[EGW editor’s preface:  I found this article in the book Christian Pulpit by John H. Horst and others, published sometime during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.  According to the book’s table of contents, F. T. Tagg is identified as being a member of the Methodist Protestant denomination.  I have included his article here in this column because:  1) he insists that the true Christian faith is a reasonable faith;  2) he candidly points out that “A man must be sincere in his belief, but he must believe what is true, and he must discover truth by examination, experiment, and testimony;” and 3) his bold recognition of the fact that “All truth must ultimately prove harmonious.  To set one truth in opposition to another is like turning different divisions of the same army against each other.”
     If you have not yet read the editor’s note defining and caveating the purpose of the With an Open Mind column, please do so at this time before continuing with the article.]

     “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”  1 Thessalonians 5:21

     The religion of Jesus Christ invites the closest investigation and examination.  It does not eschew nor condemn honest doubt.  It encourages and commends the questioning mind which seeks to convince itself by feeling the nail-prints and the spear-wounds, though it promises a richer blessing to the faith of real Christian experience than to the certitudes of mere material testimony.  When doubt is judgment held in suspense, awaiting satisfactory evidence, it becomes a means of grace.  To doubt is not to sin, is not to deny, is not an evidence of skepticism or unbelief.   Doubt may question the truth of a statement or the credibility of testimony; not to deny it, or to disprove it, but to confirm it, in order to hold more firmly to what is true.  To deny a thing because we doubt it is not only unfair, but unwise and unmanly.  When doubt ripens into investigation, and investigation flowers out into definite knowledge, then knowledge leads to conviction and to an abiding and satisfying assurance of truth.
     Reason has to do with the rational faculties.  Reason is man’s highest and noblest endowment.  It approaches every proposition with a view to a fair and dispassionate examination of its claims, its credibility, and its value.  It separates one fact from another by a process of analysis, and then unites them by a system of induction into an orderly arrangement, making one fact support another until the truth becomes clear.  God demands this much.  The Christian is admonished to have a reason for his hope.  The divine indictment of ancient Israel was that “My people will not consider.” [dc: Job 34:7; Isaiah 1:3]  Every man is under obligation to inquire honestly and diligently into the claims of his religion.  He fails at his peril.  He may doubt, but he dare not deny until he has made an honest and unbiased investigation of the evidence upon which it rests.  He must reach just and well-supported conclusions.
     A man may doubt the existence of God, but he must not deny the doctrine until he has made it absolutely clear to himself that his denial is upon safe and rational testimony.  And further, he must convince himself that his doubt will not involve him in greater contradictions and more inexplicable mysteries.  To doubt in order that reason may exercise itself to its fullest limit is to honor God and rightly use the noblest attribute of man.  To deny upon slender evidence is to register the evidence of imbecility and folly, or of egotism and presumption.
     A sound education disciplines the intellect for the discovery of truth and for its application to the proper regulation of life.  True education teaches us how to think and what to think.  It enables us to discern between the wise and the unwise, between good and evil, between what tends to true and noble sentiments, and that which tends to degradation and ruin.
     To store the mind with facts may make a man a cyclopedia and a nuisance.  To seek knowledge for its wise application to the problems of life, to the construction of noble character, and to a fruitful career is to make man Christlike and divine.   The mind is the noblest gift of God.  This imponderable, inexplicable, peerless, unresting, infinite something that dwells within him raises him to unmeasured heights above the life around him, and allies him with angels and seraphs and God.  It is this something which makes all character, plants all republics, founds all civilizations, writes all books, fights all battles, and applies the touch of life to all the material forces of nature.  It is this something which loves and hates, wills and acts; a something of infinite application, adaptability, and value.  It is this something which God has committed to man to enable him to reach forward and upward into the ultimate things of His kingdom.
