Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/104

92. the only rational ground of a faith in God is the irrefragable cosmic order of the universe. It is true that we have to give up the idea of a personal God, but is not a superpersonal God greater than the idol which we have made unto our own likeness?

The God of science is perhaps more in agreement with the biblical God than the God of dogmatic theology. The interpretations of biblical passages which are at present generally considered as orthodox are (merely from the standpoint of impartial exegetics) untenable. The first chapter of Genesis has not one word about special-creation acts. Neither the Elohim nor the Jahveh-Adonai account declares that in the beginning there had been Nothing. Both accounts (Gen. Chap. I. 1 to II. 3, and II. 3 et seqq.) agree that God "shaped" the world. The word barah (to shape, to form, to make) is nowhere used in the sense of creating out of nothing. The Psalmist says, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made," which was so interpreted in the New Testament that it meant "by the logos," and the gospel of St. John adds, i.e. and the word was God. Logos means rational speech or reason, and the world-reason through which the heavens were made can mean only the cosmic order of the universe. This idea of St. John's thought out to its ultimate conclusions means monism.

There is a common error that scientific progress is dangerous to religion. Scientific progress is dangerous to superstition only. Religion (i.e. true religion) is not based upon our ignorance, but upon our knowledge; it is not a child of the darkness but of the light, and faith far from being a mere belief, i.e. the imperfect knowledge of an opinion for which no proof is forthcoming, is applied knowledge, it is knowledge plus the confidence that this knowledge can be made the basis of ethics and the supreme rule for regulating our conduct in life. The history of religion has been and is still a constant purification of our religious ideas, and the crucible in which the religious ideas are purified is science. We are slowly but constantly progressing toward a high religious ideal and this ideal is a cosmical religion free from the pagan notions so severely criticised by Christ and yet so carefully preserved by the Christian churches. This