CHAPTER XXIV. PROVE, BUT HOLD. THE human mind is a delicate instrument to work with. It may easily be blunted or cut in the wrong place if it is used on mistaken principles. One of these mistaken principles is the doctrine which is much emphasized by some writers-that your first duty toward truth or statements of truth is that of doubt. According to their own method, then, it is our duty to doubt the dictum which they so dogmatically lay down. We not only doubt it, but deny it. The mind cannot work properly and efficiently if it adopts this specious error at the outset of its inquiries. I believe that the truth which exists in this bold and false assertion is that a man ought to ask himself first whether he really believes what he professes to believe. This is a wholesome and a much-needed principle, and it would aid the thinker in coming to sound conclusions. Let him inquire into the nature of the grip which he has of truth. Is he receiving it because thus and thus it is held by those whom he respects, or because with his own mind he is satisfied of its soundness? If he wants to begin with doubt, let him be sceptical about himself. Some seem to think that the human mind is a nicely adjusted pair of scales; and that if you do not interfere with it, the balance will be evenly held between truth and error. The figure of speech is misleading. The mind ought to be like a sensitive and chemically prepared plate waiting to photograph the object before it. If the plate had consciousness, we might suppose it asking to be allowed to receive a correct impression; that is, it would have a bias towards what was true. So the human mind ought to have a bias towards what is simply and nakedly true. But beyond this it may be regarded as specially prepared to receive some impressions rather than others. It cannot accept facts regardless of their moral worth and of their spiritual meaning. The plate has, in other words, been made by the Creator sensitive toward the beautiful, the heroic, the Christian. Man interferes with this bias, and often introduces some other sensitive element, so that the mind is ready to receive deformity, badness, and the blurred outlines of atheism. It is of the first importance, then, that you shake yourselves loose from the unscientific and sophistical maxim that your primary duty is to doubt. You cannot work properly as a mental student without a bias toward the true. Mere authority will not overawe you; but those who have investigated before you will surely leave behind beaten tracks which you may at first tread without much question. But there are so many of them! Are there? Keep men strictly to their own department, and you will not be confused by discordant voices. There is a central point where the lines meet, and as you look on the interlacing lines you are much perplexed. Follow them a little way and you find that they branch off in separate and distinct directions. If the scientific line is blocked, there are some others that are clear. If the danger signal is up on the ecclesiastical branch, you may yet perform a safe journey on the theological. Thus, for example, an eminent man of science may puzzle you very much by his religious utterances. Remember that a little child is often a greater authority on the subject of prayer than those who have never tried to pray. Follow the scientific inquirer, with a bias in his favour, as long as he deals with facts, and with facts which come naturally within his own |