PPERSOMALTY, : 2OF Gop. “SABBOTT. WS Jen We — Ofarbte AS. : iie PERSONALITY OF GOD BOOKLETS BY LYMAN ABBOTT. + Bound in the uniform dainty style of the “What is Worth While Series.” —+— Each 35 cents by mail. —_e— THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. SALVATION FROM SIN. THE SOUL'S QUEST AFTER GOD, THE SUPERNATURAL. — THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., NEW YORK. DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE PERSONALITY OF GOD BY LYMAN ABBOTT AUTHOR OF “SALVATION FROM SIN,” “THE SUPERNATURAL,” “THE SOUL’S QUEST AFTER GOD” NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1905, . By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO, PuBLisHED FEBRUARY, 1905. PREFATORY NOTE Tuis little book aims to be a compact presen- tation of the views concerning the personality of God which Dr. Abbott has for many years expressed in his sermons and writings. The author neither desires nor professes in these pages to formulate any new or radical theo- logical theories. His hope is that he may be able to show the honest, sincere, and rational man, who is confused by the difference of opinion between a certain school of theologians and a certain school of scientists, that a belief in the loving Fatherhood of God is entirely consistent with an acceptance of a thoroughly modern scientific conception of the universe, of its genesis, and of the laws which display themselves in its greatest movements and most minute details. The book is based upon an address which was first delivered before the National Council 5 6 PREFATORY NOTE of Congregational Churches at Des Moines, Iowa, on October 19, 1904. At that time it appeared to excite no great antagonism, but to be received with sympathetic approval. The address was afterwards given in the form of a sermon in Appleton Chapel, Harvard Univer- sity, on December 18. For some inexplicable reason the newspapers of the country seized upon the sermon as a radical expression of an entirely new theology, and in every part of the United States news paragraphs and editorial comment were printed about it. Some of the newspaper comment was personal in its criti- cism, but much of it was thoughtful and sym- pathetic. The author has received from all parts of the country a deluge of letters con- cerning the sermon and address, which is now printed in book form. A few of these letters were denunciations of the author and his views. The great majority, however, were in the form of serious and honest discussion of the subject, or of thanks for what seemed to the writers to be a simple and clear presentation of the idea that a simple faith in the personality of God PREFATORY NOTE 7 does not conflict with the modern knowledge of the vastness of the universe in which our own world plays but a trifling part. The address is reprinted in the form of this small book, with the hope that it may give some comfort and courage to those who, having had to abandon their former notions, have come to the conception that time, space, the past, the future, the immense array of the stars of the sky, and the irresistible power of the chemical and electrical forces of nature exist not merely for this little world and for a chosen portion of the human race that dwells upon it; those, in fact, who, having a new conception of the magnitude of the universe, yet wish to hold fast to their belief in a knowing, willing, loving, personal God. THE PUBLISHERS. frie PERSONALITY OF GOD ANY converging tendencies have operated to bring about a time peculiarly adapted for great spiritual work in and through the Christian Church. We have already entered upon an epoch, intellectual, social, spiritual, which we can make an epoch of the greatest spiritual movement the world has ever seen. When Christianity passed over into Europe, it found Europe dominated by a great imperialistic system. Czsarwasthesupreme authority. His edicts were absolute law — ecclesiastical, civil, political law —throughout the empire. He was represented by a host of subordinates, who were simply the instruments to interpret and execute these laws. He was absolutely inaccessible to the great multitude of the citizens of the Roman Empire; they could come to him only through his subordinates, who were mediators between 9 10 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD the people and the Emperor. Christianity, entering into Europe and pervading it, adopted, naturally, as its ecclesiastical machinery, this framework of government. The pagan Roman Empire was transformed, as Mr. Bryce has well shown us, into the Holy Roman Empire. Czesar became the Pope; the prefects and sub-prefects became bishops and archbishops and rectors and curates; but the essential principle of the ecclesi- astical system remained what the essential prin- ciple of the political system had been — absolute imperialism. The Pope was the vicar and repre- sentative of Almighty God— the supreme and absolute authority. The decrees of the Vati- can were the laws of God. The bishops and archbishops and curates and rectors were the representatives of this Cesar. They were the mediators between him and the people. At the same time Christianity was modified in its thinking, or rather was transformed in its thinking, by this imperialistic system. The