HOW SCIENCE SAVES RELIGION, OR MODERN KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION
_What_ is God?
_Who_ is God?
_Where_ is God?
What does God _do_?
_If the ancients made their gods, how do we know that we
are not making our God?_
_May we not be communing with a mere idea?_
MODERN KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION
Christian character, the Christian college, and Christian civilization
have been very important factors in the discovery and development of
modern learning.
Expecting to derive much benefit from the sciences, Christian people
with fine enthusiasm strove to promote them. Nevertheless, there came a
time when the allied sciences threatened to turn upon and destroy the
religion that had so carefully nurtured them. When the scientific
imagery of the Bible began to clash with the clearly ascertained facts
of science, many people concluded that science and religion were
contradictory; however, the crude conceptions of the material universe
found in the Bible are no integral part of religion.
That religion may discard its wornout clothes for new and better ones
has not been an easy lesson for believers, or unbelievers, to learn.
Thinking that religion must stand or fall with the scientific accuracy
of the Bible, some drew back from modern science preferring religion;
others clung to the new learning forsaking religion. For a time,
therefore, it was inevitable that religion and her foster daughter,
modern science, should not be on the best of terms; because the daughter
could not approve of the mother's dress, and the mother thought the
daughter utterly lacking in becoming reverence. However, with their
great need of each other, let us believe that they are now settling down
to a lasting friendship of mutual helpfulness.
Unfortunately, the opinion is gaining considerable credence that modern
Christians are believing less and less, and that finally they will cease
to believe in religion altogether.
But this is the very opposite of the truth, for they are still believing
the old religion, though in a vastly bigger and better way. For, at the
present time, where its help is welcome, modern learning is rendering a
beautiful service to Christian faith. And this is the grateful testimony
of thousands of intelligent, consecrated people. No well-informed
person, however, would deny that science has injured, and will
increasingly weaken, the faith of those who do not know how to make a
religious use of modern learning.
While religion and science have distinctive fields to cultivate, yet
neither may disregard the claims of the other with impunity.
Nevertheless, we do rejoice to see science tearing down the "old cabin"
of an unscientific world in which the Church has lived too long. But
when it proposes to shut God out of the _new mansion_ of a scientific
universe, those who know and love Him will seriously object,--especially
since the new knowledge makes God better understood, and more needed
than ever.
It is likewise pleasant to see religion standing for spiritual verities
and duties, but when it demands that the Christian shall live in a world
that is crude and half false, the modern man resents it. He simply
cannot do it. Yet, to-day and always, religion should be a simple story
that anyone may understand; but it should not be clothed in such crude
and antiquated forms as to antagonize the man of modern knowledge.
During these introductory statements, we may as well admit that the
average scientist appears to have as poor a knowledge of religion as the
average Christian has of science. Too often he is still resisting
religious conceptions that all intelligent Christians have long since
outgrown, or else he is adopting philosophical theories that are only
half thought through. This is amazingly true of some men who are superb
in their own chosen lines of research. No one is hit by this statement
unless he is standing in the line of the shot. Whether or not the reader
is hit, I beg of him to keep friendly with me until he has heard my
simple story of God in His world.
Could we but free the religion of Jesus from the crude psychology and
the antiquated science of other days, and see it at home in the fairer
world of to-day, it would shine with new luster; and at the same time
give a rich, new meaning to the world itself,--such as it can never have
apart from religion. Science, and not religion, was responsible for
crude science.--Religion will be responsible if it retains a science
that has become antiquated.
Taking our stand then in the midst of modern knowledge, I shall endeavor
to _picture_ religion both at home and happy in the new world. I shall
not have much to say directly about scientific subjects, but shall
constantly try to keep in mind the man with modern information. The
nearer I can make this book resemble a primer, the better satisfied I
shall be. If one could so write that the learned would approve, and the
ignorant understand, his joy should be full. To give a simple
_description_ of God in His world congenial to the scholar, while
comprehensible and acceptable to common busy people, would be the
highest possible service one could wish to render. In these days there
is great need of a clear presentation of God; a presentation that is
free from the entanglements of technical learning, and at the same time
consonant with the known facts of life. Practical men would like to see
"the mended circuit of our religious thoughts," since their circuits, in
many cases at least, seem broken beyond repair. They are asking for a
simple and satisfying gospel that is cognizant of the facts and forces
among which they live and toil. We shall begin, therefore, at the very
beginning.
1. What is God?
The discussion which immediately follows does not concern itself with
why we believe in God, but aims to give a definite idea of how we
conceive of Him. For those who have a natural sense of God, or a
religious nature, a satisfying conception of Him will be ample for their
spiritual needs. And, furthermore, those who doubt God's existence need
first of all a definite idea of what we mean by the term Deity.
It is a pleasure, therefore, to answer in the words of Jesus, "God is a
spirit."
This might very well be regarded as a final answer but for the fact that
spirit means all sorts of things to different minds. When I once asked a
company of intelligent people if I were a spirit, they promptly answered
"no," but supposed I should be when I died. They seemed to think of
spirit as a ghost, as something that might appear or disappear through
locked doors. The same idea apparently obtained universally in times
past, and that doubtless accounts for the fact that the Greek word,
meaning spirit, was translated "Ghost" in the Scriptures and Apostles'
Creed. But the idea of a _visible_ spirit should perish. Spirits are
neither evil ghosts nor Holy Ghosts. Even if there were a ghost, that
which appeared could be no more than the instrument of the spirit, and
not the spirit itself. However refined and ghostly the form, the spirit
would remain as invisible as when it had a gross human body.
