This was brought home to me as I read again a true classic, "Therefore, Stand"
by Prof. Wilbur M. Smith. Written in the 40's, it was stunningly prophetic
about the days to come (now) and in assessing the spiritual mood of the
country.
In his chapter, "Pessimism of Skepticism," he quotes extensively from the most
famous materialist of his day, Bertrand Russell. Here is what that sage had to
say:
"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were
achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his
beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire,
no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual
life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all
the inspiration, all the noon-day brightness of human genius, are destined to
extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of
Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe
in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly
certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within
the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding
despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
"Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and on his race the slow sure doom
falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction,
omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man condemned today to lose
is dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains
only to cherish, ere the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his
little days--proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate for a
moment his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone a wearily but
unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the
trampling march of unconscious power.
"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible
foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to
reach, and where none may tarry long." [Id., pp. 195-196]
The brilliant teacher and writer Will Durant also confessed to the despair of
materialism. In recounting his rejection of God, he wrote:
"Life has become in that total perspective which is philosophy, a pitiful
pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be
cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and death--a sleep from which,
it seems, there is no awakening....Faith and hope disappear; doubt and despair
are the order of the day. It seems impossible any longer to believe in the
permanent greatness of man, or to give life a meaning that cannot be annulled
by death." [Id., p. 198]