I.

_Difficulty of expressing the Idea of God so that it can be readily

understood._

In Goethe's great poem, while Faust is walking with Margaret at

eventide in the garden, she asks him questions about his religion. It

is long since he has been shriven or attended mass; does he, then,

believe in God?--a question easy to answer with a simple yes, were

it not for the form in which it is put. The great scholar and subtle

thinker, who has delved in the deepest mines of philosophy and come

forth weary and heavy-laden with their boasted treasures, has framed a

very different conception of God from that entertained by the priest at

the confessional or the altar, and how is he to make this intelligible

to the simple-minded girl that walks by his side? Who will make bold

to declare that he can grasp an idea of such overwhelming vastness as

the idea of God, yet who that hath the feelings of a man can bring

himself to cast away a belief that is indispensable to the rational

and healthful workings of the mind? So long as the tranquil dome of

heaven is raised above our heads and the firm-set earth is spread forth

beneath our feet, while the everlasting stars course in their mighty

orbits and the lover gazes with ineffable tenderness into the eyes of

her that loves him, so long, says Faust, must our hearts go out toward

Him that upholds and comprises all. Name or describe as we may the

Sustainer of the world, the eternal fact remains there, far above our

comprehension, yet clearest and most real of all facts. To name and

describe it, to bring it within the formulas of theory or creed, is

but to veil its glory as when the brightness of heaven is enshrouded

in mist and smoke. This has a pleasant sound to Margaret's ears. It

reminds her of what the parson sometimes says, though couched in very

different phrases; and yet she remains uneasy and unsatisfied. Her mind

is benumbed by the presence of an idea confessedly too great to be

grasped. She feels the need of some concrete symbol that can be readily

apprehended; and she hopes that her lover has not been learning bad

lessons from Mephistopheles.

The difficulty which here besets Margaret must doubtless have been

felt by every one when confronted with the thoughts by which the

highest human minds have endeavoured to disclose the hidden life of the

universe and interpret its meaning. It is a difficulty which baffles

many, and they who surmount it are few indeed. Most people content

themselves through life with a set of concrete formulas concerning

Deity, and vituperate as atheistic all conceptions which refuse to be

compressed within the narrow limits of their creed. For the great mass

of men the idea of God is quite overlaid and obscured by innumerable

symbolic rites and doctrines that have grown up in the course of the

long historic development of religion. All such rites and doctrines had

a meaning once, beautiful and inspiring or terrible and forbidding, and

many of them still retain it. But whether meaningless or fraught with

significance, men have wildly clung to them as shipwrecked mariners

cling to the drifting spars that alone give promise of rescue from

threatening death. Such concrete symbols have in all ages been argued

and fought for until they have come to seem the essentials of religion;

and new moons and sabbaths, decrees of councils and articles of faith,

have usurped the place of the living God. In every age the theory or

discovery--however profoundly theistic in its real import--which has

thrown discredit upon such symbols has been stigmatized as subversive

of religion, and its adherents have been reviled and persecuted. It

is, of course, inevitable that this should be so. To the half-educated

mind a theory of divine action couched in the form of a legend, in

which God is depicted as entertaining human purposes and swayed by

human passions, is not only intelligible, but impressive. It awakens

emotion, it speaks to the heart, it threatens the sinner with wrath to

come or heals the wounded spirit with sweet whispers of consolation.

However mythical the form in which it is presented, however literally

false the statements of which it is composed, it seems profoundly

real and substantial. Just in so far as it is crudely concrete, just

in so far as its terms can be vividly realized by the ordinary mind,

does such a theological theory seem weighty and true. On the other

hand, a theory of divine action which, discarding as far as possible

the aid of concrete symbols, attempts to include within its range

the endlessly complex operations that are forever going on throughout

the length and breadth of the knowable universe,--such a theory is to

the ordinary mind unintelligible. It awakens no emotion because it

is not understood. Though it may be the nearest approximation to the

truth of which the human intellect is at the present moment capable,

though the statements of which it is composed may be firmly based upon

demonstrated facts in nature, it will nevertheless seem eminently

unreal and uninteresting. The dullest peasant can understand you when

you tell him that honey is sweet, while a statement that the ratio

of the circumference of a circle to its diameter may be expressed by

the formula +p+ = 3.14159 will sound as gibberish in his ears;

yet the truth embodied in the latter statement is far more closely

implicated with every act of the peasant's life, if he only knew it,

than the truth expressed in the former. So the merest child may know

enough to marvel at the Hebrew legend of the burning bush, but only

the ripest scholar can begin to understand the character of the mighty

problems with which Spinoza was grappling when he had so much to say

about _natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_.

For these reasons all attempts to study God as revealed in the workings

of the visible universe, and to characterize the divine activity in

terms derived from such study, have met with discouragement, if not

with obloquy. As substituting a less easily comprehensible formula for

one that is more easily comprehensible, they seem to be frittering

away the idea of God, and reducing it to an empty abstraction. There

is a further reason for the dread with which such studies are commonly

regarded. The theories of divine action accepted as orthodox by the

men of any age have been bequeathed to them by their forefathers of an

earlier age. They were originally framed with reference to assumed

facts of nature which advancing knowledge is continually discrediting

and throwing aside. Each forward step in physical science obliges us to

contemplate the universe from a somewhat altered point of view, so that

the mutual relations of its parts keep changing as in an ever-shifting

landscape. The notions of the world and its Maker with which we started

by and by prove meagre and unsatisfying; they no longer fit in with the

general scheme of our knowledge. Hence the men who are wedded to the

old notions are quick to sound the alarm. They would fain deter us from

taking the forward step which carries us to a new standpoint. Beware of

science, they cry, lest with its dazzling discoveries and adventurous

speculations it rob us of our soul's comfort and leave us in a godless

world. Such in every age has been the cry of the more timid and halting

spirits; and their fears have found apparent confirmation in the

behaviour of a very different class of thinkers. As there are those

who live in perpetual dread of the time when science shall banish God

from the world, so, on the other hand, there are those who look forward

with longing to such a time, and in their impatience are continually

starting up and proclaiming that at last it has come. There are those

who have indeed learned a lesson from Mephistopheles, the "spirit that

forever denies." These are they that say in their hearts, "There is

no God," and "congratulate themselves that they are going to die like

the beasts." Rushing into the holiest arcana of philosophy, even where

angels fear to tread, they lay hold of each new discovery in science

that modifies our view of the universe, and herald it as a crowning

victory for the materialists,--a victory which is ushering in the happy

day when atheism is to be the creed of all men. It is in view of such

philosophizers that the astronomer, the chemist, or the anatomist,

whose aim is the dispassionate examination of evidence and the

unbiased study of phenomena, may fitly utter the prayer, "Lord, save me

from my friends!"

Thus through age after age has it fared with men's discoveries in

science, and with their thoughts about God and the soul. It was so

in the days of Galileo and Newton, and we have found it to be so in

the days of Darwin and Spencer. The theologian exclaims, if planets

are held in place by gravitation and tangential momentum, and if the

highest forms of life have been developed by natural selection and

direct adaptation, then the universe is swayed by blind forces, and

nothing is left for God to do: how impious and terrible the thought!

Even so, echoes the favourite atheist, the Lamettrie or Büchner of

the day; the universe, it seems, has always got on without a God, and

accordingly there is none: how noble and cheering the thought! And as

thus age after age they wrangle, with their eyes turned away from the

light, the world goes on to larger and larger knowledge in spite of

them, and does not lose its faith, for all these darkeners of counsel

may say. As in the roaring loom of Time the endless web of events is

woven, each strand shall make more and more clearly visible the living

garment of God.