As further evidence of confusion on this subject, a young man from one
of our good colleges seeking membership in my Church, informed me that
he had peculiar views. Spirit, whether applied to God or man, had no
meaning for him. He wanted to join the Church because in that way he
believed he could render a better social service. In his thought, God
was neither a person nor a spirit, but a force. Having no satisfactory
idea of spirits he had banished the thought of them entirely from his
mind.
All through my own period of doubt I conceived of God's spirit on earth
as something emanating from a glorious spiritual _form_ in heaven.
Thinking that this form in heaven was a spirit made it only the easier
to believe that God himself could appear to men if He cared to do so.
That He did not care to appear to His children and thereby settle the
question of His existence beyond all doubt seemed preposterous. And it
would still seem so to my moral sense, if I retained my former
conception of spirit. Of course He should not come near enough to
"consume us," but He might come near enough to convince us.
The "New Thought" people, struggling with the meaning of spirit, have
arrived at the conclusion that there is just "_One universal substance
called spirit_." So, God is not to them _a_ spirit, but simply spirit,
"a universal substance."
Two or three other cults believe that man's spirit is simply his
physical breath.
To say that God is a spirit, then, with any of these gross conceptions
in mind, is sadly to misconceive Him.
_Whether we say God is a Spirit, a Soul, or a Person, our meaning is the
same._ Of these three expressions, however, the word _Person_ is the
best because, being the scholar's term, it is clearly defined. So when
we have learned the signification of the word _Person_, we shall
attribute the same meaning to all three words, using them
interchangeably.
In speaking of God as a person the scholar never has in mind either form
or substance, however rarefied. He does not know even that there is
material substance, much less spiritual substance. He knows very well
what personality is as experience, but beyond that he knows nothing
about it. Personality, to him, means _a Will that knows itself_, and
then knows _Other Wills_. When we say that God is a Spirit, or Person,
we should mean that He is a _Loving Intelligent Will_. In speaking of
God as the Soul of the universe we should have in mind the same idea.
There is no harm in thinking of God as a force if the force is
intelligent, and knows itself; but a force that does not know that it is
a force, is not God. A progressive Jewish rabbi expressed the wish that
we could get rid of the word God altogether, and substitute some such
word as "Cosmos." When asked if the "Cosmos" knew that it was a cosmos,
or that we were talking about it, he replied that he did not think so.
"Then I would rather worship you," I said, "than your cosmos, for you
would at least know that I reverenced you."
An intelligent lawyer friend of mine once said to me, "Of course I do
not believe in a personal God." I asked him if he meant that he did not
believe in a God who has a _form_ in heaven. But he answered:
"Oh, no, no, I have been beyond that for twenty-five years! God, if He
means anything, means the infinite, while a person means the limited.
Now, who ever heard of such a childish thing as a limited infinite? No,
pig-iron, as much as anything, is God."
I replied, "With all your intelligence, you haven't the remotest idea of
what constitutes personality. You are not aware that by personality we
mean a certain type of experience, and not a substance. Personality is
realized only as the experience of self-knowledge is achieved. You are
not as yet much of a personality, you are hardly more than a candidate
for the office, but by making a good campaign you may get elected. You
are not very personal because you are not very self-knowing, and if you
should drop the plummet into the depths of your experience to sound
yourself, by that very act you would acquire new depth, and would need
to try again to fathom yourself. So at best, you are only becoming
personal. None but the Infinite Experience can know itself perfectly,
and therefore, God alone is completely personal."
My friend had no idea either of God's personality or his own, and his
philosophical conception of nature was only a little less crude.
It was a long step in the right direction when I came to realize that I
had never seen my mother, with whom I lived for so many happy years. Yet
there was one thing that I felt sure I knew--absolutely, as I knew
nothing else--and that was my mother. Not her face, not her voice, not
her attitudes nor her actions, though all these I knew too and loved.
But back of all these there was a real mother, of whom these were only
manifestations. And this real mother, that I knew as I knew nothing
else, was silent, and invisible. And then I found that I knew myself
too--hardly as well as I knew my mother, but in the same way, and I knew
myself also to be invisible and silent. My spirit, or personality, is as
invisible and silent as God. I have no more seen myself than I have seen
Him. Neither has my naked soul ever made a sound. All the words that my
soul desires expressed are produced by a sort of animated phonograph
which we call the mouth. At the wish of my invisible self the physical
organs of speech set the air vibrating, but my self-conscious Will is
eternally silent. There is much to be said about the relation of
Personalities to their instruments, but this must be left until a little
later. It will avoid confusion if we try to take but one step at a time.
