two messages from Boreham regarding the barrenness of the secularist mindset

The Analyst

WE are all born analysts, and we quickly get to work. . The passion for scientific investigation begins in the cradle. A child glories in taking things to pieces. He is always at it. He will take a clock to pieces to find the thing that is for ever ticking. He will take an instrument to pieces to find the music. He will take a flower to pieces to find the .fragrance. He will take his mechanical toys to pieces to find what makes them go. He would take his mother to pieces, if he could, to find where all the love and sweetness come from. Those who have no eye for beauty will mutter a lot of common place nonsense about his bump of destructiveness having been abnormally developed. It is not destructiveness at all. When he discovers that his investigation has destroyed the very thing that he was fondly investigating, he will weep over its ruin Nothing was further from his thought. He is not a born iconoclast, but a born analyst. That is all His most passionate propensity is the scientific yearning to resolve a substance into its original elements, to ascertain its component parts, to reveal its ingredients, to take it to pieces. And, though he should live to be as old as Methuselah, he will never quite escape from that analytical propensity. Indeed, it may grow upon him. And, as in the nursery it often led him to the ruin of his best-loved toys, so, in later life, his insatiable craving for taking things to pieces will beguile him into many sorrows before it has done with him. Let us trace the thing a little. But we must not yet say good-bye to the child in his cot. Watch him I He cries and crows and chuckles and squeals. The causes of his antics and grimaces are among the things that are not dreamed of in our philosophy. And yet, what if he is wrestling with some profound analytical problem? What if the young chemist is already in his wonderful laboratory, and is hard at work at his task of taking the universe to pieces? See I He scratches at his cot and he laughs. He pokes at the counterpane and crows in his furious glee. In his delicious merriment he flings his feet into the air and chuckles audibly. 'And as the pair of pink pillars appear before his delighted gaze, he scratches at them with all his might and main. And then he screams, as if the foundations of the world had been suddenly shaken. You are amazed at his incredible stupidity in scratching himself, and in straightway crying because it hurts. But what if the incredible stupidity be yours, and not his? What if he be absorbed in an analytical experiment? For experiments in a laboratory are never unattended by some risk. See I He has now divided the entire universe into two parts. He has discovered that there is an essential difierence between the cot and the counterpane on the one hand, and the pretty pair of chubby pink pillars on the other. He finds, as a result of his elaborate experiments, that certain things make up the  "I" of this life, and must on no account be scratched; and that certain other things make up the "Not-I" and may be scratched without pain. Later on he will pass from this purely physical analysis of • l' and • N ot-I ' to the purely ethical dissection of the' mine' and the • notmine.' And, still later, his hungry mind will invade and dissect a still more wonderful world. He will pick up, let us say, Matthew Arnold's Literature  Dogma, and, sitting at the feet of the brilliant Oxford Professor, he will learn to make a new analysis. For, says Arnold, all scientific religion amounts in the last resort to a clear distinction between the • ourselves' and the' not-ourselves.' For here, dwelling within the very body that we scratched in the cradle, is' a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.' And that power is God r GOD in Us I And when he gets as far as this, our young analyst has begun to take the universe to pieces to some purpose I

And yet, at this very point, his knowledge will lead him into mischief. Knowledge always does. Knowledge is like a lie. A lie requires another lie to cover it. And my knowledge requires still more knowledge to teach me how to use it. It is of no use teaching a child how to handle a knife and howto wield a pen. If you leave it at this, you will find him celebrating his knowledge of cutlery and calligraphy by carving his name on the dining-room table. You must teach him how to use the knowledge you have already given him. In the same way, the inborn faculty of analysis must be educated, or it will play some cruel pranks with him. History affords a shocking example. About three hundred years before Christ a young analyst sprang into existence at Alexandria, Euclid by name. Most school children have heard of him. He spent a good deal of his time in taking things to pieces-triangles, squares, and curves. And at last he actually committed himself to this amazing fallacy: ' The whole,' he said, ' is equal to the sum of all its parts.' It is a fearful thing when the passion for analysis leads a man into so grave a heresy as this.   The whole is equal to the sum of all its parts.' Could anything be more absurd? Take Paradise Lost or Hamlet or In Memoriam to pieces on this principle, and you will find that the great classic simply consists of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet in an endless variety of juxtaposition. And would Euclid have us believe that the whole of Hamlet is only equal to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet? It has often been pointed out that in Gray's Elegy there is scarcely a thought that rises above mediocrity, and yet the combination and sequence and rhythm of the whole are such that we have all recognized it as one of the choicest gems of our literature. The entire poem is infinitely greater than the sum of all its parts. Or think of Tennyson's brook, with its deeps and its shallows, its whirls and its eddies, its song and its chatter, its foamy flake and its silvery flash, its graceful windings among ferns and forget-me-nets, its haunts of trout and of grayling. Now, the analyst who has not been warned of the peril of dissection will take all this to pieces. And he will tell you that it consists of two parts of hydrogen to sixteen parts of oxygen!

