With an Open Mind
[EGW
editors preface: I found this article in the
book Christian Pulpit by John H. Horst and others, published
sometime during the late 1800s to early 1900s. According
to the books table of contents, F. T. Tagg is identified
as being a member of the Methodist Protestant denomination. I
have included his article here in this column because: 1)
he insists that the true Christian faith is a reasonable faith;
2) he candidly points out that A man must be sincere
in his belief, but he must believe what is true, and he must
discover truth by examination, experiment, and testimony;
and 3) his bold recognition of the fact that All truth
must ultimately prove harmonious. To set one truth in opposition
to another is like turning different divisions of the same army
against each other.
If you have not yet read the editors note
defining and caveating the purpose of the With an Open Mind column, please do
so at this time before continuing with the article.]
The Test
of Truth
by F. T. Tagg
Prove all things; hold
fast that which is good.
1 Thessalonians 5:21
The religion of Jesus Christ invites
the closest investigation and examination. It does not
eschew nor condemn honest doubt. It encourages and commends
the questioning mind which seeks to convince itself by feeling
the nail-prints and the spear-wounds, though it promises a richer
blessing to the faith of real Christian experience than to the
certitudes of mere material testimony. When doubt is judgment
held in suspense, awaiting satisfactory evidence, it becomes
a means of grace. To doubt is not to sin, is not to deny,
is not an evidence of skepticism or unbelief. Doubt may
question the truth of a statement or the credibility of testimony;
not to deny it, or to disprove it, but to confirm it, in order
to hold more firmly to what is true. To deny a thing because
we doubt it is not only unfair, but unwise and unmanly. When
doubt ripens into investigation, and investigation flowers out
into definite knowledge, then knowledge leads to conviction and
to an abiding and satisfying assurance of truth.
Reason has to do with the rational
faculties. Reason is mans highest and noblest endowment.
It approaches every proposition with a view to a fair and
dispassionate examination of its claims, its credibility, and
its value. It separates one fact from another by a process
of analysis, and then unites them by a system of induction into
an orderly arrangement, making one fact support another until
the truth becomes clear. God demands this much. The
Christian is admonished to have a reason for his hope. The
divine indictment of ancient Israel was that My people will not consider. [dc:
Job 34:7; Isaiah 1:3] Every
man is under obligation to inquire honestly and diligently into
the claims of his religion. He fails at his peril. He
may doubt, but he dare not deny until he has made an honest and
unbiased investigation of the evidence upon which it rests. He
must reach just and well-supported conclusions.
A man may doubt the existence of
God, but he must not deny the doctrine until he has made it absolutely
clear to himself that his denial is upon safe and rational testimony.
And further, he must convince himself that his doubt will
not involve him in greater contradictions and more inexplicable
mysteries. To doubt in order that reason may exercise itself
to its fullest limit is to honor God and rightly use the noblest
attribute of man. To deny upon slender evidence is to register
the evidence of imbecility and folly, or of egotism and presumption.
A sound education disciplines the
intellect for the discovery of truth and for its application
to the proper regulation of life. True education teaches
us how to think and what to think. It enables us to discern
between the wise and the unwise, between good and evil, between
what tends to true and noble sentiments, and that which tends
to degradation and ruin.
To store the mind with facts may
make a man a cyclopedia and a nuisance. To seek knowledge
for its wise application to the problems of life, to the construction
of noble character, and to a fruitful career is to make man Christlike
and divine. The mind is the noblest gift of God. This
imponderable, inexplicable, peerless, unresting, infinite something
that dwells within him raises him to unmeasured heights above
the life around him, and allies him with angels and seraphs and
God. It is this something which makes all character, plants
all republics, founds all civilizations, writes all books, fights
all battles, and applies the touch of life to all the material
forces of nature. It is this something which loves and
hates, wills and acts; a something of infinite application, adaptability,
and value. It is this something which God has committed
to man to enable him to reach forward and upward into the ultimate
things of His kingdom.
This alert, discriminating, investigating
faculty, with its powers of abstraction, reflection, and observation,
is to be engaged in and applied to all moral and religious questions.
The gospel nowhere demands a blind, unquestioning faith.
That is the gratuitous assumption of skeptics and infidels.
They falsely assert that religion is founded on ignorance
and tradition. Yet the very word which he believes, accepts,
and lives by solemnly charges him to prove all things;
to satisfy his mind, his heart, and his conscience as a preliminary
to his faith. He is never to infer from slender premises,
nor to conjecture from unsatisfactory testimony. To prove
means to test by experiment, to ascertain upon trustworthy evidence,
or to demonstrate by irrefutable logic. A man whom God
has endowed with thought-power and to whom He has given opportunity
and facility for its unlimited exercise, depreciates himself
and dishonors God by accepting any doctrine, however wise or
wholesome, without a clear and honest investigation of its truths
and merits. Even the psalmist in his day invited men to taste and see that
the Lord is good.