Great scholars may think that such ideas as I have endeavored to
illustrate are too simple to require statement, nevertheless the
recognition of these simple facts concerning my mother and myself
unlocked my prison door. It revolutionized everything within me, and
without me. During the thirty years of my active ministry, it has been
the moulding thought of my life. Once realizing that God was a "Loving
Intelligent Will," I no longer thought of Him as sitting on a throne, or
showing His face through parted clouds. This conception of spirit gave
to everything new shape and color. It was the idea around which a new
heaven and a new earth took form. The rest of this book must further
explain what it then meant, and still means, to me. As the result of a
better conception of spirit, my world was relieved of intolerable
intellectual burdens. Simply to get the idea, however, is not enough;
one must follow it out logically to see where it will lead him.
To the question, "What is God?" I once more answer that He is a Loving
Intelligent Will. And, apart from His instruments, He is silent and
invisible, here and everywhere, now and always.
2. Who is God?
First, allow me to say that He is _not_ the Father of our bodies, though
He is the Creator of them. God created trees, but He is not the Father
of trees. Fatherhood, in addition to creation, implies likeness so close
that father and child classify as members of the same family. Our bodies
were not made in the image of God.
While passing through my Sunday school where a college woman was giving
some supplementary work, I heard her teaching the young people that we
were made in the image of God because we had two legs instead of four,
and stood on end. "Why in the name of conscience," I thought, "do we
permit anyone in our churches to retain such detrimental and absurd
ideas?" This woman was what the young men and women called a
"crackerjack" in her college line. So I was amazed at her crude
conceptions, until I realized that she had never heard an exposition of
the primitive story in Genesis. I also remembered that I had heard it
preached from a pulpit, that man was in the image of God because he had
a face, and walked upright instead of going on all fours. Those churches
that believe man has no spirit except his breath are necessarily
confined to this monstrous idea; while many in our regular churches are
in a maze of tangled thoughts.
According to Scriptures, _God is the Father of spirits_. The "Loving
Intelligent Will" is the Father of other loving intelligent wills. This
makes every created spirit a God-child, or a child of God. These terms
must be interchangeable, unless we are playing at "make-believe," when
we say that a spirit is a child of God. Were not all spirits members of
the God family, it would be useless to teach them about God; for, being
of a different order, they would not understand. It is impossible to
teach a horse the things of a man, because he has not the spirit of a
man. I believe in an anthropomorphic God, simply because I believe in a
Theomorphic man. God must be in man's image, because man is in God's
image. But it is not the animal man in whose image God is.
I should never believe in a religion that I was incapable of
experiencing. Neither could I experience a religion that was contrary to
my reason. Nevertheless, mine is not a private religion, because I am an
infinite debtor to the world's best thought, and to the world's best
experience. Without the help of the ages I never could have thought or
felt that which I cannot avoid thinking and feeling at the present time.
This is not an effort to prove anything, but simply an attempt to
picture what I see and feel, with the hope that someone else may see and
feel in the same way.
The great pity of it all is that so many people have never _known_ the
world's best religious thought and experience. There are those, a
thousand years behind their age, who are launching new religions or
fostering old ones, who are utterly oblivious to the strata upon strata
of human achievement above them.
Yes, God is the Father of _all spirits_, whether they reside on earth,
or in heaven, or in hell. When once the meaning of spirit, or
personality, is realized there is no dodging the issue. If a horse goes
down the street keeping company with himself after this manner, "Now I
am an old horse, and I ought to be a good old horse, and I wonder what
the end will be," then he too is a son of God and our brother, though he
has four, instead of two legs. I do not think a horse so keeps company
with himself, but if he does, then we must own him and hope for the time
when our brother will have something better than a quadruped for an
instrument.
I am often asked what angels are like. That is an easy question. An
angel is very much like my wife. For they both are spirits, and children
of God. My wife is a sister of all the angels, and if Milton's great,
classical devil exists, he also is our brother, and a child of God. All
spirits are children of God, whether good or bad, just because they are
spirits.
In speaking of sons, the Bible usually means the good children of God;
yet it clearly teaches that prodigals are likewise sons. Earthly parents
are our older brothers and sisters, honored and much beloved; but only
God is the Father of our spirits. No one need fear that natural sonship
to God makes it less imperative that we should become good sons. To be a
bad son of God is a most wretched and deplorable thing in itself, and
leads inevitably to all deserved punishment. A good Father will not be
slack in discipline. And furthermore, the rebellious sons of God are not
slow to make hell in this life, and that they will make no more hell
after death we may not dare to believe.
If the truth about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all
spirits could enter the minds of the people with all that it involves,
it would break the heart of the Church, and, we may believe, the heart
of the world as well. As yet, however, this truth is but dimly realized.
I once had a dear old friend, a saint, whom I greatly appreciated. With
her white hair and charming accent she was beautiful. Her mind was
richly stored with beautiful poetry, and her apt quotations often
touched me deeply. Loving all the saints, she was equally loved by them.
But one day I learned that my dear old saint was a saint only in
spots--yet she was a saint. The discovery came about in this way; I
asked her if she knew of the family with four children across the way,
who had lately come to her neighborhood, suggesting that she might be
useful to them. Now, what do you think my dear old saint said? With a
spasmodic jerk of the elbow, and a toss of the head, she replied, "No! I
don't want to know such folks!" This was a case in which caution was
unnecessary, and where real service might have been rendered. For the
time being my friend had completely forgotten that her neighbors were
God's little ones and her own brothers and sisters. She had forgotten
that her Father was over there struggling and suffering to save His
children from sin and harm, and that He sorely needed His older daughter
over the way to help Him. My dear old saint would not go across the
street to help her Father whom she thought she loved so dearly. She did
not realize that God was the Father of all spirits, and that all they
were members of one family. My dear old friend has long since gone to
her home beyond, and has learned how sadly she failed to comprehend the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This knowledge doubtless
gives her many a heartache, and drives her forward with new zeal to
learn the lesson that God is the Father of _all spirits_.
