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IS THE NEW THEOLOGY
CHRISTIAN

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IS THE
NEW THEOLOGY
CHRISTIAN

BV
HAKLUYT -EGERTON
AUTHOR OF "PATRIOTISM," "a PLEA FOR CHURCH SCHOOLS," ETC., ETC.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & SONS
156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1907
[All rights reserved]

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Printed by Ballantvnh, Hanson &* Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Introduction  i
I. The Re-statement of the Christian Message 19
II. The Nature of Religion  29
III. Mr. Campbell's Doctrine of God and the
World  37
The Existence of God .... 39
God and the Universe . . . . 81
Note. — Creation and Love . . .100
God and Man  103
Note. — The New Theology as the Re
ligion of Science . . .108
„ The Self-Limitation of God . 108
Conclusion  109
Pantheism  115
The Immanence of God . . . .118
Individual Immortality .... 121
The Practical Value of the New The
ology  127
IV. The Person and Work of our Lord . . 133
The Person of our Lord .... 135
Is the New Theology Unitarian? . . 139
The Doctrine of the Trinity ... 142
Sin  146
Atonement  149
The Uniqueness of our Lord . . . 155
The Adequacy of Mr. Campbell's Christ
ology  160
Is the New Theology Christian? . . 166
V. The Church  171

INTRODUCTION

The following are the Author's principal conclusions : —
(i) Mr. Campbell's New Theology is a non-
Christian system of doctrine, which
borrows from Christian thought only
certain illustrations (pp. i6'6— 168).
(2) The central conception ofthe New Theology
can be held reasonably — up to a certain
point — only if developed into a non-
Theistic philosophy (pp. 1 11— 115).
Note. — The passages quoted are taken from Mr. Campbell's book,
" The New Theology."

IS THE NEW THEOLOGY
CHRISTIAN *
INTRODUCTION I
This little book is not an answer to the New
Theology, but a comment upon it. Adequately
to answer that adventurous thought would involve
counter-construction — the exposition of an alter
native system — and in the following pages my
primary purpose is not expository but critical.
Mr. Campbell has said many things that those
who have not left the older ways of thought find
repellent, and some that others — not less familiar
than he with the world's new fashions — think
mischievously mistaken. The book in which these
things have been said one cannot praise, but the
significant event is — not that these things have
been unworthily said, but that they have been said
and welcomed. Mr. Campbell speaks primarily for
himself, and for himself alone ; but he is a promi
nent preacher ; he utters boldly what many have
been less extravagantly thinking ; and among his
readers are many whose incipient humanism has
already predisposed them to neology.

2 INTRODUCTION
Moreover, some of us, who are not in the least
attracted by Mr. Campbell's reconstruction, believe
that, in one important particular of his message,
he has told the Christian world a truth which it
needed to be told.
We are persuaded that a great deal of ordinary
Christian teaching is deplorably out of touch with
the world's actual life. Not only is its ethical
witness feeble and obscure, but it does not ade
quately take account of those increasing proba
bilities which are the characteristic contribution of
modern times to the general body of the world's
knowledge. Its apologetic lags behind the doubt
it is supposed to refute : its presentation of the
Christian essentials is disfigured by crudities that
provoke to unbelief, and is encumbered by acces
sories that increasing numbers reasonably reject.
There is therefore, we think, urgent need for
a readjustment of the Christian message, for a
re-statement of Christian truth. The old theology
must renew its life by contact with the present
needs of men and their actual knowledge. It need
not forget its past, it may not forget the unchang
ing revelation it safeguards and sets forth, but it
dare no longer stand aloof from the intellectual
progress of men. The world has changed much
in nineteen hundred years. Its needs, indeed,
remain essentially the same, and to those un
changed needs the unchanged Christ is adequate —
not less so' to-day than when the earliest evangel
proclaimed Him to be the effectual power of God.
But, since the preaching of that first evangel, man
has more widely explored his physical environment
and more critically examined his own past, and

INTRODUCTION 3
has thereby grown into a new way of looking at
things. His thought is to-day governed by new
probabilities, which constitute a new criterion of
reasonableness, and have made incredible (or hardly
credible) many things that were aforetime generally
received. An increasing number of earnest men
can no longer use the Old Testament as our fathers
used it, or even as St. Paul used it, and find not
unreasonable difficulty in accepting a theology
moulded to beliefs that no longer seem to them
true. It were easy to assert that these new proba
bilities are merely probabilities, and to contrast the
impregnable rock of Christian revelation with the
ever-changing tides and currents of human opinion.
But this would involve a sceptical view of history
for which few are prepared. The progress of the
world has not been, wholly material. We know
more than the men of old knew. It may be that
we are as far as they from a complete philosophy ;
but, at least, the atmosphere of thought has become
clearer. Schools of thought have arisen and
declined, opinions have swayed backwards and
forwards between widely separate extremes, well-
accredited solutions have become discredited, and
old problems have revived — nothing seems final,
nothing seems secure, and yet, through all the
seeming confusion, there has been a real advance,
for a new and more reasonable conception of the
world and of life has been gradually wrought out.
But this conception, it may be said, is merely
probable. No, it is more probable — probabilior —
and, because more probable, it is normal for our
thinking.

4 INTRODUCTION
I am not advocating a new idolatry of the
Zeit-Geist. Not everything put forth in the name
of modern knowledge is true. Sometimes the
new conception shaped for us by the progress of
thought and inquiry is developed into dogmatic
constructions — such, for instance, as Professor
Haeckel's — which no Christian thinker can accept,
but these illegitimate developments do not invali
date the conception they misrepresent. That
conception — that Welt-Anschauung — remains, I
think, more probable, and, if we desire to com
mend the Christian message to the mind of the
modern world, we must readjust it to the new
criterion of reasonableness which that conception
establishes. The Christian revelation is, indeed, unchanging,
but Christian teaching is not unchanging. It has
been shaped by various interests, adapted to various
modes of thought, and, in its effort to set forth
the Christian message reasonably, has lawfully
made use of many conceptions that are not part
of that message. These interpretative accessories
have served their purpose well, but some have
become obsolete. They no longer help us to
apprehend for ourselves the revelation of God.
Rather do they interpose difficulties, and throw a
shadow of unreasonableness over the Faith they
once sufficingly explained.
The time, then, has come for a new criticism
of accessories — of the instrumental conceptions
whereby we seek to commend the Gospel to the
minds of men ; and Mr. Campbell's insistence
upon this — although not always the manner thereof
— should be counted to him for righteousness.

INTRODUCTION 5
There can, I think, be no doubt that many are
thus far in agreement with Mr. Campbell, but this
agreement does not infer acceptance of the New
Theology. To me, indeed, that particular re-state
ment of the Christian message seems radically
false. The judgment is severe, but (I hope) not
uncharitable, and in the following pages I submit,
for the consideration of those interested in Christian
thought, the reasons that have led me to it.
II
(a) The notes to which these lines are intro
ductory are primarily critical, and, in so far as they
are critical, they are dialectical.
I am not unmindful of the text, Non in dialectica
complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum, and I do
not suggest that logic can furnish the content of
religious faith. To suppose that it can do this
were wholly to mistake the function of logic, and
would lead us towards the characteristic error of
rationalism. Reality, whether spiritual or natural,
is always a datum — a thing given — and our appre
hension of it in experience is independent of logic,
and antecedes inference. But over all explana
tory thought logic is supreme. In explanation we
attempt to make something — the explicandum —
intelligible. All explanation is an appeal to reason,
and must be judged by the canons of reason — that
is, by logic. Indeed, the characteristic function
of logic, when in the presence of a proffered ex
planation, is to judge of its reasonableness. An
unreasonable explanation — one that involves
invalid conceptions, or unsound processes of

6 INTRODUCTION
thought — is not an explanation, but only a pre
tended explanation.
Now, Mr. Campbell's New Theology — be it true
or false— is distinctively an explanatory system.
He attempts to re-state the Christian message in
terms of " monistic idealism," and this attempt
naturally suggests three inevitable questions : —
(i) Is the Christian message faithfully re-pre
sented in Mr. Campbell's re-statement ?
(2) Is monistic idealism true ?
(3) Are the articles of the New Theology
severally consistent with monistic idealism ?
I have designated these questions inevitable,
and, sooner or later, if discussion continue, they
will be found to Tbe so. They can be answered
only by logical criticism.
(b) But, although the following notes be
primarily critical, they include certain positive
conceptions which seem to me important, not
only for Christian apologetic, but also for the
right understanding of the Christian religion and
of Christian history. I do not now propose to
discuss those conceptions — to do so adequately
would change the character of this book — but it
may be convenient if I here resume them.1
(1) Religion exists because of human need. In
every place, and at every stage of human develop
ment, men have felt the need of helpful relations
with Nature, or with some supposed or actual
powers or Power in or beyond Nature. These
relations have been desired and sought because
1 They are more fully set out in my New Way in Apologetic.

INTRODUCTION 7
man has discovered in his environment some real
or apparent "unfriendliness" which menaces his
life, or his purposeful endeavour, or both. Some
times the menace, be it then real or supposed,
threatens only the savage industry of savage life ;
sometimes it does but reflect the fears awakened
by the mysteries of an unexplored world wherein
man had not yet found himself at home. At
other times it arises out of the contradiction
between man's sovereign vocation to righteous
ness and the seemingly non-moral world wherein
that vocation — if it be not ignored — must be
followed. Religion exists to overcome this real
or apparent unfriendliness, and, in all its forms —
alike in savage wizardry and' in the Christian
Eucharist — it discloses or establishes (or purports
to disclose or establish) relations between man
and his environment which overcome that un
friendliness. The "objective aspect" of religion
is constituted by the practices (ethical or ritual)
and beliefs which establish or disclose (or purport
to establish or disclose) those helpful relations.
The "subjective aspect" is constituted by the
inner disposition which accepts and uses the
mediating apparatus of the objective aspect.
It follows from this that religion is not co
terminous with "theolatry" — the worship of God.
Art, philosophy, and science may severally dis
charge religious functions, and may severally
constitute the " objective aspect " of genuine re
ligions. Even Professor Haeckel's Monism may
be a genuine religion.
But no merely " natural " religion can be com
pletely adequate to man's higher religious needs,

8 INTRODUCTION
because none of the "natural" means whereby
man explores his environment — neither philo
sophy, nor science, nor art — can adequately
overcome the contradiction between man's moral
vocation and the seemingly non-moral katabolism
of his world. That contradiction can be ade
quately overcome only by revelation. A "natural "
religion may, indeed, reach the truth, but cannot,
by itself, finally establish its own truthfulness.
An adequate revelation will not only disclose the
truth, but will enable man sufficingly to trust it.
This is precisely what the Christian religion does.
(2) The Christian religion has its ground in the
revelation given once for all in and through the
Incarnate Life, wherein and whereby God made
known to men that He is Love. By this revela
tion the contradiction apparent between man's
moral vocation and his natural environment is
conclusively overcome, for, if God (Who created
both man and the world) be indeed Love, we
may be certain that He will not frustrate the
hope that He has Himself quickened, and that
He has not foredoomed us — who are the work
of His hand, and, therefore, of His Love — to final
disappointment. The ultimate ground of the Christian religion
is not in the teaching of Christ but in His Person,
and the faith which apprehends that Person is the
subjective aspect of that religion. The ultimate
ground of our confidence that God is Love, that
Reality is neither neutral nor unfriendly, is not
in the words and example of our Lord, but in
the fact that He Who is eternally God became

INTRODUCTION 9
Incarnate, and not only gave us the witness of
words and deeds, but also suffered ignominious
death — all to make us know that God is Love.
(3) The Divine co-efficient in Christ, which
makes His Person a conclusive revelation, is not
patent to ordinary observation, but, as in the
beginning, is only to be apprehended by an act
of faith — an act which is also an act of inter
pretation. In the first believers this interpreting
and accepting faith was awakened by personal
intercourse with our Lord : in later generations it
has been awakened by an equivalent experience,
which — at least, after its first beginnings — is nor
mally an experience within the Christian society.
That experience is characteristically an experience
of grace — of grace which is operative unto the
renewing of our lives and unto an apprehension of
Christ therewith concomitant. Did that renewal
stand .alone, as an ethical process within our
selves, it might but accentuate the contradiction of
Nature against our moral vocation, but our con
comitant apprehension of the Christian revelation
overcomes the contradiction, and quickens us
into " sure and certain hope."
(4) The characteristic note of the Christian
religion is " acceptance of Christ," by faith. Now,
faith — which comes to its completeness in love — is
the soul's natural response to gifts that make for
life. Our Christian faith is our natural response
to that renewal of life which comes to us from
our experience of grace within the Christian
society — the Spirit-bearing body.

10 INTRODUCTION
The Christian Church has a twofold vocation : —
(i) To set forth the Christian revelation.
(2) To edify the hearts of men into an effectual
apprehension of that revelation.
The revelation itself has been given once for
all, but we do not apprehend it once for all. The
experience wherein we apprehend our Lord is
normally a progressive and continuous experience,
and, to those whose experience is what it ought
to be, the revelation of God is daily renewed, in
hearts that are themselves daily renewed.
(5) The Christian life — the life into which we
are edified by our experience within the Christian
society — is characteristically a life of love. Now,
that life is our normal life — the life wherein our
nature comes to its completeness. The Christian
Church, then, edifies man into the likeness of his
own ideal, and, concomitantly therewith, gives him
sufficing assurance, through his apprehension of
Christ, that that ideal is not misleading.
(c) Because God is the Supreme Reality, a full
revelation of His character must of necessity have
a wide-reaching significance. All our ultimate
problems are ontological, and could be sufficiently
answered did we adequately apprehend the nature
of Reality. Were such an apprehension in some
way to become ours, the new content thereby
given to our thought would be a treasure that
we could only gradually explore and never ex
haust. In the first moment of apprehension we
would use it for that moment's needs, but that
use of it would make only a first discovery of its

INTRODUCTION n
value, and, as other needs gave other opportunities,
other discoveries would disclose more and yet
more of its anticipatory helpfulness.
Now, in the Christian revelation we have such
a treasure as this — the " pearl of great price," to
which nothing is equal. And, all through the
Christian centuries, the followers of Christ have
diversely proven its value. Amid the corruption
of moribund Rome, in the arena and at the stake,
in the darkest of the Dark Ages (when the order
of the world seemed breaking up, and wonders
in the sky and on the earth seemed heralds of the
Final Judgment), amid the new perils and new
temptations evoked by new truth, along strange
and unlighted ways of duty, and when the Church
itself seemed wounded unto death by sins it could
not expel, or fatally benumbed by worldliness it
could not conquer — in all these times and in all
these circumstances, in every variety and extremity
of human need, faithful hearts have found their
sufficiency in Christ. And we to-day — plain
thinkers of a quiet time, burdened with the new
problems of the world's new knowledge, and beset
by doubt — we, in our need, find help where they
found it.
Once for all was the Christian revelation given,
" full, perfect, and sufficient," but not once for
all was its power made known. Rather have the
changing needs of men always found in it a new
helpfulness. It may be that we, who find in Christ the truth
that makes goodness a reasonable aim, speak in
words that were not familiar to the piety of
simpler times, and seem metaphysicians rather

12 INTRODUCTION
than Christians. But our need is real, and our
discovery of helpfulness in Christ is also real.
In Him there is indeed the truth which alone
can answer that need, and we receive that truth
only in apprehending Him evangelically, as the
faithful have always apprehended Him. We do
not declare a new Gospel ; we tell of a new help
fulness in the old Gospel — in the truth whereby
the Church has ever lived. " A new helpfulness,"
newly found, not newly given, for the grace of
God does not wait for man's importunity ; but,
even along paths that he has not yet trodden,
makes anticipatory provision for his need.
Moreover, this conception of the Christian re
ligion — which attributes religious value to Christ
primarily because of the cosmological significance
of His Person — is not, in any way or degree,
inconsistent with the more widely held conception
which sets forth Christ primarily as the Saviour,
and derives the Christian revelation and religion
from the good purpose of God to save men from
their sins. Our experience of sin is one form
of the contradiction of Nature against our moral
vocation, for therein we find our lower selves
in contradiction to our higher, therein the lower
values that Nature does in fact make accessible
are in contradiction — in successful contradiction —
to the higher values that Nature seems to ignore.
And, whatever be our conception of the atoning
work of our Lord, through His Atonement we
rise above those contradictions.
(d) Because our Christian faith has its proxi
mate ground in our experience within the living

INTRODUCTION 13
Christian society, and its more remote ground
in a historical revelation, the Christian religion
has a certain positive character comparable with
that of the natural sciences. It is not merely
a speculation, nor merely a private illumination ;
it is a practical trust in the Christian line of
history, in a certain succession of actual events,
to which — reasonably, as we think — we attribute
a certain significance. That succession com
menced in Palestine, when the Son of Man went
about doing good, and our present experience
of grace is part of it. In the world which seems
to contradict our vocation we discover that which
overcomes the apparent contradiction. And what
is it that we discover ? Jesus, who is called
Christ, and the Christian society, and the perduring
grace that renews our lives. These are facts in
the world's history, and in these do we trust.
(e) If the foregoing account of Christian faith
be true, the Christian society — witnessing and
grace-bearing, missionary and edifying — is the
proximate ground of that faith.
We may not conceive of that society in any
mechanical way. It is an organism, not a
mechanism, and it subsists in and through the
faith which joins its members severally unto Christ
their Head, the charity wherewith they edify each
other, and the grace wherewith they are all
edified by Christ. In other words, the Chris
tian society is a society only through " personal
religion " and charity, — the mutual charity of
its members, and the grace -giving \ charity of
Christ.

14 INTRODUCTION
Where is that society to be found ? The
question has often been asked, and it has been
variously answered. Some have found it in com
munities formed by individual preferences in
doctrine or practice. Others have found it in
some community claiming organic continuity with
the Pentecostal Church, and have thought separa
tion from that fellowship to be sin.
It were beyond my present purpose to discuss
these answers. Indeed, from the general con
ception I have endeavoured to set forth, we
cannot immediately infer an answer. Two things,
however, seem clear : —
(i) The society integral in the grounds of
Christian belief must be an actual society, and
not merely an ideal society.
(2) Neither the edifying grace of God nor
the evangelical witness to the Christian revelation
is confined to any one line of Christian succes
sion. Where is the Christian society ? The question
is important — of the first importance — but, here
and now, I intentionally leave it unanswered, for
my present purpose does not lead me to do more
than indicate a certain conception of the work of
that society, a conception which will, I think,
one day prove to be the distinctive contribution
of modern apologetic to Christian thought.
Against two possible misconceptions, however,
it may be well at once to guard.
(1) The doctrine here briefly set forth is not
Ritschlian, for it derives the religious value of
Christ, not from His " value " in our experience,
but from His metaphysical nature.

INTRODUCTION 15
(2) That doctrine does not permit an immediate
inference to the witnessing and edifying Church
of the authority sometimes distinctively attributed
to the Ecclesia docens.1
1 I do not say that the Catholic Church does not possess that authority,
but only that the existence of that authority cannot be demonstrated
from the conception here put forth. ,

I
THE RE-STATEMENT OF THE
CHRISTIAN MESSAGE

THE RE-STATEMENT OF THE
CHRISTIAN MESSAGE
(a) Mr. Campbell suggests that the message
of the Christian Church to the world that it is
not yet Christian should be re-stated. To the
great majority of Christians this suggestion would
be novel and unwelcome. Rome does not always
refuse to change, but is always at first intolerant
of change, and in Eastern Christendom large
communities stand, not unproudly, in the ancient
ways. Even in England numbers think of the
Christian message as unalterable — given once for
all to the Missionary Church, and now only to be
set forth.
Yet, for centuries, the religious history of Eng
land has been a history of re-statement. The
Church of England itself — because a reformed
Church — is a re-stating Church, and each of the
multitudinous societies around her — that severally
bear witness to her failure or her fidelity — had
its origin, or soon made for itself a doctrinal
foundation, in some kind of re-statement.
In certain cases the original re-statement is no
longer greatly regarded. No competent thinker
in the Church of England now holds, without
qualification or reservation, the Tudor conception

20 THE RE-STATEMENT OF
of the "Christian Prince," nor is the appeal to
Catholic antiquity now generally thought to exclude
appeal to the present voice of the Living Church.
And in at least the principal "Free Churches"
there has been a similar movement away from
conceptions once thought to be important. Unita
rianism is not what once it was ; Calvinism is not
what once it was ; and in our modern Congre-
gationalists it is hard to recognise the descendants
of the first Brownists. In each case the advance
into new ways of thought has involved more or
less of re-statement.
In our more recent history, then, re-statement
of the Christian message has been prominent, and
to-day the suggestion of re-statement should not
be strange to English ears. Moreover, we urgently
need re-statement, for, in every Christian com
munity, the Gospel of the Grace of God is
hindered and thwarted by incomplete and outworn
conceptions. (b) If, then, re-statement be necessary, what are
the limits of re-statement ? The very endeavour
to re-state the Christian message pre-supposes the
distinction between things essential and things
non-essential, things true and things false, things
helpful and things unhelpful. It is clear, more
over, that re-statement may not change essentials.
Did it do so it would be, not a re-statement
of the old Gospel, but a presentation of a new
one. The ultimate limits of re-statement, then, are
defined by the Christian essentials. If it be true
that our Lord was only the teacher and exemplar

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 21
of human love, re-statement has only ethical limits,
and may proceed to formal atheism.1
On the other hand, let us suppose the Christian
religion to have its ground in a revelation mediated
by certain historical events — by events of such
a nature that they themselves are the revelation.
It is then clear that re-statement may not ignore
those events, or so re-present them that they cease
to be a revelation. If this conception of the
Christian religion be true, the primary duty of
the Christian society is to preserve the memory
of the events wherein the Christian revelation
subsists, and this duty the Church has at least
attempted to discharge by putting forth the
Catholic creeds.
It may be, however, that some, who accept
this general conception of the Christian religion,
would contend that not all the evangelical facts
are of equal importance — that the Virgin-Birth
is of less importance than the Incarnation, the
Resurrection than the Risen Life.
Were this contention put forth, what should we
say ? I think we should accept it, but acceptance
would not entail the consequences which some
think it would entail.
Primarily', the Christian revelation is a revela
tion of God. By it we are assured that God is,
and that He is Love. The particular fact or facts
in the Divine revelation which are directly the
ground of this assurance may not unreasonably
1 Mr. Campbell's own thought makes interesting approximations to
atheism, and one form of it can, I think, be made reasonable up to a
certain point only by conversion into atheism.
In the Ritschlian school it has been seriously contended that
Christianity is not inconsistent with speculative atheism.

22 THE RE-STATEMENT OF
be thought the most important. But other parts
of that revelation have their own importance, and
one that we cannot without loss ignore. The
Christian revelation is not only a revelation of
God, it is also a revelation of the world and
of man. In our Lord's miracles, for instance,
we see (as in the sacraments) physical things —
which ordinarily seem barriers to spirit — become,
through Love, the instruments of spirit, and mani
fest, in their higher and unwonted serviceableness,
an aspect of the Divine character which ordinarily
they did not indicate.1 Again, because the Incar
nation came not through a mere Theophany, but
through a true assumption of human nature, we
learn from it that our nature, with its characteristic
potencies and implicit ideals, is a thing not wholly
alien from the nature of God, but so far accordant
therewith that through it God could give us the
fullest revelation of Himself. The Incarnation
reveals to man, not only the character of God,
but also His own nature, and each element in that
revelation is part of the Divine response to our
ultimate religious need.2
(c) One thing that Mr. Campbell urgently de
mands is a re-statement of the relations between
the Christian religion and the Old Testament. I
will not now ask whether such a re-statement is
necessary or desirable : I will only submit certain
considerations preliminary to that question.
(i) We all know what our fathers thought of
1 Cp. my articles on Liberal Theology published in The Church
Quarterly Review during 1905 and 1906.
2 See Chapter II,, "The Nature of Religion."

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 23
the Old Testament — what the majority of Chris
tians still think of it. Now, whether that view of
the Old Testament be right or wrong, it has
religious value for Christian thought primarily
because it sets forth the providential preparation
for Christ — because it exhibits the Christian re
ligion as the designed fulfilment of a long pre
paratory history. But it seems clear that we can
retain these thoughts of preparation and fulfilment
even though we cease to think as our fathers
thought concerning the first chapters of Genesis,
the nature of prophecy, and the general course of
Israel's religious life.
We know, I have said, our fathers' view of the
Old Testament. Let me suggest another view,
not as certainly true, but as alternative — as an
alternative which we may reasonably hold even
though we accept the conclusions of modern Old
Testament criticism.1
In the opening chapters of Genesis we have'7%
not a revelation of the first beginnings of the
world and of human history, but the result of a
spiritual development — of a development whereby
conceptions, not original among the Jews, were
made organic to a new thought of God, and
human- history as a whole was brought within the
range of ethical thinking. And through all the
later history of Israel that development continued.
Slowly arose the thought of One Only God whose
life is Holiness. Slowly, and through great vicis
situdes of history, this thought became the centre
of a people's life, and, out of the wreck of national
prosperity, there aros.e a great hope — a hope that
1 Cp. Liberal Theology.