Hebrews were not philosophers. The Old Testament contains no philosophy; the New Testament contains very little, except such as THE PERSONALITY OF GOD II is to be found in Paul’s Epistles, and not a great deal even there. But when Christianity passed over into Europe it took on a philosophic form, and therefore the Roman form, and there- fore the imperialistic form. God was conceived of as a celestial Czesar, sitting in the centre of the universe and ruling it. The Church was the representative of this divine Cesar. The laws of God were edicts issued from him and handed down to men. This God was inacces- sible to the great majority of men: they had no ears to hear him, no capacity to reach him; they must reach him through mediators. First was Christ, the divine Mediator. But Christ was too holy and too remote. Next there was the Mother of God, as the mediator through whom to come to the Christ; but she was too holy and too remote. Then there were saints to come to the Mother of God, and priests to come to the saints. And so the individual came to the priest, and the priest to the saints, and the saints to the Mother of God, and the Mother of God to Christ, and Christ to the Eternal. The Eter- nal was an absentee God, dwelling in a far-off 12 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD world. Law issued from him; sin was disobedi- ence to that law; forgiveness was remission of the penalty for violating that law; access to him was only through a throng of mediators. The Reformation broke down the ecclesiastical system for the Reformers and the children of the Reformers. The Protestant world said, ‘The Pope is not the vicar of God; the Church is not the supreme and final authority.” The Church had held to the sacredness of the Bible, but to the Bible as the constitution of the Church. It was not for the common people; it was for the Church; and the Church was to interpret it and to declare its meaning. The Protestant Reformers went back of the Church, of the priesthood, of the human mediators, to the Bible. They said, ‘““Any man may take this constitution ; any man may interpret it.” But still Protestant- ism accepted and adopted — unconsciously, per- haps—the notion of an absentee God. Still God was conceived of as enthroned in the cen- tre of the universe, as the Moral Governor; and laws as edicts issued from him; and sin as dis- obedience to those laws; and forgiveness as THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 13 remission of a future penalty; and the Bible as the book of his laws, and an authoritative state- ment of certain conditions precedent to obtain- ing that forgiveness. But presently there began to come another set of influences weakening the belief that the Bi- ble is an ultimate and supreme authority. First came geology, with its message that the world was not made in six days. The Church replied, “Six days does not mean six days; it means six long periods.” Then came anthropology, with its message that man was not created six thousand years ago; that he has been on the earth at least ten or fifteen or twenty thousand years. The Church replied, ‘The Bible is not authority on matters of chronology.” Then came evolutionary science, with its message that man was not made perfect; he has been developed gradually, like all other animals, from a germ. And then the Church replied — nothing. Then followed liter- ary criticism. It analyzed this Bible, and com- pared it with other literatures, and announced its conclusions: These laws of Moses were not handed down complete, once for all; they are 14 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD composed of various elements which can be distinguished ; this code of laws was gradually produced, and the progress of their gradual de- velopment can be traced. Then came the study of comparative religions, with its message: We can find the Hebraic legends of creation and fall and deluge in the older religions of Egypt, of Phoenicia, and of Assyria. Little by little the Protestant faith that the Bible is the supreme and final authority was weakened, and for some destroyed. Whether we like it or not, that les- sening of the authority of the Book as a book must be recognized. We have only to compare the sermons of the great orthodox preachers of the past and the present to see the difference of appeal. While this process was going on within the churches, there was going on a process without, subtle, powerful, irresistible. Science was at- tacking the notion of an absentee God, a God who can be defined, described, analyzed, interpreted increeds. Science, which, first, showed how vast the universe was; which, secondly, showed how the universe was all one; which, third, showed THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 15 that the same forces were at work in this world and in the remotest sun and in this epoch and in the remotest epoch, so that all days are equally ‘creative, undermined the notion of a celestial /Czesar sitting on a celestial throne afar off, | creating matter and force out of nothing, and laws to govern them, and leaving them to their ‘own operation with occasional interventions on his part. Then came history. History had been mere annals, the mere story of events, the mere record of lives. Voltaire, I