THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2013, 21 March 1914, Page 3

THE REASONABLENESS OF FAITH.

* —-—- PROFESSOR CAIRNS ON THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. The Rev. Professor B, S. Cairns, of Aberdeen, recently gave n course of lectures at Cambridge University uptour "Tho Reasonableness of Christian Faith." The lectures tre'ro arranged by a oo.mmittee of all denominations, if ho

have arranged similar courses by ofltcr speakers in tho Lent Terms of the last four years. Dealing in his first lecture tvM.i the problem of religious certainty, Professor Cairns said that if that matter had be- : como an acute one with any *.f- them, it was necessary to see tho thing throitgh without any kind of flinching. It was necessary to faco everything, for certainty lay on the. other t-idc of suctj honest labour of the mind, and he supposed there was almost ho teacher now liviug of any range a'iid place who had not had to pass through just such ail experience of uncertainty as. it might he that they werq iu at that moment. ■ They should be quite sure., too, that tho Christianity they believed . they were compelled to give up was a real and fundamental Christianity. Mitch of the religious doubt of to-day was. something ■ truo Christian thought had'long moved beyond. There was a story-toid of one of their Scotch, scholars of tho last generation who had been listening to -n, very eloquent discotffse on the future life, which dealt with much detail on the happiness in heaven, and who was asked by tho author of the discourse what he thought of it. He was unwilling to spc-Sk at first, hut at last ho said, "It was very pretty, but for me one steady look Uito the dark is worth one hundred of yottf farthing candles.'" That was it, ti'iey had got- to look into tho dark. They could never understand the fundamental optimism of Christianity until they realised how it had passed tho darkness,. faced pessimism, and triumphed over it. Let them como with him, continued tho Professor, to what ]tad been established by tho scieuco of feligio-ia, to what they might take as fixed, and first oi all ho would seek to empliasi&a the fact that science had onco and for all established, that religion was practically a universal thing. 'Wherever they got human nature they might count upon finding some ono or other religion; whenever they began this -study of some ' new race they might bo tjuite sure that in the history of that race they would get ono or moro religions, and they could not go anywhere throughout tha world to-day without findijig a. religion. Thero were abnormalities, but thov were almost as nothing in the presettco ef tho immense part that religion had played in human history from its dawn to th& present day. A great seilofai' had summed up tho position hy saying that man was incurably religious. Religion might die down for an epoch, but it flamed up again. It was something that was inveterate wherever they pot linnian suffering and striving and- labour. Comparative religion had established) ho thought, that it was no longer possible to think of religion as being accidental to man. It was jsart cf his nature. If ho was going to be » man at all he had to bo religiotts iu some' shape or form; to he otherwise- was abnormal. They might say that that wi:s all too vaguo; that it all depended vpott what was meant by religion. Noli' what Was it that was'' so wonderful about tl'io spectacle of human religion ? To him it w«s a great venturing out of the lr:minu scul beyond tho scenes man eowkl see and touch. It was a conviction that there was an eternal world Mid that in sjiite of all appearances, in spite of funnier, storm, and earthquake, and fill the powers of nature and of time, that iroseen world was mightier than r.il, that it ought to rule, and that it would manifest itself and would mle if men would commit themselves wholeheartedly to it. Surely » conviction <.f that kind was an imposing thing. Was it a d-oht-sjvo conviction? If it wa.s, then surely thero was no instinct in human nature that they could trust, What were tliev to make, of any kind of conviction if human nature had got a fundanwiilal error like that running through ail its history?