24 THE RE-STATEMENT OF
one day, the God thus thought of would be
effectually sovereign in and through the people
He had gathered unto His name. At first, this
hope was a narrow patriotism, reminiscent of the
real or supposed glories of the ruined kingdom.
Slowly, however, a wider outlook opened out.
The Coming King would be the Suffering Servant,
and, although Israel would remain His chosen,
all peoples would be blessed in His rule. And,
then, in the fulness of time, " God sent His Son "
to fulfil Israel's anticipations, to be completely
what Israel had hoped for with a hope that was
incomplete.1 Does the reasonableness of Christian thought
require more than such a retrospect as this ? I
think not.
(2) It should not be forgotten that the tradi
tional view of the Old Testament is neither part
of the Christian revelation nor the ground of our
faith therein.2
The Christian revelation comes to man in
and through the Person of Christ, and we re
ceive it as we apprehend that Person in and

1 According to this view, we should find the "fulfilment of prophecy "
in the Divine completion of a divinely-guided process, not (or not
merely) in the happening ofa predicted event.
2 A different view seems indicated by Sir Robert Anderson : —
" The Christ of Christendom was a crucified Jew — crucified because
He declared Himself to be the Jew's Messiah ; and His claims upon
our homage and our faith are inseparably connected with that Messiah-
ship. "And what were the credentials of His Messiahship ? To some extent
the miracles which He wrought, but mainly the Hebrew Scriptures.
And in His appeal to those Scriptures He implicitly asserted that they
were in the strictest sense inspired." — In Defence, p. 63.
Do we to-day give Christ homage and faith because we believe Him

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE 25
through present Christian experience. And the
revelation was given primarily, not to teach a
doctrine concerning God's past relations with the
world, but to set forth a new conception of
God, and to bring men into new relations with
Him. (3) It may, however, be asked — Does not the
Christian revelation confirm a doctrine concerning
God's past dealings with His people ? Is not
Christ Christus Comprobator? Does He not, by His
own words, confirm the traditional view of the
Old Testament ?
(a) It seems very difficult to show that our
Lord's words will bear the weight of this suggested
proof. On either view of the Old Testament, the pro
phets spake of Him, and He fulfilled their words.
On either view of the Old Testament, He perfectly
accomplished what the institutions of Israel's re
ligion indicated.
(b) Moreover, we know so little, and can reason
ably surmise so little, concerning the process of the
Incarnation, that it seems yet more difficult to

to be the Messiah ? Does not our recognition of Him as the Messiah
follow upon our entirely independent apprehension of Him — in and .
through personal experience — as " the Son of the Living God " ?
It may be said, however, that Sir Robert means only this — we could
not give Christ homage and faith if we believe that He falsely claimed
Messiahship. Perhaps not, but we believe that He truly claimed it. This belief,
however, does not constrain us to the traditional view of the Old
Testament. According to the alternative view suggested in the text,
Israel's history was a divinely-ordered preparation for the Messiah, and
Christ, we believe, was the promised completion of that history.
Genuine belief in our Lord's true Messiahship is quite consistent with
a "modern" view ofthe Old Testament.

26 THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE
demonstrate a priori that even real acceptance by
our Lord of traditional opinions would give those
opinions Divine sanction.1
1 Sir Robert Anderson tells us that "every free and fearless thinker
will recognise " that, if " the Kenosis theory " be valid, " it destroys the
Christian revelation."
" If Christ was Divine, the truth of everything adopted and accredited
by His teaching is placed beyond question. To plead that, with a.
view to advance His Messianic claims, He pandered to Jewish ignorance
and prejudice, is not only to admit that He was merely human, but to
endanger our respect for Him even as a Rabbi. And yet Christian
teachers have the temerity to suggest such an explanation of His words.
Such a position is utterly untenable. The Christian is, to borrow a
legal term, stopped from questioning the inspiration of the Old Testa
ment, or the reality of the miracles recorded in it ; and when teachers
who profess to be Christians question both, they should not be surprised
if they are charged with being either dishonest or credulous." — In
Defence, p. 67.
I find myself quite unable to agree with Sir Robert Anderson. I
affirm a real providence in Israel's history, and am quite willing to
believe that providence marked by miracle, but this does not carry me
to Sir Robert's conclusions. Does any Christian thinker suggest that
our Lord " pandered " ? Pandering is one thing : self-limitation within
a certain intellectual life quite another.
Moreover, even according to the alternative view suggested in the text,
our Lord is the completion of Israel's history. Therefore, He rightly
claimed to be that completion, and He supported His claim by an appeal
to His hearers' interpretation of that history — an interpretation which,
even if in some particulars mistaken, did at least affirm the essential
truth that Israel's history was a providential preparation for the Christ.
This affirmation was all that was necessary to make our Lord's argu
ment substantially valid.

II
THE NATURE OF RELIGION

THE NATURE OF RELIGION
Religion, says Mr. Campbell, is " man's response
to the call of the universe" (p. 12), is "the re
sponse of human nature to the whole of things
considered as an order " (p. 65). It is " the soul
turning towards its source and goal " (p. 1 2).
" All religion begins in cosmic emotion. It is
the recognition of an essential relationship be
tween the human soul and the great whole
of things of which it is the outcome and expres
sion. The mysterious universe is always calling,
and, in some form or other, we are always an
swering. The artist answers by trying to express
his feeling of its beauty ; the scientist answers
it by recognising its laws and unfolding its
wonders ; the social reformer answers it by his
self-denying labours for the common good. In
each and every case there is in the background
of experience a conviction of the unit as the in
strument of the All ; religion is implied in these
and in all other activities in which man aims
at the higher-than-sel-f. But religion, properly
so-called, begins when the soul consciously
enters upon communion with this higher-than-
self as with an all-comprehending intelligence ;
it is the soul instinctively turning towards that
from whence it came. Religion may assume a
great many different and even repellent forms,

30 THE NATURE OF RELIGION
but at bottom this is always what it is ; it is the
soul reaching forth to the great mysterious whole
of things, the higher-than-self, and seeking for
closer and ever closer communion therewith.
The savage with his totem and the Christian
saint before the altar have this in common ;
they are reaching through the things that are
seen to the reality beyond " (pp. 16, 17).
(a) It is undoubtedly true that, in religion, man
endeavours to pass beyond the nearer realities
of his environment and condition to some more
valuable Reality beyond. The savage, whose
religion — in its outward manifestation — does not
rise above wizardry, and the Christian saint, who
(before the altar of unceasing commemoration)
presents himself, his soul and body, to be "a
reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice," are united
by a common need and a common aspiration.
But what is that need, and what that aspiration ?
They are both, says Mr. Campbell, "reaching
through the things that are seen to the reality
beyond." So in fact they are, but for what
reason ? According to Mr. Campbell, they are
seeking communion with that unseen Reality.
Now, no one will deny that, at least in the
higher forms of religious life, this is what men do
seek, and certainly no Christian believer whose
own life has been renewed by what is ordinarily
called communion with God, will deny the reality
and blessedness of that renewing experience.
It is not an imagination, but a thing most inti
mately known, and known to be beyond price.
God, we think, cannot be the immediate object

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 31
in any human experience, and yet, now and again,
an awe as of a holier Presence has possessed us,
a wordless voice has spoken, and the silence has
seemed tremulous with a besetting life. Others
have told of more than this — of moments when
faith has become vision, and vision has passed into
a mystic union of life with life which no human
words can describe.1 Let those who have had
such moments tell of them ; we who live along
other levels of Christian experience can bear our
own testimony — not indeed to such things, but
to others that seem not less truly Divine. We
have heard a clear vocation that came not from
our own purposes. We have felt the familiar
words of absolving benediction breathe an un
familiar peace, life's chaos has grown orderly
with opportunities that bespoke an undeserved
providence, in lonely trouble we have found an
unseen companionship, in the darkness of doubt
an enlightening strength.
Why do we value such experience ? We value
it because of its intrinsic worth — because it is
valuable as honour is valuable, or patriotism, or
the artist's gladness in successful work. But we
value it more because we think it trustworthy,
because through it we reach (or believe that we
reach) ultimate reality — the sovereign truth of
things. We value it because it gives us aesthetic
delight : we value it more because it gives us
saving help.
This universe is not an obvious Theodicy.
The physical world seems quite unmoral : its
processes cut heedlessly across the path of our
1 Cp. my New Way in Apologetic, pp. 14-15-

32 THE NATURE OF RELIGION
moral aspiration, and bring impartial destruction
upon every human, achievement. Is, then, the
good life a reasonable life, and our vocation to
it a reasonable vocation ? Were it not wiser to
accept the passing values of the passing moment,
instead of essaying a doubtful and laborious quest
for the highest values — for the things that are
lovely and of good report ? We can reasonably
answer this question in the negative only if, in
some way or other, we reach a sufficing appre
hension of the world's controlling reality and
discover it to be good.
Such a discovery the Christian religion enables
us to make in and through Christian apprehension
of the Person of Christ. In Him, God assumed
human nature, and became subject to the con
ditions of human life, and obedient even unto
death. This self-limitation of the Most Perfect
was " for us men and our salvation," and thereby
we know that God is indeed Love, for we cannot
imagine His condescension to be ironical ; thereby
we know that Ultimate and Sovereign Reality is
not unkindly, that it will not finally thwart the
lives it has itself called into goodness, or mock
the hopes it has itself quickened.
The distinctive ground of Christian faith is in
the Person of Christ — not in what Christ said
or did, but in what He essentially is ; and our
apprehension of His Person — if not in its first
beginnings, at least in its daily renewal — is part
of that experience which seems to us a Divine
communion. In that experience He walks with
us by the way, and, when our eyes are opened
and we see Him as He is, we know that experience

THE NATURE OF RELIGION 33
to be trustworthy, its refreshment not misleading.
Through our apprehension of Christ, those times
of refreshing become to us times of Divine visita
tion. Therefore do we value them, and we rightly
value them, for they give to us what we most
need and what nothing else can give — a trust
which is a present victory over the world's ap
parent contradiction of our hope.
(b) It may, however, be said that this account
is an account of only one form of religion, and
refers to a doubt which is not and never has been
general. This comment, were it made, would be
just. The doubt arising out of the real or appa
rent contradiction between man's moral vocation
and the natural environment of his life, although
it has a long history, became prominent in
European philosophy only at a time not yet re
mote. But from the earliest times men have felt
the need of assistance in their practical endeavour
to live out their lives, and have sought to obtain
it. At first, when feeble groups of hunters and
fishers arduously won precarious subsistence from
the fringe (as it were) of the yet unexplored
world, and later on, when the first beginnings of
husbandry laid the foundations of man's present
mastery in the world, Nature was an environing
menace. Fear made its darkness terrible, and
peopled its untrodden recesses with invisible foes.
Men, it may be, then knew no other vocation
than to live — to sustain the life we call animal.
Their needs were little more than biological, and
to their needs their purposes were correspondent.
But, simple though their purposes were, they could
c

34 THE NATURE OF RELIGION
not easily fulfil them, for the world was unkindly.
Had men then heard of the contrast — the con
tradiction — which now perplexes us, they had not
understood it. But a certain contrast they also
knew, for their lives too were purposeful along
their own levels, and constantly they found them
selves menaced, hindered', thwarted — constantly
forces they could not comprehend swept de
structively across their path.
Out of this contrast arose their religion — crude,
it may be, and barbarous, but like unto our own
in. one essential particular, for it brought men (or
was believed to bring men) into relation with
some helpful Reality. And what religion was in
its first beginnings, it has ever since ""remained.
Wherever it has been more than a nam&jt has
been (or has purported to be) a means of paving
man from the apparent unkindliness of the/ world,
of lifting man above nature's! realr- trr\ seeming
contradiction of his characteristic! purpose. That
contradiction has not always had the same form.
To-day it appears to us as a contradiction of our
moral vocation : at other times it has been other
wise construed. Always, however, it has been a
contradiction of some valued human purpose, and
against it men have ever sought help. The story
of their quest may be read in the history of the
world's religions : the completed response to that
quest we see on Calvary.
This aspect of religion Mr. Campbell seems to
ignore. Yet, more than any other aspect, it dis
closes, I think, the essentials of religion.1
1 Op. A New Way in Apologetic and Liberal Theology.

Ill
MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF GOD
AND THE WORLD

MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
GOD AND THE WORLD
One of the primary duties of the Christian teacher
is to commend to the world the Christian tradition
of Truth.
To-day, large numbers — very large numbers —
are without any quickening belief in God. Many
do not believe that God exists. Others practically
identify Him, in their thoughts, with Nature.
Others picture Him as an undiscriminating Bene
volence that will not ultimately be hard on any
one. We lament the indifference of men — their
indifference not only to religion, but to other high
aspects of individual and national life. We lament
the selfishness of men, their lack of intellectual
and moral earnestness, their devotion to vulgar
pleasures, their unscrupulous haste to be rich.
We lament these things, and we have occasion
for our lament ; but the things we lament are
only symptoms — symptoms of a life de-vitalised
by the loss of faith. Men are what we lament
they are because they have no sense of a Divine
vocation, no health-giving belief in a besetting
Holiness that calls men severally to the highest
service they can render.
Those who are thus variously living "without
God in the world" need to be brought to God,

38 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
and others, who are not so widely separate from
Him, need their faith in Him confirmed; Because
of all this, the Christian teacher must to-day be
more than a theologian : he must be an apologist.
And with certain apologetic thoughts. Mr. Camp
bell begins his exposition of the New Theology.
Before he speaks of the relation of Gobi to the
world and to human life, he attempts to show
upon what foundation he builds. But when we
examine his foundation, what do we find ? Rubble !
— fragments of different kinds of thought, unrea
soned, uncoordinated, undeveloped; and just
where the foundation should be strongest, we find
gaps — gaps filled only by an alleged necessity of
belief, or bridged by an avowed leap ! As a con
tribution to Theistic Apologetic the New Theology
is valueless. Not even the reference to "mon
istic idealism " makes it important.
Moreover, it is part of the Christian teacher's
duty to set forth a Welt-Anschauung — a conception
of God and His relation to the world — that men
can hold reasonably. This, however, Mr. Camp
bell entirely fails to do. His cosmology is riddled
with contradictions. Its central thought is the
thought that the universe is the self-expression
(self-realisation) of God, and when this thought
is freed from contradictions, it leads, I think, to
one or other of two alternative and equally un
acceptable conclusions : (i) to the conclusion that
the process of creation is an unmoral process,
because merely and ignobly aesthetic ; or (2) to
the conclusion that Ultimate Reality is not Divine.

GOD AND THE WORLD 39
The Existence of God
I
According to Mr. Campbell, religion is " the soul
reaching forth to the great mysterious whole of
things, the higher -than-self, and seeking for closer
and ever closer communion therewith" (pp. 16—17).
" But what name are we to give to this higher-
than-self whose presence is so unspeakable ?
The name matters comparatively little, but it in
cludes all the ordinary Christian means by God.
The word ' God ' stands for many things, but to
present-day thought it must stand for the un
caused Cause of all existence, the unitary prin
ciple implied in all multiplicity. Every one of
necessity believes in this" (p. 17).
(a) " All religion," says Mr. Campbell, " begins
in cosmic emotion." Now, cosmic emotion is
not merely emotion awakened by the cosmos, by
the whole of things. It is indeed that, but it is
more than that. Not only is it awakened by the
cosmos, but it goes out towards the cosmos — it
is a response to the cosmos. "The mysterious
universe is always calling," says Mr. Campbell,
" and in some form or other we are always
answering." An emotion that went out beyond
the cosmos towards, let us say, the transcendent
wisdom or holiness of God or His perfect love,
however that emotion were awakened, would not
be a cosmic emotion.
The wonderful beauty of a tropical honey-
sucker, " which hung, loud humming, over some

40 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
fantastic bloom, and then danced away, seem
ingly to call its mate, and whirred and danced
with it round and round the flower-starred bushes,
flashing fresh rainbows at every shifting of the
lights," moved Frank Leigh — Franciscus Leighius
Anglus — to the reverent exclamation, " Qualis
Natura formatrix, si talis formata ? Oh, my God,
how fair must be Thy real world if even Thy
phantoms are so fair ! " It is not impossible,
although hardly probable, that these words arose
out of cosmic emotion ; it is, I think, certain that
the emotion they immediately expressed was not
a cosmic emotion.
Religion begins, we are told, in cosmic emotion,
and cosmic emotion is (we have seen) a response
to "the whole of things" — not an aspiration to
wards something transcendent. Quite accordantly
with this conception of religion, Mr. Campbell tells
us — at least, so I understand his words — that " the
whole of things " is God. If this be not Pantheism
— and Pantheism of quite an ordinary and well-
known kind — what is it ?
(b) But Mr. Campbell's words suggest the possi
bility of an alternative explanation. He tells us,
not that religion is, or necessarily subsists in,
cosmic emotion, but that it begins in cosmic
emotion. But does it end there ? Is it always —
in its later history, as, ex hypothesi, in its earlier
— an emotional response to " the whole of things,"
or does it, in the course of its age-long develop
ment, leave its first beginnings behind, and estab
lish itself upon a new foundation ? Such a
transition were not without precedent. Our human

GOD AND THE WORLD 41
love begins at or near " the dark edges of the sen
sual ground," but rises into a spiritual consecration
that is independent of "sense." Does not something
similar occur in the development of religion ?
Even if we accept Mr. Campbell's doctrine that
religion " begins in cosmic emotion," may we not
reasonably think that afterwards it rises above
cosmic emotion — into, for instance, the discovery,
by faith or thought, of a purposeful Spirit that is
not "the whole of things," nor the substantial
principle of their unity, but their separate and
rational ground ?
The transition is not unthinkable, but does Mr.
Campbell leave room for it ? Not only, according
to him, does religion " begin in cosmic emotion,"
but it is always a response to — a " reaching forth
to " — the " great mysterious whole of things." We
cannot rightly infer from Mr. Campbell's words
that religion continues always to be, or to subsist
in, cosmic emotion. His words (if not his mean
ing) leave open the possibility that, in its later
history, religion establishes itself upon a new
ground — let us say, upon a metaphysical theory —
but it seems quite clear that, even if religion reach
a new foundation, its essential nature does not
change. Religion, according to Mr. Campbell,
is always "the soul reaching forth to the great
mysterious whole of things." And "the whole of
things," we are told, is what Christians designate
" God." Once more, if this be not Pantheism —
and Pantheism of quite an ordinary and well-
known kind — what is it ?
We may not forget that Mr. Campbell is an
idealist of the monistic sort. It is not easy to

42 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
discover what form of monistic idealism Mr. Camp
bell holds, but it seems clear that he believes the
particulars of existence to be modes or expressions
of an Absolute Existence. Now, one kind (if not
more than one kind) of monistic idealism identifies
the Absolute with the " whole of things," and does
not attribute to it any existence transcendent there
to or separate therefrom : the Absolute is the
whole of things — that, and nothing more. Quite
accordantly with this doctrine — although, it may
be, accidentally so — Mr. Campbell tells us that the
" whole of things " is God, or what Christians
designate God.
Nor may we forget the strange dualism in Mr.
Campbell's conception of God. There are, we
read, two modes of God. In one He is "the
infinite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being."
In the other He is " the finite, imperfect, condi
tioned, and limited being of which we are ourselves
expressions " (p. 23). In the latter mode, God is
immanent in the world of particulars — for in that
mode He is, or is expressed by, that world — and it
is, Mr. Campbell tells us, with "the immanent
God " that "we have to do " (p. 5). Apparently,
God is said to be immanent because, in His second
mode, He is believed to be the substantial reality
of all particular things, or because all particular
things are believed to be the expression of that
mode of His being. The "immanent God," then,
is (or is expressed by) the " whole of things," and
it is with this that we have to do.
(c) We have seen that cosmic emotion pre
supposes • at least a vague feeling, or obscure

GOD AND THE WORLD 43
perception, that the world of particulars is a cosmos,
an unity — that things constitute a whole. And Mr.
Campbell tells us, in so many words, that religion
" is the recognition of an essential relationship be
tween the human soul and the greatwhole of things."
But do things, in fact, constitute a " whole " ?
Early man did not think so, and many to-day
could answer the question affirmatively only with
the reservation that the unity they think of is an
unity of purpose, not of substance. Mr. Campbell, it
is clear, believes that things do constitute a whole,
and it is probable that the ultimate ground of his
belief is in monistic idealism. But religion — which,
according to Mr. Campbell, presupposes the unity
of the world, and begins in an emotion which is a
response to the " whole of things " — exists where
monistic idealism is unknown, and even where
it is disbelieved. Therefore cosmological unity,
which, according to Mr. Campbell's account, is
essential to the existence of religion, must have its
ratio credendi elsewhere than in monistic idealism.
Men do not ordinarily believe without reasons that
seem to them sufficient, and, if they believe that
things constitute a whole, they must (in most cases)
believe this for reasons that are not derived from
monistic idealism. What are those reasons ? Mr.
Campbell does not indicate them. In the para
graph which sets forth his conception of religion,
the " whole of things " appears as an unverified
assumption or unreasoned postulate. Indeed —
unless the passing references to monistic idealism
indicate a demonstration — the bases of Mr.
Campbell's Theism are throughout undemon-
strated. Apparently, he is a Theist because he

44 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
cannot help being one. This may sufficiently
explain his own belief, but it is not an important
contribution to apologetic, and seems an insecure
foundation for the New Theology.
(d) " Religion," says Mr. Campbell, is " implied
in . . . all . . . activities in which man aims at
a higher- than-self." He tells us also, as we have
seen, that religion is " the soul reaching forth to
the great mysterious whole of things, the higher-
than-self." "The higher-than-self," then, is another name
for the " whole of things." But is this alternative
name appropriate ? More than self, stronger than
self, the "whole of things" undoubtedly is, but is
it higher ? Is it higher than man's rational will
and moral personality ? Mr. Campbell does not
help us. There is the mere implication that the
" whole of things '' is " the higher-than-self," but
this attribution of a greater worth, which makes
the " whole of things " look most like the God
of Christian faith, remains unsupported by argu
ment or evidence.
(e) What, then, leads Mr. Campbell to think
that the " whole of things " is God ? He does
not directly tell us. It seems that "the higher-
than-self" is God because it is "the un-caused
Cause of all existence, the unitary principle implied
in all multiplicity," and, in a passage already
quoted, "the higher-than-self" is another name
for " the great mysterious whole of things." May
we thence infer that the " whole of things " is God
because it is " the un-caused Cause of all existence,

GOD AND THE WORLD 45
the unitary principle implied in all multiplicity " ?
The inference were easy, but the conclusion doubt
ful. The " whole of things " is not " the un-caused
Cause of all existence," it is existence itself, exist
ence as a whole : it is not merely the " unitary
principle implied in all multiplicity," it is the
multiplicity as well.
(/) It seems not improbable, however, that in
" the higher-than-self " we have an indication of
another conception of religion — a conception other
than the " cosmic " conception — and of another
and correspondingly different ground of Theism.
" The mysterious universe," says Mr. Campbell,
" is always calling, and, in some form or other,
we are always answering." He mentions three
answers — the artist's, the scientist's, the social
reformer's. Now, beauty is always a " diversity in unity,"
and we not infrequently find an artist's work in
formed by a feeling that may properly be named
cosmic ; indeed, the artistic temperament seems
more open than others to the " call " of things.
But the unity perceived in beauty, or reproduced
in art, is not always or ordinarily the unity of the
"whole of things." The artist does not always
make his work significant with some significance
borrowed from the " whole of things " ; he does
not always see the " whole " in the part. Take,
for instance, a Japanese ivory statuette, say, of a
fisherman or swordsman. It is difficult to believe
that this expresses cosmic feeling — a feeling towards
the " whole of things " — and, certainly, it does not
ordinarily awaken such a feeling.

46 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
In the bolder ventures of natural science,
thought does, indeed, attempt to embrace the
" whole of things," and even its particular investi
gations are governed by conceptions that develop
into general theory. But the philanthropy of the
social reformer — is this ordinarily a form of cosmic
feeling, a response to the whole of things ? Do
" his self-denying labours for the common good,"
in fact, presuppose the recognition of " an essen
tial relationship " between himself and " the great
whole of things " ? I think not.
Cosmic emotion is a response to the cosmos — to
the "whole of things." Although always imme
diately awakened by some " part " — by something
less than the whole — that part is always felt to be,
not a quite separate existent, but part of the whole,
a " part " through which the " whole " calls. We
know little of it in these restless and unthoughtful
days — when most men live in towns where the
stars are never seen — but Wordsworth knew it well
by the northern lakes, and Mr. Campbell knew it,
I think, by the Cornish sea. He who wrote the
following lines also knew it : —
" Within the hollow silence of the night
I lay awake and listened. I could hear
Planet with punctual planet chiming clear,
And unto star star echoing aright.
Nor these alone : cloistered from deafening sight,
All things that are made music to my ear :
Hushed woods, dumb caves, and many a soundless mere,
With Arctic mains in rigid sleep locked tight.
But ever with this chant from shore and sea,
From singing constellation, humming thought,
And Life through Time's stops blowing variously,
A melancholy undertone was wrought ;
And from its boundless prison-house I caught
The awful wail of lone Eternity."

