A System is to be tested by its product. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said the Master. Thought takes form in character; the goal of the world's toil and struggle is the revelation of manhood. Ruskin never said a nobler thing than that the real test of our factory system is not the manufacture of fading fabrics so much as the true type of manhood produced in their service. At the bar of this judgment religions must also appear, and when found wanting they fall. The human concept of God has shaped men's deeds and lives. 'Those who worshiped the god of war became fierce and warlike; those who worshiped beauty and symmetry became esthetic; those who worshiped power became conquerors; those who conceived of God as a moral governor sought, even though with much limitation, after holiness.
The modern thought of God has been limited by a dominant materialism, and this has necessitated a thought of the infinite which is partial, confused, discordant. God is conceived of as infinite power, yet over against God is placed a gigantic power as real as He, limiting the divine action. God is conceived of as infinite good, yet evil is believed to be over against Him—as real as good and often more potent. John Stuart Mill threw a bomb into the theological camp of his age by claiming that the moral and physical evil in the world proves the creator to be limited either in goodness or power; and he reasons for the limit of power.
The writer long sought for a successful reply to Mill's sharp logic, but found none. From the standpoint of scholastic theology none is possible. Prevalent pulpit arguments to show that the infinite creator did not create all that is real have not lifted the unbelief from the general mentality. Many rebel, many withdraw thought from the problem of life; the contradiction lurks and hinders. Demonstration is destroyed by doubt of the infinite veracity. It is evident that the type of life based on limitation, confusion, uncertainty, will be weak, discordant, hesitating. The world long sought the basis of harmony, but no rational basis was found. The long mental struggle over the conflict between religion and science has ceased, and the theories which were hailed as a solution have been swept away.
