Partial letter likely from Horace Sumner Lyman on theology of belief · Digital Exhibits

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Title: Partial letter likely from Horace Sumner Lyman on theology of belief
Description: Partial letter from Horace Sumner Lyman discussing theology of faith-based belief versus the belief in pure human logic.
Creator: Lyman, Horace Sumner
Source: Pacific University Archives
Date: 1878-1883
Is Part Of: Lyman Family Papers
Format: Letter
Language: English
Identifier: PUA_MS31_42_cc
Rights: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/
Type: Text

Item sets: Lyman Family Papers; Pacific University Archives DPLA

Media: https://exhibits.lib.pacificu.edu/files/original/62fbcbf19d64254af1bbd00996f326b7.pdf; ? natural occurances, or a natural result of forces already in operation. The orthodoxy more seems to take pleasure in saying that the body will be raised and transported through the air to heaven, and adding that because we can not understand this, we ought not to deny it. The very fact that he can’t understand it seems to please him. It is sort of a torture to me to try to believe what I don’t understand. I don’t do it, I cant, anyhow. So for us I do not see through a matter, so far it is a [?] to me. I may not deny it, but I do not accept it. The strict Catholic says “This is true, because the Pope has said it.” The Presbyterian says “This is true because the Bible says so.” They both rest their ultimate reason upon arbitrary authority. The liberal says “This is true because reason says so.” He rests his ultimate upon what he has in himself. Is the Pope infallible, is the Bible infallible, is God infallible? On the other hand, is reason infallible? Is one’s own conscience, one’s own moral [rome?] infallible? Is anything infallible? Can we trust to anything? When we start out with this precious [?] of ours, about all that we have properly our own, can we be certain that we can find any safe place for it in the great universe? Or does it matter so much whether we find a safe place at all? Is life really such a vast concern? [truth?] it is about the only thing that does concern us. But are we of very much importance, even to ourselves? This is a somewhat weary round of questions, and it naturally comes up to inquire, does it pay to bother with them at all? But if we do not bother ourselves with such questions what shall we bother ourselves with? If we try to make any logical judgment at all, we fall inevitably [?] them. If we think at all we must find something upon which to rest our thinking. But living without thinking seems to be unsatisfactory. I have tried to believe that there was a philosophy of feeling, going into a region above logical thinking. We feel truths, we see them. Here things are revealed that we actually touch with our souls, and we can [rely?] upon them. Out of this region of us, above logic, springs action. I have never been able to make anybody understand what this philosophy is. It looks clear to me, but nobody knows what I am talking about, and they think I don’t either. It may not be clear, it may all be a muddle. You say that I am talking [?], meaning that I am unintelligible. If it were a true sound system, I don’t know that it could be reduced to logic. [?][?]—and LIVING—may be the only ways to express it. And yet what a [small?][man?], I would [?] to try to express it so! I sometimes [?] to put it so somebody could see it, then I think it might not be worth anyone’s time. It may be only a [?]. It may be only a small concern that others would overlook, and if I should succeed in getting it outside of my head, it might look as small to us as to others. An idea in our heads looks bigger than in out. A meteor falling through the sky Struck upon the earth’s blue air, Then the meteor had to die, It had gone without due care. But it burnt into a flame Of rosy, trailing, waving, light, And as it like a planet came, For a while it lit the night. So souls, in the sky of death, Saw a meteoric spark, Not wholly cold is that [skie’s?] breath, That heaven, ‘tis not entirely dark. Each man must work out his own philosophy with fear and trembling. How to make one’s life satisfactory—the answer to this query as each one finds it, is his life philosophy. Most persons never reduce it to words. They let it lie liquid in their feelings, or let it spurt out like steam in action. There are three states of man’s activity, the solid, which is thinking, the liquid which is feeling, and the gaseous which is acting. The first is the most in bulk, the second is the most in diversity, the third is greatest in power. They are mutually interdependent, and may be changed from state to state by a greater or less application from a psychic force. I have been reading over Gnostic philosophy again. There is something inexplicably weird about the thinking of that age. Magic, Necromancy, Hindu spiritism, witchcraft, astrology, Persian dualism, Platonism, ideas out of Judaism and Christianity—stirred up together so as to be held in a mystic philosophy—joined to the strangest and many times the most outrageous practices—every man thinking himself at liberty to follow his imagination to the uttermost both in thinking and in practice—all more or less wild, religious, philosophical and political institutions gradually [sinking?]—a unique phase of the world’s history. Gnosticism, in eluding Neo Platonism, has been spoken of as the evening red of ancient civilization. It seems to have been the convulsions of disintegrating philosophy, rather than the throes of birth. It is certain that this evening red was followed by a night of storms such as was never known before. Jerusalem had sizzled out in blood, then Rome was cinder-burnt, by lightning, her ashes washed away in bloody rain, while the [natives?] stood from afar crying, Alas, alas that great city! Christianity was the only thing that went into that period and came out unchanged. Through the driven clouds, sifted sometimes by the wind, all that dark night one star usually appeared. Christians had learned that the things seen were only temporal, so they were to look upon the things unseen which are eternal. They furthermore looked for a city which had …