The Dominion. SATURDAY. APRIL 6, 1912. EASTER AND IDEALS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1407, 6 April 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY. APRIL 6, 1912. EASTER AND IDEALS.

The great festivals of the Christian Church, such as Easter and Christmas, in, addition to their special significance for those who observe them from the purely religious point of view, havo a wider and more general usefulness aa periodical reminders to all sorts and conditions of men that a human being is something' moro than a mere speck in space and moment in time, or an infinitesimal part in a tremendous cosmic machine. They emphasise the reality of those spiritual ideals without which life would be a very poor and oppressive thing. In our best momeuts wo all must feel that it ia a, true note which Pkofessok TnirxY, a distinguished American thinker, strikes when he declares that "what we particularly need is an abiding faith in ideals—in spiritual ideals; for mere material progress is not worth fighting for except as a mnans lo something better. If all the sweat, and Wood, and tears of mankind shall mean no more than the preservation of atrophied souls in bodies that wax fat in idleness and luxury, then indeed life becomes a stupid farce, and the sooner iis actors nre phased from the boards the better." To the average man the ideal is too often associated with the unreal, the real being generally identified with material things, Matter seoine the one oortain aolicl thing which wtnjwfc ba (WUJiWftfid. awojj, but Wu> ietf.

is that the fundamental reality is mind or spirit, and what we call the material world becomes under criticism only a mental image which the mind constructs of its surroundings —a sort of working model; and, as a leading scientist tells us, "we are driven when confronted with the mystery of the universe to ask if this model at all corresponds with reality, if indeed there be any reality behind the image." In his memorable address as President of the British Association in 100-1, Mi(. A. J. Balfour pointed out how the man in the street lives and dies in a world of illusions, and these illusions have not beeu about things remote or abstract, things transcendental or divine; but about what he sees and handles, those plain matters of fact among which common sense daily moves with its most confident step and most self-satisfied smile. The present-day scientist is much more humble than his predecessors, and frankly acknowledges that he has to confine himself to the phenomena which our senses apprehend; he does not touch reality itself. These thoughts point to the fact that the universe is something more than matter and motion, and modern evolutionary science (to quote Professor J. A. 'Thompson) has no word to utter against that doctrine of idealism which finds the ultimate reality of the universe in mind or spirit, and its end in the perfecting of spiritual life. .Of course Easter, with its message of a fiiture life and its miracle of the Resurrection, runs clean contrary to that mechanical conception of the universe which, as Huxley once said, "weighs like a nightmare upon the minds of many people." This conception regards the universe as a closed system —a. vast automatic mechanism in which everything happens in accordance with an iron necessity. This theory, it is declared, requires that "all motives must admit of mechanical statement, and the motions of matter and its configurations must be the sole and sufficient reasons of all change." In such a rigid system there can be no place for miracle, or free will, or personal responsibility. Until recent years this was th 3 prevailing theory of things in the world of thought; but all that is best in human nature cried out against it, and thanks to the- criticism of philosophers like Balfour, Bergsox, and James Ward, and scientists like Kelvin, J. A. Thomson, Lloyd Morgan, Hans Driesch, and others, the nightmare has been dispelled. We are now assured on the highest authority that life is free, spontaneous, incalculable; that organisms arc more than mechanisms. The mechanical theory could find no place for anything ically new, but now we are told that life is unceasing creation; that consciousness is a force essentially free and capable of bringing forth at every moment something which is a real creation, and that this creative impulse is a spiritual force. Instead of being the victims of inexorable necessity, the newest school of philosophy declares, wo aro free, joint workers with God in the world's evolution, having real personality and initiative. This means, as Dr. James Ward puts it, a living God in a. living world—a world of self-deter-mining free agents; instead of a potter God and a world of illusory clay. We are no longer over-awed by the Laws of Nature, for on closer examination we find that they are really not at all awesome—they ' are simply creations of our own minds. We used to be told that everybody and everything had to "obey" them, but now a leading scientific authority confesses that "physical laws have greatly fallen off in dignity. No long time ago they were quite commonly described as the Fixed Laws of Nature, and were supposed sufficient in themselves to govern the universe. Now we can only assign hem the humble rank of mcro i descriptions, often erroneous, of similarities which we believe wo have observed." However, we must not forget that wo still live in a cosmos, not a chaos, and that order is still Heaven's first law. The Laws of Nature, though too domineering as masters, mako very useful servants when stripped of their unreasonable pretensions and kept in their proper place. In this new and bracing theory of life as free and continuously creative there is room for surprises of every kind—room almost for anything,'even for miracles, for in om sense, all creation is miraculous, and the greatest miracle is that there is a universe at all and minds capable of forming theories about it. The old dogma that miracles cannot happen has been brushed aside, and as even Huxley admitted years ago, this matter resolves itself simply into a question of evidence. Whether, for instance, the testimony for the miracles of the New Testament, aiid especially the Resurrection, is adequate, is a question that must be decided on the evidence by those competent to judge; but all the evidence must be including the witness of the Christian consciousness in all ages. It has been argued with much force that it is not irrational to expect the unique and unexpected from a unique personality like the Founder of Christianity, who, as a writer in the Ilibbert Journal states, "never said what people expected He was going to say, nor did what people thought He might to. His sayings are like great explosions, and His deeds are much the same. At least it_ is the unexpected that has left its impress on the record. Miracles are the only fitting atmosphere for such a_ character." Of course, there will always be difference of opinion on this question of miracles, for evidence that may be quite satisfactory to one mind may not be convincing to another, and there will probably never be exact agreement as to the essential features of the Easter faith; but most people will agree that the early Church was guided by a true instinct when it linked the Easter festival on to the immemorial spiritual longings of the human race. The word Easter is probably derived from the name of the goddess EosTRE, or Eastre, a pagan divinity corresponding with the- Phoenician Astarte, and the Venus of Jtoiuan mythology, whose feasts, falling at the spring of the year, usually coincided with the Christian festival of the Resurrection. The name suggests the revival of Nature after (lie sleep of winter, and is symbolical of life beyond the grave. Professor von Soukn, of Berlin, points out that the idea of dying gods who bring salvation by their death and rise again from the dead is to be found many religions. Tt is one of the most profound ideas of (he pre-Christian world. It is connected with the rising and setting of (lie situ and moon and other processes of Nature, and is further developed hi tin) laws which refukto human Jilo 4 flocaj-diujK to wluolj Uu o«l

must sacrifice himself for the other, and the hero for the multitude. These, and many other similar facts, point to the conclusion that Christianity came, not to destroy, but rather to perfect and fulfil those abiding spiritual instincts of the race, which found partial and imperfect expression in the great pagan religions; and such festivals as Christmas and Easter tend to broaden and deepen our religious sympathies by reminding us that Christianity, in certain of its aspects, has for its foundation the whole previous religious history of mankind.