GOD the Father.
The Jehovah of the Old Testament is the God of the Christians.
He it was who created the Universe, who made all substance, all force,
all life, from nothing. He it is who has governed and still governs the
world. He has established and destroyed empires and kingdoms, despotisms
and republics. He has enslaved and liberated the sons of men. He has
caused the sun to rise on the good and on the evil, and his rain to fall
on the just and the unjust.
This shows his goodness.
He has caused his volcanoes to devour the good and the bad, his cyclones
to wreck and rend the generous and the cruel, his floods to drown the
loving and the hateful, his lightning to kill the virtuous and the
vicious, his famines to starve the innocent and criminal and his plagues
to destroy the wise and good, the ignorant and wicked. He has allowed
his enemies to imprison, to torture and to kill his friends. He has
permitted blasphemers to flay his worshipers alive, to dislocate their
joints upon racks, and to burn them at the stake. He has allowed men to
enslave their brothers and to sell babes from the breasts of mothers.
This shows his impartiality.
The pious negro who commenced his prayer: "O thou great and unscrupulous
God," was nearer right than he knew.
Ministers ask: Is it possible for God to forgive man?
And when I think of what has been suffered--of the centuries of agony
and tears, I ask: Is it possible for man to forgive God?
How do Christians prove the existence of their God? Is it possible to
think of an infinite being? Does the word God correspond with any image
in the mind? Does the word God stand for what we know or for what we do
not know?
Is not this unthinkable God a guess, an inference?
Can we think of a being without form, without body, without parts,
without passions? Why should we speak of a being without body as of the
masculine gender?
Why should the Bible speak of this God as a man?--of his walking in the
garden in the cool of the evening--of his talking, hearing and smelling?
If he has no passions why is he spoken of as jealous, revengeful, angry,
pleased and loving?
In the Bible God is spoken of as a person in the form of man, journeying
from place to place, as having a home and occupying a throne. These
ideas have been abandoned, and now the Christian's God is the infinite,
the incomprehensible, the formless, bodiless and passionless.
Of the existence of such a being there can be, in the nature of things,
no evidence.
Confronted with the universe, with fields of space sown thick with
stars, with all there is of life, the wise man, being asked the origin
and destiny of all, replies: "I do not know. These questions are beyond
the powers of my mind." The wise man is thoughtful and modest. He clings
to facts. Beyond his intellectual horizon he does not pretend to see.
He does not mistake hope for evidence or desire for demonstration. He is
honest. He neither deceives himself nor others.
The theologian arrives at the unthinkable, the inconceivable, and
he calls this God. The scientist arrives at the unthinkable, the
inconceivable, and calls it the Unknown.
The theologian insists that his inconceivable governs the world, that
it, or he, or they, can be influenced by prayers and ceremonies, that
it, or he, or they, punishes and rewards, that it, or he, or they, has
priests and temples.
The scientist insist that the Unknown is not changed so far as he knows
by prayers of people or priests. He admits that he does not know whether
the Unknown is good or bad--whether he, or it, wants or whether he, or
it, is worthy of worship. He does not say that the Unknown is God, that
it created substance and force, life and thought. He simply says that of
the Unknown he knows nothing.
Why should Christians insist that a God of infinite wisdom, goodness and
power governs the world?
Why did he allow millions of his children to be enslaved? Why did
he allow millions of mothers to be robbed of their babes? Why has he
allowed injustice to triumph? Why has he permitted the innocent to be
imprisoned and the good to be burned? Why has he withheld his rain
and starved millions of the children of men? Why has he allowed the
volcanoes to destroy, the earthquakes to devour, and the tempest to
wreck and rend?