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GENERAL IDEA OF RELIGION – COMPARISON OF POLYTHEISM AND PANTHEISM WITH THEISM – THE THREE GREAT THEISTIC RELIGIONS COMPARED – NO RELIGIOUS PROGRESS BEYOND THEISM

I

There are three great theistic religions. All of them can scarcely be supposed to be perfect. It is most unlikely that they should all be equal in rank and value. But to determine the position and worth of a religion, whether theistic or non-theistic, it is indispensable that we have some notion of what religion is in itself.

It is very difficult to give a correct definition or accurate description of religion. And the reason is that religion is so wide and diversified a thing. It has spread over the whole earth, and it has assumed an almost countless variety of forms. Some sense of an invisible power or powers ruling his destiny is manifested by man alike in the lowest stages of barbarism and in the highest stages of civilisation, but the rude savage and the cultured thinker conceive very differently of the powers which they adore. The aspects of religion are, in fact, numerous as the phases of human life and the steps of human progress. It extends its sway over all lands, ages, and peoples, and yet it is the same in no two countries, no two generations, no two men even. There is, accordingly, of necessity a great difficulty in finding an expression which will comprehend and suit the vast variety of forms assumed by the religious life. Instead of trying to find an expression of the kind, many, I might almost say most, theologians are content silently to substitute for religion the phases of it with which they are most familiar, and instead of a definition of religion, to give us, say, a definition of theism, or even of Christianity. It is the rule and not the exception to find the same theologians who define religion as the communion of man with God, or the self-surrender of the soul to God, arguing that religion is common to all races and peoples. Of course, this is self-contradictory. Their definitions identify religion with monotheism, and their arguments assume it to include pantheism, polytheism, fetichism, &c. Belief in the one God and the worship of Him are very far from being universal even at the present day. If there be no other religion – if nothing short of that be religion – there are still vast continents and populous nations where religion is unknown.

A definition of religion must completely circumscribe religion; it must not be applicable merely to one religion, or at the most to several out of the vast host of religions which are spread over the earth; it must draw a boundary line which includes all religions, the lowest as well as the highest, and which excludes all things else.7 A definition thus extensive cannot be, in logical language, very comprehensive; to include all religions, it must not tell us much about what any religion is; in significance it can be neither rich nor definite. Perhaps if we say that religion is man's belief in a being or beings, mightier than himself and inaccessible to his senses, but not indifferent to his sentiments and actions, with the feelings and practices which flow from such belief, we have a definition of the kind required. I fear at least that any definition less abstract and vague will be found to apply only to particular forms or special developments of religion. Religion is man's communion, then, with what he believes to be a god or gods; his sense of relationship to, and dependence on, a higher and mysterious agency, with all the thoughts, emotions, and actions which proceed therefrom. The communion may be dark and gross, and find expression in impure and bloody rites, or it may be in spirit and in truth, and expressed in ways which educate and elevate both mind and heart. The belief may rest on wild delusions, on authority blindly accepted, or on rational grounds. The god may be some personified power of nature, some monstrous phantom of the brain, some imaginary demon of lust or cruelty; or it may be He in whom all truth, wisdom, goodness, and holiness have their source. But whatever be the form or character which religion presents, it always and everywhere involves belief in a god or object of worship, and feelings and actions corresponding to that belief. It is always and everywhere a consciousness of relationship to a worshipped being.

Is there any truth which can be affirmed to belong universally to this consciousness? If there be, it will hold good universally of religion, and the recognition of it will advance us a step in the knowledge of the nature of religion. One such truth at least, it appears to me, there is – viz., that the religious consciousness, or the frame and condition of spiritual life distinctive and essential in religion, is not peculiar to some one province of human nature, but extends into all its provinces. This truth has been often contradicted in appearance, seldom in reality. The seat of religion, as I indicated in last lecture, has been placed by some in the intellect, by others in the affections, and by others still in the will. It has been represented as knowing, or feeling, or doing. When we examine, however, the multitude of, at first glance, apparently very conflicting views which have originated in thus fixing upon some single mental faculty as the religious faculty, the organ and seat of religion, we soon find that they are not so discordant and antagonistic as they seem to be.