We may be proud of our family name and social standing; we may think
that we are different and apart, but we should remember that no one
ever had more disreputable children than God. All the bad people are His
sons and daughters. True, they have dishonored His name, and grieved His
heart, yet He does not disown them; rather He follows them into all the
dens and haunts of vice asking them to return home. And as fast as we
become good sons, we join the Father in His love quest for His prodigal
sons, who are our brothers.
Possibly I am a direct descendant of King Swain of Denmark who conquered
England in the tenth century. There is no evidence to that effect, but
he is the first Swain of whom I know in history. However this may be,
with every other self-conscious being I can lift my head and say with
justifiable pride and gladness of heart, "God, who makes the world, is
my Father." How wonderful you are, O God-child! and what a pity it would
be if anything should drag you down from your divine possibilities!
3. Where is God?
When I once asked a company of young people where my spirit was they
promptly answered,
"In your body." I inquired,
"In a part of my body, or in all of it? Am I to understand that my
spirit is just the shape and size of my body, and that when I am thin of
flesh my spirit is not as large as when I am fleshy?"
"No," said they, "we do not like that."
"Oh! your spirit is in your brain," remarked one young fellow.
"Now, then, I have it," said I, "my spirit is just the shape and size of
the cavity in my skull."
"No," he replied, "we don't know how it is." And they did not know,
because no one had explained it to them. This is what I told them:
"The spirit is not in the body as a hand is in a glove, for that is one
_thing_ inside another _thing_. Spirit has no dimensions. If any boy has
a rule in his pocket let him measure my 'conscious will,' and tell me
how long it is." They promptly replied that it could not be done. So I
continued:
"If my self-conscious will occupies no space, then I, the spirit, am
neither in my body nor out of my body. I am nowhere. 'Where' applies to
things and not to spirit. The book is in the room because it occupies a
definite space. When we say that our spirits are in our bodies we simply
mean that our wills are capable of commanding our bodies and making them
act. _While our spirits are nowhere, yet they do get expressed
somewhere._ For all practical purposes, spirits are where their
instruments express them in time and space."
At this point in my remarks, I turned aside, and poked sharply with my
forefinger a friend who stood near. In reply to his inquiring look I
said:
"I did not poke you. It was this finger." (Then to the boys) "Did I poke
him? My finger touched him because I wished it. My will got expressed
right at the end of the finger, and therefore that is where my spirit
seemed to be."
Again I punched my friend, but this time with a long stick, and when he
turned sharply about, I said:
"I did not jab you, it was the stick. But the stick," I explained, "had
become the instrument of my will; therefore my will got expressed at a
greater distance from my body. The stick was really the lengthening of
my finger."
I then told them of the man in Virginia who was talking by wireless
telephone. It is reported that when he spoke, one man in Paris, and
another in Honolulu, replied at the same time, as if he were in both
places:
"Hello, Jake, is that you?" Had there been a million receivers in the
encircling space with people listening, it would have seemed to every
one of them that he was present. Though expressed in a million remote
places at one time, he would not have been divided into a million
persons; neither would he have been spread out to reach all the places
occupied by his listeners. His instruments would have been spread out,
but not his soul. His soul would still have remained sharply
self-conscious. That concentrated, self-conscious will is what we mean
by the soul. The soul is always a definite, personal will, to itself and
to the one or the many with whom it is communicating, however short or
extended its instruments.
That the young people grasped this conception of spirit, was made
evident in a subsequent review.
So to the question, "Where is God?" we must answer that, as naked
spirit, He is not anywhere, but that His instruments may express Him
everywhere. Where His instruments end, or whether nature ends at all, no
scientist knows. The Divine Spirit is no larger than the human spirit,
for neither of them has any largeness at all. God is simply more
conscious, more loving, and more intelligent than we; and His
instruments are infinitely more vast than ours. Developing a soul is not
making it larger, but making it more loving, intelligent, and
purposeful. However, the development of the soul does require the
enlargement of its instruments. An undeveloped person may be very
conscious of his body and its wants and scarcely at all aware of his
soul and its needs. To be infinitely self-knowing, like God, is the most
concentrated and intensified reality conceivable. So the minister's wife
of whom we have spoken, was mistaken in thinking God a rarified
substance like ether, spread out to fill all nature. With her
materialistic conception of God, she thought Him so spacially big that
she could neither know Him nor love Him, whereas He is no more spread
out than the mathematical point that has no dimensions. To give complete
satisfaction to our friend, it will be necessary to show her the various
ways of approaching this Loving Will, the Father of her own invisible
self; but for this we are not yet ready.
Dr. Lyman Abbott tells of sitting at the table one day with his little
grandson when the latter said, "'Grandfather, how can God be in Cornwall
and in Newburgh at the same time?' I touched him on the forehead and
said, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the shoulder, 'Are you
there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the knee, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' 'That
is the way,' I replied, 'God can be in Cornwall and in Newburgh at the
same time.' He considered a moment, and shyly smiled his assent."
