01 - Chapter 01

I. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (Psalms 23:1).

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him (Psalms 103:13).

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence (Psalms 139:7). THE distinguishing characteristic of the Religion of the Israelites is well known to every reader of the Old Testament. While the nations that surrounded them were given up to Polytheism and Idolatry, the Israelites believed in one only living and true God: Creator and director of all things:

One who, though transcending, was yet immanent in the world: a Personal and Ethical Being who stood in moral relationship with man.

How exalted this belief appears to be when it is compared with the beliefs that prevailed in those early times! And how true it seems when con-trasted with some of the most modern interpretations of our religious impressions! Does a man believe in more Gods than one?

Then his belief is in direct conflict with that faith in the unity of nature which every increase in scientific knowledge helps to strengthen. Does any one assert that the universe is simply a gigantic piece of mechanism constructed and set agoing by one who has vanished from the scene of his labours and has gone we know not whither?

Such a belief will, of course, destroy religion, but it will do more. It will put an end to all ethics, to all our ideals, and to all our efforts to realise them. “It will reduce” says Mr. B. F. C. Costelloe “ consciousness to a mockery, spirituality to a dream, and love to a chemical attraction: and after all it will have explained nothing, but have rendered everything insoluble.” Does a man believe in an Impersonal God, “a stream of tendency which makes for righteousness”?

Then the question arises, How can you have righteous-ness without right thinking and conscientious doing? And how can you have these apart from a Person?

Moreover, a belief of this kind is likely to carry a man further than he may be inclined to go. A stream must flow in its appointed channel, and it cannot rise higher than the source from which it comes. A stream must have its origin in the hills of God, and find its replenishment in the rains that fall from heaven. Does a man believe that this divinely fair and cunningly ordered universe owes its origin to accident and its government to chance? Then he believes in a miracle infinitely greater than any recorded in the word of God. “ Was there “ asks Lord Kelvin “ anything so absurd as to believe that a number of atoms by falling together of their own accord, could make a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal?

People thought that given millions of years these might come to pass, but they could not think that a million of millions of millions of years could give them unaided a beautiful world like ours...

Forty years ago I asked Liebig, walking somewhere in the country, if he believed that the grass and flowers which we saw around us grew by mere chemical forces? He answered, No; no more than I could believe that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere chemical forces.”

Some scientific men, it is true, do not like to be asked to take their choice in what seems an inevitable alternative belief in a creative and direc-tive Power, or belief in a fortuitous concourse of atoms. They prefer to think of the world as gra-dually evolved by eternal laws out of primeval atoms, elements, matter. But evolution, we must carefully remember, is not, of necessity, such a godless creed as many have imagined it to be. When the famous French mathematician Laplace went to Napoleon to beg him to accept a copy of his great work, the Mecanique Celeste, Napoleon said to him, “ Mons. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe and have never even mentioned its Creator.” Laplace, though time-serving as a politician, was as conscien-tious as a martyr in reference to his philosophy, and drawing himself up he bluntly replied, “ I had no need of that hypothesis.” Napoleon, greatly amused, related the incident to the celebrated mathematician Lagrange, who exclaimed, “ Ah, that is a beautiful hypothesis; it explains so many things.” How different Laplace’s conduct was from that of Sir Isaac Newton, who closed the third book of his Principia with a noble passage of ascription to “ the Most High God, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Omnipotent, and Omniscient, who ruleth all things not as a mere spirit of the Universe, but as the Lord and Master of all, whose name is the Lord God Almighty.’^/ There was an excuse for Laplace. He dealt with the universe as a mathematical problem in dynamics. To him the universe was a machine, and the things he had to discuss were blind forces which could be measured, and dead matter with the characteristics of mass, weight, rigidity. But how different all things are to the modern evolutionist! Matter to him is not dead and unproductive, but possessed of “ the promise and the potency” of all things. Atoms to him are not lifeless but animated, endowed with the properties of attraction and repulsion, and possessed of such a resemblance to life, feeling, thought, that pleasure and pain and love and hate may almost be predicated of them. To him chemical elements are no longer simple elements, but resolvable into simpler forms of matter, which in turn may be refined away altogether into ethereal vibrations or electrical energy; so that atoms of matter have come to “ue thought of by some as concentrated portions of electricity. To the man of science in our day there is no such thing as empty space. To him the whole of space, so far as it is not occupied by ponderable matter, is filled with a continuous ultra-gaseous substance called ether a substance which is so light and subtle that it cannot be weighed, if indeed it has any weight a substance which is for ever in motion, and to whose vibrations we are indebted for light, radiant heat, magnetism and electricity. The man who goes to the root of things, therefore, if he has eyes to see, may well find himself at every step face to face not merely with a creative, but also with an indwelling and directive Power: for how can “ purposive contrivance “ be produced by purely mechanical processes without design? We are not surprised, therefore, when we discover that even such a man as Haeckel sees God everywhere and recog-nises the Divine Spirit in all things, and is able to quote with approval the words of Giordano Bruno, “ There is one spirit in all things, and no body is so small that it does not contain a part of the divine substance whereby it is animated.” And so the advance of science does not necessarily tend to banish God from the Universe. On the con-trary it enables us to emphasise more strongly than we have hitherto done the great fact of the divine Immanence, for it reveals God as a permanent resident in the world, and not as a mere occasional visitor coming now and again to supplement or amend His original creation by external and arbitrary interferences. If law implies Lawmaker, and if “ the reign of law “ be regarded as another name for the abiding Presence of a great sustaining and directing Power, it is difficult for us to find fault with Dr. Strong, Dean of Christ Church, when he defines evolution as “ an organic teleological process, a process guided by rational purpose at every step, determined in every detail by the consciousness of an end in view.” If all things are for ever changing, if the world is only in the process of being made, if the universe is only becoming what it will one day be, then the question arises, what is the nature of the change that is thus taking place? If it is not a mere drift or aimless clash of elements producing chance products to be devoured by chaos, but an evolution or process evolving higher and higher forms, then there is order underlying the change, and purpose behind the order with a guiding hand direct-ing things towards the predestined end. To some men in our day the existence of God would almost seem to be a luminous self-evident fact. They need no argument to convince them, for their spiritual vision is such that they can say:

“ Where’er I look abroad, I see the living form and face of God.” To others, God is a spiritual experience an ex-perience which, they think, can only be theirs because God makes His presence felt in their souls. God is immanent, they say, in man’s rational, moral, and spiritual nature, and influences that side of our nature where the finite being blends with the Universal Being: and so our best knowledge of God is an immediate consciousness of God. “ The feeling of God within us is, for us at least who feel, the certified fact that God is.”, But man is essentially a rational being, and it is only by slow and laboured steps that many men rise from the seen to the unseen, from nature up to nature’s God. Nevertheless, by men and women of this kind, if they are earnest in their search, there are always to be found in reason and in the nature of things sure grounds for the belief in God as a personal and moral Being. The ever-changing phenomena in a universe, which nevertheless does not pass away, constrain us to think of and believe in an unchanging reality which underlies all things. The power, the life, the fruitfulness of nature seem to speak of an abiding presence immanent in nature. Matter never comes before us as matter and nothing else. When we look at matter it is clearly seen to be matter in motion, and so impelled by some power: or matter at rest, and so acted upon by equal and opposing forces: or matter animated by life and characterised by growth, as we have it in plants and trees: or matter remarkable for its form and colour, and thus distinguished for its beauty like the flower: or matter endowed with sensation, as we have it in the animal: or matter inhabited by mind and guided and directed by reason and conscience, as we have it in man. And so the material universe inevitably leads us beyond itself to the Power the Presence which is within, behind, and above nature.

“ Yes, write it in the rock Saint Bernard said Grave it on brass with adamantine pen:

’Tis God Himself becomes apparent, when God’s wisdom and God’s goodness are display, For God of these His attributes is made.” And when reasoning from the works of God to Him whose works they are, we must not forget that man is part of the universe whose existence has to be accounted for. Man is the flower and crown of creation, but he belongs to it. And when we dream of explaining the universe by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, we must think of man with his reason, conscience, free-will; with his sympathies, affections, unselfish acts, self-denying deeds; with his efforts for the welfare and his struggles for the existence of others.

If all things owe their existence to the blind operation of mechanical laws how are we to account for the free acts of man? We may, of course, say that human freedom is not so unqualified a thing as many imagine it to be. But we know that man is responsible only to the extent to which he is free, and we all feel that there is much, very much indeed, in our lives for which we are responsible. And so every action of human free will is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science. And how are we to account for the “ moral imperative” as it is felt by the human conscience? The “ I ought “ that is for ever welling up from the depths of our being is a strange fact. It speaks to us not in the way of information, but commandment.