Those who represent religion as essentially knowledge or belief, do not really mean to affirm that anything entitled to be called religion is ever mere knowledge or mere belief; on the contrary, they proceed on the supposition that feeling and volition will correspond to the knowledge or belief. They define religion as knowledge or belief, and not as affection or volition, because, regarding religious knowledge or belief as the ground of religious feeling and willing, they think they may treat the two latter, not as constituents, but as consequences of religion. Then, although a few of those who have defined religion as feeling have written as if they supposed that the feeling rested upon no sort of apprehension or conviction, they have been very few, and they have never been able to explain what they meant. In presence of the Power which is manifested in the universe, or of the moral order of the world, they have felt an awe or joy, it may be, irresistibly raising them above themselves, above the hampering details of earth, and "giving fulness and tone to their existence;" and being unaccustomed to analyse states of consciousness, although familiar with the mechanics and chemistry of matter, they have overlooked the obvious fact, that but for an intellectual perception of the presence of an all-pervading Power, and all-embracing order, the awe and joy could never have been excited. Mere feeling cannot tell us anything about what is out of ourselves, and cannot take us out of ourselves. Mere feeling is, in fact, mere absurdity. It is but what we should expect, therefore, that all those capable of reflecting in any measure on mental processes who have placed the essence of religion in feeling, have always admitted that the religious feeling could not be wholly separated either from the power of cognition on the one hand, or the exertion of will on the other. Men like Schleiermacher and Opzoomer argue strenuously that religion is feeling and not knowledge or practice; but it is expressly on the ground that, as there can be what is called religious knowledge and practice without piety, the knowledge is a mere antecedent, and the practice a mere consequent. Those, again, who make religion consist essentially in an act of will, in the self-surrender of the soul to the object of its worship, do so, they tell us, because pious feeling, even though based on knowledge, is only religiousness, not religion – the capacity of being religious, not actually being so; and religion only exists as a reality, a completed thing, when the will of man submits itself to the Divine Will. But this is to acknowledge, you observe, that both thought and feeling are present and presupposed wherever religion exists.

Now, if the facts be as I have just stated, obviously the controversy as to whether religion is essentially knowing, feeling, or willing, is mainly verbal. It turns on an undefined use of the term essential. Thought, feeling, and will – knowledge, affection, and self-surrender – are admitted to be indissolubly united, inseparably present, in religion, even by those who will not admit them to be all its equally essential constituents. But in these circumstances, they should carefully explain what they mean by essential and non-essential, and tell us how we are to distinguish among inseparable states those which are essential from those which are non-essential. This they never do; this they cannot do. All facts which always go together, and are always equally found in any state or process, are its equally essential components. When we always find certain elements together, and can neither discover nor imagine them apart, we have no right to represent some of them as essential to the compound into which they enter, and others as non-essential. They are all essential.

The conclusion to which we are thus brought is, that religion belongs exclusively to no one part or province, no one disposition or faculty of the soul, but embraces the whole mind, the whole man. Its seat is the centre of human nature, and its circumference is the utmost limit of all the energies and capacities of that nature. At the lowest it has something alike of intellect, affection, and practical obedience in it. At its best it should include all the highest exercises of reason, all the purest and deepest emotions and affections, and the noblest kind of conduct. It responds to its own true nature only in the measure that it fills the whole intellect with light, satisfies the reverence and love of the most capacious heart, and provides an ideal and law for practical life in all its breadth. There is, then, a general notion of religion which includes all religions, and that notion both suggests to us that the various religions of the world are of very different values, and points us to a standard by which we may determine their respective rank, and estimate their worth. The definition of religion, in other words, though not to be confounded with the type or ideal of religion, is connected with it, and indicates what it is. The type is the normal and full development of what is expressed in the definition. It is the type, of course, and not the definition, which is the standard – the medium and measure of comparison. And the type or ideal of religion is the complete surrender of the heart, and strength, and soul, and mind of man to Deity. Only a religion which admits of a full communion of the reason, affection, and will of the worshipper with the object of his worship – only a religion which presents an object of worship capable of eliciting the entire devotion of the worshipper's nature, and at the same time of ennobling, enlarging, refining, and satisfying that nature – fully realises the idea of religion, or, in other words, can claim to be a perfect religion.8

