FACING THE FACTS

This is the age of the dominance of science. When a man asks, What
shall I believe? only one answer can be returned: Believe the things
that are. An age now past found it easy to believe that it believed
what it was told, even the things that it knew were not so. But to-day
at least has the merit of finding no merit in that form of
self-deception.

The passion for absolute truth and rightness is one of the noblest that
can spring up in any breast; it is a ripe fruit of religion. The
scientist, by his devotion to exact facts, to pure truth, is the
religious man of our day, and the schools become religious educators in
their power to instill a primary love for truth and to lift up ideals
of exactness and equity.

When we translate religion into terms of life, into actuality as
contrasted with imagination, we begin to discover the necessity for
foundations deeper than legend or romance. So long as a man's religion
consisted in what he might picture in glowing colours of imagination on
the canvas of fancy about his past or future he did not need to take
his designs from facts.

But when religion becomes the science of right living, the process of
securing right social relationships and character as the expression of
ideal personal and individual character, it is evident that in such a
work religion must proceed on ascertained, indisputable verities.