The Destiny of Man | Page 2

placed in the centre of a universe wherein all things were ordained for
his sole behoof: the sun to give him light and warmth, the stars in their
courses to preside over his strangely checkered destinies, the winds to
blow, the floods to rise, or the fiend of pestilence to stalk abroad over
the land,--all for the blessing, or the warning, or the chiding, of the
chief among God's creatures, Man. Upon some such conception as this,
indeed, all theology would seem naturally to rest. Once dethrone

Humanity, regard it as a mere local incident in an endless and aimless
series of cosmical changes, and you arrive at a doctrine which, under
whatever specious name it may be veiled, is at bottom neither more nor
less than Atheism. On its metaphysical side Atheism is the denial of
anything psychical in the universe outside of human consciousness; and
it is almost inseparably associated with the materialistic interpretation
of human consciousness as the ephemeral result of a fleeting
collocation of particles of matter. Viewed upon this side, it is easy to
show that Atheism is very bad metaphysics, while the materialism
which goes with it is utterly condemned by modern science.[1] But our
feeling toward Atheism goes much deeper than the mere recognition of
it as philosophically untrue. The mood in which we condemn it is not at
all like the mood in which we reject the corpuscular theory of light or
Sir G.C. Lewis's vagaries on the subject of Egyptian hieroglyphics. We
are wont to look upon Atheism with unspeakable horror and loathing.
Our moral sense revolts against it no less than our intelligence; and this
is because, on its practical side, Atheism would remove Humanity from
its peculiar position in the world, and make it cast in its lot with the
grass that withers and the beasts that perish; and thus the rich and
varied life of the universe, in all the ages of its wondrous duration,
becomes deprived of any such element of purpose as can make it
intelligible to us or appeal to our moral sympathies and religious
aspirations.
And yet the first result of some of the grandest and most irrefragable
truths of modern science, when newly discovered and dimly
comprehended, has been to make it appear that Humanity must be
rudely unseated from its throne in the world and made to occupy an
utterly subordinate and trivial position; and it is because of this
mistaken view of their import that the Church has so often and so
bitterly opposed the teaching of such truths. With the advent of the
Copernican astronomy the funnel-shaped Inferno, the steep mountain of
Purgatory crowned with its terrestrial paradise, and those concentric
spheres of Heaven wherein beatified saints held weird and subtle
converse, all went their way to the limbo prepared for the childlike
fancies of untaught minds, whither Hades and Valhalla had gone before
them. In our day it is hard to realize the startling effect of the discovery

that Man does not dwell at the centre of things, but is the denizen of an
obscure and tiny speck of cosmical matter quite invisible amid the
innumerable throng of flaming suns that make up our galaxy. To the
contemporaries of Copernicus the new theory seemed to strike at the
very foundations of Christian theology. In a universe where so much
had been made without discernible reference to Man, what became of
that elaborate scheme of salvation which seemed to rest upon the
assumption that the career of Humanity was the sole object of God's
creative forethought and fostering care? When we bear this in mind, we
see how natural and inevitable it was that the Church should persecute
such men as Galileo and Bruno. At the same time it is instructive to
observe that, while the Copernican astronomy has become firmly
established in spite of priestly opposition, the foundations of Christian
theology have not been shaken thereby. It is not that the question which
once so sorely puzzled men has ever been settled, but that it has been
outgrown. The speculative necessity for man's occupying the largest
and most central spot in the universe is no longer felt. It is recognized
as a primitive and childish notion. With our larger knowledge we see
that these vast and fiery suns are after all but the Titan like servants of
the little planets which they bear with them in their flight through the
abysses of space. Out from the awful gaseous turmoil of the central
mass dart those ceaseless waves of gentle radiance that, when caught
upon the surface of whirling worlds like ours, bring forth the endlessly
varied forms and the endlessly complex movements that make up what
we can see of life. And as when God revealed himself to his ancient
prophet