In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living being,
whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a component item of
a single personality, in the same way as each individual citizen of a
community is a member of one state, or as each cell of our own bodies
is a separate person, or each bud of a tree a separate plant. We must
therefore see the whole varied congeries of living things as a single
very ancient Being, of inconceivable vastness, and animated by one
Spirit.
We call the octogenarian one person with the embryo of a few days old
from which he has developed. An oak or yew tree may be two thousand
years old, but we call it one plant with the seed from which it has
grown. Millions of individual buds have come and gone, to the yearly
wasting and repairing of its substance; but the tree still lives and
thrives, and the dead leaves have life therein. So the Tree of Life
still lives and thrives as a single person, no matter how many new
features it has acquired during its development, nor, again, how many
of its individual leaves fall yellow to the ground daily. The spirit or
soul of this person is the Spirit of God, and its body-for we know of no
soul or spirit without a body, nor of any living body without a spirit
or soul, and if there is a God at all there must be a body of God-is
the many-membered outgrowth of protoplasm, the ensemble of animal and
vegetable life.
To repeat. The Theologian of to-day tells us that there is a God, but is
horrified at the idea of that God having a body. We say that we believe
in God, but that our minds refuse to realise [sic] an intelligent Being
who has no bodily person. "Where then," says the Theologian, "is the
body of your God?" We have answered, "In the living forms upon the
earth, which, though they look many, are, when we regard them by the
light of their history and of true analogies, one person only." The
spiritual connection between them is a more real bond of union than the
visible discontinuity of material parts is ground for separating them in
our thoughts.
Let the reader look at a case of moths in the shop-window of a
naturalist, and note the unspeakable delicacy, beauty, and yet
serviceableness of their wings; or let him look at a case of
humming-birds, and remember how infinitely small a part of Nature is
the whole group of the animals he may be considering, and how infinitely
small a part of that group is the case that he is looking at. Let him
bear in mind that he is looking on the dead husks only of what was
inconceivably more marvellous [sic] when the moths or humming-birds were
alive. Let him think of the vastness of the earth, and of the activity
by day and night through countless ages of such countless forms of
animal and vegetable life as that no human mind can form the faintest
approach to anything that can be called a conception of their multitude,
and let him remember that all these forms have touched and touched and
touched other living beings till they meet back on a common substance in
which they are rooted, and from which they all branch forth so as to be
one animal. Will he not in this real and tangible existence find a God
who is as much more worthy of admiration than the God of the ordinary
Theologian-as He is also more easy of comprehension?
For the Theologian dreams of a God sitting above the clouds among the
cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before Him, and
humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an Oriental tale; but
we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on the petals of flowers, on
the faces of our friends, and upon whatever we most delight in of all
that lives upon the earth. We then can not only love Him, but we can
do that without which love has neither power nor sweetness, but is a
phantom only, an impersonal person, a vain stretching forth of arms
towards something that can never fill them-we can express our love and
have it expressed to us in return. And this not in the uprearing of
stone temples-for the Lord dwelleth [sic] in temples made with other
organs than hands-nor yet in the cleansing of our hearts, but in the
caress bestowed upon horse and dog, and kisses upon the lips of those we
love.
Wide, however, as is the difference between the orthodox Theologian and
ourselves, it is not more remarkable than the number of the points on
which we can agree with him, and on which, moreover, we can make his
meaning clearer to himself than it can have ever hitherto been. He, for
example, says that man has been made in the image of God, but he cannot
mean what he says, unless his God has a material body; we, on the other
hand, do not indeed believe that the body of God-the incorporation of
all life-is like the body of a man, more than we believe each one of our
own cells or subordinate personalities to be like a man in miniature;
but we nevertheless hold that each of our tributary selves is so far
made after the likeness of the body corporate that it possesses all our
main and essential characteristics-that is to say, that it can waste
and repair itself; can feel, move, and remember. To this extent, also,
we-who stand in mean proportional between our tributary personalities
and God-are made in the likeness of God; for we, and God, and our
subordinate cells alike possess the essential characteristics of life
which have been above recited. It is more true, therefore, for us to say
that we are made in the likeness of God than for the orthodox Theologian
to do so.
