"Doubtless. As have been many of the world"s most earnest searchers.
Yet he enunciated much truth, which we to-day are acknowledging. But, to resume, since Christianity as we know it is based upon the personality of a man, Jesus, we ask: Can the historicity of Jesus be established?"
"What! Do you mean: did he ever live?" queried Miss Wall in greater surprise than before.
"Yes. And if so, is he correctly reported in what we call the Gospels?
Then, did he reveal the truth to his followers? And, lastly, has that truth been correctly transmitted to us?"
"And," added Hitt, "there is still the question: a.s.suming that he gave us the truth, can we apply it successfully to the meeting of our daily needs?"
"The point is well taken," replied Father Waite. "For, though I may know that there are very abstruse mathematical principles, yet I may be utterly unable to demonstrate or use them. But now," he went on, "we are brought to other vital questions concerning us. They are, I think, points to which the theologian has given but scant thought. If we conclude that there is a G.o.d, we are confronted with the material universe and man. Did He create them? And what are their natures and import?"
"Well!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Haynerd. "Seems to me you"ve cut out a large a.s.signment for this little party. Those are questions that the world has played football with for thousands of years. Do you think we can settle them in a few evenings" study? I think I"ll be excused!"
"No! We can"t spare you," laughed Father Waite. Then he glanced at Carmen, who had sat quiet, apparently unhearing, during the remarks.
"I think you will hear things soon that will set you thinking," he said. "But now we are going to let our traveled friend, Mr. Hitt, give us just a word in summation of his thought regarding the modern world and its att.i.tude toward the questions which we have been propounding."
The explorer leaned back in his chair and a.s.sumed his customary att.i.tude when in deep thought. All eyes turned upon him in eager expectation.
"The world," he began reflectively, "presents to me to-day the most interesting aspect it has a.s.sumed since history began. True, the age is one of great mental confusion. Quite as true, startling discoveries and astounding inventions have so upset our staid old mediaeval views that the world is hurriedly crowding them out, together with its G.o.d.
Doctrines for which our fathers bled and burned are to-day lightly tossed upon the ash heap. The searchlight is turned never so mercilessly upon the founder of the Christian religion, and upon the ma.n.u.scripts which relate his words and deeds. Yet most of us have grown so busy--I often wonder with what--that we have no time for that which can not be grasped as we run. We work desperately by day, building up the grandest material fabric the world has ever seen; and at night we repair the machine for the next day"s run. Even our college professors bewail the lack of time for solid reading and research. And if our young pursue studies, it is with the almost exclusive thought of education as a means of earning a material livelihood later, and, if possible, rearing a mansion and stocking its larder and garage. It is, I repeat, a grandly materialistic age, wherein, to the casual observer, spirituality is at a very low ebb."
He thrust his long legs under the table and cast his eyes upward to the ceiling as he resumed:
"The modern world is still in its spiritual infancy, and does not often speak the name of G.o.d. Not that we are so much irreverent as that we feel no special need of Him in our daily pursuits. Since we ceased to tremble at the thunders of Sinai, and their lingering echoes in bulls and heresy condemnations, we find that we get along just as well--indeed, much better. And it really is quite bad form now to speak continually of G.o.d, or to refer to Him as anything real and vital. To be on such terms of intimacy with Him as this girl Carmen is--in thought, at least--would be regarded to-day as evidence of sentimentalism and weakness."
He paused again, to marshal his thought and give his auditors an opportunity for comment. Then, as the silence remained unbroken, he continued:
"Viewing the world from one standpoint, it has achieved remarkable success in applying the knout to superst.i.tion and limitation. But, like a too energetic housekeeper, it has swept out much that is essential with the _debris_. When spirituality ceases to be real or vital to a people, then a grave danger threatens them. Materiality has never proved a blessing, as history shows. Life that is made up of strain and ceaseless worry is not life. The incessant acc.u.mulation of material wealth, when we do not know how really to enjoy it, is folly.
To pamper the flesh, to the complete ignoring of the spirit, is suicide. The increased hankering after physical excitements and animal pleasures, to the utter abandonment of the search for that which is real and satisfying, is an exhibition of gross, mesmeric stupidity, to say the least. It shows that our sense of life is awry."
"But the world is surely attempting its own betterment," protested Haynerd.
"I grant you that," replied Hitt. "But legislation and coercion are the wrong means to employ. They restrain, but they do not cure. They are only narcotics."
"Oh, well, you are not going to change the race until the individual himself changes."
"Have I disputed that?" said Hitt. "Quite the contrary, that is the pith of my observations. Reform is a hearthside affair. And no sane man will maintain that general reform can ever come until the individual"s needs are met--his daily, hourly, worldly needs."
"I think I get your point," said Father Waite. "It is wholly a question of man"s concept of the cause of things, himself included, and their purpose and end, is it not?"
"Quite so," replied Hitt. "The restless spirit of the modern world is hourly voicing its discontent with a faltering faith which has no other basis than blind belief. It wants demonstrable fact upon which to build. In plain words, _mankind would be better if they but knew how_!"
"Well, we show them how," a.s.serted Haynerd. "But they don"t do as we tell "em."
"Are you quite sure that you show them how?" asked Hitt. "What do you ever do toward showing them how permanently to eradicate a single human difficulty?"
