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CAN I BELIEVE IN GOD THE
FATHER?

CAN I BELIEVE IN GOD
THE FATHER?

LECTURES DELIVERED AT THE SUMMER
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY 1899

By WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D.
Author of
'WHAT SHALI, WE THINK OF CHRISTIANITY" AND "AN
OUTLINE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY "

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK  • • 1899

Copyright, 1899,
By Charles Scribner's Sons.

SHiutattg ^ress :
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S A.

TO
iBffg Eager JWIfl&r=,S>ttttienti5,
THE MEMBERS OF
THE FIRST HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL
OF THEOLOGY.

CONTENTS

Page
I. The Practical Argument for the
Being of God . . .3
II. Divine Personality 59
ITI. The Relation between God and
Men .  IIS
IV. The Moral Effect of the Doc
trine of God ... ... 165

THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT FOR
THE BEING OF GOD

CAN I BELIEVE IN GOD
THE FATHER?

THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT FOR
THE BEING OF GOD
I suppose that every one here present
knows something about the difficulty of
believing in God. It is easy to say "I
believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth," and to say
it sincerely, and a genuine confidence in
such a God may be the usual practice and
attitude of our life ; nevertheless, the fact
remains that to attain and preserve a vital
and soul-satisfying belief in the God and
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the
all-embracing mind and the all-embracing
heart, — to maintain a confidence in him
that is worthy of a perfect God on the one

4 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
hand and an immortal human spirit on the
other, — this is an act and practice that
demands our human best and utmost, and
is beset with difficulties deep and high.
Who will say that he is habitually satis
fied with his own belief in God?
If a full and fair census of difficulties
could be taken in this present company, it
is likely that we should find the whole
field represented. I cannot go through
the list, or do more than recall the variety
and seriousness of the questions that are
involved. We should find, in the minds
that are here, Jhfi— old., and well-recited
arguments for the being of God, — the
cosmological, the toloologioal, the .anthro
pological, the ontological, and whatever
others there may be, — and we should find
cordial recognition of their strength so far
ras_&ej^_gPj^and^j»rofound sense of their
Jumtetaons_andvim£erfeotness. We should
find the feeling that no one of them is
absolutely beyond reproach, and that, taken.

FOR THE BEING OF GOD

all together, they may not make a com-..
plete and always convincing proof. We
sbouTd'find'ffie lurking doubt whether any
argument or group of arguments can ever
suffice to establish immovably so vast a
j,oncJusioR,,as. we. ,ao:&.,&e.ekjng„, to- .validate*.
And thus, ajfe^jt^uryey_ of_the_ knowji_.
field and range of deliberate and formal
proofs, ..we should find intelligent minds,
still reaching out for something more, feel-.,
ing that something more must be attain
able, and longing for firm hold upon that
certainty which lies beyond the field of
proving. In the minds that are gathered here we
should also find full catalogue , of the
practical and moral difficulties in the way
of belief jn God- To belie veJnjGrod if
we could see him as he is, or as we con-
ceive him to .-, be when we rise to the
thought of perfect wisdom and perfect
love, this would be as easy as believing in
the sunlight on a summer morning; but

6 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
to believe in God in such a world as this !
I need not try to recall the forms in which
this ancient difficulty has been encoun
tered by the minds that are now attending
to my words. In a world of storms and
shipwrecks and impartial death, in a world
of losses and disappointments and the
irony of fate, in a world of crowding and
cruelty and the survival of the fittest, we
are asked to believe in God. In a world
of sin and shame, — of war and bloodshed,
of fraud and dishonesty, of impurity and
greed, of waste and want, of pride and
jealousy and revenge, — we are asked to
believe in God. We have met the prob
lem in our personal lives with their dark
mysteries, and in our outlook upon the
large and sad affairs of humanity, and in
the memories that are here we should find
full store of questionings whether it was
possible really to believe in God in such a
world as this.
In the presence of both these classes of

FOR THE BEING OF GOD

difficulties, the theoretical and the prac
tical, we have been told that we have need
of faith, the strong springing of the spirit
up into a higher realm, the bold resorting
of the human to the divine. In the minds
here present, the difficulties of faith are
well known. Is there any one there for
us to fly to? If there is a good Being
there, unseen, it is only by the free up-
springing of a heart in fellowship with
him in goodness that we can find our
selves at rest in him. Are we good
enough to believe in a good God? How
are we to obtain the moral vigor, the
elasticity and spring of spirit, to become
sure that there is a congenial and fatherly
goodness for us to find and repose upon ?
In our census of difficulties, we certainly
should find in many of our own souls the
desolating consciousness that we are not
good enough to believe in God. And
with all the rest, there comes now and
then to us, as a check upon faith, the

8 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT

voice of hard uniformity, the report of
unpoetical and unaspiring science, sug
gesting that even as God is nowhere found
by searching, so there is no need of him,
since all is going smoothly whether he is
known or not. With such a counter-
summons, what wonder that our faith does
not always rise at the call of the divine,
and that we can find among our memories
the shuddering thought, "What if, after
all, there should prove to be nothing in
it? What if the sight of our eyes were
showing us all there is?"
I am not saying that these are bars to
belief in God. They are not final or
fatal difficulties, for they have been over
come, and can be overcome again. I
believe in God, or I should not be here
speaking of him; and yet I know the
meaning of all these difficulties that I
have hinted at, and am well convinced
that my auditors know them as thor
oughly as I. Such difficulties do beset

FOR THE BEING OF GOD

the common mind of man, and they are so
great that the way of clear and satisfac
tory belief in God is by no means a plain
path. It might seem easier if the difficul
ties were found in the philosopher's coun
try, where trained minds might grapple
with them in solitude, while the common
man went free. But the distinction be
tween philosophical problems and practi
cal every-day difficulties does not hold
here. Philosophical uncertainties about
God emerge in their effect upon Chris
tian faith and common living, and the
grounds of doubt that are influential in
the house and the shop, by the grave-side
and in the ruins, are among those that
trouble the philosophers also. Philoso
phers are common men here, and common
men are philosophers. The question of
the being of God is not exclusively, or
chiefly, a question of the schools: it is
a question of the world. All men have to
do with it, and all have means of know-

IO THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
ing that the clear solution lies above and
beyond our ordinary range of life, where
it can be reached only through strenuous
exertion of our highest powers.
What shall we do? How shall we
advise the common man who desires to
believe in God? This is the same as to
ask how we shall advise ourselves ; for we
are all common men, dealing with the
common question. What shall a man do,
who stands unsatisfied with the customary
arguments, perplexed by the^mystery of
life, unable to rise to 'a*"satisfying*' faith,
and uncertain whether the words of belief
thatjie longs to utter are words of truth?
How shall such a man approach his ..ques-.
tion, with rational hope of becoming able
to say with all his heartland all his mind,
^1 believe in God the Father " ?
I propose that such a man test the con
trary. Try the opposite position, and see

FOR THE BEING OF GOD II
how^t works. What if there absolutely
is no God? There are... difficulties, as we
well know, in believing in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
They sometimes seem so great that it
would appear easier to take the other side,
and disbelieve in God. But* it would
seem reasonable to inquire what difficul
ties there are in doing that. It is fair to
assume that any conclusion or conviction
in so high and mysterious a region will
have its difficulties, but it is well to judge
them in advance as far as we can, and see
whether, in accepting a new conclusion,
we shall be freeing ourselves from per
plexity or not. Test the contrary. ~X.
find it hard to believe in God with a full
and satisfactory belief : where, then, shall I
find myself, if I give over the attempt and
adapt myself to the conclusioii that G°d
cannot be believed in? If this is really
the easier position to hold, we wish to
know it; but if we were to find ourselves

12 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
in a land of contradictions, inaptitudes,
and impossibilities that could not sustain
the life of mind or of heart, it would be
greatly to our advantage if a glimpse into
that land could be given to us before we
really entered it. As a common man,
therefore, bringing the common questions,
I wish to inquire where I am, and what I
am, if I am not to believe in God. I am
driven before my difficulties, out of what
I thought was God's country, and I go as
I am driven. Where am I now ? Do not
blame me for saying the things that I
must now say, for I shall not be talking
foolishness. I must plunge at once into a
world where God is not, and report what
I find there. And do not plead against
me that absolute atheists are very rare, — so
rare, in fact, that it is hardly worth while
to consider their arguments. I am not
proposing to dispute with an absolute
atheist, or indeed to dispute at all. I am
considering my own questions, and those

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 13
of my hearers in this room. If we yield
to our every-day difficulties about the divine
intelligence and goodness, and consent to
the denial that they suggest, we shall
move into the country of absolute atheism,
even though we prove to be the first that
ever entered it. Either we are to believe
in God, or we are not; and I am simply
proposing that we test the negative, and
see whether it affords us rest from our
mental and moral perplexities.
If there is no God, there is no mind
where we have been accustomed to look
for God. When I yield to my difficulties
in believing in God, I surrender my right
to hold that the universe, as I have been
wont to call it, is a work of mind. If I
find a mind, I find a God, and I am now
shut out from finding a God. I live there
fore in a mindless world. It has never
been willed to be such as it is, and it has
never been embraced in thought. It has

14 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
not become what it is by any exercise of
rational powers. It is not an intellectual
system, but is inexpressive of mental proc
esses and meanings. I have often found
it hard to say that the universe with all
its diverse elements is the expression of a
mind, and therefore I now declare, whether
sadly or joyfully does not matter, that it
is not. I follow my doubts, and say there
is no God, and understand myself to be
saying that there is no mind in the world.
It is a point on which I cannot compro
mise : yes and no are the only answers to
the question, and my doubts have driven
me to the no.
Then of course I shall find no mind ex
pressed in things about me, and shall hear
no living voice from above me and beyond.
It is no news to any of us that if there is
no God there will be nothing to bear the
name of revelation. Of course all that
men have called by that inspiring name
will disappear from the plane of reality,

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 15
and nothing that can be called revelation
will ever be known again. There is no
one to be revealed; and if I hunger and
thirst for knowledge of unseen things,
there is no one to offer it to me. This is
too old a story to need more than a pass
ing mention now. But the companion-fact
to this is not so familiar in the common
thought. If I follow my doubts, and de
scribe the observed universe in accordance
with them, it is certain, as I said just
now, that I shall find no mind expressed
in things around me. If there is none, I
can find none. If by any means it comes
to pass that I think I do find traces of the
work of mind in things around me, that
will be only because I am unwittingly
projecting my own powers into things
that I observe, and finding there what I
have first placed there by my own think
ing. Any such process will be illegitimate,
and can result only in misinterpretation
and misconception. No imaginings of

l6 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
mine will change the facts. A mindless
world it is, being a godless world, and a
mindless world I shall find it. No traces
of mind shall I find in it, since none are
there. So I shall have no science. I can have
none. I find myself in a world to which
science is not normal; a world that does
not yield itself to science or offer any
material for it; a world in which there is
nothing to make science of. I may as
well speak the simple word that tells the
truth: I live in a world where science is
impossible. It is a world where science
can never be possible.
I need not stay long to establish it. No
God, no revelation, is a truism; but beside
it stands the equally certain and unques
tionable truth, no-Gad, no science. Reve
lation and science stand on equal ground,
for the two are essentially alike. Revela
tion implies that there is some Other than
myself, unseen, who can and does make

FOR THE BEING OF GOD l?
himself known to me. Science implies
that there is some mind other than myself,
that has expressed itself in things that
I observe, and expressed through them
meanings that are fit material for appre
hension by the human intellect. Science
implies two intellects, — one weaving in
tellectual conceptions into the web of
existence, and the other studying out the
figure that is inwoven to the web; two
intellects, one producing what the other
can read and understand, and the other
understanding what the first has produced.
I suppose it is plain that nothing but a
mind can apprehend and appreciate the
expressions of a mind. The utterances
that I am making, being expressions of
an intellect, would remain absolutely un-
absorbed and unapprehended, if there were
not other intellects here to which they
made appeal. But it is equally plain and
true that an inteJlect can apprehend and
find meaning only in that which is the

18 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
expression of a mind, of its own intel
lectual nature and kindred. If the sounds
that now traverse the air of this room
did not convey expressions of powers
akin to your own, they would be to you
utterly unintelligible. The cries of our
lower kindred among the animals are to
us partly intelligible, and even impressive,
but only as we hear in them the expression
of some desires or passions that we are
familiar with. We understand only where
there is community. Rational powers, as
we name them, apprehend only rational
expressions. Only our own kindred can
we understand. And so it becomes clear
that in a world that is not the expression
of mind there can be for us no science.
Nothing can be understood, for nothing
will have meaning. The one point of con
tact with our rational powers, by virtue
of which we might form statements of
meanings present in things that we ob
serve, will be forever wanting. A mind-

for the Being of god 19
less world is necessarily an unintelligible
world, and therefore no world for science.
Science makes its exit along with revela
tion, if we cannot believe in God.
It is a very serious matter to live in a
world where no science is possible. I was
just now asking where I find myself if I
cannot believe in God, and it seems that
I find myself in a mindless world, where I
can have no science. I do not see how I
can be at home in such a world, and at
any rate I must ask another question.
What am I, if I cannot believe in God?
What am I, indeed ? I have been accus
tomed to say that I am a spirit^ or_that.
I have a mind, or that I am a rational
being, — describing myself under all these
names, and perhaps more, as one who
possesses powers of understanding and
affection and spiritual activity. I have a
right to describe myself thus, for these
powers are certainly an inalienable part of

20 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT

myself. Whatever I may conclude about
the existence of a spirit greater than I,
these powers belong to me, and my pos
session of them is not less real, whether
I believe in God or not. But my own
being, though not altered in itself, is rela
tively altered in a most surprising way,
by my ceasing to have a God. I now
stand forth as the greatest mind in exist
ence, — or rather, as a fair sample of the
class of greatest existing minds. Other
individual men may have larger powers
than I, or they may not; in either case
there exists no mind, either within my
knowledge or beyond it, essentially supe
rior to mine in the nature of its powers and
its relation to existing things. If I know
no God, I know no mind superior to the
human mind, and so no mind essentially
above my own. Human thought is the
highest thought, and human knowledge
the completest knowledge, that there is.
Nothing more than men know has ever

for the being of god 21
been known anywhere. Whether other
worlds exist, peopled by minds superior to
ours, matters nothing here ; for if they do
exist they are essentially like us in the
nature and limitations of this knowledge,
though superior. The fact remains, that
if I know no God, my mind stands forth
as a sample of the highest type of mind
in existence.
A high rank this would seem to give to
man. There is none above him. Yes, but
see what it brings with it. No thought
in existence larger than mine : then there
is no comprehensive thought. My knowl
edge grows, and is dependent upon growth
and upon the passage of time. I know a
little about certain fragments of the past,
I know a little of things that are at pres
ent, I know nothing of the future. My
own career, as a whole, I have never
grasped in thought, and can never grasp.
I can form no synthesis, save by guess
work, even of this hour and the next.

22 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT

There is no man living who can combine
this hour and the next hour in his knowl
edge. But this is now the largest knowl
edge that exists. My life as a whole has
never been present in thought to any mind,
and will never be. No single thing that
exists will ever be understood, in the sense
of being truly known in all its relations ;
for neither I nor any other man can ever
fully know all the qualities and relations of
anything whatever. No larger knowledge
than this ! Nothing has ever been thought
through, nothing has ever been fully
known. All is moving on uncompre-
hended. The world itself has never been
embraced in any thought, or held present
as a whole to any observation or any con
ceiving power. The universe is no more
known than I know it, save as a few of
my brothers have gathered more informa
tion about it than I possess. All knowl
edge is knowledge of results, obtained by
observation ; knowledge of causes, if there

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 23
are such things, is all merely inferential,
never and nowhere original and certain.
Man is at the summit if there is no God :
yes, but what a summit ! No all-embrac
ing mind, no well-balanced understanding,
no comprehensive knowledge, no knowl
edge higher and larger than that human
ignorance that we are so profoundly con
scious of ! Nothing broader than our nar
rowness, or deeper than our Kttle depth!
When I think of it, I most ardently hope
that the summit may be found higher than
I, or any of my kind.
But what if my hope fails, and I am
compelled to live in such a world as I
have been picturing ? A further question
will confront me, and I cannot turn away
from it. It is a question of life and
death, too, for all my thinking. Can I
trust my powers ? The powers of a think
ing being I certainly possess. No one
knew that I would possess them, but some-

24

THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT

how I do. By some unexplained and in
explicable process I have come to have
them, and there are none essentially higher
anywhere. Standing in the front rank
might seem to imply the trustworthiness
of these powers of mine; but does it, or
does it not? Can I trust my powers?
The trouble about trusting my powers in
a world without God is very easily stated.
My powers stand akme. The powers of all
my human brothers are just like mine, and
I have nothing with which to compare my
powers, except others of the same order.
The human has nothing to compare itself
with, for, since I cannot believe in God,
there is no mind higher than the human.
A dog, if he came to a human-like con
sciousness and self-estimate, might com
pare his reasoning with that of his master,
so far as he could understand it, and thus
learn to judge himself. But my thinking
stands by itself, with no higher thought in
existence. I am like a dog in a manless

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 2$
world; and how shall I learn anything
about larger and more trustworthy mental
action ? If there were about me a world of
order, offspring of an intelligent mind, with
its far-reaching illustration of intellectual
operations, such a world would serve as a
support to my intelligence, a confirmation
to my instinctive confidence in my own
thinking, and a proof of the validity of my
normal intellectual powers and processes.
If there were a larger mind than mine
putting forth similar activity, doing in the
large what I do in the small, giving evi
dence that it possessed in full what I pos
sess in rudiments, plainly such a mind
would stand in comparison with my own,
and I could learn to estimate the value of
my own processes in the light of larger
processes. The vaster the scope of such
a mind, and the larger and more various
its operations, the surer would become the
basis for an estimate of what rationality
is, and what my own rationality is worth.

