"WITHOUT
faith it is impossible to please God,” and without faith it is impossible for
you to become great. The distinguishing characteristic of all really great men
and women is an unwavering faith. We see this in Lincoln during the dark days
of the war; we see it in Washington at Valley Forge; we see it in Livingstone,
the crippled missionary, threading the mazes of the dark continent, his soul
aflame with the determination to let in the light upon the accursed slave
trade, which his soul abhorred; we see it in Luther, and in Frances Willard, in
every man and woman who has attained a place on the muster roll of the great
ones of the world. Faith-not a faith in one’s self or in one s own powers but
faith in principle; in the Something Great which upholds right, and which may
be relied upon to give us the victory in due time. Without this faith it is not
possible for anyone to rise to real greatness. The man who has no faith in
principle will always be a small man.
Whether
you have this faith or not depends upon your point of view. You must learn to
see the world as being produced by evolution, as a something that is evolving
and becoming, not as a finished work. Millions of years ago God worked with
very low and crude forms of life, low and crude, yet each perfect after its
kind. Higher and more complex organisms, animal and vegetable, appeared through
the successive ages; the earth passed through stage after stage in its
unfolding, each stage perfect in itself, and to be succeeded by a higher one.
What I
wish you to note is that the so-called “lower organisms” are as perfect after
their kind as the higher ones; that the world in the Eocene period was perfect for
that period; it was perfect, but God’s work was not finished. This is true of
the world today. Physically, socially, and industrially it is all good, and it
is all perfect. It is not complete anywhere or in any part, but so far as the
handiwork of God has gone it is perfect.
THIS MUST
BE YOUR POINT OF VIEW: THAT THE WORLD AND ALL IT CONTAINS IS PERFECT, THOUGH
NOT COMPLETED.
“All’s
right with the world.” That is the great fact. There is nothing wrong with
anything; there is nothing wrong with anybody.
All the
facts of life you must contemplate from this standpoint.
There is
nothing wrong with nature. Nature is a great advancing presence working
beneficently for the happiness of all. All things in Nature are good; she has
no evil. She is not completed; for creation is still unfinished, but she is
going on to give to man even more bountifully than she has given to him in the
past. Nature is a partial expression of God, and God is love. She is perfect
but not complete.
So it is
of human society and government. What though there are trusts and combinations
of capital and strikes and lockouts and so on. All these things are part of the
forward movement; they are incidental to the evolutionary process of completing
society. When it is complete there will be harmony; but it cannot be completed
without them. J. P. Morgan is as necessary to the coming social order as the
strange animals of the age of reptiles were to the life of the succeeding
period, and just as these animals were perfect after their kind, so Morgan is
perfect after his kind.
Behold it
is all very good. See government, and industry as being perfect now, and as
advancing rapidly toward being complete; then you will understand that there is
nothing to fear, no cause for anxiety, nothing to worry about. Never complain
of any of these things. They are perfect; this is the very best possible world
for the stage of development man has reached.
This will
sound like rank folly to many, perhaps to most people. “What!” they will say,
“are not child labor and the exploitation of men and women in filthy and
unsanitary factories evil things? Aren’t saloons evil? Do you mean to say that
we shall accept all these and call them good?”
Child
labor and similar things are no more evil than the way of living and the habits
and practices of the cave dweller were evil. His ways were those of the savage
stage of man’s growth, and for that stage they were perfect. Our Industrial
practices are those of the savage stage of industrial development, and they are
also perfect.
Nothing
better is possible until we cease to be mental savages in industry and
business, and become men and women. This can only come about by the rise of the
whole race to a higher viewpoint. And this can only come about by the rise of
such individuals here and there as are ready for the higher viewpoint. The cure
for all this inharmoniousness lies not with the masters or employers but with
the workers themselves.
Whenever
they reach a higher viewpoint, whenever they shall desire to do so, they can establish
complete brotherhood and harmony in Industry; they have the numbers and the
power. They are getting now what they desire. Whenever they desire more in the
way of a higher, purer, more harmonious life, they will receive more. True,
they want more now, but they only want more of the things that make for animal
enjoyment, and so industry remains in the savage, brutal, animal stage; when
the workers begin to rise to the mental plane of living and ask for more of the
things that make for the life of the mind and soul, industry will at once be
raised above the plane of savagery and brutality. But it is perfect now upon
its plane, behold, in fact it is all very good.
So it is
true of saloons and dens of vice. If the majority of the people desire these
things, it is right and necessary that they should have them. When the majority
desires a world without such discords, they will create such a world. So long
as men and women are on the plane of bestial thought, so long the social order
will be in part disorder, and will show bestial manifestations. The people make
society what it is, and as the people rise above the bestial thought, society
will rise above the beastly in its manifestations. But a society which thinks
in a bestial way must have saloons and dives; it is perfect after its kind, as
the world was in the Eocene period, and very good.
All this
does not prevent you from working for better things.
You can
work to complete an unfinished society, instead of to renovate a decaying one;
and you can work with a better heart and a more hopeful spirit. It will make an
immense difference with your faith and spirit whether you look upon
civilization as a good thing that is becoming better or as a bad and evil thing
that is decaying. One viewpoint gives you an advancing and expanding mind and
the other gives you a descending and decreasing mind.
One
viewpoint will make you grow greater and the other will inevitably cause you to
grow smaller. One will enable you to work for the eternal things; to do large
works in a great way toward the completing of all that is incomplete and
inharmonious; and the other will make you a mere patchwork reformer, working
almost without hope to save a few lost souls from what you will grow to
consider a lost and doomed world.