William Hallock Johnson

“ As the poet finds in the flower thoughts too deep for tears, so the scientist sees in it problems too vast and far-reaching for human comprehension. He can see in the very atom minute solar systems, and in electricity a mystery lying at the very heart of material things.
It is the paradox of science that the more the world is understood, the deeper does the mystery of its existence become. With the enlarging boundaries of knowledge there is a growing appreciation of mysteries perhaps insoluble which lie beyond. ”

“ The challenge to faith, meeting us at every point, rouses from dogmatic slumber and dead orthodoxy. We realize that the faith which is to survive must be not simply a traditional faith, but an intelligent faith, sending its roots down deep into reason and experience, and blossoming upward in the flowers and fruits of character and of good works. As character receives its crown in the times of persecution, so perhaps faith may grow strongest in an age of doubt: it was the doubter among the disciples who at last made the boldest confession of faith. ”

“ The testimony of Christian experience is to a Power and a Presence which the Christian feels only as he hears and accepts the gospel message and looks to Christ for forgiveness, guidance, and help. "A man who is converted, in the New Testament sense, is one who has surrendered to a force immeasurably greater than anything he has of himself; one who has awakened to the overwhelming consciousness of a spiritual world brought to a focus before him in the Person of Jesus Christ." ”

“ The appearance of a new species is something as new as the composition of a symphony of Beethoven. Man, then, in his powers and destinies is not to be judged by his likeness to the brutes, but by what he possesses over and above the qualities of animal life, by those achievements and endowments to which animals have failed to attain. Since man, and man alone, has come so far, and in him alone consciousness has broken the chains of mechanical necessity, "we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life." ”

“ In other religious and philosophical systems there have been golden maxims for the conduct of life, wonderful insights into truth and visions of beauty, and evidences of the reaching out of the human soul after God; but Christianity is the only religion of which the enlightened reason and conscience of the world can say that it is from heaven and not from men. In no other religion has there been a long period of centuries of preparation in the religious education of a people to be the recipients and the messengers, in the fullness of time, of the final revelation. ”

“ A flaw discovered in the character of a teacher easily neutralizes the force of his moral appeal. The ethic of Jesus is not merely a system of rules, but the blending of a code which has guided human progress and a character in which men have found their supreme ideal of moral excellence. His sureness of touch, His clearness of moral insight, His transparent beauty of character, betray a consciousness unique among men. ”

“ I love to dream of its glory, and its vast whiteness is a moral force in my life." "Climb the mountains," says one of the best known of American mountaineers, John Muir, "and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while care will drop off like autumn leaves." ”

“ The drama of evolution as unfolded by science inevitably suggests that in the fortunes and life of humanity is to be heard the motif of nature's music, unless indeed all is chaos and discord. The diapason ends full in man, or rather begins in man and the history of his life upon the earth. It may still be believed—because of evolution avowedly, or in spite of evolution—that man is a happy or an unhappy accident, a sport, a monstrosity, the miscarriage of an ape, a faux pas of nature, the strangest event in a purposeless series ”

“ On the one hand there were loud claims at first that the death-knell of religion had been sounded. A cause other than creation had been discovered for the origin of species and by analogy for other origins formerly assigned to the Creator. Chance, not only blind but apparently cruel, was enthroned in the place of design in the production of the various forms of life. The higher was evolved from the lower, but in a way that gave to the higher the quality of the lower. Man was no longer the child of God, not even the prodigal child. ”

“ We must distinguish between the absorption of the Buddhist with his passion for annihilation, and the Christian's delight in the Lord; and between a mysticism which means identity of substance and the deification of man, and a moral mysticism which realizes at once that God is infinitely near in His grace but infinitely far in His holiness.
It is fair to ask whether the assurance of the presence of God enjoyed by many Christians in all ages, according to their testimony, is immediate or inferred knowledge, and whether it should be called knowledge or faith. ”

“ While assuming that it is the nature of life to evolve, he admits that there is no evidence accessible to the senses or discerned as yet by the most delicate instruments for the existence of these countless beginnings of life. The real question then concerns not this kind of life, which eye hath not seen, but the origin of the life which we know, and whose marvellous development evolution traces. ”