     This alert, discriminating, investigating faculty, with its powers of abstraction, reflection, and observation, is to be engaged in and applied to all moral and religious questions.  The gospel nowhere demands a blind, unquestioning faith.  That is the gratuitous assumption of skeptics and infidels.  They falsely assert that religion is founded on ignorance and tradition.  Yet the very word which he believes, accepts, and lives by solemnly charges him to “prove all things;” to satisfy his mind, his heart, and his conscience as a preliminary to his faith.  He is never to infer from slender premises, nor to conjecture from unsatisfactory testimony.  To prove means to test by experiment, to ascertain upon trustworthy evidence, or to demonstrate by irrefutable logic.  A man whom God has endowed with thought-power and to whom He has given opportunity and facility for its unlimited exercise, depreciates himself and dishonors God by accepting any doctrine, however wise or wholesome, without a clear and honest investigation of its truths and merits.  Even the psalmist in his day invited men “to taste and see that the Lord is good.”  [dc: Psalm 34:8]
     Sincerity is a noble virtue.  A man can not be a true Christian without an honest, ingenuous, unaffected spirit.  But a man may sincerely believe a falsehood.  He may be perfectly honest and yet be the victim of a vicious doctrine.  Sincerity can not save him from the consequences of a false faith or a delusive hope.  He may administer deadly poison to his sick child in mistake for a remedial agency, but the sincerity of his motive will not prevent the fatality of his mistake.  A man must not only be sincere, he must be right.  Sincerity and truth are the basis of religion, as of every virtue.  A man must be sincere in his belief, but he must believe what is true, and he must discover truth by examination, experiment, and testimony. [dc: emphasis mine]
     Reasoning disciplines the mind and enables it to apply satisfactory tests to the affairs of life.  How else could we separate romance from reality, or sophistry from sound argument.  The supreme purpose and utility of the reasoning faculties is in discovering what is wise and useful and true, and applying it to the regulation and conduct of life.
     Now, to what can a trained intellect apply itself with greater interest and with the prospect of more important results than to religion?  This, if it is anything at all, is the most engaging subject that can arrest the attention of the human mind.  It embodies man’s interests in two worlds.  Its principles apply equally to time and to eternity.  Religion interprets God to the soul, outlines the duty of man, and then prepares him to do it.
     It is do fitted to human nature that it is best adapted to any walk or condition of life in which man may be found.  It is adapted to the intellect — because its spirit harmonizes perfectly with that of true philosophy, because it demands a free inquiry into all its claims, because it makes a place for the discovery and the application of truth, because it answers questions of supreme importance which nature can not answer, and because it is so communicated as to be adapted to every human mind.
     It is equally adapted to our moral conditions and needs, because it clearly reveals the origin, the nature, and the results of evil; because it provides an adequate remedy for all forms of immorality, and removes the incubus of sensuality and low vice, and points with unerring finger to the path of innocence and virtue.
     It is best adapted to our physical nature in that it prescribes rules for labor and rest, for food and raiment, for habit and habitat, that have never been improved upon by statute or scholarship.  Its laws of temperance and chastity, of activity and repose are at this day perfect rules of physical virtue.
     Its spirit of forbearance and charity, of brotherhood and fraternity, of prayer and service, of obedience to law and subjection to authority, of sympathy and beneficence as its answer to every cry of need, adapt it perfectly to all organized forms of society.  It is the supreme thing.  It is more than creed, however orthodox; more than ritual, however impressive; more than profession, however consistent; more than service, however useful.  It is God manifest in the flesh.  It is Christ in man, the hope of glory.  It is the Holy Ghost working Himself out in human acts and thoughts, and producing a reincarnation of divine life and character.
     Notwithstanding all the hostility that religion has excited, Jesus speaks today in languages more numerous, in tongues more eloquent, and to nations more populous than ever before.  He marshals soldiers that shrink from no conflict and who rise triumphant over every foe.  He is shaking down old philosophical systems that exalt themselves against God.  The steam press groans under the rush of multiplying Scriptures, and the steam horse groans under the burden of increasing charities.  Jesus emancipates the slave, He civilizes the lawless, refines literature, inspires poetry and music, and sends forth art and science — not as luxuries for kings’ palaces, but as the prophets of God — to make the earth bud and blossom as the rose.  “He gives a divine breadth and energy to the civilizations that bear His name, elevating savage races into Christianized States, repeating glorious Pentecosts in the bosom of hoary paganisms,” and ever increases the circles of light He has created until they shall meet at last in universal illumination.
     This is the religion we preach and whose claims we ask men to test and accept.  We demand that men “shall taste and see that the Lord is good.”  It is a religion that satisfies every man who will give it an honest trial; and when it is once fully accepted, moves the enraptured soul to the adoring litany; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away.” [dc: 1 Peter 1:3-4]
     Your attention is now directed to the glorious privilege of my text, “Prove all things.”  That is the fairest proposition that can be offered to man.  Any system that limits inquiry paralyzes thought.  Whatever contributes to intellectual thraldom, whether in the Church or out of it, is not of God.  An unchained Bible is synonymous with an emancipated humanity.  Freedom of thought is ordained of God.  From the days of Lactantius and Lucretius men have demanded the right to look into the multiform problems of life from their own point of view.  When such liberty was denied there followed tyranny and oppression, or restlessness and revolution.  In the Middle Ages the repressive influences were followed by the revival of letters, the increase of knowledge, the extension of schools, ending at last in the Protestant reaction and Reformation.  Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence were born out of the repression of liberty. To prohibit free inquiry is to lay the foundation for revolution.
