Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/102

90. will not be cast aside as a mere superstition of the Dark Ages, it will be purified and appear in a greater and sublimer, in a nobler, higher, and in a truer conception than ever before.

The idea of God is an historical heirloom of past ages. The religious man and the philosopher of all times have tried to put into it their highest, their best, their grandest, and their purest emotions as well as thoughts. And these thoughts were not meaningless, they were not mere fancies. They contained the quintessence of their conception concerning that feature of reality which has produced us as living, thinking, and aspiring beings, and which still prompts us to aspire to higher aims. The world which has produced other beings and ourselves, cannot be and is not a meaningless congeries of material particles in motion. It is a living cosmos. It is a grand harmonious universe pregnant with mind, and nothing in it is suffered to exist for any length of time but that which conforms to its laws; and that which conforms to its laws we call moral.

The idea of God, however, as it is commonly taught in our schools is full of pagan notions, and the very paganism of the present God-idea is often supposed to be its deepest and holiest meaning. No wonder that atheism increases with the progress of science! And why should not atheism increase, if it is truer than a superstitious theism? Atheism I believe will increase more and more until theism is cleansed of its pagan notions. But atheism will not come to stay, for atheism is a mere negative view and negations have no strength to live. They have power to criticise and they will serve as a leaven in the dough. Their purpose is the purification of the positive views. Negations will pass away as soon as their purpose is fulfilled.

The old pagan conception (now considered as orthodox) places God in the dark nooks and crevices of our knowledge. Wherever science fails and wherever our inquiring mind is entangled in problems which we cannot hope to solve, wherever the continuity of nature and of the order of nature is hidden from our intellectual sight, the so-called orthodox believer comes forth and declares: "This is a holy place. Here is the finger of God's special interference!" Consider what a degrading view of God this is! The place of