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WHAT AND WHERE IS GOD?

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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WHAT AND WHERE
IS GOD?

A HUMAN ANSWER TO THE DEEP RELIGIOUS
CRY OF THE MODERN SOUL

BY
RICHARD LaRUE SWAIN, Ph.D.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1920,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1920

TO THE LOVED ONES
OF MY FATHER'S FAMILY
AND
TO THE DEAR ONES
OF MY OWN FAMILY
SO TRULY A PART OF THESE PAGES
I GRATEFULLY
DEDICATE THIS BOOK

PREFACE

The foreground of this book has largely to do with the answering of vital questions that have sprung from the suffering souls of men and women with whom the author has been sympathetically associated. Considerable attention has been given to the natural sequence of these questions in order that the answers might form a more or less orderly line of discussion. While the method of answering a particular set of questions does not permit of a strictly logical treatment of the themes, yet in the background there is a definite and concrete picture of God, of the universe, and of man as he is enfolded in God's world.

The chapters on immortality contain a further discussion of God, man, and the universe as they move on in endless time. To know "what and where" God is, it is necessary to understand how man and the universe exist in God, and what God purposes to achieve through them.

If we are to reach people's minds, their questions are of supreme importance because they show where the mind is focused. The average person can, as a rule, proceed no farther with a subject until his main difficulty is removed. Therefore, we have preferred the question to the natural division of the subject, believing that the reader would be able to see the logic that is beneath it all.

The chapters on the Bible are not closely related to the rest of the book, but as the Scriptures contain the "specifications" and "blue-prints" from God, it seemed important to include a description of how we must approach them if we are not to misread their spiritual content.

Though the material of this volume has been given in extemporaneous addresses, yet no part of it has been reduced to writing until now. Its appearance in book form is in response to many requests. Especially helpful has been the encouragement of Professor Douglas Clyde Macintosh of Yale University who has kindly read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions.

R. L. S.

306 Golden Hill,
Bridgeport, Conn.

CONTENTS

WHAT AND WHERE IS GOD?

CHAPTER I

LOSING GOD, OR THE HONEST ATHEIST

Why does God leave His very existence in doubt by forever hiding Himself?

If there were a God would He not make Himself known in such a way that no one could possibly doubt His existence?

Why should we be expected to love and obey a God whose existence is still a subject of discussion?

Could a righteous and loving Father leave any of His children in doubt of His existence?

While I was dining one day with a young minister and his wife, the latter disclosed to me her religious state of mind. Said she:

"I have no God! They have taken Him away and I do not know where to find Him. My childhood conception of a Man-God on a throne in heaven is gone—and I think rightly gone; but I have nothing to take its place. I hear them speak of an immanent God; of a God who fills all nature. And I have no objection to this except that it brings no relief. Nature is so inexpressibly vast and complex that, to my mind, a God who fills all nature is so infinitely big and spread out that I can neither know Him nor love Him. He is altogether too attenuated for me; besides, this makes Him so much everywhere that He seems to be nowhere. Here I am, without a God, working myself nearly to death in a great Church; and my heart is breaking for a Father to whom I can go, as I once did, with all my hopes and fears. Moreover, all my young women friends feel as I do. We often speak of this among ourselves without knowing where to turn for relief."

The distressing experience of this minister's wife is more common than many think. With her type of mind it was inevitable that she should experience doubt while passing from the crude to the mature. Being bright, consecrated, and sincere she had simply hastened the crisis. That the Church is not always present to take care of its own passengers when they arrive at these way-stations is the greater pity; because representatives of various spiritual inns will be sure to meet every incoming train. And if the Church is neglectful of its spiritual pilgrims, it compels them to spend their night of doubt in the depot or on a bench in the park exposed to the tender mercy of religious fakers. Were the difficulties of this minister's wife met, it would be a great blessing to her and to thousands of other troubled souls; and at the same time it would immeasurably enrich our common Christian life.

Because of our newly acquired knowledge of the physical universe multitudes, both without and within the Church, are asking what God is and where He is that they may find Him.

The poverty of faith and confusion of ideas concerning God were recently brought to light by Professor Leuba in his questionnaire. Many seem to think there is no place for God in their conception of the universe. Having no longer a satisfying idea of God, the thought of Him is fading from their minds. And while some rejoice in their scepticism, others deeply regret a waning faith.

All this only proves that the world is over-ripe for a finer conception of God and His universe; and that a better and more definite idea must be obtained, or doubt will run into positive unbelief. Modern learning is thought by many to be particularly hard on faith. Some of us, however, have found the world of modern knowledge more congenial to faith and much superior to the old unscientific world as a place in which to live the simple Christian life. This better vision should be given to the people with all possible speed. They should be taught to see that as boulevards and steel bridges are superior to mud roads and dangerous fords, so the new Christian highway is better than the old. Nevertheless, new knowledge in certain directions does present grave difficulties for those who retain crude conceptions of God and erroneous views of His relation to the forces of nature that envelop us. Until we do the work that our times demand of us, even Christians may not hope to remain immune from the devastating influences of doubt. There is a deep cry in the modern soul that must be met.

While our hope of knowing God rests on His immanence yet the idea of immanence has not been sufficiently clarified to meet our practical demands. If we continue to teach the beautiful doctrine that God is everywhere, in the vague way that is now so prevalent, an ever increasing number will surely come to believe that He is nowhere.

Lovingly and faithfully our mothers taught us that God was everywhere in all majesty and power. But it was different. They believed that God had a form, or nucleus, in heaven, and that His spirit radiated from this form to the remotest particles of matter in the universe. They also believed that when transported at death to His central abode they should look with rapture upon His ineffable being. They expected to see the glorious presence of the Father distinct from the glorified body of Jesus. In their thought, the visible Jesus was literally on the right hand of a visible Father. However, this conception of a visible and localized God in heaven is either gone or going; and for the average mind there remains a Deity, if any, as attenuated as stellar ether, and scarcely more personal than the forces of nature. No one ever made a more rational demand than the minister's wife when she asked for a particular God to supplement a universal God.

We must get on common ground with our fellows, if we really wish to help, and sow our seed in the soil of living minds. The supreme need of the hour is for someone to help the masses to move out of the old "shack" of an unscientific world into God's beautiful, expanding palace. Though some new frames are needed for the old pictures, yet no treasure should be left to perish in the old "shack"; because the ampler world of modern knowledge will never be home until the pictures of our childhood hang on the wall and the fire burns in the furnace. The larger abode of a scientific universe is a veritable prison when we have cast out the God of our fathers. But whether we would or not, we must learn to do business in the new world; and sooner or later we shall learn that we can not do business in one kind of a universe and foster religion in another. Religion must thrive in the new world or perish. Neither is it enough for a few scholars to see their way in the new order; they must show others how to be religious without stultifying their intellects. In other words, men must see before a religious appeal can reach their conscience.

There are as many ways of becoming a sceptic as there are of becoming a Christian. We must admit, however, that careless living has multiplied the difficulties of faith for every one of us. And yet, a sincere effort to make religion real in one's own personal experience often hastens unbelief. Those who think that no one honestly doubts the existence of God have a poor knowledge of the facts; because, in many minds, this is the only serious doubt. If only they could make this point secure, everything else would fall in line as a matter of course. To a singular degree this has been true in my own case. The one word "God" is a creed large enough to burst all little worlds, if the word stands for a fact which has any worthy meaning. Some people, always wondering whether God is good to them, or whether He really thinks of them at all, are greatly shocked if some one else doubts God's existence. Whereas, to believe in Christ's God and at the same time doubt His goodness is a flat contradiction. For many of us this would be impossible.

