Part 3 (1/2)

I

G.o.d is not as man is, this was a lesson which ancient prophets struggled to teach. He is not a man that He should lie, or a son {68} of man that He should repent. He is not to be conceived as influenced by the petty hopes and fears and jealousies which influence the ma.s.s of mortals. 'My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.' He is infinitely exalted above the best and wisest of His children and to see in Him only their likeness is not to see Him aright. It is not to be denied that the writers of the Old Testament employ anthropomorphic language to vivify the justice and goodness of the Eternal. They speak of His Eyes and of His Face, of His Hands and of His Arm and of His Voice. They speak of Him walking in the Garden and smelling a sweet savour. They speak of Him repenting and being jealous and coming down to see what is done on earth. Such figures, however, as a rule, have a force {69} and an appropriateness which never can become obsolete or out of date. They even heighten the Majesty and Spotless Holiness of G.o.d. They are felt to be, at most, words struggling to express what no words can ever convey: they are the readiest means of impressing on the dull understanding of men their practical duty, of letting them know with what purity and righteousness they have to do. It is not in such figures that any harm can ever lie.

The error of taking literally such phrases as 'Hands' or 'Arm' or 'Voice' is not very prevalent, but the error of framing G.o.d after our moral image is not distant or imaginary. There is a mode of speaking about Divine Purposes and Divine Motives which must jar on those who have begun to discern the Divine Majesty, to whom the thought of the All-Embracing Presence has become a reality.

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II

The representation of the Almighty and Eternal as one of ourselves, as animated by the lowest pa.s.sions and paltriest prejudices of mankind, as a 'magnified and non-natural' human being, is recognised as ludicrously inadequate and terribly distorted. The representation of the Creator as 'sitting idle at the outside of the Universe and seeing it go,' as having brought it into being and afterwards left it to itself, as mingling no more in its events and evolution, is utterly discarded. It is, however, to such representations that the a.s.saults of modern critics are directed, and in the overthrow of such representations it is imagined that Christianity itself is overthrown. The a.s.sailants maintain that Christianity in attributing Personality to G.o.d makes Him in the image of man, and separates Him from the Universe. But what is meant by Personality? It does not mean a {71} being no higher than man, with the limitations and imperfections of man.[2] Mr. Herbert Spencer, who would not ascribe Personality to G.o.d, yet affirmed that the choice was not between Personality and something lower than Personality, but between Personality and something higher. 'Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will as these transcend mechanical motion?'[3] The description of Personality given by the author of the _Riddle of the Universe_ would be repudiated by every educated Christian. 'The monistic idea of G.o.d, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognises the divine spirit in all things. It can never recognise in G.o.d a ”personal being,” or, in other words, an individual of limited extension in s.p.a.ce, or even of human form. G.o.d is everywhere.'[4] That conclusion,--we {72} are not concerned with the steps by which the conclusion is reached,--does not strike one as a modern discovery. In what authoritative statement of Christian doctrine G.o.d is defined as _not_ being everywhere, or 'an individual of limited extension in s.p.a.ce, or even of human form,' we are unaware.

There is apparent misunderstanding in the supposition that we have to take our choice between G.o.d as entirely severed from the world, and G.o.d existing in the world. G.o.d, it is a.s.serted in current phraseology, cannot be both Immanent and Transcendent; He cannot be both in the world and above it. 'In Theism,' so Haeckel draws out the comparison, 'G.o.d is opposed to Nature as an extra-mundane being, as creating and sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in Pantheism G.o.d, as an intra-mundane being, is everywhere identical with Nature itself, and is operative within the world as ”force” or {73} ”energy.”'[5] If there is no juggling with words here, it can hardly be juggling with words to point out that so far as 's.p.a.ce' goes, an intra-mundane being, rather than an extra-mundane, is likely to be 'limited in extension.'

III

The imagination that the Christian G.o.d is a Personality like ourselves, and is to be found only above and beyond the world, finds perhaps its strangest expression in some of the writings of that ardent lover of Nature, the late Richard Jefferies. 'I cease,' so he writes in _The Story of my Heart_, 'to look for traces of the Deity in life, because no such traces exist. I conclude that there is an existence, a something higher than soul, higher, better, and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I pray to find this something better than a G.o.d.