think, was the first one to portray history as a development of | life. He was followed by others, —Mommsen, ; Curtis, Arnold, Buckle, Macaulay, Green. All these men differed from the old classical his- torians in tracing history as a gradual process of development — the widening out and the up- building of humanity —and in thus showing a divine development in humanity as science had shown it in nature. Then came literature and the study of comparative literatures, the litera- tures of Greece and Rome and Italy and Eng- land, and last, but not least, of the Hebrew people, and of the common life of man that 16 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD animates them all and underlies them all; and the discovery (for it was almost a discovery) that remorse is as universal as the human race, and forgiveness as universal, and love and pity and sympathy as universal; and that underneath all nations and all races and in all eras there beats, not merely one blood, but one human, palpitating, emotive life. This process has been resisted by some men in the Church and feared by more; but the resistance has been in vain and the fears have been needless. For it has been a divinely ordered process toward a profounder faith, a larger hope, and a closer and tenderer love. One day some years ago a young man called upon me with a long list of theological questions. He wanted to get copy for his newspaper, and he asked me toanswer them. I was bowing him out with a polite declination when he stopped me: “Just a moment, please. Do you believe in a personal God?” ‘ What do you mean by a personal God?” I asked. ‘ Well,” he said, “I mean—lI mean a big man sitting up in the cen- tre of the universe and ruling things.” No,” I said, “I do not believe in that kind of a THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 17 personal God.” “Well, then,” he said, “you are a pantheist!”’ That picture of a “big man sitting up in the ~ centre of the universe ruling things,” was a very crude expression for a belief that was universal in the Middle Ages. Among the cartoons of Raphael is one representing the creation. A venerable gentleman is represented as seated cross-legged upon the ground, with the various portions of a child’s Noah’s Ark before him, putting the different parts of the animals to- gether. It was a great artist’s conception of a divine creation. That notion of an absentee God—an imperial Czesar sitting in the centre of the universe ruling things, whose edicts are laws, who is approached only from afar by men —that is gone, or going. There are some of us who still cling to it, and to whom the removal of that image seems like atheism; some that are trying to cling to it, though their grasp is loos- ening; some that are trying to make themselves believe that they still believe in it; but it has gone, or is going. Not merely the final author- ity of the Church is undermined; not merely 18 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD the authority of the Book as an ultimate court of appeal is lessened; but the conception of a God sitting in the centre of the universe ruling things, as an imperial Cesar sits in Rome ruling things —that also is growing dim or absolutely disap- pearing. What is coming in its place? I am not going to ask the theologians what is coming in its place; I will first ask the scien- tists. Herbert Spencer was not, in my opinion, a great philosopher; but he was a_ great inter- preter of the philosophic tendency of his times ; and this_is Herbert Spencer’s answer to the question, what will science put in the place of this conception of a divine Cesar sitting in a celestial robe: But one truth must ever grow clearer —the truth that there is an Inscrutable Existence everywhere manifested, to which we can neither find nor conceive either beginning orend. Amid the mysteries which become the more mys- terious the more they are thought about, there will remain this one absolute certainty, that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things | proceed. What has science to offer? This: that we are ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eter- THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 19 nal Energy, from which all things proceed. No longer an absentee God; no longer a Great First Cause, setting in motion secondary causes which frame the world; no longer a divine me- chanic, who has built the world, stored it with forces, launched it upon its course, and now and again interferes with its operation if it goes not right; but one great, eternal, underlying Cause, as truly operative to-day as he was in that first day when the morning stars sang together — every day a creative day. That is the word of “ science. What is the word of history? The historian ment, and that history illustrates that progress, and that not only the individual man grows from babyhood to manhood, but the whole race of men grow from infantile beginnings to a future, we know not what. Is there any mean- ing in this? Is there any power behind it? And what does this power mean? And, again, we turn to a historian, not a theologian, — not even an orthodox historian, — to Matthew Arnold. He tells that the one thing history makes sure is 20 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD that there is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness; a power to-day at work in the world as truly and as efficaciously as ever in the past; that the evolutionary processes that are going on are making for righteousness. Finally, we turn to literature, and we ask one of the great poets to tell us what is to take the place of this Romanized conception of an absen- tee God. What has human experience to tell? What word have the men of vision to bring back to us as the product of their insight into human life? And this is Tennyson’s reply: “The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains, Are not these, O soul, the vision of Him who reigns ? Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why; For is He not all but that which has power to feel, Iam I ? Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom. Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet; Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands or fect.) The notion of a humanized God, sitting in the centre of the universe ruling things, is gone; THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 21 and in the place of it science has brought us back this: “We are ever in the presence of the Infinite;’”’ and history has brought us back this: “There is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness;” and literature has brought us back this: “Spirit with spirit can meet; closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.” Am I then a pantheist? Is this pantheism ? I suppose there are a great many persons who do feel that this changed conception of God is going to destroy the personality of the Divine. Is it? Go into a great cathedral, as St. Paul’s or St. Peter’s. As you look on these great pillars, on this great dome, this splendid architecture, you say: I see here the fruit of the personality of Wren or of Michael Angelo; I am looking on something more than stones and mortar; I am looking on the work of a great mind and a great heart. But now imagine for one moment that as you stood there you could see stone reared upon stone, and column upon column; you could see some invisible hand tracing the fretwork 22 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD around the columns and carving the beautiful forms; as you looked, the cathedral grew into its splendid proportions ; and then some invisible force lifted the great dome and put it like the dome of heaven on the columns underneath. Would you think the personality was gone be- cause it was operative before your eyes? Am I to think that there was a personal God six thousand years ago, or sixty thousand years ago, or six hundred thousand years ago, and that to-day, when I can go out and see him painting the leaves, and starting this fall the beginnings for next year’s spring — see the love and life of the ever present God at work before my eyes, can I think that his personality is gone? No; a thousand times nearer, a thousand times closer. We are in the presence of the great Divine per- sonality. What we mean by personality is this: The Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed, is an energy that thinks, that feels, that purposes and does; and is think- ing and feeling and purposing and doing as a conscious life, of which ours is but a poor and broken reflection. THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 23 The image which in my childhood I formed of God as a great king sitting upon a great white throne was really an idol, though it was not formed of stone nor painted upon a canvas. It is not to such an imagination we are to go for a realization of the personality of God. God has | personified himself in human history. He has | entered into one human life, and filled that life | so full of himself that in Jesus Christ we see the | image of the Invisible God. Christianity is not / an episode. The life of Christ is not a histori- cal event completed in three short years. Jesus | Christ is the revelation of an Eternal Fact, and the Eternal Fact is the Ever Present God. I , stood one night on the top of Mount Washing- ton. The clouds were passing over the moun- tain all the evening, and the moon was behind them, and I stood in a diffused light, sometimes brighter, sometimes less bright; but every now and then the moon would seem to break through the clouds, and bend down and rush toward the earth as though it would kiss the very foreheads of those of us who were looking at it, and then as suddenly it would retire again, and the clouds 24 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD once more obscure it. But it was always there. So the “Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” was always in the world, and always will be in the world as long as God is love and man has need of him. The coming of Christ to the Church was in order that we might know that God is. It was the _revelation of a perpetual incarnation; the reve- lation of an unseen but eternal presence. Too? long we have stood at the foot of the cross or at" the door of the tomb, and not seen the stone rolled away and the triumphant Saviour emerg- ing. Too long we have thought of the life of Christ ending with his passion and death. But the greatest part of his life is his post-resurrec- tion life. For the message of the Gospel is not merely