Following the advice of friends—whose judgment I trust—I venture to give a simple history of my own early religious life. This is for the sake of finding a point of contact with those who have little or no faith; and with the hope of stating some of the real problems. Some may think this a dangerous thing to do. But unless we know the problems of suffering souls, how are we to solve them? Besides, the knowledge of another's difficulty with its solution, should enrich the faith of one having no serious difficulties of his own; and certainly it would make him more useful among people differently constituted from himself.

My father became a Protestant at twenty years of age to the great distress of his Roman Catholic mother. At twenty-two he married Sarah Elizabeth Carr of Great Dalby, England. They were married in the quaint old church of the town by the Episcopal rector. Later, my father preached in England for the Wesleyans. However, on coming to America in 1857 he identified himself with the United Brethren and remained with them until his death. As he located in what was then the frontier of this country, I can duplicate out of my own life much that is to be found in "Black Rock" and "Sky Pilot." In the midst of much irreligion, my parents put vital religion into the very marrow of my bones.

Going far and near to preach in little schoolhouses, my father left us much alone in the old log cabin of one room; especially in the winter season when he preached nearly every night. His home-coming about once a month was a great event. In the summertime he would ride thirty miles on Sunday, preach three times, and be back home Monday by one o'clock to delve into every kind of rough work as a true frontiersman. I pity the little boy who has never had the privilege of rifling a pair of saddlebags on the return of his father. Sometimes my father was detained on his way home by overflowing rivers that were too mad for the horse to swim. And once he was detained by watching all night to prevent a rough gang from hanging one of his dearest friends. The long, long Sundays that I spent alone with my mother in the old cabin are indelibly stamped on my memory. Sometimes I thought I should die with loneliness. At such times my mother would try to comfort me with stories, or with letters from her invalid mother across the sea; and then we both would cry. Once when I refused to be comforted, and bitterly complained because my father left us alone, my mother explained to me in a simple, awe-inspiring manner the tragedy of the World's sin and sorrow together with the suffering love of God. How my father was going forth in God's compelling love to help Him save His children from the impending doom of sin, she pictured so vividly that I felt glad to live and suffer in such a cause. This was, probably, the most effective sermon to which I ever listened. And then my mother gathered me into her arms and made me conscious of the greatest thing in the world; a love that is infinitely deeper than words; something so like God that we need look no farther for a fitting symbol of Him.

As a child I was very susceptible to fear. I remember one bitter cold night when the winds howled and the thieves prowled. Every nerve in me ached with fear. That night my mother kneeling by her bed, with her little children at her side, prayed in a low tremulous voice, and with a sweet English accent, until God seemed nearer than the raging winds, and more powerful than the evil forces that were abroad to do us harm. How happy I was the next morning to find that the wind had subsided, and that the horses were not stolen, and that no evil had befallen us! When a little child, religion was as real to me as my parents, or the atmosphere I breathed, or the food I ate.

I am not certain of ever having been in a church until I was almost grown. But when I was probably five years old, I accompanied my mother to a revival meeting in an old schoolhouse. This schoolhouse, even to the lathing, was made of black walnut that was sawed at a local mill. Which of the many denominations was conducting the services I do not know. But one night there were probably ten people kneeling at what they called the "mourner's bench." During the evening such a psychic wave passed over those at the altar that the packed congregation, to see what was happening, rose as one person. At this point, my mother lifted me onto the desk before her which afforded me a plain view of all those who were kneeling at the front. A young woman with head thrown back and hair disheveled, was wringing her hands and crying in piercing tones, "O God, save my poor soul from hell!" Just beyond, a man lay in a trance. And then another woman, with perfectly rapturous face, throwing her head back, clapped her hands and shouted "glory." Other seekers were groaning and pleading with tremulous voices. The Christians who were assisting the seekers alternated their groanings of intercession with "amens" and shouts of praise. As it appeared to me the realms of the blessed and the realms of the damned were mingling their voices in that tumultuous scene. Heaven and hell seemed veritable realities before my eyes, and the picture was burned into my soul.

The religion of my parents was simple, loving, and thoroughly ethical. These meetings were not criticized by them except that my father sometimes remarked at home that he liked the quiet meetings best.

Much of the time there were no meetings in the community. Yet betimes services were conducted by all kinds of ministers, "descript and non-descript." It was not uncommon to hear these ministers say that no one ever got to heaven except by way of the "mourner's bench." One minister remarked that there was not a converted person in the Presbyterian Church except a few individuals who were converted outside at such meetings as he was conducting. Never having seen any of them, I took his word for it that the Presbyterians were an ungodly set.

Altogether it became a fixed thought in my mind that I should need to get "old people's religion" or be lost. Indeed, that belief was very common throughout America when I was a child. Even the Presbyterians believed it, though they kept their mourner's bench out of sight. Accordingly, when I was fifteen years old, and getting to be a big boy, the crisis came; because temptations were coming in thick and fast. Going to a revival one night in the schoolhouse and finding the seats all full, I took a board from under the stove and placed it on the coal pail for a seat. As I sat there the thought came to me, "When are you going to get religion?" This was followed by another, "Wouldn't it be strange if I went to the mourner's bench to-night?" "Not for five years yet," my heart quickly responded. "Not until I am twenty years old." Being a bashful boy I felt terrified at the mere thought of taking such a step before that crowd of "rowdies" who were openly scoffing. "But," my mind said, "if you make a start in five years it will again be now." It seemed plain to me that one "now" would be about as embarrassing as another. "Wouldn't it be strange if I just went forward to-night without any regard to my feelings?" was a question that kept asserting itself. My mind swayed and tipped first one way and then the other until finally it literally fell on the side of a decision. "It is to-night." To me this seemed deeper than any other decision I had ever made,—than which no firmer decision could be made. Being thoroughly aware of its ethical significance, my heart involuntarily said, "You see, O God, what I have done." Not to have regarded myself a bound person from that time forth would have meant the perjuring of my deepest soul. It was an awe-inspiring decision at a time when God was to get either a great deal more or a great deal less of my life as the days went by. It would have been an irreparable loss to me if this great decision had not been made at that time. Even now, I thank God with a growing gratitude for helping me to make that decision. So far, the experience was perfectly normal for a Christian boy in the adolescent period,—though at that time I had never known a Christian boy. This experience of an unconditional surrender to the will of God should have brought me peace and strength; but it did not, because I utterly discredited my previous religious life as being no more than moral development. Real religion, in my thinking, would not begin until I had experienced the miracle of regeneration at the "mourner's bench."

The die had been cast. And now the great miracle must be achieved! So I went forward. The knowledge that I was observed by mocking eyes hurt like the thongs of a whip on a bare back. For a few moments I could think of nothing else. Then I tried to feel sorry for my sins; and not succeeding in that, I tried to feel sorry because I was not sorry. Those kneeling with me asked whether I believed in God. No one could have believed it more fully than I did. Then they asked me if I believed that He sent His Son into the world to save sinners. This I believed without question. Did I believe that He came to save me, and that He wanted to save me now? This, too, I believed. "Do you feel that He saves you now?" I did not know. "Well," they said, "you will know when He saves you,—so you must make no mistake there." And thus we went the rounds, over and over again. While I believed everything, yet I did not experience the miracle. Things seemed to grow worse and more confused as time went by. As they pleaded, first with God to save me, and then with me to surrender all to God and believe, I became utterly bewildered and hardened. There seemed to be no reality in anything. The groans and sighs, the pressure of the hand, the pats on the back, the rhythmic music, the loud and fervent prayers, became a meaningless jargon. I was heartily glad when the hour was over so that I could be alone. Once being alone, I did pray earnestly and continuously for God to save me, and felt a great depression of spirits without further results. The next night I repeated the experience of the previous evening with like sad consequences. The next day I was greatly depressed, but made up my mind that I would get religion or break a blood vessel in the attempt;—and I nearly broke the blood vessel. In the afternoon while carrying a heavy load of corn on my back, I stumbled over something which caused me to say "Oh!" and as I added the word God, it sounded like profanity. But it was not, for prayer had become automatic. This incident caused me to smile,—the first time, I believe, in two days. As I continued to pray without ceasing, there came to me after awhile a little suggestion of gladness which caused me to exclaim, "Oh, I believe I am getting religion!" Though the burden seemed to be lifting, yet it was some minutes before another feeling of gladness came. During the supper hour it seemed almost certain that I was getting religion. Nothing, however, was said about it as I wanted to be perfectly sure.