GOD AND THE WORLD 47
The thought expressed in these lines is an in
terpretation — true or false — of the " world as a
whole," and the ground of that thought is in an
impression produced, a mood or an emotion
awakened by, the " world as a whole " — not by this
or that particular thing, but by the whole of things.
An emotion must have some such reference as
this — some reference to the cosmos as a whole, to
the " whole of things " — before it can properly be
called a cosmic emotion. Therefore, when we
find Mr. Campbell attributing religious character
to the social reformer's philanthropy — which, I
think, has not ordinarily such a reference — it seems
clear that his thought is no longer fettered by his
initial account of religion.
That account left us with the thought that the
" whole of things " is God. But this thought
appeared as a correlate (or consequence) of the
doctrine that religion is a response to the " whole
of things " — to the call of the universe. If, then,
this latter doctrine be left behind — and, as we have
seen, Mr. Campbell appears to leave it behind — we
shall expect to find some correspondent change in
the conception of God. Is not that change in
dicated by the name " higher-than-self " ?
Mr. Campbell, it is true, applies that name to
the " whole of things." But he tells us also that
" religion, properly so called, begins when the soul
consciously enters upon communion with this
higher-than-self as with an all-comprehending
intelligence." It seems clear from this that, if the
" higher-than-self " be the " whole of things," it is
also more than the " whole of things," for — so, at
least, I gather — it is the principle that makes things

48 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
a whole, and — so it seems reasonable to think — is
something other than the things it unites. More
over, unless the "higher-than-self" be more than
the " whole of things," it is difficult to understand
in what way we commune with it. Men speak, it
is true, of communing with the " whole of things,"
but in most cases they are admittedly using
imagery, and, when they are not, they conceive
things to be made a whole by some other and
higher Existent which speaks through them.
Again, Mr. Campbell tells us that behind man's
response to the " call " of the universe is " a con
viction that the unit is the instrument of the All."
This conviction could hardly exist were the "whole
of things " thought of as merely the " whole of
things." In a whole that is merely a whole the
ultimate differences are only numerical ; the several
parts are all equivalent. Hence it is that, when
the " whole of things " is believed to be the only
existent, we not infrequently find a marked de
valuation of moral quantities. Instrumentality,
however, implies the subordination of means to
purpose, and the purpose pre-supposed by the
conviction Mr. Campbell mentions is a general
purpose — a purpose of the "All." Now, the All
— the "whole of things" — cannot be purposeful
unless it be subsistent rather than existent, unless it
subsist in some "all-comprehending intelligence"
that makes it a whole and informs it with purpose.
Again : " The savage . . . and the Christian
saint . . . have|this in common: they arej reach
ing through the things that are seen to the reality
beyond." It is not unreasonable to suggest that
" the things that are seen " are the " whole of

GOD AND THE WORLD 49
things," the " mysterious universe." But, if this
interpretation be correct, God is not the " whole of
things," but Reality transcendent thereto, and this
" reality beyond," and not the " whole of things,"
is that " higher-than-self " at which (according to
Mr. Campbell) man aims.
Mr. Campbell does not systematise these
thoughts, nor support them by any argument.
They occur as incidental inconsistencies in his
general account of religion, but they clearly in
dicate a doctrine different from the simple Pan
theism we first inferred from that account.
It will be remembered that Mr. Campbell desig
nates the " higher-than-self " God, because God is
" the un-caused Cause of all existence, the unitary
principle implied in all multiplicity." It seems,
therefore, that the "higher-than-self" must be
that Cause and that principle. We saw, however,
that if the "higher-than-self" be merely the
" whole of things," it can be neither the one nor
the other. A " higher-than-self " transcendent to
the " whole of things " — truly transcendent there
to, even if the ground of its subsistence — could,
however, undoubtedly be the un-caused Cause
of all existence, and (were words made a little
plastic) might well be described as the unity in
multiplicity. II
Let us now turn to other apologetic suggestions.
" The word ' God ' stands for many things,
but to present-day thought it must stand for
the uncaused Cause of all existence, the unitary
D

So MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
principle implied in all multiplicity. Every one
of necessity believes in this " (p. 1 7).
(a) "The un-caused Cause of all existence."
The argument to a First Cause is one of the
simplest " proofs " and, to many minds, the most
conclusive "proof" of the existence of God. As
ordinarily stated it runs as follows : —
Every event must have a cause.
A beginningless series of causes is unthinkable.
Therefore, there must be a First Cause.
In answer to this it is often said that the alleged
First Cause, if actually existent, would itself be
caused — that the law of thought which impels us
to seek for causes, if valid at all, is universally
valid, and may not be arbitrarily suspended at this
point or that.
But this criticism ignores the distinctive char
acter of the argument to a First Cause. According
to that argument not every existent thing must have
a cause but only every event. If every existent
thing were caused, then, undoubtedly, " the alleged
First Cause, if actually existent, would itself be
caused," and, therefore, would not be a First
Cause. But if the Law of Causality apply only to
events, our quest for causes legitimately comes to
an end when we reach a cause that is not an event.
That the Law of Causality has only this limited
application is, I think, clear. No constraint by
reason compels us to think that everything has
a cause, for we have the conception of necessary
being — of something that necessarily exists, some
thing that is (as we paradoxically say) causa sui,
something that has the ground of its existence

GOD AND THE WORLD 51
wholly within itself. But every event has a be
ginning ; at one time it was not, at another time
it is. Now, we cannot suppose that a thing which
begins to be has necessary being, and, concerning
every such thing, reflective' thought compels us
to ask : Whence ? What made it happen ?
The Law of Causality, then, applies only to
events, and the quest for causes to which it impels
us naturally terminates if and when we discover
a cause that is not an event. But can we dis
cover such a cause, or have we sufficient reason
to suppose that such a cause exists ?
From the Law of Causality, by itself, we cannot
infer the existence of a First Cause. " Every
event must have a cause." True, but this does
not exclude the possibility that every event is
caused by an antecedent event, in infinite regress.
An infinite series of events, each caused by its
antecedent and causing its consequent, would
fully satisfy the Law of Causality. Only if we
exclude the possibility of there being such a series
can we infer from the Law of Causality that a
cause exists which is not an event, and is, there
fore, outside the Law of Causality, and properly
thought of as a First Cause.
This brings us to the second step in the argu
ment : " A beginningless series of causes is un
thinkable." " Unthinkable " ? Unimaginable it no doubt Is,
but is it unthinkable ? And, if it be unthinkable,
is not the infinite existence of God equally un
thinkable ? Moreover, may it not be that " un-
thinkableness " would illustrate only the incapacity
of our own minds ? Can we be quite certain

52 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
that unthinkable things do not exist ? A better
intelligence than ours might be able tp think
them !
" An unbeginning series of events is unthink
able." Why ? Not because it is a series, for
we can think of a series. Not because it is a
series of events, for we can think of a series of
events. Is it, then, unthinkable because infinite ?
But if an infinite series of events be unthinkable,
because infinite, the infinite existence of God
must also be unthinkable. And if we do in
fact believe that God exists, the unthinkableness
of His infinite existence notwithstanding, we must,
it would seem, admit the possibility that an in
finite series of causes exists. But, if we admit
this possibility, the proffered argument to a First
Cause inevitably fails, for only by excluding that
possibility can we infer from the Law of Causality
the existence of such a cause.
Moreover, the infinite is not unthinkable.
Unimaginable it is, but we can define it, and
form a clear conception of it, and this makes it
thinkable. So again, it would seem, the proffered
argument fails.
But the thinkableness of the infinite will nega
tive that argument only if " First " mean " prior
in time " — that, and nothing else.
Now, undoubtedly, " first " does denote priority.
But there is more than one kind of priority. Not
only is there temporal priority, the priority of the
antecedent to its • consequent, but there is also
logical priority — the priority of premiss to con
clusion, of ground to that which it supports, of
noumenon to phenomenon, of substance to quality.

GOD AND THE WORLD 53
This latter priority does not involve temporal
sequence. If then our earlier arguments be valid, if we
cannot reasonably exclude the possibility that an
infinite series of causes exists, we are brought
face to face with this alternative : either we must
(a) abandon the argument to a First Cause ; or
we must (b) re-state it as an inference to a First
Cause that is logically and not temporally, or not
merely temporally, prior to its " effects " — in other
words, to a First Cause that is the perduring
ground of events and not, or not merely, their
antecedent. (b) Now, events, it may be said, are changes,
and change necessarily implies permanence, the
changing world an unchanging ground of its
changing forms.
But is the succession of events a change ?
Suppose one thing to take the place of another —
suppose A to take the place of B — does that
succession constitute a change ? If A and B
fall within our experience, then, undoubtedly,
a change takes place in our experience, and,
undoubtedly also, that change does imply per
manence. But the permanence it implies is a
permanence in ourselves, in the subject of ex
perience. Unless B and A were successively
present to one perduring subject, there would
be no consciousness of change. But this sub
jective permanence conditions only subjective
change, change in our experience ; it does not
condition, and is not inferred from, objective suc
cession — from the actual succession of events in

54 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
the world that is the object in experience. When
A succeeds B, and we are aware of the succes
sion, there is a change in the content of con
sciousness, and this change implies the permanence
of consciousness, or, more accurately, of the sub
ject in consciousness. But A and B, as existent
things, as facts in the objective world, are inde
pendent of our awareness of them, and the
succession of A to B is independent of our aware
ness of it. The permanence implied in the
change in our awareness does not condition and
cannot be inferred from the objective succession
of which we are aware — the actual succession of
A to B.
Let us, then, return to our question : Suppose
A to take the place of B, does that succession
constitute a change ?
It seems clear that, if the successive things be
entirely independent existences, their succession,
the succession of A to B, is not a change. B will
then give place to A, but it will not change into A.
Only if the successive things, A and B, be forms
of one perduring existence can we rightly say
that the succession of the later, A, to the earlier,
B, constitutes a change. Were we to see a dog
where previously we had seen a horse, it would
not occur to us to say that the horse had changed
into a dog, because the horse and the dog would
be independent existences. But, if we saw Proteus
first in his proper shape and then as a dog,
we could properly speak of a change, for the
two objects would be forms of one existence.
Similarly, we rightly speak of water changing
into ice, because ice is only frozen water ; the

GOD AND THE WORLD 55
molecules that at one time exist in the form of
water afterwards exist in the form of ice.
We infer, then, that the succession of events
does not constitute change unless the succession
be a succession within an existential unity — unless
the successive events be successive forms of one
substance. Only if events possess this character
can we rightly speak of their succession as a
change. We infer change from permanence, not
permanence from change. Not in this way, then,
by inference from the succession of events, can
we reach the conception of a perduring ground of
events. There remains, however, another way.
(c) We have, I have said, the conception of
necessary being, and we are persuaded that every
event has its ground in something that is its own
ground, in something that has necessary exis
tence. We can neither imagine nor think that
Reality is entirely contingent — consists through
out of particulars whose existence, no less than
their apparent qualities, is wholly derivative and
conditioned. An infinite regress of causes is
thinkable, but an infinite regress of entirely de
rivative existences is unthinkable. We are com
pelled to think that something necessarily exists,
or that some things necessarily exist. Now, the
necessarily existent is a perduring ground, and
not, or not merely, a temporal antecedent ; its
characteristic priority is a logical priority. I do
not say that this is involved in the conception of
necessary being, but, certainly, it is entailed by
or implied in the argument which infers that
events are grounded in necessary being.

56 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
We are constrained to think that Ultimate
Reality — whatever be our conception of it — has
necessary being, has the ground of its existence
in itself, is causa sui.1 But particular things — the
spring frost, the winter's hail — come and go.
We cannot think that these, in their particularity,
have necessary being ; for necessary being can
not have beginning — it is eternal, at least a parte
ante. Yet these transient things undoubtedly
exist, and, since their individual particularity has
not necessary being — it must be derivative from
necessary being and have its ground therein.
But this necessarily existent ground must be
intimately present in all transient particularity.
Prior thereto it undoubtedly is, but its priority
is characteristically a logical priority. We cannot
believe the necessarily existent ground of things
to be merely an antecedent, merely a temporal
prius, for, were it only this, dependent particu
larity would be without a present ground. But
such an unsupported existence of things that had
not in themselves necessary being were incredible.
Therefore, we are constrained to think that the
necessary being which is the ground of particu
larity is a present ground, and not a more or less
remote cause. Its characteristic priority is logical,
not temporal.
(d) We may reach a similar conclusion by yet
another way. In the last paragraph we considered
particular things in their separate individuality.
1 This seems to be the- conviction underlying the modern doctrine
that the causal question may hot be asked concerning "existence as
a whole."

GOD AND THE WORLD 57
But our observation of the world has discovered
many substantial unities — for instance, the unity
constituted by the molecular identity of a sub
stance which exists in several successive forms.
Ice changes into water, and that into steam, but
in all three modes of being the same molecules
are existent. This leads us to distinguish between
the ultimate reality of things and their apparent
forms and qualities. But that ultimate reality
is not, or not merely, a temporal prius, for it
is the present ground of those apparent forms
and qualities. Priority it indeed has, but, char
acteristically, a logical priority.
(e) From all this we must, I think, infer that
if the argument to a First Cause be an argument
to an antecedent cause of the world's particular
existences, it is superseded by the demonstration
that those particulars subsist — have their ground
— in necessary being. The demonstration that
necessary being exists, infinite in at least its
past duration and intimately present in all par
ticularity as the ground thereof, excludes the
causal question — Whence are the world's par
ticulars derived ? The argument to an ante
cedent cause — to a First Cause whose priority
is temporal — can be revived only if we discover
in the world's particulars sufficing indication of
a general purpose, of a purpose governing those
particulars as a whole. Such a purpose could
originate only in the necessarily existent ground
of things, and, because purpose must always be
antecedent to its results, we could thence rightly
infer that the necessary ground of things has,

58 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
not only logical, but, also, temporal priority — is
not only a present ground, but also an antecedent
cause. (/) Two questions remain to be considered : —
(i) Is necessary existence God ?
(2) Is it plural or unitary ?
(1) " Is necessary existence God ? " Mr. Camp
bell appears to think that names are unimportant —
" the name matters comparatively little" — but they
have meaning, and should not be used hap-hazard.
Now, it seems clear that the argument to a neces
sarily existent ground of things does not enable
us to attribute to that ground the personal nature
and moral character which are essential in the
Christian conception of God.
Whether we can make that attribution otherwise
is another question.
(2) Is necessary existence plural or unitary ?
We cannot think of necessary being as beginning
to be. Therefore, we are compelled to attribute
to it an infinite past duration. But from the
necessity of its existence we cannot infer to it any
other infinity than a temporal infinity — we cannot
infer to it the infinity ordinarily attributed to God.
Now, it is not impossible for several things of
infinite duration to co-exist. Therefore, it is not
a priori impossible that necessary existence is plural
—that there are several " necessary existents."
The argument which demonstrates a necessary
ground of things — which demonstrates that the
particularity of things subsists in necessary being
— will enable us to demonstrate that necessary
being is unitary only if we have independent

GOD AND THE WORLD 59
reason to believe that all particular things are
modes of one substance. Now, as we have seen,
observation does in fact discover certain sub
stantial unities or identities. When ice melts
there is a perduring identity of substance : the
real thing (whatever be the conception we form
of it) which first exists as ice afterwards exists as
water. Moreover, the advance of Natural Science
discloses an increasing probability that all physical
things are modes of one primary substance. Now,
if the demonstration of unity could be made uni
versal — if we could show that all particular things
(ourselves included) are modes of one existence —
that demonstration would warrant the inference
that necessary being is unitary. But until this be
done, and the apparent difference between the
" spiritual " and the " natural " — between persons
and "things" — be thereby overcome, the demon
stration that particularity subsists in necessary being
will not enable us to affirm that necessary being is
unitary — that only one Necessary Being exists.
From sufficient indications of a general purpose
we would, indeed, infer that necessary being is
unitary, but that would be another argument.
(g) Mr. Campbell tells us — unless I misunder
stand his words — that " every one of necessity
believes " in " the un-caused Cause of all existence,"
and that this Cause is God.
We have seen —
(1) That the argument to a First Cause of
existent particulars is valid only in the form of
the demonstration that those particulars have their
ground in necessary being ; and

60 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
(2) That this demonstration does not enable us
to attribute to necessary being the characteristics
which — according to the Christian conception —
are distinctive of God, or even to affirm that
necessary being is unitary, and not plural.
We have not, indeed, considered the argument
from general purpose, but this argument is not
mentioned in the passage we are now considering
— the Cause Mr. Campbell therein speaks of is
the Cause of " existence," not of design. More
over, to this argument we shall soon have occasion
to return.
(h) Mr. Campbell tells us also — unless I mis
understand him —
(1) That an "unitary principle" is implied in
all multiplicity ;
(2) That " every one of necessity believes " in
this principle ;
(3) That this principle is God.
Now, it is true that the perception of multiplicity —
or, more accurately, the recognition of multiplicity
— implies the unity of the perceiving subject. Let
us assume the co-existence of several particulars
— A, B, C, D. If each of these particulars be
perceived by a separate subject which does not
perceive the others, there will be no consciousness
of plurality — each percipient will perceive only
one thing. Only if two or more of them be per
ceived by one percipient will there be awareness
of plurality. But this unity of the" perceiving
subject is implied, not by the existence of plurality,
but by the recognition of plurality. Can we say
that the existence of plurality implies the " objective "

GOD AND THE WORLD 61
unity of the several existent particulars ? — that
several things cannot exist, either simultaneously
or successively, unless they have their ground in,
or be held together by — unless they subsist or
consist in — some other thing ? An affirmative
answer to this question would, I think, be quite
without warrant.
We may be told that Mr. Campbell speaks, not
of plurality but of multiplicity. He does, and it
is true, also, that multiplicity is not identical with
plurality. We find plurality only where there is
more than one existent, and the mere existence of
more than one thing in any given field of obser
vation — in any given tract of space or time — is
sufficient to constitute plurality. Similarly, multi
plicity implies the presence of more than one
existent, but its characteristic denotation is this —
that the several existents are forms of one reality.
Undoubtedly, multiplicity does imply an " unitary
principle." But is the world in fact a multiplicity?
Are its innumerable particulars in fact forms of
one existence ?
To this we shall soon return. Now we need
only notice that, by his use of the words " all
multiplicity," Mr. Campbell either begs or hides
the question. He begs it if by " all multiplicity "
he mean the multiplicity of the world. He hides
it, if this be not his meaning. Ill
Mr. Campbell bids us remember that "the real
God is the God expressed in the universe and in "
ourselves.

62 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
" The question is not whether you shall believe
in God, but how much you can believe about
Him. You may think with Haeckel that the
universe is the outcome of the fortuitous inter
action of physical forces, without consciousness
or definite purpose behind them ; . . . but you
cannot help believing in God — the Power
revealed in it" (pp. 20-2 1).1
"When I say God, I mean the mysterious
Power which is finding expression in the uni
verse, and which is present in the very tiniest
atom of the wondrous whole. I find that this
Power is the one reality I cannot get away from,
for, whatever else it may be, it is myself. Theo
logians will tell me that I have taken a pro
digious leap in saying this ; but I cannot help it."
" I cannot help it." This note of necessity we
have heard before, and indeed it is (p. 1 8) charac
teristic of Mr. Campbell's Theism. We ought, he
tells us, "to understand clearly that to disbelieve
in God is an impossibility" (p. 17).
Now, this may be at once granted to Mr.
Campbell — if we know the universe to be the
expression of one Power " which is present in
the very tiniest atom of the wondrous whole "
and is, " whatever else it may be," ourselves, that
Power is an omnipresent reality from which we
"cannot get away." But is the universe the
expression of such a Power ? And, if it be, is
that Power God ?
1 Cp. the following passage : —
" Professor Haeckel declares his belief in God on every page of his
* Riddle of the Universe,' the famous book in which he says that
God, Freedom, and Immortality are the three great buttresses of super
stition, which science must make it her business to destroy " (p. 17).

GOD AND THE WORLD 63
(a) Mr. Campbell uses the word " expression "
— " the mysterious Power which is finding ex
pression in the universe." Now, we ordinarily
say that an artist finds expression in his work.
In that case the expression — the work — is quite
distinct and separate from that which is expressed
— the artist. On the other hand, we say also
that the human spirit in the course of its develop
ment finds " expression " in the ethical forms of
self-realisation — in justice, temperance, charity.
Now, these expressions are the human spirit itself
— the human spirit as just, temperate, charitable.
In this case there is no existential difference
between the expressions and that which they
express ; the human spirit is its expressions.
In which of these two ways is the universe the
"expression" of one "mysterious Power"? Mr.
Campbell's meaning seems clear : it is in the latter
way that the universe is the expression of that
Power. In one passage, indeed, Mr. Campbell describes
the expression as a presence: "the mysterious
Power which is finding expression in the universe,
and which is present in the very tiniest atom of
the wondrous whole." Now, presence may
imply only a pervading, only a presence in the
mode of indwelling — the mode properly named
" immanence." A Power thus present is distinct
and separate from the things it pervades, from the
things wherein it is immanent. But presence
may also imply substantial (existential) identity.
The " mysterious Power '' expressed in the uni
verse is " present in the very tiniest atom " if it
be that atom. Now, Mr. Campbell tells us that

64 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
this Power, "whatever else it may be," is Mr.
Campbell himself. These words denote sub
stantial identity, and point unmistakably to the
second mode of presence.1 We infer, therefore,
that Mr. Campbell believes " the mysterious
Power" expressed in the universe to be the
Universe. (b) But is the universe thus the expression of
one Power ? Are all the particulars of the uni
verse (ourselves included) modes of one Power ?
Observe, the question is not — Has the universe
one cause or one ground ? Nor is it — Is there
more than one ultimate reality ? The question
we have now to answer is this — Are all the par
ticulars of the universe modes of one Power ?.
Is ultimate reality, not the ground of each par
ticular thing, for that it must be, but is it the
constituent being of such particular thing ?
According to ordinary Christian thought, there
is only one Ultimate Reality, but the particulars
of the universe — although created by It, and con
tinuously sustained by Its concurrent will — do
not share Its essential being, are not modes of
1 That God is thus present in persons seems to be the unexpressed
postulate of Mr. Campbell's venturous assertion that " every one
believes in God if he believes in his own existence " (p. 17).
That conception may be also the unexpressed postulate of the
following passage : —
"The blankest materialist that ever lived . . . must have affirmed
God even in the act of denying Him. Professor Haeckel declares his
belief in God on every page of his ' Riddle of the Universe,' the
famous book in which he says that God, Freedom, and Immortality
are the three great buttresses of superstition, which science must make
it her business to destroy" (p. 17).
But it may be that we have here, alternatively or in addition to the
conception mentioned, a reference to Professor Haeckel's well-known
doctrine of Substance, which Mr. Campbell seems willing to accept
as a form of Theism.

GOD AND THE WORLD 65
It, are not consubstantial with It. But what
(according to ordinary Christian thought) those
particulars are not, that, according to Mr.
Campbell's thought, they are. Certainly, the
theologians would be right ! Mr. Campbell has
reached his cosmology by "a prodigious leap,"
and leaves it without support from evidence, and
almost without support from argument. Mr.
Campbell " cannot help it " ? It may be that he
cannot, but others do not share his incapacity.
(c) According to Mr. Campbell the universe is
the actuality of one " mysterious Power." That
Power is the universe ; that Power, Mr. Campbell
tells us, is God. Why does Mr. Campbell believe
that Power to be God ? Apparently, that belief
is one of the things Mr. Campbell "cannot
help," but, once more, others do not share his
incapacity. The word " God " has beeh variously defined.
As Mr. Campbell tells us, it "stands for many
things," but in Christian thought it stands for
One who, whatever else He be, is absolute,
personal, loving. Does Mr. Campbell accept
this denotation ? If he accept it, can he show
reason for thinking that the Power which is the
universe fulfils the conception of God thus con
stituted ? Is that Power what "God" denotes in
its Christian use ? For instance — Is that Power
absolute ? Has it self-existence or necessary
being ? From the mere fact that, according to
Mr. Campbell, it is the universe, we cannot infer
either an affirmative or a negative answer. We
cannot think that Ultimate Reality ever began to
E

66 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
be, for Ultimate Reality must have necessary
being. But we can think that the universe of
particulars began to be, and we can think also
that the Power which is the universe then
simultaneously began to be — called into existence
by some higher Power. Nothing observable in
Nature, and nothing properly inferred by Science,
warrants the belief that the universe had not a
beginning. Why, then, should we believe that
the Power which is the universe had not a
beginning ? But, if it had a beginning, it is not
self-existent,, and, if it be not self-existent, it is
not God.
(d) Let us, however, concede that the Power
which is the universe is a self-existent Power.
This will give us a cosmology closely similar to
Professor Haeckel's. The self-existent Power
which is the universe differs in little but name
from Professor Haeckel's Eternal Substance,
which also is the universe.1 Now, Professor
Haeckel's cosmology is ordinarily and, I think,
rightly described as atheistic. Mr. Campbell is
not an atheist, but does his conception of a Power
which is the universe — if it be a conception of
a self-existent Power — rise above atheism ? It
may be that Mr. Campbell would admit that it
does not, for to reach Theism he takes, and seems
aware that he takes, " a prodigious leap."
(e) Mr. Campbell, however, does not leave that
" leap " wholly without explanation. At least, the
1 Cp. p. 64 (footnote).

GOD AND THE WORLD 67
following passage seems to convey not only an
explanation, but also a justification : —
" Materialists may tell me that the universe
does not know what it is doing, that it goes on
clanking and banging, age after age, without end
or aim ; but I shall continue to feel compelled
to believe that the Power which produced Jesus
must at least be equal to Jesus " (p. 21).
Now, we may reasonably infer that Jesus was
" produced," and we may quite as reasonably
believe that the Power which produced Him was
equal to producing Him. Mr. Campbell, how
ever, says — not "equal to producing Jesus," but
" equal to Jesus." Behind this phrase there seems
to be a scale of worth. And, undoubtedly, in our
own minds most of us have a scale of worth.
We rank the personal above the impersonal, the
rational above the irrational, the moral above the
immoral. But have we sufficient reason, apart
from Theism, for believing that our scale of worth
has cosmic validity ; for believing that, according
to the constitution of the universe and in virtue
thereof, the things we deem higher are higher ?
If, however, we set aside this conception of
graduated worth, " equal to Jesus " can mean only
" similar to Jesus." Were we to adopt this mean
ing, and also Mr. Campbell's argument, we might
infer that because Jesus is personal, the Power
that produced Him must be personal — because
Jesus loved greatly, the Power that produced Him
must love greatly.
These inferences would presuppose that a cause
must be like its effects. This presupposition, how
ever, would exclude the idea of development. If

68 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
an effect be produced by an act of production
which is also an act of development, its cause is
not like unto it, but unlike it. And we know that,
from the age of the Vedantists unto our own day,
many thinkers, some of them prominent idealists,
have accepted the idea of development ; at least
to the extent of believing that the personal has, in
fact, arisen from the impersonal.
Moreover, the argument that Mr. Campbell
starts from Jesus could, with equal propriety and
cogency, be started from any particular existent —
from a stone or from Nero. Indeed, the first
general conclusion to which this argument, if
made universal, would lead is merely this — all
the qualities that temporarily appear in the tran
sient particulars of the universe must exist in the
Power which is the universe, and produces all
particulars out of itself. Observe ! All qualities,
the qualities of Jesus, the qualities of a stone, the
qualities of Nero ! Now, that conclusion is inter
esting — if not otherwise, at least for the specula
tive problems it suggests, — but it would not greatly
help us towards Theism.
(/) I have said that Mr. Campbell has left his
attribution of Deity to the Power which is the
universe almost unsupported by argument. One
could say " quite unsupported " were it not for
the following passage, which, it may be, Mr.
Campbell intends for an argument : —
" How can there be anything in the uni
verse outside of God ? Whatever distinctions
of being there may be within the universe, it is
surely clear that they must all be transcended

GOD AND THE WORLD 69
and comprehended within infinity. There can
not be two infinities, nor can there be an
infinite and also a finite beyond it " (p. 1 8).
This passage, I think, clearly presupposes the
existence of God, and proffers reasons for think
ing that, whatever else He be, He is the Power
existent in the world's particulars.
Now, the question to which Mr. Campbell's rhe
toric has led us is this — Can we infer Theism from
a Power which is the universe ? Mr. Campbell's
argument may be fairly re-stated in this form : —
God exists, and has such and such a nature.
His nature is such that there cannot be any
existence other than He — " outside of God."
Therefore, the Power which is the universe is God.
This argument infers Deity — Mr. Campbell
would, I think, say "divinity" — to the Power
which is the universe from the nature of the
existent God. It does not enable us to reach
belief in God from the discovery of that Power,
and its force would be completely broken by the
not impossible rejoinder, " I do not believe that
God exists ! "
It may, perhaps, be said that Mr. Campbell
here presupposes not the existence of God, but the
conception of God, and that his argument, if re
stated, should be re-stated thus: —
The word "God" denotes a certain specified
kind of existent.
The Power which is the universe is an existent
of that kind.
Therefore that Power is God.
The evidence is, I think, against this suggestion,
but let us accept it for what it is worth.