II

Applying the very general idea of religion which has now been reached, it soon becomes apparent that no religion can possibly claim to conform to it which does not present to man as the true and supreme object of his adoration, love, and obedience, the One Infinite Personal God – almighty, all-wise, and all-holy; or, in other words, that it is only in a theistic religion that whatever in religion is fitted to satisfy the reason and affections of man, and to strengthen and guide his will, can find its proper development.

Look at polytheism – the worship of more gods than one. Clearly religion can only be very imperfectly realised in any polytheistic form; and still more clearly are most of the forms which polytheism has actually assumed unspeakably degrading. Think for a moment of a human being worshipping a stock or a stone, a plant or a tree, a fish or serpent, an ox or tiger – of the negro of Guinea beating his gods when he does not get what he wishes, or the New Zealander trying to frighten them by threatening to kill and eat them – of the car of Juggernaut, the fires of Moloch, the sacrifices to the Mexican war-god, the abominations ascribed to Jupiter, the licentious orgies so widely practised by the heathen in honour of their deities. Reflect on such a scene as is brought before us in the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah. The language of the prophet is so graphic that one almost seems to see the man whom he depicts choosing his tree in the forest and hewing it down – to see the smith working at it with his tongs among the coals, and hear the ring of his hammer – to see the carpenter with adze and line and compass shape it into an ugly monstrous shape, bearing faint resemblance to the human – to see the workman with one part of the tree kindling a fire, and baking bread, and roasting roast, and eating it, and then going up to the ugly, wooden, human shape that he has fashioned out of another part of the same tree, prostrating himself before it, feeling awed in its presence, and praying, "Deliver me; for thou art my god." The prophet obviously painted from the life, and his picture is still true to the life where polytheism prevails. But what could be more calculated to inspire both horror and pity? How awful is it that man should be able so to delude and degrade himself! As a rule, the gods of polytheists are such that, even under the delusion that they are gods, little improving communion with them is possible. As a rule, the religion of polytheists consists of vague, dark, wild imaginations, instead of true and reasoned convictions – of coarse, selfish desires, fear and suspicion, instead of love, and trust, and joy – and of arbitrary or even immoral rites and practices, instead of spiritual worship, and the conformity of the will to a righteous law.

Then, at the very best, polytheism must be far from good, – at its highest, it must be low. Were it much better than it has ever been – had it all the merits of Greek polytheism, without any of its faults, save those which are inherent in the very nature of polytheism – it would still be but a poor religion, for its essential and irremediable defects are such as to render it altogether incapable of truly satisfying the nature of man. It is a belief in more gods than one. This of itself is what reason cannot rest in – what reason is constantly finding out more clearly to be false. The more the universe is examined and understood, the more apparent does it become that it is a single, self-consistent whole – a vast unity in which nothing is isolated or independent. The very notion, therefore, of separate and independent deities, and still more, of course, of discordant or hostile deities, ruling over different departments of nature, is opposed to the strivings and findings of reason. The heart will no less vainly seek satisfaction in the belief of many gods. Its spiritual affections need a single Divine object. To distribute them among many objects is to dissipate and destroy them. The reverence, love, and trust which religion demands are a whole-hearted, absolute, unlimited reverence, love, and trust, such as can only be felt towards one God, with no other beside Him. The will of man in like manner requires to be under not a number of independent wills, but a single, all-comprehensive, perfectly consistent, and perfectly righteous will. It cannot serve many masters; it can only reasonably and rightly serve one. It can only yield itself up unreservedly to be guided by One Supreme Will. If there be no such will in the universe, but only a multitude of independent and co-ordinate wills, that full surrender of the will of the worshipper to the object of his worship, in which religion should find its consummation, is impossible.