[dc: Psalm
34:8]
Sincerity is a noble virtue. A
man can not be a true Christian without an honest, ingenuous,
unaffected spirit. But a man may sincerely believe a falsehood.
He may be perfectly honest and yet be the victim of a vicious
doctrine. Sincerity can not save him from the consequences
of a false faith or a delusive hope. He may administer
deadly poison to his sick child in mistake for a remedial agency,
but the sincerity of his motive will not prevent the fatality
of his mistake. A man must not only be sincere, he must
be right. Sincerity and truth are the basis of religion,
as of every virtue. A man must be sincere in his belief,
but he must believe what is true, and he must discover truth
by examination, experiment, and testimony. [EGW editor: emphasis mine]
Reasoning disciplines the mind
and enables it to apply satisfactory tests to the affairs of
life. How else could we separate romance from reality,
or sophistry from sound argument. The supreme purpose and
utility of the reasoning faculties is in discovering what is
wise and useful and true, and applying it to the regulation and
conduct of life.
Now, to what can a trained intellect
apply itself with greater interest and with the prospect of more
important results than to religion? This, if it is anything
at all, is the most engaging subject that can arrest the attention
of the human mind. It embodies mans interests in
two worlds. Its principles apply equally to time and to
eternity. Religion interprets God to the soul, outlines
the duty of man, and then prepares him to do it.
It is do fitted to human nature
that it is best adapted to any walk or condition of life in which
man may be found. It is adapted to the intellect
because its spirit harmonizes perfectly with that of true philosophy,
because it demands a free inquiry into all its claims, because
it makes a place for the discovery and the application of truth,
because it answers questions of supreme importance which nature
can not answer, and because it is so communicated as to be adapted
to every human mind.
It is equally adapted to our moral
conditions and needs, because it clearly reveals the origin,
the nature, and the results of evil; because it provides an adequate
remedy for all forms of immorality, and removes the incubus of
sensuality and low vice, and points with unerring finger to the
path of innocence and virtue.
It is best adapted to our physical
nature in that it prescribes rules for labor and rest, for food
and raiment, for habit and habitat, that have never been improved
upon by statute or scholarship. Its laws of temperance
and chastity, of activity and repose are at this day perfect
rules of physical virtue.
Its spirit of forbearance and charity,
of brotherhood and fraternity, of prayer and service, of obedience
to law and subjection to authority, of sympathy and beneficence
as its answer to every cry of need, adapt it perfectly to all
organized forms of society. It is the supreme thing. It
is more than creed, however orthodox; more than ritual, however
impressive; more than profession, however consistent; more than
service, however useful. It is God manifest in the flesh.
It is Christ in man, the hope of glory. It is the
Holy Ghost working Himself out in human acts and thoughts, and
producing a reincarnation of divine life and character.
Notwithstanding all the hostility
that religion has excited, Jesus speaks today in languages more
numerous, in tongues more eloquent, and to nations more populous
than ever before. He marshals soldiers that shrink from
no conflict and who rise triumphant over every foe. He
is shaking down old philosophical systems that exalt themselves
against God. The steam press groans under the rush of multiplying
Scriptures, and the steam horse groans under the burden of increasing
charities. Jesus emancipates the slave, He civilizes the
lawless, refines literature, inspires poetry and music, and sends
forth art and science not as luxuries for kings
palaces, but as the prophets of God to make the earth
bud and blossom as the rose. He gives a divine breadth
and energy to the civilizations that bear His name, elevating
savage races into Christianized States, repeating glorious Pentecosts
in the bosom of hoary paganisms, and ever increases the
circles of light He has created until they shall meet at last
in universal illumination.
This is the religion we preach
and whose claims we ask men to test and accept. We demand
that men shall
taste and see that the Lord is good.
[EGW
editor: Psalm 34:8; Taggs punctuation]
It is a religion that satisfies every man who will give
it an honest trial; and when it is once fully accepted, moves
the enraptured soul to the adoring litany; Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us again unto
a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and that
fadeth not away.
[EGW
editor: 1 Peter 1:3-4; Taggs punctuation]
Your attention is now directed
to the glorious privilege of my text, Prove all things.
That is the fairest proposition that can be offered to
man. Any system that limits inquiry paralyzes thought.