26 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
But as it is, what have I to go by, in
judging the validity of my own mental
processes? Indeed, what do I mean by
validity of mental processes? There are
no mental processes, except in such limited
minds as my own, and there exists abso
lutely no outside standard by which I, or
all men together, can test the correctness
of human thinking. How can I be sure
that it is trustworthy?
This sad sense of uncertainty is deep
ened by what I know of the status of the
mental operation in mankind. That status
is one of incompleteness. Thinking is an
art that needs to be learned, and an art
that humanity has imagined itself to be
learning. At any rate, mankind has ap
parently begun to learn the use of intel
lectual powers, but has thus far learned it
only in part. My own thinking is youth
ful, tentative, almost childish: I go on
from year to year, correcting not only my
conclusions but my methods, taking on

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 2*J
what I feel to be better and more trust
worthy ways of mental work. But what
right have I to feel that they are better?
I am only a beginner in intellectual action,
at the best, and all men are Hke me in
this, even though they may be more ad
vanced beginners than I, and we are all
beginners without a teacher, groping our
way through the unknown field of mental
operation, with no tests or means of com
parison. What we call better may be
worse, — if there be any worse or better.
What we fancy to be growth may be
decline. When we feel a fine glow of
certainty, our powers are so childish and
our methods so improvable that, for aught
we know, we may be enjoying merely
the intoxication of self-confidence and the
delight of a pleasing error. Without
guide and without maturity, how shall we
be sure that our thinking is worthy to be
trusted ?
And even deeper than this the question

28 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
goes. As for the very process itself that
we call rational, and the quality in our
selves to which we give that name, —
what are we to think of this quality and
this process ? Here is a race of beings to
which this quality and process seem nor
mal. But, by hypothesis, they stand
utterly alone and unsupported in this
striking peculiarity. No larger rationality
than theirs exists, and the world around
them, however it may have come into
being, bears no traces of rational opera
tion, and is not the product of a rational
mind. Here we stand thinking, all by
ourselves, with nothing to bear us com
pany. How shall we know that there is
any real meaning or validity at all in this
process which we call rational? The
world exists without it. All the age-long
operations of the universe go on without
it. How do I know that this whole
method and work that I call rational, is
not a mere freak of life, a passing and

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 29
non-significant development, as transient
and unimportant as it is solitary and un
supported? Nay, rather, it looks to me
as if the rational process, thus unsup
ported and alone, could be nothing else
than a passing freak of mindless operation.
I certainly cannot be sure that it is more
than this, and while such uncertainty lasts,
I must not allow myself to trust my rational
processes, as if they possessed a genuine
validity. My powers may in every act be
misleading me, my thinking is a will o'
the wisp, and life is false. There is a
noble phrase that I am very fond of, —
"an honest world." But that phrase, and
the idea that it expresses, and the whole
range of conceptions to which it belongs,
can have no existence if we are forbidden
by the facts to believe in God. In that
case our powers delude us and lead us
into ways where there is no valid and
trustworthy action possible, and the whole
order of things amid which we stand is

36 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
really no order at all, but a strange,
misleading group of accidents, false in
their testimony and untrustworthy in their
nature. If we were compelled to live even for
a little while, in such a world as I have
been speaking of, we should come back
with unspeakable joy, if the way of return
were opened, into the good old world of
science, with its warm and fruitful soil of
intelligibility, bearing witness to the pres
ence of the rich subsoil of mind. The world
of science is the world that can be under
stood : that is its great and abiding peculi
arity. That unintelligible world of which
I have just been speaking is not the world
in which we live. We firmly believe that
the things around us will give clear and
true answer to our inquiry as to their
nature and significance. That things
around us have an intelligible nature and
a real significance, — that existing things

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 31
have real meanings, — this is the first
assumption of science. It is an assump
tion that science has never been challenged
by any fact to abandon; rather has it been
confirmed by every new discovery and
every fresh experiment. The one great
fact that modern science has taught us
is, that the universe is infinitely richer
in meaning than we had ever imagined.
Materialism in the philosophy of existence
is dead and gone. Brute force and dead
matter are no longer spoken of, and the
physical universe is suspected to be even
more truly a psychical universe. Meaning
is everywhere. But meaning and mind are
inseparable. Thought is the product of a
thinker. A system impressed throughout
with intelligible meanings is the work of a
mind that means. Perhaps I seemed a
httle while ago to be wasting time when I
talked of a world in which there could be
no science, for there is no such world.
We know full well that there is no such

32 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
world. All worlds would make good
homes for science, for all worlds can be
understood. The universal method is es
sentially intelligible ; the universal method
is therefore the expression of mind, and
of mind similar to our own. The good
old world of science does have the warm
and fertile soil of intelligibility, and the
rich subsoil of mind does underlie it.
We men are not the only thinkers in
existence: there is a vaster mind. Sci
ence is our witness that the universe has
been embraced in a single thought. It is
one, and not a mass of fragments. It has
been thought through, and the relation
of each part of it to the other parts has
been thought of. And so we live amidst
rational operation, and there is something
with which to compare our mental proc
esses. We can judge of the validity of
our reasoning. Our minds and their proc
esses are supported by the universal mind.
We are rational in a rational universe,

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 33
seeking truth in an honest world, children
thinking out the thoughts of the vast
mind to which all things owe their intelli
gibility. The world is honest, and life is
not a delusion.
So it appears that unless we hold to the
universal mind, we are compelled to deny
the possibility of science, the validity of
our own mental processes, and the value
of all in ourselves that we call rational.
If the universe is mindless, mind in us is
untrustworthy. But since the universe is
intelligible, we may still our doubts about
God, for atheism is impossible, and our
doubts are destined to be permanently
silenced by better knowledge of things as
they are.
Yet this may seem too large a conclu
sion. Another vast question awaits us.
Intelligible the universe doubtless is, on
the intellectual side: science can see its
way to exhaustive knowledge, if only
3

34 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
the necessary data could be obtained.
But is the universe morally intelligible?
There is a universal mind, but is there a
universal heart ? God is intelligence, but
is God the perfect goodness ? Intellectual
doubts concerning God are, after all,
minor doubts, and less tormenting than
those moral doubts that darken all our
sky when they sweep across. There is
an all-comprehending mind, that gives to
existence an intellectual unity: is there
also an all-comprehending character of
goodness, that gives to existence a moral
unity? Belief that God is good is often
found the hardest part of belief in God.
One true and helpful statement is wait
ing for us here, suggested by the field that
we have just traversed. Science brings us
a strong argument for the goodness of God.
The existence of science, as we have seen,
is evidence of the honesty of the world,
and so of the straightforwardness and sin
cerity of the mind of which the world is

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 35
an expression. Our powers, as science
shows us, are not misleading. The ra
tional is the real. The universe is framed
according to the principles that our rational
nature acts upon and approves as good.
The mind to which we are akin has placed
us here amid the manifestations of itself,
where our rationality will be supported by
its larger rationality, and be able to find
confirmation and training in the reasoned
and reasonable world. Our mental powers
have their counterparts, and what is nor
mal to us proves to be characteristic of
existence around us. All this is favorable
to belief in God as good. Certainly it
looks as if the mind that has given char
acter to existing things were not only
honest and trustworthy, but benignant and
benevolent, gracious and kindly, worthy
of our love and confidence.
But when we ask whether God is good,
we shall do well to test the matter here

36 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
in the same manner as before. Try the
opposite. See what comes if we deny
it, and judge whether denial does not in
volve greater difficulties than it leads us
to escape.
I think we may safely say that we have
found the acknowledgment of a mind in
the things around us to be unavoidable.
Our question now is, whether this mind,
whom we name God, is good. We need
not insist upon close definition of this
word " good, ' ' for in the large we all know
well enough what it means. Is the great
mind trustworthy and loveworthy? Does
God possess those qualities which com
mand the approval of the best human
judgment and affection? Is all that is
good in us akin to something greater and
better in him ?
What if not? Let me yield to my
doubts concerning an eternal and perfect
goodness, and be driven to the convic
tion that God is not good. What

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 37
then? Where am I, and what am I,
now? For one thing, I am in a world where
there ought to be no religion. I do not
know that I can say that I am in a world
where there can be no religion, for no one
knows what follies may spring up in an
irrational place, even though men regard
themselves as rational. But certainly in
a world of rational men, where there is
no God, there ought to be no religion.
Religion would not be normal in such a
world. It is not well that men should
look up, if there is not some one above
who is worthy to be looked up to. In
that case religion is a delusion and a
snare. It would be an unworthy exercise
of high and noble powers. If there is no
good Being, religion as religion is a mis
take. It is not merely true that special
forms of religion are degrading ; it is true
also that this entire department of human
nature and life does not accord with real-

38 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT

ity, since there is no worthy object for it
to rest in, and man is not himself till he
has shaken off the whole system and idea
of religion, whether in its lowest forms or
in its highest. Nay, in its highest forms
it is more misleading and harmful than in
its lowest, since here its affirmations are
at once more noble and more false.
A world without God as mind is a
world in which science is impossible. A
world without God as goodness is a world
in which religion is abnormal. To live in
such a world I need not only to throw
away all regard for science, but to still all
voices of what I have been wont to call
my religious nature. I must not worship,
I must not pray, I must not aspire to a
divine fellowship, I must not cry out for
righteousness in the fierceness of hunger
and thirst, I must not count upon mani
festations of the divine goodness in my
own soul or in the history of my kind.
There is no divine righteousness, and there

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 39
is no divine fellowship. Let us face the
consequences of our denial, for they will
surely face us. Humanity is not adapted
to religion, or religion to humanity. All
religion is a mistake. Religion of every
kind is as much out of place in a godless
world as science is. No longer has either
of the two the slightest standing in the
court of reality.
If I find myself in a world where relig
ion is utterly abnormal, it will not be long
before I shall be asking what I am. I
thought I had a religious nature; that is
to say, I thought that religion was normal
to me, and I could not be myself without
it. I thought these unquestionably real
and urgent religious elements in my life
and that of mankind constituted a part of
my proper being. They form a part of my
actual being: there is no doubt of that;
but it now appears that my actual being
has nothing to correspond to it. It is
exactly as if I had eyes in a world without

40 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
light, ears in a world of eternal silence,
and smell in a world destitute of odors.
It is as if I had reason in a world non-
rational, and an artistic sense in a world
in which beauty had never existed. Still
farther, I have to deal with this enormous
anomaly, that these powers that have no
counterpart have somehow been brought
into exercise. It is as if in a lightless
world my eyes had not been useless, as
if in a silent world I had been hearing
sounds, as if in a world devoid of beauty
my artistic sense had actually discovered
beauty. For the life of religion has not
been void and vain. The religious powers
of man have found fruitful exercise, and
have made their worthy and elevating con
tribution to the life of the race; and yet
they tell us what is false, for there is abso
lutely no goodness above us. Passing by
the question where these beneficent but
false endowments came from, and how my
nature came thus to bear witness to that

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 4 1
which has no existence, I come back to
my first question, What am I ? How can
I answer it? for it is a hopeless puzzle.
There are difficulties, in view of what goes
on in this poor world, in believing in the
goodness of God; but they do not go so
deep as this difficulty about the nature
and constitution of our own selves, which
we meet if once we follow our doubts and
deny that God is good.
But the difficulties are not all in the
region that is commonly called religious.
The ethical department of life is equally
involved. I am following my doubts, and
consenting to deny that God is good, just
as I consented a little while ago to deny
that God is intelligent. Then at once I
encounter certain questions about this
reality, not well definable but well under
stood in fact, which we call goodness.
To deny that God has it is not to deny
that it exists, and is not to get away from

42 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
the necessity of considering it. Such a
thing as goodness does exist among men.
We have our moral judgment, our moral
standards, our practice and our theories
explaining it, our right and wrong, our
self-condemnation and self-approval. We
admire moral purity, unselfishness, fidelity,
and love. We know that goodness is real
in the world. It is imperfect everywhere,
but it is not a dream or a fancy, it is a
solid trait of existing character in men.
Mankind is evil enough, and prone enough
to evil-doing; and yet goodness, partial
but genuine, is as real in the world as
badness, and forms the great common
stock of social possibility, without which
all our structures of society could not stand
a day. Whether there is a good God or
not, good men and women are known to
us all, and all human beings have some
good in them.
But, following my doubts, I stand in a
world that has no good God in it or

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 43
above. All the goodness that anywhere
exists is like my own. How much does
it amount to? Many of my brothers
in humanity may have attained to a
higher degree of goodness than I have
reached, but their goodness is of the same
kind as mine. It belongs to the common
stock of humanity. It has been attained.
It has been wrested from ancient brutal-
ism and later indifference, through the
hard stress of life. Some have supposed
that in part it was taught from above, and
favored and nourished by heavenly gift,
but it was not: they are wrong; it is
exclusively human. It is such as human
effort and experience have attained, and
it is nothing more. I have my little
part in it, and I long for a better portion.
I have my conscience by which I esti
mate myself and my doings, and I have
my moral standards, such as I have
wrought out from my inheritance and my
striving ; and I have — best gift, I used

44 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
to think, of all that make my manhood
— my love for moral excellence, and my
eager and insatiable desire to be a better
man. If I can attain to a higher degree
and quality of goodness, this will be to
me the very crown of my life. Yet the
way of such attainment is not very clear
to me. My conception of moral excel
lence is not as clear and worthy as I could
wish, my standards of judgment are not
what they might be, and my consistent
devotion to the ends of goodness is far
less than I would have it. I often disap
point myself, and often wonder how I am
ever to satisfy even such aspirations as I
possess. This is my status. It is not
very satisfactory, but I have been hoping
that I might rise to higher things.
My denial of goodness in God teaches
me a lesson. It teaches me, all in a flash
of light, that such goodness as mine is the
highest goodness that exists. Other men
may have more of it than I, and beings in

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 45
Mars or some dark orb near Sirius may
have distanced us all in attainment, but
the only goodness that exists is just such
developed and developing goodness as I
find in myself and my race. It is such as
men have attained to. It has no source,
except the struggles of humanity. It has
no affinity with any dominant type of
being. It has no standard above man
kind. There is no standard to which
human goodness is naturally destined to
be conformed. It has no friend above, no
inspirer and inbreather, no higher end or
aim. I may not be the best of men, but
all the goodness that anywhere exists or
ever will exist is of the same type as
mine. I may consult with students more
advanced, but this school has no teacher,
no standards, and no ideals. The idea of
comparing my conduct with a perfect
standard, blaming me for my failures, and
cheering me on toward higher attainments,
never occurred to any one above myself.

46 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
My efforts are unaided from above, unseen
from above, for the heavens are bare and
vacant of goodness, and there is no higher
goodness for me to rise into. I am ap
palled at learning that the highest good
ness is so low, and as for encourage
ment to rise above myself, where can I
find it?
But the same question rises about good
ness unsupported, that we met concerning
unsupported rational powers. What is
the rank and value of a goodness that has
no support in the general order of things ?
These sensations of right and wrong, these
estimates of good and evil, these horrors
at sin and hungerings and thirs tings after
righteousness, — they are found to have no
existence, affiliations, or affinities except
in the thoughts of men. They cannot be
tested by comparison with any external au
thority. The order of human events goes
on without reference to them. The mind
that has thought all things — for we must

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 47
admit the presence and action of such a
mind, or stultify ourselves and all our
thinking — has no sympathy with them.
The mind that has determined what should
be has made its determination without
reference to any of these considerations.
On what ground can I base the least confi
dence in my moral judgment, as I call it,
when it stands thus unsupported and
alone? Moral judgment is an exception
in the world. There is no reason to sup
pose that it was ever intended by a mind
that had sympathy with moral thinking or
approval of what we call moral excellence.
Most probably this whole realm of thought
about morals represents only a feverish
state of ill-developed and incompetent
humanity. If the great mind can get on
without goodness, surely we little minds
may do the same, and so we may as well
forget the whole matter, as a hopeless
puzzle from one point of view, and a vain
delusion from another. We cannot trust

48 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
our moral judgment or our moral sense.
Our nature deceives us, and life is false.
If God is not good, we cannot be sure of
anything. Many men allow their doubts about the
being of God to gain power over them,
without stopping to notice whither such
doubts would lead them. Doubt may be
blameless, and a doubter the most sincere
of men, helpless, indeed, in yielding to
what seems to him beyond escape. Never
theless, it is wise to consider the whither.
Is it easier to deny the being of God than
to accept it? Do we leave our perplexi
ties behind us when we yield to the diffi
culties that beset our theism? The truth
is, that to deny the presence of mind in
the universe about us, is to discredit all
mind and all work of mind in ourselves,
and to render our own thinking untrust
worthy throughout; and that to deny the
presence of goodness in the mind that we

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 49
are thus led to recognize, is to destroy the\
basis of all religion for mankind, to dis
credit the reality and worth of all good
ness in men, and to declare our own moral
judgments unworthy of confidence. When
the facts stand thus, the acceptance of
belief in God involves far less difficulty
than the denial of it. The being of God
is the indispensable support for our con
fidence in human thinking, and the only
key to the understanding of religion and
the human conscience.
The practical argument that I have thus
ventured to present to you is more power
ful to-day than it ever has been before.
The view of existence that is now current
requires belief in God, and strongly rein
forces it. The present view of existence
is the evolutionary view ; and no view of
the existing universe ever represented it,
as the expression of mind, so fully as does
the evolutionary view. For the sake of
4

50 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
my argument I was willing, a little while
ago, to appear foolish while I talked of a
world in which science was impossible.
Such would indeed be the world that had
no mind in it; but I well knew how fool
ish it seems to speak as if the world in
which we live were such a world. The doc
trine of evolution declares the unity and
continuity of things, and thus proclaims
that the field of science is universal. It
now stands unquestionable that the field of
intelligibility knows no limits. All things
are subject to the operation of one method,
which is intelligible to us. The range of
investigation is boundless, and our abili
ties are limited through ignorance, and
through lack of data and means of search
ing; 'but the doctrine of evolution places
the difficulties all in us, and declares that
the same rational method that we have
observed wherever we could inquire is
prevalent everywhere, so that if we could
search all existing things we could under-

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 5 1
stand them. But if man can understand
the universe in its long unfolding, it is
because the universe in its long unfold-.
ing expresses the thoughts of a rational
mind that is akin to the mind of man that
understands it. By the doctrine of evo
lution, the universe is for the first time
consistently represented as a universe of
ideas, — that is to say, as an expression of
God. From of old, Christian faith and
doctrine have declared it to be so; but
now comes the doctrine of evolution, to
illustrate and confirm the declaration, so
that it cannot be denied again. To deny
the presence of mind in the universe
is to be belated in the world of evolu
tionary thought. If the common man
comes to a true conception of the world
he lives in, he will find the day far
past when he could question the presence
and activity of the all-comprehending
mind. Not less strongly, though in a different

52 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
way, does the doctrine of evolution rein
force our belief in the goodness of God.
A system of evolution is a system of un
folding of ideas, and is a system concern
ing which we may be sure that it has been
thought of and thought through. Not at
random does it move, but in accordance
with certain ideals that manifest an ascend
ing significance as the process advances.
According to all analogy that we know,
these ideals must have been present to
the mind that organized and sustains the
process. As the movement sweeps on, it
is found to be ever more and more expres
sive of the qualities of a being capable of
conducting such a process. Life, con
sciousness, reason, far-reaching intellect,
— these form an ascending movement, ris
ing toward resemblance to the original
conceiving mind; and we never doubt that
these qualities, slowly brought forth in
the world, are qualities of the mind by
which the entire process has been thought

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 53
through. But to these is added goodness.
Goodness, moral worthiness, grows up in
men. It is a quality without which all
the other traits and attributes of humanity
are incomplete and unsatisfactory. Life,
consciousness, reason, far-reaching and
mighty intellect, without moral excellence,
leave man but an unfinished being, and
defective in the highest region of his
nature. Goodness is the crown of human
ity, the indispensable final element in the
making of completed men. This highest
quality is slowly coming in to the human
race, as intellect slowly came in before it;
and the analogy of all preceding gains of
man convinces us that it is coming in as
yet another form of resemblance to that
great mind which is bringing forth its
own likeness from the long process of the
universe. Mind has been developed in
man through dealings with a world that is
the manifold and helpful expression of
mind. Mind in man has grown up in

54 THE PRACTICAL ARGUMENT
response to the presence of mind in God.
So goodness in man is growing up in
response to the eternal reality of goodness
in God. Human mind is supported in its
processes by the sustaining reality of divine
mind; and human goodness is supported
in like manner by the eternal reality of
divine goodness. Both virtue and relig
ion are responses to the eternal goodness,
and would be unsupported and misleading
experiences, telling man falsehood, and
luring him by false ideals, unless an eter
nal divine goodness, source of the like in
man, were existent in God. To deny
the divine goodness, original, perfect, and
eternal, is to miss the point of the evolu
tionary process, and leave it as puzzling
as a mindless world. If the common man
comes rightly to know the world he lives
in, he will feel the sense of the eternal
goodness sweeping in upon him as a very
flood of inspiration. His own childish
attempts at goodness he will find sup-

FOR THE BEING OF GOD 55
ported and sustained by that which con
stitutes the universal order, and he will
hear the call of existence, summoning him
onward and upward, into the moral like
ness of God.

