Life — October 13, 1921 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

OCTOBER 13, 1921 London Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. GIANT has been boss of the world, off and on, ever since it was made, but espe- cially and increasingly for the last sixty years. He has a strong head and body, made up of an assortment of metals, like the one that the Prophet Daniel told about, but his feet, like those of Daniel’s giant, are mud. He has stood up big and strong, and has been a powerful boss, though stupid, but the great war cracked his feet and he is slowly coming down. That giant is Materialism, He is busting while you wait. There are signs of it on all sides. An immense rising of disgust and impatience with him, and a general holding of the nose over his abominable consequences is going on. Mr. Bryan came out the other day with a blast at him in the New Era Magazine. The sin of this generation, Mr. Bryan said, is mind worship; evo- lutionists are leading their followers away from their Creator; they teach that man is the lineal descendant of the lower animals; materialism has so para- lyzed their mental machinery that they cannot comprehend spiritual things. It is time, he averred, that the Christians of the country should understand the ravages that the groundless hypothesis of Darwin is making, and he suggested that those who preach and teach be called upon to announce their views so that their positions may be clearly un- derstood, and, that only Christians should be permitted to teach in Chris- tian schools and colleges. Mr. Bryan’s idea of what the trouble is is more or less right, but his idea of a remedy seems to us to be faulty. Darwin was a devoted searcher for truth and he found a good deal. What “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 598 Madison Avenue, New York he found made a great disturbance be- cause it did not match some of the ideas that people of his time had derived from the Bible, but that was not his fault, though it seemed to be. But out of his inquiries and investigations there did come to prevail a supposition that the universe ran itself; that there was nothing to it but matter and that matter worked out on its own hook in different forms and progressed with variations according to climate and the changes in the earth and other material things. So it happened that the minds of the scientists became so fixed on Processes as to lose sight of the in- visible energy that is and was behind them all. The result was very troubled times to religion, and that condition which makes Mr. Bryan say that “the sin of this generation is mind worship.” Cra HE human mind is a fallible in- strument, but it is the chief instru- ment we have for sorting truth from er- ror. We have to do the best we can with it; find out all we can, live as far as possible in accordance with what we find out and bear the consequences of our errors with such fortitude as we may. There is no real conflict between dif- ferent kinds of truth. All the seekers for truth—the Christian and the non- Christian—have got to work together and there is no good reason why they should not teach together.. A fair field and no favor is all that truth ought to ask for, and no particular phase or line of truth ought to be fenced off from the rest nor any one hindered from finding out what he can about the laws and processes of nature and telling about it. It took centuries of bitter experience to win for Darwin the chance to put Vol. 78. No. 2032 out information that seemed not to square with the Bible. He did it and the benefit of the discussion of the last sixty years seems now to be coming along. The scientists begin to go back on the idea that the world runs itself. Dr. Baskerville complained the other day that chemistry was not spiritual enough. What he must have meant was—that there was not in it a sufii- cient sense of the great creative power that is behind all combinations. If one reads the papers he keeps coming across signs of the same conclusion in other scientists. A professor of the Univer- sity of Minnesota came out with a piece the other day in which he disclosed the opinion that the processes of evolution would not work without a directing force behind them, That was a good deal like saying that a motor car would not run without gasoline, but it was a pleasant novelty as coming from a sci- enitist, for the scientists have really been extraordinarily stupid about some things, and in their extreme care to avoid being fooled and their extreme distrust of everything that could not be tested by the senses, have missed a whole department of indispensable truth. DOCTOR well versed in science was asked the other day what he thought of the state of affairs, “The trouble with our world,” he said, “is too many Fatty Arbuckles; too many peo- ple swamped with money beyond their capacity to carry it; too much wealth— too much knowledge—too much power over material things for the spiritual capacity of the present generation of man to handle.” And he was discour- aged about the outlook. His idea of improvement in the world seemed to be comicbooks.com