Faith Justified by Progress (Volume 9); Lectures Delivered Before Lake Forest College on the Foundation of the Late William Bross (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE As his pursuit of present pleasure brings man disappointment and disaster, so his endeavor to insure himself of comfort and well-being during the course of his natural lifetime turns out to be a failure. A conviction of the essential uncertainty of the natural life and the consequent transiency of its joys is either produced in him slowly as the outcome of observation and experience of the vicissitudes of fortune in his own case and that of others, or else bursts upon him with overwhelming force as the result of some devastating personal calamity. But the breakdown of the ideals and practices of the natural life does not leave human volition crushed by defeat or prostrate through failure: it responds to the emergency with characteristic faith and vigor by projecting the plan of a larger 130 and more permanent life. On the ashes of its burnt-out hopes of natural security and satisfaction it raises the ideal of a life which shall be beyond the reach of misfortune and decay, a life of eternal and abiding reality. For, incidental to his pursuit of natural goods, man had learned of the existence of ends whose attainment depended upon the favor of no external agency whatsoever, but exclusively upon the activity of his own will. His capacity for thought was his own, he could exercise it in acquiring knowledge in bad fortune as well as good: his power of choice remained with him while he had life and sanity; his emotions could be trained to find pleasure not in pursuing or appropriating material objects but in contemplating the beautiful and harmonious in nature and in man. Devotion to such spiritual ends now promised to give widest scope to human personality, greatest substantiality to human life. In order that it might give itse...