II
DIVINE PERSONALITY

II
DIVINE PERSONALITY
The present purpose requires the resum
ing and re-presenting of the conclusions of
the first lecture. Influenced by the dif
ficulties that we find in believing in God,
we inquired what difficulties there are in
denying God and getting on without
admission of his existence. iiSH;Qn. the intel
lectual side, the conclusion was that we
cannot deny the presence of a mind in the
universe without vitiating our own men
tal processes and casting doubt upon the.
validity of all our thinking..., Since -the
evolutionary method was discerned, daily
has the evidence been ^accumulating that
the universe has been --thought-thip.ugh,
If it has not been-thought through,- then-
there exists no essentially Jaigher_.thinking

60 DIVINE PERSONALITY

than ours, and our thinking cannot^ be
shown to be worthy of confidence. On
the moral side, the conclusion was that
we cannot deny goodness to the mind that
we thus acknowledge as existing, without
declaring the entire field of religion void,
and discrediting all our own moral con
victions. If that mind is not good, there
exists no goodness essentially higher than
ours, and we do not know that the moral
distinction and the moral sense have any
genuine validity. In other words, our
mental and moral life, and all religion too,
are unsupported and untrustworthy, unless
they correspond to a mental and moral life
outside of ourselves, in the source from
which we and all things proceed. Science
on the one hand, and ethics and religion
on the other, which are solid realities in
our life, absolutely require and imply in
telligence and goodness in the universal
order, and in the mind which is its source.
Stronger than ever is this argument, I

DIVINE PERSONALITY 6 1
claimed, in this age of evolutionary
thought. For myself, I have no doubt of these
positions, and I judge that they ought to
stand clear and firm in all intelligent
minds to-day. The possibility of contra
dicting them is daily passing out of the
world, and the certainty of the all-embrac
ing mind and the all-embracing goodness
is destined soon to be recognized in evolu
tionary philosophy, as it now is in Chris
tian faith.
Notice what this means. Since science
and religion are possible, the great under
lying Power has intelligence and char
acter. That Power is capable of thought
and of goodness. Intelligence and char
acter, thought and goodness, belong, so
far as we know, only to persons. They
exist in rudimentary form and degree in
lower animals, but that is only to say that
they exist rudimentally where personality
is rudimentally present. Intelligence and

62 DIVINE PERSONALITY
character are personal endowments, and
exist in proportion to the completeness of
personality. In finding that there is a
mind in the universe, and that that mind
is good, we have at least gone far toward
affirming that God is personal. We have
attributed to him powers and qualities
that we do not know except in persons,
and it would seem natural for us to add
"God is a person," as our next great affir
mation. We are now to inquire whether
this is so. Ought we to say, and can we
say, that God is a personal Being? or are
we shut out from saying so ?
Those of us who were brought up under
the influence of the Bible, handled in the
fashion of all the Christian ages, began
with no difficulty in thinking of God as
personal. He was presented to us in such
ways that it was quite impossible to think
of him in any other manner. There was
no apology for anthropomorphism; indeed,

DIVINE PERSONALITY 63
there was no recognition of it, as a thing
that needed a name. That God should
walk in the garden in the cool of the day
seemed as natural as that Adam should do
the same ; and that God should talk with
Moses was no more strange, though far
more solemn and impressive, than that
Moses should talk with Joshua. "Thus
saith the Lord," said the prophets. "I
am thy God," said he to Israel.
When we came to study philosophy or
to think in the atmosphere of philosophic
thought, whether we were students or not,
we began to ask questions. Philosophy
works in the region of abstract thought,
and it is not surprising that philosophy
should talk more of the divine than of
God. It describes existing realities in
terms of quality rather than of form, and
under its influence the preconceived lines
of form readily shade off into indistinct
ness. So perhaps the personality of God
grew dim to us. Moreover, we brought

64 DIVINE PERSONALITY
from our Christian training itself the
elements of a hard question. We were
taught to think of God as personal, after
the manner of human personality, and at
the same time as infinite. How do these
two thoughts combine? Is not a person
necessarily limited and self-enclosed, while
our word "infinite" is expressly declaring
of God that he is unlimited? Is not an
infinite person inconceivable, because of
inherent contradiction in the terms ? And
so the more we dwell upon God's great
ness, and fill out the meaning of his in
finity, the vaguer may our sense of his
personality become.
Moreover, in our time, science has
joined with philosophy in making it harder
to think of God in personal terms. Sci
ence has had no intention of showing that
God is infinite, or of proving about him
anything whatever; and yet modern sci
ence has done more than was ever done
before to give tangible meaning to the old

DIVINE PERSONALITY 6$
word "infinite," for minds that were apply
ing it to God. Our age is struggling with \
the vast conception of a connected, con
tinuous, interrelated, and consistent uni
verse ; and those who believe in God need
to conceive of him as capable of conceiv
ing, producing, conducting, and fulfilling
such a universe. Believers in God had
long carried in their minds the old word
"infinite," as a word comparatively empty
of definite content ; but science here offers
the largest single contribution that has
ever been made toward filling it with
meaning. Never before in the history of
religion or of thought was the sentence
" God is great " so redeemed from empti
ness and bare transcendency as it is, for
one who believes in God, by the doctrine
of evolution. Never, consequently, did the
difficulty of conceiving of God as personal
stand out so strongly. No metaphysical
infinity is here attributed to God, but
even harder to deal with in actual thought

66 DIVINE PERSONALITY
is that practical infinity which the enter
prise of the evolving universe implies in
him. It would be easier if this practical
infinity appealed to the imagination, which
is akin to faith ; but at least in the earlier
stages of thought it appeals to reason and
hard sense instead. We are not asked to
feel God's immeasurable greatness, but
are required to take it as a conclusion
from facts, at the end of an argument.
The effort to combine greatness with per
sonality is thus transferred from the field
of imagination and faith to that of thought,
and the primary assumption of religion be
comes a problem in the realm of theologico-
scientific inquiry. It is no wonder that
the living sense of God's personality grows
dim in such a time, and that many wonder
whether the conception that has always
thus far seemed indispensable to religion
is to abide with us in force hereafter.
Neither is it surprising that a fine
poetic feeling offers itself as mediator

DIVINE PERSONALITY 6"J
between the scientific conception of the
universe and the sense of the personality
of God. " I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
When Wordsworth wrote thus, he was
not attempting theological suggestion or
philosophical theory. He was not think
ing of pantheism, or of religion, or of
philosophy; he was thinking the thoughts
of poetry, and reading the universal mean
ing of things. Yet he did suggest a
feeling, in view of the universal presence,
that might creep in as substitute for the
familiar attitude of the soul in the face
of personality. It would not be strange
if such a poetic sense of the unseen and

68 DIVINE PERSONALITY
vaguely felt indwelling spirit proved to be
all that some minds could retain of belief
in the personality of God.
Does it matter much? Well, it makes
this difference. Religion has always re
garded the divine as personal, and it would
seem that it must always so regard it.
Religion speaks to the divine, and believes
itself heard. Polytheism says "they," of
its many deities, and addresses them.
Monotheism, with larger reach, says "he"
of its sole deity, and in prayer says "thou."
" Thou " is the characteristic word of re
ligion. If we cannot retain in our belief
something that essentially corresponds to
what we know as personality, we shall be
compelled to say "it" of the divine, in
stead of "thou" and "he." That will
be a very great and far-reaching change.
The substitution of "it" for the personal
designations and words of address, obliter
ates what has thus far always been essen-

DIVINE PERSONALITY 69
tial to religion. Some try to tell us that
it would not destroy religion itself to make
the change. They think we could have
an "it" religion. But at any rate the
change would work a tremendous revolu
tion, and what was left would scarcely be
recognizable to one who had known and
lived religion in the old ways. It is a most
important question, therefore, whether or
not we can still say, in truth and without
delusion, "Thou art God." On this ques
tion we seek for light.
We shall do well to prepare for our
inquiry into divine personality, by seek
ing to know just what we mean by per
sonality itself. I do not know whether a
very precise definition is possible, or not ;
but at any rate the word represents a
familiar group of facts, and these facts can
at least be set forth with some clearness.
All that we know about personality we
learn from knowledge of ourselves and of

70 DIVINE PERSONALITY
our kind. All the personality that we
are acquainted with is human. We do
not call any sub-human being a person.
Powers of the same nature with those that
make up personality in us exist in lower
animals, but not, so far as we can judge,
in such degree and combination as to be
equivalent to what we call personality.
Something is lacking. Some of our dogs
seem almost personal, and yet we do not
regard them as fully so. There is a point
at which the higher powers and qualities
exist in such fulness and combination as
to constitute their possessor a person ; and
that point, according to general under
standing and use of the term, is at the
lower limit of the human. How far above
humanity the range of personal existence
may sweep, and through how many orders
of greatness, we may not know; but
humanity is personal, and nothing below
it is so regarded.
What are these powers and qualities

DIVINE PERSONALITY 71
that go to make up personality? Intelli
gence is one of them, as no one doubts, —
intelligence of such grade as is found in
men. The power of volition is of course
another, for will belongs to all animate
existence, and is combined in man with
his higher intelligence. Certain powers
of feeling — of desire, affection, love,
hatred, passion of various kinds — also
enter, as we all know, into personality.
These also are common property of ani
mate beings, but in man they are of higher
grade than elsewhere in the animate world.
These elements of intelligence, will, and
feeling are present in a person, and they are
more than present, they are combined and
held in conscious unity. It is true that they
are combined by consciousness in the lower
animals that we do not call persons ; and
we can never tell just how the personal
combination differs from the non-personal
that is below it. But we speak of self-
consciousness, and of personal conscious-

72 DIVINE PERSONALITY
ness, and of personal unity, and of personal
identity, — names by which we affirm an
undefinable but real fact. Somehow, in
what probably must always remain a mys
terious way, these powers are gathered up
into a conscious unity, and the result is
what we name personality. The person
possesses the intelligence, and feels the
passions and affections, and exercises the
will. | The powers are his, and his is
the action, and he is himself. He is
always himself, and not another. It is true
that there is such a thing as abnormal
change of personality, and double person
ality, concerning which we know facts
that we are utterly unable to explain ; but
the normal course of personal life is con
tinuous, with unbroken consciousness of
personal identity, and with moral respon
sibility as unbroken as the consciousness.
Moral responsibility, I say, for moral re
sponsibility is the inseparable companion
of personality; and from moral responsi-

DIVINE PERSONALITY 73
bility comes the possibility, and the cer
tainty, of character. It belongs to the
very nature of a person that he does
right or wrong, good or evil, and comes
to be himself good or bad, or partly good
and partly bad. To nothing but a per
son is character possible, but to every
personal being character is certain to
belong. Can we define in few words that which
we have thus set before us? Not per
fectly, perhaps, but some one has said that
personality consists in the union of intelli
gence with power. I should wish to add
affection; and I would ask whether per
sonality, as we know it, does not consist
in the conscious unity of intelligence,
affection, and power. Under this defini
tion we should find rudimentary personal
ity below man; but we should apply the
full name, personality, to the conscious
unity of intelligence, affection, and power
existing in human degree.

74 DIVINE PERSONALITY
Personality, thus conceived, is the high
est form of life of which we have any con
ception. Of course we know that it is the
highest form of life that has been reached
in the evolution of this world, but we can
say more than this. It certainly would seem
to be the highest form of life to which it is
possible for finite being to attain. Intelli
gence, affection, will; to know, to love, to
act, — these seem to be the highest powers
that the finite can hope ever to possess.
If any higher powers than these exist or
can exist, no sign of them is apparent
anywhere in the order of the world or the
indications of the unknown that existence
gives. I freely own that I cannot prove
that there are no higher powers than these.
My limitation to three dimensions of space
does not prove there is not a fourth, and
my limitation to this triad of personal
powers does not prove that no others exist
or are possible. Yet in this noble triad
of powers I find so splendid a unity and

DIVINE PERSONALITY 75
completeness, and so fine a sufficiency for
the purposes of existence, that I firmly
believe that there is nothing in store for
finite being beyond the elements that are
now gathered in the conscious unity of
personal life, — the power to know, the
power to love, and the power to act.
I must now add another fact about per
sonality, essential to the present purpose,
— namely, that in human experience,
which teaches us all that we know about
it, personality is not at once complete,
but is a growing thing. This is true in
the case of the human individual. A
new-born child is not yet a person. The
elements of which personality is composed
are indeed included in the inheritance
from antecedent humanity and from all
antecedent life; but only in the experi
ence of living are these inherited elements
developed. Only through experience in
life does the child become able to exer-

y6 DIVINE PERSONALITY
cise the powers of thought, affection, and
will. At first the exercise of these powers
is tentative, fragmentary, unorganized;
and only through practice can anything like
organic personal completeness be attained.
As for that fine and well-balanced unity of
powers in which personality is completed,
and which would seem to be the normal
human endowment, only by the long and
varied experience of life does it become
possible. Indeed, no one has ever seen
it yet. The longest lifetime is not long
enough to bring the elements of personality
up to that completeness, co-ordination and
efficient unity of which by their nature they
are capable. Progress in successful exist
ence consists, in fact, on the side of one's
own development, in the training of the
powers that constitute personality, and the
building up of that mysterious unity by
which the person is fully himself. So it
comes to pass that there is an ideal of
human personality that lies far beyond all

DIVINE PERSONALITY TJ
present degrees of attainment in fulness
and unity of being. Complete personality
is the goal and crown of individual evolu
tion. We have no difficulty in thinking
of a human being in whom all that is
essential to personality is far more perfect,
and the efficient unity of powers is far
more complete, than in any human being
who has yet existed. Such a person,
when he comes to exist, will be the ideal
man. Through all favorable conditions
and all normal progress, by work and
struggle, joy and sorrow, conflict and vic
tory, individuals are advancing toward
this ideal. Life is too short for attaining
it, but life is to be continued beyond the
present scenes, and the long future may
bring the ideal completion of personality.
Furthermore, what is true of the indi
vidual is true of the race. In the long
experience of mankind, as well as in the
career of an individual, personality is a
growing thing. When we have drawn the

78 DIVINE PERSONALITY
line of personality between man and the
creatures below him, we might proceed to
say that since a man is a person, all men
are equally persons; but experience does
not justify such a statement. Some men
are far more fully and richly personal than
others. There is such a state as that of
race-infancy ; and in that state some parts
of humanity are still lingering. Pre
historic man, whether among the flints of
glacial time, or at a higher stage, in the
heart of Africa to-day, is less fully per
sonal than historic and civilized man.
The tendency of civilization, of education,
of advanced experience, and of all enlarg
ing influences, is toward the enrichment
and completion of personality. I say no
new thing when I say that there is a
higher degree of personality in the best-
developed part of mankind to-day, than
there was in the best-developed part of
mankind two thousand years ago. It has
already been remarked that though the word

DIVINE PERSONALITY 79
"person" is ancient, the present signifi
cation of it is modern, and that the abstract
noun "personality" has no equivalent in
the Greek language or the Latin, for the
reason that the abstract idea that it ex
presses had no existence in the thought of
the classical world. The thing that we
mean by personality had not then been
identified in thought, partly because it had
not yet attained such proportions of ful
ness and efficiency as to take rank among
clearly observed realities. Personality, as
an endowment of human beings, has been
in history an actually growing thing. Age
after age has seen men possessing it in
fuller degree. Stage after stage of his
torical progress has found the elements
that make up personality further devel
oped, the personal unity better girt and
managed, the sense of personality more
pronounced, and the uses of personality
more largely fulfilled in the relations of
life. As personality is the goal of indi-

80 DIVINE PERSONALITY
vidual evolution, so personality is the goal
and crown of the evolution of the race.
Indeed, we do not reach the truth until
we say that personality, and the comple
tion of personality, is the goal of the
entire process of evolution in this world.
Man is the crown of the process, and full
personality is the normal destiny of man.
The experience of the race nourishes,
guides, and develops personality, and the
career of the individual is directed toward
the attainment of it. Every individual
moves from impersonal infancy toward full
personal rank and force, and the race
moves from a stage at which personality
is infant-like, toward a stage at which
personality in its individuals is large, rich,
and fine. Personality is the crown of
evolution. Have I dwelt too long upon these state
ments about personality in man? But I
have use for them. Personality is the

DIVINE PERSONALITY 8 1
highest form of existence that is known
to us, and toward the completion of this
highest form of existence that we know,
mankind is visibly advancing. Now I
wish to see what we can fairly infer from
this concerning God.
When we seek to know that Being
whose existence underlies our own, and
validates our mental and moral processes,
we can dwell, in our inquiry, more upon
the resemblances between ourselves and
him, or more upon the differences. Dif
ferences and resemblances there are, of
course, and to our exploring minds the
differences at once present themselves.
Great they are, and baffling to our
thought, if we set them at the front and
consider them the decisive element in our
conception of God. But we must firmly
hold that the differences between God and
man are differences between beings that
are essentially resemblant. Not only does
6

82 DIVINE PERSONALITY
the Christian doctrine proclaim that man
bears God's likeness, and thus assert that
the resemblances run deeper than the dif
ferences ; but the very existence of science,
as we have seen, brings daily before our
eyes the likeness of our minds to the mind
that is in the universe. God and man
are alike ; alike with vast differences, but
really alike. This is so, or else religion,
science, and philosophy are all mislead
ing and false together. The differences
between God and man, the great unlike -
nesses, we will not minify, but will recog
nize to the full, for they are essential to
the trustworthiness of our thinking. Our
incipient and growing minds need the sup
port of a mind infinitely vaster than we,
in order to be sure of themselves at all,
and the differences that often baffle us are
really our rest and strength, when we
think wisely of them. But when we seek
to know what God is, we will not begin
with the contrasts between ourselves and

DIVINE PERSONALITY 83
him. It is our privilege to begin with the
resemblances. We will not first inquire
how there can be anything like what we
call personality in God in spite of the im
measurable contrasts. We will ask what
resemblances to our kind of personality we
can trace in God, and then will open our
minds to the significance of the differences.
What, then, is God? At the outset,
God is a great Thinker. He is a thinker
so great as to embrace in his thought the
entire existence and movement of the
universe. If this seems too confidently
affirmed, remember the alternative. The
universe has been thought through, or it
has not. If it has not, there is nothing
to give it meaning and consistency. But
it has meaning and consistency, and we
are constantly gaining fresh evidence that
it has been thought through. God is a
great Thinker. His thinking and his
knowing must differ widely in method