70 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
Two questions immediately suggest them
selves : —
(i) Has Mr. Campbell shown that the Power
which is the universe does, in fact, possess the
nature and character denoted by " God " ?
(2) Does Mr. Campbell give an adequate
account of the conception of God ?
(1) The one note of Deity mentioned by Mr.
Campbell is infinity. Has Mr. Campbell shown
that the Power which is the universe is infinite ?
He has not.
(2) Does Mr. Campbell's argument start with
an adequate conception of God ? Now, as Mr.
Campbell tells us, " the word ' God ' stands for
many things," but, as I have already said, in its
Christian use it stands for One Who, whatever
else He be, is absolute, personal, loving. No
existent that is not this can be the God of Chris
tian Faith.
The only attribute of God mentioned by Mr.
Campbell is infinity. Now, we may reasonably
think that an infinite existent is necessarily self-
existent — that is, absolute. But would Infinite Self-
Existence necessarily be personal or loving ?
Mr. Campbell should, in the first place, have
shown that infinity ' infers the other attributes-
essential in the Christian conception of God, or
should have otherwise sufficiently indicated them.
But he mentions only the infinity of God, and
gives no indication that infinity implies anything
else. His argument, as re-stated, starts from a
fatally inadequate conception of God, and not the
clearest fulfilment of that conception would prove
the fulfilling Power to be God.

GOD AND THE WORLD 71
(g) The " real God," says Mr. Campbell, is " the
God expressed in the universe " and in ourselves.
According to Mr. Campbell, the impossibility of
disbelieving in the existence of God excludes the
question — Does God exist ? and leaves primary
the quite different question — What ought we to
believe concerning Him ? Even though men be
materialists, like Professor Haeckel, they " cannot
help believing in God " — in the Power revealed in
the universe. Immediately upon these explana
tions follows this passage : —
" As I write these words I am seated before
a window overlooking the heaving waste of
waters on a rock-bound Cornish coast. ... I
have never seen anything quite like it before.
It tells me of a beneficent stillness, an eternal
strength. ... It whispers the word impossible
to utter, the word that explains everything, the
deep that calleth unto deep. So my God calls
always to my deeper soul, and tells me I must
read Him by mine own highest and best, and
by the highest and best that the universe has
yet produced" (p. 21).
This passage tells us how to interpret the
character of God, and, at least, it gives us a useful
canon whereby to judge — not the ways of God,
but men's representations of His ways. If, how
ever, it do nothing more than this — nothing more
than indicate a way of interpreting the character
of God — it will not help us to interpret the Power
that is the universe, unless we first believe that
Power to be, or to express, God. Yet I think
Mr. Campbell intends it to give us that help. He
has told us that the "real God," in whom one

72 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
"cannot help believing," is the Power revealed
in the universe, and that the important question
for each one of us is — What ought I to believe
concerning this real God ? When, after a delay
that seems primarily rhetorical, he goes on to tell
us how we should " read " God, it seems reason
able to think that he intends us to " read " the
universe — which, according to him, expresses God
— in the same way.1
If this be Mr. Campbell's intention, he would
have us interpret the universe by " the highest
and best " it has yet produced. Can we, in this
way, reasonably assure ourselves that the Power
which is the universe is God ?
The " highest and best that the universe has
yet produced " is, I think, the ideal of Christian
humanism — the ideal of a fully-developed life
made complete in love. If we use this ideal to
interpret the universe, what should be our method ?
We should, I think, begin by asking — What kind
of Ultimate Reality does this ideal presuppose ?
But the moment this question is asked an im
portant distinction comes into sight. An ideal is
not only existent : it is either valid or invalid.
From the mere existence of an ideal — from its mere
existence in the minds of men, as a fact in human
history — certain cosmological inferences may be
drawn, but the conclusions thus made immediately
accessible are not very important. If, however,
an ideal be valid — at least, if the ideal of Christian
humanism be valid — its validity has much more
1 Cp. the following sentence : —
" It is a Divine experiment without risk of failure, and we must
interpret it in terms of our own highest."
In this passage "it" unmistakably denotes the universe.

GOD AND THE WORLD 73
significance than its mere existence. An invalid
ideal has, I think, no other significance than the
significance of its existence.
(h) It is in the argument from man's moral
ideals that the argument to a general purpose in
things becomes most persuasive. Men do not
willingly accept the conclusion that the universe
is mindless, and, because purpose is the most
certain indication of mind, they have everywhere
sought for marks of purpose. The speculative
interest of their search is clear : if there be a
general purpose in the universe, we may reasonably
infer that Ultimate Reality is unitary and personal.
No form of the inference to purpose has been
more widely popular than what is ordinarily
called " the Design-argument." This argument has
sometimes been merely an argument from design.
Certain things having been assumed to show marks
of design, there followed an easy inference to the
existence of mind. But every argument of this
kind has been open to this initial criticism — Are
the marks here taken to be marks of design really
marks of design ? We cannot infer from design
unless we first have design. Now, design is not
obvious in Nature. Therefore, the argument from
design has developed into a more complex argu
ment, of which the earlier part is an argument to
design. Now, this latter argument — the argument
to design — has always been more effective in its
rhetorical than in its logical appeal, and recent
well-accredited conceptions of adaptive develop
ment have interposed difficulties that many find
insuperable.

74 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
Moreover, the Design-argument is an argument,
through a particular design, to a particular purpose
and a mind which originated that purpose. But is
the mind it reaches an universal mind ? It seems
clear that not every alleged instance of design
implies an universal purpose, nor every alleged
purpose an universal mind.
Some have attempted to infer cosmic purpose
from the general process of change — called a
process of evolution — whereby the particulars of
the universe are (as many believe) produced.
Evolution, it is said, presupposes an end, and an
end implies purpose, and, since the process of
evolution is universal, the purpose that guides it
must also be universal. But this argument con
fuses evolution with progress. Change (we know)
is not always purposeful, and even evolutionary
change — the change marked by the appearance of
new forms — may not be thought purposeful unless
its products bear the marks of purpose.
It is, however, sometimes said that the cosmic
process is, in fact, progressive — that in human
history, for example, we have unmistakable pro
gress. Now, it may be admitted, at once, that
evolutionary changes constitute what we ordinarily
call an ascending series : the later biological forms,
for instance, are " what we call higher than the
earlier, and in human history there has been a
similar advance. We may also admit that, at least
in human affairs, the ascent is still continuing, but
for how long will it continue ? Biological de
velopment and human advance presuppose certain
favourable conditions — if for no other reason, then
at least because animal and human life can exist,

GOD AND THE WORLD 75
not in every kind of world, but only in a certain
kind of world. Now, at one time this earth was
lifeless, and we have strong reasons for believing
that one day it will again be lifeless. If, then, the
seemingly progressive history of man be part of
the life-history of our planet, it is only an incident
therein, and one of comparatively short duration.
Moreover, the change that will make our earth
intolerant of life will be brought about by pro
cesses that are universal. Every part of the
physical universe will, sooner or later, "run down."
But, if this be true, the evolutionary ascent is
but an episode, and the subsequent descent will
destroy all that we now think higher. Even if
the past ascent seem purposeful, what shall we
say of the future descent ?
To many, however, this cosmology does not
seem final. They believe that man has a spiritual
nature which is not essentially involved in the
flux of things material, and in man's vocation to
the good life they find — or think that they find —
marks of a purpose which, if it be actual, must be
general. Is this alleged discovery a real discovery ?
In these pages, at least, it may be admitted,
without discussion, that man has a moral vocation
to the good life. But what is meant by a vocation ?
The word " vocation " means either " a call " or
" that to which one is called," and, when we speak
of a vocation to the good life, we mean a call to
the good life. Now, a call is something that
comes to one, and those who hold the Christian
faith think of man's moral vocation as the call of
God. But this presupposes Theism, and, in oftr
present argument, we may not presuppose Theism,

76 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
for we are endeavouring to reach Theism. Ordi
narily, however, when we speak of this or that
man's vocation, we do not — unless we are religi
ously interpreting a religious vocation — suppose
the vocation to come to him from without. A
boy, we say, has a clear vocation to the Bar.
We do not ordinarily mean that God has called
him to the Bar — such a meaning might overtax
the most robust faith — but only that he has a
certain kind of aptitude for the Bar, His vocation
is given by his own nature, and, if we are to use
man's moral vocation in the argument to general
purpose and thence to Theism, we must at first
regard it as a vocation of that character.
When, then, at the commencement of our
Theistic argument, we postulate that man has a
moral vocation to the good life, what does our
postulate mean ? It means not merely that man
has an aptitude for the good life, that he is capable
of achieving and living the good life, but that he
has a certain kind of aptitude for it. We mean that
human nature is so constructed that only in and
through the good life can it become complete and
satisfied. Man's vocation to that life comes from
the intrinsic determination J of his nature thereto.
The human spirit is characteristically a potency, and
the good life is the natural end or term of that
potency, the end in which alone it can become
completely actual.2 In other words, human
nature is not fixed and unchanging, but develop
ing, and its development can become complete
1 When using the word " determination " at this early stage of our
argument, we should be careful to exclude all thought of "purpose,"
and to think only of " potency " and " end."
2 Cp. my Patriotism, pp. 33-40.

GOD AND THE WORLD 77
only in and through the particular kind of life we
call the good life.
Now, the good life is nowhere completely actual,
— at least, nowhere within human experience, and
our argument does not yet permit us to speak of
the perfect life of God. Within our experience
it exists — in its perfect form — only as an ideal.
Consequently, the question immediately arises :
Is that ideal a practicable and reasonable ideal ?
Can we reasonably and hopefully make it the
guide of life ? A guide it unmistakably claims to
be, and it sets forth values which we ourselves
believe to be highest. But is that claim valid ?
Are those values really highest ? We have a sense
of obligation towards it — we ought to be what it
invites us to be — but is that obligation trustworthy
or misleading ? The good life is undoubtedly an
attractive life — the best judgment of the race deems
it the highest life, — but it is not easily attainable,
and even growth towards it entails or involves no
little sacrifice. Man has more than one kind of
aptitude, more than one kind of thing is valuable
to him — really valuable — and some values are near
at hand and easily accessible. Is it wise to forego
these, and to become ascetic for righteousness'
sake ? If the highest values be unattainable, it is
madness to pursue them. If, although attainable,
they be transient, finally extinguished by death,
are they worth the effort of attainment ?
Moreover, the good life can become completely
actual only as the result of a spiritual develop
ment which none of us can hope to see completed
within ourselves during our earthly existence. Is
there a life for man beyond the grave, and, if there

78 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
be, what is its character ? Will that after-life
fulfil or contradict this earthly life, and, in that
after-life, will the good life still be reasonable ?
These questions cannot be adequately answered
in the affirmative by an unassisted theory of human
nature. Suppose it true that man will live here
after, and that, in his future life, the values which
now seem highest will still seem highest. The
question would still remain unanswered — Is man's
vocation to those values a reasonable vocation ?
There are those who would tell us that, if the
after-life proved to be like this life, the demonstra
tion of reasonableness would (to say the least) be
difficult,, because, in and for earthly experience,
the good life is only doubtfully reasonable, and
the mere prolongation of our existence upon a
similar, although another, scene would not make
that life more reasonable.
Now, why is it said that, in and for this world,
the good life is only doubtfully reasonable ? If,
here and now — in and for present experience — it
seem unreasonable, its apparent unreasonableness
comes, I think, not from Nature, but from man
himself, from man's inhumanity to man, from his
selfishness and ignorance, from his indifference to
the best things, and his heedless hurry after the
lower. The selfishness of pretentious mediocrity
sheltered by insolent privilege, and of those who
hasten ruthlessly to be rich, or as ruthlessly to enjoy,
and the ignorance which not only impoverishes
the ignorant but hinders those jwho know better —
these are the things that sometimes make life seem
not worth the living. Nature, as we now know it,
is tolerant of the good life. In some sufficing

GOD AND THE WORLD 79
degree of completeness, that life could be lived
here and now did men seriously and generally
resolve to live it. Nature, in its relations to
human life, does indeed present problems, but
these are important for theology rather than for
ethics — for those who allege a Theodicy, rather
than for those who affirm the reasonableness of the
good life. Death, it is true, would, if it were
final, reduce all values to equal insignificance, and
leave Epicureanism the only reasonable creed.
But, if there be a future life, and if the theatre of
that life be no more unkindly than the Nature
which now environs us, the good life is, I think, a
sufficingly reasonable life.
Let it be assumed, then, that human nature
is essentially a spiritual nature, and that it will
eternally perdure after death — can we thence
infer a general purpose ?
The alternative inference would be that this
nature which thus perdures has arisen, without
purpose, by some necessary development from
Ultimate Reality.
This alternative may seem the less probable,
but we may not altogether ignore it.
Our argument to reasonableness involved, how
ever, more than immortality. It involved also a
tolerant environment. For us, here and now — in
and for our present experience — our present en
vironment is, I think, sufficingly tolerant, but will the
environment of our future life be not less kindly,
or will it make the good life impossible, e.g. by
making it a perpetual and profitless martyrdom ?
If the environment of that future life will be
sufficiently tolerant, can we, from that fact, infer

80 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
a general purpose ? Remember, we have reached
the conclusion that our present environment is
sufficingly tolerant. Were it demonstrated, or
otherwise known, that our future environment will
be no less friendly, that discovery would enable
us to frame this general proposition — The en
vironment of man's immortal existence is, and
always will be, tolerant of the good life. Thence
we could infer that the good life is a reasonable
life. Could we thence — from that eternal coin
cidence of opportunity with vocation — infer also
a general purpose ? Once more, the alternative
inference to a necessary and unpurposed develop
ment might seem the less probable, but, once
more, it could not properly be altogether ignored.
We set out to answer the question — Does
man's moral vocation to the good life presuppose
a general cosmic purpose ? We have discovered —
what ? An alternative, and, it may be, a some
what greater probability on the side of affirmation.
To make this discovery, however, we assumed
immortality, and in that assumption we virtually
assumed also that man's vocation to the good life
is a reasonable vocation. But is that vocation
in fact reasonable ? We do not know. Experience
does not and cannot demonstrate the reasonable
ness of it, and the natural sciences suggest nega
tion. There are, indeed, some who would seek
to exhibit this reasonableness as part of a general
philosophical construction. But every philoso
phical construction is a construction of human
thought, and who can certainly say that our
thought is adequate to metaphysical exploration ?
— that our undoubted metaphysical capacity is a

GOD AND THE WORLD 81
thoroughly competent capacity, able to accomplish
(with known and objective validity of accomplish
ment) that final interpretation of Ultimate Reality
which it so confidently essays ? The answer must,
I think, be — No one I J
This discussion arose out of Mr. Campbell's
precept to interpret the universe by our own
" highest and best." Mr. Campbell tells us of a
Power which is the universe, and we have sought
for proof that it is God. Could we prove it to
be purposeful, we could reasonably believe it to
be personal, and this would bring us very near
to Theism. But, not even with the help of Mr.
Campbell's precept, have we been able to discover
purpose, and Mr. Campbell's guidance leaves us
on the hither — the non-theistic — side of his " pro
digious leap." God and the Universe
We have endeavoured to discover in Mr. Camp
bell's thought some sufficient ground for a reason
able Theism. We have endeavoured, but we
have failed, because Mr. Campbell reaches Theism
by a " prodigious leap " for which no adequate
warrant is adduced.
From the other side of that leap Mr. Campbell
speaks to us, no longer of a Power that is the
universe, but of God, and goes on to explain the
1 It will be noticed that the argument here considered — the argument
from man's moral vocation to a general cosmic purpose and thence to
Theism — is not the argument from the Law of Conscience to a Law
giver, nor is it precisely Kant's argument through the concomitance of
pleasure with blessedness. F

82 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
method and purpose of creation. What concep
tion of God does this explanation disclose ?
(^4) At the very outset, Mr. Campbell points us
to an easy inference that God — whatever else He
be — is the universe.
" How can there be anything in the universe
outside of God ? Whatever distinctions of being
there may be within the universe, it is surely
clear that they must all be transcended and
comprehended within infinity. There cannot be
two infinities, nor can there be any infinite and
also a finite beyond it" (p. 18).
If God be infinite, it seems clear that all the
particulars of the universe must subsist within His
infinite being. But this does not define the mode
of their subsistence. Are we compelled to believe
that they subsist as modes of His essence — that
God can make particulars exist only by, as it were,
fashioning into particulars unseparated parts of
His own substance ? If God were extended sub
stance, filling infinite time and space, the belief
might seem inevitable, for there would be no un
filled parts of time or space wherein non-divine
things could exist. All the particulars of the
visible universe occupy time and space, and, if
all time and space be filled with the infinite being
of God, it at first sight seems clear that those
particulars must be so many forms or modes or
parts of God, for there is no room for anything
that is not God.
But this conception of God is to-day an anach
ronism. God is not extended substance, nor does
He fill time and space. These, indeed, are not

GOD AND THE WORLD 83
real extensions. To us they seem such, but to
God they are, I think, abstract conditions of
presentation (yorstellung) or " position," — forms
wherein He presents to Himself, or posits, the
particulars of the world. Are we to assume that
He can therein posit only particularised parts of
Himself ? May it not be that He creates the
things He posits, and gives unto them a substantial
existence other than that of His own self-existent
being, — not integral therein, and, although other
than it, not " outside " it ? If God be not in time
and space, and these be not real extensions but
" forms " of Divine action, the positing of such
other things therein would not derogate from the
completeness of the Divine nature, nor would
such things " limit " the being of God otherwise
than as particulars — even if they be modes of
God — must always limit it.
(B) We will now turn to other passages — to
passages wherein Mr. Campbell describes God, no
longer as mere infinity, but as infinite conscious
ness, and the universe as the self-realisation of
God:— "What I have to say reads back through
Hegehanism to the old Greek thinkers, and
beyond them again to the wise men who lived
and taught in the East ages before Jesus was
born. It is that this universe of ours is one
means to the self-realisation of the infinite.
Supposing God to be infinite consciousness, there
are still possibilities to that consciousness which
it can only know as it becomes limited " (p. 22).
" To all eternity God is what He is, and never

84 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
can be other ; but it would take Him to all
eternity to live out what He is. In order to
manifest even to Himself the possibilities of His
being, God must limit that being. There is no
other way in" which the fullest self-realisation
can be attained" (p. 23).
" I start, then, from the assumption that the
universe is God's thought about Himself " (p. 26).
(1) Self-realisation properly denotes the pro
cess whereby potency passes into act, whereby
possibilities develop into actual forms of life.1
Such a process we find in the growth of the
individual from infancy to manhood. Intellectual
capacities and moral qualities are present in adult
life which were not present in earliest infancy.
Yet in some form they must have been present
from the very beginning; because they are not
additions from without, but developments from
within. How, then, did they at first exist ? As
possibilities, or (more accurately) as potencies ?
We think of the individual self as possessing from
the first a certain definite constitution or nature —
definite, although undeveloped. Its first outward
expressions are simple, and probably its first
inward experience is equally simple, or almost
equally simple. But even at the very first it has
within itself certain capacities — capacities of be
coming this or that, of becoming able to do this
or that. These capacities are potencies, real
possibilities ; that which they can become is not
yet actual, but only potential or possible. For
example, we cannot think that a new-born infant
1 Cp. Patriotism, pp. 33-40.

GOD AND THE WORLD 85
loves. Yet, unless it be radically abnormal, there
must be within it the possibility of love, some
undeveloped capacity that later on will develop
into love. That undeveloped capacity is a
potency, and love is its actuality. But when
potency passes into actuality, when the possibility
of love develops into love, the reality of the self
becomes richer and more complex ; the self, we
say, becomes more completely real, and this pro
cess of becoming we call a process of self-
realisation. Now, the forms of life wherein the self thus
becomes realised (becomes more completely actual)
are not separate from the self ; they are the self —
the self acting in this way and that. The forms
of self-realisation are forms of the self ; their
existential reality is that of the self.
Therefore, if the universe be the self-realisation
of God, God is the universe ; and the particulars
of the universe are forms of His being, modes
of His life.
(2) It may be, however, that (in Mr. Campbell's
thought) " self-realisation " has another meaning.
It may be that he means by it, not " development
of potency into actuality," but " bringing into con
sciousness, or into clearer consciousness."
A man has lost his way — without knowing that
he has lost it — on a mountain, and is walking in
the dark along the edge of a precipice which he
believes to be a mile away. He is in danger, but
does not know that he is in danger. A flash of
lightning, however, shows him the precipice at his
very feet, and then for the first time he " realises "

86 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
his danger. If the universe be thus the self-realis
ation of God, the process of creation is a process
wherein God becomes more and more clearly or
completely aware of Himself, of His own nature.
But how does this awareness come to Him ?
There are two alternative possibilities : —
(i.) It comes in and through the development
of His own nature into actuality, in and through
self-realisation of the kind first discussed and
properly so called.
(ii.) It comes in and through a process which
calls into being an universe of particulars that
does not share His existential reality, but illus
trates His powers and character.
Between these alternatives the doctrine that the
universe is (in the second sense) the self-realisation
of God does not, in and by itself, enable us to choose.
(3) God, we are told, is " infinite conscious
ness." Now consciousness is a quality, and cannot
exist without a subject. There can no more be
consciousness without some one who is conscious
than there can be whiteness without something that
is white, or courage without some one who is brave.
Clearly, then, Mr. Campbell's definition or
description must be amended. God cannot be
merely infinite consciousness — that and nothing
else. If infinite consciousness be indeed His
characteristic quality, He must be a Being who
has infinite consciousness.
But what is infinite consciousness ? Conscious
ness implies not only a subject, but also an object.
There cannot be a consciousness which is mere
blank awareness, which is not a consciousness of

GOD AND THE WORLD 87
something. Consciousness that is not a con
sciousness of anything cannot exist. It seems,
then, that an infinite consciousness is a conscious
ness that has an infinite content, that is conscious
of an infinite number of things. If God be such
a consciousness, He must be aware of everything :
for Him there can be no undeveloped possibilities,
no potencies not yet become actual.1 Did such
exist, His consciousness would not be infinite, for
it would lack certain forms of actuality.
If, however, the consciousness of God be thus
complete, He cannot undergo either kind of self-
realisation. Not the first, for, ex hypothesi, no
possibilities (no potencies) remain undeveloped ;
everything is completely actual, and cannot be
come more real. Not the second, for if God be
(in this sense) infinite consciousness, He is already
completely aware of everything. Neither can He
have undergone self-realisation in the past ; for
if He be essentially a Being whose consciousness
has an infinite content, His consciousness must
ever have had that content. The content of His
consciousness must be co-eternal with His con
sciousness — that is, with Himself. We have
already seen that the existence of an infinite con
tent precludes self-realisation. If such a content
has existed from all eternity, then from all eternity
it has precluded self-realisation.
(4) It may be, however, that (in Mr. Campbell's
use) " infinite consciousness " does not denote a
consciousness with an infinite content, but one
Cp. p. 42 — " The being of God is a complex unity, containing
within itself and harmonising every form of self-consciousness that
can possibly exist."

