THE PRINCE OF PEACE

BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

I offer no apology for speaking upon a religious theme, for it is the most universal of all themes. If I addrest you upon the subject of law I might interest the lawyers; if I discust the science of medicine I might interest the physicians; in like manner merchants might be interested in a talk on commerce, and farmers in a discussion of agriculture; but none of these subjects appeals to all. Even the science of government, tho broader than any profession or occupation, does not embrace the whole sum of life, and those who think upon it differ so among themselves that I could not speak upon the subject so as to please a part without offending others. While to me the science of government is intensely absorbing, I recognize that the most important things in life lie outside of the realm of government and that more depends upon what the individual does for himself than upon what the government does or can do for him. Men can be miserable under the best government and they can be happy under the worst government.

Government affects but a part of the life which we live here and does not touch at all the life beyond, while religion touches the infinite circle of existence as well as the small arc of that circle which we spend on earth. No greater theme, therefore, can engage our attention.

Man is a religious being; the heart instinctively seeks for a God. Whether he worships on the banks of the Ganges, prays with his face upturned to the sun, kneels toward Mecca, or, regarding all space as a temple, communes

with the heavenly Father according to the Christian creed, man is essentially devout.

There are honest doubters whose sincerity we recognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at creeds and refuse to connect themselves with churches. They call themselves "liberal," as if a Christian were narrow minded. To these young men I desire to address myself.

Even some older people profess to regard religion as a superstition, pardonable in the ignorant but unworthy of the educated-a mental state which one can and should outgrow. Those who hold this view look down with mild contempt upon such as give to religion a definite place in their thoughts and lives. They assume an intellectual superiority and often take little pains to conceal the assumption. Tolstoy administers to the "Cultured crowd" (the words quoted are his) a severe rebuke when he declares that the religious sentiment rests not upon a superstitious fear of the invisible forces of nature, but upon man's consciousness of his finiteness amid an infinite universe and of his sinfulness; and this consciousness, the great philosopher adds, man can never outgrow. Tolstoy is right; man recognizes how limited are his own powers and how vast is the universe, and he leans upon the arm that is stronger than his. Man feels the weight of his sins and looks for One who is sinless.

Religion has been defined as the relation which man fixes between himself and his God, and morality as the outward manifestation of this relation. Every one, by the time he reaches maturity, has fixt some relation between himself and God and no material change in this relation can take place without a revolution in the man, for this relation is the most potent influence that acts upon a human life.

spoils

Religion is the basis of morality in the individual and in the group of individuals. Materialists have attempted to build up a system of morality upon the basis of enlightened self-interest. They would have man figure out by mathematics that it pays him to abstain from wrong doing; they would even inject an element of selfishness into altruism; but the moral system elaborated by the materialists has several defects. First, its virtues are borrowed from moral systems based upon religion; second, as it rests upon argument rather than upon authority, it does not appeal to the young, and by the time the young are able to follow their reason they have already become set in their ways. Our laws do not permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he is twenty-one-Why this restraint? Because his reason is not mature; and yet a man's life is largely molded by the environment of his youth. Third, one never knows just how much of his decision is due to reason and how much is due to passion or to selfish interest. We recognize the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the jury every man, no matter how reasonable or upright he may be, who has a pecuniary interest in the result of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality is based upon a nice calculation of benefits to be secured spends time figuring that he should spend in action. Those who keep a book account of their good deeds seldom do enough good to justify keeping books. Morality is the power of endurance in man; and a religion which teaches personal responsibility to God gives strength to morality. There is a powerful restraining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the individual.

There is a wide difference between the man who is trying to conform to a standard of morality about him and the

man who is endeavoring to make his life approximate to a divine standard. The former attempts to live up to the standard if it is above him and down to it if it is below him-and if he is doing right only when others are looking he is sure to find a time when he thinks he is unobserved, and then he takes a vacation and falls. One needs the inner strength which comes with the conscious presence of a personal God. If those who are thus fortified sometimes yield to temptation how helpless and hopeless must those be who rely upon their own strength alone!

There are difficulties to be encountered in religion, but there are difficulties to be encountered everywhere. I passed through a period of skepticism when I was in college and I have been glad ever since that I became a member of the Church before I left home for college, for it helped me during those trying days. The college days cover the dangerous period in the young man's life; it is when he is just coming into possession of his powers-when he feels stronger than he ever feels afterward and thinks he knows more than he ever does know.

It was at this period that I was confused by the different theories of creation. But I examined these theories and found that they all assumed something to begin with. The nebular hypothesis, for instance, assumes that matter and force existed-matter in particles infinitely fine and each particle separated from every other particle by space infinitely great. Beginning with this assumption, force working on matter-according to this hypothesis-creates a universe. Well, I have a right to assume, and I prefer to assume a Designer back of the design-a Creator back of creation; and no matter how long you draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands back of it you can

not shake my faith in Jehovah. In Genesis it is written that, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and I can stand on that proposition until I find some theory of creation that goes farther back than "the beginning."

I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as some do; I have not yet been able to convince myself that man is a lineal descendant of the lower animals. I do not mean to find fault with you if you want to accept it; all I mean to say is that while you may trace your ancestry back to the monkey, if you find pleasure or pride in doing so, you shall not connect me with your family tree without more evidence than has yet been produced. It is true that man, in some physical qualities, resembles the beast, but man has a mind as well as a body and a soul as well as a mind. The mind is greater than the body and the soul is greater than the mind, and I object to having man's pedigree traced on one-third of him only—and that the lowest third. Fairbairn lays down a sound proposition when he says that it is not sufficient to explain man as an animal; it is necesary to explain man in history-and the Darwinian theory does not do this. The ape, according to this theory, is older than man and yet he is still an ape, while man is the author of the marvelous civilization which we see about us.

One does not escape from mystery, however, by accepting this theory, for it does not explain the origin of life. When the follower of Darwin has traced the germ of life back to the lowest form in which it appears-and to follow him one must exercise more faith than religion calls forhe finds that scientists differ. Some believe that the first germ of life came from another planet, and others hold that it was the result of spontaneous generation.