VIII.
SECOND-CLASS PASSENGERS
I AM travelling saloon, and between the ample and commodious promenade on which I stroll and the small and poky deck on which the second-class passengers disport themselves there is a barrier, and over that barrier is a notice, clearly inscribed in glaring capitals. Here it is:
NO SECOND-CLASS PASSENGERS
ALLOWED BEYOND THIS BARRIER.
I am writing to insist that that wholesome regulation should be rigidly enforced. I want no second-class passengers strutting on my deck. And I think I can make out my case without qualifying for the inclusion of my name in the Book of Snobs.
I fancy I notice a tendency in modern preaching to exaggerate the importance of scientific opinion. It seems to be taken for granted that the conclusions of eminent scientists and celebrated philosophers give to the faith a sanction and an authority that it would not otherwise possess. I am not prepared to; accept the assumption. Scientists and philosophers, considered as scientists and philosophers, are distinctly second-class passengers, and they must be kept on their own side of the barrier.
Now, I must carefully protect myself, or I shall be most grievously misunderstood. I speak with no disrespect. I raise my hat to every scientist and philosopher living, and to the memory of every scientist and philosopher dead. The human race flowers into perfection when a thinker is born. ‘Beware’ says Emerson, ‘when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.’ Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than a brilliant thinker, a daring philosopher, a distinguished scientist. Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. That is to say, that, great as he is, he is but a second-class passenger after all. It is good, of course, for all who can possibly manage to do so — and it is almost essential for every minister — to read what these princes of thought and peers of intellect have to say. What a wealthy inrush of mental enrichment has reached us just lately, for example, through the brilliant unfoldings of Eucken and Bergson! All this is most excellent. I do not object to my having the right — as a saloon passenger — to go down to the second-class deck and to chat with any passengers I may happen to find there. My protest is against their being allowed to invade my preserves. I can snap my fingers at the barrier. But I protest against their being allowed to do so!
I am always delighted, naturally enough, when an eminent thinker avows himself a Christian, just as I am delighted when a crossing-sweeper avows himself a Christian. And, since the thinker may wield his Christian influence over a wider area than is open to the crossing-sweeper, I may, perhaps, rejoice even more in the conversion of the philosopher than in that of the crossing-sweeper. But that is about as far as it goes. I have never felt free to parade the opinions of scientists and philosophers on distinctly religious subjects because I have never felt that they are authorities on those subjects. For one thing, it does not seem quite fair to do so. It happens that, at this moment, the general consensus of scientific and philosophical thought is most strongly favourable to the faith. But I am conscious of very little elation on that account. Nor do I feel that, on that account, my position as a Christian teacher is appreciably strengthened. And for this reason: Suppose the tide happened to turn! The very suggestion seems absurd. But the present cordiality between the scientist and the theologian is quite a fresh development. It has grown up in a single century. There is nothing to guarantee its permanence. Let us suppose, however ridiculous the supposition may seem, that the general consensus of scientific and philosophical thought became once more strongly sceptical. Should I feel correspondingly depressed ? Should I feel that my position as a Christian teacher was appreciably weakened ? Not a bit of it ! It would not affect a single emotion in my soul, or a single inflection in my voice. ‘We preach Christ crucified.’ And
Whatever record leap to light,
He never can be shamed.
And just because I should, in that grotesquely supposititious case, go on with my work as though nothing had happened, it seems to me scarcely fair or seemly to be unduly elated at the sympathetic smiles of our great thinkers, or to assume that my message gains in authority through their endorsement.