84 DIVINE PERSONALITY
from ours, but we have no need to fathom
all the mysteries of his thinking; the fact
stands firm, that he has so known all
things as that all things derive a genuine
unity from his comprehensive thought of
them, and that thus he is a thinker and
knower, unlike us, and yet more pro
foundly like us than unlike. Kepler was
right when he said of the meanings that
he read in the visible universe, " O God, I
think thy thoughts after thee."
If the universe shows God to be a great
thinker, there is good reason why we
should take the next step, and affirm that
God is also a great Wilier. First of all,
we do not know anything about thinkers
that are not willers. Thought, so far as
we have ken of it at all, is always ac
companied by volition. From the lowest
regions where thought appears to the
highest that is known to man, this is the
rule, — whatever thinks, wills. Nay, will
runs even lower in the world of life than

DIVINE PERSONALITY 85
thought, if that is possible, and seems
even more fundamental and inalienable as
an element in conscious being. And when
we reach the vast and comprehensive
thought, so wide-sweeping and far-seeing
as to suggest that here must be the perfect
thinker, surely here we have no reason to
suppose a falling off in quality, and imag
ine this mind divorced from will. More
over, the signs of will are found wherever
the signs of this thinking mind appear.
The universe, physical and psychical, is a
system, expressive of a mind; and what
else can be so probable as that the mind
willed the system? There are some who
think that all exertion or exercise of
energy, in all forms whatever, proceeds
through direct action of the will of God,
so that the sum-total of force throughout
the universe is simply God's strength,
put forth in incessant activity by God's
will. I confess I do not know how else
to account for it, nor has any one, I sup-

86 DIVINE PERSONALITY
pose, a clear and solid theory of the inde
pendent origin of energy; and yet I dare
not theorize very confidently about God's
willing, and do not care to insist upon any
such explanation of universal energy as I
have named. I do not need to press the
description of God's willing into details,
in order to assert that God is a great
Wilier. The overwhelming probability is,
that the mind that thought the system
willed it, and so caused it to be the sys
tem that was in force. Indeed, thought
unable to express itself in will is but feeble
and barren; and not such is the thought
that comprehends all things. He who
thought the system willed the system
also. But there is something to be added to
thought and will. Remember that we found
it just as necessary to hold that God is
good as that God is intelligent. If we did
not hold this, we could not permanently re
tain our confidence in our own moral con-

DIVINE PERSONALITY 87
victions, and we could have no worthy
religion. The alternative to a good God
is universal moral desolation. So I say
that God is good, and thereby I ascribe to
him a character. Goodness implies more
than intelligence and will; goodness im
plies affection. If God is good, God is a
great Lover. Other words may be added
to complete the description of the character
that is covered by the one word "good,"
and I do not rule them out by select
ing this. I select this because I want just
here a word to describe the normal exer
cise of the highest moral excellence; and
by the common consent of those who know
what moral action is, there is no nobler
word or truer than this word "love." An
all-comprehending mind that wills a uni
verse must will it in love, or else not will
it worthily at all. God is either love or
wrong, highest love or bitterest wrong.
When once we have assented in any de
gree that God is good, we have committed

88 DIVINE PERSONALITY
ourselves to believe in an eternal love,
and so in an eternal Lover. The infinite
Intelligence is an affectional Being also,
caring for that which he has made, and
regarding things that exist with feeling
that worthily corresponds to their char
acter. I know that it is a great thing to
attribute to the great unseen One a heart,
and to declare that he really loves his
creatures. But I cannot say that he is
good without saying this, and I cannot
deny that he is good without stultifying
my own moral and religious nature. So
I say that God has a heart, or is a heart,
as well as a mind and a will.
Thus we are sure that the Being who
stands back of all existence that we can
know resembles us in the qualities essen
tial to personality. He is thinker, he is
wilier, he is lover. We can go one step far
ther yet, I am sure, and be safe in affirm
ing that in him these powers are bound

DIVINE PERSONALITY 89
together in a conscious unity. When I
cast about for means of proving this, I am
at a loss to find them, because the fact
seems to me so obvious as scarcely to be
capable of proof. We may remember that
this is no rare combination to which our
argument has led us, — this combination of
thought, will, and affection in conscious
unity. It is actually the commonest thing
in all the human world, for it exists wher
ever there is a human being. Wherever
these elements are found, they are found
in conscious unity. What they would be
apart, we have no idea. Thought without
feeling, feeling without will, will with
out feeling and thought, — these are mere
words, empty names, signifying nothing.
If these powers exist apart from one
another, it is something utterly contra
dictory to the nature of mind, will, and
character as we know them, — not above
our knowledge and beyond if, but against
it, and destructive of our certainty. These

90 DIVINE PERSONALITY
powers are so related to one another that
each requires the rest, in order to any
worthy exercise. Alone, no one of them
could be itself. Indeed, if we entertain
any large and fine idea of them, and think
of them at all in their ideal fulness of
meaning, we shall not be able to conceive
of any one of the three as existing without
the others. Here is a genuine triunity.
Intelligence, affection, and will ought
to be an inseparable triad, and such they
are. Bound together in conscious unity,
they supplement and support one another,
and are sufficient to make an effective
spiritual being. Now, if these high powers
exist in the mind to which the world gives
expression, of course they are bound to
gether in conscious unity. Is that mind
less completely organized than ours, and
less effective ? And where is our loyalty
to that far-reaching modern idea, the idea
of unity, if we hesitate for a moment to
regard these essential powers of personal-

DIVINE PERSONALITY 91
ity as held together in the oneness of con
scious being? But I must not speak at
length of this, for it is scarcely respectful
to my audience to be trying to show that
thought, character, and will, existing on a
scale as vast as the universe, must exist
as elements in the conscious life of One
who knows himself and directs his own
activity. Yet I may add, by way of illustration,
that yesterday, after the lecture, in which
I had said that if there is no intelligent
conceiving mind science is impossible, I
was asked whether cause and effect with
out intelligence would not suffice to make
a trustworthy order in which there might
be science. My answer was that cause
and effect without intelligence is some
thing very easily put into words, but not
so easily put into thought. Cause and
effect without intelligence, — can you fill
the words with satisfactory meaning ? Do
they express a manageable idea? What,

92 DIVINE PERSONALITY
then, is the link between cause and effect?
— for certainly there must be some prin
ciple of connection, or effect would not
follow cause. We are accustomed to say
that every effect has its adequate cause,
and every cause its appropriate effect.
There is a constant element of corre
spondence and equivalence here ; the ade
quacy and appropriateness not only form
an essential part of the idea of cause and
effect, but constitute the living quality
of the idea. Whence came they? How
did adequacy and appropriateness in this
field originate? How was such an idea
impressed upon the universe? By what
kind of agency has it been maintained in
perpetual and universal operation? How
are cause and effect kept yoked together
by this unfailing bond of adequacy and
appropriateness ? It is not enough to say
that force is the link between cause and
effect, or to suggest power in any form as
sufficient here. There is more than power

DIVINE PERSONALITY 93
in this. The link between cause and
effect is formed of two elements, — power
and intelligence, or, rather, intelligence
and power. Causation implies intelligence
as clearly as it implies power. It implies
intelligence as antecedent to the operation
of power in the producing of effect from
cause. The world of cause and effect is
a world of intelligence, for the energy to
which it gives expression is energy intelli
gently guided. No, there is no division
or scattering. Mental powers are found
only in a mind. We shall never find,
with all our searching, the elements of
personality separate from one another,
lying about loose in the universe, operat
ing piecemeal in the work of existence.
We have never found them separate in
the human field, and we shall never find
them separate in the divine. Personality
has exclusive possession of the powers
that compose it. The elements of person
ality — intelligence, affection, and will —

94 DIVINE PERSONALITY
always exist as elements of personality,
and are never seen in any other form or
relation. When we behold them expressed
in that vast work which we call the uni
verse, we may be sure that here also, in
the mind from which the universe pro
ceeds, they are bound together in the con
scious oneness of personal being.
So I call God personal. Following the
line of resemblance in seeking to know
what he is, I find this at the end of it.
Differences may be as they may, but with
essential truthfulness the word " personal "
is applied to God.
And yet this statement does not express
the whole truth, for it leaves untouched
an important fact concerning the nature of
the difference between ourselves and God.
It is sometimes said that the word "per
sonal " may be true of God and yet inade
quate ; that God may be more than personal,
— superpersonal, some have suggested, —

DIVINE PERSONALITY 95
living a life so unlike ours that to call
him a person is only to hint at what he is,
leaving vast ranges of possibility for life
that cannot be called personal at all. But
I do not think this is the right account
of the difference between God and us.
Rightly conceived, the difference itself
falls into the line of resemblances. The
peculiarity of God is nothing else than
this, that God is the only perfect person.
If we knew all, we should know that God
is more truly and fully personal than any
finite being is or can be. He is the per
fect type of all personality.
We have seen that human personality
is never perfect, but is an ever-growing
thing, with high possibilities not reached
as yet or even apprehended. In the fill
ing out, the balancing and the efficient
wielding of the powers that make us
persons, there are unattained possibilities
immeasurably great. We are slowly grow
ing toward them, perhaps, and in the great

96 DIVINE PERSONALITY
future we hope to attain to some of them,
for it hath not yet been manifested what
we shall be. But in all that we may
become, in fulfilment of our worthy possi
bilities, we know that we shall be like
Him. The ideal of our personal constitu
tion is not in ourselves, but in God, and
in completing our personality we grow up
into his likeness. This is our process
from the beginning. Starting with the
crude, unorganized, unconscious material
that we have in infancy, we move on
through the ascending course of life. We
become aware of ourselves, we get our
powers in hand, we gird up the loins of
our personal unity as we advance, and so
we become more completely personal as
our years pass. But it is not merely our
selves that we are growing up to. The
type of our personal being is not in our
selves, or anywhere in our human kind;
it is in God. There exists one supreme,
typical, perfect Person, and there also

DIVINE PERSONALITY 97
exist innumerable incipient, adolescent
persons, getting their personality as they
go, growing up into his likeness. This is
the story of personal existence. And yet
we shall not attain fully to his likeness;
he will always be beyond us. It is not
for creatures starting from personal non-
being to become entirely like the great
Original, who is from everlasting to ever
lasting, whose thought is all-embracing,
whose affection is perfect, whose will is
universal, and whose unity is complete.
He stands alone, in the unapproachable
glory of the perfect Person. This is the
difference between God and us, — a differ
ence on the line of likeness, and a dif
ference that inspires us to adore and trust
the One who is like us and yet forever
gloriously unlike.
Perhaps some one will wish to stop me
here, seeking for clearness, and ask just
what I mean by the perfect person, and
whether I know what I mean by that
7

98 DIVINE PERSONALITY
name. I am willing to answer, for I
know what I mean. I know what a per
son is, by studying myself and others who
are like me. What a perfect person would
be, I learn from what a person is, by con
ceiving perfection of the powers and rela
tions that constitute personality. I cannot
describe a perfect person in all his glory,
but I can tell what makes one. By the
perfect person I mean the Being in whom
the essential powers that constitute per
sonality — intelligence, affection and will
— exist in perfect quality and degree, and
are perfectly bound together, and wielded
in use, in the unity of self-directing con
sciousness. This is the perfect person.
And then questions may spring up on
every side, touching on all the peculiari
ties of perfection. Do I know how a
perfect person exercises the power of
knowing, so that I can solve the mysteries
of omniscience ? Do I understand the work
ing of the perfect will ? Am I not obliged

DIVINE PERSONALITY 99
to discuss the ancient difficulty about an
infinite person, limited and unlimited at
once ? To all of which I have one answer.
These things I do not know, and do not
need to know. What am I, that I should
understand the specialties of perfection, in
any sphere ? Why ask a child to define a
man ? Why expect a man to expound the
pecuharities of God? I may know where
they lie, but I can never describe them.
It is strictly impossible that I should know
just how the perfect person differs from
imperfect persons in the operation of the
powers that are common to both. If I
were seeking to establish the divine per
sonality to my own mind by defining its
peculiarities, I should be doomed to fail.
But I can establish it to my own mind by
tracing out the lines of resemblance to the
personality that I possess, and that is better,
and sufficient. But, moreover, when once
I have thus become satisfied of the divine
personality on the ground of resemblance,

IOO DIVINE PERSONALITY
then the differences that once perplexed
me find their meaning and glow with
light. I did not expect to find in God a
personality just hke my own. If I could,
he would be no God, but only a man like
me. The mind that I have searched out
in the universe is greater than I, and the
God whom I have seen in the light of
revelation is greater than I. My powers
come quickly to their limits, — his never.
Though mine should grow to their appro
priate perfection, they will still be limited,
adequate only to such existence as I was
created for; but he is unmeasured and
immeasurable. Far beyond the possibili
ties of Imman personality do the powers
and glories of his divine personality ex
tend. This is the glory of what I learn
of him, — that his powers are great enough
to lay in the created universe that ever
lasting foundation for all my mental and
moral processes, by virtue of which I can
rest in my fundamental certainties. God,

DIVINE PERSONALITY IOI
who is one in the unity of a perfect per
sonality, is great enough to serve for sus
taining and support to the intellectual and
spiritual being of all the finite persons,
offspring of his own personality, to whom
he has given existence. This is the com
fort that we may find in recognizing the
perfect person, source of all our person
ality, sufficient to be our eternal rest,
because of the resemblances, and because
of the differences, between his personality
and our own.
Thus does belief in divine personality
commend itself. I have not been speak
ing of it in terms of Christian faith, or
indeed of religion at all. I think it can
be reasonably maintained, apart from relig
ion, in the field of general thought. But
when I say this, I shall be reminded that
the doctrine of evolution is often, perhaps
generally, regarded as unfavorable, if not
hostile, to belief in a personal God. To

102 DIVINE PERSONALITY
me, however, it seems quite otherwise. I
cannot follow the thought of evolution
through without finding the divine per
sonality at the end of it. There it stands,
not always to remain unnoticed and un
acknowledged. Before I leave the matter
I must show, in few words, why I say this.
It is an old story, too old to need tell
ing now, that in the evolution of our
world we have a forward movement, more
and more full of traceable meaning as it
advances. This bringing forth of greater
and greater meaning is proof of a con
ceiving and directing mind. The idea of
mindless evolution will be relegated before
long to the chamber of outgrown things.
The universe is the conception and off
spring of a mind. What I now wish to
say is, that the upward movement consists
in the taking on by the universe of more
and more of the likeness of the mind that
brought it forth. The meaning of the

DIVINE PERSONALITY 103
advance is this, that with every step there
is something more like God than was any
thing before. The highest stage always
expresses most of the conceiving and pro
ductive mind.
The process by which the earth itself
was formed might have seemed to a be
holder, if there had been one, aimless and
vain; yet it was an orderly process, and
that at least was like God. When it had
become a world, and had been a world for
ages, life appeared upon it. A wonderful
thing was life, and wonderful in this, that
even in its lowest forms it bore a likeness
to God, the living Spirit, the conceiving
Mind, such as nothing had borne before
it. Higher it rose, and richer it became.
Consciousness entered. Life ascended
into mind, judgment, love, thus taking on
greater and nobler likeness to God. In
reason — godlike reason we call it — and
in love and moral judgment we behold
the very image of God, appearing upon

104 DIVINE PERSONALITY

his highest earthly creature. Now gradu
ally, out of the experience of rational life,
personality grows up, and slowly moves
on toward completeness. It is the con
scious unity of the godlike powers of man.
Man stands forth, not indeed a perfect or
a full-grown person, but at least a new
born and growing person, bearing in his
conscious unity of intelligence, affection and
will, the high possibilities of the highest
known form of being. On what principle
shall we deny or question that this crown
of human existence is simply one more
resemblance to that original Being who is
the type of all ? The ideals of the unfold
ing universe have existed from eternity in
the being of the conceiving and creative
source, and the long work of time has
been the impressing of more and more of
the likeness of that source upon its off
spring. Now we behold man, with spirit
ual powers so similar to those which the
universe reveals, that he can understand

-DIVINE PERSONALITY 105
the universe, and with these powers gath
ered up into conscious personal unity, and
thus organized for effective use. Surely
the natural interpretation of all this is,
that in having personality man must be
the finite counterpart of the mind that
conceived him. That mind also, we may
be sure, must gather up in conscious per
sonal unity the powers that belong to it.
In man the old line of divine self -manifes
tation has not been abandoned, or diverted,
but extended straight on in its old direc
tion. Still does every gain in the human
correspond to something eternal in the
divine. Personality in man is simply a
new form of likeness to God's eternal
being, and growth in personality is growth
toward God. God is personal.
If this looks reasonable, do not turn
away from it till you have noticed a con
firmation that is waiting. It is found in
the direction that was taken by evolution
when it came to man. Up to man, there

106 DIVINE PERSONALITY
proceeded through unmeasured periods a
physical evolution, a bodily unfolding and
advance, accompanied by a development
of mental or psychical powers also. But
we are told that now, when man has come,
there are no signs that physical advance
is to proceed further through his line. It
does not appear that he is to be the parent
of new and higher physical species, but
the movement of evolution has turned to
the development of his spiritual powers.
First came that which was natural, then
that which was spiritual. God by the
long process of life prepared the human
body, fruit of patient evolution, fit 'for
human uses; but when the body was
ready, the spirit — if we may still use the
familiar name — was not so far advanced,
but was unformed and infantile. From
the time when man first was man, God's
patient process of evolution forsook the
body, which it had now completed, and
turned its energies to the soul, which was

DIVINE PERSONALITY 1 07
still in its early stages. Age after age, the
human spirit has been developing through
the hard course of experience. Intelligence,
affection, will, have been growing strong
and clear, and have slowly been gathered
more and more into that effective oneness
which we call personality. In fact, the
present work of evolution, so far as the
human individual is concerned, is the form
ing, training, and completing of the per
son; and there is no sign that any higher
work is to be undertaken on the earth
than this. The finishing of the human
personality is the highest earthly work
of God. How clear and convincing a
confirmation is this of the claim that the
human person is the highest expression and
truest picture of the conceiving mind, and
that God, when we know him, will prove
to be just that which personality, projected
and expanded to perfection, would be !
Yes, the mind that conceived the world
has been personal all the while, — personal

108 DIVINE PERSONALITY
in having thought, affection, will, all
bound into conscious self -directing unity.
This personal Being, God, wrought upon
the world until he had brought forth upon
it man, the likeness of his own personal
ity, and then he turned from other work
to train the human personality for endless
fellowship with himself. This is the pur
pose that unifies human history, and makes
it the legitimate continuation of the great
age-long process of the world. In the
course of this latest work, God gave to
men religion, in which they were moved
to look up to heaven and commune with
the power above them. It was his gift,
indeed, and he did not forget that he had
conferred it. The characteristic word of
religion in all ages and stages of its life is
"Thou," a personal word, a cry and call
of the heart to one who hears. The char
acteristic word of religion is a pronoun
of personal address. This word is true.
There is no "it" back of all things and

DIVINE PERSONALITY 109
over all ; there is One who is rightly called
"He," and addressed as "Thou." The
source of being is personal.
" Speak to him thou, for he hears, and spirit with
Spirit can meet :
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than
hands and feet."
The personal language of religion is not
to be rejected as false, but stands as the
truest language that the soul can speak or
hear. "Thus saith the high and lofty
One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name
is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy
place, with him also that is of a contrite
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of
the humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite ones. " " From him, and through
him, and unto him, are all things." This
is the utterance of religion, and religion
is right in its inextinguishable habit and
practice of saying "Thou" to God. As
truly as we are persons, so truly is he the
perfect Person.