I am well aware that we have not said enough about God to make Him
satisfyingly near and personal to our love; but it is a start, and we
still have the pleasure of traveling together over a beautiful road
until we shall stand face to face with Him whom our souls seek. We
should reach this desired goal in the fourth chapter. But if we become
impatient, we shall spoil the journey, for we are traveling as fast as
we can go without having a wreck.
Here, a little incident from actual experience may be helpful. My eldest
son, when a little child, would not say a prayer. This, beyond doubt,
was abnormal, because most little children are willing to pray. As my
own religious life had given me so much trouble, I concluded that he had
inherited my frailties, and not his mother's virtues. Being perplexed by
his attitude I would sometimes take him out to see the stars, when I
would speak of the greatness and goodness of God. Then, once in awhile,
though not often, I could get him to pray. We did not wish him to be
unduly serious, certainly not solemn, but it did puzzle us to know why
he would not say a prayer. So one day when he came into my study I
thought, "Now is my chance." Taking him up, I set him on the desk before
me, which permitted him to look out of the window upon the apple trees
that were a bower of beauty in their spring blossoms.
"Isn't this a beautiful world?" I said.
"Yes," was his reply.
"Who made it?"
"God."
"Well, wouldn't it be nice to pray a little?" I asked.
"Oh," with a tone of aversion, "I don't want to pray!"
"You don't like to talk to God?"
"Huh!" scornfully. "I can't _talk_ to God, He's up in heaven."
"No, God is in your heart." At that he rose to his knees and said, with
an incredulous look on his face:
"Well, I guess I can't jump into my mouth!" This made me feel that he
was born a little pagan, but at the same time it gave me one clue to the
difficulty. He made a difference between talking and praying. That he
liked to talk, I knew, but now it appeared that, to his mind, offering
prayers to some one so far away was quite a different thing. Then I
asked him if he thought I loved him.
"Yes, I know you love me," he said, putting his arms about my neck, and
giving me a squeeze.
"Well," I asked, "can you see my love?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure you can see it?"
"Why, of course."
"Well, then, put your hand on it."
"I can't _see_ your love, but,--I know you love me, though!"
"Yes, you do know that I love you, but you can't see my love, neither
can you see _me_."
"Yes, I can!"--and his hand literally flew to my cheek.
"Oh, no, that is not papa; that is flesh. You didn't think I was flesh,
did you? No, you can't see me because I am love, or spirit." Here I
carefully felt of his head, saying, "Now, that is a bone box, but I
don't talk to a bone box when I talk to you." Next, feeling of his ear,
I remarked, "Isn't that a funny little thing, a piece of gristle!--but I
don't talk to gristle when I speak to you." Bringing my hand down over
his face, I continued, "Here is some flesh with bones under it, but I
don't talk to flesh and bones when I talk to you. No, I can't _see_ you.
Yet, my love _knows_ your love, and your love knows my love. When my
love feels your love, then we say you are in my heart; and when our love
feels God's love, then He is in our hearts. Isn't it beautiful, that my
love knows and likes to talk to your love, and your love knows and likes
to talk to my love, and that we like to talk to God's love?" He didn't
wait for me to ask him to pray, but at once began in a loud whisper,
saying:
"O God, help me to be a good boy, and to love papa and mamma, and
everybody, and to do everything that is good." Then looking up with a
smile, he asked, "Do you know what I was doing?" I said:
"I think you were talking to the Lord." With evident satisfaction he
admitted that he was.
Two days after this he came into my study while I was reading a book and
put his hand on my knee. Giving my knee a hard shove, he said:
"This isn't papa, is it? This is papa's _body_." My book went out of the
way in a hurry, I can assure you, and there was a dear little upturned
face smiling, which said, "We are spirits, aren't we, papa?" Never after
that did he refuse to pray.
Some years ago a successful minister, about forty-five years of age,
consecrated, eloquent, and revered by his people, asked me how I
conceived of God when I prayed. The conversation revealed the fact that
he was struggling with all the questions that troubled the little boy.
This unhappy condition was due to the fact that theology begins too far
down the stream, leaving unanswered and unconsidered the best questions
of all, the questions of children and fools.
Once, when a little child, I was told by my mother that God saw all my
naughty thoughts. Immediately, I asked, "Where is God?" She answered,
"Everywhere." "In the sky?" "Yes." "In this house?" "Yes." "In the logs
of the walls?" "Yes." "In the table leg?" "Yes." "If I were to saw the
table leg off, would I hurt God?" "Sh-h, be careful what you say about
God."
That last question was as legitimate as the previous ones, and was asked
with equal sincerity. It clearly revealed my materialistic conceptions
of God. My present opinion is that it would not give Him pain to saw off
the leg of a table, but that it would give Him pain to amputate a human
leg. God knows the thrill of a nerve better than we do, or else He has
much to learn.