Further, polytheism is not only the belief in more gods than one, but in gods all of which are finite. There can be no true recognition of the infinity of God where there is no true recognition of His unity. But the mind of man, although finite itself, cannot be satisfied with any object of worship which it perceives to be finite. It craves an infinite object; it desires to offer a boundless devotion; it seeks an absolute blessedness. The aim of the religious life is the communion of the finite with the infinite; and every religion, however otherwise excellent, which suppresses the infinite, and presents to the finite only the finite, is a failure.

Religion can no more attain to its proper development in pantheism than in polytheism. For pantheism denies that the One Infinite Being is a person – is a free, holy, and loving intelligence. It denies even that we ourselves are truly persons. It represents our consciousness of freedom and sense of responsibility as illusions. God, according to pantheism, alone is. All individual existences are merely His manifestations, – all our deeds, whether good or bad, are His actions; and yet, while all is God and God is all, there is no God who can hear us or understand us – no God to love us or care for us – no God able or willing to help us. Such a view of the universe may have its attractions for the poet and the philosopher in certain moods of mind, but it assuredly affords little foundation for religion, if religion be the communion of the worshipper and the worshipped. What communion of reason can a man have with a being which does not understand him, or of affection with a being which has no love, or of will with a being which has no choice or freedom, and is the necessary cause both of good and evil? Pantheism represents absorption in Deity, the losing of self in God, as the highest good of humanity; but this is a mere caricature of that idea of communion with God in which religion must find its realisation, as pantheism leaves neither a self to surrender, nor a personal God to whom to surrender it. The absorption of the finite in the infinite which pantheism preaches is as different from that surrender of the self to God, which is the condition of God dwelling in us and we in God, as night is from day, as death is from life.

We find ample historical confirmation of what has just been said in the very instructive fact, that widespread as pantheism is, it has never in itself been the religion of any people. It has never been more than the philosophy of certain speculative individuals. India is no exception, for even there, in order to gain and retain the people, pantheism has had to combine with polytheism. It is the personal gods of Hindu polytheism and not the impersonal principle of Hindu pantheism that the Hindu people worship. The Sankhya and Vedanta systems are no more religions than the systems of Spinoza, Schelling, or Hegel. They are merely philosophies. Buddhism has laid hold of the hearts of men to a wonderful extent; not, however, in virtue of the pantheism, scarcely dis-tinguishable from atheism, which underlies it, but because of the attractiveness of the character and teaching of the Buddha Sakyamuni himself, of the man-god who came to save men. The human heart cries out for a living personal God to worship, and pantheism fails miserably as a religion because it wholly disregards, yea, despises that cry.

We are compelled to pass onwards, then, to theism. And here, applying the same view of religion as before, it soon becomes obvious that of the three great theistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism – the last is far inferior to the other two, and the first is a transition to and preparation for the second. Although the latest of the three to arise, Mohammedanism is manifestly the least developed, the least matured. Instead of evolving and extending the theistic idea which it borrowed, it has marred and mutilated it. Instead of representing God as possessed of all spiritual fulness and perfection, it exhibits Him as devoid of the divinest spiritual attributes. Although the Suras of the Koran are all, with one exception, prefaced by the formula, "In the name of Allah, the God of mercy, the merciful," there is extremely little in them of the spirit of mercy, while they superabound in a fierce intolerance. Allah is set before us with clearness, with force, with intense sincerity, as endowed with the natural attributes which we ascribe to God, but only so as to exhibit very imperfectly and erroneously His moral attributes. He is set before us as God alone, beside whom there is none other; as the first and the last, the seen and the hidden; as eternal and unchanging; as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient; as the Creator, the Preserver, and the Judge of all; – but He is not set before us as truly righteous or even as truly reasonable, and still less as Love. He is set before us as an infinite and absolute arbitrary Will, the acts of which are right simply because they cannot be wrong, and which ordains its creatures and instruments to honour or dishonour, heaven or hell, without love or hate, without interest or sympathy, and on no grounds of fitness or justice.

