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

THE PRINCETONZ RE VIE W.
audacity by the secret conviction that moral truth in the longrun can never suffer from any assault of science. Accordingly
not a few reasoners who pride themselves on the rigor of their
logic and the sharpness of their analysis take refuge from their
own deductions in some convenient shelter of faith or feeling.
They would fain save their faith in duty from the scientific
assaults which they themselves make upon its supremacy, by
some special Te Deum of sentimental worship in their private
chapel of common humanity or common sense. We do not
defend the reasonableness of this divided allegiance. We
simply notice the fact as explaining how faith in duty can be
made to survive the destructive influence of the most dangerous
theories, and why active religious convictions seem to be able to
exist in some minds along with an anti-religious philosophy.
We are forced to adopt some such theory in order to explain
some of the strange incongruities of our times. In this speculative age many believe more earnestly in duty and in goodness
than their theories provide for, and seem to hold their shallow
and destructive ethics more as exercises for scientific ingenuity
than with the spirit of martyr-like or even of manly conviction.
The negative theories of morals which are so zealously defended
would be more dangerous were the disbelief more positive and
earnest. Scientific frivolity, however, is a poor excuse, and yet
it may be the best excuse which can be given for the unbelieving and destructive ethics of the day.
We are arrested at this point by the wide reach of the discussion which we have undertaken. The questions which we
have considered thus far relate to the metaphysical and ethical
foundations of faith and are necessarily speculative. Those
which remain concern its object matter and are in their nature
popular.
NOAH PORTER.
184