A relative, visiting in my home, remarked that she was utterly confused
about God; and that she had been reading some of the new cults of the
day with the hope of finding something satisfying. Consequently, a
little conversation followed on how God was immanent in all nature. So,
when she put her little boy to bed that night, she told him that God was
not away off in heaven but near, and in everything that was good. To
this the little fellow replied, "Oh, gee! then He is in strawberry
shortcake, isn't He?" The poor mother was at the end of her wits, and
felt that the devotion which followed was not very successful. We teach
that God is in everything, without comprehending how He is in anything,
and herein lies the difficulty.
The question of how God is in nature was again before us. Some one
suggested, "If He is in strawberry shortcake, is He likewise in the
garbage can?" "Horrors!" exclaimed another. A third voice, "_Now_ where
are we!--do we believe, or do we not believe that God is in all nature?"
A garbage can may be most repulsive if allowed to breed life; yet
chemically and biologically viewed, its contents are more beautiful
than any fairyland ever described. The odor and sight are repugnant to
us, because the refuse is not wholesome food for human beings; but to
some other animals it is more delicate than a perfume bottle. The other
animals would probably think the perfume horrid stuff. The "Loving
Intelligent Will" is not in nature in the same way that strawberries are
in shortcake. After that manner God is neither in nor out of anything.
This, however, will be made more plain in the consideration of the next
question.
Whether or not the reader likes these illustrations, at least they are
out of the raw experience of life, and reveal the crude conceptions that
linger concerning God and His relations to the universe. A child can ask
many of the vital questions concerning religion and life before he can
count ten; and if his questions are answered, he will ask almost all the
religious questions before he has learned the multiplication table. This
is because nothing else is so near to him as life and religion. The
mathematical faculty is a later development.
I should never crowd a child in his acquisition of religious knowledge;
but when he wants to know, if we ourselves know the way, it is much
better to start him on the right track.
4. What does God do?
"What does God do all day?" asked a little boy of his mother.
We used to think that He made the universe in a week, and that ever
since He had been keeping Sunday. During this long Sabbath we believed
Him to be engaged in religious work; though He may have regulated the
universe a bit now and then. Now, however, we see that nothing is
finished. Even new worlds are being formed, and the old ones are
constantly being changed. It is deeper truth to recognize God as making
the universe all the time, to think of nature as God at work. For,
should God cease working there would be no world. We used to say, and
rightly, too, that the world is crammed so full of meaning and purpose
that it must have had a wise Creator; that there never could have been
such a world without a God. With equal propriety, we may now say that
there could no more be a God without a world than a world without a God;
because a God who was so indolent and purposeless as to think nothing,
and feel nothing, and project nothing, would not be worthy of a second
thought.
At last we have come to the point where we can see how science, in a
peculiar way, has saved religion. Men have always been pondering over
God's relation to the wonderful forces of nature that envelop us. They
could get along pretty well with either a God or a world, but found it
difficult to harmonize both thoughts. There appeared to be a spirit
world over against the great lump of a dirt world. The _bulk_ of things
often seemed such a hindrance that men dreamed of deliverance by
ultimately getting rid of the material universe altogether. Even God,
it was thought by some philosophers, did the best He could with the
stubborn clay at His disposal. When my brother was killed, I could not
decide whether God or the great machine world killed him. Just when the
world acted, or just when God acted, was to me a profound mystery. For,
in my thought, the world was a great automatic machine, that ran
entirely by itself, except when God occasionally interfered. Whether He
was a sort of spiritual ether penetrating all things, or what, I could
not at all decide. But like the Yale professor, I still believed that if
He existed, He must have a _visible_ nucleus all His own in heaven. God,
at the center, was a ghost, whom His ghost children would find only
after death. According to the common teaching, Jesus had left His Father
and happy home in heaven, having come to this sinful earth to be clothed
with a physical body. Of course, the Father's spirit was represented as
being with Jesus, but the Father Himself had remained in His far-away
home. So my confusion was worse confounded by thinking.
During many centuries, scholars were grappling with the thought of
spirit; and they did some good thinking in spite of their mistakes.
Spirit was being more and more clearly defined. It increasingly appeared
to be a self-conscious will, but how this Infinite Will was related to
the great lump of nature, was the supreme difficulty.
Finally the scientists took the lump into the laboratories, when behold!
it melted as quickly as a lump of sugar melts in the mouth of a boy.
They discovered that nature was no lump at all, but a bundle of
beautiful, complex energies. Nature as _substance_ scientists have
driven to the vanishing point; so much so that no great physicist would
dare to say that there is any substance. Yet nature was never so potent
in the lives of men as since it has been reduced to invisible energies.
The knowledge of these invisible forces and the power to manipulate them
make men almost like gods in their achievements.
The present situation, then, is a little like that of putting the tunnel
under the Hudson. One gang beginning on the Jersey side, and another on
the New York side, they bored down and onward, sometimes going far below
the water; but when the workers came together under the Hudson, they had
varied from each other only by the least fraction of an inch. Just so
the philosophers and theologians began on the spirit side, reducing
spirit to purposeful energy; while the scientists began on the nature
side reducing it to purposeful energy; and when the two sets of workers
broke through, they were apparently at the same point. The Christian
scholar looked up with joy and amazement, saying, "Why, this invisible,
purposeful energy of nature is simply what God is thinking, and feeling,
and willing. Whether there is any _substance_ we do not know, but
whether there is, or is not, _nature is Will in action_. God continually
purposes all these energies and they go forth. Light-energy, and all
other beautiful forces constituting nature, are the modes of God's
continuous will."
