During my first year in the seminary I frequently dreamed of seeing my brother in torment. Sometimes I would wake trembling, and even when I could throw off the thought and go to sleep, I was liable to repeat the dream in some new form.
Once when I was walking with one of the professors, as true a Christian man as ever I knew, I told him of the circumstances of my brother's death. He asked me if my parents were Christians. I told him that they were very good Christians. Then he counseled me not to go off into any heresies, but to feel comforted concerning my brother; for "The promises were to the parents and to their children unto the third and fourth generation."
While I listened to this in silence, yet the following thoughts went through my mind:
"Then God would save my brother who had not improved his privileges, while He would consign to endless torment our poor play-fellows who were not blessed with the good influence of Christian parents."
My mind instinctively felt what I had discretion not to say: "I should despise a God who had no more ethical sense than that. God should be harder on my brother than on them."
Much of my philosophy and theology was worked out during my seminary course; but there were gaps that I could not fill. So I next went to Yale to study philosophy. In postgraduate work, through the guidance of professors, I expected to find the "wise men" for whom I had waited so long. However, these "wise men" are not readily understood in a few weeks. They have a poor faculty for making connection with all the ideas that still linger in the mind of callow youth. At any rate it soon dawned upon me that there was no such God as I was looking for or else these men were unable to give Him to me. When this conviction came to me I went out from a recitation one night into the dark and once more fought the old battle. Standing on the New Haven Green and looking up into the pelting sleet I said:
"Now I have met the 'wise men,' and still I do not know whether there is an inspired Bible, or a heaven, or a God." But I exclaimed, "O God, if you are, and if I should ever meet you anywhere in eternity, I would run to you as a little child runs to a father. I would tell you how weak and sinful and ignorant I am, and I know you would love me." That night on the old Green, while in the dark and pelted with sleet, I went out onto the last crag where any human soul can go, and cried into the infinite depths, "O God, if you are there, some day I shall know you and love you." In that act I passed beyond all men and all institutions, and took my stand with the final reality, whatever it might be, and at least I was free and not afraid. Though thoroughly agnostic still, yet I could quietly work and wait.
Returning to my studies and resolving to appropriate whatever I could understand, I was surprised to find howmuch of the teaching ministered to my needs. Before long I came to see that God did not have a central nucleus, or ghost form in heaven; neither did He resemble a refined substance like ether. Spirit was something quite different from what I had supposed. My mind was hitting the trail. Then I understood that God had not revealed Himself to the world according to my demand, because no such God existed in heaven or earth. So one day in class I asked a professor, who is now dead, if he thought we should see God in heaven as we see men and trees here. At the same time I assured him that I did not. His answer was, "I think your position would be a very dangerous doctrine to teach." But my own conviction was that it was becoming a very dangerous doctrine not to teach. Time has proved that I was right. Millions of people are suffering to-day from false images of God or from no image of God. Not long ago when I related this class incident to a Yale man, he remarked, "Well, Professor —— made great growth before he died."
My categorical answers to the four questions at the head of this chapter are: When we have rational ideas of God and the universe we shall see that He is leaving nothing undone to reveal Himself. To an enlightened understanding it does not seem possible that God could reveal Himself so that no one could doubt His existence. Though the existence of God is a question of doubt and discussion with many, yet we may achieve deep and satisfying assurance if we go about it in the right way. Ithink it would be morally wrong for God to leave His children in doubt of His existence if He were able to reveal Himself.
This chapter is largely excavation. We have dug the hole deep so that we may commence in the next chapter to lay the foundation on solid bottom. And this was necessary if our proposed structure is to stand.
Allow me this closing word. When I began to get on my religious feet at Yale, I unexpectedly received a call to a college pastorate. And though the usual number of sceptics were found among the students, yet in many respects they were the most savable men in college. Usually, if you could hit the keys of their souls they would ring back and ring true.
Whatis God?Whois God?Whereis God?What does Goddo?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?
Whatis God?
Whois God?
Whereis God?
What does Goddo?
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?
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 tocultivate, 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 thenew mansionof 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 crudepsychology 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 topicturereligion 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 simpledescriptionof 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 avisiblespirit 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 spiritualformin 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 themaspirit, 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 wordPersonis the best because, being the scholar's term, it is clearly defined. So when we have learned the signification of the wordPerson, 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, meansa Will that knows itself, and then knowsOther Wills. When we say that God is a Spirit, or Person, we should mean that He is aLoving 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 aformin 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 beenthe 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 isnotthe 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 offour, 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 neverknownthe 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 ofall 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 oftentouched 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 ofall spirits.
We may be proud of our family name and social standing; we may think that we are different and apart, butwe 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 onethinginside anotherthing. 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 theend 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 atthe 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 studyI 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'ttalkto 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'tseeyour 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 seeme."
"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'tseeyou. Yet, my loveknowsyour 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 isgood." 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'sbody." 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, "Nowwhere 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. Thebulkof 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 avisiblenucleus 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 sugarmelts in the mouth of a boy. They discovered that nature was no lump at all, but a bundle of beautiful, complex energies. Nature assubstancescientists 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 anysubstancewe 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 otherbeautiful 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 onthat planeof 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 themoral 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 inits 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. ThisCreative 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 aliving, 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 usfeelthe 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 afterwe 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 tobegina 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 moremade 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 theuniverse. 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.