If you hear the wildest statement often enough, you will come at last to believe it. And this young analyst has read Euclid's axiom so frequently that he has really come at last to fancy that it is true!

The whole of the brook equal to the sum of all its parts I The whole equal to' hydrogen and oxygen !

Let our analyst read the poem and see I Does a lovely tune consist merely of so many notes? We

are irresistibly reminded of Balthazar, the infatuated chemist in Balzac's Quest lor the Absolute.

His poor wife is in an agony of apprehension on his account, and she frets and worries about his perilous experiments. She seeks with passionate entreaty to dissuade him. As he looks into her face he notices that her beautiful eyes are swimming in tears.

, Ah I' exclaimed the analyst, 'tears I tears I Well, I have decomposed them. They contain a little phosphate of lime, a little chloride of sodium, a little mucus, and a little water I' Now, I happen to know for certain that neither Euclid, nor Balzac's chemist, nor all the cold-blooded philosophers in the universe, could ever persuade any husband or lover in the wide, wide world that a woman's tears contain nothing more than these constituent elements!  It is another of those common cases in which the whole is greater, beyond all calculation, than the sum of all its parts. I wonder that it never occurs to such analysts as these to ask themselves this pertinent question: If a whole contains no more than the sum of all its parts, why should either God or man take the trouble to transform the parts Into a whole? It would be love's labour lost, with a vengeance.

But, after all, the analyst will not do very much harm in the world unless he starts to take himself to pieces. If he confines his attention to poems, and books, and tunes, and tears, he may miss a vast amount of beauty and pathos and music and romance; but he may survive that. The wreck will not be total. But when he begins to take himself to pieces, he will make a tragic mess of things unless he knows exactly how to go about it.

Here, for example, is an extract from the Practical Druggist. It tells us that an average man is made up of so much iron, so much phosphate, so much salt, so much gas. so much water, and so on. Now, does anyone feel that this is quite satisfactory? Is this MAN? Is the whole only equal to the sum of all its parts? Where does consciousness come in, and conscience, and passion, and love, and hate, and everything that makes me ME? And is your analyst much nearer to the truth when he dissects himself another way, and says that he consists of spirit and soul and body? I think not. I have noticed something about the body which is wonderfully spiritual, and something about the spirit which is wofully carnal. The analysis is very crude. I prefer to take myself as I am-a whole which is very much greater than the sum of all its parts and to cry with Behmen, the mystic: 'Only when I know GoD shall I know MYSELF!'

Here, then, we have a most extraordinary phenomenon. We are analysts from our cradles, yet we never excel at it. It is the one thing we begin to do as soon as we are born; and we are still doing it very clumsily and very badly when the time comes to die. We look around us, and we divide things in general into things sacred and things secular. What could be more stilted, more unnatural, more artificial? As though to a secular mind anything could be sacred I As though to a saintly soul anything could be secular I We divide our fellow mortals up into saints and sinners. But we often suspect our own analysis. We find ourselves gazing in admiration at the saintliness of some sinners; and we find ourselves in grief at the sinfulness of some saints.

We turn from things around to things within, and soon find ourselves in the same confusion. Chesterton says that the battle of the future is the battle between the telescope and the microscope. He is mistaken. The battle of the future is between the telescope and the stethoscope. And in that fight the telescope must win. It was fashionable, once upon a time, for most excellent and devout people to spend half their time with the stethoscope in awful introspection and analysis. Such self-examination has Its place; but it has been sadly overdone. I prefer to lay down the stethoscope and take up the telescope. 'Looking unto Jesus,' says a wonderful writer who points out this more excellent way. It is so very difficult to analyse the soul and to dissect the good from the bad. I like to think of that great and gracious Covenanter, David Dickson, Professor of Theology in Glasgow University.