88 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
which has an infinite capacity, and receives a
content through the process of self-realisation.
The conception of bare consciousness — of a
consciousness that is merely consciousness, without
being a consciousness of anything — is, as we have
seen, an impossibility. But let us waive the impos
sibility and suppose God to be an infinite con
sciousness of that kind. We have still to face the
difficulty that such a consciousness cannot undergo
self-realisation. Such a consciousness already has
the full reality of consciousness ; the advent of a
content would not make it more real. The gradual
appearance of an infinite content might, indeed,
imply self-realisation ; but the self-realisation im
plied would be a self-realisation, not of the con
sciousness, but of the Reality, whatever its nature,
that gradually revealed itself in consciousness.
We can reasonably conceive of a self-realisa
tion of consciousness only if we suppose the
consciousness that is self-realised to be, not con
sciousness, but only the potency or possibility of
consciousness. Let us then once more amend Mr. Campbell's
definition. God, we will say, is a Being who is
characteristically the potency or possibility of an
infinite consciousness. We could think of such a
potency becoming actual, developing into actual
consciousness ; but the process would presuppose
an original unconsciousness, for a possibility of con
sciousness — a possibility not yet developed into
actuality — is not consciousness.
Were we, then, to adopt this last amendment of
Mr. Campbell's definition, it would be necessary
to believe that God was at first unconscious, and

GOD AND THE WORLD 89
gradually achieved consciousness by some process
of self-realisation. Moreover, since the uncon
scious cannot be purposeful, it would be necessary
to think that the self-realisation of God began
without purpose — by chance or necessity. Would
such a conception of God be Christian ? Un
equivocally, No !
(5) We will now bring together certain more
or less widely separated passages which set forth
primary aspects of Mr. Campbell's thought, and
may collectively help us to apprehend his meaning.
(a) "The limits of my subject forbid that I
should enter into a discussion of philosophic
idealism, but I think I ought to confess at once
that I can only think of existence in terms of
consciousness ; nothing exists except in and for
mind" (p. 26).
(b) " The true being is consciousness ; the
universe, visible and invisible, is consciousness "
(P- 32).
(c) "God is "ceaselessly uttering Himself
through higher and ever higher forms of
existence" (p. 24).
(d) "Thus to the question, Why a finite unit
verse ? I should answer, Because God wants to
express what He is" (p. 23).
(e) " So far we have seen that the universe,
including ourselves, is one instrument or vehicle
of the self-expression pf God" (p. 25).
If we take these passages in connection with
those already quoted (pp. 83-4), what general
conception will they help us to form ?
God, we have already heard, is consciousness —

90 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
infinite consciousness. The universe also is con
sciousness. It is God's thought about Himself ;
in it God is "uttering Himself," living out what
He is, manifesting to Himself the possibilities of
His own being. And He does this — how ? By
limiting His infinite being. The particulars of
the universe are limited modes of God, and the
limitation is for the purpose of self-expression.
The conception is not unattractive, and claims
careful consideration.
(a) The particulars of the universe, we learn,
are forms or modes of God's self-expression. If
we call them forms or modes of self-realisation —
and Mr. Campbell himself describes the process of
creation as a process of self-realisation — the self-
realisation we think of must be the self-realisation
of the second type, for those forms or modes are
said to be, not developments of Divine potencies,
but the expression of Divine actualities. They set
forth, not the potencies of God, but what God is :
they re-present God to Himself. But, if God be
from all eternity infinite consciousness, from all
eternity He knows what He is. Why, then, this
dramatic outspreading of a re-presentative universe ?
Mr. Campbell suggests an answer : —
" You may know yourself to be a brave man,
but you will know it in a higher way if you are
a soldier facing the cannon's mouth ; you will
know it in a still different way if you have to
face the hostility and prejudice of a whole com
munity for standing by something which you
believe to be right" (pp. 22, 23).
But if God be infinite consciousness, He has
eternally been aware of what He is, and has, from

GOD AND THE WORLD 91
all eternity, known completely all that self-expres
sion can make manifest. Why, then, has He
sought self-expression ?
(b) It may be that this question does not trouble
Mr. Campbell, for he believes creation to be
eternal J and is (it may be) content to think of it
as the self-expression of God, without believing it
to be purposeful.
" Without believing it to be purposeful " ? Yes,
for an eternal process cannot be a purposeful pro
cess, because a purpose is antecedent to its effects,
and there can be nothing antecedent to an eternal
process — a process that has no beginning.
We are, then, to think of the self-expression of
God in particulars as eternal, and as therefore, un
purposed. But, if it be unpurposed, it must be
the result of some inner necessity in the Divine
nature, for we cannot think that an eternal process
exists by chance. Is this conception of the
universe as the necessitated and eternal self-ex
pression of God — a self-expression not originated
by thoughtful purpose or intending love — one that
Christian thought can welcome ? I think not !
(c) If the self-expression of God in particulars
be an eternal and necessitated process, does it pre
suppose any ground in the Divine nature other
than a potency — a possibility as yet undeveloped
— sufficient to account for those particulars ?
Were the self-expression of God purposeful, we
could suppose it to be the setting forth — the re
presentation — of an infinite plenitude of being
1 " The act of creation is eternal, although the cosmos is changing
every moment" (pp. 23, 24).
On p. 27 the universe is described as " infinite and eternal."

92 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
already existent in the Divine nature. But, if once
the thought of purpose be dropped, such a pleni
tude would be otiose, functionless, and unnecessary.
An eternal self-expression in particulars would not
presuppose an antecedent plenitude, for there
cannot be any antecedent to an eternal process.
It would presuppose only a perduring ground
containing the potency (possibility) of the par
ticulars. (d) This brings us to yet another reduction of
one conception of God. We have already taken
away the thoughts of purpose and plenitude : we
have now to remove, almost completely, the
thought of transcendence.
God can no longer be thought of as purposeful
plenitude of being. He is merely the universe of
particulars, and the not yet exhausted potency
which has not, thus far, become expressed in that
universe. His only transcendence is that of the
marginal potency which has not yet developed
into actuality. Were his self-expression complete,
He would not be in any degree transcendent, for
He would then be only the universe — the universe,
and nothing else. Once more, are these concep
tions that Christian thought can welcome ?
(e) It may be, however, that even were these last
reductions accepted, it would still remain necessary
to think of God as the universal consciousness.
But what function would we then assign to such a
consciousness ? According to the original form of
the conception we have gradually reduced, the
self-expression of God takes place in order to
manifest Himself to Himself — His nature to His
consciousness. The purposeful self-expression of

GOD AND THE WORLD 93
God has its term in the consciousness which be
holds it — it takes place in order to give that
consciousness a certain content. The Divine
consciousness is the " objective," as it were, of the
Divine process of self-expression. It is, however,
the " objective " of that process only because — I
am speaking according to our original and un
reduced conception — that process is purposeful.
If, however, the self-expression of God be, not a
purposeful re-presentation, but the necessitated
development of potency, need we suppose God to
be conscious ? If our conception of the Divine
self-expression be thus reduced, what is left for
an universal consciousness to do ?
Only one answer seems possible. A thinker
who, like Mr. Campbell, believes that " all true
being is consciousness " might say that, even if we
abandon the thought of a purposeful self-expression,
we must still continue to think of God as the uni
versal consciousness — no longer, indeed, to origi
nate His self-expression in particulars, or to give
to that self-expression an " objective," but to make
His very being intelligible.
Be it so, but, since consciousness is always and
only consciousness of a content, the Divine con
sciousness will be merely a consciousness of the
particulars of the universe and of whatever Divine
potency has not received expression in those par
ticulars — only of these, for, ex hypothesi, these are
the only existents that can give a content to that
consciousness. Once more, is this a conception
that Christian thought can welcome ?
(6) Mr. Campbell tells us that God is " infinite

94 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
consciousness." It is, however, not easy to dis
cover with satisfactory precision what Mr. Camp
bell means by this. The predicate "infinite
consciousness " has more than one denotation, and
Mr. Campbell does not clearly indicate which of
these he adopts.
Two of these denotations we have already con
sidered :
(i) An infinite consciousness is a consciousness
with an infinite content.
(2) An infinite consciousness is a consciousness
infinitely capable of consciousness.
There remains, however, a third denotation,
which must be considered before we proceed
further :
(3) An infinite consciousness is a consciousness
which transcends the distinction between subject
and object.
I will not say that this conception is distinctive
of modern philosophy, but it is prominent in
philosophical thought to-day as it has never been
before, and this prominence gives a distinctive
character to modern philosophical discussion.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to make this con
ception easily intelligible. We are familiar with
the ordinary distinction between subject and object.
I who know am the subject in my act of know
ledge, and the thing that I therein know is the
object. That kind of consciousness — the con
sciousness of an object by a subject — is the kind
which constitutes our everyday experience, but
what is that other kind — the kind which transcends
it ? Probably an illustration will be more useful
than a technically-expressed answer.

GOD AND THE WORLD 95
To ordinary thought nothing seems clearer or
more fundamental than the consciousness each
one has of himself. But this consciousness — this
self-consciousness — is not an original endowment
of human nature. In each of us it has a beginning
within the individual life. In earliest infancy it
does not exist. Consciousness, indeed, there then
is, but not — so at least our psychologists say —
self-consciousness. Our earliest experience is an ex
perience in which the distinction between subject
and object, though latent, has not emerged into
consciousness. The content of that earliest ex
perience is not the intellectual perception — " I
perceive a tree," — characteristic of late years, but
uninterpreted feeling, which is not even thought of
as " my feeling." No doubt the elements which
afterwards become a consciousness of subject and
object are latent therein, but they are latent, not
manifest. The consciousness of self, and of self
in perceptual relation with an object, is a later
development. In that development the unity of
the first experience, so we are told, is broken.
The content of that first experience was a feeling
in which the distinction between subject and
object had not become apparent. With the ap
pearance of that distinction, experience falls apart
into two sides, aspects, or factors — the subjective
and the objective — which seem to be independent.
This dualism is characteristic of our ordinary
consciousness. Infinite consciousness is a con
sciousness which transcends that dualism and
re-establishes unity. That new consciousness is
ordinarily said, rather in illustration than in
description, to be a kind of feeling, but we must

96 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
be careful not to think of it as mere feeling. The
transition to infinite consciousness is not a return
to the beginnings of finite consciousness ; the
unity is not the original unity ; the new feeling is
not the original feeling. Wherein do they differ ?
Let us return to our illustration. The conscious
ness of self — of the subject in experience — arises
out of primitive feeling which was not self-conscious,
and out of the same feeling there arises, concur
rently with consciousness of the self, consciousness
of the object. Both develop out of primitive
experience. But when the distinction between
subject and object has thus emerged, that distinc
tion, we are told, is a limitation. Reality is ex
perience — this is the distinctive doctrine of the
idealism most characteristic of our day — but sub
ject and object are severally only parts or aspects
of experience. Each is one side of a dualism that
has arisen in experience ; neither is complete
Reality, but only an aspect of Reality. Absolute
experience — which is said to be Absolute Reality
— is reached only when the dualism that has
emerged in experience is overcome, and the sepa
rate sides of it (subject and object) are brought
together again in a new experience which does not
obliterate the distinction between subject and
object, but transcends it. Absolute experience does
not negative finite experience, but completes it ;
it does not annihilate the distinctions that have
arisen in finite experience, for it is the " truth " of
those distinctions.
This is as far, or almost as far, as we can
easily go — for our human speech is shaped by our
finite human experience, and cannot describe an

GOD AND THE WORLD 97
experience essentially different from ours, — and,
fortunately, this is as far as we now need go.
Does Mr. Campbell's " infinite consciousness "
denote absolute experience ? or, more accurately,
does it denote a consciousness related to ordinary
consciousness as absolute experience is to ordinary
experience ? I do not know, and cannot discover.
Certain passages, if they stood alone, would
incline us to believe that, in Mr. Campbell's
opinion, the infinite consciousness of God is
merely extensively infinite — is infinite either because
it has a numerically infinite content, or because it
is capable of receiving such a content.
"The Infinite Consciousness sees itself as a
whole ; the finite consciousness sees that same
whole in part" (p. 33).
"The larger and fuller a consciousness be
comes, the more it can grasp and hold of the
consciousness of God" (p. 28).
" Individuality only has meaning in relation
to the whole, and individual consciousness can
only be fulfilled by expanding until it embraces
-the whole " (p. 33).
"The mind that thinks the universe must
be immeasurably greater than my own, but in
so far as I am able to think the universe, mine
is one with it" (p. 26).
On the other hand we have the following
passage : —
" Supposing God to be infinite consciousness,
there are still possibilities to that consciousness
which it can only know as it becomes limited "
(p. 22).
Here we have a new thought, the thought of
G

98 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
a possible experience outside, as it were, of the
infinite, an experience that can be gained only by
a self-limitation of the infinite. This suggests that
the infinity of the Divine consciousness is not
thought by Mr. Campbell to be distinctively an
extensive infinity.
If the consciousness of God were infinite because
possessed of a numerically infinite content, there
would (and could) be nothing outside it. Its con
tent would be an all-inclusive content. In it, as
we have seen, every potency would be completely
actualised, every possible development completely
accomplished. There would be nothing for God
to gain by assaying the Divine adventure of self-
realisation, for He would already be everything.
But if the infinity of the Divine consciousness
were, distinctively, a qualitative infinity — of the
kind indicated by our third denotation — then, un
doubtedly, new experience would be gained by
adventure into finite consciousness. If the Divine
consciousness transcended the limitations of " sub
ject-object experience " — were above the character
istic dualism of our consciousness — it would not
include the kind of consciousness distinctive of
"subject-object experience." Were God to step
out of His infinity into finitude, He would gain
that latter kind of consciousness. He would come
to know things, as we know them, and that kind of
knowledge would be new to Him. But would it
be worth gaining ?
According to the philosophy that to-day gives
us the conception of qualitative infinity, a con
sciousness qualitatively infinite would be a com
pletely perfect consciousness, and every other

GOD AND THE WORLD 99
consciousness is imperfect. If, then, God be
already perfect consciousness, why should He take
the trouble 1 to achieve imperfect consciousness ?
Only one answer seems possible. God takes
that trouble in order to gain new experience — a
new kind of knowledge or a new feeling. If this
answer be accepted, the " Divine experiment " of
self-expression must be merely Epicurean, for it
must be an experiment made merely to obtain a
certain aesthetic satisfaction — the satisfaction of
gratifying an intellectual curiosity that is merely
curious, satisfaction akin to that of the gourmet who
tries a new dish. Few will think — Mr. Campbell
himself will not think — that this adequately inter
prets the purpose of God in creation.2
7, The self-realisation spoken of in the para
graphs immediately preceding is self-realisation of
the second kind — re-presentative self-realisation.
Self-realisation of the first kind — developmental
self-realisation, self-realisation by the development
of potency (possibility) into actuality — is impos
sible to a consciousness already qualitatively
infinite, and, therefore, already completely and
perfectly real.
Is it, then, impossible to connect the thought of
developmental self-realisation with the thought of
Absolute Consciousness — of consciousness already
qualitatively infinite ? Clearly not, for we can
regard the consciousness as the term or goal of
1 "Trouble," indeed, is too mild a word, for the descent into finite
experience brings into the Divine Life all the sin and misery of the
world. ? gee note on pp. joo-103,

roo MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
the self-realising process ; we can suppose the
universe to be the expression or self-realisation of
a Self-Existent whose potency is being gradually
developed towards Absolute Consciousness,
According, however, to this conception, the
Divine consciousness would be an emergent, a
result. God (Absolute Consciousness) would be,
not the cause of the world-process, nor its perdur
ing ground, but its last achievement, and, as yet,
He would be non-existent, or, more accurately,
only potentially existent, — existent only in the
potency that would one day become God (Abso
lute Consciousness), but would not as yet be God.
The developing Self-Existent Reality would, in
deed, be on its way to Godhead, but would not
yet possess the distinctive consciousness of God,
and, therefore, would not yet be God.
It seems unnecessary to ask whether Christian
thought could accept such an interpretation of the
world-process. Note. — Creation and Love
I. The following passage suggests that the self-limitation
of God to the world of finite persons took place in order
that God might express (become aware of) His love — in
order that His love (the " Christ spirit ") might become
self-conscious : —
" Look abroad all through the world, look back upon
the slow upward progress of humanity to its home in God,
and you will read the story of the incarnation of the
eternal Son. Never has there been an hour so dark but
that some gleams of this eternal light have pierced the
murky pall of human ignorance and sin ; never have bitter
hate and fiendish cruelty gone altogether unrelieved by the
human tenderness and self-devotion that testify of God.
Indeed, without the limitation, the struggle, and the pain,

GOD AND THE WORLD 101
how would this Christ spirit ever have known itself?
Granted that self-surrender had never been called for by
the conditions of life, granted that our resources had always
known themselves infinite, and that which is worthiest and
sublimest in the nature of God and man alike could never
have been revealed. This is why the eternal Son has
become incarnate " (pp. no, in).
(a) " How would this Christ spirit ever have known
itself" ? Mr. Campbell tells us that God is Infinite Con
sciousness. If, then, God be love, and His consciousness
be extensively infinite — without limit, and aware of every
thing — God must eternally know that He is love. It
could not have been necessary for Him to pass into finite
existence — to become incarnate — in order to make dis
covery of His love.
Again, if » the consciousness of God be qualitatively
infinite — if it be Absolute Consciousness — then, in that
consciousness, love and knowledge must be transcendent-
ally complete. God needs not to leave the perfection of
His Absolute Existence in order to become aware that He
is love, for in that Existence His love and His knowledge
of His love are both eternally complete. Self-expression
within the sphere of finite existence — necessarily an in
complete self-expression, because within that sphere — could
add nothing to His nature or to His knowledge of His
nature. (b) Love, we know, cannot subsist except in a plur
ality. Were God one Sole Person, He would not and
could not be love. If He be love, His life must in
some way be involved in plurality. If He be eternally
love, the plurality wherein His love subsists must be an
eternal plurality.
According to the Catholic tradition of thought, such a
plurality exists in the Divine Essence Itself, and, within
that plurality — in the perfect life of the Holy Trinity —
love is eternally complete. An alternative is not, however,
inconceivable. Were the universe of finite persons eternal,
that universe (together with God) would constitute an
eternal plurality within which love could eternally subsist.
But the love thus contingent upon the world of particulars
could not be the cause of that world.
(c) Catholic doctrine requires us to believe that God

102 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
created the world for some purpose consistent with His
love, and became incarnate in the unique Person of our
Lord in order to manifest His love — not to Himself, for
that were unnecessary, but to us.
Mr. Campbell teaches that " the eternal Son " is incarnate
in every man, and not uniquely in our Lord. According
to Mr. Campbell, God, by self-limitation, created a world
of finite persons in order, through that self-limitation, to
become aware of His own love — in order to manifest His
love to Himself, in order that the "Christ spirit" might
know itself.
This, however, brings us face to face with alternative
difficulties. If God be, as Mr. Campbell teaches, infinite Perfec
tion, His love and His knowledge of His love must be
eternally complete — the " Christ spirit" must eternally know
itself. Because the self-knowledge of the infinitely Perfect
must be complete, God had no need to create a world
of finite persons in order to discover to Himself His own
love. On the other hand, if the creation of, that world
were really a self-discovery by God of His own nature, He
could not, prior to that creation, have been infinitely
Perfect. This alternative, however, brings us, as we have
seen, within sight of a non-Theistic cosmology.
II. " There are some things," says Mr. Campbell, " im
possible even to omnipotence, and one of them is the
realisation of a love that has never known pain" (p. 49).
" Where no need exists, that is where life is infinite, love
finds no expression. To realise itself for what it is, sacrifice,
that is self-limitation, becomes necessary."
These passages make it clear that, in Mr. Campbell's
opinion, the love of God is contingent upon the existence
of a world of finite particulars (see p. 101).
It is, however, difficult to conceive of infinite life without
love. One naturally inclines to think that the absence of
love would be a most important moral limitation.
Is it said that there would be capacity for love? A
dormant capacity is a potency (a possibility), and, if we
once begin to think of God as " potency," we are on the
highroad to non-Theistic theory (see p. 100).
These conclusions have an important bearing on Mr.

GOD AND THE WORLD 103
Campbell's theory of evil. They suggest, too, this further
question : If God achieve love only by passing into finite
life, is it only thus that He becomes conscious ?
III. In one passage, at least, Mr. Campbell seems to
suggest an aesthetic end for the self-realisation of God in
the world of finite persons.
" If it affords an artist satisfaction to express himself
in a beautiful picture, or a great thinker to express his
noble thought in a book, surely the highest satisfaction
that God can know must be His self-expression in the
self-sacrifice of His children. ... It is the satisfaction He
receives from the Atonement, and the only one " (p. 175).
Mr. Campbell is able to represent this end as a worthy
one because he does not recognise that, if God be Infinite
Perfection, the satisfaction concomitant upon His self-
expression in finite particulars must be poorer than the
satisfaction He eternally enjoys.
If God be eternally Infinite Perfection, He must eternally
possess the infinite perfection of love, and to achieve the
satisfaction concomitant upon finite experience would
involve declension to a lower " value." x

God and Man
(a) Thus far we have not been able to discover
precisely what relation Mr. Campbell conceives to
subsist between the particulars of the world and
God. Those particulars, we are told, are the self-
realisation or self-expression of God. But what is
meant by " self-realisation or self-expression " ?
Self-realisation, we have seen, has two denota
tions : —
(1) It denotes the development of potency
(possibility) into actuality ;
1 It should be noticed that, if God be Infinite Perfection or Absolute
— that is, qualitatively infinite — Consciousness, self-expression in (or
self-limitation to) the imperfections of finite existence would " express "
what God is not.

I64 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
(2) It denotes the re-presentation of things
already existent, which, by the re-presentation, are
brought into consciousness, or into clearer
consciousness. Theprocessindicated bythefirstdenotation I have
called developmental self-realisation. The second
process I have called re-presentative self-realisation.
If the finite particulars of the world be the
developmental self-realisation of God, God is the
existential reality of each particular. Each
particular is God — is God developed or self-
expressed in a certain way and form.
If, however, they be the re-presentative self-realisa
tion of God, they are not of the Divine substance
— God is not their existential reality, although they
re-present facts of the Divine Nature. If this be
God's mode of self-expression, then is His self-
expression comparable with a work of art, which
represents its object in and through another
medium — a sunset through the medium of painted
canvas, a resting god through marble.
(b) We have not, as yet, found any clear indica
tion which of these possible and alternative modes
Mr. Campbell conceives to be the actual mode of
God's self-expression. When, however, we turn
to Mr. Campbell's account of the relation sub
sisting between man and God we find what is, I
think, a clear suggestion that God and man are of
one nature, that man is of the Divine substance.
"To ordinary common-sense nothing seems
more obvious than that we know most that is to
be known about our friend, John Smith. . . .
But, according to the newer psychology, this

GOD AND THE WORLD 105
matter-of-fact Englishman is not what he seems
even to himself. His true being is vastly greater
than he knows. ... It belongs ... to the
plane of eternal reality. This larger self is, in
all probability, a perfect and eternal spiritual
being integral in the being of God. His surface
self ... is the incarnation of some portion of
that true eternal self which is one with God"
(pp. 31,32).
" A third inference, already hinted at and pre
sumed in all that has gone before, is that the
highest of all selves, the ultimate Self of the uni
verse, is God. The New Testament speaks of
man as body, soul, and spirit. The body is the
thought-form through which the individuality
finds expression in our present limited plane ; the
soul is man's consciousness of himself as apart
from all the rest of existence, and even from
God . . . the spirit is the true being thus limited
and expressed — it is the deathless Divine within
us ... it is at once our being and God's.
What we are here to do is to grow the soul, that
is to manifest the true nature of the spirit, to
build up that self-realisation which is God's ob
jective with the universe as a whole, and with
every self-conscious unit in particular" (p. 34).
We find the same doctrine, in other words, in
the later chapter entitled, " Jesus, the Divine Man."
"The terms with which we have to deal are
Deity, Divinity, and Humanity. ... It follows
from the first principle of the New Theology that
all the three are fundamentally and essentially
one, but in scope and extent they are different.
By the Deity we mean . . . the all-controlling

106 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
consciousness of the universe, as well as the
infinite . . . abyss of being beyond. By Divinity
we mean the essence of the nature of the imma
nent God. . . . Show us perfect love, and you
have found us the divinest thing the universe can
provide, whether it knows itself to be immedi
ately directed and controlled by the infinite con
sciousness of Deity, or whether it does not. . . .
Humanity . . . stands for that expression of
the Divine nature which we associate with our
limited human consciousness. Strictly speaking
the human and Divine are two categories which
shade into and imply each other : humanity is
Divinity viewed from below ; Divinity is humanity
viewed from above. If any human being could
succeed in living a life of perfect love ... he
would show himself Divine, for he would have
revealed the innermost of God"1 (pp. 74, 75).
Man then, is essentially of the one only Divine
substance ; he is, as it were, part of God. The
spirit, which is man's true self, is the " deathless
Divine " within each one of us — " it is at once our
being and God's."
(c) I have spoken of the Divine substance. Mr.
Campbell described God as consciousness — infinite
consciousness — not as substance.
1 Cp. the following passages from the same chapter :—
" We have to get rid of the dualism which will insist on putting
humanity and Deity into two separate categories " (p. 81).
" Present-day Unitarianism is preaching with favour and clearness
the foundation truth of the New Theology, the fundamental unity of
God and man " (p. 82).
Cp., also, the following passage : " Where, then, some one will say,
is the dividing line between our being and God's ? There is no dividing
line except from our side. The ocean of consciousness knows that the
bay has never been separated from itself" (pp. 34, 35).
On p. 40 we read of " the fundamental identity of God and man."

GOD AND THE WORLD 107
The following passages, which have been quoted
once before, show what relation Mr. Campbell
conceives to subsist between infinite and finite
consciousness : —
"The Infinite Consciousness sees itself as a
whole ; the finite consciousness sees that same
whole in part" (p. 33).
"The larger and fuller a consciousness be
comes, the more it can grasp and hold of the
consciousness of God " (p. 28).
" Individuality only has meaning in relation
to the whole, and individual consciousness can
only be fulfilled by expanding until it embraces
the whole" (p. 33).
" The mind that thinks the universe must be
immeasurably greater than my own, but in so
far as I too am able to think the universe, mine
is one with it" (p. 26).
Finite consciousness, we gather, is related to
Infinite Consciousness as " part " to " whole."
This is the very relation that I have already
described in terms of substance.
It appears, then, that, according to Mr. Camp
bell, man is God or part of God — is God existing
as man. God's self-expression in man is a de
velopmental self - expression or self - realisation,
and, if it illustrate the mode of His self-expression
in other finite particulars, then is God substan
tially present in every finite particular. Of each
one He is the existential reality.1 Each is — not
1 Cp. the following passage : " How can there be anything in the
universe outside of God ? " (p. 18).
Also the following: "In a sense, of course, everything that exists
is Divine, because the whole universe is an expression of the being of
God" (p. 75).

108 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
a re-presentation of God or of something in His
nature, but is God, is God self-limited to that
particular mode of being.
This appears to be the doctrine implied in the
following interesting and singular passage : —
"Thus we get two modes of God — the in
finite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being ;
and the finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited
being of which we are ourselves expressions.
And yet these two are one" (p. 23).
Note. — The New Theology as the Religion of Science
Mr. Campbell claims for the New Theology that it is
" the religion of science " (p. 1 5).
"It is the denial that there is, or ever has been, or ever
can be, any dissonance between science and religion ; it is
the recognition that upon the foundations laid by modern
science a vaster and nobler fabric of faith is rising than
the world has ever known before. Science is supplying
the facts which the New Theology is weaving into the
texture of religious experience" (p. 15).
" So far science has only succeeded in giving us a vaster,
grander conception of God, by giving us a vaster, grander
conception ofthe universe in which we live" (pp. 17, 18).
If it be true that God is the universe — the universe and
something more — it is clear that science (within its own
range) is an exploration of the Divine Nature, and the
theology which asserts the divinity of the world may fairly
be called " the religion of science."
Note. — The Self-limitation of God
The thought of God's self-limitation is very prominent
in Mr. Campbell's New Theology.
" Supposing God to be the infinite consciousness, there
are still possibilities to that consciousness which it can
only know as it becomes limited" (p. 22).
" We have seen, too, that it is by means of the universe
and His self-limitation that He expresses Himself to Him
self" (p. 25).

