The Art of Public Speaking Dale Carnagey

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follow him one must exercise more faith than religion calls for--he finds that scientists differ. Those who
reject the idea of creation are divided into two schools, some believing that the first germ of life came from
another planet and others holding that it was the result of spontaneous generation. Each school answers the
arguments advanced by the other, and as they cannot agree with each other, I am not compelled to agree with
either.
If I were compelled to accept one of these theories I would prefer the first, for if we can chase the germ of life
off this planet and get it out into space we can guess the rest of the way and no one can contradict us, but if we
accept the doctrine of spontaneous generation we cannot explain why spontaneous generation ceased to act
after the first germ was created.
Go back as far as we may, we cannot escape from the creative act, and it is just as easy for me to believe that
God created man as he is as to believe that, millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and endowed it
with power to develop into all that we see to-day. I object to the Darwinian theory, until more conclusive
proof is produced, because I fear we shall lose the consciousness of God's presence in our daily life, if we
must accept the theory that through all the ages no spiritual force has touched the life of man or shaped the
destiny of nations.
But there is another objection. The Darwinian theory represents man as reaching his present perfection by the
operation of the law of hate--the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is
the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward
toward the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I prefer to believe that love rather than hatred
is the law of development. How can hatred be the law of development when nations have advanced in
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The Art of Public Speaking
proportion as they have departed from that law and adopted the law of love?
But, I repeat, while I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it; I only refer to it
to remind you that it does not solve the mystery of life or explain human progress. I fear that some have
accepted it in the hope of escaping from the miracle, but why should the miracle frighten us? And yet I am
inclined to think that it is one of the test questions with the Christian.
Christ cannot be separated from the miraculous; His birth, His ministrations, and His resurrection, all involve
the miraculous, and the change which His religion works in the human heart is a continuing miracle.
Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely a human being and His gospel is stript of divine authority.
The miracle raises two questions: "Can God perform a miracle?" and, "Would He want to?" The first is easy
to answer. A God who can make a world can do anything He wants to do with it. The power to perform
miracles is necessarily implied in the power to create. But would God want to perform a miracle?--this is the
question which has given most of the trouble. The more I have considered it the less inclined I am to answer
in the negative. To say that God would not perform a miracle is to assume a more intimate knowledge of
God's plans and purposes than I can claim to have. I will not deny that God does perform a miracle or may
perform one merely because I do not know how or why He does it. I find it so difficult to decide each day
what God wants done now that I am not presumptuous enough to attempt to declare what God might have
wanted to do thousands of years ago. The fact that we are constantly learning of the existence of new forces
suggests the possibility that God may operate through forces yet unknown to us, and the mysteries with which
we deal every day warn me that faith is as necessary as sight. Who would have credited a century ago the
stories that are now told of the wonder-working electricity? For ages man had known the lightning, but only
to fear it; now, this invisible current is generated by a man-made machine, imprisoned in a man-made wire
and made to do the bidding of man. We are even able to dispense with the wire and hurl words through space,
and the X-ray has enabled us to look through substances which were supposed, until recently, to exclude all
light. The miracle is not more mysterious than many of the things with which man now deals--it is simply
different. The miraculous birth of Christ is not more mysterious than any other conception--it is simply
unlike it; nor is the resurrection of Christ more mysterious than the myriad resurrections which mark each
annual seed-time.
It is sometimes said that God could not suspend one of His laws without stopping the universe, but do we not
suspend or overcome the law of gravitation every day? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we
temporarily overcome one of the most universal of natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed.
Science has taught us so many things that we are tempted to conclude that we know everything, but there is
really a great unknown which is still unexplored and that which we have learned ought to increase our
reverence rather than our egotism. Science has disclosed some of the machinery of the universe, but science
has not yet revealed to us the great secret--the secret of life. It is to be found in every blade of grass, in every
insect, in every bird and in every animal, as well as in man. Six thousand years of recorded history and yet we [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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