His infinite exaltation above His creatures is recognised, but not His relationship to and interest in His creatures. His almighty power is vividly apprehended, but His infinite love is overlooked, or only seen dimly and in stray and fitful glimpses. His character is thus most imperfectly unveiled, and even seriously defaced; and, in consequence, a whole-hearted communion with Him is impossible. As an unlimited arbitrary Will He leaves man with no true will to surrender to Him. Inaccessible, without sympathy, jealous, and egoistic, His appropriate worship is servile obedience, blind submission – not the enlightened reverence and loving affection of the true piety in which mind and heart fully accord; unquestioning belief, passionless resignation, outward observances, mere external works – not the free use of reason, not the loving dependence of a child on its father, not an internal life of holiness springing from a divine indwelling source. God and man thus remain in this system, theistic although it be, infinitely separate from each other. Man is not made to feel that his whole spiritual being should live and rejoice in God; on the contrary, he is made to feel that he has scarcely any other relation to God than an inert instrument has to the hand which uses it. Submission to the will of God, whatever it may be, without recognition of its being the will of a Father who seeks in all things the good of His children, is the Mussulman's highest conception either of religion or duty, and consequently he ignores the central principle of religious communion and the strongest motive to moral action.

The theism of the Old Testament is incomparably superior to that of the Koran. It possesses every truth contained in Mohammedanism, while it gives due prominence to those aspects of the Divine character which Mohammedanism obscures and distorts. The unity and eternity of God, His omniscience, omnipresence, and inscrutable perfections, the wonders of His creative power, His glory in the heavens and on the earth, are described by Moses and the author of the Book of Job, by the psalmists and the prophets, in language so magnificent that all the intervening centuries have been unable to surpass it. And yet far greater stress is justly laid by them on the moral glory of God, which is reflected in so dim and broken and disproportionate a way through the visions of Mohammed. It is impossible to take a comprehensive view of the Old Testament dispensation without perceiving that its main aim, alike in its ceremonial observances, moral precepts, and prophetic teaching, was to open and deepen the sense of sin, to give reality and intensity to the recognition of moral law, to make known especially that aspect of God's character which we call His righteousness, His holiness. At the same time God is set forth as merciful, long-suffering, and gracious; as healing our diseases, redeeming our life, and crowning us with loving-kindnesses; as creating in us clean hearts, and desiring not sacrifice but a broken spirit.

Before the close of the Old Testament dispensation, a view of God's character had been attained as complete as could be reached through mere spiritual vision and expressed through mere words. The character of God was so disclosed that His people longed with their whole hearts for the blessedness of true spiritual communion with Him, and worthily apprehended what that communion ought to be. But with the widening of their views and the deepening of their longings as to this the supreme good, they realised the more how far they were from the attainment of it. From the beginning Judaism looked beyond itself and confessed its own preparatory and transitional character. And this consciousness grew with its growth. In the days of the later prophets men knew far better what spiritual communion with God ought to be than in the days of the patriarchs, but they did not actually enjoy even the same measure of childlike communion with Him. The law had done its work; it had made men feel more than ever the need of being in communion with God, but it had made them realise also the distance between God and them, and especially the awful width of the gulf between them caused by sin.

That gulf no mere spiritual vision of man could see across, and no mere declarations of love and mercy even from God Himself could bridge over. The reason of man could only be enlightened – the heart of man could only be satisfied – as to how God would deal with sin and sinners, by an actual self-manifestation of God in humiliation, suffering, and sacrifice, which would leave men in no doubt that high and holy as God was, He was also in the deepest and truest sense their Father, and that they were His ransomed and redeemed children. It was only when this was accomplished that religion and theism were alike perfected. Then the character of God was unveiled, the heart of God disclosed, and in such a manner that the most childlike confidence in Him could be combined with the profoundest sense of His greatness and righteousness. Perfect communion with Him in trustful love no longer supposed, as it did in earlier times, an imperfect knowledge, on the part of the worshipper, either of God's character or of his own. It required no overlooking of the evil of sin, for it rested on the certainty that sin had been overcome. Only the life hid with God in Christ can completely realise the idea of religion, for only in Christ can the heart of sinful man be sincerely and unreservedly yielded to a holy God. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me," are words of the Lord Jesus which can only be denied by those who do not understand what they mean – what the truth and the life are, what fatherhood signifies, and what is involved in coming to a Father.

