CENTURIES ago there was an age which men called the Age of Faith. That age has forever passed, if by faith we mean blind belief. Knowledge has gone too far and become too universal. Henceforth we must be guided by reason as well as by sentiment. In direct contrast to the Age of Faith was our last century—the Age of Unbelief. Yet in the last years of that same skeptical age there arose a reactionary force which more than anything else is to characterize the twentieth century, and make it an age, not of faith nor of unbelief, but of enlightened understanding. To this inevitable result point the signs of the times.
To understand more clearly what these signs of the times are and why they portend an age of understanding, let us glance first at the century which has just closed. It needs but a brief survey to convince us that the nineteenth century was an age of materialism in every sense of the word. An age when the man of business and the man of learning alike sought satisfaction in the external world the one by the pursuit of wealth and devotion to material interests; the other by making matter the one reality and attempting to find in "the things which are seen" the solution of every problem. It was an age when worldliness and materialistic doctrines triumphed.
This fact was doubtless due in great measure to the working of two mighty forces which distinctly characterized the century an unprecedented advance in science and a vast accumulation of wealth. As knowledge of natural law increased and one remarkable scientific discovery or invention succeeded another, men began to find in the material universe their all in all. As the infatuation for gain spread abroad and "millioniare" became an every-day word, men ceased to care for aught but the growth of their riches. They lived in an atmosphere of material things. If the man of the world had been asked, "Why do you not seek satisfaction in something higher than mere wealth or position?" he might have answered, "That 'something higher' is too vague, too elusive. I must have that which I can understand and see." Likewise had it been said to the scholar, "In basing your philosophy and beliefs upon the discoveries of science do you not have to give up much that is better? where now is the simple faith of your childhood?" he might have replied, "The faith of my childhood I can no longer retain, for I find the religion and science of this day to be irreconcilable. I have had to choose between them; and I have chosen science, because science is something I can prove." Yes, but prove how? Alas, that was where the weakness lay; for in every case men sought their proof through the material senses. While ridiculing the ancients, who believed that the earth was flat because it looked that way, they themselves in other matters relied only on such knowledge as human sight could give them, not realizing that this "knowledge" has ever proved temporary and false.