Nor, again, do we find difficulty in adopting such an expression as that
"God has taken our nature upon Him." We hold this as firmly, and much
more so, than Christians can do, but we say that this is no new thing
for Him to do, for that He has taken flesh and dwelt among us from the
day that He first assumed our shape, some millions of years ago, until
now. God cannot become man more especially than He can become other
living forms, any more than we can be our eyes more especially than any
other of our organs. We may develop larger eyes, so that our eyes may
come to occupy a still more important place in our economy than they
do at present; and in a similar way the human race may become a more
predominant part of God than it now is-but we cannot admit that one
living form is more like God than another; we must hold all equally like
Him, inasmuch as they "keep ever," as Buffon says, "the same fundamental
unity, in spite of differences of detail-nutrition, development,
reproduction" (and, I would add, "memory") "being the common traits of
all organic bodies." The utmost we can admit is, that some embodiments
of the Spirit of Life may be more important than others to the welfare
of Life as a whole, in the same way as some of our organs are more
important than others to ourselves.
But the above resemblances between the language which we can adopt
intelligently and that which Theologians use vaguely, seem to reduce the
differences of opinion between the two contending parties to disputes
about detail. For even those who believe their ideas to be the most
definite, and who picture to themselves a God as anthropomorphic as He
was represented by Raffaelle, are yet not prepared to stand by their
ideas if they are hard pressed in the same way as we are by ours. Those
who say that God became man and took flesh upon Him, and that He is
now perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting, will yet not mean that Christ has a heart, blood, a stomach,
etc., like man's, which, if he has not, it is idle to speak of him as
"perfect man." I am persuaded that they do not mean this, nor wish to
mean it; but that they have been led into saying it by a series of steps
which it is very easy to understand and sympathise [sic] with, if they
are considered with any diligence.
For our forefathers, though they might and did feel the existence of a
Personal God in the world, yet could not demonstrate this existence, and
made mistakes in their endeavour [sic] to persuade themselves that they
understood thoroughly a truth which they had as yet perceived only from
a long distance. Hence all the dogmatism and theology of many centuries.
It was impossible for them to form a clear or definite conception
concerning God until they had studied His works more deeply, so as to
grasp the idea of many animals of different kinds and with no apparent
connection between them, being yet truly parts of one and the same
animal which comprised them in the same way as a tree comprises all its
buds. They might speak of this by a figure of speech, but they could
not see it as a fact. Before this could be intended literally, Evolution
must be grasped, and not Evolution as taught in what is now commonly
called Darwinism, but the old teleological Darwinism of eighty years
ago. Nor is this again sufficient, for it must be supplemented by a
perception of the oneness of personality between parents and offspring,
the persistence of memory through all generations, the latency of this
memory until rekindled by the recurrence of the associated ideas, and
the unconsciousness with which repeated acts come to be performed.
These are modern ideas which might be caught sight of now and again by
prophets in time past, but which are even now mastered and held firmly
only by the few.
When once, however, these ideas have been accepted, the chief difference
between the orthodox God and the God who can be seen of all men is, that
the first is supposed to have existed from all time, while the second
has only lived for more millions of years than our minds can reckon
intelligently; the first is omnipresent in all space, while the second
is only present in the living forms upon this earth-that is to say, is
only more widely present than our minds can intelligently embrace. The
first is omnipotent and all-wise; the second is only quasi-omnipotent
and quasi all-wise. It is true, then, that we deprive God of that
infinity which orthodox Theologians have ascribed to Him, but the
bounds we leave Him are of such incalculable extent that nothing can be
imagined more glorious or vaster; and in return for the limitations we
have assigned to Him, we render it possible for men to believe in Him,
and love Him, not with their lips only, but with their hearts and lives.
Which, I may now venture to ask my readers, is the true God-the God of
the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in whose presence
we stand each hour and moment of our lives?