“ So when evolution, through the genius of Darwin, came into popular discussion and acceptance, it was feared that chance had been enthroned in the universe, and that religion was destined to extinction. But in the progress of the evolution theory, as its advocates have split into various camps, the sense of the mystery in the origins and laws of the organic world has deepened, and many can see in nature the evidence of a diviner wisdom than before. ”

“ But every practical movement, enlisting great masses of men and demanding tremendous sacrifice for its accomplishment, must have a rational basis. A humanitarian impulse is not sufficient to carry through to a conclusion so vast and world-embracing a plan as is contemplated by Christian Missions. The impulse however strong and noble will evaporate, unless based upon and fed by a theory of what the Christian religion is, of what it offers to men, of man's need of it, and of the obligation of Christians to carry it to the non-Christian nations. ”

“ Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him. From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art, social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is constructed through the activity of the human mind alone." ”

“ We must start with pluralism, says Ward, because no reason can be given why the One, in whatever way conceived, should become the Many. Why should the homogeneous become heterogeneous, or the indeterminate determinate, or why should the absolute become split up into finite spirits? A creation out of nothing cannot, for Ward, solve the problem, for his conception of creation is that of "intellective intuition," in which God as subject is necessary to the existence of the world as object, but the world, from this standpoint, is equally necessary to God. ”

“ If "man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin," [88] he bears in the framework of his mind and moral nature the indelible stamp of his spiritual origin. His spiritual endowments can find their explanation only in a spiritual world. They have arisen, not from the lair of the wild beast, but rather from the bosom of God. No ascertained fact of science, nor any legitimate or necessary inference from any such fact, forbids the affirmation of faith, "It is He that hath made us," and "we are His people." ”

“ As a writer on the psychology of the New Testament says: "The self, according to the New Testament, is not merely a social self developing in a community of other finite selves; it is a divine self realizing its ideal powers of service, and fulfilling its destiny only in a fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ." [136] Unless Humanity is endowed with the attributes of Deity, as it almost seems to be in the Positivist ritual, the estimate of society is also lowered when men are viewed as having relations and obligations only to one another. ”

“ If we interpret the power behind evolution in a theistic sense, and believe that God is immanent in nature and in the life of man, we are not absolved from the task of tracing as far as possible the natural history of life and mind, but we may view that history from a standpoint from which both origin and progressive development become intelligible. No scientific hypothesis is able in itself to carry us all the way from "concentrating nebulæ to the thoughts of poets." ”

“ Christian ethics doubtless makes an appeal of its own, but apart from the support of Christology its supremacy is by no means assured. If we go back to the moral teaching or to the example of Jesus alone, there will be no [Pg 52] teaching with authority, no divine Teacher who is the Truth, and no regenerative power of the Spirit behind the teaching. The power of Christ's example lies in the union of humility and authority. "Take Christ's difference from us out of Christianity and His identity with us loses all its glorious power." ”

“ The verdict of mankind as they have studied the character of Jesus, and studied themselves in the light of it, is that that character is as much a miracle in the moral sphere,—that is, opposed to a uniform experience—as is the birth from a virgin, for example, in the physical sphere. The consciousness of Jesus, at the very least, must have been profoundly influenced by the fact, assuming it to be a fact, that He alone among the children of men did perfectly the will of the Father. ”

“ He remarks that "if personality is determined by heredity alone, all teaching, preaching, government, is useless." The only hope for the race, he says, is in eugenics—always supposing that enough freedom is left to carry out its program.
If the birth of the individual and the full story of his origin is thus enveloped in mystery for theologian, poet, philosopher and even scientist, it is not to be expected that the problem of the origin of the human race can be solved by a neat formula. Here the mystery of the birth of the individual from parents of the same species is intensified many fold. ”

“ Theism is reached as the alternative of supposing that the inter-actions of the Many are a mere welter of happenings without meaning or purpose. Evolution and history show an increase of complexity and coöperation, and if all things work together it is natural to believe that all things work together for good. "The God who knows all loves all," and only the immanence of God in the world as defined by theism can give assurance that the pluralist's ideal will be fulfilled. ”

