File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18161179225).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo18amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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TOMP/■:'/'ITi(K\ OF Till': rhwrrnfES" 301 piTssion aud syinptuni. With all our inter- minable analyses, refined to the intense cir- cumscription of microscopic areas, we fail to put the noodle point of our objective upon the ox(;uisite pulse of Ufi' itself. . . . Wo cannot certainly say what is nuittor, or what is onory:y; and when we turn to th(> batllinir 2)rol)lom of the conversion of atomic motion into mind, we fiiul the Ari- adne thread of research suddenly cut short. But leaving scientific or philosophical enig mas aside, and looking at this great worM as human beings endowed with supernatural ambitions, how clear, or luminously full of purpose does it seem. See this phantasma- goric earth, its wars, its fan\ines, its pesti- lences, and its bewildering obstructions! Read its history, the unintormittont strugi^le, the sacrifice of the individual, the under- lying untold tragedies of millions of work- ers, the subterfuges of vanity, the deceits of greed, the mockery of pretension, the hurly- burly of doing and undoing, of everlast- ingly getting there and never getting there. It may be one increasing purpose runs with the process of the suns, but is its vindication very clear, or is it at all merciful? Now is it possible that the twentieth cen- tury will supersede all competition by bring- ing revelation to fix and justify knowledge? Can it be imagined that a voice, a touch, a presence, outside of human effort, or study, or sentiment, will illuminate it with a trans- figuring message, shall insert the rectifying key into the run-down machinery of our common faith and bring to some proper plane of realization the present helplessness of our songs and our psalms? Let us be honest. The reading over of impossible statistics does not constitute the highest form of elation. The building up of more and more unwieldy encyclopedias is all right, but if there is no confirming and conforming progress in the social fabric, . . . they are all wrong. I do not wish to par- ticularize. I would not dare to lift a sig- iiilicMiit tinker at the p!()l)loins you are ham- mering at today here in New York. We all know the woild niDM's; that sanitation and cheap riotliing and department stores have alle\iated the domestic burden and covered the nakediu>ss of man. . . . But, my friends, the spiritual sense of man is dying. Will the twentieth century light again its consuming fires? It is not neces- sary to ask for fanaticism. How often we pinch (lurselves to find out whether we be- lieve in aiiytliiiig at all. Hut our spiiitual sense will not endure a prolonged famine. Behind a sentiment there nuist 1)0 the overmastering touch of reality. Lot me speak boldly, even at this convivial feast. The message of Christ needs today re-enforcement, re-establishment, re-inearna- tion! Will the twentieth century bring it? Let us hail it in that hope; let us trust in it with that faith, and watch with expectant eyes for the light that never was on sea or shore, and listen with straining ears for the voice that shall revive the souls of men. May it not be that at the end of the twen- tieth century our desolate humanity, pros- trate upon the ruined throne of its high hopes, prostrate upon a grave of buried as- pirations, prostrate upon the broken staff of an alluring but deceptive faith, shall lift its tear-stricken eyes into that unriven sky, that pitiless and voiceless azure, that can- opy of stars, in whose obscure depths not even the plummet of the inerrant telescope has ever yet found the vanishing threshold of any Heaven, and cry out, Eli, Eli, lam a sa h acht ha n i ? No! No! Rather may it be that celestial voices shall re-awaken the orphic vision of man's supersensual destiny, and with new promises, and new premonitions, quicken the recognition of the divinity within him, and outside of creed or dogma, or book, or bell, or candle, bring upon the earth the apoca- lyptic glory of peace and righteousness and life!
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