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

THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH.
romantic reliance on the most improbable hypotheses. In this
way the sense of obligation to logical coherence may become
gradually relaxed, the judgment concerning the true and the
real be enervated, and the universe of tremendous fact be transformed into any unreal phantasmagoria of speculation which
may illustrate or confirm some newly broached imaginative
theory. Faith in moral and religious truth, on the other hand,
tho intellectual in its activity and its grounds, is in its very
essence intensely realistic and practical. It is not necessarily
carefully adjusted even by men of high intellectual culture to
their scientific or philosophical theories, and hence it is not
always helped or hindered by either so seriously as would seem
to be inevitable. The fact is certainly unquestioned that orthodox and even ultra-orthodox Christian believers not infrequently
accept a theory of the universe which is utterly atheistic or
agnostic, or a doctrine of man that is hopelessly materialistic,
with little or no interruption to a fervent Christian experience.
II. This distinction between the logical and practical faiths of
men forces itself upon our attention as we proceed to our next
topic and inquire what we ought to think of the ethical theories
and tendencies of our times. That many of these theories are
eminently dangerous and destructive no man can possibly deny.
Viewed from a purely logical stand-point, nothing seems more
clear than that every theory of ethics which is derived from
materialistic evolutionism must deprive moral obligation of its
permanence and sacredness. The utmost that any can do is to
enforce the most sacred duties of life, by associations which are
confessed to be factitious in so far as they are creatures of social
forces. Every such theory must resolve the authority of duty
itself into the right of the strongest to compel by the bayonet
when directed by science and wisdom, or by the shouts and jeers
of an ignorant and brutal mob. It finds the original rudiments
,of conscience in the dread of the war-club and the bludgeon.
" The imperious word ought," says Mr. Charles Darwin, " seems
merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a persistent instinct either innate or partly acquired." A matured
and cultured conscience is only that inextricable web of associations which society weaves about every one of its members for
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