When he lay dying, he attempted to analyse his inmost self; but he soon abandoned the attempt.

Then, turning to his bosom friend, John Livingstone, who sat beside his death-bed, he said: ' I have taken them all-all my good deeds and all my bad deeds -and have cast them all together in a heap before the Lord! I have fled from both of them to Jesus ; and in Him I have sweet peace I' It was beautifully and bravely spoken. That is the last word in analytical science.

 

Aristotle said that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

And God said…

 

 

 

 

 

SECOND.,CLASS PASSENGERS

I remember travelling on the rail motor and the choo choo train to school each day.  On entering there was a notice, clearly inscribed in glaring capitals. Here it is :

NO SECOND-CLASS PASSENGERS ALLOWED BEYOND THIS BARRIER.

I am writing to insist that that wholesome regulation should be rigidly enforced. I want no secondclass passengers strutting on my deck. And I think I can make out my case without qualifying for the inclusion of my name in the Book of Snobs.

I fancy I notice a tendency in modem preaching to exaggerate the importance of scientific opinion. It seems to be taken for granted that the conclusions of eminent scientists and celebrated philosophers give to the faith a sanction and an authority that it would not otherwise possess. I am not prepared to accept the assumption. Scientists and philosophers, considered as scientists and philosophers, are distinctly second-class passengers, and they must be kept on their own side of the barrier.

Now, I must carefully protect myself, or I shall be most grievously misunderstood. I speak with no disrespect. I raise my hat to every scientist and philosopher living, and to the memory of every scientist and philosopher dead. The human race flowers into perfection when a thinker is born.  'Beware,' says Emerson, 'when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe or where it will end.' Among them that are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than a brilliant thinker, a daring philosopher, a distinguished scientist. Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. That is to say, that, great as he is, he is but a second-class passenger after all. It is good, of course, for all who can possibly manage to do so-and it is almost essential for every minister-to read what these princes of thought and peers of intellect have to say.

What a wealthy inrush of mental enrichment has reached us just lately. for example, through the brilliant unfoldings of Eucken and Bergson I All this is most excellent. I do not object to my having the right-as a saloon passenger-to go down to the second-class deck and to chat with any passengers I may happen to find there. My protest is against their being allowed to invade my preserves. I can snap my fingers at the barrier. But I protest against their being allowed to do so I

I am always delighted, naturally enough, when an eminent thinker avows himself a Christian, just as I am delighted when a crossing-sweeper avows himself a Christian. And, since the thinker may wield his Christian influence over a wider area than is open to the crossing-sweeper, I may, perhaps, rejoice even more in the conversion of the philosopher than in that of the crossing-sweeper. But that is about as far as it goes. I have never felt free  to parade the opinions of scientists and philosophers on distinctly religious subjects because I have never felt that they are authorities on those subjects. For one thing, it does not seem quite fair to do so. It happens that, at this moment, the general consensus of scientific and philosophical thought is most strongly favourable to the faith. But I am conscious of very little elation on that account. Nor do I feel that, on that account, my position as a Christian teacher is appreciably strengthened.

And for this reason: Suppose the tide happened to turn! The very suggestion seems absurd. But the present cordiality between the scientist and the theologian is quite a fresh development. It has grown up in a single century. There is nothing to guarantee its permanence. Let us suppose, however ridiculous the supposition may seem, that the general consensus of scientific and philosophical thought became once more strongly sceptical. Should I feel correspondingly depressed? Should I feel that my position as a Christian teacher was appreciably weakened? Not a bit of it I It would not affect a single emotion in my soul, or a single inflection in my voice. f We preach Christ crucified.'

And  Whatever record leap to light, I never can be shamed. J

And just because I should, in that grotesquely supposititious case, go on with my work as though nothing had happened, it seems to me scarcely fair or seemly to be unduly elated at the sympathetic smiles of our great thinkers, or to assume that my message gains in authority through their endorsement.

The fact is that we have a faith that cannot be shocked by the contempt of these second-class passengers, and which, therefore, derives no real support from their corroboration and patronage. For there is always this difference between those passengers beyond the barrier and myself. They must always speak with hesitation, whilst I speak with unwavering assurance. They are always subject to correction and revision, whilst my certainties are absolutely final. "I know whom I have believed.'