GOD AND THE WORLD 109
" The coming of a finite creation into being is itself of
the nature of a fall — a coming down from perfection to
imperfection. We have seen the reason for that coming
down; it was that the universal life may realise its own
nature by attenuating or limiting its perfection. If I want
to understand the composition of the ordinary pure-white
ray, I take a prism and break it up into its constituents.
This is just what God has been doing in creation " (p. 66).
Self-limitation implies that the limited being which is
the result of the limitation is not existentially separated
from the original, non-limited being, but is that being
made subject to certain self-imposed conditions.
The last of the three passages quoted in this note sug
gests an interesting resemblance between the New Theology
and Vedantism. The "creation" of the world by the
breaking up of the Divine perfection seems very like the
"creation" of finite existence in the "veil of Maya."

CONCLUSION
(a) This, then, is the result of our inquiry :
according to Mr. Campbell, God is the finite parti
culars of the universe and something more. But
what is that " something more " ? Infinite con
sciousness, says Mr. Campbell, which is self-
expressed in, or self-limited to, those particulars.
But, again, what is infinite consciousness ?
The adjective " infinite " may denote either ex
tensive or qualitative infinity — either a consciousness
that knows (or is capable of knowing) everything,
or a consciousness that is what modern thinkers
ordinarily call absolute. A consciousness of the
former sort would be generically like our own ;
a consciousness of the latter sort would be generi
cally unlike, our own, for it would transcend the
limitations of "subject-object" experience, within
which our consciousness is characteristically

no MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
confined, and this transcendence would be its dis
tinctive note. When Mr. Campbell tells us that
God is Infinite Consciousness, of what kind of
Infinity does he think ?
We have not been able to discover. Some of
Mr. Campbell's words point to the one conception,
and some to the other.
(b) If, however, there be one thought which,
more than any other, is essential in Mr. Campbell's
doctrine, it is the thought of self-realisation or
self-expression.1 Now, in an earlier part of our
inquiry, we found that, if the Divine consciousness
be extensively infinite, it cannot undergo self-realisa
tion. (i) If it be a consciousness capable of an
extensively infinite " awareness," it is already, as
consciousness, completely real, and has no content
that can become developed into actuality, or re
presented (cp. p. 88).2
(2) If it be a consciousness with an extensively
1 " What I have to say leads back through Hegehanism to the old
Greek thinkers, and beyond them again to the wise men who lived and
taught in the East ages before Jesus was born. It is that this finite
universe of ours is one means to the self-realisation ofthe infinite"
(p. 22).
2 It may be said — Does not the self-realisation of God consist, ac
cording to Mr. Campbell, in giving this infinite " awareness " a content ?
I think not.
The argument runs as follows : —
God is consciousness without content, but capable of receiving an
extensively infinite content.
In the universe of particulars, this capacity to know is realised in
actual knowledge.
That realisation, however, cannot be a self-realisation of Infinite
Consciousness, because consciousness, as such — consciousness that is
not a consciousness of anything, mere " awareness " — cannot develop
out of itself its own content.
Because of this incapacity for self-development, the content wherein

GOD AND THE WORLD in
infinite content, it is already aware of everything —
there is nothing left for either kind of self-realisa
tion to bring forth (cp. p. 87).
We found also that, if the Divine consciousness
be qualitatively infinite (if it be Absolute Conscious
ness), it is equally incapable of developmental self-
realisation — for Absolute Consciousness is already
perfect (completely real), and can essay re-presenta
tive self-realisation only by a declension to lower
forms of life. Because such a declension would
be an act of aesthetic depravity, the conception
that the universe is the re-presentative self-realisation
of a consciousness qualitatively infinite seems to be
outside the limits of reasonable theory (cp. p. 99).
(c) We made more than one attempt to interpret
the Divine Nature in a way that would permit us
to think of the universe as being the developmental
self-realisation of God, but each of these attempts
— partly because of difficulties inherent in that
conception of the universe, and partly because of
the additional difficulty introduced by Mr. Camp
bell's description of God's creative self-realisation
as eternal — brought us, not to Theism, but to
the Infinite Consciousness is said to be realised must come from
without. But, according to Mr. Campbell, there is no " without " whence it
could come.
" All existence," says Mr. Campbell, " is consciousness." Now, there
cannot be another consciousness outside Infinite Consciousness. If,
then, all existence be consciousness, and God be Infinite Consciousness,
He must be the sole existent, the One without a second ; there can be
nothing beside Him that could give His consciousness content.
Therefore, Mr. Campbell cannot suppose the Infinite Consciousness
to be mere " awareness " that gradually receives a content, for, were it
mere awareness, it could never (according to Mr. Campbell's philo
sophy) receive a content, and there would not now be an existent
universe of particulars.

112 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
some kind of raora-Theistic doctrine (cp. pp. 88-93
and p. 99).
(d) One difficulty, however, we have been able
to remove. It seems clear that the self-realisation
or self-expression of God is supposed by Mr.
Campbell to take place by self-limitation. God
is the particulars of the universe, and they are
God — God self-limited to finite existence. God
is their existential reality ; they are of the Divine
substance.1 Now, if the particulars of the universe
be part of God — forms or modes of God — and if
they come into being through the self-realisation
of God, that creative self-realisation must be of
the kind I have named developmental, for only
in that kind of self-realisation are the results of self-
realisation substantially identical with the nature
self-realised or self-expressed in the results. If
God be the particulars of the universe and they
His self-realisation, the self-realising process must
be one in which God has become those particulars ;
each particular must be the result of the develop
ment, within the Divine nature, of some potency
(possibility) which, when developed, is that parti
cular. Self-realisation of this kind — by the transi
tion from potency into actuality — is what I have
designated developmental self-realisation.
Re-presentative self-realisation, on the other
hand, does not and cannot take place in and
through the substance of the thing realised, but in
and through another medium (another substance).
It involves the kind of re-presentation characteristic
of Fine Art (cp. p. 104).
1 See the last section : " God and Man."

GOD AND THE WORLD 113
Neither can this kind of self-realisation take place
by self-limitation, for in self-limitation there is no
transition into another medium (another substance).
The result of self-limitation does not re-present
the original non-limited Being, it is that Being,
— that Being existent under certain self-imposed
conditions. God cannot re-present Himself by limit
ing Himself : if the universe be God in self-limited
existence, it cannot be the re-presentation of God.
The self-expression or self-realisation of God
in the world's finite particulars is, then, a de
velopmental self-expression or self-realisation —
an evolution of and in the Divine nature.
Now, the thought of self-expression is the
characteristic note of the New Theology. It
is essential and distinctive in Mr. Campbell's doc
trine of God, in his account of the world-process,
in his theory of human life, in his Christology.
If, then, the New Theology be a coherent system
of thought, its conception of God must be con
sistent with this central and governing idea.
Let us ask, then — To what conception of God
does this thought of developmental self-realisation
point ? The answer seems clear — it points to
the conception that God is a potency gradually
becoming realised (actualised) in the particulars
of the world.1 As we have seen, this conception
leads to Atheism.
Self-limitation, indeed, is otherwise indicative,
for, according to Mr. Campbell, the self-limitation
which creates the universe is a self-limitation of
the Perfect.
1 Only "potency" (possibility) can undergo developmental self-
realisation (cp. p. 84). H

114 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
But the self-limitation of the Perfect to the
imperfection of finite existence would necessarily
be — as Mr. Campbell admits — "of the nature of
a fall," and we have already seen that such a de
clension would create the gravest moral difficulty.
If God be Perfect, He cannot thus decline, for a
voluntary declension to lower values for the sake
of those lower values — and Mr. Campbell suggests
no other motive — would be, at least, non-moral
(cp. p. 99).
The thought of self-limitation is, as I have
said, prominent in Mr. Campbell's thought, but —
because of the ethical difficulty the supposition
would create — we cannot reasonably suppose that
self- limitation is the actual mode of God's self-
expression in finite particulars.
Yet the thought of self-expression — of self-
realisation — is essential in Mr. Campbell's doctrine,
and must in some way be retained in our explana
tion of that doctrine. In what way can it be
retained ? Only, I think, by abandoning the
thought of self-limitation, and regarding the self-
expression of God as true self-realisation — i.e. as
developmental self-realisation, self-realisation by
the development of potency (possibility) into actu
ality. Were we to adopt this correction, we should
think of God or (as we would then prefer to say)
Ultimate Reality as an undeveloped nature (a
potency) gradually realising itself in the world of
particulars.1 It would now be more than that
world, but its transcendent being would be only
1 The resultant conception would be very similar to Schopenhauer's
conception ofa purposeless Will in eternal "expression " (cp. p. ioo).

GOD AND THE WORLD 115
potency (possibility) and would be inferior to the
world of particulars as potency is necessarily
inferior to — because less than — actuality (cp.
p. 92).
This conception of Ultimate Reality could, how
ever, hardly be called Theistic.1
Pantheism
Let us return to Mr. Campbell's own statement
of his doctrine.
"Where, then, ... is the dividing line be
tween our being and God's ? There is no
dividing line except from our side. The ocean
of consciousness knows that the bay has never
been separated from itself. . . . But, the reader
may protest, this is Pantheism " (pp. 34, 35).
Were the protest made it would not be un
reasonable, for, certainly, a doctrine which asserts
the essential unity of God and man, and teaches,
more or less clearly, that God is the particulars
of the universe, would ordinarily be designated
Pantheism. Mr. Campbell, however, denies rhetorically
that the New Theology is a form of Pantheism.
" But, the reader may protest, this is Panthe
ism. No, it is not. ' Pantheism ' is a technical
1 It should be remembered that Mr. Campbell describes creation as
eternal. But, es we have seen, an eternal process cannot be purposeful.
This creates another difficulty. It seems very hard to conceive of a
Perfect Being who is eternally self-expressed by a necessitated (because
unpurposed) process. The more clearly Theistic Mr. Campbell's thought
appears — and it is never more clearly Theistic than when Mr. Campbell
speaks of the self-limitation of the Perfect — the more clearly it seems
to involve difficulties that can be overcome only by the thought itself
being radically transformed.

116 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
term in philosophic parlance, and means quite
different from this. It stands for a Fate-God,
a God imprisoned in His universe, a God who
cannot help Himself, and does not even know
what He is about, a blind force which here
breaks out into a rock and there into Ruskin,
and is equally indifferent to either. But that is
not my God. My God is my deeper Self, and
yours too — He is the Self of the universe, and
knows all about it. He is never baffled, and
cannot be baffled ; the whole cosmic process
is one long incarnation and uprisings of the being
of God from itself to itself. With Tennyson you
may call this doctrine the Higher Pantheism,
if you like ; but it is the very antithesis of the
Pantheism which has played such a part in the
history of thought" (p. 35).
Really, Mr. Campbell's points seem quite un
important. Pantheism is the doctrine which asserts that God
is the universe. But, as we have already seen, this
is the very conclusion to which the New Theology
leads — God is the particulars of the universe.
It may be that certain non-philosophical forms
of Pantheism have asserted also that the universe
is God, but all the philosophies ordinarily called
pantheistic assert, I think, or imply that God
is more or less transcendent. He is not merely
the particulars of the universe ; He is something-
more, e.g. the ground and unity of those par
ticulars. We find this in Vedantism, in Spinozism,
in Neo-Platonism (if, indeed, that philosophy
be a form of Pantheism). We find it also in

GOD AND THE WORLD 117
Hegehanism, and we find it, not more clearly, in
the New Theology.
" My God is my deeper Self, and yours too ; He is
the Self of the universe." This is precisely what the
Vedantist says of his God.
" He is never baffled, and cannot be baffled." So
any Pantheist would say. Pantheos cannot be
baffled, for He is the One Only Existent, and
there is no one that can oppose Him. What
ever happens is an incident in His life.
" The whole cosmic process is one long incarnation
and uprising of the being of God from itself to itself."
A Pantheistic Hegelian could say this.
According to Mr. Campbell, the God of Pan
theism is " a Fate-God." But Mr. Campbell has
himself told us that creation is an eternal process,
and we have seen for ourselves that, if it be
eternal, it must be necessitated (see p. 91). Now, a
God who is eternally in necessitated self-expression
does not seem very different from " a Fate-God."
"My God," says Mr. Campbell, "is . . . the Self
of the universe, and knows all about it." The God
of Pantheistic Hegehanism is also "the Self of
the universe," and He " knows all about it." l
It may be that Mr. Campbell would deny that
Hegehanism is a form of Pantheism, because,
according to Hegelian thought, God is Spirit, not
Substance, and, in His present relation to the world
of particulars, is characteristically Subject. But,
according to Hegelian thought, He is those par
ticulars, and the difference between subject and
object is a difference within His universal life.
He is the One Only Existent, and the universe
1 Because He is the Universal Subject.

n8 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
is His Self-manifestation. He is the universe,
and something more. It can hardly be con
tended that this doctrine does not fall within the
limits of philosophical Pantheism ! It differs from
the typical forms of that doctrine — Vedantism and
Spinozism — chiefly in its conception that God is
Spirit and Subject. The difference is, doubtless,
an important one, but it does not seem to make
the Hegelian doctrine non-pantheistic. Neither
Vedantism nor Spinozism is pantheistic because
of its characteristic conception of the essential
nature of "God." Each is rightly called pan
theistic because it teaches that " God " is the
universe. But the Hegehanism I have called
pantheistic also teaches this, and so does Mr.
Campbell's New Theology.
It seems clear that — if there be such a thing
as philosophical Pantheism — the New Theology,
as Mr. Campbell presents it, is a form of that
Pantheism. What else could it be designated ?
The Immanence of God
The name " New Theology," Mr. Campbell tells
us, " has long been in use ... to indicate those
who believe that the fundamentals of the Christian
faith need to be rearticulated in terms of the im
manence of God " (p. 3). The New Theology, he
says, is " an untrammelled return to the Christian
sources1 in the light of modern thought. Its
starting-point is a re-emphasis of the Christian
1 Something has been said concerning the " return to Christ " in my
article on Liberal Theology.

GOD AND THE WORLD 119
belief in the Divine Immanence in the universe
and in mankind. The doctrine requires to be
placed effectively in the foreground of Christian
teaching" (p. 4).
(a) What is meant by the immanence of God ?
"Immanence" means "indwelling," and the
doctrine of the Divine Immanence is the doctrine
which asserts that God is not outside (or not
only outside) the world, but present in the world
— intimately present in each particular of the
world. Men have sometimes thought of God as the
Great First Cause who, having created the world,
remains outside the world, and permits it to run
a mechanical course under the direction of its
own laws.1 The doctrine of the Divine Imma
nence overcomes this supposed aloofness of God
from the world, and has religious value because
it does overcome this aloofness — because it repre
sents God, not as One afar off and unconcerned,
but as a closely besetting Reality and a Spirit
intimately present within us.
(b) It is clear that this doctrine of the Divine
Immanence presupposes a distinction between
God and the world in which He is said to be
present.2 Now, according to the New Theology,
God is the particulars of the world. But, if He
be those particulars, the thought of indwelling
(immanence) neither accurately nor adequately
defines His relation to them. Substantial identity
1 This form of thought is ordinarily called Deism.
2 I dwell in my house, but I am not my house.

120 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
is inconsistent with immanence, and, as the New
Theology is a doctrine of substantial identity, it
is not a doctrine of immanence.
(c) This, however, is not a demerit. The doc
trine of the Divine Immanence presupposes a really
extended universe which God pervades, and it
presupposes also, I think, that God Himself is ex
tended, for it is difficult to conceive that something
which pervades extension is itself non-extended.
But the critical philosophy has, I think, made at
least one permanent contribution to thought. It
has taught us that God must transcend space ; that,
whatever space be to us, to God it can be only a
form of presentation or " position," a form wherein
He posits finite particulars, or presents them to
Himself. He alone is self-existent ; everything
else exists " in " Him. The world is in God, we
are told, as thoughts in the mind. The concep
tion may not be final, but it is helpful, and suggests,
what I believe to be true, that God's relation to
the world is closer than even the doctrine of
immanence asserts.
That doctrine presupposes the vulgar concep
tion of space. If space had the reality which the
plain man ordinarily attributes to it, it would or
might separate God from the world that is in
space. The doctrine of the Divine Immanence
asserts that it does not, because (according to that
doctrine) God pervades space. That doctrine,
however, pertains exclusively to popular levels of
thought, and to the philosophic theologian it can
be (at the best) only an accommodation to popular
thought. It is, indeed, little (if anything) more

GOD AND THE WORLD 121
than a temporary shelter for comfortable emotion
half-way on the road from the coldness of Deism
to philosophic insight.
Individual Immortality
The New Theology clearly teaches that man is
immortal, but does it permit us to believe that
human individuality is immortal ? Is it a doctrine
of " personal immortality " ?
What does Mr. Campbell say ? The following
passages are, I think, the most important : x —
(1) "No part of the universe has value in and
for itself alone ; it has value only as it expresses
God. To see one form break up and another
take its place is no calamity, however terrible it
may seem, for it only means that the life con
tained in that form has gone back to the uni
versal life, and will express itself again in some
higher and better form " 2 (p. 24).
(2) " Our present consciousness of ourselves
and of the world can reasonably be accounted
a fall, for we came from the infinite and unto
the infinite perfection we shall in the end return.
I do not mean that our present consciousness
of ourselves is eternal ; I only assert that our
true being is eternally one with the being of God,
and that to be separated from a full knowledge of
that truth is to have undergone a fall " (p. 66).
(4) " I start, then, with the assumption that
1 These passages should be read in connection with those already
quoted (see p. 107) to illustrate Mr. Campbell's conception of the
relation subsisting between finite and infinite consciousness.
a Ordinarily, language such as this indicates or conceals disbelief in
" personal immortality."

122 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
the universe is God's thought about Himself, and
that in so far as I am able to think it along with
Him, ' I and my Father ' (even metaphorically
speaking) ' are one' " (p. 26).
(4) " Ultimately your being and mine are one,
and we shall come to know it. I shall not
cease to be I, nor you to be you ; but there
must be some region of experience where we
shall find that you and I are one" (pp. 33, 34).
(5) " Nothing that exists in your consciousness
now and constitutes your self-knowledge will
ever be obliterated or ever can be ; but in a higher
state of existence you will realise it to be part of
the universal stock" (pp. 33, 34).
(6) " I build my belief in immortality on the
conviction that the fundamental reality of the
universe is consciousness, and that no conscious
ness can ever be extinguished, for it belongs to
the whole, and must be fulfilled in the whole.
The one unthinkable supposition from this point
of view is that any kind of being which has ever
become aware of itself, that is, has ever contained
a ray of the eternal consciousness, can perish "
(pp. 230, 231).
(7) "Again, some of my friends have been
pointing out that, while the New Theology
regards all mankind as being of one substance
with the Father, our consciousness of that being
is our own. I freely admit this while maintaining
that there is no substance but consciousness.
What other kind of substance can there be ?
Therefore, I hold that when our finite con
sciousness ceases to be finite, there will be no
distinction whatever between ours and God's.

GOD AND THE WORLD 123
The distinction between finite and infinite is not
eternal " (p. 42).
(8) "The being of God is a complex unity,
containing within itself and harmonising every
form of self-consciousness that can possibly exist.
No one need be afraid that in believing this he
is assenting to the final obliteration of his own
personality. . . . No form of self-consciousness
can ever perish. It completes itself in becoming
infinite, but it cannot be destroyed " (p. 42).
" We come from the infinite and unto the infinite
perfection we shall in the end return." But in
what manner shall we therein subsist ? Shall we
be merged in the consciousness of God ? or will
each one of us retain his individuality, although
aware that he is part of a great whole ? In the
final constitution of Reality — when the world-
process (the self-realisation of God) is complete —
will there be One Only Divine Consciousness, or
will consciousness then (as now) be plural ?
(a) We notice at once that, in certain passages,1
Mr. Campbell speaks as though the difference
between each finite consciousness and the con
sciousness of God were merely a difference in
range. We know less of the universe than God
knows. Were our consciousness to become co
extensive in range (in content) with God's, the
present difference between the human and the
Divine (between man and God) would cease — at
least, this appears to be Mr. Campbell's meaning.
Even now, in so far as we think what God thinks,
1 See p. 107.

124 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
we are one with Him. These passages suggest
that consciousness is something common to God
and man, and that, in each of its manifestations,
whether in God or in men, it has only accidental
and temporary marks of individuation. They sug
gest that consciousness is now, as it were, cut into
pieces which differ only in size and position, and
that, one day, the pieces now separated will be
re-united. But if this suggestion be not mislead
ing, it is clear that after re-union there will be
only one consciousness — the present plurality will
have entirely disappeared.
This conception of consciousness, however,
omits the characteristic note of consciousness —
the note which makes each individual conscious
ness essentially unique. Brown does not differ
from Smith merely because his consciousness is
not co-extensive in range with Smith's, but be
cause it is his consciousness and not Smith's. Each
man's consciousness has a. certain essential quality
which makes it his and not another's.
That essential quality is present throughout the
entire range of his consciousness, and immediately
pervades every extension of its range. No exten
sion is without that quality ; no extension weakens
or changes it.
Consciousness is not passive awareness. It is
characteristically an activity — an activity of self-
reference — and its range is widened, not by a
mechanical addition to its content, but by a living
synthesis, which organises new experiences around
an unique centre of attention, and so builds up an
ever-widening body of knowledge. That unique
centre is the individual self, and, in each one of

GOD AND THE WORLD 125
us, consciousness is characteristically seen in self-
reference — in the reference of experience to that
unique centre. This self-reference makes each
individual's experience exclusively his own.
Mr. Campbell does not ignore this quality, but
he sets it aside, and repeats that " when our finite
consciousness ceases to be finite, there will be no
distinction whatever between ours and God's ''
(see quotation No. 7).
But if every human consciousness now have
this essential quality, and be thereby made unique,
it does not seem that the mere extension of range
— even an extension unto infinity — would deprive
a given consciousness of that individuating quality.
After the extension, it would still be A's conscious
ness and not B's. Suppose every human con
sciousness to become extensively infinite, each
would retain the quality which now makes it
unique ; there would be no merging of human
individualities in each other, or of all in God.
Each consciousness now individual would (although
infinite) remain eternally distinct, and, since each
human consciousness is, according to Mr. Camp
bell, part of God, God would be a complex unity
of several centres of attention, each the organising
centre of a consciousness extensively infinite (cp.
quotation No. 8).
(b) Let us, however, now suppose the con
sciousness of God to be qualitatively infinite —
different from ours, not only in range, but in kind
(see p. 94 et seq.).
If the consciousness of God be qualitatively in
finite, then, in the transition from finite to infinite

126 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
consciousness, the present difference between God's
infinite consciousness and our finite consciousness
would, no doubt, be transcended. But would our
individuality be lost ? The question is a difficult
one, but it should, I think, be answered affirma
tively. It is very hard, if not impossible, to form more
than a vague conception of a consciousness quali
tatively infinite, but it seems clear that separate-
ness of individuality — the separateness which now
divides this man A from that man B — pertains
only to the sphere of finite (subject-object) ex
perience. After a general transition into Infinite
(Absolute) Consciousness, there would be, not many
individuals, but one only individual — the Absolute
— in whose consummating " awareness " the dis
tinction between subject and object would not
exist (see p. 96).
At present every individual is objective to other
individuals — each man to other men, and all men
to God. In a consciousness qualitatively infi
nite there would be no objectivity. Again, finite
experience is characteristically an experience
wherein a subject is aware of an object. Each
subject is an unique centre of attention, and the
" awareness " of each subject has an essential
quality — the quality of self-reference — which makes
it also unique. The existential uniqueness of each
centre is the ground of separate personality : the
qualitative uniqueness of each awareness is the
note or sign of separate personality. In Absolute
Consciousness, however, neither ground nor note
would exist. In that Consciousness there would
be no recognition of objects by subjects — for the

GOD AND THE WORLD 127
distinction between subject and object would have
been left behind in the transition from finite ex
perience — and, therefore, no centres of recognitive
attention and no self-reference of recognitive
experience. We cannot be certain, however, that Mr. Camp
bell believes the consciousness of God to be
qualitatively infinite.
(c) Does the New Theology give us a sufficing
assurance of " personal immortality " ?
An explicit assurance it does not give, and Mr.
Campbell's thought — compact of mutually incon
sistent elements — is so confused that we cannot
safely make any inference from it.
The Practical Value of the New Theology
According to Mr. Campbell, the New Theology
discloses an unique dignity, actual or possible, in
all human life, even the lowliest.
"Thus, to the question — Why a finite uni
verse ? I should answer, because God wants to
express what He is.
' God. is the perfect Poet,
Who in creation acts His own conceptions.'
" This is an end worthy alike of God and man.
The act of creation is eternal, although the
cosmos is changing every moment, for God is
ceaselessly uttering Himself through higher and
ever higher forms of existence. We are helping
Him to do it when we are true to ourselves ; or
rather, which is the same thing, He is doing it

128 MR. CAMPBELL'S DOCTRINE OF
in us. . . . To think of God in this way is an in
spiration and a help in the doing of the humblest
tasks. It redeems life from the dominion of the
sordid and commonplace. It supplies an in
centive to endeavour, and fills the heart with
hope and confidence. To put it *in homely,
everyday phraseology, God is getting at some
thing, and we must help Him. We must be
His eyes, and hands, and feet : we must be
labourers together with Him" (pp. 23, 24).
(a) It seems clear that Mr. Campbell values the
fundamental conceptions of the New Theology be
cause he infers from them that human life is, or
should be, co-operant with the Divine life.
A similar inference, however, can be made from
any theology which exhibits the world-process as
a purposeful development towards a Divinely-
appointed goal. Certainly, we who stand in the
Catholic tradition of Christian thought have no
difficulty in reaching Mr. Campbell's inference.
Our theology is not an " otherworldliness." We
believe that human history, in its earthly process
and achievement, is informed by a Divine purpose
— by the purpose otherwise expressed in the
world's redemption, and in the edifying ministry
of the Church. We believe, also, that, when work
ing along the lines of that purpose, we are truly
co-operant with God. What more helpful thought
does the New Theology afford ?
(b) Will, however, the New Theology bear the
inference that there is in human life the higher
dignity which Mr. Campbell discovers ? The New

GOD AND THE WORLD 129
Theology, as Mr. Campbell presents it, will, I think,
sufficingly sustain that inference.
But we may not forget our results. We have
seen that the central thought of the New Theology
— the thought of self-expression — can be held
logically only if we be content to believe that the
universe is either —
(1) An unmoral self-limitation (declension) of
God to values lower than those He eternally
enjoys ; or
(2) The necessitated development of some non-
Divine Reality.
Neither alternative seems very valuable, or sug
gests any dignity that our more earnest thought
would count worthy.
Around this thought of self-expression Mr.
Campbell has rhetorically woven web after web,
glistening attractively with the dews of religious
emotion ; but his webs are only gossamer. They
are not "the diamond network of thought," and
they vanish at the first touch of criticism.