After supper I started for the schoolhouse across the dark fields. During that journey of over a mile, the psychic lights came on making all things beautiful. At the same time I was made inexpressibly glad. The great change appeared to be in the universe rather than in myself. I laughed and cried for joy. Recalling the Psalm, "For ... by my God have I leaped over a wall," that, I thought, would be an easy thing to do if a wall were there. What with laughing, making speeches, and thanking God, I soon completed the journey.

As the schoolhouse was seated to face the door, on arriving late, I confronted the whole congregation. This arrangement of seats made it unnecessary for the people to turn and strain their necks to see each one who entered.

In pioneer days it was customary to take a candle with you to church. On arriving at the schoolhouse you would take your penknife, push the small blade through the candle, stick the protruding blade into the window sash, and there you were, as nice as could be. Or else you would stand the candle on the desk in some melted tallow.

Though the schoolhouse was but dimly lighted, and the people whom I faced that night were an ordinary crowd, yet in my psychic state I saw the people as angel figures under limelight. And as the only vacant seats were in the "Amen corner," I sat facing the congregation during the entire service. The sermon was wonderful to me beyond words to express; and yet I seemed able to understand it and to see all around it.

After the sermon an invitation was given to "mourners." As none went forward, the minister then came to me to inquire of my condition. When with great joy I told him that I was converted, I was asked to relate my experience. This unexpected request shattered my beautiful world as completely as a hammer stroke would have shattered a piece of crystal. Such a stage fright seized me that I could neither move nor speak before they were compelled to go on with the service. This embarrassing experience sent me from the highest state of bliss to the deepest state of gloom. Peter's denial seemed trivial in comparison with mine; he had denied the Lord under trying circumstances, but I had denied Him while sitting in glory.

A little later, when the minister rose and stated that they would "open the doors of the Church" for any who desired to join, there ensued a terrible struggle within me. During the few minutes of exhortation that followed I seriously questioned my heart. I knew that candidates were expected to answer the question, "Have you found God in the pardon of your sins, and do you now have peace with God?" But being in a state of torment, how could I claim peace with God? Though my conversion still seemed like a miracle, yet never before had I been in such a humiliated or distressed state of mind. Before ever I tried to "get religion," I had plighted my soul and honor that I would follow God from that time forward. Even now I knew that I should follow Him, but how could I say that I had peace with God when my burden remained in spite of my earnest prayer to be forgiven? Had I in that act of denial become a "backslider," and was it necessary for me to be converted again? As a large percentage of the Christians present had been converted two or more times to my knowledge, a second conversion was not strange to me. Never doubting that I had been converted, and knowing why I was in despair, and believing that my suffering was wholly deserved, I dismissed the thought of a second conversion. "How can a person know beforehand," I reasoned, "that he will feel at peace with God at the moment the question is asked?" By "now" do they not mean something more general; to-night, for example? Deciding that there must be some latitude to the word "now" and that God would understand my honesty of purpose, I went forward and united with the Church. As I look back upon it, it still seems a most wise decision.

Though fully expecting to be happy again after joining the Church, yet my misery only increased. This was inevitable. I had identified religion with an abnormal psychic state. And such a state would not return without another terrific effort.

The next night, with an embarrassment that caused my cheeks to burn like fire, I rose before the scoffers and told them that God had converted me. Again I expected to feel happy. But, naturally, my sorrow only deepened as the abnormal state did not return. For the next two weeks I tried with all my original earnestness to get back my happiness; but without success. One day while in a valley far from any human being, where the woods covered the hill before me, I was looking up into the sky and still pleading with God to restore my happy state of mind. Then the thought occurred to me, "Where is God?" At that time I was so ignorant of the universe that I thought the earth had a ceiling, and that the ceiling of the earth was the floor of heaven. It seemed to be about three rifle shots away. I thought that if one could get through the ceiling of the earth he would be in heaven, and there would be God. As I stood there gazing into the sky my mind said, "Why does God not show Himself?" That He could part the clouds and show His face seemed the most natural and reasonable thing in the world. Why, then, did He not do so? Since He neither blesses me in answer to my prayers, nor shows Himself, possibly He does not exist. My wonderful experience may have been nothing but a highly wrought state of feelings.

I then recalled that ministers based their belief in the existence of God on certain arguments. But suddenly this seemed the strangest procedure imaginable. Why had God left us to argue and reason about His existence? Should He not settle so great a question beyond all argument? How strange it would be if my earthly father should stay away from us until we did not know whether he was dead or alive! We had the satisfaction of loving and obeying our father without ever a chance to doubt his existence. If our Heavenly Father would make me equally certain of His existence I should follow Him through flood and fire. "Then why does God not show Himself?" "Isn't it strange that He has hidden forever and forever!"

Here I remembered the Scripture which says, "No man can see God and live." But my heart quickly responded, "It is one thing to come near enough to kill us, and quite another to come near enough to convince us. Oh, isn't it strange that He hides forever?"

Then I thought of Jesus. But my heart replied, "Maybe Jesus was mistaken." If He had a rapturous feeling like mine, and was able to sustain it, He would continue to believe in God even if He did not exist. Nothing short of God's personal appearance, it seemed to me, could settle the question. "Then why does God not show Himself? There is no sense in hiding; and if no sense in it, then it is wrong; and if wrong, then there is no God. Because God, if He exists, must be good and sensible."

Therefore, when my reasoning led me to say, "There can't be a God," I found that unbelief had entered the marrow of my being. I felt that God could not possibly do such a foolish and wicked thing as to hide from His children.

Having reached this conclusion, I felt alarmed at my wicked thoughts. They were not, however, to be driven away. From that day forward the sky became more gray, and cold, and Godless. An awful crisis had come into my life. It seemed an irreparable loss if there were no God. My life, also, would go out in eternal night. If there was a God, and I gave up faith, then I should go to an endless hell of inexpressible torment. There was no comfort in either alternative. The problem was no longer the problem of the Church; it was my personal problem. And the battle had to be fought to a decisive issue. Being impaled on the two horns of the dilemma, I found it increasingly difficult to reproduce the exalted state of feeling on which I still relied for assurance.

Never having met a college graduate, of course I had not heard one preach. It was in the college chapel, four years later, that I first listened to a sermon by a college man. My impression was that he made neither noise nor light. That he made but little noise I knew. But I am now willing to admit that he may have shed more light than I saw. Preaching often fails to make any connection with the fundamental ideas and difficulties of doubting minds.

In my new state of doubt, the first impulse was to confide in my father and Christian friends. But then I realized that I knew all the stock phrases, and that none of them met my case. If confronted with the old phrases would I not argue, and might I not confirm myself in a possible error? Was it not safer to fight it out with God, if He existed, than to argue with those who could not feel what I had felt? The insistence of these questions caused me to keep my secret wholly to myself, and to go on with the struggle. Twenty-two years later during the last visit with my father, as we rode together over the hills, I told him this story. With a look of tenderness I shall never forget, he replied, "I believe the story because you tell me, but I am glad you did not tell me at the time. I could not have helped you." Said he, "I do not recall ever in my life doubting the inspiration of the Scriptures, or the existence of God. I have often doubted my worthiness and acceptance, but nothing more." Still believing that I did the wise thing under the circumstances, I was glad to have his approval. If an honest doubter asks for bread, he is not infrequently given a stone by well-meaning Christians,—and neither can understand the other.

