c sacrifice. This is a world view which asks of men a
valorous and expensive service for which it cannot supply the driving
power. Yet many of our universities are presenting just that outlook
upon life to our young men and women. The youth are being urged to
fight courageously and sacrificially for righteousness upon the earth,
and at the same time they are presented with a view of the background
and destiny of human life similar to that which Schopenhauer expressed:
"Truly optimism cuts so sorry a figure in this theatre of sin,
suffering, and death that we should have to regard it as a piece of
sarcasm, if Hume had not explained its origin--insincere flattery of
God in the arrogant expectation of gain." [5]
What this generation, which so disparages religion and like the ancient
Sadducee calls its good right arm its god, will ultimately discover is
that the fight for righteousness in character and in society is a long
and arduous campaign. The Bible says that a thousand years in God's
sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the
night. It certainly seems that way. It is a long and roundabout
journey to the Promised Land. Generations die and fall by the way.
The road is white with the bones of pilgrims who attained not the
promises but saw them and greeted them from afar. Some Giordano Bruno,
who gives himself to the achievement of mankind's high aims, is burned
at the stake; centuries pass and on the very spot where he was martyred
a monument is built with this inscription on it: "Raised to Giordano
Bruno by the generation which he foresaw." This is exhilarating when
the story is finished, but in the meantime it is hard work being
Giordano Bruno and sacrificially labouring for a cause which you care
enough for and believe enough in and are sure enough about so that you
will die for it. When such faith and hope and sacrifice are demanded
one cannot get them by exhortation, by waving a wand of words to
conjure his enthusiasm up. Nothing will do but a world-view adequate
to supply motives for the service it demands. Nothing will do but
religion.
One wonders why the preachers do not feel this more and so recover
their consciousness of an indispensable mission. One wonders that the
churches can be so timid and dull and negative, that our sermons can be
so pallid and inconsequential. One wonders why in the pulpit we have
so many flutes and so few trumpets. For here is a world with the
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