IV
THE PERSON AND WORK OF
OUR LORD

THE PERSON AND WORK OF
OUR LORD
In our last chapter we examined, first of all, the
passages which indicate the foundations of Mr.
Campbell's Theism, and, afterwards, Mr. Camp
bell's account of the nature of God and His
relation to the world of finite existence. We
have now to consider Mr. Campbell's Christology
and his doctrine of Atonement.
To consider these fairly, we must, for a time,
forget' our criticisms, and we must accept the
New Theology — with its characteristic account
of God and the world — as it is proffered. It
has, I think, an inadequate Apologetic and a
Cosmology which Christian thought should reject,
but it is not thereby foredoomed to failure in
another field.
In Apologetic we have to establish the reason
ableness of Theistic belief ; in Cosmology we
have to form some general conception of the
world and the world-process. But Christology
presumes the results of this earlier work — it com
mences, for example, with the conception of God,
and is not called upon to prove that conception
valid. We start our new inquiry, then, with Mr. Camp
bell's uncriticised results — with the thought that

134 THE PERSON AND WORK
the world of finite existence is the self-realisation
(or self-expression) of God — and we ask, first of
all — What account does Mr. Campbell give of the
central facts of the Christian religion, of our Lord's
Person and work ?

OF OUR LORD 135
The Person of our Lord
Fortunately, Ihe outlines of Mr. Campbell's
Christology are quite clear.
"Briefly summed up, the position is as follows :
Jesus was God, but so are we. He was God be
cause His life was the expression of Divine love :
we, too, are one with God in so far as our lives
express the same thing. Jesus was not God in
the sense that He possessed an infinite conscious
ness : no more are we. Jesus expressed fully
and completely, in so far as a finite consciousness
ever could, that aspect of the Nature of God
which we have called the eternal Son, or Christ,
or ideal Man who is the Soul of the universe, and
'the light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world ' : we are expressions of the same
primordial being. Fundamentally we are all one
in this eternal Christ" (pp. 94, 95).
In this passage Mr. Campbell does not do full
justice to his own thought. According to Mr.
Campbell, God is the particulars of the universe.
It follows that Jesus is God not merely through
similarity of character, but through identity of
essence (substance). He is God self-limited to,
or self-expressed in, a certain finite existence. But
in precisely the same way all finite particulars —
ourselves, General Booth, the crocodile, and all
material things — are God.1
1 Cp. the following passage : —
" In a sense, of course, everything fhat exists is Divine, because the
whole universe is an expression of the being of God. But it can hardly
be seriously contended that a crocodile is as much an expression oi
God as General Booth. It is wise and right, therefore, to restrict the
word ' Divine ' to the kind of consciousness which knows itself to be,

136 THE PERSON AND WORK
The following passages call for a passing com
ment : —
" If by the Deity of Jesus is meant that He
possessed the all-controlling consciousness of the
universe, then assuredly He was not the Deity,
for He did not possess that consciousness " (pp.
77, 78).
"Then are we to understand that the self-
limitation of Jesus means that the . . . eternal
Son . . . quitted the throne of His glory . . .
and lived for thirty-three years as a Jewish
peasant? I think the dogmatic theologian
would have some hesitation in giving an un
qualified affirmative to this question, for the
difficulties implied in it are practically insur
mountable. Was the full consciousness of the
Eternal Word present in the Babe of Bethlehem,
for instance ? If not, where was it ? Questions
like these cannot be answered on the lines of the
conventional Christology. The plain and simple
answer to all of them is to admit that the Jesus
of history did not possess the consciousness of
Deity during His life on earth. His conscious
ness was as purely human as our own " (p. 79).
" According to the received theology, Jesus
and rejoices to be, the expression of a love which is a consistent self-
giving to the universal life. ' God is love : and he that dwelleth in
love dwelleth in God, and God in him.' General Booth is Divine in
so far as this is the governing principle of his life. Jesus was Divine
simply and solely because His life was never governed by any other
principle. We do not need to talk of two natures in Him, or to think
of a mysterious dividing line, on the one side of which He was human,
and on the other Divine. In Him humanity was Divinity, and
Divinity humanity " (pp. 75, 76).
No one supposes the crocodile to be as much " an expression of
God" as General Booth, but, if "the whole universe" be "an expres
sion of the being of God," the crocodile is as truly "an expression of
God" as General Booth, or Jesus, or anything else.

OF OUR LORD 137
was God, and yet He did not possess the all-con
trolling consciousness of the universe" (p. 39).
" The very things which the critics declare to
be impossible of personality in general in relation
to God, they are affirming of at least one person
ality — that of Jesus. If Jesus was God and yet
prayed to God, if His consciousness was finite
and yet one with the infinite, it is clear that in
this one instance the seemingly impossible was
not impossible" (pp. 40, 41).
(1) By "the Deity of Jesus" orthodox theo
logians do not mean that Jesus "possessed the
all-controlling consciousness of the universe."
According to the Catholic tradition of faith,
" That which was born of the Virgin is God "
because He is "of the Substance of the Father."
We do not suppose that His consciousness was
identical or co-extensive with the Father's : we
know, in fact, that it was not.
As to the relation between the consciousness
of the Eternal Word and the consciousness of
Christ "during His life on earth," it does not
seem inconceivable that a spiritual existent (the
Eternal Word) is diversely conscious in two
spheres — in the Divine sphere and in the sphere
of finite existence. The relation between the
consciousness of the Eternal Word — " in whom
all things consist" — and the consciousness of
Christ during the years of His humiliation would
seem to be similar to that which Mr. Campbell
conceives to exist between the sub-liminal self
and the supra-liminal self. There is only one
entity (one self), but that "functions" — one

138 THE PERSON AND WORK
hardly ventures to say "is conscious" — in two
spheres, in the sub-liminal sphere and in the
supra-liminal. (2) What are "the very things" that "the
critics declare to be impossible " ? Chief among
them, I surmise, is the conception that the infinite
Divine consciousness expresses itself in the finite
consciousness of man. In declaring such expres
sion to be impossible " the critics " are, I thirjk,
right, up to a certain point.
Consciousness, whether in Gied or man, is
essentially an individual thing. Every personal
consciousness, wherther God's or man's, has an
intrinsic and essential character which makes it
the consciousness of a particular existent — of God,
or of this or that man.1
Mr. Campbell's mistake — a mistake that goes
down to the very roots of his philosophy — is
to suppose that consciousness is independently
existent. The truth seems to be that conscious
ness is always a function of substance? an activity
or property of something that is conscious.
If, however, we once recognise that conscious
ness has its ground in substance, there is no
insuperable difficulty in the conception that one
substance is conscious in several personalities.3
1 Cp. p. 124.
2 In this connection " substance " does not mean " extended sub
stance." It certainly does not mean "matter."
3 The doctrine of the Holy Trinity seems to involve such a plural
awareness in one substance.
I have said that consciousness is a function of substance. If this be
true, personality is a functional mode of substance.
This definition would make the difference between the modern word
"person" and the patristic iroixrunrov less than it is sometimes sup
posed to be.

OF OUR LORD 139
It follows from this that Pantheism is not
finally refuted by the argument that one con
sciousness cannot subsist in a plurality of Divine
and human persons — cannot be at one and the
same time the Infinite Consciousness of God
and the finite consciousness of each individual
man — for this argument does not exclude the
possibility that one Divine Substance is conscious
in such a plurality, and that possibility is clearly
pantheistic. If my surmise concerning the objections made
by Mr. Campbell's critics be correct, it is clear
that those critics do not affirm of the personality
of Jesus the "very things" which they "declare
to be impossible of personality in general in
relation to God." Orthodox Hunkers affirm that
the Virgin-Born is God because they believe Him
to be of the Divine Substance, not because they
believe Him to possess or to share the Divine
consciousness. Is the New Theology Unitarian ?
Mr. Campbell anticipates the protest — This is
sheer Unitarianism !
" But then, some one will protest, this is sheer
Unitarianism after all ; you do not believe in the
Jesus who is the object of the faith of Christen
dom, but in one who was only a man among
men ; you do not think of Him as very God of
very God" (p. 81).
What does Mr. Campbell say ?
" Not so fast ; we are busy with names again.
. . . This is not Unitarianism, and I do believe

140 THE PERSON AND WORK
that Jesus was very God, as I have already
shown. We have to get rid of the dualism
which will insist on putting humanity and Deity
into two separate categories. I say it is not Uni
tarianism, for historic Unitarianism has been
just as prone to this dualism as the extremist
Trinitarianism has ever been. Like Trinitarian-
ism it has often tended to regard humanity as
on one side of a gulf and Deity as on the
other: it has emphasised too much the tran
scendence of God " (pp. 8 1, 82).
(a) It is undoubtedly true that the New
Theology differs widely from the older kind of
Unitarianism. According to the latter, Jesus was
man, and is not God : according to the former,
Jesus (although man) is God.
Again, the older, Unitarianism taught a purely
monadistic theology. It asserted the unity of
God in a way that excluded the thought of
plurality. But (according to the New Theology)
God — whatever else He be — is the particulars of
the universe : all human life, for example, is a
form of the Divine life. God is One, but within
His unity there is an endless diversity, and, since
(according to Mr. Campbell) the act of creation
is eternal, there has never been a time when He
has not been a plurality in unity.
The doctrine of the New Theology, then, is
widely different from the characteristic doctrine
of old-fashioned Unitarianism.
(b) We may not, however, ignore the fact that
modern Unitarianism has been largely influenced

OF OUR LORD 141
by the philosophical conceptions that have shaped
the New Theology. As Mr. Campbell himself
admits, "present-day Unitarianism is preaching
with fervour and clearness the foundation truth
of the New Theology, the fundamental unity of
God and man" (p. 82). Nevertheless, Mr. Camp
bell declines " to be labelled Unitarian," and he
declines, apparently, because (in his opinion) the
New Theology is a reformation that makes the
familiar classification of religious thought obsolete.
"The old issue between Unitarianism and
Trinitarianism vanishes in the New Theology ;
the bottom is knocked out of the controversy "
(P- 83)-

142 THE PERSON AND WORK

The Doctrine of the Trinity
Some, it may be, will say that, whether the New
Theology should or should not be called Unitarian,
it shares with Unitarianism one important charac
teristic — they are both anti-Trinitarian.
Mr. Campbell tells us, however, that " we can
not dispense with the doctrine of the Trinity, for
it, or something like it, is implied in the very
structure of the mind" (p. 85). Physical science,
" after a fashion," implies the doctrine of the
Trinity (p. 86), and even Professor Haeckel " be
lieves in the doctrine " (p. 87).
"All thinking," says Mr. Campbell, "starts
with an assumption of some kind, and exact
thought requires that that assumption shall be
the simplest possible, the irreducible minimum
beneath which we cannot get. Now, when we
start thinking about existence as a whole, and
ourselves in particular, we are compelled to
assume the infinite, the finite, and the activity of
the former within the latter. In other words, we
have to postulate God, the universe, and God's
operation within the universe. Look at these
three conceptions for a moment, and it will be
seen that every one of them implies the rest ; they
are a Trinity in unity. The primordial being
must, be infinite, for there cannot be a finite
without something still beyond it. We know,
too, that to our experience the universe is finite ;
we can measure, weigh, and analyse it — an im
possible thing to do with an infinite substance.
And yet if we think of infinite and finite as two

OF OUR LORD 143
entirely distinct and unrelated modes of existence,
we find ourselves in an impossible position, for
the infinite must be that outside of which nothing
exists or can exist ; so of course we are compelled
to think of the infinite as ever active within the
finite, the source of change and motion, the
exhaustless power which makes possible the
very idea of development from simplicity to
complexity"1 (pp. 86, 87).
(a) According to Catholic doctrine there are,
in the unity of the Divine Essence (technically
designated Substance) three Divine Existents
(technically designated Persons). Each Person is
eternal, and each is Perfect God. This plurality
within the Godhead is not contingent upon the
Divine activity in creation. The distinctions
asserted by Mr. Campbell are, however, entirely
contingent upon that activity. If they be eternal,
it is only because creation is eternal.
Moreover, Mr. Campbell's distinctions are not
the distinctions indicated by Catholic thought.
For example, the Second Person in Mr. Camp
bell's Trinity is merely the finite particulars of
the world, many of which are impersonal. He
is " the immanent God," and is those particulars 2
— "the finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited
being of which we are ourselves expressions "
(p. 23). Not thus have we been taught to think
concerning the Intelligible Word !
1 It seems clear that the First, and Second Persons in this account
of the Trinity — the one primordial and infinite, the other finite — are
identical with the "two modes of God" elsewhere described (see
quotation on p. 42).
2 Those particulars and nothing more, for "the immanent God"'
has no transcendence.

144 THE PERSON AND WORK
(b) Mr. Campbell, however, gives another de
monstration of the Trinity ; incomplete, indeed,
but sufficiently exhibited for us to be certain that
it is quite inconsistent with the demonstration
already noticed.
"Thinkers have always been compelled to
construe the universe in terms of the highest
known to man, namely, his own moral nature.
It was natural, therefore, that while they thought
of the universe as an expression of God, they
should think of it as the expression of that side of
His being which can only be described as the
ideal or archetypal manhood. The infinite being
of God is utterly incomprehensible to a finite
mind. . . . But we are justified in holding that,
whatever else He may be, God is essentially man
— that is, He is the fount of humanity. There
must be one side, so to speak, of the infinitely
complex being of God in which humanity is
eternally contained, and which finds expression
in the finite universe. ... If we think, there
fore, of the archetypal eternal Divine Man, the
source and sustenance of the universe, we cannot
do better than think of Him in terms of Jesus ;
Jesus is the fullest expression of that eternal
Divine Man on the field of human history. Here,
then, we have the first and second factors in the
doctrine of the Trinity morally and spiritually
construed" (pp. 88, 89).
" Jesus expressed fully and completely, in so
far as a finite consciousness ever could, that
aspect of the nature of God which we have called
the eternal Son, or Christ, or ideal Man who is
the Soul of the universe, and 'the light that

OF OUR LORD 145
lighteth every man that cometh into the world ' ;
we are expressions of the same primordial being "
(PP- 94, 95)-
According to this account, the Second Person —
" the eternal Son " — is not the world of finite par
ticulars, but an "aspect" of the Divine nature.
He is, indeed, expressed in the universe, but is
other than the particulars in which He is ex
pressed. He is not "the immanent God" — who
is finite — but an aspect of the " infinite being
of God " ; which is, we are told, " utterly incom
prehensible to a finite mind," and " in regard "
to which " the most devout saint is as much an
agnostic as the most convinced materialist "
(p. 89). In other words, "the eternal Son, the
Christ," is entirely transcendent.
The Second Person in Mr. Campbell's first
demonstration is, however, precisely what the
" eternal Son " of the second demonstration is
not. He is "the immanent God." He is the
particulars of the universe. He is not the tran
scendent God.
It is noteworthy that Mr. Campbell does not
derive this doctrine of " the eternal Son " from
Scripture.1 The ground of his doctrine is not
in the Christian revelation, but in a philosophical
argument — in the regressive argument from " our
highest," from Jesus, to the nature and character
of God. This argument we have already con
sidered (p. 67 et seq.), and there is no need to
1 "The idea of a Divine Man, the emanation of the Infinite, the
Soul of the universe, the source and goal of all humanity, is ages older
than Christian theology" (pp. 89, 90). The Scriptures furnish Mr.
Campbell, not with the ground of his doctrine, but with illustrations
of it. K

146 THE PERSON AND WORK
re-exhibit its limitations and deficiencies. Unless
we are content to play with words, it will not sup
port a Christology acceptable to orthodox thought.
The " eternal Son " of Mr. Campbell's imaginative
speculation is not the Personal Word of Catholic
tradition. Sin
I do not propose to discuss at length Mr.
Campbell's theory of Sin, but a short account of
it will be a helpful introduction to his doctrine of
atonement. The following are the most important illustrative
passages : —
" There is no sin that is not selfishness ; there
is no selfishness that is not sin.1 All possible
activities of the soul are between selfishness on
the one hand and love on the other" (p. 146).
" The life of love is the life that is lived for im
personal ends : the sinful life is the life lived for
self alone. The life of love is the life which does
the best with the self for the sake of the whole :
the sinful life is the life which is lived for the self
at the expense of the whole. The desire for
gratification at some one else's cost, or at the cost
of the common life, is the root principle of sin.
Sin against God is an offence against the common
life : it is attempting to draw away from instead
of ministering to the common good" (p. 146).
"And yet, my friends, realise this, ... sin
itself is a quest for God — a blundering quest, but
1 Cp. the following : —
" I have already pointed out that sin is selfishness, pure and simple,
and that definition will cover all its manifestations " (pp. 145, 146).
" Sin is the opposite of love " (p. 51).

OF OUR LORD 147
a quest for all that. The man who got dead
drunk last night did so because of the impulse
within him to break through the barriers of his
limitations, to express himself, and to realise
more abundant life. His self-indulgence just
came to that : he wanted, if only for a brief hour,
to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter
untrodden regions, and gather to himself new
experience. That drunken debauch was a quest
for life, a quest for God. The roue you saw in
Piccadilly last night . . . was engaged in his
blundering quest for God. . . . All men are
seeking life — life more abundant — even in their
selfishness and wrong-doing. . . .
' Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death' " (p. 153).
" Like love, selfishness is a quest for life ; but
whereas love obtains more abundant life by
freely giving itself, sin loses hold on life by trying
to grab and keep it. Every man is seeking life,
and seeking it in one or other of these opposite
ways. . . . But life is God, and there is no life
which is not God. God is the life all-abundant.
. . . Every man, consciously or sub-consciously
wants that life ; he is wanting it all the time "
(pp. 146, 147).
(a) The doctrine that sin is a mistaken quest
for God has aroused against Mr. Campbell no
small indignation, and, indeed, it is utterly in
defensible — a thoroughly false piece of rhetoric.
It is true that man's desire is always for life

148 THE PERSON AND WORK
itself, or for something that would, he thinks,
were it attained, make his life more valuable.
And it is not mere rhetoric to say either that, in
the profoundest sense, God is our life, or that,
even in his sins, man is seeking something that
would, he thinks, make his life at least momen
tarily more valuable. But we cannot thence infer
that, when seeking the " values " proffered by sin,
man is seeking God. He is, indeed, moved by
the thought of "value," and the highest "value"
is God, but, when he prefers the " values " of sin,
he does not mistake them for Divine. Ordinarily
he knows that they are not Divine, and in his
quest for them, he knows that he is not seeking
God. The most that can be said is that, if the quest
for " values " were perfectly reasonable and moral,
it would be a quest for God, but this is as though
we said that, were sin not sin, man would therein
be seeking God.
(b) It is, however, even more important to
notice that, according to Mr. Campbell's teaching,
the sin of man is a Divine activity,1 a self-expres
sion or self-realisation of God.
According to the New Theology, every human
being is a self-expression of God, his life a self-
limitation of the Divine life to a particular finite
existence. Each human life is part of the uni
versal self-expression of God. It follows, then,-
that even the sins of each life are part of that
1 Mr. Campbell describes sin as "a misuse of Divine energy"
(p. 161). Now, a "misuse " is a " use," and (according to Mr. Camp
bell) the life that misuses is a self-limitation of the Divine life.

OF OUR LORD 149
self-expression, for there is nothing in any human
life that is not of God.
Man has, it is true, free will, but the power
within him that is said to be free is the Divine
power — the Power that is God. The free spirit
of man is a self-limitation of the One Divine Spirit,
and all its activities are activities of God.
These are the plain teachings of the New
Theology, and it seems impossible to avoid the
conclusion that, according to the ,New Theology,
it is God Himself who is sinning in the sins of
men. What agency is there that is not His ?l

Atonement
Mr. Campbell's doctrine of atonement — like his
Christology — is quite clear.
"Atonement is the assertion of the funda
mental oneness of man with man, and all with
God. Sin is the divisive, separating thing in our
relations with one another, and with God the
source of all, so the assertion of our oneness
involves getting rid of sin. If we ask how this
is to be done, the answer is simple enough : the
only way to get rid of selfishness is by the
ministry of love. What is it that is slowly winning
1 Mr. Campbell himself tells us that "the immanent God" is im
perfect. It appears that His imperfection includes moral imperfection.
Mr. Campbell tells us also that "the imperfection of the finite
creation is not man's fault but God's will" (p. 67). Mr. Campbell
is discussing "the nature of evil," and is speaking with immediate
reference to the (real or apparent) physical imperfection of the finite
creation. This imperfection, he says, is of God. It follows, I think,
from his own first principles, that the moral imperfection of the finite
creation is also of God — is a self-expression of God.

150 THE PERSON AND WORK
the world from its selfishness to-day . . . ? There
is but one thing that is doing it, and that is the
spirit of self-sacrifice. Wherever you see that
you see the true Atonement at work" (p. 165).
"Go into any home where the spirit of self-
sacrificing love is trying to do anything to supply
a need or save a transgression, and you see the
Atonement. Follow that Salvation lassie to the
slums, and listen to her as she tries to persuade
a drunken husband and father to give up the soul-
destroying habit which is such a curse to wife and
child, and you see the Atonement. Go with J.
Keir Hardie to the House of Commons, and listen
to his pleading for justice to his order, and you
see the Atonement. See that grey-haired father
patiently pleading with selfish hot-headed youth,
or yielding up his own hard-won possessions to
pay the gambler's debts and save the family
name, and you have the Atonement" x (p. 173).
" On the field of human history the death of
Jesus is the focus and concentrated essence of this
age-long atoning process, whereby selfishness is
being overcome and the whole race lifted up to its
home in God. Until Jesus came, no self-offering
had been so consistent and so complete. . . . He
showed men the ideal life by living it Himself. . . .
In a selfish world that life was sure to end on a
Calvary of some kind, but the very fact that it did
so demonstrated the completeness of its victory
1 Cp. the following passage : —
' ' Let any man ask himself what it is that is saving the world
to-day . . . and he cannot find a better answer than the fifty-third of
Isaiah. It tells of Jesus ; but it tells also of all the sons of God who,
in the spirit of Jesus, have ever given their lives in the service of
love."

OF OUR LORD 151
over all considerations of self-interest. Selfishness
lost the battle by seeming to gain it " (p. 166).
" It is easy to see how much the world owes
to Jesus in this regard. I cannot tell what the
world might have been had there never been a
Jesus, but certain it is that the sacrificial life and
death of Jesus have meant the outpouring of a
spirit into human affairs such as had never been
known in the same degree before. Here for the
first time men saw a perfect manifestation of
the life that is life indeed . . . the life that in
the presence of selfishness must inevitably be
come sacrifice, the life of Atonement ; in a sinful
world that life had to come to a Calvary, but, in
so doing, in refusing to shield and save itself, it
became the greatest moral power and the greatest
revelation of God that the world has ever known.
What we succeed in doing some of the time
Jesus did all the time ; when all men are able to
do it all the time, the Atonement will have be
come complete, and love Divine shall be all in
all" (pp. 173, 174).
In another passage, Mr. Campbell describes the
patriotic self-sacrifice of Arnold von Winkelreid at
the battle of Sempach. He then continues as
follows : —
" Such acts as these form part of the cherished
lore of nations. . . . Something tells us that an
act like that, the giving of a life for the sake of
an ideal, a cause, a country, was a great thing.
... In that very battle, Austria was trying to
grasp and hold, Switzerland was trying to get free
and live her own life, and here was a man who,
for the sake of his country's ideal, gave all that he

152 THE PERSON AND WORK
had — his life. Will you tell me where to look for
the focus and the centre of that ideal ? I know
what your answer would be. It was at Calvary.
The one thing which . . . men have recognised
in Jesus that has given Him His supreme attrac
tion for the world is this — He was absolutely dis
interested. It is the disinterestedness of Jesus,
His utter nobleness, His power of projecting
Himself into the experience of others, and trying
to lift humanity as a whole to His experience of
God, that gave Him His power with mankind.
Jesus not only proclaimed, but lived, the counter
tendency to the law of sin and death " (pp. 159,
160).
Mr. Campbell foresees an inevitable question : —
" But in what sense is the death of Jesus a
satisfaction to tl^e Father?" (p. 175).
His reply is unambiguous — " In no sense at all."
" But then, some will say, What has the death
of Jesus effected in the Unseen so as to make it
possible for God to forgive us ? Nothing what
ever, and nothing was ever needed. God is not
a fiend, but a father" (p. 175).
" Jesus did nothing for us which we are not
also called upon to do for ourselves and one
another in our degree. Faith in his atoning work
means death to self that we may live to God ; as
self-hood perishes on its Calvary, the Christ, the
True Man, the Divine reality in whom we are one
with all men, rises in power in our hearts, and
unites us to the source of all goodness and
joy. Institutional, forensic, external, the Atone
ment never has been arid never will be. But
vicarious sacrifice, willingly accepted, is the great

OF OUR LORD 153
redeeming force by which the world is gradually
being won to its true life in God, for vicarious
suffering is the expression of the law, that in a
finite world the service of the whole involves pain.
. . . The sacrifice of Jesus is the central and ideal
expression of this principle on the field of time,
but it only possesses meaning and value as it
is repeated in our own lives ; the Christ has
to be offered perpetually on the altar of human
hearts" (p. 198).
(«) It seems clear that, if sin be selfishness, it
is overcome in and through the life of love. It
seems equally clear that such overcoming of sin —
such atonement, as Mr. Campbell would say — is
a process that takes place entirely within the in
dividual heart. Each man must accomplish his
own atonement, must in his own life overcome
sin by love. Nothing that another can do will
help him, except in so far as it moves him to love,1
Philanthropic effort — Mr. Keir Hardie's or the
Salvation Army lassie's — is not, we infer, itself an
atonement. If it be successful, and renew a sinful
life, that renewal, that actual overcoming of sin, —
not the helpful sympathy which accomplished it,
— is the atonement when philanthropy succeeds in
1 Cp. the following passage : —
"To sum up. Atonement is the assertion of the mndamental unity
of all existence, the unity of the individual with the race and the race
with God. The individual can only realise that unity by sacrificing
himself lo it. To fulfil the self we must give the self to the All.
This is the truth presumed in all ancient^ideas of Atonement" (pp.
139, 140).
It is clear that the described unity can be achieved or realised only
by each man for himself, in and through his own self-sacrifice.
If Atonement be the achievement or realisation of that unity, each
man must work out his own atonement. Another cannot atone for
him.