As this is a case study, it should be said that my first mistake was in discrediting my early religious experience. My second mistake was in identifying religion with an extreme psychic state. And when my psychic state failed me, then my utterly false images of God and the universe completed the destruction of my faith. If I could have reproduced the psychic state readily, my false images of God and the universe would not have troubled me for many years.

The ministers who created these false impressions in my mind were not deserving of censure, because they did not understand the forces with which they were dealing—and the community was in great need of something. Even for me, it was best that I did what we thought was right regardless of what followed.

Having entered upon the vigorous adolescent period, I greatly needed to take my stand as an adult Christian. I needed to realize such a new influence as a thorough commitment of myself would bring. This, however, no one in the community understood.

We now know that one may be genuinely converted and hypnotized at the same time. That is, he may enter God's service with the noblest spirit of loyalty, and at the same time submit himself to a process that will induce the hypnotic state. Likewise, it is possible for one to be hypnotized under religious influences without being converted. This is the case with those who wish religion only if it will give them more pleasure than their sins. Though they may not deeply analyze it, yet their conversion is an experiment to see which they like the better; and when their hypnotic happiness leaves them, they return to their greater pleasure in sin. Or, when the idea and method are rational, one may be converted without being hypnotized. In this case a complete dedication of self to the will of God is trusted to bring its own rich reward in noble enthusiasm and fine appreciation.

Since I had always been a Christian, it was not conversion that I needed, but a deeper commitment of myself to the will and work of God. And as I have already explained, this I did before trying to "get religion." The moral will is the spiritual spine. If it stands erect in its duties toward God and men, the whole spiritual life will come into normal feeling and action. My unconditional submission to the will of God was normal, beautiful, and necessary. But the experience which came two days later should be characterized as a super-normal psychic state, self-induced. While the psychic state lasted my true religious feelings coöperated vigorously; but when it subsided, as it was bound to do, my true religious emotions likewise disappeared. For years, all references to spirituality were understood by me to mean an exciting, nervous thrill; such a thrill as I had once felt. This led me to study the feelings, a few years later, to see if I could determine their value. I found that I was able to hypnotize a man so that he thought he saw God; and then I could cause him to fall down in adoration before his imaginary deity. Or, by taking ether, I could reproduce the glory world of my own so-called conversion. Feelings alone are not to be trusted, for the objects which they often create do not exist. On the other hand, real objects, valid and knowable, produce appropriate feelings when we are rightly related to them. Never have I been in such a state of pain or dejection but that I knew that I loved my children if my attention was called to it. I still demand, therefore, an objective, knowable God before I can love Him.

While greatly deploring such religious exercises as are calculated to produce extreme psychic states, yet I bring an indictment against the average Church of this generation because its religious feelings are sub-normal. The latter condition is probably as dangerous as the former. Even our physical temperature must be allowed to run neither too high nor too low. If in everything but religion we feel warmth and enthusiasm, we reveal a deplorable religious condition. For if one intelligently and fully commits himself to the will and service of God, appropriate feelings will come to him as surely as color comes to ripening fruit.

When prayer availed me nothing in bringing back the spirit of God—as I conceived of it—I first questioned my own heart. And when it no longer condemned me, I then questioned God. As I understood it, to produce a rapturous feeling was God's part. My part was to believe and obey. If only the hand of faith could succeed in laying hold of God the spiritual current would come on with a thrill. A great deal of this sensational religion still exists. It is to be found in all our great cities as well as in rural communities.

Let two errors like false experiences and false images of God unite and they will bring forth a whole brood of errors. So far as I am able to analyze, I always had a perfect sense of God's character. If He existed at all, He was infinitely great and wise and good. But these characteristics simply meant the quality of God and not God Himself. Character without being was like a smile without a face. It was this God behind the character that I utterly misapprehended. My false picture of God's being, of the universe, and the relation between the two was the cause of my religious vexation. If we add to these the fickleness of a sensational experience—labeled, true spiritual religion—we may begin to understand my religious undoing.

I dare say that the subject of extreme religious experience will not trouble many of my readers, but half the population is vexed by false images of God and the universe. These false images are so prevalent that one trembles for the future of religion in a scientific age. As to certain aspects of God's existence, the confusion is becoming greater every day,—and there are good reasons for it. Since the masses are coming to have a fairly accurate conception of the main outlines of the universe, their false images of God's being are faring badly in this new world. Many are casting out their unsatisfactory image of God without anything to take its place. Some claim that we are much better off to think of God's character without trying to form any conception of His being. Generally, however, when His image goes God goes with it. Those who have been steeped in religion from their youth, may continue to worship God after He has almost disappeared; but succeeding generations will have little interest in such an evasive God. They will wish to know that God is before they attribute character to Him.

The various psychic cults are trying to find a more satisfying idea of God; but they are simply making a bad matter worse. Over against this, however, is the popular phrase of the day, "No one can possibly conceive of what God is like! So do not advertise your ignorance by trying." This, probably, is the saddest of all.

The religious dynamo is in the heart, or moral feelings, while the circuit is in the head, or formal ideas. If the circuit is broken the light goes out. As long as one's ideas are not discredited by himself, he may get some light with a very poor circuit. But once let him thoroughly discredit his own mental images, and the light will cease to shine.

The dynamo may be run long after the circuit is broken, and the light has gone out. I ran mine for many years. The minister's wife previously referred to was doing the same thing. Many students reported to Professor Leuba that they continued to pray, through habit or sentiment, but that God had so faded from their minds that prayer no longer meant anything to them. Many learned scientists revealed the "broken circuit" of their thoughts by giving their crude conceptions or no conceptions of God. These men have long since ceased to run their religious dynamo.

If the lights refuse to come on, after a while one grows tired of stoking the furnace merely to keep the dynamo running. Therefore, in the succeeding chapters my aim will be to show how I mended my circuit.

After continuing my fruitless struggle for two years I became desperate. For one thing, I had no religious young people with whom to associate. When not alone, I worked with vile men who never allowed much time to elapse without indulging in obscene conversation. Living in a community where we had never seen a railroad, or a piano, or an organ, I found little to entertain or comfort me. And my religion added greatly to my burden. There was just work and privations and fruitless prayers. So it is not strange that at the end of two years I wished that I might die. This feeling came to me with such force one day, when I was working in a distant, lonely place, that I gave audible expression to the wish. Not that I wanted to die on that particular day! I have never seen the time when I wanted to die to-day. But hoping that I might die in ten years, I resolved anew that I would just stiffen my neck, and grit my teeth, and pray on until the end came—which I hoped would not be too distant. During these two years I was very faithful to every known Christian duty. Once I even tried to pray in prayer meeting, but broke down with fright in the middle of the first sentence. I regularly bore testimony, however, to my determination to go forward in the Christian life.

Soon after the time of my deep depression it was announced that a series of revival meetings was to be held in the community. An uneducated old minister, rather feeble in body, was to conduct the meetings. As there were but few Christians to help him, it looked like a great undertaking. This question rose in my mind, "Would it be wrong for me to take an active part in persuading others to become Christians while I myself am in doubt of God's existence?" I had not then heard of people doing Church work to gain social standing. And if I had, it could not have been a motive because socially I already belonged to the "four hundred." Some men were reported to have joined the Church to beat a neighbor in a horse trade or an ox trade—and this I knew to be very wicked. But as I had neither horses nor oxen to trade there were but two motives that compelled me to go forward. The first motive was the hope that in this way I might find God. The second was that I might help someone else to be religious,—since other people appeared to have more faith. I decided that the proposed course was justifiable because if God did not exist it could make but little difference, and if He did it was very important that people should be brought to Him. Consequently, I selected a young man of my own age. He was on his way to the schoolhouse with a band of hilarious young people when I called him aside. We were very late in reaching the services because out in the dark I labored long and hard with my friend and used every art of persuasion that I could command before I brought him to a decision. Finally, however, he promised to go to the "mourner's bench" if I would go with him. Then we entered the schoolhouse, and each one kept his promise. My friend became so desperately wrought up at the altar that his parents, who were not Christians, did not know what to do with him when the services were over. They therefore asked me to take him home with me for the night. My friend continued to weep all the way home, and frequently requested that we stop to pray. That journey of a mile and a quarter across the fields I shall never forget. But before we went to sleep, suddenly clasping my hand, he exclaimed, "Oh, I am converted." Knowing how he felt I was very glad for him, but at the same time my heart cried within me, "I do wonder if there is anything in it! It is wonderful to him now, I know, but how will he feel to-morrow, or next week, or in six months?"

