LAND AND WATER 
October 9, 1915. 
A CHAMPION OF FAITH. 
GOD is God ; man is immortal : these six words 
may be said to epitomise the main elements 
of faith which animates and has ever ani- 
mated the very vast majority of the human 
W family. It has found expression in the most 
diverse forms of worship; it has been asserted through 
many different formulas and antagonistic dogmas. But 
stripped of all external qualities the faith persists, and 
man through all the ages and in every phase of civilisa- 
tion has accepted tiie presence of an Omnipotence and 
has rejected the idea that he himself is only a beast 
that perishes. 
But there have always been reactionaries. Tlie fool 
who hath said in his heart, " There is no God," is as 
old as faith, and a curious symptom of his folly is the 
delusion that in some incomprehensible manner he Is 
intellectually in advance of his fellows who cling to the 
higher wisdom, failing to perceive that he, too, has per- 
sisted til rough the ages. The peculiar distinction of 
fools is tiieir power of irritation, and in hours of storm 
and distress, such as the nations are passing through 
now, this ancient denial adds pain to sore hearts and 
gives new grief to souls perplexed, wherefore a re- 
assertion of tiie old truth by a living man of eminence, 
whose outlook on life has enabled him to take a detached 
view, is at the moment doubly welcome. Mr. Balfour 
will earn the gratitude of thousands of very huinble 
readers, as well as the commendation of scholarly ad- 
mirers and intellectual equals, for his new volume. 
Theism and Humanism (being the Gifford lectures 
delivered at the University of Glasgow in 1914), recently 
publisiied by Messrs. Ilodder and Stoughton (los. 6d.). 
The Gifford Lectures. 
The Gifford lectures, as Mr. Balfour points out in 
the preface, are confined to "natural" religion. "Even 
themes which might well be deemed to fall within its 
limits are scarcely referred to. For example, God, 
freedom and immortality have been treated by at least 
one eminent writer as the great realities beyond the 
world of sense. I believe in them all. But I only dis- 
cuss the first— and that only from a limited point of 
view." The phrase, " God is God," superficially 
appears nonsense, but actually it designates the belief o'f 
the mass of ordinary humanity. Either they shrink 
from a definition, or, if a definition be attempted, it is 
realised to be so inadequate that it is avoided in disputa- 
tion. Now when a man of affairs, a former Prime 
Minister of this nation, and the political head of the 
British Xavy m the gravest crisis of the Empire, talks 
on Iheism, u is with more than ordinary curiosity that 
the reader seeks out his definition, fearing lest it be too 
complex or delicate for daily wear and fear Not so 
'No utterance could be plainer than Mr. Balfour's 
" ... I speak of God I mean something other than 
an Identiy wherein all differences vanish, or a Unity 
which includes but does not transcend the differeS 
which ,t somehow holds in solution. I mean a God whom 
men can love, a God to whom men can pray, who TaS 
sides who has purposes and preferences, ^^hlse attr ! 
Ws howsoever conceived, leave unimp;ired the po - 
The lectures were delivered before the war and it 
Is interesting to find Mr. Balfour bearing est mony to a 
SrveTs 0I ,Tr''''^"''^^ '''' i-prefsed Xe/c os^ 
ODser\ers of the period antecedent to the present death 
are'fcSfe^.r''" '^^'^ ^""^^ «"d beliefs " The/e 
eTergTe of UV^ "''^ ^"'^ '^^^'^ "^ believe that the 
ctS in the i""", ,^'^'''^f ^-o" «■•« "ow entirely oc 
-ispt Ung over its dis^/'? °' .^^^^""^ ^^-^^'^'^ «"d 
doubt whether there h.'^"°"/ ^ '^""^' ^'^'"^^ ^O' ^ 
"etiier there has been for generations a deeper 
By the Editor. 
interest tiian at this moment in things spiritual." If 
that were a true statement in March, 1914. as we believe 
it to have been, how much truer is it in October. 1915, 
w hen the mere brutal force of events have compelled so 
many to jettison the dead-weight of materialistic con- 
clusions if the soul, not only the individual soul, but the 
soul of the nation and even of our vaunted civilisation, 
is to survive through this roaring maelstrom of broken, 
surging waters. 
Vital Necessity of a Creed. 
" A creed of some kind, religious or irreligious, is 
a vital necessity for all, not a speculative luxury for the 
few; and the practical creed of the few who speculate 
has a singular and even suspicious resemblance to that 
of the many who do not." This passage is from the 
first lecture, and the tenth and final lecture contains this 
conclusion : " My desire has been to show that all we 
think best in human culture, whether associated with 
beauty, goodness, or knowledge, requires God for its 
support, that Humanism without Theism loses more 
than half its value " — or, as the present writer is 
tempted to paraphrase it, that man without God is of 
little w^orth. 
In reference to the " natural history " of " Homo 
Sapiens," the lecturer shrewdly asks:' " What does 
historical interest require? Not merely 'brute fact,' 
but brute fact about beings who are more than animals, 
who look before and after, who dream about the past 
and hope about the future, who plan and strive and 
suffer for ends of their own invention ; for ideals which 
reach far beyond the appetites and fears which rule the 
lives of their brother beasts. Such beings have a 
' natural history,' but it is not with this we are con- 
cerned. The history which concerns us is the history of 
self-conscious personalities." The futility of naturalism 
Is pointed out; of agnosticism the lecturer remarks: 
•" I object to it because it talks loudly of experience, yet 
never faces facts, and boasts its rationality, yet rarely 
reasons home." " The universe either has a spiritual 
cause or it has not. If the agnostic is as ignorant as he 
supposes he cannot have any reason for preferring the 
first alternative to the second or the second to the first." 
Love of God. 
13 
" My point is different," observes Mr. Balfour in 
another connection : 
I find in the love of God a moral end which reconciles other 
moral ends, because it includes them. It is not intolerant 
of desires for our own good. It demands their due sub- 
ordination, not their complete suppression. It implies 
loyal service to One who by His essential nature wills th9 
good of all. It requires, therefore, that the good of all 
shall be an object of our endeavour, and it promises 
that in striving for this inclusive end, we shall, in 
i'aul^ue phrase, be fellow- workers with Him. 
In conclusion it is perhaps a duty to mention that this 
article, rightly speaking, is not a review of Mr, Balfour's 
brilliant lectures; rather is it a recital of the chief im- 
pressions which the perusal of them at the end of a day's 
work has left on the mind of a busy man, who has ' to 
confess he is not always able to keep pace with the close 
reasoning and cultured dialectic of the lecturer. This 
s his loss, and he regrets it; but It has not diminished 
the strong pleasure or lessened the fine stimulus which 
have been gained from the reading of them. One of 
he most vivid memories of the writer's boyhood was 
I rnnv'l^rc ''f "^If ^J'' ^^h^" i" his early' teens, of 
^ copy oi Sartor Resartus. He knew enough Latin' 
to interpret the perplexing title, but, having no one to 
explain it or othe^ riddles to him,' the philosophy of 
(Continued on i}age 20, column 2.) 
