Philosophical Results of Denial of Miracles [pp. 85-94]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW.
philosophy, and badly despoiled of religion, still save the greater
share of our fortunes. True, our theories do not subvert the facts,
and it is a blessed thing to be alone with the world if we can
only fairly well understand it. Yet, certainly, it is rather a lame
conclusion of speculation to say we will now be as tho we had not
speculated, and take things as we find them. It is quite sure,
also, that after a misleading inquiry we shall not all of us find
things as they are; that conduct will have sunk very far in the
range of its motives, and that righteousness, instead of being a
grand adjustment of life with life in the invisible, spiritual universe, will be a much more straitened adjustment of actions
with actions in a world just at hand. This ought ye to have
done, and not to have left the other undone. We are willing
to tithe mint, anise, and cumin, but we are not willing to make
this tithing our entire faith. We are willing to construct conduct by a rule, but we are not willing to lose the inspiration of
the rule. When we are through, we would not have art, but
life; not marble, but flesh.
Having weighed our losses by this retreat from the supernatural, and inquired into the tenable character of the position
we should be compelled slowly to assume, let us glance from the
altitude of the height we still occupy at our present intellectual
and spiritual defences. We remark as our first possession that
of thought, thought as a living, veritable activity, as a spiritual
efficiency fully competent under its own law to its own results.
This faith in thought, like that in consciousness, is involved in
the very fact of thinking. It is a felo-de-se to deny it. On this
condition alone, that thought is free to pursue the truth, does
thought remain thought; on this condition alone is it worth
anything as thought. Grant this or go no farther is the intellectual demand made upon us. But thought that is spontaneous and self-sufficing at once makes way for liberty, and the
two begin to subject the world and hold it in leash. Things
and physical forces have found a limit, and, in reference to
them, mind becomes a comprehending and a comprehensive
agency. With this conception we now go forth to the universe,
and a regnant, spiritual life in it is no longer alien, painful, unverifiable, but familiar, certain, the very substance of truth.
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