The fact is that we have a faith that cannot be shocked by the contempt of these second-class passengers, and which, therefore, derives no real support from their corroboration and patronage. For there is always this difference between those passengers beyond the barrier and myself. They must always speak with hesitation, whilst I speak with unwavering assurance. They are always subject to correction and revision, whilst my certainties are absolutely final. ‘I know whom I have believed.’ ‘I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God.’ ‘I know that all things work together for good.’ ‘I know that, if my earthly house be dissolved, I have a house eternal in the heavens.’ This is the aristocratic phraseology of a saloon passenger, and I mean to be very cautious lest I allow my vocabulary to be corrupted by the men from the second-class. It is interesting, of course, and — up to a certain point — reassuring, that they are saying nothing in their second-class quarters that is in conflict with the things we talk about on our promenade. But then, we talk about lots of things on our deck that they of the second know nothing at all about. Or, to put it quite accurately, we talk of lots of things on our deck that they would know nothing at all about unless we sometimes strolled down to their quarters and discussed these loftier matters with them. What would science or philosophy, left to themselves, have discovered about Sin, about Regeneration, about Forgiveness, about Redemption, about Justification, about Eternity? Or even about God? For science and philosophy never find God. They merely find evidence for the existence of a God. It is the offer of a stone to a child crying for bread. For who wants evidence? I want God. Science and Philosophy find His footprint on the sand, as Robinson Crusoe found the footprint on his island. But who wants a footprint? Would the footprint of his lady satisfy a lover? No, no, no! He wants her. I want no footprint. I want Him. ‘Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!’ This is the throbbing cry of my hungry soul. I want Him — Himself. And neither Science nor Philosophy could ever have introduced Him to me.
The trouble about these second-class passengers is their insatiable passion for proving things. Their very facility for proving things proves at least one thing. It proves how insignificant the things are that they are for ever proving. We on the first deck rarely trouble about proving things. For you can only prove things that do not really matter. You can never prove the big things of life on which our very existence and happiness depend. No man can prove that his mother loved him. No man can prove that his wife is true to him. Yet no man would wish to linger on after his faith in these things had deserted him. No man can prove that he has been divinely loved, and redeemed, and forgiven. But his faith in this blissful experience is the joy of his heart and the light of his eyes. On the other hand, those second-class passengers can prove that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and that two and two make four. But I fancy that I could still eat a decent meal, and sleep with perfect serenity at night, even if my confidence in these things should be in some strange way disturbed.
I drew a rather unkind analogy just now between the scientist and the crossing-sweeper. I was half ashamed of it as it trickled off my pen. But now that I come to reconsider the matter, with a view to a possible apology, I am more inclined to apologize to the crossing-sweeper. For it is quite possible that, in the things which we discuss on the first-class deck, the crossing-sweeper may be a higher authority than the philosopher. Professor A. W. Momerie asks himself, in his Origin of Evil, why some scientists find the vision of God so blurred and indistinct. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘the chief reason is this. Just as the body may be over-trained, and its powers developed to the injury of the mind, so the mental faculties may be over-educated — educated, that is at the expense of the spiritual. This has been the case with a good many modern physicists. Their whole lives are spent in weighing, measuring, and analysing things, so that they feel hopelessly lost in regard to subjects which do not admit of such treatment.’ And we all recall Darwin’s pathetic and classical confession: ‘My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.’ ‘My soul is dried up,’ he says again, ‘and the very nature of my work has caused the paralysis of that part of my brain on which the highest tastes depend.’ And Tyndall stoutly maintained that the devotion of the powers to scientific investigation rendered a man less, rather than more, competent to deal with theological questions.
There are, of course, times when we lose sight of the scientist in the saint, and of the philosopher in the believer. The Rev. John Morgan, of Fountain-bridge, visited Sir James Young Simpson during his last illness. He asked him one day, ‘What do you consider your greatest discovery?’ ‘On the morning of Christmas Day, 1861,’ the great doctor replied, ‘I discovered that I was a sinner, and that Jesus Christ was my Saviour!’ And Lord Kelvin, when asked by a student which of all his wonderful discoveries he considered the most valuable, startled his questioner by replying, ‘To me the most valuable of all the discoveries I have ever made was when I discovered my Saviour in Jesus Christ!’
But when a man starts to talk like this, I always discover a first-class ticket peeping out of his pocket; and as I stroll the promenade in his delightful company, I no more think of him as a scientist than I think of Bunyan as a tinker.
-F.W. Boreham
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