Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/166

152 argumentative force, it proceeds upon the theory that if two things be compared, a matter in question with a matter about which there can be no question, and the former be found to agree in its rationale with the latter, the presumption is that it is true as the latter is true. But this mode of reasoning is of no value in religious matters, because here we shape the unknown from our knowledge of the known, and the agreement between the two is already assured. The world of myth and fable bears a resemblance more or less striking to the real world, but does that afford any ground for our accepting the myths and fables as actual facts and occurrences?

Suppose the doctrine of Christian conversion, as expounded by Paul, is found, to agree with certain well-known and universal facts of human life, does that prove the doctrine to be true? Or does it prove that Paul predicated his doctrine upon the knowledge of these facts? Milton's rebellious angels in their warfare against the hosts of heaven may not violate one rule of good English military tactics, but that fact would hardly be counted sufficient evidence for our accepting the rebellion as an actual historical event. Indeed, when our theological friends ask us to accept their dogmas on the ground that they are no more unreasonble or inexplicable than many things which we do believe, and which all the world believes, they usually make the mistake of expecting us to award the same weight to the argument from analogy that we do to proof from experience.

That a thing is mysterious or inexplicable affords no grounds for our refusing to credit it. We can not explain the simplest facts of our lives; we are embosomed in mystery. We do not know how our food nourishes us, or how our sleep refreshes us, yet we know that they do nourish and refresh us, and that is enough. What a mystery that an ugly worm should become a gorgeous butterfly, or that from a little insensate egg should come a bird with all its powers of flight and song! How wonderful and inexplicable are the commonest facts and occurrences about us! Yet we know that things do turn out thus and thus and not otherwise, and we know it not from reason but by experience. We know that a man may survive the amputation of his arms and legs, but do we know that he can survive the amputation of his head? A tree or a cabbage survives the amputation of its head; the stump will sprout again, why not a man? It is not a matter of reason, I say again, but of experience. When the doctrine of the Trinity can be confirmed by the same test, then it will be just as easy to believe it true as it is that water flows or is solid according to the temperature. The difficulty with the theologians is that, while they so often appeal to our experience in establishing their premises, they at once go beyond our experience in drawing their conclusions.

The analogy upon which Professor Drummond builds so confidently will be found comforting and reassuring to those who are already of his creed, but to the disinterested inquirer, determined to