THE DOUBTER

Aye, Zeus is dead, and all the gods but Doubt,
And Doubt is brother devil to Despair.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, Prometheus.

IN

Chapter XVI

THE DOUBTER

In which it is shown how One may go

to College and not get a Diploma

N Ephesus nineteen hundred years ago there lived certain people who were said to be " ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." They were characterized by Paul as "men of corrupt minds. Yet they were learners; and this certainly was to their credit, since "wisdom is the principal thing." It was also to their praise that they were "ever learning"; for there is indeed no end to the possibilities of this earnest quest. A tree, after growing for a while, reaches its maturity and grows no more; but not so with a man. His windows may be always open to the rising sun.

The fault of these Ephesians was that, while ever learning, they were never able to come to any knowledge. They were like the horse in a treadmill that goes round and round and never arrives. They were perpetual pupils, always saying, "I want to know" and never "I believe." They were always seeking and never finding; always learning and never knowing. "Take heed of such," says the apostle, "for they are reprobate concerning the faith.'

We need not go to Ephesus to find such people; they

are nearer by. We are living in an age of facts. The world never knew so much as it does now. The man with the hammer has been chipping at the rocks for centuries; and the result is geology, which is a bundle of facts. The man with the spade has been digging among the ruins of antiquity, and the result is archeology, which is also a bundle of facts. The man with the telescope has been watching the stars, and the result is astronomy or star-ology, which is a vast array of facts exprest in mathematical terms. The man with the microscope has been scrutinizing vital atoms, and the result is a science of etiology, or facts respecting the origin of things. Thus an immense cyclopedia has been accumulated in the progress of the ages. If Plato or Aristotle were to return to the world he would find himself a mere abecedarian, unable to pass an examination for one of the advanced grades in our public schools.

And yet we are said to be living also in "an age of doubt." For the facts referred to lie within the province of natural science; that is, they are such as can be apprehended and verified by the physical sensesbut the great world of truth which lies beyond the horizon of the physical senses is still an open field of inquiry. And here is where doubt prevails. It is easy to believe the things that we can handle with our hands and see with our eyes, but far less so to accept those which are attested by faith only; that is, "the evidence of things not seen.

The result is agnosticism, which is a broad synonym for infidelity. The man who confines his investigations to the narrow province of physical things is sure to

find sooner or later, as Charles Darwin did, that his power to apprehend spiritual truth has become atrophied by disuse. Unbelief is simply crystallized doubt. The man who keeps on saying "I do not know" is morally certain to reach a point where he insists "I can not know"; and thenceforth the Unseen and Eternal are an unknown world to him. This is the intellectual state against which Cowper makes his wellknown apostrophe to common sense:

Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.

This condition is due, first, to the absence of any real desire to know. For there is a vital difference between the love of learning and the love of knowledge, or between the love of study and the love of truth. It is like the difference between a sportsman and a pothunter. The former goes forth with a complete outfit, a corduroy suit, guides, decoys, a camping kit, and a breech-loading gun with smokeless powder. He is hunting for the sport of it. The other is a rustic fellow with an old-fashioned musket over his arm; he cares for nothing but to bag the game. So the genuine truth-seeker cares less for the pleasure of the quest than for truth itself. He is bent upon resolving his doubts because his life depends upon it.

Another reason for the mental arrest referred to is the lack of a starting-point. Archimedes said that he could lift the world if he could only find a pou sto, or place to put the fulcrum of his lever. The man