There is something superior, higher, more good. For this I search, labour, {74} think, and pray.... With the whole force of my existence, with the whole force of my thought, mind, and soul, I pray to find this Highest Soul, this greater than deity, this better than G.o.d. Give me to live the deepest soul-life now and always with this soul. For want of words I write soul, but I think it is something beyond soul.' Could anything be more pathetic or, at the same time, more self-refuting?

How can anything be greater than the Infinite, more enduring than the Eternal, better than the All-Pure and All-Perfect? It could be only the G.o.d of unenlightened, unchristian teaching, Whom he rejected. The G.o.d Whom he sought must be not only in but beyond and above all created or developed things. It was, indeed, the Higher than the Highest that he wors.h.i.+pped. It was for G.o.d, for the Living G.o.d, that his eager soul was athirst, and it is in G.o.d, the Living G.o.d, that his eager soul is now, we humbly trust, for ever satisfied.

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IV

'The heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.' 'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?' 'My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways saith the Lord.' 'In Him we live and move and have our being.' 'Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Whom be glory for ever.

Amen.'[6] Now it cannot be denied that some who have striven to express after this fas.h.i.+on the unutterable majesty and the universal presence of G.o.d, who have endeavoured to demonstrate that G.o.d is in all things, and that all things are in G.o.d, have at times failed to make their meaning plain. Either from the obscurity of their own language, or from the obtuseness of their readers, they have been considered Atheists. While vehemently a.s.serting that G.o.d is {76} everywhere, they have been taken to mean that G.o.d is nowhere. The actual conclusion to be drawn from the treatises of Spinoza, the reputed founder of modern Pantheism, is still undecided. But no one now would brand him with the name of Atheist. He was excommunicated by Jews and denounced by Christians, yet there are many who think that his aim, his not unsuccessful aim, was to establish faith in the Unseen and Eternal on a basis which could not be shaken. So far from denying G.o.d, he was, according to one of the greatest of German theologians, 'a G.o.d-intoxicated man.' 'Offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy, repudiated Spinoza! The high world-spirit penetrated him: the Infinite was his beginning and his end: the Universe his only and eternal love.... He was full of religion and of the Holy Spirit, and therefore he stands alone and unreachable, master in his art above the profane mult.i.tude, {77} without disciples and without citizens.h.i.+p.'[7] Dean Stanley went so far as to say that 'a clearer glimpse into the nature of the Deity was granted to Spinoza, the excommunicated Jew of Amsterdam, than to the combined forces of Episcopacy and Presbytery in the Synod of Dordrecht.'[8] Such a judgment is rather hard upon the divines who took part in that celebrated Synod, but at any rate it indicates that the great philosopher, misunderstood and persecuted, was elaborating in his own way, this great truth, 'In him we live and move and have our being.'

'Of Him, and through Him are all things.'

V

In their loftiest moments, contemplating the marvels of the heavens above and the earth beneath, devout souls have, wherever they looked, been confronted with the Vision of G.o.d. 'What do I see in all {78} Nature?' said Fenelon, 'G.o.d. G.o.d is everything, and G.o.d alone.'

'Everything,' said William Law, 'that is in being is either G.o.d or Nature or Creature: and everything that is not G.o.d is only a manifestation of G.o.d; for as there is nothing, neither Nature nor Creature, but what must have its being in and from G.o.d, so everything is and must be according to its nature more or less a manifestation of G.o.d.'

It is the thought which has inspired poets of the most diverse schools, which has been their most marvellous illumination and ecstasy.

Now it is Alexander Pope:

All are but parts of one stupendous whole Whose body Nature is, and G.o.d the soul.

Now it is William Cowper:

There lives and works A soul in all things and that soul is G.o.d.

Now it is James Thomson of _The Seasons_:

These, as they change, Almighty Father! these Are but the varied G.o.d. The rolling year Is full of Thee.