Ill
THE RELATION BETWEEN GOD
AND MEN

Ill
THE RELATION BETWEEN GOD
AND MEN
According to the immemorial doctrine,
and the immemorial feeling, of rehgion,
the relation between God and men is a
personal relation. " Lord, thou hast been
our dwelling-place in all generations ; " —
thou, a Person, hast been to our spirits as
a home. " Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord will answer : thou shalt cry, and he
will say, Here I am." Call this anthropo
morphic if you will; nevertheless religion
has always meant it, and has always meant
the thing that it expresses, namely, that
man may say " Thou " to God, just as fitly
and truly as he may say "thou" to his
fellow. The relation between the two,
religion assumes and affirms, is a "Thou
and I " relation. Christianity not only
8

114 THE RELATION
assumes and affirms this in company with
all religion that has ever been a comfort
or inspiration to the heart of man; it
assumes and affirms this more distinctly
and positively than any other religion in
the world has ever done. "Pray to thy
Father," said the Founder of Christianity.
"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things."
Our thought in the second lecture did not
move in the region of Christian doctrine.
We were discussing the nature of person
ality, and seeking to judge whether the
mind that is in the universe can be held to
possess genuine personal powers and quali
ties. We did not begin by looking for
the differences between that mind and our
own, but rather by asking whether there
is evidence of the existence in that mind,
whatever the differences of mode may be,
of the powers that we know as personal.
For my argument, as my argument, I
care nothing, but I greatly care for the

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 15
conclusion, and I should be very glad if
those who listened felt that it was easier
to accept than to deny the personality of
God. I desired to show that the powers
that we call personal in ourselves are
manifested in the operations of the mind
that expresses itself in the universe, and
that in all sound reason these powers must
be regarded as gathered up into a con
scious personal unity in God. I sought
to present personality as that highest form
of dependent being which irresistibly
argues its own counterpart as existing in
the creative and archetypal Being to
which, or rather to whom, we give the
name of God. As I showed in the first
lecture, it is incomparably more free from
difficulties to believe in an all-embracing
mind endowed with goodness than to deny
it. Granted such a mind, it is really no
step in advance at all, but only a neces
sary unfolding of what is implied already,
to call it personal.

Il6 THE RELATION
If these positions are sound, philosophy
has no abiding objection to the primary
assumption and assertion of religion.
There is a Person out of sight, with whom
human beings may sustain personal rela
tions. We are not compelled to think of
the Great Invisible as "It; " not until we
have said "He," not until we are saying
"Thou," do we do justice to the Great
Invisible. God is a person. A person
ality so vast may, indeed, be to us un-
picturable, but it does not follow that it
is inconceivable. On the other hand,
when we approach the question through
the open door of resemblances, — a door
opened wider to us by the doctrine of evo
lution than by any other view of things
that was ever current among men, — we
find that the personality of God is easier
to believe in than to set aside. We can
not deny it, indeed, without leaving the
well-known human personality unsup
ported and unaccounted for in the world.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN W]
So when religion stands speaking to some
one in the unseen realms, no reason ap
pears for doubting that there is some one
there to be spoken to. Religion may
speak unforbidden, and need not be taxed
with unreasonableness, if it believes that
its voice is heard.
When we inquire, as we are now to do,
concerning the relation that exists between
God and men, we start with the idea that
it is a personal relation. This is much,
but we can go farther, and make a more
definite statement. We can give a defini
tion that has support from both sides of
our field of thought, from the scientific
side and from the religious. The defini
tion is this. The relation of God to men
is a paternal relation, and the relation of
men to God is a filial relation. The rela
tion between God and men is that of
Father and child. This statement I de
sire now to expound and verify.

Il8 THE RELATION
I said that the definition that I was
about to offer had support from the
scientific side. It is often supposed, I
know, that the doctrine of filial relation
between men and God is purely a doctrine
of religion, over against which scientific
thought stands in criticism if not in oppo
sition. The impulse to say " Father " is an
impulse of faith alone, and has no support
but such as faith affords it. The belief
that God, on his side, thinks the thoughts
of a fatherly heart toward us, is assumed
to be simply the reflex of our own relig
ious faith, and to have no standing in the
court of reason or science. But I affirm
that the doctrine of the filial relation has
as true a home in the world of science as
in the world of religion. When we say
"Father," we not only make a venture of
faith; we speak according to the facts.
If we did not speak according to the facts,
the venture of faith would be destined to
end, sooner or later, in collapse and wreck.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 119
But we need have no fear of this, for facts
and faith agree in their testimony as to the
relation between God and men.
The proof that I shall offer here is very
short and simple. Consent, with me, to
accept the conclusions that have been al
ready reached. Take it for true, that we
are indeed obliged to believe in a mind
which has thought existence through, and
is expressing itself in the things that come
to pass in the universe. Grant that there
exists a conceiving mind according to
whose conception the universe proceeds.
That mind, of course, is rational ; we can
not leave this out of our thoughts, as we
have seen, without leaving our thoughts
themselves all unsupported and untrust
worthy. That mind is essentially personal,
knowing, loving, and willing, as really as
we, though in modes differing from ours
and partly beyond our ken. That mind
is good also; we cannot deny it, as we
have seen, without leaving all known good-

120 THE RELATION
ness unsupported and uncertain, and dis
crediting all our religion and ethics. Take
it for true, then, that there is a conceiving
mind which is rationally conducting the
long enterprise of the unfolding universe.
Accept only this, and see what follows.
In the long process of things this con
ceiving mind has brought man into exist
ence. That is the same as to say that God
has created man, — the process and method
of his doing so being unimportant in com
parison with the fact. To say that the
conceiving mind, personal, rational, spirit
ual, brought into existence man, personal,
rational, spiritual, is the same as to say
that God created man in his own image.
Every man, so far as he possesses the
powers of a rational and moral being, bears
the likeness of God, to whom he owes his
existence. Wherever there is a man, there
God has brought into existence one who
is like himself. That is what constitutes
parenthood, as, in view of the common rela-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 121
tions of life, we define the term. When
the conceiving Spirit has brought into be
ing persons like himself, it is not by mere
accommodation of terms, it is scarcely
even by metaphor, that he is called their
Father. If it seems that this name must
be considered figurative, then tell me by
what literal name I shall set forth the
actual relation. To call him their Creator
is to speak in truth ; but the name is in
adequate, for the same conceiving mind
has conceived the solar system and brought
it into being. He is Creator of the solar
system, but the solar system does not bear
the likeness of his power to know, to love,
and to will, as you and I do. What is
the name that expresses the relation of the
great Source of all to you and me, as
different from his relation to the solar
system, which cannot think and feel and
will? What, but Father? What word
sets forth the peculiar relation of created
personal beings to him, but son ? He has

122 THE RELATION
produced us men, and we are like him in
the essential elements of the personal con
stitution. So we are his offspring, and
he is our Father. In these sentences I
have used the word " God; " but I am not
thinking as yet of the God of religion, the
God and Father of Jesus Christ. My
point is, that the originative Spirit, whose
powers and qualities are manifested in the
evolution of the world, has at last brought
forth spirits in his own likeness, and that
this makes him their Father, and them
his children. To all rational beings
everywhere, the conceiving and origina
tive rational Being is Father.
And I do not see why we are not to
give this name, even in this connection,
its proper spiritual significance, which is
that a father cares for his offspring. It is
often assumed, I know, from various points
of view, that an evolving universe must be
the home of eternal indifference and un
responsiveness. Even if there is a mind

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 123
in it, there is no heart; no evidence exists
that the God of evolution, if there is such
a God, takes the slightest interest in his
creatures. All is steady, impartial, pas
sionless in his operation, and a man is to
him simply like a rock or an apple-tree, —
one of the products of his mighty move
ment, now here but soon vanished, and mak
ing no appeal to him. But let us put our
common sense upon the question. Suppose
only that there is a spirit, rational and
kindly, who thinks the movement through,
and understands it, and carries it forward.
In this world, of which we are specially
thinking, it is a long, long movement.
After the material mass has become dif
ferentiated, so that a planet has found its
orbit, millions of times does the planet
swing round its central orb before any
rational soul looks out from it toward
the sun. But it does come to pass at
length, that spirits similar in constitution
and powers to the creative Spirit are liv-

124 THE RELATION
ing on the earth, — spirits capable of think
ing his thoughts after him, of bearing his
moral character, and of growing up to full
personality in his likeness, and to fellow
ship with his heart. Every spirit of them
is born an infant, and the race of them is
born in infancy, too ; all is rudimentary at
first, and yet the powers and possibilities
are there, and the career of personal exist
ence has been opened, with all its risks
and glories. As the planet courses on
around the sun, it becomes apparent, in
process of time, that the movement of
physical evolution has paused at man, so
that higher forms of bodily structure are
not brought forth from him, and the main
work of evolution henceforth proceeds in
the realm of his spirit, through the build
ing up of his personality, and the develop
ing of the powers in which he resembles
the creative intelligence. And do you
think that the creative intelligence takes
no interest in the presence of this his own

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 125
miniature but growing counterpart in the
world ? To deny the interest of the crea
tive intelligence in his own spiritual kin
dred, brought forth by his own long
process, is to deny the existence of crea
tive intelligence altogether, and go back
to the fathomless difficulties of a mindless
world. If man is not cared for from above
and beneath and around himself, by the
spirit that brought man forth in his own
likeness, we shall be compelled to infer that
there is no such spirit. Grant intelligence,
and you are compelled to grant affection
ate interest in kindred intelligence. Grant
creative intelligence, and you will sooner
or later find yourself recognizing a pater
nal interest of that intelligence in its
spiritual offspring. The Fatherhood of
God is a doctrine of evolutionary philoso
phy, just as truly as it is a doctrine of
Christianity; and I am only foretelling
the certain future, when I say that it will
hereafter be recognized as such. The doc-

126 THE RELATION
trine is not so rich there as it is in Chris
tianity, for evolutionary philosophy does
not know so much of God as Christianity
knows ; but the doctrine is present in both,
as a description of the existing relation.
The Christian teaching concerning the
relation between God and man — the doc
trine that this is a relation of father and
child — is not a specialty ; it is grounded
in the reality of facts that are ascertain
able outside the special field of Chris
tianity, and is thereby confirmed to us as
true. I am thus led up to the discussion of
the Christian teaching on the relation be
tween God and men. But here I am
met by question, if not by contradiction.
Have I the right to say, as I have been
saying, that Christianity represents this
relation as a relation between Father and
children? Is the statement true? If we
inquire for the thought that has histori-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 127
cally entered into the Christian teaching,
we must admit that other ideas have been
present, and have been more prominent
than this. The simple and noble relation
that is wrought into the nature of human
ity has been overlooked, and the relations
that correspond to institutions in human
society have been preferred to them for
purposes of illustration. The relation of
a king to his subjects has been most com
monly used as illustrative of the relation
that God sustains to us. From unmeas
ured prehistoric ages, the habit of looking
up to chieftains and kings has been with
mankind. When the thought of God be
came clear, and it was felt that God is
one alone, it was natural, and inevitable,
that he should be set in the place of the
kings, and regarded as the one almighty
and worthy sovereign. " The Lord reign-
eth," "The Lord is a great king," "His
kingdom is over all, " — these were natural
utterances of reverence toward the one

128 THE RELATION
Supreme, whom men were beginning to
recognize. Later, men could talk of the
divine right of kings, as if God, the king
first known, had authorized the human
kings to reign after the likeness of his sov
ereignty; but if the earlier history could
be thoroughly analyzed, it would be found
more accurate to speak of the regal right
of God, formulated in human thought
after the likeness of human sovereignty.
The first-known kings were human, and
the glorious sovereignty of the one God
was received as an inference from their
relations to their subjects. This govern
mental analogy was useful. It was veiy
largely true, and was profoundly instruc
tive. But it could not be known in the
days of kingship that royalty, age-long
though its period might be, was only an
episode in the long history of human
kind which was created for brotherhood.
Nevertheless, such is the fact. Thrones
might stand for a while, and regal

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 29
rights might seem everlasting, and sov
ereignty might appear to be the final word
by which to represent the relation of God
to men. Yet royalty was a normal thing
in human society only for a time, and was
absolutely certain to yield, as it is yielding
in our day, to institutions that have their
ground in human equality and brother
hood. Kingship marks a long stage in
human evolution, and yet a temporary
one; it cannot, therefore, be the type of
the abiding and eternal relation between
God and men. And all the while, there
was existing by the side of royalty another
relation, not arbitrary, not established, not
variable, not temporary; a relation built
into the very existence of humanity and
essential to its continuance; a relation,
indeed, that is the very means of the con
tinued existence of humanity, and is there
fore the very counterpart of the relation
of God the creative Spirit to his spiritual
creatures. The parental relation is natu-

130 THE RELATION
ral, permanent, unchanging, indispensable,
and is by its nature the truest analogue
that can exist to the relation between God
and men. It was not until the period of
kingly institutions had spent itself, that
the truth about fatherhood could become
deeply effective in the thought of men
concerning God. But when once its fit
ness has been discerned, and the paternal
idea has taken the place that belongs to
it, behold, there is thenceforth no return
to institutional illustrations and temporary
forms of thought. Here the abiding has
been reached. There exists and can exist
neither institution nor relation that can
supersede fatherhood in setting forth the
relation between God and men, save as
fatherhood comes to be interpreted as in
cluding the entire range of the parental,
and the fulness of the motherly is gath
ered in with the fulness of the fatherly, to
represent what our God is to us, and what
we are to him

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 131
It is not surprising, therefore, that when
in Jesus Christ the living God makes an
intentional expression and representation
of himself to men, we find at the forefront
the conception of his fatherhood. " When
ye pray," says Jesus to his disciples, "say,
Our Father who art in heaven." "Pray
to thy Father who is in secret." "Your
Father knoweth what things ye have need
of, before ye ask him. " " Ye shall be per
fect, as your Father is perfect." "If ye,
being evil, know how to give good gifts to
your children, how much more shall your
Father which is in heaven give good
things to them that ask him?" And in
the personal life of Jesus his teaching
found rich and illuminative illustration,
for it was his glory that he fully lived
the filial life with God as Father, and
thus showed the world what the relation is.
"O my Father," he said, in his hour of
agony, " if it be possible, let this cup pass
away from me : nevertheless, not as I will,

I32 THE RELATION
but as thou wilt." By example and by
precept alike, he taught us to look up to
God and say "Father."
It is true, at the same time, that Jesus
made much use of the kingly language.
The mention of the kingdom of God was
frequently upon his lips, and many of his
parables illustrated the nature and move
ment of that kingdom. Thus we find him
speaking, with abundant emphasis, both of
the kingly and of the fatherly in the rela
tion of God to men. All this is immensely
interesting and significant. Upon him the
ends of the ages were met, — the close of
the kingly age and the opening of the
paternal. The kingly conception of God
was retiring, though it still had a long
course to run before it would be gone;
the paternal conception was entering,
though it still had long to wait for full
admission. He spoke in terms of the idea
that was familiar to his hearers, and at
the same time he spoke in terms of the

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 133
idea that was to supersede it through his
influence. He spoke of kingship, which
was vanishing away, and he spoke of
fatherhood, which was the coming idea
because it was the truer and the eternal.
And it is immensely interesting, also, to
note the history of the two ideas after his
departure. When we come to the Epis
tles, which record the thought of the
Christian generation that followed him,
we find that the idea of the kingdom has
almost wholly departed. The phrase now
and then occurs, and the idea of sover
eignty remains, not to be set at the front,
but to be interpreted in the light of the
new realities of experience; but the regal
idea of God, so prominent in the Hebrew
Psalms, holds sway no longer. The fam
ily idea now prevails. "We have not
received the spirit of bondage, again unto
fear, but we have received the spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
"Ye are all sons of God, through faith,

134 THE RELATION
in Christ Jesus." Hence the old title of
address, "Brothers," not unknown else
where, obtains new significance and rich
ness in Christianity. The Father makes
the family, and the Christians find them
selves to be brothers in the household of
God. The change from the kingly con
ception of God to the paternal was only
initiated in the apostolic age, and has been
but slowly going forward from then till now.
Even yet it is stoutly opposed by many
Christians, partly from a spirit of humble
reverence toward God himself, whom they
think it morally dangerous to regard in so
familiar a light as the paternal relation
would suggest. Nevertheless, the transi
tion is bound to go on and be completed,
for it is a transition from a lower to a
higher conception of God, from a lower to
a higher conception of man, from an insti
tutional to a natural illustration of the
relation between God and men, and from a
temporary to an eternal fitness in thought.

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN

135

In such a case who can doubt that the
paternal conception of God is the concep
tion to which belongs the Christian future ?
But this statement is not final, for it is
still ambiguous, and Christian teachers
are not agreed as to its meaning. To
whom is God Father ? and who are God's
children ? Upon these questions the Chris-
tion people have not yet come to agreement.
Two views divide the field. Some will tell
us, without hesitation, that God is Father
to all men, and all men are sons to God.
Others will dissent. They remember that
special form of sonship to God which
appears in the New Testament as intro
duced through the Christian experience,
and will affirm that this and this alone
is sonship. God is Father to Christians
only. Of course he is Creator to all, but
Fatherhood is solely a Christian relation.
These are the two positions, — ¦ God's
Fatherhood is natural, and universal;

136 THE RELATION
God's Fatherhood is spiritual or religious,
and therefore limited.
Between the two views there is not only
difference, but controversy. Each side
sadly wonders at the other, and feels that
the other is sacrificing something essential
to Christianity. Believers in the universal
Fatherhood declare that those who deny it
put an unchristian limitation upon God,
denying the breadth of his grace, and
making him less than perfect in his rela
tion to his creatures. Those on the other
side declare that believers in the universal
Fatherhood do injustice to the eternal
claim of ethics and religion. There can
be nothing higher, they say, than sonship
to God, and to proclaim this as the natural
birthright of all men indiscriminately is
to confound moral distinctions and ignore
moral necessities. It is to lower the claim
of God's character, and encourage men in
their indifference to goodness. Thus it
has come to pass that even the gracious

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 37
and inspiring fact of divine Fatherhood
is a matter of sharp discussion. It is a
sad fact, and yet we cannot wonder at it.
The division is a sharp one, and very seri
ous. It would be a sad thing to put
an unchristian limitation upon God, and
misrepresent his relation to his creatures
by making it too narrow ; and it would be
an equally sad thing to diminish the claim
of the eternal character, and encourage the
belief that God regards the good and the
bad alike. I do not wonder that in this
controversy each side seems to the other
to be bitterly wrong. At least, I do not
wonder that this is so, as long as there
exists a controversy in the case, and dis
putants misunderstand each other's posi
tion after the manner of disputants. In
fact, both sides are right. The two posi
tions fit together perfectly, when they are
rightly understood, and there ought to be
no controversy.
When I spoke, a little while ago, of

138 tHE RELATION
finding a good doctrine of divine Father
hood in the evolutionary philosophy, it
was evident that I had in mind a universal
fatherhood, — a natural relation between
God and men, which belongs to all spirits
who have derived and dependent exist
ence. I affirmed sonship for all who are
brought forth in the likeness of the Crea
tor's spiritual being. This I affirm, with
out the slightest hesitation. I am sure
that this relation is in a most real sense a
relation of parent and offspring, father and
child. Such sonship is of course inde
structible. The relation of God to all
created spirits is essentially, and from the
terms of the case, a paternal relation, so
called not by fiction, and scarcely even by
metaphor, but in plain truth. This is the
position in which created spirits stand
and must stand, unalterably, in reference
to him who produced them in his own
likeness as spiritual beings. This relation
is the indispensable foundation of all ex-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 139
perimental forms of sonship in the life of
men. First of all, God is Father to men,
and men are sons to God, from the very
fact that he made them, and made them
like himself. This is a truth that no one
ought to question.
But it does not follow that the divine
Fatherhood is realized in its full meaning
in the lives of all his children, or that his
sons are living as sons to him at all. All
men are God's offspring, as Paul approv
ingly quoted from the Greek poet, and are
entitled to the blessings of sonship to him.
God is Father to all men, but not all men
have to do with him in their hearts as
Father. All men are sons to God, but
not all men are living as sons ought.
There is an experience in which sonship is
fulfilled ; and that is the higher thing that
the New Testament tells of. A man who
is a son of God by nature, may enter
into his sonship, and become a son of
God in conscious relation and character.