Christian theism alone gives us a perfect representation of God. It precedes and surpasses reason, especially in the disclosure of the depths of fatherly love which are in the heart of the infinite Jehovah; but it nowhere contradicts reason – nay, it incorporates all the findings of reason. It presents as one great and brilliant light all the scattered sparks of truth which scintillated amidst the darkness of heathendom; it combines into a living unity all the separate elements of positive truth which are to be found in systems like pantheism, deism, rationalism; it excludes all that is false in views lower than or contrary to its own. Whenever it maintains a truth regarding God, reason finds that it is defending a principle of Christian theism; whenever it refutes an error regarding Him, it finds itself assailing some one of the many enemies of Christian theism.

III

Theism, I argued in last lecture, can never be reasonably rejected in the name of religious liberty. I may now, I think, maintain that it can never be reasonably thrown off in the name of religious progress. It can never be an onward step in the spiritual life to pass away from the belief which is distinctive and characteristic of theism. The highest possible form of religion must be a theistic religion – a religion in which the one personal and perfect God is the object of worship. Fetichism, nature-worship, humanitarian polytheism, and pantheism, are all very much lower forms of religion, and therefore to abandon theism for any of them is not to advance but to retrograde, is not to rise but to fall. We can turn towards any of them only by turning our back on the spiritual goal towards which humanity has been slowly but continuously moving through so many ages. There is no hope or possibility of advance on the side of any of the old forms of heathendom.

Shall we try, then, to get out of and beyond theism on that other side to which some moderns beckon us? Shall we suppose that as men have given up the lower for the higher forms of polytheism, and then abandoned polytheism for theism, so they may now surrender theism itself for systems like the positivism of Comte or the new faith of Strauss? No. And for two reasons. First, so far as there is any religion in these systems there is no advance on theism in them but the reverse. Comte strives to represent humanity, and Strauss to represent the universe, as a god, by imaginatively investing them with attributes which do not inherently and properly belong to them; but with all their efforts they can only make of them fetich gods; and Europeans, it is to be hoped, will never fall down and worship fetiches, however big these fetiches may be, and whoever may be willing to serve them as prophets or priests. Humanity must be blind to its follies and sins, insensible to its weakness and miseries, and given over to the madness of a boundless vanity, before it can raise an altar and burn incense to its own self. "Man," says an eloquent author, "is great is sublime, with immortal hope in his heart and the divine aureole around his brow; but that he may preserve his greatness let us leave him in his proper place. Let us leave to him the struggles which make his glory, that condemnation of his own miseries which does him honour, the tears shed over his faults which are the most unexceptionable testimony to his dignity. Let us leave him tears, repentance, conflict, and hope; but let us not deify him; for no sooner shall he have said, 'I am God,' than, deprived that instant of all his blessings, he shall find himself naked and spoiled."9 Man, I may add, if his eyes be open and capable of vision, can still less worship the universe than he can worship himself. Mind can never bow down to matter except under the influence of delusion. Man is greater than anything he can see or touch; and those who believe only in what they can see and touch, who have what Strauss calls a feeling for the universe, but no true feeling for what is spiritual and divine, must either worship humanity or something even less worthy of their adoration. There is thus no advance on this side either, even if the systems which we are invited to adopt could be properly regarded as religious. But, secondly, we may safely say that so far as they are theories based on science, there is no religion in them; and that, consequently, to give up a religion for them would be to give up not one form of religion for another, a lower for a higher, but would be to give up religion for what is not religion, or, in other words, would be to cast off religion altogether. And to cease to be religious can surely never be to advance in religion. Positivism and materialism are not stages beyond theism, for they are not on the same road. They are not phases in the development of religion; they are forms of the denial of religion. The grossest fetichism has more of religion in it than either of them can consistently claim on scientific grounds. There is nothing in science, properly so called, which justifies the exaltation either of matter or man to the rank of gods even of the lowest fetich order.

