save yourself."

It will be seen by what has preceded, that Prof. James of Harvard University, throws the weight of his influence on the side of those who have always maintained that God and immortality are indispensable to the happiness of man. In his opinion, what a man would be if deprived of his reason, the universe would be if deprived of a God, and life, of a future existence. The eminent psychologist takes the further position that it is immaterial whether or not there is any evidence to prove the existence of a God or of a life after death. If the belief is essential to our happiness and usefulness, he thinks we have got the right to entertain it, irrespective of the question of evidence. "If there is a belief of any kind to which you have taken a special fancy, or one that you feel like crying for," the professor seems to say, "help yourself to it; you have only yourself to suit." Even if such a belief should involve an element of risk, we are urged to take the risk. If it requires audacity even to believe in a God and immortality, we are told to have the audacity. It is his idea that when we are dealing with the unknown, the important thing is the heart's desire, and not the question of evidence. In passing, I might suggest that Prof. James would never have thought of pushing aside with such nonchalance, the question of evidence, were it not for an irrepressible suspicion that the evidence is against him. He hopes to do without the evidence because the evidence will not help him. This reminds us of the saying of the philosopher Hobbes, that, men are generally against reason when reason is against them.

As already intimated, the liberal party in the church regards Prof. James as a defender of the faith. He is classed with such men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Kelvin, who though scientists still believe in the supernatural, and by their example have made such a belief respectable. It must be borne in mind, however, that these distinguished men are Christians only, if at all, in a very loose sense of the word. All the cardinal doctrines of revelation, such as the creation, the atonement, the incarnation, and a personal God—even one, to say nothing of a trinity—they reject. These gentlemen have not enough faith to be baptised to-day, had they not been baptised in their childhood,—or to be received into any Christian church without greatly stretching the rules in their behalf. It remains then quite true, and the argument has not yet been answered, that there is not a single eminent thinker in the world to-day who will subscribe to the creed of Christendom without first going through it with a blue pencil, or a pair of scissors. But Prof. James, as also Lodge and Kelvin, if they are not supernaturalists in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they anti-supernaturalists. They are between and betwixt, if I may use that phrase—not quite ready to part with supernaturalism altogether, nor yet able to hold on to it in its entirety, and so they linger somewhere on the borders or the edge of it.

The first remark I have to make on the position of these newly recruited defenders of supernaturalism—even though the supernaturalism which they defend be of the attenuated kind—is, that their argument is not even an improvement on that of the theologian. I like the dogmatic and autocratic, "thus saith the Lord," of theology, much better than the "suit yourself" of these gentlemen. The one position is as destructive of intellectual integrity, as the other. The theologian starts with the fallacy that God can make a thing true by an act of his will—that his say so makes all need of evidence superfluous. Prof. James and the men of his school start with a proposition equally fatal to the truth—namely; that whatever we wish to be true concerning the unknown is true. All that is needed, for instance, to give the universe a God is to wish for one. All that is necessary to make a man immortal is to desire and believe that he is. "The Will to Believe," which is the title of one of the professor's writings, makes truth the creature of man, as theology makes it the creature of God. You see that after all, the theologian and the "scientific" supernaturalist pull together. That is to say, when science lends itself to theology, it ceases to be scientific. It is not theology that goes over to science, but science that goes over to theology. As soon as science appears at the camp of theology, it is forthwith swallowed up. When Prof. James speaks of the "will to believe," and never mind the evidence, he is borrowing from theology, the "will to create" of God.

Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything but his glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does not have to consider anything but his needs and desires. Ask, "What is Truth?" and the theologian answers: "Whatever God wants it to be." Ask now the scientist allies of the supernatural, "What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever man desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected that it is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted to dispense with evidence and consult his will. But there is no merit, for instance, in a man not telling any falsehoods where he is sure of being found out; his character is tested by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will be found out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say anything and everything we please without the fear of ever being caught, that we should restrain ourselves and show our loyalty to the everlasting law of honor, never to depart from veracity. To make any assertions about the unknown is to take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano Bruno, "I must obey the truth, not command it." But the theologico-scientific position is the very reverse of this. If a god were to ask the question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer, "Lord, suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon your will to believe."

The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I may use such an expression—is pragmatism, which is a word from the Greek root pragmatikos, whence our word "practice" and "practical." The idea at the basis of this philosophy is that whatever is practical and business-like—whatever is necessary to a given program, is authoritative. The philosopher, Kant, was one of the first to urge that we have a right to believe as we please concerning the things which we can neither prove nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are necessary to morality. His modern disciples following his leadership, take the position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief, and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is the test, they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and not, "Is it true?" If it works, what do we care whether or not it be true. If it does not work, it is of no help to us even if it were true. This is identically the same argument which is advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify for instance, the belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of a place called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues the priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or not such a place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and profitable doctrine. Therefore it is as good as true. In the phraseology of pragmatism, millions of people want a purgatory, therefore, there is one. And once again, to the question, "What is Truth," the answer of both the theologian and the pragmatist is, "Do not bother about it." And this describes the attitude of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic toward truth. They do not bother about it. Yes, they do not bother about it. That is why progress limps and the darkness lingers. People have been brought up not to bother about