After Pentecost

195:6.1Sci­en­tists have un­in­ten­tion­ally pre­cip­i­tated man­kind into a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic panic; they have started an un­think­ing run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence has vast spir­i­tual re­sources; it can stand the de­mands be­ing made upon it. Only un­think­ing men be­come pan­icky about the spir­i­tual as­sets of the hu­man race. When the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic-sec­u­lar panic is over, the re­li­gion of Je­sus will not be found bankrupt. The spir­i­tual bank of the king­dom of heaven will be pay­ing out faith, hope, and moral se­cu­rity to all who draw upon it “in His name.”

195:6.2No mat­ter what the ap­par­ent con­flict be­tween ma­te­ri­al­ism and the teach­ings of Je­sus may be, you can rest as­sured that, in the ages to come, the teach­ings of the Mas­ter will fully tri­umph. In re­al­ity, true re­li­gion can­not be­come in­volved in any con­tro­versy with sci­ence; it is in no way con­cerned with ma­te­rial things. Re­li­gion is sim­ply in­dif­fer­ent to, but sym­pa­thetic with, sci­ence, while it su­premely con­cerns it­self with the sci­en­tist.

195:6.3The pur­suit of mere knowl­edge, with­out the at­ten­dant in­ter­pre­ta­tion of wis­dom and the spir­i­tual in­sight of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, even­tu­ally leads to pes­simism and hu­man de­spair. A lit­tle knowl­edge is truly dis­con­cert­ing.

195:6.4At the time of this writ­ing the worst of the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic age is over; the day of a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing is al­ready be­gin­ning to dawn. The higher minds of the sci­en­tific world are no longer wholly ma­te­ri­al­is­tic in their phi­los­o­phy, but the rank and file of the peo­ple still lean in that di­rec­tion as a re­sult of for­mer teach­ings. But this age of phys­i­cal re­al­ism is only a pass­ing episode in man’s life on earth. Mod­ern sci­ence has left true re­li­gion—the teach­ings of Je­sus as trans­lated in the lives of his be­liev­ers—un­touched. All sci­ence has done is to de­stroy the child­like il­lu­sions of the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions of life.

195:6.5Sci­ence is a quan­ti­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, re­li­gion a qual­i­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, as re­gards man’s life on earth. Sci­ence deals with phe­nom­ena; re­li­gion, with ori­gins, val­ues, and goals. To as­sign causes as an ex­pla­na­tion of phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena is to con­fess ig­no­rance of ul­ti­mates and in the end only leads the sci­en­tist straight back to the first great cause—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of Par­a­dise.

195:6.6The vi­o­lent swing from an age of mir­a­cles to an age of ma­chines has proved al­to­gether up­set­ting to man. The clev­er­ness and dex­ter­ity of the false philoso­phies of mech­a­nism be­lie their very mech­a­nis­tic con­tentions. The fa­tal­is­tic agility of the mind of a ma­te­ri­al­ist for­ever dis­proves his as­ser­tions that the uni­verse is a blind and pur­pose­less en­ergy phe­nom­e­non.

195:6.7The mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism of some sup­pos­edly ed­u­cated men and the thought­less sec­u­lar­ism of the man in the street are both ex­clu­sively con­cerned with things; they are bar­ren of all real val­ues, sanc­tions, and sat­is­fac­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture, as well as be­ing de­void of faith, hope, and eter­nal as­sur­ances. One of the great trou­bles with mod­ern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion and re­li­gious de­vo­tion.

195:6.8Ma­te­ri­al­ism re­duces man to a soul­less au­toma­ton and con­sti­tutes him merely an arith­meti­cal sym­bol find­ing a help­less place in the math­e­mat­i­cal for­mula of an un­ro­man­tic and mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse. But whence comes all this vast uni­verse of math­e­mat­ics with­out a Mas­ter Math­e­mati­cian? Sci­ence may ex­pa­ti­ate on the con­ser­va­tion of mat­ter, but re­li­gion val­i­dates the con­ser­va­tion of men’s souls—it con­cerns their ex­pe­ri­ence with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues.

195:6.9The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic so­ci­ol­o­gist of to­day sur­veys a com­mu­nity, makes a re­port thereon, and leaves the peo­ple as he found them. Nine­teen hun­dred years ago, un­learned Galileans sur­veyed Je­sus giv­ing his life as a spir­i­tual con­tri­bu­tion to man’s in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence and then went out and turned the whole Ro­man Em­pire up­side down.

195:6.10But re­li­gious lead­ers are mak­ing a great mis­take when they try to call mod­ern man to spir­i­tual bat­tle with the trum­pet blasts of the Mid­dle Ages. Re­li­gion must pro­vide it­self with new and up-to-date slo­gans. Nei­ther democ­racy nor any other po­lit­i­cal panacea will take the place of spir­i­tual prog­ress. False re­li­gions may rep­re­sent an eva­sion of re­al­ity, but Je­sus in his gospel in­tro­duced mor­tal man to the very en­trance upon an eter­nal re­al­ity of spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion.

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

195:6.12Sci­ence may be phys­i­cal, but the mind of the truth-dis­cern­ing sci­en­tist is at once super­ma­te­rial. Mat­ter knows not truth, nei­ther can it love mercy nor de­light in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Moral con­vic­tions based on spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment and rooted in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence are just as real and cer­tain as math­e­mat­i­cal de­duc­tions based on phys­i­cal ob­ser­va­tions, but on an­other and higher level.

195:6.13If men were only ma­chines, they would re­act more or less uni­formly to a ma­te­rial uni­verse. In­di­vid­u­al­ity, much less per­son­al­ity, would be nonex­is­tent.

195:6.14The fact of the ab­so­lute mech­a­nism of Par­a­dise at the cen­ter of the uni­verse of uni­verses, in the pres­ence of the un­qual­i­fied vo­li­tion of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, makes for­ever cer­tain that de­ter­min­ers are not the ex­clu­sive law of the cos­mos. Ma­te­ri­al­ism is there, but it is not ex­clu­sive; mech­a­nism is there, but it is not un­qual­i­fied; de­ter­min­ism is there, but it is not alone.

195:6.15The fi­nite uni­verse of mat­ter would even­tu­ally be­come uni­form and de­ter­min­is­tic but for the com­bined pres­ence of mind and spirit. The in­flu­ence of the cos­mic mind con­stantly in­jects spon­tane­ity into even the ma­te­rial worlds.

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.