140 THE RELATION
Yes, this is a case in which one who
was born a son may, nevertheless, be
come a son; or rather, this is a case in
which one who was born a son may there
fore become a son. The relation to which
he was born may become to him what it
ought to be, and the meaning of divine
Fatherhood, unknown to him before, may
be revealed in his experience and made
real in his life.
Paul and Nero, for example, are sons to
God, brought into existence by him in his
likeness. But Paul and Nero do not stand
before us in their history as equally sons
to God. To one the relation is not only
unknown, but worse than blank, for he
loves the evil that his Father hates, and
lacks the essential elements of his Father's
character. The other knows who his
Father is, knows of what sort he is, loves
him, delights in his character, chooses to
be like him, and is living at home with
God as a loyal child. God is true to the

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 141
relation which his creatorship involves,
and toward Paul and Nero alike his heart
is unchangingly paternal. Both are God's
offspring. But in one the natural kin
ship to God has ripened into moral and
spiritual kinship, while in the other the
natural relation to God stands unrealized,
unquickened, unperceived, and is daily
sinned against. Deep and radical are the
differences between the two men, and deep
and radical are the differences between the
sonships that they are actually in posses
sion of. The original fact of sonship to
God is the same to both, and yet see two
sonships actually existing, heaven-wide
apart in moral significance. One of the
born children has become true child to
the real Father, and the other has not.
Do I need to say more ? Is it not plain ?
All that I need to do, I think, is to dwell
for a moment upon what the fulfilment of
the natural sonship consists in. That son-
ship to God into which all men are born

142 THE RELATION
is not complete when they are born, for
it is intended to be spiritual as well as
natural. It is not complete so long as
they are ignorant of their Father, or in
different to their Father. It is not com
plete so long as they are bad men. The
completion of sonship to God consists in
religion and in moral excellence. The
two are closely connected; religion is re
lation to the Father, and moral excellence
is likeness to the Father. What can be
plainer than that in these the normal
sonship is attained, and the natural son-
ship becomes what it ought to be?
So it may well come to pass that one
who is born to be a son shall enter upon
the life of sonship, and shall practically
for the first time become a son. He takes
the child's place; he makes his own the
filial spirit; he lives in spiritual fellowship
with the holy One, who is his Father; he
conducts himself as a loyal son to God.
All this is new in his life. Call the begin-

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 143
ning of it a new birth; say that he has
become a child of God : you will be speak
ing truly. And yet you will be saying
nothing contrary to the claim that God
was always his Father, and he was always
God's child, for this completed sonship
is only what he was born for. He has
now come to himself, and entered into his
own, and received the portion that belongs
to the son of such a father. The natural
sonship is now coming to its proper spirit
ual completion. The filial life, such as
Christ tells of, is the only normal life of
man, and the Christian relation to God is
the only normal human relation.
The two sonships, natural and spiritual,
universal and special, are the two sides
of the shield. Why need there be any
further discussion about them? We can
not lose our natural sonship, but our spir
itual sonship, which is the crown of the
natural, we cannot possess at all, except as,
through his action and our own, we come

144 THE RELATION
home in loyal fellowship to our Father.
Here is no limiting God's loving and faith
ful relation to his creatures, and here is
no setting good men and bad on one level
in his paternal favor. If I could lift my
voice so that all Christian people could
hear it, I would say to them, Cease from
your strife over the divine fatherhood.
Recognize the universal sweep of his natu
ral and unalterable paternity, and believe
that it is a paternity full of holy love.
Recognize also the moral exactingness of
this natural paternity, and perceive that
its full meaning can be realized only in that
spiritual family relation of which Christ
is the mediator.
Having spoken thus of Fatherhood and
sonship, we are ready for a comprehensive
statement of the relation between God and
man. Dare I make one ? Yes ; for, imper
fect though it is, I am sure that what I am
about to say is true. Here it is. God is

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 45
the source of the being of men. He has
brought them into existence in his own like
ness, and is a Father to them, in fact and in
feeling. He owns them, and owns his re
sponsibility for them. He cares for them.
He is worthy of their love and confidence,
and his will for them is a will for their
goodness. Men are born his sons, and can
become their true selves only by becoming
his sons indeed, in moral and religious
fellowship with him. Since they are his
sons by birth, he desires them to be his
sons in fellowship and character, and is
satisfied with them only as they are giving
themselves to the filial life.
I am sure that this statement is true,
for it accords with what we learn of God
from the order of the world and in the
revelations of Christianity. The world of
such a Father-God is the world that we
live in; and the more we know, the more
shall we find it so. And yet I know very
well that mystery, perhaps to us at present

146 THE RELATION
insoluble, attends this answer to our ques
tion, as well as any other answer that
might be given. I stand in awe when I
speak of the relation of God to all men,
and declare it to be unquestionably a
paternal relation, so vast and mysterious
to me is that little word "all," which I
am constrained to use. Too long have we
been narrow and provincial in our con
ceptions of humanity, talking almost as if
Jews and Christians made up the human
ity that stood in close relations to God.
The time has come when by " all " we
must mean all. We must contemplate the
relation of God to the entire race of men
that he has brought into existence, and to
all the individuals that compose it. We
must not leave multitudes in forgetfulness.
In "all men," we must include the first
really human • beings that ever lived, and
all the prehistoric race, and all the gener
ations of humanity in all the nations of the
earth, and all that are to follow, as long as

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 147
mankind shall exist. Our present inquiry
concerns the relation of God to all of
these, and of all of these to him. Only
too well do I know what vast unanswered
questions, and questions perhaps to us
unanswerable, lie waiting for us, however
we may define this relation. But I cannot
change or withhold my definition because
of this condition of things, for I know and
am sure that the definition that I have
given of the relation between God and
man must be substantially correct. It cor
responds to what I am sure of, concerning
the God of the creation, in whose likeness
and at whose call the entire humanity has
come forth to being ; and it corresponds to
what has been made plain to us by Jesus
Christ, in whom God revealed himself to
men. We cannot reasonably or rever
ently think otherwise than that God, the
source of humanity, is Father to men in
fact and feeling, acknowledges his pater
nity of them, cares for them, and desires

148 THE RELATION
their good; and that men, born for the
filial life, come to themselves and their
own when they enter the life of voluntary
sonship to their holy Father, and only
then. This must be true of men as men,
or rather of men as spiritual beings, no
matter when or where they live, or what
their stage of development may be. Im
possible though it may be to answer the
questions that come with such a state
ment, still it is impossible that the truth
should be radically different from this.
Here many lines of thought open before
me, but there are two that have vital im
portance. Of the significance and effect
of the relation between God and men in
the realm of ethics, I intend to speak in
the next lecture. Let me speak a few
words now upon the significance and effect
of this relation in the realm of religion.
In the light of the relation that exists
between God and men, we see at a glance

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 49
what place belongs to religion in the
life of humanity. Here we have such a
relation of man to God as that religion is
obviously normal and necessary to man
kind. Whatever is human, was made for
religion; that is plain. Religion is the
life and experience of the human soul in
relation to higher spiritual Being, upon
which it is dependent. To this brief defi
nition we might add other elements if we
wished to define closely; but this, which
touches the heart of the matter, is a defi
nition that suffices for the present purpose.
The idea of religion implies that there is
some higher spiritual Being, with which
— or, as we might just as well say, with
whom — the spirit of man can hold inter
course. If there is no spiritual being
higher than man, of course religion ceases
to be. But if there is a spiritual Being,
the conceiver and creator of all, from
whom man's being is derived, and from
whom there comes forth upon man a genu-

iS°

THE RELATION

ine paternal interest, then religion stands
firmly grounded as a natural and necessary
part of the normal human life. Toward
such a Being it is natural and normal for
man to turn, in reverence, devotion, and
prayer. Dependence, obligation, and the
desire for fellowship, all conspire in draw
ing the heart of man toward this his God.
If filial fellowship with God is that which
he must have, in order to fulfil the son-
ship to which he was born, then plainly
man was born for religion, and religion is
an essential part of his proper lot. He
may sometimes forget it and be false to
it, for it is sadly possible for him to be
false to himself; but the order of nature
will kindly avenge itself upon such forget
fulness, and religion will not be allowed
permanently to be omitted from the com
mon life of man. Though he banish it,
it will come back in new forms, to grow
sweeter and stronger as life moves on. A
child is born to grow up in the family,

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 15 1
and cannot properly grow up anywhere
else. As to the character of religion, the rela
tion that we have been considering gives
us a helpful word of practical definition.
According to this relation, religion is to
man a family matter. It is not a matter
between himself and an abstraction, or a
stranger, or a God to whom he bears no
kin; it is a matter between man and his
Father. It is a family matter, a matter
in which sweet and helpful relations are
involved, a matter in which a man may
find himself acting out his spiritual nature
in simple and normal wise, living at home,
where he belongs, and where his true
blessing dwells.
It is this, I suppose, that has made
religion to exist. Investigators into the
early history of mankind have labored to
trace inductively the origin and growth
of religion, and show out of what forms
of experience, external and internal, the

152 THE RELATION
ideas and practice of religion grew up.
The inquiry is a worthy one, and is at
tended by valuable results. The genesis
of religious feeling may to a great extent
be traced. But it is a mistake to imagine
that inductions thus obtained can show
what it was in human nature that made
religion necessary to man, or what it was
that kept religion alive during the long
ages in which it was to mankind far more
a burden and a dread than a source of
comfort. All forms of religion have been
forms of man's grasping after that filial
divine fellowship for which he was born.
Saint Augustine's great word might stand
as key-word for the religious history of
mankind, — " Thou hast made us for thy
self, and our heart is restless till it find
rest in thee." If man had not been God's
offspring, though he knew it not, he would
not from his earliest days have been feel
ing after his Father. Feeling after his
Father he has always been, groping after

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 153
that family relation to which his nature
made him heir, seeking to be at home with
the powers above him, to which he was
akin. And in every nation, he that fear-
eth God and worketh righteousness is
accepted of him.
But do I quite mean what I say, when
I call religion a family matter, a matter
between child and Father ? for that would
imply that throughout the life of religion
the Father was as real as the child, and as
present, and as active. It ought to mean
that in the activity of religion the Father
bears his part as well as the child, — nay,
more than the child does, or can, since
the Father is greater than the child, and
wiser, and more capable, and more inter
ested, too. Do I mean all this? Yes, I
mean all this. I cannot answer all the
questions that it involves, but I am not at
liberty to believe anything less concerning
the relation between God and men. In
this relation it must certainly be true that

154

THE RELATION

God is far beforehand with his children, in
promoting that fellowship in which relig
ion consists. He moves forth to his off
spring, not meeting them half-way, but
going far more than half-way, and even
inciting them to move forth toward him.
To Saint Augustine's key- word for the
history of religion, we may add this from
a greater than Saint Augustine: "God
is a Spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth :
for the Father seeketh such to worship
him." The history of religion is the his
tory of the Father's long seeking for wor
shippers who shall worship him in spirit
and at the same time in accordance with
reality. He seeks long and patiently to
be worshipped, himself, the real God and
Father, for what he is, by the real man
his child, in the sincerity of his soul.
So from of old, even in prehistoric days,
when men were groping after God, God
was already reaching forth to men. As

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 155
they gained their bodily and mental powers
through the response of life to its environ
ment, so they gained the use of their spirit
ual and religious powers through response
to an environment that was wholly invisi
ble, but not less real on that account, — an
environment of their Father's forth-reach
ing love and care. All down through the
ages of religion, there has been something
that bore the nature of revelation, an in
tentional imparting of outward knowledge
or else of inward light, proceeding from
God himself, who willed that it should
come to pass. This impartation from God
the invisible environment, became more
definite and helpful as the possibility on
man's side increased. The crown and
fulness of revelation came in the appear
ing among men of Jesus Christ, through
whom the Father of men made his clearest
self-expression, and wrought his lowliest
work of help for his human offspring.
Through him it was made plain how the

156 THE RELATION
Father, who is in secret, feels toward his
children, and how he seeks to help them
out of their own evil into their normal
sonship. Consequently, through Jesus
Christ there has been wrought the highest
and worthiest experience of sonship, the
completing of the filial relation through
faith and love and purity 1 Here has grown
up an experience of sonship to God, so
rich and full and satisfying that many
have overlooked all sonship besides, and
affirmed that none but this was genuine
in any sense whatever. Yet this spiritual
sonship is only the fulfilment of God's
creative ideal, expressed when he created
man in his own likeness. In Christ comes
the fulfilment of the religious relation,
because in Christ has come the fulfilment
of the family idea of God. To those who
are in Christ, God is Father, in the sense
that from the beginning he had in mind,
and men are his sons in the manner that
corresponds to their creation and fulfils

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 57
their destiny. Religion is, therefore, truly
and fully a family matter now. So Jesus
taught us, when he bade us pray, " Our
Father which art in heaven." So Paul
had learned when he said, "We have re
ceived the spirit of adoption, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father." So John knew, when
he wrote, "Beloved, now are we the sons
of God." The relation between God and
men is such that in all highest and holiest
religious experience it is simply completed
in its true meaning. The holiest and most
loyal man that shall ever walk the earth,
or love God and do his will in the im
mortal hfe that is now invisible, will sim
ply be a full-grown son of God, who has
experienced the full meaning and blessed
ness of the relation between God and men.
I am intensely interested in the fact
that I have found this relation between
God and men attested, as it seems to me
that it is, both by the natural order of

158 THE RELATION
the world and by the Christian revelation.
It is, indeed, an interesting fact, and
useful in our apologetics. The modern
method of proof, we know, in regard to
great realities, is by comparison rather
than by direct argumentation. We do
not construct and depend upon separate
forms of proof, either syllogistic or ana
logical, for the existence of God, or the
immortality of man, or the validity of the
moral law, so much as our forefathers did.
We know that we live in a universe, and
we believe in the unity of things. We
lay things out before us, and see how they
fit together; and the convincing evidence
in favor of a view of things is that it does
fit. We carry along the deep conviction
that the universe is one, that things agree,
and that when we find the right thing it
will fit in with other things, and that will
be its vindication. The explanation that
most thoroughly explains is the one that
we accept as the true. We must needs go

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN 1 59
carefully in this, for we are liable to error,
and may have errors to correct, and yet
we are sure that the method is trust
worthy. On this method it comes to pass
that one thing supports another. Confi
dence is cumulative. The universal order
confirms the separate parts that fit together
to compose it; and the separate parts, fit
ting together, confirm our confidence in
the universal order.
It is, therefore, both interesting and
satisfactory to me to find the evolution
ary view and the Christian view of the
relation between God and men so far
bearing one testimony. See how they
hold together. The Spirit of the evolv
ing world is truly our Father; and by
that name Jesus bade us call God. The
Spirit of the evolving world is good,
or else we know nothing about goodness
and cannot trust our own being ; and the
Christian revelation declares God to be
infinitely good. The Spirit of the evolv-

l60 THE RELATION
ing world must be interested in us, as
spirits akin to his own originating self;
and through Christ we have learned that
God is love. The ideals of the evolving
Spirit are impressed upon his work, and
man is the personal spirit, most like him
self, in whom the highest ideals, the moral,
ought to be realized; and under Christian
teaching I long since learned that we
were created in God's likeness, and had
it for our normal destiny to grow up
into resemblance to his moral excellence.
When I find two witnesses agreeing, and
so confirming each other's testimony, I
receive each more confidently because of
the other. I perceive that the unfolding
world, informed and directed by the pater
nal Spirit whom I find expressed therein,
is a natural home for such a religion as
Christianity, the religion of the divine
Father, and that Christianity is such a
religion as it is reasonable to think that I
may find as the crown of religion in such

BETWEEN GOD AND MEN l6l
a world. Hence, beheving in Christian
ity, I believe also in the evolutionary order
of the world ; and believing in the evolu
tionary order of the world, I believe also
in Christianity.

ll

IV
THE MORAL EFFECT OF THE
DOCTRINE OF GOD

IV
THE MORAL EFFECT OF THE
DOCTRINE OF GOD
What has been the total effect of religion
upon morals in the long lifetime of human
ity, it is impossible to discover and diffi
cult to guess. If we inquire, the field is
too vast for us, and over the larger part of
it hang the prehistoric mists. Within the
part that we know something of, we are
haunted by a fallacy, from which it seems
impossible to escape. We persistently
carry back our modern standards of eth
ical judgment, and estimate the morals of
the past by the tests of the present.
"How low, how fearfully low," we ex
claim, " were the morals of that past day !
We are shocked by the horror of it. They
had religion, and it was a mighty element

1 66 THE MORAL EFFECT
in their life, and yet in morals they rose
no higher than that. Surely religion can
not have elevated them much; perhaps it
even depressed them." Even in going
back two or three centuries, and estimat
ing the effect of Christianity upon the
conduct of devout and conscientious Chris
tians, as the Pilgrim fathers, we fall into
this misjudgment. "Put yourself in his
place," appears to be one of the counsels
of perfection, not a rule for ordinary mor
tals. Whereas I suppose that all we can
reasonably ask to find is, that religion, in
some given period, historic or prehistoric,
has enabled men better to live in fidelity
to such moral standards as they had, and
has helped progressively to raise their
standards. If this has been done, religion
has been helpful to morals, even when
both were low in grade.
If we knew all the facts, I have no
doubt that we should find that religion,
all through human history, has been on

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 167
the whole a real help to morals. There
have doubtless been exceptions, and relig
ion has sometimes led men to violate their
best moral convictions. But these have
not been commonest, I judge, in those
lower grades where we would first suspect
them, but on higher levels, where ethical
training has sometimes been better than
religious, and the standards of the two
have come to differ. Yet this has not
been the ordinary thing in history. On
the whole, religion has reinforced and
elevated the moral sense. It has added
sanctions of its own to support the claim
of duty, and offered motives that were
helpful to good living. Throughout the
human period morality has been purer
and more progressive by reason of its in
fluence. I do not suppose that I can
demonstrate this, nor do I suppose that
demonstration is called for. The helpful
ness of religion to morals is not generally
doubted.