It tells us that we are under the obligation of a moral law which we did not make, but which we must obey a moral law which we are constrained to think of as emanating from a personal author. And so it introduces us to another mind, before which we bow in instinctive homage a mind stored with the same moral order as our own, if not indeed the source of that order in ourselves. The power which made the world and all things has bestowed on man that moral consciousness which condemns what is evil, approves what is good, and urges us on in the path of purity and holiness. And so this moral consciousness in man is it not a suggestion of moral consciousness without? a proof in fact that God is a moral Being? for man’s moral consciousness is God’s voice in man. When we think of these things after this fashion, we can with calmness and confidence turn our faces backward towards the beginning of the universe, and ask ourselves the questions, Is Spirit self-existent and eternal? or Is it a function of matter? Is matter self-existent and eternal? or Has matter been brought into existence by Spirit? In the human personality in which alone we can find an analogy imperfect and inadequate doubt-less to the Divine Personality, spirit and matter are always found together. And spirit is here so closely connected with matter, and apparently so dependent upon it, that it is difficult for us to think of the spirit of man as existing apart from the material body. But whatever may be the origin of the spirit in man, and however unimportant it may seem to be when we are in infancy, there can be no doubt that the spirit gradually asserts itself, until it occupies a position that is significant in the extreme. The matter of our bodies is for ever changing, but our spirit remains one and the same, and throughout the whole of its experience it is conscious of its identity. Our bodies are acted upon and shaped by what is external to them, but our spirits determine themselves from within, and without compulsion elect what they are going to do and what they are going to be. It is the spirit that thinks, wills, loves, distinguishes between good and evil, chooses its own end. And the transcendent importance of our spiritual nature is even more clearly seen when we notice that while spirit can be of no use to matter, matter is of “ inces-sant and inevitable use to spirit.” Except when we are asleep, the spirit never ceases to use the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the hands, or the feet. So thoroughly indeed in every way does the uncon-scious matter of our bodies not to speak of the matter that is outside us serve the purposes and minister to the needs of our self-conscious, self-determined spirits, that it is difficult for us to keep from believing that it exists to serve the purposes of spirit.

It may not be easy for us to think of spirit as existing and acting without matter: but it is im-possible for us to think of matter as existing and acting without spirit. It may be difficult to think of matter as owing its existence to spirit, but it is impossible for us to think of spirit as an evolution from matter. For evolution does not create. It can only bring forth as a result what has been in some way present in the process. A process of evolution, therefore, which ends in spirit must have had spirit in it from the beginning. When we think of God as the great first cause of all things, we do not require to think of Him as existing by Himself for an eternity before resolving to create the world. Neither do we require to restrict His creative functions to a single act to imagine Him creating the substance of the world in a moment, endowing it with the faculty of the most extensive evolution, and then troubling Him-self no further about it.

Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture to our-selves how the eternal purpose did actually realise itself in time. But the difficulty seems to be lessened when we think of God not as mere arbi-trary power, but as intelligence, love, wisdom, holiness; not as a mere abstract self-identical unity, but as a self-revealing spirit whose very nature makes it necessary for Him to reveal Himself in order to realise the glory and blessedness which are possible for Him. When we think of God after this fashion it is not unreasonable to expect that He should eternally manifest His inner nature in “ an infinite cosmos of inter-related physical and psychical agencies.”

Modern science knows nothing of a beginning. As to the origin of matter and life it can, apart from inference and speculation, neither affirm nor deny creative power.

All things in this world are for ever changing: but most scientific men in these days believe in what has been called the law of substance, which embraces the chemical law of the conservation of matter as well as the physical law of the conserva-tion of energy. The law of the conservation of energy asserts that the sum of force which is at work in infinite space is unchangeable, however many transformations its constituent parts may undergo. The law of the persistence or indestructi-bility of matter declares that the sum of matter which fills infinite space is ever the same, however much its component parts may change their shape or nature. But even the most thorough-going believers in the conservation of matter and energy may not be so far removed as they imagine from a legitimate Christian belief on the subject of the origin of things, for according to this law a body has merely changed its form when it seems to have disappeared, and it is merely a question of change of form in cases where a new body seems to have been pro-duced. But all scientific men admit that the physical universe as it now exists is greatly different from what it must have been in the dim and distant past, while the great majority of them maintain that the matter of the universe, which is now so solid, is likely to have been, at successive periods as we go backward, in a state which we may justly charac-terise as viscous, fluid, gaseous, etheric, and so practically invisible to such eyes as ours. There is nothing, therefore, absurd in the belief that the visible universe in which God now dwells, and through which He reveals Himself unto the children of men, may have been at one time the invisible vesture of the Great Unseen. And when scientific belief maintains that the visible universe came forth from the unseen, it is not out of harmony with Christian faith, which understands ’ that the worlds were made by the word of God: so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.’ Moreover, when scientific men declare that the universe, which began in time, may in time come to an end, they are in accord with St. Paul and St. Peter, who say: ’ The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’ ’ The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.’ With regard to the beginning of the universe, of which we can know so little, one remark may safely be made.

