One does not have to believe in the same kind of a god as did the seers
and singers of long ago in order to obtain the spiritual values which
they found in the thought of his nearness to them. David and Browning,
Isaiah and Whittier, with all the centuries between them, still come to
the same thought--we know that Thou art near.
Through all ages and in all peoples this sense of that which is other
than ourselves, from which our highest good comes, towards which our
ideals and aspirations strain, the ultimate force of our being, this
feeling after the infinite is universal. It is the essential and
determinative mark of every religion.
When those singers of long ago tried to express their sense of the
infinite life and love they used words which make it appear that they
thought only of some being larger, mightier, wiser than themselves,
yet, after all, like themselves, a great man deified because He was
great. Perhaps that really was their conception; still, we use
precisely the same language, even though our ideas are entirely
different.
It makes relatively little difference what their conceptions were, so
far as ours are concerned. Their words are not accurate, detailed pen
pictures of some being who can be described or photographed. No man
has seen the infinite at any time. The great thing is that ever and
everywhere men find themselves with a hunger after this sublime unseen.
One may use terms of personality and another terms of power; to one the
infinite may be but a local deity; to another, that which embraces all
spirit and being, and each may have all of the divine his heart is
capable of containing. Here none may dogmatize for others.
Religion does not depend on uniformity of conceptions of the divine.
It depends more upon universality of consciousness of the infinite and
openness of mind and life to whatever we may feel and know, from any
source or through any means whatsoever, of that life or energy which
lies back of all life and energy, of that love and light which cheer
and lighten every son of man.
Definitions determine nothing, but they do work great damage when minds
capable of being stereotyped to them agree to impose those definitions
on their fellows as final, authoritative, and essential to their
welfare. The divine is neither infinite nor sublime when you can say,
Here are His lineaments and He has no other likeness or appearance.
To the question, How shall we think of the divine? there can be but one
answer--in higher, wider, deeper, nobler, purer ways than yesterday.
The conception must be a developing one. A man's spiritual capacities
develop as his inner vision becomes more keen. The soul takes wider
flight, and in our deep thoughts we discover that which language cannot
compass.
There are those who think they must be atheists because they cannot
believe in the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Old Testament--a
limited personality. But the genuine atheists are more likely to be
those who are without a sense of the divine, because they have taken
definitions and descriptions prepared by others instead of seeking
truth for themselves.
We are but poor learners of those ancient teachers if we have not
discovered that their greatest lesson to us is not truth, as they had
found it, but the blessing of the persistent search after truth. To
cherish as final past presentations of truth is to be false to its
present possibilities.
We do not need to worry over definitions of the divine. We do need to
cultivate the temper of mind and the sensitiveness of spirit that will
save us from blindness to the higher facts of life, that will save us
from the blasting whirlwind of materialism, with its sense of nothing
but a soulless world of things.
We need to avoid the mind that shuts the divine up in some far off
heaven to be reached only by formal telephony called prayer; that fails
to see the infinite in all things--in sunlight and flower, in
children's laughter, and in misery's wail, in factories and stores, as
well as in churches. We need the mind that argues not about
omnipresence, but in duty and delight cries, Always and everywhere,
Thou art near.