1 68 THE MORAL EFFECT
The principle of the usefulness of reli
gion to ethics is plain enough. Let me
speak of the human aspect of it, before I
come to the divine. Religion brings in
influences and motives from the invisible
world, to affect the conduct of men here
and now; and in the invisible world,
where gods are located, the worthiest
human ideals are enthroned. The best
that men have known they have placed
yonder, in the divine; and back upon
them have flowed the wholesome effects
of their own best conceptions.
Only see how powerful a combination
this is. The very fact of an acknowledged
connection of present life with a world
invisible — which world invisible can be
nothing but a world spiritual — is by itself
a great thing for man. There are dangers
in such a thought, I know, — dangers of
ignorance, of error, and of fraud; dangers
so great that some have thought it would
have been as well if men had never thought

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 169
of relation with a world unseen. But what
would that have meant? Thank God it
has not been possible, for it would have
meant that humanity was of this earth
alone, and had no valid ties or inter
ests or obligations above it. As it is,
rehgion has imported to the present life
motives and sanctions from above, and
has brought to human existence a large
ness, a dignity, a solemnity, not other
wise possible. No one can estimate the
contribution that religion has thus made
to the significance and the worthiness of
human conduct. Now add to this the
other fact, that in that world invisible
the best that men have thought is located
by their imagination. In some form or
other, the human ideals are there set up
for admiration and for worship. Only in
a rough and approximate way may this
sometimes appear to us to be true, and
with that strange perverseness of which I
spoke at first, we may refuse to conceive

170 THE MORAL EFFECT
that such ideas as we find apotheosized
were ever ideals to any one. Neverthe
less, the fact is unaffected by our lack of
imagination and our unsympathetic supe
riority. Men did think of their gods in
terms of their best ideas. The qualities
that they most admired they beheld in
their deities ; and back from enthronement
in the world of gods came these ideals of
men, to exert a helpful influence, such as
it was, in the realm of daily conduct.
Thus the best that was human obtained a
sanction from the divine. Slight and slow
the uplift may have been, but who does
not see that here we have a means of
uplifting for the ethical life?
Is religion, then, just a human inven
tion? No, it is a divine gift also. I do
not believe that its helpfulness to morals
is solely the fruit of man's apotheosizing
of his own ideals. I believe, as I have
said already, that the long history of
religion has not gone on unnoticed or

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 71
untouched by the living God. He, from
whose conceiving mind the human race
came forth, has always had relations with
that race in respect of religion. While
man was deifying his own best concep
tions, God was aware of it, and, in ways
that I am unable to describe or explain,
was doing his helpful part for religion.
This statement raises questions enough,
but it is true. Men have believed in ten I
thousand gods, but there has been only
one God meanwhile, and he has always
been interested in his creatures. None of
us know him very well, even now; our
thoughts of him are crude and poor; and
yet we beheve that he is interested in our
religion. Where, then, shall we draw the
line in the past, and say that beyond it
our brothers, bearing his likeness too, were
so ignorant and crude that in their religion
he could take no interest? We may be
sure that he has watched the long move
ment of religion, and has helped the spirit

172 THE MORAL EFFECT
of man to rise above this world, even
when it could rise but a little way. When
once we have banished the groundless idea
that every touch of God must immediately
produce what is perfect, we shall have no
difficulty in believing this. And if we
really and vitally believe in God as the
creative source of all spirits that have
ever lived, we shall have infinite difficulty
in believing anything different.
In the course of time God, seeking his
children, was able to make himself known
to them more clearly and adequately. His
manifestation of himself is called by Chris
tians revelation. We are familiar with
the record of it in the history of the
Hebrew people. In seeking to understand
revelation, we may not be able to answer
all our own questions, or to agree in tell
ing just how the Eternal Reality, God,
bore in upon the hearts of men the sense
of what he was; but certainly this is
exactly what he did. It was not merely

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 173
that men thought him out, and rose,
through experience, to worthier views of
his character. This they did, and some
would have us believe that this was all
there was of it. But they were not alone
in the doing of this, for he was there all
the time, and was presenting himself to
them, while they were seeking him. Does
any one doubt it? God was not passive
while his children were active in thinking
him out; he was active as well as they,
and the knowledge that they gained of
him was his gift as well as their attain
ment, and may fitly be called a result of
revelation, or of God's unveiling of him
self to men. But let us not fail to under
stand that on his side this was no unique
or solitary act. In what we generally
agree to call revelation, within the period
of Hebrew history, God was simply advanc
ing further, as the time and conditions now
allowed, in that long movement of pater
nal interest in his creatures, of which the

174

THE MORAL EFFECT

unrecorded ages of the world had already
contained manifold evidence. What was
said by Paul to the Lycaonians might just
as well have been said to the lake-dwellers :
"The living God, who made the heaven
and the earth and the sea, and all that in
them is, suffered all the nations to walk in
their own ways, and yet left not himself
without witness, in that he did good, and
gave you rains from heaven, and fruitful
seasons, filling your hearts with food and
gladness." And when Paul said, "It
pleased God to reveal his Son in me,"
he was speaking of a later and greater
step in the same great progress of self-
manifestation. Thus the divine part has
always been as real in rehgion as the
human. As for the effect of God's self-revelation
upon morals, this began to attain its effec
tive and worthy power when God was
manifest as One, and as Good. The best

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 75
possible form of religion is, of course, the
religion that recognizes one good God, and
recognizes him worthily, in worship and
in conduct. Where such discernment is
present, however dim, the effect in ethics
must be good. In the days of the Old
Testament this came to pass more fully
than before, and the moral effect appeared.
The moral effect was this : men were told
that if they desired friendly relations with
God, they must break off their sins.
So said the prophets. God is holy, God
is pure, God is righteous, but men are
sinful. If you desire to have him for
your God, you must break off your sins,
and live in holiness and righteousness
before him. Thus the prophets thun
dered. The same teaching was expressed
in symbolic form in the Levitical institu
tions, so that prophets and law-givers alike
proclaimed the one duty of men, to put
away their evil if they desired friendly
dealings with their God, since God was

176 THE MORAL EFFECT
holy. Thus did religion assert itself, and
announce its claim in the field of ethics,
as soon as it was perceived that God is
One, and God is good.
Men were told that they must put away
their sins. We do not need just here to dis
cuss the nature of sin, or the theory of its
connections in the universe, interesting
though it would be to do so. But we have
to do with it here, because it is so tremen
dous an element in the relation between
God and men. When we study sociological
ethics, we meet with crime, and vice ; but
when we come to the deepest ethics, the
ethics of the soul in its relation to God,
we encounter sin. God encounters sin
when he seeks to fulfil the destiny of his
children. It is the thing that resists him,
not merely in the manner of inertia, but
more in the manner of wilfulness. It
includes vice and crime, and much that
is neither. It is the choice and habit, the
will and character, by which the ideal of

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 77
the conceiving Spirit is rejected, and his
purpose is resisted. In this definition I
have intentionally spoken of it not in
terms of religion or revelation, but in
terms of the organized and meaningful
world. It is often assumed that the evo
lutionary view of the world has no place
for sin, which indeed is a thing uncounted
upon outside the realm of religion. But
only suppose a conceiving Spirit, in whom
the moral ideals of personal existence are
present and to whom they are dear, and
the thing that we call sin can be under
stood. Suppose that in seeking to bring
his spiritual offspring along the road of
life to their appropriate destiny in fellow
ship with himself, he finds himself resisted
by them. The blameworthiness of their
resistance varies, and he always judges it
righteously, but it exists; there is real
responsibility and real blame in them.
They cling to what was blameless or even
normal once, in lower stages, and insist
12

178 THE MORAL EFFECT
upon keeping it on beyond its day, to cor
rupt and spoil a higher state of being.
They love what is inferior, and cleave to
what is unworthy of them, and will have
none of that higher life which is dear to
him who created them for himself. This
blameworthy resistance to the upward
movement which is dear to the creative
Spirit, is just as intelligible in an unfold
ing world as it is in the realm of religion.
To the Mind that conceived the universe,
as well as to the God of Christianity, the
thing that is spoiling his offspring must be
hateful. And so sin is a reality in the
world, and its hostility to the ruling end
and purpose of existence is the point of
evil in it, whether God be thought of as
the God of evolution or as the God of
salvation. In the presence of sin, the God of evo
lution and the God of salvation are one.
The one thing clear and certain is, that
God must be against sin, in his attitude

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 79
of mind and in the administration of the
world. He is against it because it is
against him. It opposes him in the fulfil
ment of his creative purpose, and therefore
he opposes it. Hence we are not surprised
to hear the voice going forth with tremen
dous energy, telling men that if they are
to have to do with God they must put
away their sins. This is the voice of
moral nature and necessity, and it cannot
be silent. It is the voice of righteousness
and of love. It is the voice of a Saviour.
Notice now the form in which for a long
time this appeal of God to men was made,
— or, in other words, the mode of entrance
of the doctrine of God to the field of
ethics. The appeal was long made prin
cipally in the form of command.
This was naturally the first form; the
divine sends its requirements down to the
human. The will of God must be obeyed,
and it is made known in commandments,

l8o THE MORAL EFFECT
mediated usually through messengers.
This was the instinctive first thought
when men began to think of dealings be
tween themselves and higher powers, and
this was the thought and feeling of the
religious Hebrew spirit. The kingly idea
was dominant, in association with the idea
of transcendence. God was above all.
From the heavens he looked down upon
the earth. It was as a king that he sat
above, "a great king, above all gods." It
is true that he visited the earth, as when
he came down in power and glory at Mount
Sinai. It is true also that his voice was
heard on earth, in the thunder, and that
men said, " The whole earth is full of Thy
riches: the Lord of hosts is with us, the
God of Jacob is our refuge." Neverthe
less, God was predominantly the king,
ruhng above, uttering law, claiming obe
dience, and sending to the world by the
hand of messengers the spoken will of a
sovereign.

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD l8l
When I say that for long the best reli
gion in the world was cast in this mould
of sovereignty and commandment, I mean
more than that men guessed at the truth
thus. I mean that God was willing to be
known thus. God was moving toward
men, as well as men toward God, to the
end that they might know him better. But
his approach to men must be made in
forms that they could profit by. The kingly
conception of God was partial, but was
not untrue. It represented a great truth,
and represented it effectively, — the truth
of his greatness and his rightful supremacy.
It was right, therefore, as well as natural,
that rehgion should for the time be cast in
the mould of royalty, and the idea of sov
ereign authority should be at the front.
With the idea of sovereign authority went
the idea of commands as from a king, and
the idea of obedience, such as loyal men
give to their rightful rulers. Thus came
together this group of kindred ideas : God

1 82 THE MORAL EFFECT
sits as king over the world; God rules
by law ; God brings or sends his messages
of law to men; men learn their duty
through God's commanding them; men
must obey God's commands.
Thus, by the way of law and command
ment, religion entered the field of ethics,
and the conception of God became effec
tive in morals. A natural result was
that the commands were largely prohibi
tions. This is the way of governments.
To this day, on the statute books of
states, law touches ordinary conduct
mainly by way of prohibition, or else of
limitation and restraint, which is partial
prohibition. God's voice was oftenest
heard saying, "Thou shalt not." Posi
tive requirements were added, and the
constructive element was not absent from
this scheme of command for human duty,
and yet the tone of the whole system in
clined to the cautionary and prohibitive,
and in the great system of commands the

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD lS$
course of action was guarded more than it
was inspired, protected from evil more
than it was filled with good.
When religion struck into ethics through
commands from the divine king, the effect
could not fail to be very great. This ap
peal is very powerful, — God is worthy,
God is sovereign, God commands. Its
influence reaches far through the ages, as
it has a right to do. The system of com
mands has the great practical advantage
of being compact, convenient, and intel
ligible, and the graces of reverence, hu
mility, and obedience are fostered by it.
I have not time to speak of the abuse of
the method, and the injury to ethics and
religion at once, that came in through
the misjudgments of Pharisaism. In
stead, I must follow the method of
sovereignty and commandment into Chris
tianity, and trace its influence upon ethics
in the world with which we are all
familiar

1 84 THE MORAL EFFECT
I need not remind my auditors that in
the history of Christianity itself the regal
idea of God has been extremely influential.
In the first place, it is matter of record that
Christianity itself very early came to be
regarded by many of its adherents as essen
tially a law, like that of the Old Testa
ment, — a law that differed from the older
one mainly in that it was more spiritual in
its requirements, and was accompanied by
power to get itself obeyed. But in an
other way the kingly idea of God has
found large expression and exerted long
influence, namely, through schemes of
doctrine that have sovereignty for their
centre. Only see how abundant was the ma
terial, in Christian times, for the forma
tion of such a system. Here was the
Hebrew idea, rendered permanent by the
sacredness of the Hebrew scriptures, of
God as reigning in glorious sovereignty
over all. Here was the current philo-

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 85
sophical idea of God as transcendent, not
inhabiting the world, but separate from it
and governing it from without. Here was
the Christian idea of God as infinitely
good, and as entertaining from eternity the
thoughts of saving grace toward sinful
humanity. And here is the constructional
idea, if I may call it so, that a perfect
king cannot reign without perfect system,
in which everything is planned and de
creed beforehand, and comes to pass in
complete accordance with the original in
tention. Ideas so harmonious as these do
certainly seem foreordained to come to
gether, bone to his bone, and form a great
theory of divine operation, in which all
things shall stand forth consistent, straight
forward, exceptionless. According to the
scheme that is thus suggested, God is so
far above that men cannot hope to under
stand him. God is absolute sovereign,
giving account of none of his matters, and
under obligation to none of his creatures.

1 86 THE MORAL EFFECT
As he must in his perfection, he does all
things according to unalterable decrees,
held fast by him from all eternity. Ac
cording to these decrees all things occur.
God's sovereign purpose of undeserved
saving grace to sinful men is the crown
ing purpose of them all, and the execu
tion of it conforms perfectly in extent and
method to the foreordained form of it in his
mind. Men have freedom of action only
within narrow limits, if indeed they have
it at all, and there is only one thoroughly
effective will in the universe, the will of
God. And God is altogether good, his
will is right and worthy, and whether his
work is understood or not, he is to be
absolutely trusted as one that has reasons
sufficient for all that he brings to pass and
all that he requires of men. This doc
trine, for substance, is Augustinianism ;
this doctrine, in its later and riper form, is
Calvinism. Straightforward logic is its
servitor, and its premises contain the po-

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 87
tency and promise of its conclusions. So
strong a system could not fail of wide and
powerful influence in the world.
I do not present Calvinism in order to
attack it or defend it, but only because it
offers one of the greatest illustrations of
the moral effect of the doctrine of God.
Calvinism, or the consistent regal doctrine
of God, obtained the firm and unswerving
loyalty of a multitude of the best men and
women. It was not mere assent, it was
loyalty. Honest, conscientious, devoted
souls in great numbers accepted this view
of God, and took it into heart and life.
With them it was no matter of cool opin
ion ; it was absolute, eternal truth. Their
own experience confirmed it, too ; for they
had passed through an agony concerning
the destiny of their souls, and had found
peace to themselves only when they took
God's sovereignty for true, and bowed in
absolute submission and self -surrender be
fore him who could justly dispose of them

1 88 THE MORAL EFFECT
exactly as he pleased. Who does not see
the tremendous ethical power of such a
system ? The ethics of Calvinism was very
simple. God must be absolutely obeyed.
In the thoughts of the heart and the deeds
of the life, God must be honored, adored,
obeyed with absolute submission. No
creature has a moment's right to think his
own thoughts against the thoughts of God,
or do his own will against the will of God.
His commands are final, and man's great
duty is intelligently to know his will and
unquestioningly to do it. Study, O man,
to know what God would have thee do,
and then put the whole force of thy being
into the loyal doing or enduring of his
righteous pleasure. He cannot do wrong,
and thou canst not do right, save in bow
ing to his sovereignty.
A noble type of character thus comes
into existence. All purity here finds en
couragement. Firmness, resoluteness, self-
abnegation, surrender, are here glorified.

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 89
Intelligence is not repressed. The entire
personal force of the soul is wakened up,
to fight if need be, but with or without a
struggle to give itself away to God. Some
graces of character would not seem at home
here; yet it would be vain to deny that
sooner or later all the Christian graces
have grown and thriven, more or less
freely, under this influence. In Calvin
ism God lays his heavy hand upon the
judgment, the conscience, and the affec
tions of men, and claims them for himself,
and man as a moral being walks as a cap
tive in God's splendid triumph, — cower
ing sometimes, but often with head erect
and heart exultant. Simply because he
has bowed to God and owned himself a
captive, he can hold his head erect, and
be thankful that he is strong to serve his
Master. To him it is right that he should
be saved, since this is the eternal will of
God; and he can most freely and gladly
use all his powers in grateful consecration

190 THE MORAL EFFECT
to the God who has loved him with an
everlasting love. Here is the glorification
of the kingly. And yet Calvinism, per
haps, has broken as many hearts as it has
nerved. Fresh truths from God do not wait, for
their coming into the world, until men
know themselves ready to receive them.
If they did, they would never come. God
sends his fresh truth, and then it has to
make its way. Old truth, less advanced
and perfect, is already in the field, well
known and well established, and the new
may be long in finding welcome. It will
be considered dangerous at first, because
it proposes methods and appeals that the
old has not used, and men will long regard
with suspicion and dread that higher truth
by which God is seeking to do better for
them than he has ever done before. Such
is the way of humanity. God in his kind
ness does not wait till men know them-

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 19 1
selves in need of a higher gift. He
sends the truth out among them, to
win its slow welcome by proving itself
divine. In the part of mankind to which he
came, Jesus Christ found the regal idea
of God dominant. God, it was thought,
was above the world; with the great mass
of men he communicated by sending mes
sages through others ; and human duty was
made known mainly through command
ments which had the force of law, and in
obedience to which men might find eternal
life. I know that these statements need
some qualification, for in the religion of the
Old Testament God was recognized as pres
ent in nature and the events of life, and
some men knew the experience of deep
spiritual fellowship with him. Yet the gen
eral statement is true, that when Jesus ap
peared, the frame and structure of religion
was built on the foundation of regalism
and legalism, rather than upon any other.