"I know that nothing can separate me from the love of God.'  'I know'  that all things work together for good.'  'I know that, if my earthly house be dissolved, I have a house eternal in the heavens.'

This is the aristocratic phraseology of a saloon passenger, and I mean to be very cautious lest I allow my vocabulary to be corrupted by the men from the second-class. It is interesting, of course, and-up to a certain point-reassuring, that they are saying nothing in their second-class quarters that is in conflict with the things we talk about on our pr0menade.

But then, we talk about lots of things on our deck that they of the second know nothing at all about. Or, to put it quite accurately, we talk of lots of things on our deck that they would know nothing at all about unless we sometimes strolled down to their quarters and discussed these loftier matters with them. What would science or philosophy, left to themselves, have discovered about Sin. About Regeneration, about Forgiveness, about Redemption, about Justification, about Eternity?

Or even about God? For science and philosophy never find God. They merely find evidence for the existence of a God. It is the offer of a stone to a child crying for bread. For who wants evidence?

I want God. Science and Philosophy find His footprint on the sand, as Robinson Crusoe found the footprint on his island. But who wants a footprint? Would the footprint of his lady satisfy a lover? No, no, no I He wants her. I want no footprint. I want Him. • Oh, that I knew where I might find Him I' This is the throbbing cry of my hungry soul. I want Him-Himself. And neither Science nor Philosophy could ever have introduced Him to me.

The trouble about these second-class passengers is their insatiable passion for proving things. Their very facility for proving things proves at least one thing. It proves how insignificant the things are that they are for ever proving. We on the first deck rarely trouble about proving things. For you can only prove things that do not really matter. You can never prove the big things of life on which our very existence and happiness depend. No man can prove that his mother loved him. No man can prove that his wife is true to him. Yet no man would wish to linger on after his faith in these things had deserted him. No man can prove that he has been divinely loved, and redeemed, and forgiven.

But his faith in this blissful experience is the joy of his heart and the light of his eyes. On the other hand, those second-class passengers can prove that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, and that two and' two make four.

But I fancy that I could still eat a decent meal, and sleep with perfect serenity at night, even if my confidence in these things should be in some strange way disturbed.

I drew a rather unkind analogy just now between the scientist and the crossing-sweeper. I was half ashamed of it as it trickled off my pen. But now that I come to reconsider the matter, with a view to a possible apology, I am more inclined to apologize to the crossing-sweeper. For it is quite possible that, in the things which we discuss on the first-class deck, the crossing-sweeper may be a higher authority than the philosopher. Professor A. W. Momerie asks himself, in his Origin of  Evil, why some scientists find the vision of God so blurred and indistinct. "I think," he says, "the chief reason is this. Just as the body may be over-trained, and its powers developed to the injury of the mind, so the mental faculties may be over-educated-educated, that is at the expense of the spiritual. This has been the case with a good many modem physicists. Their whole lives are spent in weighing, measuring, and analysing things, so that they feel hopelessly lost in regard to subjects which do not admit of such treatment.' And we all recall Darwin's pathetic  and classical confession: < My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.' ' My soul is dried up,' he says again, < and the very nature of my work has caused the paralysis of that part of my brain on which the highest tastes depend.' And Tyndall stoutly maintained that the devotion of the powers to scientific investigation rendered a man less, rather than more, competent to deal with theological questions.

There are, of course, times when we lose sight of the scientist in the saint, and of the philosopher in the believer. The Rev. John Morgan, of Fountainbridge, visited Sir James Young Simpson during his last illness. He asked him one day, < What do you consider your greatest discovery?' < On the morning of Christmas Day, 1861,' the great doctor replied,  "I discovered that I was a sinner, and that Jesus Christ was my Saviour I' And Lord Kelvin, when asked by a student which of all his wonderful discoveries he considered the most valuable, startled his questioner by replying, ' To me the most valuable of all the discoveries I have ever made was when I discovered my Saviour in Jesus Christ I '

But when a man starts to talk like this, I always discover a first-class ticket peeping out of his pocket; and as I stroll the promenade in his delightful company, I no more think of him as a scientist than I think of Bunyan as a tinker.