     The Christian has a free range and a wide field, but he must yield to certain exacting rules in his inquiry; but this is an inflexible regulation of inquiry in any department of investigation.  No man can afford to yield himself in facile abandonment to prevailing winds of doctrine, so characteristic of much of modern theologic and scientific thought. A man must hold to fundamental truth in every storm of unbelief. Theologians may dabble in science to their hurt, and scientists often assail religion to their shame.
     All truth must ultimately prove harmonious.  To set one truth in opposition to another is like turning different divisions of the same army against each other. [dc: emphasis mine]
     Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is always a legitimate inquiry.  Not especially what is the latest conclusion in science, criticism, psychology, or philosophy.  Opinions are valuable only as they are feeling after truth.  Conclusions are important only to the extent that they stand for irrevocable truth.  When two known truths appear to contradict each other the wise man will not reject either; he will look for the connecting link.  There is truth in science, in philosophy, and in criticism; but when we can not reconcile one with the other it is far wiser to consider our limitations, and wait, rather than jump to hasty conclusions.
     Freedom of thought is an inalienable possession, involved in the very nature of man, and becoming more pronounced as the problems he has to meet deepen in their significance.  Individual responsibility is an essential doctrine and an irrevocable fact, and this demands the largest liberty in personal inquiry.  Every man must give an account of himself to God.  We dare not follow in the footsteps of any other.  Milton determined “to swear by no master, however high in repute.”  We are not at liberty to accept second-hand testimony, however plausible.  Men who can think are bound to think.  They must recognize their limitations and restrictions, but the mind must have a free range.
     There are postulates or first truths as enduring as eternity; elementary principles in morals and religion as irrevocable as the laws of nature.  To ignore these is to plunge into a fathomless, shoreless ocean without helm or compass, direction or object.  We may call these propositions, intuitions, primary truths, or what not; but they stand as inflexible postulates without which it is impossible to reach rational conclusions.  Every algebraic equation must begin with the recognized and familiar x.  The known must precede the unknown.
     The first words in the Bible are, “In the beginning God.” [dc: Genesis 1:1; Tagg’s punctuation]  But who by searching can find God?  We may reason back from effect to cause, but there is no antecedent fact known by which we can establish the being of God.  Moses accepted the existence of God as an unquestioned postulate, and then built upon it a system that no subsequent investigation has been able to materially change.  Deny this, and it is impossible to account for the universal order of nature, or for the providential history of the Jewish or the Christian Church.  The thought-realm is not an arena in which intellectual athletes contest for the oak-leaf of a clever syllogism.  Rather it should be the garden of God to discover the luscious fruits and the fragrant flowers of His limitless kingdom. The search must not be plausible probabilities, but for the logic of life.
     Freedom of thought is a sacred trust and involves a fearful accountability.  To abuse it by resorting to evasion, subterfuge, casuistry, for the sake of fine distinctions, is not investigation, but bush-whacking.  The power to know and the freedom to choose involve the duty to hold fast to what is good.  To know what is right and to do what is wrong is the vilest prostitution of a sacred trust.  The Christian makes a thoughtful and intelligent choice and follows what is wise and good, and out of it comes a Christlike character and a holy life.  To achieve a life of virtue, truth, and fruitfulness is the most important task that God has committed to man.  It constitutes a rank within itself, becomes an invaluable individual possession, and a priceless assest to the body politic.  It exercises a far greater power than wealth, and secures all the honor, without the jealousy of fame.  It is the salt of the earth and never loses its savor.  It is human nature in the process of incarnating the gospel of the Son of God.  It is the conscience of society and the only safe motive power of the State.  The strength, the progress, the civilization of the nations rest wholly upon individual character.  The foundations of civil security, wise laws, noble institutions, just governments, human liberty, — all grow out of it.  Our character determines the value of our words and acts, our fruitfulness and our lives.  And our character, when it is evolved under the direction of the Spirit of God until it bears the seal of the kingdom of Christ, becomes the final and unanswerable argument of Christianity.  Skepticism can never find an argument to confute a righteous life.
     “This is an arch like strong foundation
     To support the incumbent weight of absolute,
          complete conviction:
     Here the more we press, we stand more firm,
     Who most examine, most believe.”