Modern Substitutes for Christianity Part 3

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 Such figures, however, as a rule, have a force {69} and an appropriateness which never can become obsolete or out of date.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 worshipped. 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 fashion 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 citizenship.'[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.

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Now it is William Wordsworth:

I have felt A Presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man A motion and a spirit which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.

Now it is Lord Tennyson:

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains, Are not these, O Soul, the vision of Him Who reigns?

Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet.

Closer is He than breathing and nearer than hands or feet.

Certainly, we may say, nothing atheistic in utterances like these: they are the utterances of lofty thought, of profound piety, of soaring aspiration, and of childlike faith. They have a pantheistic tinge: what is there to dread in Pantheism? Not much in {80} Pantheism of that kind: would there were more of it! But it will be observable that, in the instances cited, though G.o.d is in Nature and manifesting Himself through it, there is a clear distinction between Nature and G.o.d. It may seem as if it were merely the sky, the sun, the stars, the ocean, that are apostrophised: in reality it is a Life, a Spirit, a Power not themselves, in which they live and move and have their being: not to them, but to That, are the prayers addressed. And, we venture to think, it is scarcely ever otherwise: scarcely ever is the Visible alone invoked: identify G.o.d as men will with the material universe, or even with the force and energy with which the material universe is pervaded, when they enter into communion with it, in spite of themselves they endow it with the Life and the Will and the Purpose which they have in theory rejected. But the absolute identification of G.o.d and the Universe, the a.s.sumption that above and {81} beneath and through all there is no conscious Righteousness and Wisdom and Love overruling and directing, _that_ is a belief to be resisted, a belief which enervates character and enfeebles hope.[9] 'Whoever says in his heart that G.o.d is _no more_ than Nature: whoever does not provide _behind the veil of creation_ an infinite reserve of thought and beauty and holy love, that might fling aside this universe and take another, as a vesture changing the heavens and they are changed, ... is bereft of the essence of the Christian Faith, and is removed by only accidental and precarious distinctions from the atheistic worship of mere "natural laws."'[10] 'In our worship we have to do, not so much with His finite expression in created things as with His own free self and inner reality ... all _religion_ consists in _pa.s.sing Nature by_, in order to enter into direct personal relation {82} with Him, soul to soul. It is _not_ Pantheism to merge all the life of the physical universe in Him, and leave Him as the inner and sustaining Power of it all. It is Pantheism to rest in this conception: to merge Him in the universe and see Him only there: and not rather to dwell with Him as the Living, Holy, Sympathising Will, on Whose free affection the cl.u.s.ter of created things lies and plays, as the spray upon the ocean.'[11]

VI

G.o.d is _not_ as we are, and yet He _is_ as we are. G.o.d is not made in the image of man, but man is made in the image of G.o.d. It is through human goodness and human purity and human love that we attain our best conceptions of the Divine Goodness and Purity and Love. 'If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father {83} give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?'

Picture to yourself what is highest and best in the human relationship of father and child: be sure that the Heavenly Father will not fall below, but will infinitely transcend, that standard. All the justice and goodness which we have seen on earth are the feebler reflection of His. It is by learning that the utmost height of human goodness is but a little way towards Him that we learn to think of Him at all aright.

But the justice and the love by which he acts are different only in degree, and not in kind, from ours. When we think of G.o.d as altogether such as we are, we degrade Him, we have before us the image of the imperfect; when we try to think of Him under no image and to discard all figures, He vanishes into unreality and nothingness, but when we see Him in Christ, we have before us that which we can grasp and understand, and that in which there is no imperfection.

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If there is no G.o.d but the universe, we have a universe without a G.o.d.

Worship is meaningless, Faith is a mockery, Hope is a delusion. If the universe is G.o.d, all things in the universe are of necessity Divine.

