The Collapse of the Faith [pp. 164-184]

THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH.
methods of inference or any of the old grounds of belief. The
new universe of modern science has indeed become immensely
expanded to man's certain insight and been made immeasurably more impressive to his instructed and quickened imagination. Its spaces stretch out in every direction before the
eye in immeasurable tracts which the imagination falters in its
attempts to traverse. But the instructed eye finds in these most
distant provinces examples of order, beauty, and goodness as
brilliant and overwhelming as in those which are near. New
agents have been discovered in the far and the near, the products and actings of which have made science familiar even to
uninstructed minds as the minister and magician of art.
It would seem at first that these brilliant discoveries, these
verified facts, and these determined laws would have made the
old theory of a self-existent, creating, and loving Intelligence
more necessary and more acceptable to the scientific intellect.
At the least, we might conclude that the logic of atheism could
find no advantage in modern science above the logic of theism.
Such at least is the judgment of the unsophisticated intellect
when first confronted with the facts and relations which science
reveals.
It becomes therefore a question of more than curious interest, by what processes of intellectual legerdemain has the new
atheism become so plausible, and by what subtle transitions
of thought have the atheistic and agnostic theories so largely
taken possession of the Zeit-Geist of the present generation.
The strength of these theories and the likelihood of their endurance may be estimated by a brief review of their history,
involving as it must a critical judgment of the logical value of
the steps in the process by which they have grown into such
gigantic proportions and been applied to such appalling conclusions.
The least informed of the students of science is not ignorant that the so-called galvanic force, originally a product of the
subtle chemistry which was almost unknown in I770, has enabled us to excite and regulate in various ways that molecular
action of which we so glibly speak, but which we very imperfectly understand. We have gone so far, at least, that we can
talk by threads of metal beneath and athwart the sky. We
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