However, I next persuaded his parents to go forward, and the minister asked me to pray for them at the altar—which I did. They, too, were converted, but no blessing came to me. During the two weeks, I led eleven people to the altar, and was asked by the minister each night to offer prayer for the seekers.

On the last night of the series, near the close, the minister said:

"Now there is a little business to be attended to, and will Brother Richard Swain please withdraw from the room?" I was so surprised and excited that I arose and went out into a temperature below zero without either overcoat or hat. Leaving the reader to judge of my ethics and manners, I will confess that I put my ear up to the wall and listened with all my might. The minister said:

"Some of us have been considering the matter, and we are convinced that Brother Richard Swain has a decided call to the ministry. We want you, therefore, if you think it is wise, to recommend him to the conference for license to preach."

This was such a shock to me that a little cry went up from my heart,—"And I don't even know that there is a God!"

As there was no dissenting vote the minister said, "You may now call him in." If only my coat and hat had been with me I should not have been present when the door opened. However, with the temperature below zero, and neither overcoat nor hat, even a young candidate for the ministry could not refuse to enter. But it would have been more to his comfort if the congregation had not been seated to face the door.

Through this vote of the Church I was compelled to grapple with a new question of ethics. Would it be right for me under the circumstances to appear for examination? I had not asked for license to preach. The matter had been thrust upon me without my knowledge and consent. How could I know but this was the road over which I was being led to the light? Besides, eleven people had responded to my appeal. Would I care to be a minister? It seemed to me that there was nothing in the world I should so much like to be as a minister if only I could know there was a God. This feeling decided me to accept the invitation and appear for examination.

While my education had not gone beyond that of the common country schools, and while I was but seventeen years of age, yet the average minister of the community had even less education. Not until three years after I was licensed to preach did I learn that there was such an institution in the world as a Theological Seminary. However, in those pioneer days all the ministers, missionaries, Irish pack-peddlers, and horse thieves who passed through put up at my father's house for the night without ever being charged a cent. They more than paid their way, though, I can assure you, by having to talk religion and theology until midnight with my father who was a born theologian. Though my father was not an educated man, yet he had picked up an immense amount of knowledge along certain lines, and always enjoyed a friendly debate more than a good dinner. At such times, from early childhood, I had been allowed to sit in the chimney corner and listen until the last word was said. It was my motion-picture show. And no child ever had more pleasure than came to me when I saw that my father had "wound up" his man in the argument. Then, with the greatest cordiality, my father would show the guest to bed. As there was but one great room, and beds none too many, I usually slept with the guest. And according to the guest's report in the morning, I had given him the completest kicking he ever had in his life.

With such training, and in such a community, it is not strange that my biblical and doctrinal examination was pronounced entirely satisfactory. After I had gone to school for ten years it, probably, would not have been so satisfactory. Indeed, I was strongly advised not to go to college, as it was likely to rob me of my spirituality; and besides, many souls would be lost while I was getting an education.

Though I continued for a time on the farm or in the coal mines, yet I was told to go out and preach somewhere on Sundays. Accordingly, I would ride ten or twenty miles on Sunday to preach in different schoolhouses. Putting the rein over the horn of the saddle, I would plead before the cold gray sky for an unknown God to renew my happy feelings as a token of His existence. But no happiness, or assurance, came to me. When the time came to preach, I felt the importance of not throwing our lives away in sinful living, and so was able to give them some very earnest advice. Then on the return trip I would continue to pray to an unsympathetic sky. Nothing, however, ever came of it except a deeper depression of spirits. Though the dynamo was running at a terrific rate, yet the circuit of my thoughts was broken beyond my ability to repair. So I decided to go to college at any sacrifice.

Boarding a train for the first time, I went two hundred miles for my preparatory course in connection with the college where I expected to graduate. But no religious experience came to me until the middle of my sophomore year. Then while studying Mark Hopkins' little book, "The Law of Love, and Love as a Law," I got a new insight into the human soul. I could see that if one would bring all his powers into harmony, and then relate them to the beautiful enfolding universe, all things must work together for his good,—if by his good one meant the perfect unfolding of his life. Instantly there came a great joy in living. It took shape in the thought, "All things work together for good to them that love God." I felt that no proposition in geometry was more capable of proof. A life with its powers united in the will of God must unfold to match the harmony without, even as the rose unfolds to the light and warmth of the sun. Besides, I now had entertainment and beautiful friends. Almost any good thing seemed possible. "This," I said, "must be what intelligent people mean by Christian experience." The only remaining question was the old one, "Is there a God?" Is God "The Allness of things about us?" This, however, seemed too pantheistic. And the personal God still evaded me. So I decided that the question of God was too much for me, and that I would just wait until I should meet the "wise men" who knew. In the meantime I would assume that there was a God; for the college president believed that there was, and prayed to Him every day at chapel.

As the happy unfolding of my life continued I tried to commit all to God whose will, if He existed, I very well knew. At any rate there was something in the universe that matched my need. I would just call it God until I met the "wise men" in further courses of study which by this time I had fully resolved upon. So the last two and a half years of my college course were very beautiful; they constantly increased my joy in living. No small part of this better experience was due to the influence of the Christian gentleman and fascinating preacher who became our new college pastor.

Here it becomes necessary to relate something more delicate than anything that has gone before. While I was in college my younger and only brother passed through a great moral crisis. As I dearly loved him he was much in my mind. During my senior year I dreamed night after night that he was killed. In these dreams I was always with my two older sisters hunting our brother in the woods. Feeling certain that we should find him dead, we usually came upon him by an old log cabin where he lay dead and mangled. I have no theories about the dreams, but the impression made upon my mind was so deep that when I went home, after graduating from college, I felt that I must do something to help him. Accordingly it was planned that I should spend three or four days with him in the harvest field where he was running a heading machine. There I hoped we should have a pleasant time, and find an opportunity to shed some light on the deeper meanings of life. Then some evening we would have a quiet little talk when I might persuade him to be a Christian. As I was going a long distance to a theological school, and did not expect to see him again for three years, I hoped to accomplish my purpose during the week at my disposal. For two and a half days we worked together with many pleasant little chats. It then being Saturday noon, my father wanted me to drive fourteen miles with him and preach for him the next day. I could return Monday and be with my brother one or two days before the long journey. But Saturday afternoon a great storm arose, and at midnight my host awakened me saying, "Your brother is killed by lightning."

Though we started home immediately, the mud was so deep and sticky that it required till daylight to make the journey. There had been a cloudburst, and such an electric storm as is seldom seen. From midnight till dawn we dragged through the mud under an indescribable electrical display. Forked lightning splitting the sky in every direction made the whole heavens lurid with light, while the low thunder like distant artillery scarcely ceased to roll. No pen can describe that journey. Nature seemed omnipotent and awe-inspiring. At first my heart was dazed and dumb. Then it cried, "Why did God kill my brother at this little nick of time when I was hoping to bring him to Christ? Was there ever anything like this? Why did He take him?"

