1 Chronicles 16:31

And let men say among the nations, the Lord reigneth.

Pessimism

I. Now, what is the prevalent tendency of opinion, as illustrated in our day, in science, in art, in journalism, in literature, in social speculation? It may certainly be summed up in the one word “pessimism”--that is, unbelief and hopelessness. The illustrations of the tendency are manifold, they come from every side. If we turn to philosophy, we find, as a consequence of unbelief, the revival of the old doctrine that life is not worth living, that man is a failure, just as Pyrrho, the ancient sceptic, compared mankind to swine pent up in a foundering, wrecked, and rudderless vessel in the midst of a hurricane. “Since the human race,” says Schopenhauer, “always tends from bad to worse, there is no prospect but ever-deepening confusion and wretchedness.” “Existence,” says Von Hartmann, “is unspeakably wretched, and society will grow worse and worse.” “More dreary, barren, base and ugly,” said Carlyle, “seem to me the aspects of this poor, diminished, quack world, doomed to speedy death,” which he can only wish to be speedy. “A wave of doubt, desolation, and despondency has passed over the world,” says an English poet, Mr. Alfred Austin, in a lecture before the Royal Institution. “One by one all the fondly cherished theories of life, society, and empire have been abandoned; we no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to think that we are travelling to perdition.” This pessimistic spirit, he said, pervades all society and all thought.

II. I will speak mainly of the supposed connection of science with this pessimistic tendency. To science many attribute its growth and its spread. “Science,” says M. Zola, the French novelist, in his speech, “hath emptied nations, and is incapable of re-peopling them; it has ravished happiness from our human souls, and is incapable of restoring it; in proportion as science advances the ideal slips away.” Now I believe science to be beneficent, and I believe pessimism to be destructive, and, desiring to combat the predominant pessimism, I shall try to prove to you that science gives no ground for it at all. Science is part of revelation. Religion on one side is nothing but a knowledge of God, and science deepens our knowledge of God. Religion on the other side is nothing but morality. It is a good mind and a good life. There is not one law of morality which science does not repromulgate and emphasise in thunders louder than those of Sinai. Science is one of the Bibles of God by which, as St. Paul boldly says, the invisible things of Him are rendered visible; it is God’s revelation to the mind of man through the works of Nature, and whatever may be the voice in which God speak to us, it is impossible for Him to lie. If we are faithless, He abideth faithful; He is not able to deny Himself. The supposed antagonism between science and religion is merely due to the passion and ignorance of men. And science has been to men a boon unspeakable, an archangel of beneficence as well as an archangel of power. She has prolonged life, she has mitigated disease, she has minimised torture, she has exorcised superstitious terrors; she has given to feeble humanity the eyes of Argus and the arms of Briareus, she has opened to men’s thoughts unimaginable realms of faerie, and has made fire, flood, and air the vassals of His will

III. Does science tend to unbelief? And it is not true that science leads to unbelief. Whose name stands first in the modern era of science? The name of Sir Isaac Newton. Was he an unbeliever? He was one of the whitest, purest, simplest, most believing souls that ever lived. Whose name stands first in science in our own generation? The name of Michael Faraday. Was he an atheist? His friend found him one day bathed in tears, and asked if he was ill. “No,” he said, “it is not that”; but pointing to his Bible, he said, “While men have this blessed book to teach them, why will they go astray?” It has been sometimes assumed that Charles Darwin was an unbeliever; yet he wrote in his book on the descent of man: “The question whether there is a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by the highest intellects that ever lived.” There have been scientific atheists, but such men have not been atheists as a necessary consequence of their science, but because they have committed the very fault which they scorn so utterly in priests: it is because they have tried to soar into the secrets of the Deity on the waxen wings of the understanding; it is because they have pushed their science to untenable conclusions and mingled it with alien inquiries. H unbelief were a necessary result of science, no benefit which science could possibly bestow could equipoise its curse, for religion means that by which the spirit of man can live. The destruction of religion would be first the triumph of despair, and next the destruction of morality. Once persuade man that he is no better than the beasts that perish, and he will live like the beasts that perish; he will cease to recognise the intangible grandeur of the moral law, and will abandon himself to the struggles of mad selfishness. All religion is based on three primary convictions, of God, of righteousness, and of morality, and these convictions science strengthens and does not destroy. (Dean Farrar.)

God’s rule the saint’s comfort

John Wesley used to say, “I dare no more fret than curse and swear.” A friend of his said, “I never saw him fretful or discontented under any of his trials, and to be in the company of persons of this spirit always occasioned him great trouble. He said one day, ‘To have persons around me murmuring and fretting at anything that happens is like having the flesh torn from my bones. I know that God sits upon the throne ruling all things!’” (R. Newton.)