of the Church, he is in a measure also supporting and upholding theological ideas which are to him in the last degree unreasonable and improbable. His money pays misguided men for teaching the ignorant of earth that the all-foreseeing and merciful Author of all things would doom his creatures to suffer untold agony throughout eternity for the sins and mistakes of a short life, or for using the reason with which he has endowed them! Where one dollar goes to relieve want, or build up character, two go to build up church or creed. The relief of the widow and the fatherless is thought a matter of less importance than acquainting the heathen with the theological dogmas of the Christian Church.

Of course the church-going and church-supporting rationalist must expect to be continually reminded of the culpability of his unbelief, which, so far as he can judge, arises simply from an exercise of his reasoning faculties, and not from any wrongful intention. He becomes wearied and disheartened by the want of consideration shown for the