If the present visible universe came forth from the invisible if the unseen universe gave birth to the seen then the force which brought about the change must have had its origin in will force, which is the product of mind; for, so far as we know anything on the subject, it is spirit alone that is self-determined and able to originate change without compulsion from without.

Whatever else the universe is, it is a universe of changes; of effects produced by causes which are themselves effects. And if we are not to go back-ward for ever from physical cause to physical cause, we must come at last to spirit: for physical causes are not in the true sense causes at all. They are simply the antecedents or conditions which transmit causation which they themselves cannot originate.

It is spirit alone that is self-conscious and self-determined, and able out of its own inner nature to originate change. Spirit must, therefore, have existed before the time when that process of development was set agoing which has resulted in our present physical universe. Before any given point of time, before the happening of any event or change, God was, God must have been. When we remember this, we see how self-evidently truthful is the great assertion made in the opening words of Genesis, ’ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ The relation of the Divine Personality to the human is an extremely interesting but profoundly difficult subject. In every act of conscience we distinguish between what is and what ought to be, between the promptings of our inclinations and passions and the voice of the moral consciousness which seems to be of us, but which we recognise to be over us, and which, somehow or other, we are constrained to think of as the voice of God within us. In this way the finite self awakes to find over against its own self “ an infinite self making its presence felt by waves of emotion, new and most wonderful.” The human soul is neither self-derived nor self-subsisting, but, however depend-ent upon God we may feel ourselves to be, we are never so carried away by the thought, “ God is all,” that we are unable to distinguish between ourselves and Him who is all in all. Our power to resist the moral order of the universe, the existence of sin and our sense of responsibility, remind us that we have an individuality and a freedom which are not illusory, and that the human spirit cannot be regarded as “ a mere mode of the universal spirit.” The human personality is a unity, not simple and undifferentiated, however, but highly complex, made up of many parts, faculties, functions which act and react on each other and which are necessary to the existence of each other and of the whole. May it not, indeed, be asserted that every person is a trinity in unity? Are not body, soul, and spirit a trinity in unity? Does not a man think and feel and will with three different sides of his one nature? We are all well-acquainted with the conscious self, but have we not discovered in these later days the importance of the sub-conscious self, and are we not greatly interested in the mutual relations of these two parts of our personality?

“ A person,” says Mr. Illingworth, “ is a subject who can become an object to himself, and the relation of these two terms is necessarily a third term. I cannot think or desire or will without an object which is either simply myself or something associated with myself or dissociated from myself considered as an object, in either case involving my objectivity to myself... And I cannot think of the world I live in without thinking of it negatively as outside me, or positively as including me, in either case related to myself.” And how can an individual realise his personality apart from association with others? Separated from others wholly and from the first, our moral as well as our intellectual capacities would be undeveloped, and we would remain strangers to those deeds of love and self-sacrifice which enable us to emerge from the narrow and dead life of self-centred individuality, and to become partakers in a wider and fuller life which ennobles and en-riches. But is not the first stage in our association with others to be found in the family which is the unit of society? And does not the family imply the existence of father, mother, child? And is it not, therefore, a trinity in unity? After the same fashion, Is it not impossible for us to think of God as a self-identical unity who is shut up for ever in blank potentiality of Being?

God is love, we say. But love is social in its character, and where could God’s love from the first find satisfaction save within the unity of the Godhead? And how could God’s greatness be realised and His blessedness perfected apart from the wonderful visible universe which reflects His glory, and the children of men who were made in His image and whose very fall has been the occasion for a signal manifestation of the Divine compassion and mercy? When we think of these things after this manner we become less inclined than, perhaps, formerly we were to find fault with the Christian doctrine with regard to God that doctrine which represents God not as a self-identical unity, but as a self-revealing Spirit; a Trinity in unity who, in perfect love, and for the realisation of their glory and blessedness, go forth from out themselves “ to create, to sustain, to redeem, to sanctify, to bless.”