It is only, then, by keeping within the limits of theism that further religious progress is possible. If we would advance in religion, it must be, not by getting rid of our belief in God, but by getting deeper and wider views of His character and operations, and by conforming our hearts and lives more sincerely and faithfully to our knowledge. There is still ample room for religious progress of this kind. I do not say, I do not believe indeed, that we shall find out any absolutely new truth about God. Were a man to tell me that he had discovered a Divine attribute which had never previously been thought of, I should listen to him with the same incredulous pity as if he were to tell me that he had discovered a human virtue which had escaped the notice of all other men. In a real and important sense, the revelation of God made in Scripture, and more particularly and especially the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, is most justly to be regarded as complete, and incapable of addition. But there may be no limits to the growth of our apprehension and realisation of the idea of God there set before us perfectly as regards general features. To perceive the mere general outline and general aspect of a truth is one thing, and to know it thoroughly, to realise it exhaustively – which is the only way thoroughly to know it – is another and very different thing; and centuries, yea, millenniums without number, may elapse between the former and the latter of these two stages, between the beginning and the end of this process. Thousands of years ago there were men who said as plainly as could be done or desired that God was omnipotent; but surely every one who believes in God will acknowledge, that the discoveries of modern astronomy give more overwhelming impressions of Divine power than either heathen sage or Hebrew psalmist can be imagined as possessing. It is ages since men ascribed perfect wisdom to God; but all the discoveries of science which help us to understand how the earth is related to other worlds – how it has been brought into its present condition – how it has been stocked, adorned, and enriched with its varied tribes of plants and animals – and how these have been developed, distributed, and provided for, – must be accepted by every intelligent theist as enlarging and correcting human views as to God's ways of working, and consequently as to His wisdom. The righteousness of God has been the trust and support of men in all generations; but history is a continuous unveiling of the mysteries of this attribute: through the discipline of Providence individuals and nations are ever being more thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of it. I have, indeed, heard men say – I have heard even teachers of theology say – that the knowledge of God is unlike all other knowledge, in being unchanging and unprogressive. To me it seems that of all knowledge the knowledge of God is, or at least ought to be, the most progressive. And that for this simple reason, that every increase of other knowledge, – be it the knowledge of outward nature, or of the human soul, or of history – be it the knowledge of truth, or beauty, or goodness, – ought also to increase our knowledge of Him. If it do not, it has not been used aright; and the reason why it has not been so used must be that we have looked upon God as if He were only one among many things, instead of looking upon Him as the One Being of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and that we have, in consequence, kept our knowledge of Him wholly apart from our other knowledge, instead of centring all our knowledge in it, because we feel it to be "the light of all our seeing," as well as "a lamp to our feet." In other words, our knowledge of God is in this case not a living, all-diffusive knowledge. Only a dead knowledge of Him is an unprogressive knowledge. That, I admit, is unprogressive. It may fade away and be effaced, but it does not grow, does not absorb and assimilate, and thereby transmute and glorify all our other knowledge.

Growth in the knowledge of God is a kind of progress which can have absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth; truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities. It is, I shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies and determines all other progress. Whenever our views of truth, of righteousness, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon us, – our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously, feeling after God, if haply they may find Him. It is only in and through God that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and longings. If man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than themselves – by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have not yet attained – by desires for a blessedness which neither earth nor humanity can bestow? Must not, in that case, his ideals be mere dreams – his longings mere delusions? Pessimists like Schopenhauer and Hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all is vanity." I believe them to be quite logical in thinking so, seeing that they have ceased to believe in God, who is the ideal which alone gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of all mental, moral, and religious progress. Of course, if the pessimists can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths and affections by which Infinite Goodness is drawing men to itself, but mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts, progress must soon cease. When a delusion is seen through, the power of it is gone. But the pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed. They will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the opposite of what they anticipate. It must be that men will prize more the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history which they propagate. Pessimism must send the philosophical few back with deepened reverence and quickened insight to Plato, in order to master more thoroughly, and take to heart more seriously, his great message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise in God, who is at once the First and the Final Cause, the Absolute Idea, the Highest Good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many, whether learned or unlearned, for the Gospel which has taught them that to glorify God is an end in which there is no illusion, and to enjoy Him a good which never disappoints. God, as the presupposition of all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.10