"What does God do all day?" Why, everything that is being done in the
universe, except that which other wills are doing. And the child will is
only combining his Father's energies and thinking his Father's thoughts.
The child never works apart from his Father's enfolding powers. If we
could comprehend all the dynamics of the universe, we should know what
God is doing on _that plane_ of His activities. Or, if we could know all
His loving thoughts and higher purposes concerning His children, who are
striving and building in the midst of these simple, enfolding energies,
we should know what God is doing in the _moral realm_. The wall of
partition is broken down, the veil is rent in twain; we live in the Holy
Presence, since there is no other place to live. With Browning, we feel
that the atmosphere "Is the clear, dear breath of God who loveth us."
The pavement on which we walk is the power of the Great Will bearing us
up. Likewise, the buildings along the street are more of His beneficent
energies, providing shelter and rest for His loved ones. Our bodies are
also His energies, highly sensitized, through which we become
beautifully aware of our surroundings. All the vitality in the quivering
beams of ships, and all the propelling force in their engines, is but
the power of a Will, and that Will is the Father of our spirits. Leaving
out of mind for the present the thought of the vast universe, measure,
if you can, the ocean in its breadth and depth, which in its ceaseless
rising and falling raises and lowers ship-cities as if they were
snowflakes; and then remember that, if rightly applied, there is power
enough in each cup full of water to destroy a ship, and that all the
energy of the boundless worlds is but the will of Him in whom we "live
and move and have our being." Having done this, if you are not something
less than a man, you will fall down and adore in wonder, love and
praise. To be brought face to face with God in the beauty and awfulness
of nature is the only cure for the irreverence of this generation.
But some one says, "This makes God too great. Have you looked, and
staggered before the limitless heavens?" Yes, but is it not claimed that
God is Infinite?--and we have not yet found the equal of infinity. With
all our insistence upon the infinitude of God, perhaps it offends some
to think of Him as being equal to His universe,--or even to the little
part of it that we can imagine. However, God must be greater than all
His works.
This is pantheism, says another. No, pantheism though containing many
beautiful truths is, nevertheless, a golden mist. Its advocates have
eliminated personality, they have broken the mast of their ship, and all
the riggings have fallen down with it. Being the perpetual cause of all
things, Self-conscious Will is the greatest fact in the universe. There
is a clear distinction between God and His deeds, even as there is a
distinction between myself and what I am now thinking and doing. This
Creative Will is what the intelligent Christian means by the term God.
He conceives of this Will of the universe as being the Father of all
other wills. We are not to think of God as making a dirt planet which He
has tossed off into space as something separate from His will. He never
put His children on such an isolated Earth as that would be, to roam
about and care for themselves as best they might. The world is the
complex energy of His will never-ceasing, with which He enfolds His
children. He carries them in His loving powers and will not let them go.
This is His cosmic relation to us; but it is by no means the only
relation which He sustains to His children. His more personal
relationship is equally beautiful and necessary.
Something like this twofold relationship exists between man and man. We
know that it is best for us to build railroads, though many are sure to
be killed by them however careful we may be. Yet we should be something
more than railroad operators; we should be personal friends and, if
occasion should arise, minister to the wants of those who are injured by
our railroads.
So God must either will a cosmos, or not will it. He cannot obliterate a
part of the world, every time one of His wilful or ignorant children
gets in the way. It is not even best for His children that He should do
so. It is far better to have a definite and orderly world, though it may
hurt many. Yet God never forsakes His injured children, but leads them
out of their injuries into something better, if they are willing.
Comforting as these thoughts are, we must yet travel a long way before
we come to a completely satisfying idea of God. However, this is not
discouraging, because we like to travel when the prospect grows more
pleasing at each stage of the journey.
Some think there must be a dirt world because they see it. In a way I
seem to see my wife when I look at her picture; yet I only see a bit of
paper irregularly faded. Likewise a shining light appears to be a
complete thing in itself, whereas the sun, doubtless, is as dark as
blackness. The light which the scientist studies is waves of energy,
traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per
second, but that is not the sweet something that we experience as light.
The light coming from the sun is not shiny until our sensations are
added. And even then, it is our feelings that are brilliant because our
nerves were struck by these rapid waves of energy. When we think we see
a real face, it is only a shadow on the retina of the eye; which eye is
only another bundle of energies, and not the substance that it appears
to be.
We live in a picture world, produced by God's energies beating upon
other energies which He has intimately associated with our wills. We
thank God for these pictures because they are the visible language of
"loving intelligent wills," wills that in themselves are silent and
invisible. Yet these wills are known in consciousness as a bit of final
reality. They are like unto God who causes the vital energies that
result in the pictures of a living, rational experience. Experience,
therefore, with its inner consciousness and its outer symbol, or
picture, is all we know. So when they would take us out of personal
experience into a universal "substance" called spirit, they are offering
to take us out of the known into the unknown; for they do not know
whether there is any substance.
