A BLIND GUIDE—A FOUNDATION OF SAND.
By Editor
FOR the editor of The Torch of Reason, a Secularist paper of Oregon, we have the same feeling that we do for an honest man making a losing, hopeless, mistaken fight for what he believes to be right. This editor has been working for years to build a great liberal university by means which he hopes that Liberals will sometime liberally furnish. He has presented his building plans, he has enthusiastically set forth the advantages of education, he has earnestly appealed for means to build this temple to "science, the great saviour of men." He says:— There is no use of our quoting Scripture to Secularists. "God loveth a cheerful giver," only makes an Infidel smile; besides, it would be trying the same old trick that we condemn the priests for. What, then, can we do?—We can appeal to your love of liberty, to your love of justice, to your love of truth, to your love for the children, to your love for HUMANITY. This is all we can do. If this and our labor are not a sufficient appeal, we must struggle on without further aid. In the same issue he quotes most of an article from this paper on "The Trust Idea," and then ridicules the thought we express that the only way to secure true union is through Jesus Christ. He gives us this counsel:— You must drop all superstition, brothers, and form a trust with education as a foundation and science as a guide. Your idea of Christ's coming is no better than the Indian's idea of the happy hunting-ground. You are not much in advance of the Catholics. Those old prophecies and miracles and horned-beast stories only keep up the disunion of our people, or cause factions to form trusts in order to control other factions. Give up your ancient myths and mysteries; come with us and help in forming a trust that will save the world from its corruption—the great Secular brotherhood of mankind. And we reply, No, no, friend, we want a better "torch" than that to light us. The only true greatness is goodness. "Love is eternal." Education is good only when it is the good education of a good man. The more a confirmed bad man is educated the worse he is. "Science" will not change men's hearts. Education apart from God is a foundation of sand. Science at her very best, apart from God, is groping in the dark. We have no desire to argue with you on the Old Book or its "more sure word of prophecy," but it stands and will stand. You do not believe it; you will not submit to its supreme and certain test. We know it; we know Jesus Christ, its Author—a knowledge higher than all the universities of earth can give. And, brother mortal, if you are weary of following old, blind, credulous, fumbling "Science;" if you have been sufficiently deceived by a false education divorced from God; if you get weary of calling, appealing, laboring in vain for other unbelievers to build a temple to your own higher ideals, then come to Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God, and He will receive you. You do not know Him; but "taste and see that the Lord is good."