The representation of the Almighty and Eternal as one of ourselves, as
animated by the lowest passions 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 assaults of modern
critics are directed, and in the overthrow of such representations it
is imagined that Christianity itself is overthrown. The assailants
maintain that Christianity in attributing Personality to God 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 God, 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 God, which alone is compatible with our present
knowledge of nature, recognises the divine spirit in all things. It
can never recognise in God a "personal being," or, in other words, an
individual of limited extension in space, or even of human form. God
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 God is defined as _not_ being everywhere, or 'an individual of
limited extension in space, or even of human form,' we are unaware.
There is apparent misunderstanding in the supposition that we have to
take our choice between God as entirely severed from the world, and God
existing in the world. God, it is asserted 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,
'God is opposed to Nature as an extra-mundane being, as creating and
sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in
Pantheism God, 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 'space' goes, an
intra-mundane being, rather than an extra-mundane, is likely to be
'limited in extension.'