"Why, then," some may ask, "does God combine His energies to form a
poisonous rattlesnake?" God has expressed everything imaginable; the
beautiful and ugly, the safe and harmful, the pleasant and painful, the
gentle and terrible, and all these are but the alphabet of a soul. If He
had given us nothing but abstract definitions, we never should have
learned the meaning of anything; and scarcely more, if He had given us
only the beautiful and pleasant without their opposites. But He has made
us _feel_ the meaning, so that it may be real to us. From this marvelous
alphabet which He has provided, we learn to spell, then to read, and
finally to live. When we have learned the meaning of poison and its
opposite, we may kill the rattlesnake, or cause its energies to dissolve
and pass into something more beautiful and safe. Thus we become more and
more immune from all that is ugly and harmful, and more appreciatively
attached to all that is beautiful and good. The ugly and harmful were
desirable things to know in contrast with the beautiful and good, that
we might reject the one, and cleave to the other. The deeper meaning of
things thus learned will give significance to our beautiful world long
after we have passed beyond the evil which we have come to loathe. I am
entirely convinced that this so-called evil world with its epidemics,
earthquakes, and cyclones is the best conceivable place in which to
_begin_ a soul; not the best possible world as yet, for it is our
business to help make it better. Neither should we forget that the
terrible is often the overture to us of some mighty, beneficent energy
which we have not yet learned to use.
Again we affirm that God is doing everything that occurs in the
universe, except those things which are being done by His children.
Nothing ever occurs that is not directly or indirectly the act of some
will.
5. If the Ancients made their gods, how do we know that we are not
making our God?
Doubtless, the great fallacy in this question is the supposition that
the Ancients made their gods. No one ever made his God or his gods; for
all men have the same identical God, living and moving and having their
being in Him. They have Him regardless of whether they know either His
name or His character. Since there is no other God or thing to have, all
must have Him. Neither can they avoid being conscious of Him, nor escape
having opinions concerning Him. All religious opinions, however sane or
grotesque, are about the same God. The Ancients, being conscious of our
God and their God, were sometimes comforted by His presence, while at
other times they were greatly frightened. As they could not escape Him
they tried to explain Him; and in the act of explaining, they made a
theology and not a god. Whoever expresses a religious opinion is guilty
of starting a theology. Even the Ancients were moved by an objective
reality, and not by a mere idea. Though their idea often failed to
describe the reality with accuracy, yet if the reality had disappeared,
the idea would have perished from among them. It seemed to them that
there was a god of thunder and, according to our interpretation of the
universe, there was; for if our God had not been there thundering, they
never would have thought of a god of thunder. Neither were they mistaken
when they thought there was a god of harvest; because our God was there
making their harvests grow as He does ours, and was feeding them as He
feeds us. We all make worse mistakes than that. These crude men may be
excused for thinking that a crashing thunderstorm was a big enough task
for one god; or that the fructifying of all vegetation was ample
employment for another.
Those early men worshiped our God in divided form simply because they
could not think of a God great enough to carry on all the diverse
activities which they beheld. Another reason why these crude children
conceived of Him as many gods was that they could not understand how one
person could be so gentle and terrible at the same time. Nevertheless,
they would not have had gentle and terrible gods if our God had not been
both gentle and terrible. They, therefore, no more made their gods than
they made their stars. Their gods were our God, and their stars were our
stars. We call their theology mythology, and their astronomy astrology.
Yet mythology is crude theology, and astrology is unscientific
astronomy. Astrology arose because men were influenced by real stars,
and were impelled to offer such explanations as they were able. Without
astrology we never would have had astronomy. In like manner men were
disquieted by the same Infinite Power that disturbs us to-day, and were
moved by that Power to offer their best interpretation. But without
their mythology we never would have had our theology. The development of
astronomy will never cease while there are intelligent men for stars to
shine upon. Nor will the idea of God cease to expand while men are
enfolded in the vast purposeful energy called the universe.
Our early brothers were trying to comprehend and interpret our God who
was as present to them as He is to us. And here we are in the year
nineteen hundred and twenty, A. D., still trying to expound Him; because
the need is not less now than then. Those who know most about God best
realize the need of knowing more. When we no longer try to increase our
knowledge of God, we shall cease to love Him.
6. May we not be communing with a mere idea?
No, that is impossible. Because, whatever it is, it is at least an
objective reality. Its grip is that of the universe. We can not let it
go because it will not let us go. We are worshiping more than an idea;
we are worshiping what we live in; we call it God; we think it is
"Loving Intelligent Will." We believe that the power that enfolds us
knows itself and us. And that we are not mistaken in this, our assurance
deepens as our knowledge increases. We find that if we do not neglect or
stultify any portion of our nature, our insight grows. If we invest our
all on the conception of a spiritual universe we get astonishing results
to the individual and to society. Then follows more insight and the
incentive to invest again our talents that have doubled in the using of
them. Of this, however, we shall have more to say later. For the present
suffice it to say, the object of my worship is the great reality; all
the reality there is, except my will and the other wills whom I call
brothers. To state clearly what we mean, before trying to tell why we
believe it, is of the utmost importance. With an experimental knowledge
of God, and with ideas of the universe that harmonize therewith, our
heads and hearts are thoroughly anchored in Him. If our every line of
vision converges to this end, our insight gives us God as the great
enfolding reality. Our further task is to make the idea of God clear and
to show how the lines of vision converge. In this task, modern knowledge
is the Christian's best ally.