192 THE MORAL EFFECT
Jesus Christ found the regal idea of God
dominant, and brought, as God's better
gift, the paternal idea. It was not un
known before, but he introduced it, in the
sense that he gave the living illustration
of what it meant, and laid it, in God's
name, as the true foundation for the frame
and structure of religion. From his time
on, the religion that struck in with the
keynote of his influence made less of the
kingly, and more of the fatherly, in God.
This is Christ's doctrine. All turning
"back to Christ" means return to the
glorious beginnings of the doctrine of di
vine paternity. In our time the fatherly
element is put forward in Christian teach
ing more than ever, and is winning its
way through Christian thought and life as
a formative idea. Its movement shows no
signs of reversal or retreat.
What is the proper ethical effect of this
paternal view of God ? What is to be ex-

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 93
pected from it in the field of morals ? It
has shared the fate of higher gifts in gen
eral, for it has been welcomed as the surest
means of bringing the days of heaven
upon the earth, and at the same time
viewed with suspicion, and condemned as
a doctrine of indifferentism, fatal to all
high ethics. The hope and the fear, the
welcome and the rejection, are both quite
intelligible, but both cannot be justified by
the real nature of the doctrine, and both
cannot last. What is the state of the case ?
Which ought to survive? What is the
normal effect in the field of ethics of that
doctrine of fatherhood and sonship which
has been maintained in these lectures, —
the doctrine that all men are created sons
of God by being created by him in his own
likeness, that God's relation and feeling
toward men are essentially paternal, but
that men need to become full sons to God
by loyally acknowledging him as Father,
and becoming transformed into the like-
13

194 THE MORAL EFFECT
ness of his character? What is such a
doctrine of God as this adapted to do for
morals ?
I would open the answer to this question
by noting that the fatherly relation does
not by any means exclude the idea of
authority, or dispense with the service of
commands, which are so convenient and
efficacious for the purposes of moral influ
ence. Has not a father authority ? In fact,
a father is the very one who does possess
authority, and possess it by the very na
ture of the case, without the need of any
arbitrary arrangement to invest him with
it. A father's authority is natural and
ungiven, while a king's is not. God as
our Father has a far more intimate and
penetrating authority upon us than God
regarded as our king. And a father's
authority may surely find expression in
commands, that represent his will for the
children whom he loves. No true paternal

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 195
doctrine of God weakens his authority, or
stills the voice of his commanding. Nor,
on the other side, does the fatherly rela
tion provide any less room for obedience
on the children's part. Obedience is the
natural correlative to authority, and is
most natural where authority is most nat
ural. The normal field for obedience is
first the family, and obedience to God our
Father takes precedence, in the order of
nature, of obedience to God our king.
When the fatherly relation is rightly
understood, authority and obedience, so
far from being discredited, have now for
the first time come to their own place and
found their permanent standing.
The kingly conception of God has been
accompanied by a vivid sense of his oppo
sition to sin. Does the fatherly concep
tion imply less opposition to sin on his
part ? A thousand times, no. It is often
supposed that the regal or judicial relation
of God to men implies strict and faithful

196 THE MORAL EFFECT
hatred of men's evil, while the parental
relation stands for softness, indulgence,
and comparative moral indifference. But
nothing could be more untrue. Who feels
the criminal's sin and shame more keenly,
— the judge who passes sentence on him, or
the parents who gave him life ? In human
affairs the judicial relation to sin or crime
is more visible, external, formal, dramatic,
but the parental relation to the sinner or
criminal is natural, vital, heart-constrain
ing, and so, when parents are good, the
parental hatred and grief at the sinner's
sin is terrible, heart-breaking, intolerable.
The regal conception of G od affords more
vivid pictorial views of condemnation, just
because it does not go so deep into the
heart; but it does not compare with the
paternal conception in power to set forth
God's essential, unalterable, inexpressible
hatred of sin in human beings. Can any
one doubt it when the fact is so simple
and so natural? God hates human sin,

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 97
because it is evil in itself, but he hates it
also because it is spoiling his children. It
is breaking up his family. It is the one
thing that abidingly resists his desire to
possess the filial love of his own, and to
bring his children up to their destiny.
Therefore he desires to deliver his chil
dren from it, and acts upon this desire.
Accordingly, the paternal relation sur
passes all others in the joy and satisfaction
over the attainment of goodness that it
affords. The delight of good parents in
their children's goodness is such delight
as is possible nowhere else. If you wish
intelligently to conceive of God as rejoic
ing over the goodness of men who have
become good, you must think of him as
their Father, loving them as his own, and
now glorying in the possession of his own
offspring in spiritual fellowship. In the
parables of the Master, there was gladness
when the woman found her lost money,
and when the shepherd found his stray

198 THE MORAL EFFECT
sheep, but there was deeper joy when the
wandering son came home.
In the hght of these facts, — the pres
ence in the paternal relation of authority
and obedience, and of hatred toward sin
and delight in goodness, — we may judge
whether this relation implies any less
strictness in moral demand on the part of
God than the kingly relation. Those who
dread the moral effect of the paternal idea
dread it mainly on this ground. Children
are allowed to have their own way. Now
adays parental restraints are little regarded.
Bad youths may be afraid of the law, when
their fathers and mothers have little influ
ence over them. To call God a father, it
is feared, may be to enthrone indulgent
kindness as the ruling motive in his deal
ings with men ; or at least the danger that
it may be taken so is greater than any ad
vantage in the fatherly conception. Yet
this objection, common though it is among

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 1 99
Christians, is not quite worthy of Christian
judgment and feeling. We are not intro
ducing a new idea when we speak of
divine paternity. Christ is our authority.
We all pray, as he taught us, and teach
the little ones to pray, " Our Father who
art in heaven." When Jesus bade us pray
thus, he did not mean that God was a
foolish father, without holy aims and fam
ily discipline. He was not encouraging us
to suppose that God would give us our
own way to our own injury, or that we
could impose upon him by our wilfulness.
God is the one perfect Father, and an ideal
father is the very one who has the pro
foundest motive to be strict and steady in
moral requirement. There are good gov
ernmental motives to moral strictness, but
they do not go so deep as the family mo
tives. Always must a true father require
the best from his children, seeing that he
desires the best for them. And, as a
matter of present fact, solemn and stern

200 THE MORAL EFFECT
proceedings are perpetually going on be
tween our Father and ourselves, in that
invisible realm of spirit-life in which even
now we are all living. Upon every one
of us is now exerted the stern and unalter
able demand of God, who has made us for
himself. God's moral sequences, though
invisible, are as invariable as his physical,
and his moral government, just because it
is family government, holds immovably
the requirement that we shall be true chil
dren to our holy Father. In no other way
can we prosper. The inexorable demand
of God is upon us, that we be true sons
to him. Unless we do this, moral welfare
is to us forever impossible. Sonship, let
us remember, though we are born to it,
is not complete until with our own co
operation we have been delivered from
evil and brought to bear our Father's moral
likeness. Our Father holds us immovably
to this condition, and will make it well
with us never, except as his own yearning

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 201
heart has its way, and we come to live as
loyal children at home with him.
Yet all this holy strictness and wise
severity, how different a thing it is in the
family from what it is before the throne,
where we stand not as children but as sub
jects! How different when there is a
natural relation back of it, from what it
is when separated from the heart-constrain
ing bond ! Here we touch upon the great
ethical advantage of the family relation
between God and men, when once it is
rightly apprehended. God has toward us
the feelings of a father. This great fact
is the foundation of the meaning of our
life, and the manifold effects of it are far
beyond my present power to mention.
The marvellous combination of hating the
sin and loving the sinner is to us almost
an unlearnable spiritual art, but so far as
it is learned at all on earth it is mostly
learned by parents. But this is to God
our Father an unacquired and eternal spir-

202 THE MORAL EFFECT
itual nature, and the blessing of it is ours.
In the family relation all commands are
commands of one to whom we are infi
nitely dear, all strictness is for the sake of
our Father's final satisfaction in us, and
all severity is severity of love. In the
family relation there is opened to us all the
fulness of an infinite patience, bearing with
our faults until they can be cured, and all
the wealth of an infinite helpfulness, and
all the warmth of an infinite love. All
these unspeakable gifts are freely ours to
day, and will become fully ours in propor
tion as we rise to the spiritual completion
of our sonship. When we set out for our
home in God, we have two great consola
tions and inspirations. One is, that it
truly is our home, and nature even in
ourselves is on our side; the other, that
we are working with the eternal reality,
and shall not work alone.
But I conceive that the crowning effect
of the true doctrine of God in the field of

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 203
morals is this, — that in the kinship of
man with God there is laid an eternal
foundation for human ethics. What I am
about to say, if I understand it rightly,
may be held up in the hght either of
Christianity or of evolution, and be found
equally at home in either atmosphere.
I have already spoken in these lectures
of the ideals that have found expression in
the unfolding universe as ideals that not
only exist, but are perfectly realized, in
the mind that conceived the universe.
What God has brought forth into being,
I have said, has been progressively more
and more like himself. Thus his work
constantly expresses and represents him.
Last and highest of these creations that
reveal God is that form of being which we
call personality, the fulness and unity of
thought, affection, and will. Personality,
I have insisted, not only belongs to God,
but is perfect in God alone. He is that
perfect person, of whose personality ours

204 THE MORAL EFFECT
is but a "broken light." But now let us
remember that personality is a moral form
of existence; no, it is the moral form of
existence. To all personal being corre
sponds morality. There can be no ethics
where there are not persons, and there can
be no persons without ethics accompany
ing their life. And so God's personality
is an ethical personality as well as man's,
and God has character. But if the ideal
and perfect personality exists in God, the
ideal and perfect character must exist there
also. If he is the ideal person, he must
have the ideal character, or the character
in which personality must find its perfec
tion. It cannot be otherwise than that the
ideal and perfect person bears the charac
ter in which alone personality can be per
fected. Since God is the ideal person,
God must be the ideal of goodness for all
persons. There can be no personality,
ever or anywhere, that does not have
for its ideal of character that goodness

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 205
which is existing in the ideal person, who
is God.
This is a great truth, if it is a truth at
all. It means that for God and men, and
for all spirits whatever, the moral world is
one. The nature of ethics is everywhere
the same, good and evil are universal in
their sweep and unalterable in their
nature, and there is one moral standard
for all. The character that is borne by
God is the ethical ideal for God, and for
us men, and for all spirits that ever ex
isted or may exist. The source and fount
of existence is morally good, and is such
as all spirits ought to be. The true ethics
for men, therefore, is eternally grounded
and sure. The good is likeness to God.
This is the final word, for God is unalter
able, and is the ideal for all personal and
moral existence. No true word can ever
be spoken, in any world, that represents
the good as consisting in anything else
than moral likeness to God. The mani-

206 THE MORAL EFFECT
festation of that standard is the progres
sive work of him in whom it exists, and
conformity to that standard is the one"
hope of men.
The doctrine of the family relation be
tween God and men is simply the practical
and inspiring expression of this sublime
and all-harmonizing ethical reality. God
is the moral standard. The character of
the Father is the standard for the family.
What does that mean to me? I am a
young, weak, and unformed moral being,
embarrassed by ignorance, restrained by
sin, incapable as yet of doing justice in
my life to any high ideal of morality.
But I have at least learned what family I
have been born into, and in what atmos
phere it is my privilege to be growing
up. There is in existence a perfect moral
standard ; and that standard is my Father's
standard, and therefore mine. The kin
ship that I bear to God makes God's ethics
my ethics too, by inalienable right, and

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 207
gives me assurance that I am on the right
and hopeful road when I am rising toward
my best and worthiest. I do not know all
that is in my Father, but I know that my
best is most like to him. In his family
the purest, truest, sweetest human is the
sure foreshining of the divine. Since I
am of God's family, moral obligation is a
part of my being, goodness is my birth
right, which I have but to claim, and the
worthiest that I can learn is most akin to
my eternal ideal which exists in God my
Father. This, I confess, is worth much to me,
for here I have found what many are seek
ing. Students in ethics have searched
through the discoverable stock of infantile
human experiences, seeking for the primal
sources of the moral sense. How in the
early stages of humanity the moral sense
grew up, and the idea of obligation was
developed, they have sought to ascertain
by analysis and guessing and the piecing

208 THE MORAL EFFECT
of facts together. The search is legiti
mate, and the course of the incipient moral
sense and judgment may to a great extent
be traced. Means of development and occa
sions of direction -taking may be found,
and the ethical history of early man may
in great measure be brought to light. But
the inner cause of the moral sense is not
to be tracked out by exploring the infan
tile social relations of primitive man. The
primal cause of the moral sense lies in the
fact that man bears the likeness of God.
From his earliest human moments, man
was akin to the infinite source and ideal of
moral perfection, and it was his nature to
feel like a child of the perfect One, begin
ning afar off to grope after likeness to his
Father. From the first hours of his per
sonality the ethical belonged to his nature
and his life, and his ultimate moral stand
ard was just where it is now and will be
forever, in the character of the perfect
God. So the foundation of ethics is eter-

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 209
nal, and the standard in morals is unalter
able ; and that standard, though not fully
discerned by any of us, is growing clearer,
and our right to claim it as our own is
growing more certain to us, with every
forward step in ethical attainment. The
moral effect of the doctrine of God, thus
presented, is the eternal grounding of
morals for man, and the directing of hu
man ethics to the perfect and unchange
able ideal. This is the noblest service to
ethics that could possibly be rendered.
In these lectures I have endeavored to
show that we cannot refuse to believe in
God as intelligent and as good, without
stultifying our own intellectual and moral
processes; that God, regarded as intelli
gent and good, is personal, in an intelli
gible sense ; that the relation between God
and men is the relation between a father
and his children, — children, however, who
may not know their father, and who need

2IO THE MORAL EFFECT
to advance to the completion of their son-
ship through holy fellowship with God;
and that this conception of God and his re
lation to men is favorable, not unfavorable,
to sound and strong ethics in the world.
My reason for presenting these views
has resided in my strong conviction that
the idea of a living and personal God is
equally at home in science, in philosophy,
and in religion ; and that from whichever
of these fields this idea approaches us, the
true and well-supported conception of God
is the paternal conception. Moreover, I
perceive that through the joint influence
of Christianity and modern knowledge
this paternal conception of God and his
relation to men is now coming to its place
in religion and theology, never again to
retire. The doctrine of divine Father
hood has come, and has come to stay.
Doubtless it is a doctrine that is easily
misunderstood and easily misused. But
I am well convinced that it is the doctrine

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 211
of Jesus Christ and of all permanent Chris
tianity, and that at the same time it is in
genuine harmony with the characteristic
knowledge and thinking of the present
age. It is not destined to be displaced by
an advance in religion, or by an advance
in science, or by an advance in philosophy,
or by an advance in ethics. There is no
advance beyond it. It is the true doc
trine, and will remain. It has not yet had
the opportunity to show what type of char
acter it will bring forth in men who are
fearlessly taught it from their youth, and
live all their days in its atmosphere. But
it is adapted to produce the very noblest
moral fruit; and before it has had even
half as much time as has been given to the
kingly doctrine of God to show of what
ethical power it is, it will vindicate itself
by disappointing fears and more than fulfil
ling hopes, and training godlike character.
I have desired to be helpful in clarify
ing and thereby commending this most

212 THE MORAL EFFECT
solid and beneficent doctrine, and there
fore I have framed these lectures. At the
end of our quest, however, rises the ques
tion, how far a doctrine is necessarily a
power. It looks, when once one gets a
vision of the truth, as if a clear and spir
itual doctrine of God ought fairly to
sweep the field in ethics, and transform
us promptly into faithful children of our
holy Father. But it does not always turn
out in that manner. Good doctrines of
ethics are often taught, but they do not
always make good men of students, or of
teachers either. Even this high doctrine of
the living, personal, and paternal God,
of the naturalness of religion, of the unity
of human ethics with divine, and of the
everlasting validity of morals, may, like
any other doctrine, be a word of breath
but not of power. No opinion studied
out is necessarily influential in transform
ing character, — not even a noble opinion
about God and our normal life with him.

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 213
What we need is not merely the moral
influence of the doctrine of God ; it is the
moral influence of God. We want the
relation to be realized in life, and the gra
cious moral effect of the sonship to be
brought forth in fact. The proper inter
mediary, or connecting link, between a
true conception of God and the moral
power that corresponds thereto is religion,
the actual personal life of man in conscious
relation to the God in whom he believes.
When one has a right conception of God
the Father, gracious and holy, exacting,
inspiring, and transforming, the next thing
is to take him as Father, and let the relation
do its transforming work. Let this never
be forgotten. We may light-heartedly
boast that God is our Father, and be ready
to go our way in shallow peace; but the
question, "What kind of son are you to
him, then ? " ought to recall us to our
senses. That is always a fair question.
One who claims God as Father, thereby

214 THE MORAL EFFECT
admits his duty to be toward God a loyal
son, and ought to be living up to that
duty. It is through the practice and ex
perience of loyal sonship that the moral
influence of the paternal doctrine of God
is to become effective upon us. Liv
ing at home with the holy God as sons,
we shall receive the benefit of his trans
forming power.
So it is well to proclaim the divine
Fatherhood in its fulness and its searching
power, and make it as plain and impres
sive as we can, and keep it year after year
before the people ; not merely in order that
men may think correctly about it, but in
the hope that they may at length take it
for true, and claim their filial place. We
want to lead God's sons up into possession
of their full spiritual sonship. We would
gladly bring them out of their sin and igno
rance and alienation, home to their glory.
We want all filial acts of all sorts to be
performed and to become habitual, one if

OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 21 5
not another, of this kind if not of that;
we will be thankful for all acts and for
any, in which men conduct themselves in
the spirit of sons to God. We desire to
see the human sonship completed in every
soul that God has made, through holy,
loyal fellowship with the Father. It is
well, therefore, to be telling men of the
relation that we desire to see fulfilled.
As for those who fear the doctrine lest it
weaken morals and rehgion, and those
who welcome it as a doctrine of ease and
lazy hope, both classes misunderstand it,
and we must help them to see it as it is.
In all such endeavor we are laboring to
gether with God, who desires his children
to know their relation to him, in order that
they may humbly enter into it in its ful
ness and grow up to their proper destiny
there. The mightiest moral force in the
world is God himself, working for the ful
filment of his own gracious counsel for his
human family.

OTHER BOOKS BY DR. CLARKE.
What Shall We Think of
Christianity?
THE LEVERING LECTURES BEFORE THE
IOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 1899.
BY
WILLIAM NEWTON CLARKE, D.D.
Professor of Theology at Colgate
University, Hamilton, New York.

12mo  $1.00.

I TOOK up this new volume, " What Shall We Think
of Christianity? " expecting much from any new con
tribution from the pen of the author of " An Outline
of Christian Theology." It has more than fulfilled the
expectations which it aroused. It seems to me an ad
mirable statement, not only of the fundamental princi
ples, but also of the essential spirit of Christianity. —
Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., LL.D.

Dr. Clarke has a singular grasp on theological learn
ing, with an utter absence of theological terminology.
This helps him with non-theological readers. These
lectures are fine examples of candid, devout thinking.
We commend them to thoughtful readers as of excep
tional value. Dr. Clarke represents the best elements

WHAT SHALL WE THINK OF CHRISTIANITY'
of devout liberalism in religion, and deserves study from
those who would keep in touch even with ideas which
they do not themselves hold. — The Christian Index,
Atlanta, Ga.
This volume contains three lectures, dealing respec
tively with "The Christian People," "The Christian
Doctrine," and " The Christian Power." It is a brief
but full apology for Christianity. We would specially
commend to our readers the statement in the third lec
ture of what it means to say Christianity is true. — The
Spectator, London.

It cannot but be recognized as a singularly beautiful
and powerful statement of the essentials of the Christian
religion, clothed in an exquisite simplicity of form and
language, while its crystal clearness of thought leads
the reader deep into the ^ieart of the very truth itself.
— The Christian Advocate.

They are the addresses of a cultured man to cultured
hearers ; they are intent on what is essential and vital ;
they deal with facts rather than theories ; the note of
realism is heard throughout. — The Outlook.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
Publishers,
153-157 Fifth Avenue . . NEW YORK.