Then while I was fixedly watching the omnipotent display before me my mind asked:

"Did God kill him or did the great and terrible machine, called the world, kill him? What is the world, and what is God? When does God act, and when does the universe act? Would they not be squarely in each other's way much of the time? The world I know, and its activities I behold, but where is God? Does He have an abode, or is He a sort of spiritual ether that pervades the universe?" And my heart responded, "Oh, you have never yet settled the question of whether there is a God!" So once more God faded into a dream, or a guess, while the elements continued to display their terrifying power.

At daylight I stood with a broken heart beside my dead brother, believing either that there was no God, or else that my brother had gone to endless torment. A few moments later I saw my father kneel by his side, and heard him say, "Oh, my son, my son, would to God I had died for thee!"

In a short time we were invited to breakfast, and my father being unable to speak motioned to me to say grace. However I managed I do not know, but out of a choking throat I said grace to as empty and Godless a world as any human being ever faced.

Two weeks after my brother's death I entered the theological seminary. The deep, vast, and unshakable verities from which I could not escape were sorrow and love. All else was chaos. As a hungry man seeks for food, so I sought for light. Much of the theology in the books which I read irritated me so that I could scarcely eat my food at mealtimes. Yet it was important that I should learn the history of human thought. All of my professors I truly loved and respected, but the attitude of theological schools more than thirty years ago was not wholly suited to the needs of one on the border of a "new world-awakening" whose faith had suffered so much and so long. The theological world was not quite ready to give the help that it now gives to many suffering minds.

During my first year in the seminary I frequently dreamed of seeing my brother in torment. Sometimes I would wake trembling, and even when I could throw off the thought and go to sleep, I was liable to repeat the dream in some new form.

Once when I was walking with one of the professors, as true a Christian man as ever I knew, I told him of the circumstances of my brother's death. He asked me if my parents were Christians. I told him that they were very good Christians. Then he counseled me not to go off into any heresies, but to feel comforted concerning my brother; for "The promises were to the parents and to their children unto the third and fourth generation."

While I listened to this in silence, yet the following thoughts went through my mind:

"Then God would save my brother who had not improved his privileges, while He would consign to endless torment our poor play-fellows who were not blessed with the good influence of Christian parents."

My mind instinctively felt what I had discretion not to say: "I should despise a God who had no more ethical sense than that. God should be harder on my brother than on them."

Much of my philosophy and theology was worked out during my seminary course; but there were gaps that I could not fill. So I next went to Yale to study philosophy. In postgraduate work, through the guidance of professors, I expected to find the "wise men" for whom I had waited so long. However, these "wise men" are not readily understood in a few weeks. They have a poor faculty for making connection with all the ideas that still linger in the mind of callow youth. At any rate it soon dawned upon me that there was no such God as I was looking for or else these men were unable to give Him to me. When this conviction came to me I went out from a recitation one night into the dark and once more fought the old battle. Standing on the New Haven Green and looking up into the pelting sleet I said:

"Now I have met the 'wise men,' and still I do not know whether there is an inspired Bible, or a heaven, or a God." But I exclaimed, "O God, if you are, and if I should ever meet you anywhere in eternity, I would run to you as a little child runs to a father. I would tell you how weak and sinful and ignorant I am, and I know you would love me." That night on the old Green, while in the dark and pelted with sleet, I went out onto the last crag where any human soul can go, and cried into the infinite depths, "O God, if you are there, some day I shall know you and love you." In that act I passed beyond all men and all institutions, and took my stand with the final reality, whatever it might be, and at least I was free and not afraid. Though thoroughly agnostic still, yet I could quietly work and wait.

Returning to my studies and resolving to appropriate whatever I could understand, I was surprised to find how much of the teaching ministered to my needs. Before long I came to see that God did not have a central nucleus, or ghost form in heaven; neither did He resemble a refined substance like ether. Spirit was something quite different from what I had supposed. My mind was hitting the trail. Then I understood that God had not revealed Himself to the world according to my demand, because no such God existed in heaven or earth. So one day in class I asked a professor, who is now dead, if he thought we should see God in heaven as we see men and trees here. At the same time I assured him that I did not. His answer was, "I think your position would be a very dangerous doctrine to teach." But my own conviction was that it was becoming a very dangerous doctrine not to teach. Time has proved that I was right. Millions of people are suffering to-day from false images of God or from no image of God. Not long ago when I related this class incident to a Yale man, he remarked, "Well, Professor —— made great growth before he died."

My categorical answers to the four questions at the head of this chapter are: When we have rational ideas of God and the universe we shall see that He is leaving nothing undone to reveal Himself. To an enlightened understanding it does not seem possible that God could reveal Himself so that no one could doubt His existence. Though the existence of God is a question of doubt and discussion with many, yet we may achieve deep and satisfying assurance if we go about it in the right way. I think it would be morally wrong for God to leave His children in doubt of His existence if He were able to reveal Himself.

This chapter is largely excavation. We have dug the hole deep so that we may commence in the next chapter to lay the foundation on solid bottom. And this was necessary if our proposed structure is to stand.

Allow me this closing word. When I began to get on my religious feet at Yale, I unexpectedly received a call to a college pastorate. And though the usual number of sceptics were found among the students, yet in many respects they were the most savable men in college. Usually, if you could hit the keys of their souls they would ring back and ring true.

CHAPTER II

HOW SCIENCE SAVES RELIGION, OR MODERN KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION

What is God?

Who is God?

Where is God?

What does God do?

If the ancients made their gods, how do we know that we are not making our God?

May we not be communing with a mere idea?

MODERN KNOWLEDGE AND RELIGION

Christian character, the Christian college, and Christian civilization have been very important factors in the discovery and development of modern learning.

Expecting to derive much benefit from the sciences, Christian people with fine enthusiasm strove to promote them. Nevertheless, there came a time when the allied sciences threatened to turn upon and destroy the religion that had so carefully nurtured them. When the scientific imagery of the Bible began to clash with the clearly ascertained facts of science, many people concluded that science and religion were contradictory; however, the crude conceptions of the material universe found in the Bible are no integral part of religion.

That religion may discard its wornout clothes for new and better ones has not been an easy lesson for believers, or unbelievers, to learn. Thinking that religion must stand or fall with the scientific accuracy of the Bible, some drew back from modern science preferring religion; others clung to the new learning forsaking religion. For a time, therefore, it was inevitable that religion and her foster daughter, modern science, should not be on the best of terms; because the daughter could not approve of the mother's dress, and the mother thought the daughter utterly lacking in becoming reverence. However, with their great need of each other, let us believe that they are now settling down to a lasting friendship of mutual helpfulness.

Unfortunately, the opinion is gaining considerable credence that modern Christians are believing less and less, and that finally they will cease to believe in religion altogether.

But this is the very opposite of the truth, for they are still believing the old religion, though in a vastly bigger and better way. For, at the present time, where its help is welcome, modern learning is rendering a beautiful service to Christian faith. And this is the grateful testimony of thousands of intelligent, consecrated people. No well-informed person, however, would deny that science has injured, and will increasingly weaken, the faith of those who do not know how to make a religious use of modern learning.

While religion and science have distinctive fields to cultivate, yet neither may disregard the claims of the other with impunity. Nevertheless, we do rejoice to see science tearing down the "old cabin" of an unscientific world in which the Church has lived too long. But when it proposes to shut God out of the new mansion of a scientific universe, those who know and love Him will seriously object,—especially since the new knowledge makes God better understood, and more needed than ever.

It is likewise pleasant to see religion standing for spiritual verities and duties, but when it demands that the Christian shall live in a world that is crude and half false, the modern man resents it. He simply cannot do it. Yet, to-day and always, religion should be a simple story that anyone may understand; but it should not be clothed in such crude and antiquated forms as to antagonize the man of modern knowledge.

During these introductory statements, we may as well admit that the average scientist appears to have as poor a knowledge of religion as the average Christian has of science. Too often he is still resisting religious conceptions that all intelligent Christians have long since outgrown, or else he is adopting philosophical theories that are only half thought through. This is amazingly true of some men who are superb in their own chosen lines of research. No one is hit by this statement unless he is standing in the line of the shot. Whether or not the reader is hit, I beg of him to keep friendly with me until he has heard my simple story of God in His world.