154 THE PERSON AND WORK
awakening love, that success, and that alone, is the
real atonement. When it fails to awaken love
there is no atonement.
(b) It is quite true that victory over sin is always
an achievement within the individual heart. How
ever we interpret the " benefits " of our Lord's
Passion, those "benefits" become ours only through
personal acts of apprehension — through sincere
repentance and lively faith. But those apprehend
ing acts are not themselves the Atonement for our
sins. That is objectively accomplished by Christ,
and His work is a sufficing Atonement, whether
we receive its benefits or ignore them.
(c) Here, then, we have a most important differ
ence between the New Theology and Catholic
doctrine. The Atonement of the New Theology —
the actual supersession of sin by love — is not the
Atonement of the Catholic religion. The latter
Atonement — purely objective in its essential
character — is declared by the New Theology to be
non-existent. (d) Our Lord has Himself told us that His blood
was " shed for many unto remission of sins."
According to Catholic doctrine the work which
accomplished that remission, and that work alone,
constitutes the Atonement.
Now, the remission of sins is one thing, and the
supersession of sin by love quite another. It is
only of the latter that Mr. Campbell takes account.
According to him, that supersession, and that
alone, constitutes Atonement.

OF OUR LORD 155
Have we, then, any ground for thinking remission
to be necessary ?
I think we have. There seems nothing un
reasonable in the thought that sin has " objective "
consequences — consequences other than those
within the sinful heart — and that these, unless they
were overcome, would be an obstacle to the com
plete reconciliation of man with God. It seems
clear from the New Testament that the first
Christians believed that such an obstacle had
existed, and that it had been overcome in and
through the Passion of our Lord, and could not
otherwise have been overcome. Moreover, when
we read our Lord's own words concerning His
work and death, it seems very difficult to reject
this belief.
The Uniqueness of Our Lord
According to the distinctive tradition of
Christendom, our Lord is unique because in His
one Person there are two natures. Being God
and Man, He is what we are not, and never can
become. But, according to Mr. Campbell, Jesus
had not this essential uniqueness. He was, indeed,
essentially God, but, then, so is everything else —
General Booth and a crocodile, Mr. Campbell him
self, his followers, and his opponents. And, indeed,
Mr. Campbell attributes to our Lord only a moral
uniqueness. " Briefly summed up, the position is as follows :
Jesus was God, but so are we. He was God
because His life was the expression of Divine
love ; we, too, are one with God in so far as our

156 THE PERSON AND WORK
lives express the same thing. . . . Jesus ex
pressed fully and completely, in so far as a finite
consciousness ever could, that aspect of the
nature of God which we have called the eternal
Son . . . ; we are expressions of the same
primordial being " (pp. 94, 95).
" The reason why the name of Jesus has
such power in the world to-day is because a
perfectly noble and unselfish life was crowned
by a perfectly sacrificial death " (p. 123).
" Many a British soldier has died as brave a
death as Jesus, but none have ever lived the life of
Jesus. The life and death together were a per
fect self-offering . . . and therefore the greatest
manifestation of the innermost of God that has
ever been made to the world" (pp. 124, 125).
In " the sacrificial r life and death of Jesus,"
we are told, men saw for the first time " a perfect
manifestation of the life that is life indeed . . .
the life that in the presence of selfishness must
inevitably become sacrifice." "In a sinful
world," continues Mr. Campbell, " that life had
to come to a Calvary, but, in so doing, . . .
it became the greatest moral power and the
greatest revelation of God that the world has
ever known." " What we succeed in doing
some of the time Jesus did all the time "(p. 174).
According to the New Theology, Jesus (like
every other man) was a self-expression of God.
He differed from others, not in kind, or in essential
1 " Self-sacrificing " would be more accurate than " sacrificial." Ac
cording to the New Theology, the sacrifice in our Lord's death was none
other than the sacrifice of self, which those who love are always
making. "Love is essentially self-giving" (p. 50).

OF OUR LORD 157
nature, but only in character. He loved more
perfectly than they, and therefore revealed the love
of God more completely than they. He was truly
pre-eminent, but His pre-eminence was only the
pre-eminence of His love.
(a) Now, a moral uniqueness the faith that is
called orthodox also attributes to our Lord, for the
self-limitation whereby God assumed human nature
and submitted to human experience, even to the
experience of a lonely death, was an act of sur
passing love, which our human love can never
rival. It may be said that Mr. Campbell also sets forth
the self-limitation of God in Jesus. True, but not
an unique self -limitation. According to Mr.
Campbell, we have a self-limitation of God in every
finite particular, and, if Jesus be the highest of
finite particulars, in every other finite particular —
in General Booth, in a crocodile — the self-limitation
of God must be greater than in Him. God must
have limited Himself more to become a crocodile,
or General Booth, or a Piccadilly roue', than to
become Jesus.
Moreover, according to Mr. Campbell, the self-
limitation of God in Jesus was not " for us men
and for our salvation." It was part of an eternal
and universal process, and that process — because it
is said to be eternal — we cannot conceive to be
purposeful. The distinctive kind of moral uniqueness which
orthodox faith discovers in Christ, Mr. Campbell
does not discover in Jesus. If, however, that
uniqueness be set aside, what is left ? Only a

158 THE PERSON AND WORK
possible pre-eminence in human love. " Only a
possible pre-eminence " ? Yes, for were our Lord
only what He seems to be in Mr. Campbell's New
Theology, it would be hard to demonstrate that
He loved more than others have loved. Jesus,
Mr. Campbell tells us, is "on the throne." En
throned He may be by Mr. Campbell's faith,1 but
He is not enthroned by Mr. Campbell's thought,
for that leaves Him one among many — each as
truly as He an incarnation of " the eternal Son " —
and uncertainly the first of many.
(b) Yet we find Mr. Campbell strongly asserting
the uniqueness of Jesus.
" It is no use trying to place Jesus in a row
along with other religious masters. He is first,
and the rest nowhere ; we have no category for
Him" (p. 70).
" I have already devoted some little space to
emphasising the obvious fact that it is impossible
to deny the uniqueness of Jesus ; history has
settled that question for us. If all the theologians
and materialists were to set to work to-morrow
to try to show that Jesus was just like other
people, they would not succeed, for the civilised
world has already made up its mind on that
point, and by a right instinct recognises Jesus
as the unique standard of human excellence.
But this is not to say that we shall never reach
1 " Let us go on thinking of Jesus as Christ, the very Christ of glory,
but let us realise that the same Christ is seeking expression through
every human soul. He is incarnate in the race in order that by means
of limitation He may manifest the innermost of God, the life and love
eternal. To say this does not dethrone Jesus ; it lends significance to
His life and work. He is on the throne, and the sceptre is in His
hand" (pp. 108, 109).

OF OUR LORD 159
that standard too ; quite the contrary. We must
reach it in order to fulfil our destiny, and to
crown and complete His work" (p. 76).
" Lest any one should think that this position
involves in the slightest degree the diminution of
the religious value and the moral pre-eminence
of Jesus, let me say that it does the very opposite.
Nothing can be higher than the highest, and the
life of Jesus was the undimmed revelation of the
highest. Faith to be effective must centre on a
living person, and the highest objective it has
ever found is Jesus " (p. 96).
If it indeed be true that history has settled the
question, history has "settled" only that Jesus is
morally pre-eminent.1 And a moral pre-eminence
is all that Mr. Campbell directly attributes to Him.
He was not " just like other people," but He
differed from them only in kind. Indeed, accord
ing to Mr. Campbell, what He was we have to
become. It is quite true that Christ is " the highest objec
tive " of human faith. But He is thus pre-eminent,
not because of His pre-eminent character, but be
cause His unique nature makes His Person an
unique revelation.
It is not clear that the New Theology provides
any " objective " for human faith. The general
structure of that theology requires us, I think, to
believe that the ground of human faith is in a
philosophical doctrine, in the conception that our
human love is a trustworthy self-expression of
1 The essential uniqueness of our Lord's Person is still denied or
ignored by large numbers, even in Christendom.

160 THE PERSON AND WORK
God. Whatever be the religious importance attri
buted by the New Theology to our Lord, that
importance is inferred to Him from that philo
sophical conception.
This conclusion, if sound, makes it clearer
than ever that, according to the New Theology,
the uniqueness of our Lord is merely the unique
ness which pertains to moral pre-eminence. If
Mr. Campbell's doctrine be true, our Lord can no
longer validly be the "objective" of Christian
faith, for Christian faith has no longer a valid
" objective."
The Adequacy of Mr. Campbell's Christology
(a) Behind Mr. Campbell's doctrine of the
Person of Christ lies the philosophical conception
that the universe of finite particulars is the self-
expression or self-realisation of God, who is Infi
nite Consciousness. This conception Mr. Campbell
does not verify, and it involves difficulties which,
I think, destroy it, or transform it into a non-
Theistic doctrine. But let us assume it to be true ;
is the Christology which Mr. Campbell deduces
from it an adequate Christology ?
There can be no doubt that Mr. Campbell's
Christology, although not without precedent,
differs widely from the ordinary Christology of
Christendom, According to the latter, Christ has
two natures. He is man, but He is also God —
" Perfect God and perfect man ; of a reasonable
soul and human flesh subsisting " — and this union
of two natures in His Person makes that Person
existentially unique.

OF OUR LORD 161
Mr. Campbell, however, rejects the doctrine of
the two natures. According to him, our Lord
had only one nature. That nature, indeed, was
essentially Divine, but the nature of each one of
us is also essentially Divine. According to Mr.
Campbell, Jesus was, in His essential nature, what
we are. According to the doctrine prevalent in
Christendom, Christ is what we are not and can
not become.
(b) It may, however, be urged that Mr. Camp
bell's doctrine, although widely different from the
doctrine called orthodox, nevertheless gives a re
presentation of our Lord adequate to the world's
religious needs.
The highest form of the need that seems to me
distinctively religious x is the need for some sufficing
assurance that God exists and is Love. Does Mr.
Campbell's Christology set forth One able to meet
that need — able to meet it adequately ?
Let us return to Mr. Campbell's fundamental
conception. God is Infinite Consciousness, and
realises or expresses Himself in the world of finite
particulars. Jesus was one of those particulars,
and from His love Mr. Campbell infers that God
is Love. Undoubtedly, according to Mr. Campbell, God
was realised or self-expressed in Jesus. But is
that particular self-expression of God a sufficient
indication to us of God's essential character ? A
crocodile and a " Piccadilly roue," according to
Mr. Campbell, are also forms of God's self-expres
sion or self-realisation. Are they not, then, also
1 See Chapter II., The Nature of Religion. L

1 62 THE PERSON AND WORK
indications of His character ? And, if indications,
why should they be thought less importantly in
dicative than Jesus ? Because Jesus transcends
them ? But transcendence has not been demon
strated. Jesus, indeed, stands higher in our
thought, but is He actually higher in the process
of Divine self-expression ? Indeed, is there any
" higher " and any " lower " in that process ?
May it not be merely the activity of a Nature
which is content with self-expression as such,
whatever be the character of the expression ? If
it be, then the apparent worth — what seems to us
to be the worth — of a given particular expression
is either non-significant or unimportantly signifi
cant. We may say, indeed, that, because it is an
expression, its distinctive character must be in the
original, but we may say the same concerning
every other expression, however widely different
therefrom. Let it be granted, however, that God's self-
expression in the crocodile and Piccadilly roue is
in fact transcended by His self-expression in the
love of Jesus and in all other human love. Will
or can that transcendent expression be similarly
transcended ?
Love, we reflect, subsists within " subject-object
experience." It can exist only within the con
ditions of that experience, and in Absolute Con
sciousness, wherein that experience is completely
transcended, Love also must be transcended.
This, however, is not conclusive. We desire an
assurance that God is Love, not to satisfy a merely
speculative curiosity, but to meet a practical need —
the need that is distinctively religious. That need

OF OUR LORD 163
can exist only within the sphere of finite experi
ence. When we return — as, according to Mr,
Campbell, we shall return 1 — to the Infinite Con
sciousness, it will no longer exist.
Had we sufficing assurance that to us, within
finite experience, God is, and ever will be, Love,
that need would be adequately met. Can we,
from Mr. Campbell's Christology, reach such an
assurance ?
This question could, I think, be reasonably
answered in the affirmative only if we have some
demonstration — similar, let us say, to Hegel's
famous dialectical development of concepts — that
love is the highest and final form of God's self-
expression within the sphere of finite existence.
Were such a demonstration given, we could rest
assured that, so long as we continue within that
sphere, God will be to us a God of love. Mr.
Campbell, however, does not give such a demon
stration, nor does he attempt to give one. He
leaves open the possibility that God's self-expres
sion in love will one day be transcended as com
pletely as His self-expression in the crocodile is
transcended. (e) Let us, however, suppose this difficulty to be
in fact overcome by a demonstration such as Mr.
Campbell has omitted to give — the love of Jesus,
and our love, will then be a trustworthy revelation
of a sufficing love in God. But it will be a trust
worthy revelation only because Mr. Campbell's
1 " Our consciousness of ourselves and of the world can reasonably
be accounted a fall, for we came from the infinite and unto the infinite
perfection we shall in the end return " (p. 66).

1 64 THE PERSON AND WORK
form of idealism is true, and we shall know it to
be trustworthy only if we know that form of
idealism to be true. But, in that case, only com
petent metaphysicians could be Christians !
It may, however, be said that philosophy is not
the only road to truth — that Christ is, in fact,
effectually apprehended otherwise than by philo-<
sophy. We need not dispute this ; let us admit
that, although (ex hypothesi) the Christian revelation
is true only because a certain form of idealism is
true, it can be sufficiently apprehended otherwise
than through that form of idealism. This, how
ever, would re-introduce into Christian thought
the Gnostic distinction between perfect and im
perfect Christians. For the perfect there would
be the insight of philosophy ; for the others — for
the great majority — a certain practical assurance
inferior to that insight as anything which falls
short of vision must be to actual vision.
Some, it may be, would reply that even to-day,
within ordinary Christian society, that distinc
tion already exists, for the many have a faith
which only a few can prove to be reasonable.
The existing distinction, however, is not the dis
tinction entailed by Mr. Campbell's doctrine.
That doctrine entails two modes of apprehension — one
(by philosophy) for the learned, and one (other
wise than by philosophy) for the unlearned. But
to-day, within ordinary Christian society, all who
apprehend Christ effectually do so in one way — by
faith. It is unfortunately true that very few are
competent apologists and can demonstrate the
reasonableness of faith, but it is one thing to
demonstrate the reasonableness of faith and quite

OF OUR LORD 165
another to claim an independent and superior
apprehension. (d) Let us, however, suppose the love of Jesus,
and our love, to be a trustworthy revelation that,
within the sphere of finite existence, God is and
ever will be to usward a God of love — what then ?
Would that revelation sufficingly meet our need ?
Yes, if we could sufficiently apprehend it. A
revelation that we could not apprehend, either
because it was too far above us, or because we
were in some other way separated from it, would
be unavailing — indeed, to us it would not be a
revelation. In conformity with Catholic tradition it has
already been suggested that sin has " objective "
consequences — consequences other than those
within the sinful heart. Now, if there be such
consequences, it is not unreasonable to believe
that they separate men from God in such a way
that, until they be overcome or set aside, men
cannot effectually apprehend the love of God —
that love which is the sufficing response to man's
characteristic and deepest need. According to
Catholic doctrine such " objective " consequences
exist, and have been overcome, once for all, by
the "objective" Atonement of our Lord — an
Atonement which becomes effectual within us
through our individual acceptance of it.
The final question, then, suggested by Mr.
Campbell's Christology is this : Were our Lord
only what Mr. Campbell represents Him to have
been — essentially such an one as ourselves — could
He have wrought that " objective " Atonement, and

1 66 THE PERSON AND WORK
thereby have overcome sinful man's " objective "
separation from the sufficing love of God ?
The question goes back to the Arian controversy.
Had Christ been merely such an one as ourselves,
could He be the world's Saviour, and have wrought
a "full, perfect, and sufficient" Atonement for the
sins of men ? Mr. Campbell says " Yes," but Mr.
Campbell does not think of sin as others think
of it. Is The New Theology Christian?
One question yet remains to be asked and
answered — Is the New Theology Christian ?
As we have already seen, it is exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible, to develop Mr. Camp
bell's fundamental conceptions into a self-consistent
doctrine acceptable to Christian thought. Let us,
however, ignore this difficulty, and take the New
Theology as Mr. Campbell presents it— Is that
theology Christian ?
The following considerations seem to me the
most important, and I know of nothing sufficient
to countervail against their apparently negative
tendency. (i) The New Theology has its ratio credendi—
the ground of its credibility — in the philosophic
system,1 not in Christian experience, not in the
Person, or life, or teaching of our Lord.
1 In the doctrine namely, that we are severally one with the self-
realising God. The characteristic assurance given by the New Theology
is, indeed, the Ved&ntist assurance — ' ' I am that one " (cp. Libera
Theology). In this connection the following passage is noteworthy : " Our
present consciousness of ourselves and of the world can reasonably be

OF OUR LORD 167
(2) It would be unfair to say that the New
Theology does not permit devotion to our Lord.
The devotion it permits, however, is not the de
votion that Christendom has always character
istically paid, but only such devotion as we pay
to human goodness.
(3) The only thing that the New Theology
derives from our Lord is the lesson and example
of human love. The love of Jesus is, indeed, set
forth as a witness to the love of God, but this
evidential character is inferred to it solely from
Mr. Campbell's philosophy, not from our Lord's
Person or teaching. According to Mr. Campbell
the love of Jesus is indicative of God's character
only because it is a form of God's self-expression.
And Jesus is believed to be a form of God's self-
expression, not because of the evangelical declara
tions, nor as the result of our present apprehension
of His Person, but because (according to a
certain philosophical doctrine) every finite par
ticular is such a form.
(4) The love of Jesus is said, also, to be pre
eminent, but it has meaning — it illustrates the
character of God — because it is love, not because
it is pre-eminent love. The fundamental conceptions
of the New Theology compel us to believe that the
significance attributed to the love of Jesus is pos
sessed by all other human love.
accounted a fall, for we came from the infinite and unto the infinite
perfection we shall in the end return. I do not mean that our present
consciousness of ourselves is eternal ; I only assert that our true being
is eternally one with the being of God, and that to be separated from
a full knowledge of that truth is to have undergone a fall (p. 66).
According to Mr. Campbell, the self-limitation of God to finite
existence entailed a loss of knowledge. That loss can be repaired by
gain of knowledge, and the knowledge that can repair it is the know
ledge asserted in the VedSntist affirmation — " I am that one."

1 68 PERSON AND WORK OF OUR LORD
(5) The New Theology stands or falls with its
metaphysical foundation. It derives nothing but
illustration from the life of our Lord. As a
system of thought it is independent of His teach
ing and example : its truth is independent of His
Person. If it be true, it would be none the
less true were the Gospels proved to be wholly
mythical, and Jesus no more real than Jupiter.
(6) Mr. Campbell finds passages in the New
Testament which point — so he thinks — to certain
characteristic tenets of the New Theology. But
Mr. Campbell does not derive the New Theology
from Scripture. The passages he quotes are not
the foundations of his doctrine, but at most,
from his point of view, interesting anticipations
of certain^etails in his doctrine.
From these considerations it seems to follow that
the New Theology is not a system of Christian
thought, but an independent philosophy 1 exhibited
in a non-essential and illustrative relation with
Christian thought. The Gospels and Christian
experience contribute to it neither its truth nor
its essential content, but only an illustration —
an illustration that could equally well be found
elsewhere. 1 It should not be forgotten that the fashion in thought called
monistic idealism has already commenced to pass away. Hegehanism
no longer has the supremacy it once had, either in Germany or in
England.

V
THE CHURCH

THE CHURCH
(a) Mr, Campbell contrasts two conceptions of
the Church of Christ, which he names respectively
the "sacerdotal" and the "evangelical." He him
self holds the evangelical conception, but he seems
not to be of those who regard the Church as a
mere accident in Christian history — an accident
created by the natural drawing together of men
who share a common loyalty and recognise a
common vocation, and indicating or expressing
nothing but the human sympathies out of which
it sprang. He seems not, I say, to be of those,
for (even if it be correct to surmise that he accepts
their account of the natural genesis of the Church)
he believes, or inclines to believe, that our Lord
intended to found a Church — a distinctively Chris
tian society or complexus of societies. But, if our
Lord intended to found a Church to carry on His
work, that Church was not, in the thought of our
Lord, a mere accident in His religion, but an
appointed instrument — the organism wherein His
religion would subsist and through which it would
work. But, if the Christian Church be such an
instrument and organism, it has its ground, not in
human sympathies — which, at most, could only
extend it — but in our Lord's creative intention
and constituting act.

172 THE CHURCH
(b) Even if the Christian religion existed for no
other purpose than to exhibit in word and life
" the fellowship of love," it could most effectually
perform its appointed work in and through a living
society. The life of love is an achievement, and
men cannot be completely edified into the life
of love without mutual help.
To the loving heart, indeed, love is always pos
sible — even amid the most hostile surroundings —
and many a remembered and many an unre-
membered saint has proved it to be the victory
that overcometh all that an adverse world can do
against it. But men to whom Christian love is
a new experience can be built up into a fruitful
habit of love only by brotherly help. This help
can reach them best or only through the en
compassing and edifying love of a brotherhood
wherein they are the youngest -born of many
brethren. Again, although love can live, as a consecrating
strength within the heart, amid any surround
ings, it can effectually transform the world's prac
tical activities only through social forms of life.
Industry, for example, can be effectually " bap
tized into Christ " only by becoming the industry
of a Christian society. The world's industrial
new-birth will never come through "atomistic"
philanthropy — through individual reformers work
ing separately. It can come only through wide
co-operation, and this there cannot be with
out some kind of social organisation. Even
though Christianity had no other mission than
to preach and live " the fellowship of love,"
it could not effectively discharge its mission

THE CHURCH 173
otherwise than through corporate forms of Chris
tian life.1
(c) This ethical mission the Church of Christ
undoubtedly has, but it is not her only mission,
and not her most characteristic mission. The
Church exists, not merely, by human helpfulness,
to edify men into love, but to bring men to Christ,
and to give them an apprehension of Him that
will become, through daily renewal, the constant
refreshment and reinforcement of their love.
Something concerning this I have elsewhere
said.2 Here I will only repeat the thoughts that
seem to me essential.
The characteristic note of the Christian religion
is the revelation of the Divine Love given in and
through the Person of our Lord. We believe
that God is Love because, "for us men and for
our salvation," He became incarnate, and sub
mitted to human experience, and was obedient
unto death, even the death of the Cross.
It is by setting forth this revelation, and bring
ing us helpfully to apprehend it, that Christianity
meets our deepest need — the need that seems to
me distinctively religious.
1 Few better things could happen to the world than a widespread
and intelligent revival of corporate Christian life. Our present un-
brotherliness is more than a scandal — it at least partakes of the nature
of sin. Christian men are grouped into separate and hostile denomina
tions, and within no given denomination — not in the Church of England,
not in the " Free Churches "—is there more than the poor beginnings
of a genuine common life.
We lament the slightness of the impression we make upon the world
—the world we should save and have not saved. May it not be that
we fail because Christian consciousness is so feeble and has so poor a
content ? But how can it be strengthened and enriched, except through
the corporate life of Christian brotherhood?
1 See Introduction. Cp. A New Way in Apologetic and Liberal
Theology.

174 THE CHURCH
The Christian revelation is given to us in a
Person — in the Person of Christ, who is God
Incarnate — and it becomes effectual in us only
in proportion as we rightfully and helpfully ap
prehend that Person. Such apprehension the
Church exists to give. Through the witness of
the Christian society we are brought to an ex
perience — again and again renewed within its
fellowship — equivalent to that which first evoked
St. Peter's faith, and moved him to his great
confession. Our Christian faith is distinctively faith in Christ :
the distinctive ground of our trust is in His meta
physical Person. We are brought to that faith
and trust through the witness, and in and through
the characteristic life, of the Christian society,
wherein the revelation of God is daily renewed.
That society is thus the proximate ground of our
trust, and the primary problem of Christian
thought to-day is to formulate a theory of right
belief which shall exhibit that ground as a reason
able ground. Were such a theory sufficingly
formulated, it would, I think, prove to be a form
of Pragmatism, although I do not feel certain that
it would be Dr. Schiller's form of Pragmatism.

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