"Oh, well, putting it that way, nothing, of course."
"Quite so, my friend. The relief we afford is but temporary. And so the world continues to wait for surcease from woe in a life beyond the grave. But now, returning to our survey, let me say that amid all the folly of vain pursuits, of wars and strife, of doleful living and pitiable dying, there are more encouraging and hopeful signs hung out to the inquiring thought to-day than ever before in history. If I misread not, we are already entered upon changes so tremendous that their end must be the revolutionizing of thought and conduct, and hence of life. Our present age is one of great extremes: though we touch the depths, we are aiming likewise at the heights. I doubt if there ever was a time when so many sensed the nothingness of the pleasures of the flesh. I doubt if ever there was such a quickening of the business conscience, and such a determined desire to introduce honesty and purity into our dealings with one another. Never was the need of religion more keenly felt by the world than it is to-day; and that is why mankind are willing to accept any religious belief, however eccentric, that comes in the guise of truth and bearing the promise of surcease from sin, sickness, and sorrow here this side of the grave. The world was never so hungry for religious truth; and this fact is a perpetual challenge to the Church. There is a tremendous world-yearning to know and to do better. And what is its cause? I answer, a growing appreciation of the idea that "the kingdom of harmony is within you.""
"Jesus said that," murmured Carmen, looking up.
"He but amplified and gave form to the great fact that there was an influence for better things always existent in the ancient Jews, that "something not ourselves," if you will, "that makes for righteousness." And he showed that that influence could be outwardly externalized in freedom from the ills which beset humanity."
"Very good," put in Haynerd. "And then, what?"
"That "something not ourselves" is the germ of the true idea of G.o.d,"
answered Hitt.
"Which makes G.o.d--?"
"Wholly mental."
"Spirit?"
"Mind," offered Carmen.
"The terms are synonymous," said Hitt. "And now let me conclude with a final observation. Mankind"s beliefs are in a whirl. Ecclesiasticism is dying. Orthodoxy and conservatism are hanging desperately to the world"s flying skirts, but they will eventually drop off. No change in thought has been greater than that concerning G.o.d. The absentee Lord who started the universe and then withdrew has gone to the sc.r.a.p heap, with the ridiculous views of predestination and infant d.a.m.nation. The idea of a G.o.d who at divers times interfered with His creation and temporarily set aside His own laws to convince puny man of His greatness, is likewise obsolescent. The world is slowly growing into a conception of a creator, of some kind, but at least mental, and universally present. Nay, more, available for all our problems and needs. And the end will be the adoption of that conception, enlarged and purified still further, and taken into the minutest affairs of our daily life--as this girl has done. The day of patient suffering in this world, under the spell of a promise of compensating reward in the heavenly future, has all but pa.s.sed. We are gradually becoming conscious of the stupendous fact that the kingdom of all harmony, immortality, and good, is _right here within us_--and therefore can be naught but a consciousness of absolute good, perfectly attainable by humanity as the "old man" of Paul is laid off, but not gained, necessarily, through what we call death."
The silence which followed was broken at length by Miss Wall. "And what const.i.tutes the "old man"?" she asked.
"Largely, I think," said Hitt, "the belief that matter is real."
"What?" exclaimed Haynerd, almost rising from his chair. "Matter, real?"
Hitt laughed. "I stand on my statement," he replied.
Father Waite rose slowly, as if lost in thought. "History shows," he said, meditatively, "that man"s progress has been proportionate to his freedom from the limitation of ignorance and undemonstrable belief.
And that freedom has come as man"s concept of G.o.d has grown less and less material, and more and more spiritual. From the animal nature of the savage, to whom all is matter, down--or up--to the man of to-day, to whom mind is a.s.suming ever greater ascendency, man"s progress has been marked by a throwing off of limiting beliefs, theological or other, in material power and substance. The development of the least material forces, steam, electricity, the X-ray, has come only as the human mind has thrown off a portion of its hampering material beliefs.
I am astounded when I think of it, and of its marvelous message to future generations! For, from the premise that the creator of all things is spirit, or mind, as you will, comes the corollary that the creation itself must of necessity be _mental_. And from this come such deductions as fairly make me tremble. Carmen has told me of the deductions which her tutor, the priest Jose, drew from the single premise that the universe is infinite in extent--a premise which I think we all will accept."
"There can be no question about it," said Hitt, nodding his head.
"Well," continued Father Waite, "that granted, we must likewise grant its creator to be infinite, must we not?"
"Certainly."
"And that puts the creator out of the matter-cla.s.s entirely. The creator must be--"
"Mind," said Carmen, supplying the thought ever-present with her.
"I see no other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect in every part."
"Perhaps it is already disintegrating, and that"s what causes the evil in the world," hazarded Haynerd.
"Utterly untenable, my friend," put in Hitt. "For, granted an infinite mind, we must grant the concomitant fact that such a mind is of very necessity omnipotent, as well as perfect. What, then, could ever cause disintegration in it?"
"You are right," resumed Father Waite. "And such a mind, of very necessity perfect, omnipotent, and, of course, ever-present, must likewise be eternal. For there would be nothing to contest its existence. Age, decay, and death would be unknown to it. And so would evil."