Could we but free the religion of Jesus from the crude psychology and the antiquated science of other days, and see it at home in the fairer world of to-day, it would shine with new luster; and at the same time give a rich, new meaning to the world itself,—such as it can never have apart from religion. Science, and not religion, was responsible for crude science.—Religion will be responsible if it retains a science that has become antiquated.

Taking our stand then in the midst of modern knowledge, I shall endeavor to picture religion both at home and happy in the new world. I shall not have much to say directly about scientific subjects, but shall constantly try to keep in mind the man with modern information. The nearer I can make this book resemble a primer, the better satisfied I shall be. If one could so write that the learned would approve, and the ignorant understand, his joy should be full. To give a simple description of God in His world congenial to the scholar, while comprehensible and acceptable to common busy people, would be the highest possible service one could wish to render. In these days there is great need of a clear presentation of God; a presentation that is free from the entanglements of technical learning, and at the same time consonant with the known facts of life. Practical men would like to see "the mended circuit of our religious thoughts," since their circuits, in many cases at least, seem broken beyond repair. They are asking for a simple and satisfying gospel that is cognizant of the facts and forces among which they live and toil. We shall begin, therefore, at the very beginning.

1. What is God?

The discussion which immediately follows does not concern itself with why we believe in God, but aims to give a definite idea of how we conceive of Him. For those who have a natural sense of God, or a religious nature, a satisfying conception of Him will be ample for their spiritual needs. And, furthermore, those who doubt God's existence need first of all a definite idea of what we mean by the term Deity.

It is a pleasure, therefore, to answer in the words of Jesus, "God is a spirit."

This might very well be regarded as a final answer but for the fact that spirit means all sorts of things to different minds. When I once asked a company of intelligent people if I were a spirit, they promptly answered "no," but supposed I should be when I died. They seemed to think of spirit as a ghost, as something that might appear or disappear through locked doors. The same idea apparently obtained universally in times past, and that doubtless accounts for the fact that the Greek word, meaning spirit, was translated "Ghost" in the Scriptures and Apostles' Creed. But the idea of a visible spirit should perish. Spirits are neither evil ghosts nor Holy Ghosts. Even if there were a ghost, that which appeared could be no more than the instrument of the spirit, and not the spirit itself. However refined and ghostly the form, the spirit would remain as invisible as when it had a gross human body.

As further evidence of confusion on this subject, a young man from one of our good colleges seeking membership in my Church, informed me that he had peculiar views. Spirit, whether applied to God or man, had no meaning for him. He wanted to join the Church because in that way he believed he could render a better social service. In his thought, God was neither a person nor a spirit, but a force. Having no satisfactory idea of spirits he had banished the thought of them entirely from his mind.

All through my own period of doubt I conceived of God's spirit on earth as something emanating from a glorious spiritual form in heaven. Thinking that this form in heaven was a spirit made it only the easier to believe that God himself could appear to men if He cared to do so. That He did not care to appear to His children and thereby settle the question of His existence beyond all doubt seemed preposterous. And it would still seem so to my moral sense, if I retained my former conception of spirit. Of course He should not come near enough to "consume us," but He might come near enough to convince us.

The "New Thought" people, struggling with the meaning of spirit, have arrived at the conclusion that there is just "One universal substance called spirit." So, God is not to them a spirit, but simply spirit, "a universal substance."

Two or three other cults believe that man's spirit is simply his physical breath.

To say that God is a spirit, then, with any of these gross conceptions in mind, is sadly to misconceive Him.

Whether we say God is a Spirit, a Soul, or a Person, our meaning is the same. Of these three expressions, however, the word Person is the best because, being the scholar's term, it is clearly defined. So when we have learned the signification of the word Person, we shall attribute the same meaning to all three words, using them interchangeably.

In speaking of God as a person the scholar never has in mind either form or substance, however rarefied. He does not know even that there is material substance, much less spiritual substance. He knows very well what personality is as experience, but beyond that he knows nothing about it. Personality, to him, means a Will that knows itself, and then knows Other Wills. When we say that God is a Spirit, or Person, we should mean that He is a Loving Intelligent Will. In speaking of God as the Soul of the universe we should have in mind the same idea.

There is no harm in thinking of God as a force if the force is intelligent, and knows itself; but a force that does not know that it is a force, is not God. A progressive Jewish rabbi expressed the wish that we could get rid of the word God altogether, and substitute some such word as "Cosmos." When asked if the "Cosmos" knew that it was a cosmos, or that we were talking about it, he replied that he did not think so. "Then I would rather worship you," I said, "than your cosmos, for you would at least know that I reverenced you."

An intelligent lawyer friend of mine once said to me, "Of course I do not believe in a personal God." I asked him if he meant that he did not believe in a God who has a form in heaven. But he answered:

"Oh, no, no, I have been beyond that for twenty-five years! God, if He means anything, means the infinite, while a person means the limited. Now, who ever heard of such a childish thing as a limited infinite? No, pig-iron, as much as anything, is God."

I replied, "With all your intelligence, you haven't the remotest idea of what constitutes personality. You are not aware that by personality we mean a certain type of experience, and not a substance. Personality is realized only as the experience of self-knowledge is achieved. You are not as yet much of a personality, you are hardly more than a candidate for the office, but by making a good campaign you may get elected. You are not very personal because you are not very self-knowing, and if you should drop the plummet into the depths of your experience to sound yourself, by that very act you would acquire new depth, and would need to try again to fathom yourself. So at best, you are only becoming personal. None but the Infinite Experience can know itself perfectly, and therefore, God alone is completely personal."

My friend had no idea either of God's personality or his own, and his philosophical conception of nature was only a little less crude.

It was a long step in the right direction when I came to realize that I had never seen my mother, with whom I lived for so many happy years. Yet there was one thing that I felt sure I knew—absolutely, as I knew nothing else—and that was my mother. Not her face, not her voice, not her attitudes nor her actions, though all these I knew too and loved. But back of all these there was a real mother, of whom these were only manifestations. And this real mother, that I knew as I knew nothing else, was silent, and invisible. And then I found that I knew myself too—hardly as well as I knew my mother, but in the same way, and I knew myself also to be invisible and silent. My spirit, or personality, is as invisible and silent as God. I have no more seen myself than I have seen Him. Neither has my naked soul ever made a sound. All the words that my soul desires expressed are produced by a sort of animated phonograph which we call the mouth. At the wish of my invisible self the physical organs of speech set the air vibrating, but my self-conscious Will is eternally silent. There is much to be said about the relation of Personalities to their instruments, but this must be left until a little later. It will avoid confusion if we try to take but one step at a time.

Great scholars may think that such ideas as I have endeavored to illustrate are too simple to require statement, nevertheless the recognition of these simple facts concerning my mother and myself unlocked my prison door. It revolutionized everything within me, and without me. During the thirty years of my active ministry, it has been the moulding thought of my life. Once realizing that God was a "Loving Intelligent Will," I no longer thought of Him as sitting on a throne, or showing His face through parted clouds. This conception of spirit gave to everything new shape and color. It was the idea around which a new heaven and a new earth took form. The rest of this book must further explain what it then meant, and still means, to me. As the result of a better conception of spirit, my world was relieved of intolerable intellectual burdens. Simply to get the idea, however, is not enough; one must follow it out logically to see where it will lead him.

To the question, "What is God?" I once more answer that He is a Loving Intelligent Will. And, apart from His instruments, He is silent and invisible, here and everywhere, now and always.

2. Who is God?

First, allow me to say that He is not the Father of our bodies, though He is the Creator of them. God created trees, but He is not the Father of trees. Fatherhood, in addition to creation, implies likeness so close that father and child classify as members of the same family. Our bodies were not made in the image of God.

