Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things — our powers, our desires, our food — are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.
The emotions will not make us cosmopolitan, any more than the greed for gain could do so. It is only by the cultivation of the habit of intellectual criticism that we shall be able to rise superior to race prejudices. … Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms. If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. … Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalist. It will give us the peace that springs from understanding. ¶ Nor is this all. It is Criticism that, recognizing no position as final, and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school, creates that serene philosophic temper which loves truth for its own sake, and love it not the less because it knows it to be unattainable.
Agnosticism is a theory of the Unknowable which assumes its most definite form in the denial of the possibility of any knowledge of God. 1st kind: connected with theory that we know only the phenomenal and a logical deduction from it. 2d kind: held by those who do not hold the phenomenal theory of knowledge but rest their deduction that the Infinite and the Absolute are unknowable on the limitation of human intelligence, maintaining that the infinite transcends the limits of our knowledge, and must on that account remain unknown, while the existence of the infinite God must be a matter of belief.
In a similar way we may conceive that progress may be made in natural theology in either of two ways: by deducing consequences from what we know or observe, or by assuming for trial the truth of a
statement made on whatever authority it may be, and then examining whether the supposition of its truth so falls in with such knowledge as we possess, or such phenomena as we observe, as to lead us to a conviction that the statement does indeed express the truth. It may be that the statement comes from a source which professes to be a revelation made from God to man. But such an employment of it as I have just described is strictly analogous to our procedure in the study of physical science, and does not therefore seem to be precluded by the terms of the foundation of this lectureship.
In this timeless speech, Henry Drummond argues that the greatest thing, the summum bonum, is love. But this love is not here just a cliché, the love of pop songs and romantic comedies. As Drummond puts it: “Patience; kindness; generosity; humility; courtesy; unselfishness; good temper; guilelessness; sincerity — these make up the supreme gift… You will observe that all are in relation to men, in relation to life, in relation to the known to-day and the near to-morrow, and not to the unknown eternity.” I have always appreciated this fact, that the biblical portrait of love is not merely a beautiful but empty concept, but rather a love with form and flesh. Drummond enumerates and expounds on the nature of biblical love, contrasting it with other goods, analyzing its aspects, and defending its primacy of place. ~ Afterall
Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means the worst in life is overcome — it is no longer even seen. So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the three Christian precautionary measures.
One must be careful not to fall back on opaque black — on deliberate wrong — and even more one has to avoid the white of a whitewashed wall, which means hypocrisy and everlasting Pharisaism. I must tell you that with evangelists it is the same as with artists. There is an old academic school, often detestable, tyrannical, the accumulation of horrors, men who wear a cuirass, a steel armor of prejudices and conventions; Their God is like the God of Shakespeare’s drunken Falstaff, le dedans dune eglise [the inside of a church].
The sects in the Church might be judged by a comparison of their favorite holidays. And so might eras in history be judged. It is matter of real interest, then, to see how all poets and prophets of all divisions of the Church unite on this day, to proclaim it the Sunday of Sundays, the High Holy Day of the year. For this is to say that poet and prophet, of every sect and those least sectarian, have found out at last that the Christian Religion stands for Life. Life instead of form; Life instead of Laws; Life instead of Grave-clothes; Life instead of Tombs; Life instead of Death ; — that is what Christianity means, and what it is for. You would be tempted to say that the Saviour had already enforced this completely in what he said to men; tempted to say that Easter morning was not needed either for illustration or enforcement. Certainly the gospel texts are full of the lesson. "Because I live, ye shall live also." "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." "This is Life Eternal — to believe on thee." And central text of all, the text we have chosen for the motto of this church, "I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." If texts alone ever did anything, these and a thousand more would show what The Truth is, and The Way. But one is tempted, in bitter moods, to say that texts never do anything, that words never achieve or finish anything. One is tempted to remember how he said that any man who prepared God’s way is greater than any man who only proclaims it, how prophets and prophesying were done with, mere talk was over — praise the Lord! and energy, action, force had come in instead, praise the Lord! Yet, if anybody did still trust in talk, he might take a lesson from these Gospels.
Every one knows that strictly speaking most words are almost untranslatable. It is always hard to find an exact equivalent for any word which has much meaning. There are no exact synonyms for such words in their own language and nothing precisely corresponding to them in another. But this difficulty is immensely increased when these words have any subtle aroma any particular charm any delicate sentiment attached to them. Then they become absolutely untranslatable. The very quality which distinguishes them disappears when they are transferred into a different phrase. This makes the desperate nature of the attempt to translate poetry from one language into another for a large part of the charm of poetic language lies in the subtle associations connected with each word. We read Virgil or Horace in the best English translations and wonder how they can ever have been considered such great writers. Their peculiar aroma has evaporated while they were being poured from one receptacle into another. The reverse takes place which was suggested in the parable for the old wine has burst the new bottles and the wine has been spilled.
Hence it happens that foreign words are so often transported bodily from one language into another or left untranslated when quoted for any purpose. Words which cannot be translated from the Latin, Greek, French, German are adopted into English and naturalized. Thus every language is enriched by the best phrases of every other. This no doubt often leads to pedantry conscious or unconscious. Foreign words are used when English ones would do as well or better So we have introduced the German word hand book when we already had a word with precisely the same meaning manual and with a better sound But generally these immigrations from foreign parts enrich our own literature.
Sometimes words are left untranslated because they seem untranslatable. Shakspeare has done this as when the dying Cæsar reproaches Brutus with the words. “And thou, too, Brutus!” Shakspeare has left it in the Latin Et tu, Brute! Then die Cæsar.” There seems something incongruous in putting a Latin and an English clause together in the same line But Shakspeare no doubt found something in the Latin to which no English words not even his own could do justice The English and German Bibles as translations are as nearly perfect as anything can be. I mean as a whole and in their impression on the mind.
There are errors no doubt which ought to be corrected but the simplicity pathos sublimity of the language cannot be surpassed In these great Teutonic tongues strength and tenderness blend as in the original writings Unfortunately the language which was spoken by Jesus and his disciples in Galilee has disappeared There is no gospel extant in the words which were uttered on the lake shore or in Capernaum A few fragments however of that old speech remain in the New Testament certain words so full of tender and heavenly associations that they were left untranslated in the Greek gospels and still remain untranslated in our English Testament Of these I will mention five four of thein uttered by Jesus and one by Mary Magdalene Two of these were expressions of power one was a cry of anguish another was an utterance of ununspeakable tenderness the last of the most ardent faith We read that Jairus the ruler of the synagogue came to Jesus earnestly praying him to come and heal his little daughter who was at the point of death Jesus comes to the house goes into the room with only three of his disciples Peter James and John and the father and mother of the little girl who was twelve years old Having put out those whom he found in the room he called saying Maid arise This is what Luke says who of course was not present Matthew