that Jesus Christ lived and died eighteen hun- dred years ago, living here for three short years and then disappearing, to be an absentee Christ; it is that God is always pouring out his life upon men and into their hearts, lifting them up out of their sins, succoring them from their remorse, and making them live again. Long before THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 25 Christ lived the Psalmist wrote: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name; who healeth all thy diseases ; who forgiveth all thine iniquities ; who redeem- eth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” Men said, ‘What does that mean?” And God said, “T will tell you.” And he came, and for a lit- tle while he lived among men; he forgave the woman that was a sinner, and bade her go in peace, and sinnomore. This, he said, is what I mean by forgiving iniquity. He succored doubt- ing Thomas from the scepticism in which he was entangled, of the unstable Peter he made a rock, and of the ambitious John the beloved disciple and the prophet of a spiritual life. This, he said, is what I mean by the healing of diseases. He surrounded the traitor Judas Iscariot with love, and recovered the denying Peter and sent him back, reconsecrated, to his ministry. This, he said, is what I mean by saving men from their own destruction. Did he cease then? He has been doing this work of love ever since. The history of the 26 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD world has been simply this: man sinning, God forgiving ; man diseased, God healing; man de- stroying himself, God redeeming him from his self-destruction ; man sordid and selling himself into slavery, and God recovering him from slav- ery and crowning him with lovingkindness and tender mercies. And the message of the Chris- tian minister to-day to this sorrowing, sinful, troubled humanity is, “The God that was in the world then is in the world now.” It is not Browning’s message, ‘‘ God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.” If God were in his heaven, all would not be right with the world. He is in his world making it right. I suppose there are some of you here to-night who will feel that this frank recognition of the overthrow of old forms of faith is injurious. I wish you who hold still to the sacredness of the Roman theology would consider this question one moment. You remember how Gideon, beat- ing out the grapes in the wine-press, was told by God to destroy the idol of Baal and cut down the groves, and how, when the people came out the next morning and found their idol and their THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 27 sacred grove gone, they rose in wrath against him, because he had destroyed their religion. But he had not destroyed their religion; he had simply given it a wider scope and a purer life. You remember how, when Jesus Christ told the people at Jerusalem that the temple would be destroyed, they identified religion with that tem- ple and with those sacrifices and that priest- hood, and counted as an enemy of religion any man who said that all those things were to be destroyed. But he was not the enemy of reli- gion; and the destruction of that Jerusalem and of that priesthood and the overthrow of those sacrifices were only the opening out of a larger life. You remember how, when Luther said, Pope, you are no vicar of God; Church, you are no infallible representative of God, men all over Europe — honest men, devout men, godly men, and godly women — wrung their hands in despair and said, If there is no Church to inter- pret God’s law, how shall we know what it is? But here in this audience I need not argue that the destruction of the notion of an infailible Church only widened the scope and enhanced 28 THE PERSONALITY OF GOD the power of religion. May it not perhaps be that the same God who destroyed the idol of Baal and the Jewish temple, and for us Protes- tants the power of the medizval Church, has destroyed this idol that we have reared in our minds only in order that he may bring us nearer to himself ? God is in all nature; thank God for the scientists, for they are thinking the thoughts of God after him, whether they know it or not. God is in all humanity, and every man is a child of God whom we are to endeavor to bring back to his Father. God is in history, forgiving and redeeming, as Christ was in Palestine, for- giving and redeeming. God is in human expe- rience, inspiring, uplifting, life-giving. Our message to our congregations is not a mere ethical law, not a mere philosophy about God, not a mere reiteration of a traditional creed, not a mere interpretation of the Bible. But through ethics, and philosophy, and the creed, and the Bible, we are to bring this threefold message: the message of science — “‘ We are ever in the pres- ence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from THE PERSONALITY OF GOD 29 which all things proceed ;”’ the message of his- tory — “There is a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness ;”” the message of liter- ature— “Speak to him, for he hears; closer is he than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” “We are all his offspring; he is not far from any one of us; in him we live and move and have our being.” : i/ a a ” vs Tao ly