The distinction between right and wrong is broken down. In a sense very different from that in which the phrase was originally employed, 'Whatever is, is right.' Nothing can legitimately be stigmatised as wrong, for there is nothing which is not G.o.d. 'If all that is is G.o.d, then truth and error are equally manifestations of G.o.d. If G.o.d is all that is, then we hear His voice as much in the promptings to sin as in the solemn imperatives of Conscience. This is the inexorable logic of Pantheism, however disguised.'[12] 'I know,' says Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'what is meant by the Power and Goodness of an Almighty Creator. I know what is meant by the genius and patience {85} and sympathy of man. But what is the All, or the Good, or the True, or the Beautiful? ... The "All" is not good nor beautiful: it is full of horror and ruin.... There lies this original blot on every form of philosophic Pantheism when tried as the basis of a religion or as the root-idea of our lives, that it jumbles up the moral, the unmoral, the non-human and the anti-human world, the animated and the inanimate, cruelty, filth, horror, waste, death, virtue and vice, suffering and victory, sympathy and insensibility.'[13] Where these distinctions are lost, where this confusion exists, what logically must be the consequence? Honesty and dishonesty, truth and falsehood, purity and impurity, kindness and brutality, are put upon a level, are alike manifestations of the One or the All.

It is said that in our day the sense of sin has grown weak, that men are not troubled {86} by it as once they were. There is a morbid, scrupulous remorsefulness for wrong-doing, a desponding conviction that repentance and restoration are impossible, which may well be put away.

But that sin should be no longer held to be sin, that evil should be wrought and the worker experience no pang of shame, would surely indicate moral declension and decay. Were the time to come when, universally, mankind should commit those actions and cherish those pa.s.sions which, through all ages in all lands, have gone by the name of sin, should become so heedless to the voice of conscience, that conscience should cease to speak, the time would have come when men, being past feeling, would devote themselves with greediness to anything that was vile, so long as it was pleasant, the bonds of society would be loosened and destruction would be at hand. The Religion of the Universe ignores the facts of life, the sorrow, the struggle, {87} the depravity, the need of redemption. Fortunately, human beings in general are still inclined to mourn because of imperfection or of baseness: still they are inclined at times to cry out, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' and still they have the opportunity of joyfully or humbly saying, 'I thank G.o.d through Jesus Christ our Lord.'

'And now at this day,' listen to the ungrudging admission of perhaps the most earnest English apostle of Pantheism, Mr. Allanson Picton: 'We of all schools, whether orthodox or heterodox so-called, whether believers or unbelievers in supernatural revelation, all who seek the revival of religion, the exaltation of morality, the redemption of man, draw, most of us, our direct impulse, and all of us, directly or indirectly, our ideals from the speaking vision of the Christ. Such a claim is justified, not merely by the spiritual power still remaining in the Church, {88} but almost as much by the tributes paid, and the uses of the Gospel teaching made in the writings of the most distinguished among rationalists.... Such writers have felt that somehow Jesus still holds, and ought to hold, the heart of humanity under His beneficial sway. Excluding the partial, imperfect and temporary ideas of Nature, spirits, h.e.l.l, and heaven, which the Galilean held with singular lightness for a man of His time, they have acquiesced in and even echoed His invitation to the weary and heavy laden, to take His yoke upon them and learn of Him. And that means to live up to His Gospel of the nothingness of self, and of unreserved sacrifice to the Eternal All in All.'[14] If such is the conclusion of Rationalism and of Pantheism, how much more ought it to be the conclusion of Christianity. The imagination of a G.o.d confined to times and places, visiting the world only occasionally, {89} manifesting Himself in the past and not in the present, ought to be as foreign to the Christian Church as to any Rationalist or Pantheist. Be it ours to show that we believe in G.o.d Who filleth all things with His presence, Who is from Everlasting to Everlasting, that to us there is but one G.o.d the Father, by Whom are all things and we in Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things and we by Him, that G.o.d has identified Himself with us in Jesus Christ, His Son. Be it ours to lose ourselves in Him. For, after all our questionings as to the government of the world, as to abounding misery and degradation, as to what lies beyond the veil for ourselves and for others, this is our hope and our confidence: 'G.o.d hath concluded all in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of G.o.d! how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out. For who hath {90} known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again? For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things: to Whom be glory for ever. Amen.'

[1] _Riddle of the Universe_.

[2] Appendix XI.

[3] _First Principles_.

[4] _Confession of Faith of a Man of Science_.

[5] _Riddle of the Universe_.

[6] Appendix XII.