TRAINING IN ETHICAL SCIENCE. 101 



those of fallible men only ? Does it furnish to the earnest and fearless 

 seeker for moral truth an undeviating path to the object of his search ? 

 Is he not constantly invited to depart from his course on journeys 

 through the pathless wastes of theological speculation, where each 

 man thinks his diverging creed marks the true highway to heaven ? 



There are various reasons why the earnest seeker for truth who is 

 without religious belief can not feel content with the Church as a 

 teacher of moral duty. The energy, the time, the money which should 

 be devoted to building up character, to a recognition of the duties of 

 man to his fellow-man, to the relief of the afflicted, to an intelligent 

 dealing with the great problems of this life he sees devoted largely 

 to building up, jjromulgating, or seeking excuse for dogmas and the- 

 ories from which his intelligence revolts. With want and suffering 

 appealing for relief, with ignorance demanding enlightenment, with a 

 thousand duties at our doors which scarcely receive a passing notice, 

 we are asked to follow these blind teachers of the blind away from the 

 things of this world, and to enjoy with them their irrational conception 

 of what is to us the unknown perhaps the unknowable. 



Of what value is a sermon on the duty and efficacy of prayer, to 

 one who looks upon the question of the existence of a Divine Being 

 as an insoluble problem ? Of what use or benefit to him is a dis- 

 course on the nature of the Trinity, or the theory of the atonement ? 



The rationalist is compelled to look upon the books which make up 

 the Bible as simply the work of fallible men, of varying degrees of in- 

 telligence, and representing the thought of widely differing periods of 

 human development. To him, what is there of interest in attempts to 

 reconcile their contradictions and inconsistencies attempts to estab- 

 lish the untenable theory that they embody and set forth the plan and 

 design of an all-wise Author of the universe ? 



If the rationalist would support and uphold the ethical school of 

 the Church, he is in a measure also supporting and upholding theologi- 

 cal ideas which are to him in the last degree unreasonable and improb- 

 able. His money pays misguided men for teaching the ignorant of 

 earth that the all-foreseeing and merciful Author of all things would 

 doom his creatures to suffer untold agony throughout eternity for the 

 sins and mistakes of a short life, or for using the reason with which 

 he has endowed them ! Where one dollar goes to relieve want, or 

 build up character, two go to build up church or creed. The relief of 

 the widow and the fatherless is thought a matter of less importance 

 than acquainting the heathen with the theological dogmas of the Chris- 

 tian Church. 



Of course the church-going and church-supporting rationalist must 

 expect to be continually reminded of the culpability of his unbelief, 

 which, so far as he can judge, arises simply from an exercise of his rea- 

 soning faculties, and not from any wrongful intention. He becomes 

 wearied and disheartened by the want of consideration shown for the 



