h is not there, but turn rather to other
horizons and to surer hopes. Do not waste life clinging to
ecclesiastical dogmas which represent no eternal verities, but search
elsewhere for truth which may haply be found. What should we think of
the man who persistently repulsed the persuasion that two and two make
four from the ardent desire to believe that two and two make five? Whose
fault is it that two and two do make four and not five? Whose folly is
it that it should be more agreeable to think that two and two make five
than to know that they only make four? This folly is theirs who
represent the value of life as dependent on the reality of special
illusions, which they have religiously adopted. To discover that a
former belief is unfounded is to change nothing of the realities of
existence. The sun will descend as it passes the meridian whether we
believe it to be noon or not. It is idle and foolish, if human, to
repine because the truth is not precisely what we thought it, and at
least we shall not change reality by childishly clinging to a dream.

The argument so often employed by theologians that Divine Revelation is
necessary for man, and that certain views contained in that Revelation
are required by our moral consciousness, is purely imaginary and derived
from the Revelation which it seeks to maintain. The only thing
absolutely necessary for man is Truth; and to that, and that alone, must
our moral consciousness adapt itself. Reason and experience forbid the
expectation that we can acquire any knowledge otherwise than through
natural channels. We might as well expect to be supernaturally nourished
as supernaturally informed. To complain that we do not know all that we
desire to know is foolish and unreasonable. It is tantamount to
complaining that the mind of man is not differently constituted. To
attain the full altitude of the Knowable, whatever that may be, should
be our earnest aim, and more than this is not for humanity. We may be
certain that information which is beyond the ultimate reach of Reason is
as unnecessary as it is inaccessible. Man may know all that man requires
to know.

We gain more than we lose by awaking to find that our Theology is human
invention and our eschatology an unhealthy dream. We are freed from the
incubus of base Hebrew mythology, and from doctrines of Divine
government which outrage morality and set cruelty and injustice in the
place of holiness. If we have to abandon cherished