“ The second thing that stands out prominently in the emotions produced by the disaster is that in moments of urgent need men and women turn for help to something entirely outside themselves.... To those men standing on the top deck with the boats all lowered, and still more when the boats had all left, there came the realization that human resources were exhausted and human avenues of escape closed. With it came the appeal to whatever consciousness each had of a Power that had created the universe. ”

“ The religion of humanity must look outside itself for its highest inspiration for social [Pg 118] service and for the norm of social progress. It was Christianity that created the atmosphere in which "the enthusiasm of humanity" and zeal for social service could flourish. Christianity has emphasized the value of the individual, and the sacredness of family relationships and the brother-hood of the children of the one Father. Without divine love as its pattern and inspiration human love would lose in comprehension and in intensity. ”

“ It is at one with Christianity in its ethical standpoint and emphasis. The Cross is no longer foolishness to the Greek, when leaders of philosophic thought find in Christianity their brightest glimpse into the homeland of the spirit, the source of their deepest insights into truth, the inspiration of their most fruitful activity and the key to the solution of their profoundest problems. ”

“ The love of Christ is the entirely new power that has come into the world; not [Pg 193] merely as a new type of morality, but as 'a Divine influence transfiguring human nature in a universal love.' The passion of St. Paul's appeal lies in the consecration of every detail of it by reference to the life and death of the Master." [257]
The gospel which conquered the Roman Empire was no syncretic product growing from Græco-Roman soil, no mélange of oriental religions and Greek philosophy, no cunningly devised fable or myth for the myth-loving Greeks. ”

“ Then faith comes in, which means that the soul is in a receptive attitude.... One throws oneself completely on the world-will, so that one may become a 'receiver of its truth and an organ of its activity.'" [115]
Royce remarks that our religious need is supreme, and "is accompanied with the perfectly well-warranted assurance that we cannot attain the goal unless we can get into some sort of communion with a real life infinitely richer than our own.... The religious ideal grows out of the vision of a spiritual freedom and peace which are not naturally ours." ”

“ If early Christianity had compromised with heathenism, and had not waged unrelenting warfare upon idolatry, it could have escaped the united hostility of the state and of the other religions and philosophies; on the other hand, if Christianity had come to terms with Judaism or Paganism, while it might perhaps be known historically as an obscure Jewish sect, or as a ripple upon the wave of oriental religious influence upon the Græco-Roman world, it would never have been the mighty spiritual power that it has been in human society. ”

“ The horizons of mystery are not at the confines of telescopic vision, or at the far boundaries of the material universe, but are in the objects which are most familiar, in the meanest flower that blows, in the minutest seed and in the smallest atom. ”

“ The Christian believes that he receives grace from the Father and the Son. "When Jesus deals with us and works within us, He does what only God can do. All Christian experience is nothing if it is not this." ”

“ If the evolution theory is to cover the whole history of the world and of man, it must be hospitable to the ideas both of continuity and progress. An interpretation of evolution so framed would be opposed, indeed, to the conception of a Creator touching the world only with His finger-tips, and exhausting His creative power in its initial exercise. It would be opposed to materialistic monism, as well as to an idealistic or pantheistic monism which would reduce the evolutionary and historic process to mere appearance. ”

“ It is significant that those who have interpreted evolution to the masses have quite uniformly done so in terms of progress. But progress is a teleological conception. In a world where atoms shift unceasingly, but without the guidance of intelligence or will, there may be change but there will be no progress; for one arrangement of atoms will be as high in the scale of values as another. Evolutionists who, as evolutionists, are inspired with an ideal of human progress must in some sense be finalists. ”

“ We are living at a time when territory formerly deemed sacred is being traversed by hosts of forbidding aspect under the banners of natural science, of philosophy, and of the psychology and history of religion. The greatest foe of all, it has been thought by some, has arisen within the household of faith in the form of Biblical Criticism. ”