Whatever contributes to intellectual thraldom, whether
in the Church or out of it, is not of God. An unchained
Bible is synonymous with an emancipated humanity. Freedom
of thought is ordained of God. From the days of Lactantius
and Lucretius men have demanded the right to look into the multiform
problems of life from their own point of view. When such
liberty was denied there followed tyranny and oppression, or
restlessness and revolution. In the Middle Ages the repressive
influences were followed by the revival of letters, the increase
of knowledge, the extension of schools, ending at last in the
Protestant reaction and Reformation. Magna Charta and the
Declaration of Independence were born out of the repression of
liberty. To prohibit free inquiry is to lay the foundation for
revolution.
The Christian has a free range
and a wide field, but he must yield to certain exacting rules
in his inquiry; but this is an inflexible regulation of inquiry
in any department of investigation. No man can afford to
yield himself in facile abandonment to prevailing winds of doctrine,
so characteristic of much of modern theologic and scientific
thought. A man must hold to fundamental truth in every storm
of unbelief. Theologians may dabble in science to their hurt,
and scientists often assail religion to their shame.
All truth must ultimately prove
harmonious. To set one truth in opposition to another is
like turning different divisions of the same army against each
other. [EGW
editor: emphasis mine]
Pilates question, What
is truth? is always a legitimate inquiry. Not especially
what is the latest conclusion in science, criticism, psychology,
or philosophy. Opinions are valuable only as they are feeling
after truth. Conclusions are important only to the extent
that they stand for irrevocable truth. When two known truths
appear to contradict each other the wise man will not reject
either; he will look for the connecting link. There is
truth in science, in philosophy, and in criticism; but when we
can not reconcile one with the other it is far wiser to consider
our limitations, and wait, rather than jump to hasty conclusions.
Freedom of thought is an inalienable
possession, involved in the very nature of man, and becoming
more pronounced as the problems he has to meet deepen in their
significance. Individual responsibility is an essential
doctrine and an irrevocable fact, and this demands the largest
liberty in personal inquiry. Every man must give an account
of himself to God. We dare not follow in the footsteps
of any other. Milton determined to swear by no master,
however high in repute. We are not at liberty to
accept second-hand testimony, however plausible. Men who
can think are bound to think. They must recognize their
limitations and restrictions, but the mind must have a free range.
There are postulates or first truths
as enduring as eternity; elementary principles in morals and
religion as irrevocable as the laws of nature. To ignore
these is to plunge into a fathomless, shoreless ocean without
helm or compass, direction or object. We may call these
propositions, intuitions, primary truths, or what not; but they
stand as inflexible postulates without which it is impossible
to reach rational conclusions. Every algebraic equation
must begin with the recognized and familiar x. The
known must precede the unknown.
The first words in the Bible are,
In
the beginning God.
[EGW
editor: Genesis 1:1; Taggs punctuation]
But who by searching can find God? We may reason
back from effect to cause, but there is no antecedent fact known
by which we can establish the being of God. Moses accepted
the existence of God as an unquestioned postulate, and then built
upon it a system that no subsequent investigation has been able
to materially change. Deny this, and it is impossible to
account for the universal order of nature, or for the providential
history of the Jewish or the Christian Church. The thought-realm
is not an arena in which intellectual athletes contest for the
oak-leaf of a clever syllogism. Rather it should be the
garden of God to discover the luscious fruits and the fragrant
flowers of His limitless kingdom. The search must not be plausible
probabilities, but for the logic of life.
Freedom of thought is a sacred
trust and involves a fearful accountability. To abuse it
by resorting to evasion, subterfuge, casuistry, for the sake
of fine distinctions, is not investigation, but bush-whacking.
The power to know and the freedom to choose involve the
duty to hold fast to what is good. To know what is right
and to do what is wrong is the vilest prostitution of a sacred
trust. The Christian makes a thoughtful and intelligent
choice and follows what is wise and good, and out of it comes
a Christlike character and a holy life. To achieve a life
of virtue, truth, and fruitfulness is the most important task
that God has committed to man. It constitutes a rank within
itself, becomes an invaluable individual possession, and a priceless
assest to the body politic. It exercises a far greater
power than wealth, and secures all the honor, without the jealousy
of fame. It is the salt of the earth and never loses its
savor. It is human nature in the process of incarnating
the gospel of the Son of God. It is the conscience of society
and the only safe motive power of the State. The strength,
the progress, the civilization of the nations rest wholly upon
individual character. The foundations of civil security,
wise laws, noble institutions, just governments, human liberty,
all grow out of it. Our character determines the
value of our words and acts, our fruitfulness and our lives.
And our character, when it is evolved under the direction
of the Spirit of God until it bears the seal of the kingdom of
Christ, becomes the final and unanswerable argument of Christianity.
Skepticism can never find an argument to confute a righteous
life.
This is an arch like strong
foundation
To support the incumbent weight
of absolute,
complete
conviction:
Here the more we press, we stand
more firm,
Who most examine, most believe. |