While passing through my Sunday school where a college woman was giving some supplementary work, I heard her teaching the young people that we were made in the image of God because we had two legs instead of four, and stood on end. "Why in the name of conscience," I thought, "do we permit anyone in our churches to retain such detrimental and absurd ideas?" This woman was what the young men and women called a "crackerjack" in her college line. So I was amazed at her crude conceptions, until I realized that she had never heard an exposition of the primitive story in Genesis. I also remembered that I had heard it preached from a pulpit, that man was in the image of God because he had a face, and walked upright instead of going on all fours. Those churches that believe man has no spirit except his breath are necessarily confined to this monstrous idea; while many in our regular churches are in a maze of tangled thoughts.

According to Scriptures, God is the Father of spirits. The "Loving Intelligent Will" is the Father of other loving intelligent wills. This makes every created spirit a God-child, or a child of God. These terms must be interchangeable, unless we are playing at "make-believe," when we say that a spirit is a child of God. Were not all spirits members of the God family, it would be useless to teach them about God; for, being of a different order, they would not understand. It is impossible to teach a horse the things of a man, because he has not the spirit of a man. I believe in an anthropomorphic God, simply because I believe in a Theomorphic man. God must be in man's image, because man is in God's image. But it is not the animal man in whose image God is.

I should never believe in a religion that I was incapable of experiencing. Neither could I experience a religion that was contrary to my reason. Nevertheless, mine is not a private religion, because I am an infinite debtor to the world's best thought, and to the world's best experience. Without the help of the ages I never could have thought or felt that which I cannot avoid thinking and feeling at the present time. This is not an effort to prove anything, but simply an attempt to picture what I see and feel, with the hope that someone else may see and feel in the same way.

The great pity of it all is that so many people have never known the world's best religious thought and experience. There are those, a thousand years behind their age, who are launching new religions or fostering old ones, who are utterly oblivious to the strata upon strata of human achievement above them.

Yes, God is the Father of all spirits, whether they reside on earth, or in heaven, or in hell. When once the meaning of spirit, or personality, is realized there is no dodging the issue. If a horse goes down the street keeping company with himself after this manner, "Now I am an old horse, and I ought to be a good old horse, and I wonder what the end will be," then he too is a son of God and our brother, though he has four, instead of two legs. I do not think a horse so keeps company with himself, but if he does, then we must own him and hope for the time when our brother will have something better than a quadruped for an instrument.

I am often asked what angels are like. That is an easy question. An angel is very much like my wife. For they both are spirits, and children of God. My wife is a sister of all the angels, and if Milton's great, classical devil exists, he also is our brother, and a child of God. All spirits are children of God, whether good or bad, just because they are spirits.

In speaking of sons, the Bible usually means the good children of God; yet it clearly teaches that prodigals are likewise sons. Earthly parents are our older brothers and sisters, honored and much beloved; but only God is the Father of our spirits. No one need fear that natural sonship to God makes it less imperative that we should become good sons. To be a bad son of God is a most wretched and deplorable thing in itself, and leads inevitably to all deserved punishment. A good Father will not be slack in discipline. And furthermore, the rebellious sons of God are not slow to make hell in this life, and that they will make no more hell after death we may not dare to believe.

If the truth about the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all spirits could enter the minds of the people with all that it involves, it would break the heart of the Church, and, we may believe, the heart of the world as well. As yet, however, this truth is but dimly realized. I once had a dear old friend, a saint, whom I greatly appreciated. With her white hair and charming accent she was beautiful. Her mind was richly stored with beautiful poetry, and her apt quotations often touched me deeply. Loving all the saints, she was equally loved by them. But one day I learned that my dear old saint was a saint only in spots—yet she was a saint. The discovery came about in this way; I asked her if she knew of the family with four children across the way, who had lately come to her neighborhood, suggesting that she might be useful to them. Now, what do you think my dear old saint said? With a spasmodic jerk of the elbow, and a toss of the head, she replied, "No! I don't want to know such folks!" This was a case in which caution was unnecessary, and where real service might have been rendered. For the time being my friend had completely forgotten that her neighbors were God's little ones and her own brothers and sisters. She had forgotten that her Father was over there struggling and suffering to save His children from sin and harm, and that He sorely needed His older daughter over the way to help Him. My dear old saint would not go across the street to help her Father whom she thought she loved so dearly. She did not realize that God was the Father of all spirits, and that all they were members of one family. My dear old friend has long since gone to her home beyond, and has learned how sadly she failed to comprehend the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This knowledge doubtless gives her many a heartache, and drives her forward with new zeal to learn the lesson that God is the Father of all spirits.

We may be proud of our family name and social standing; we may think that we are different and apart, but we should remember that no one ever had more disreputable children than God. All the bad people are His sons and daughters. True, they have dishonored His name, and grieved His heart, yet He does not disown them; rather He follows them into all the dens and haunts of vice asking them to return home. And as fast as we become good sons, we join the Father in His love quest for His prodigal sons, who are our brothers.

Possibly I am a direct descendant of King Swain of Denmark who conquered England in the tenth century. There is no evidence to that effect, but he is the first Swain of whom I know in history. However this may be, with every other self-conscious being I can lift my head and say with justifiable pride and gladness of heart, "God, who makes the world, is my Father." How wonderful you are, O God-child! and what a pity it would be if anything should drag you down from your divine possibilities!

3. Where is God?

When I once asked a company of young people where my spirit was they promptly answered,

"In your body." I inquired,

"In a part of my body, or in all of it? Am I to understand that my spirit is just the shape and size of my body, and that when I am thin of flesh my spirit is not as large as when I am fleshy?"

"No," said they, "we do not like that."

"Oh! your spirit is in your brain," remarked one young fellow.

"Now, then, I have it," said I, "my spirit is just the shape and size of the cavity in my skull."

"No," he replied, "we don't know how it is." And they did not know, because no one had explained it to them. This is what I told them:

"The spirit is not in the body as a hand is in a glove, for that is one thing inside another thing. Spirit has no dimensions. If any boy has a rule in his pocket let him measure my 'conscious will,' and tell me how long it is." They promptly replied that it could not be done. So I continued:

"If my self-conscious will occupies no space, then I, the spirit, am neither in my body nor out of my body. I am nowhere. 'Where' applies to things and not to spirit. The book is in the room because it occupies a definite space. When we say that our spirits are in our bodies we simply mean that our wills are capable of commanding our bodies and making them act. While our spirits are nowhere, yet they do get expressed somewhere. For all practical purposes, spirits are where their instruments express them in time and space."

At this point in my remarks, I turned aside, and poked sharply with my forefinger a friend who stood near. In reply to his inquiring look I said:

"I did not poke you. It was this finger." (Then to the boys) "Did I poke him? My finger touched him because I wished it. My will got expressed right at the end of the finger, and therefore that is where my spirit seemed to be."

Again I punched my friend, but this time with a long stick, and when he turned sharply about, I said:

"I did not jab you, it was the stick. But the stick," I explained, "had become the instrument of my will; therefore my will got expressed at a greater distance from my body. The stick was really the lengthening of my finger."

I then told them of the man in Virginia who was talking by wireless telephone. It is reported that when he spoke, one man in Paris, and another in Honolulu, replied at the same time, as if he were in both places:

"Hello, Jake, is that you?" Had there been a million receivers in the encircling space with people listening, it would have seemed to every one of them that he was present. Though expressed in a million remote places at one time, he would not have been divided into a million persons; neither would he have been spread out to reach all the places occupied by his listeners. His instruments would have been spread out, but not his soul. His soul would still have remained sharply self-conscious. That concentrated, self-conscious will is what we mean by the soul. The soul is always a definite, personal will, to itself and to the one or the many with whom it is communicating, however short or extended its instruments.

That the young people grasped this conception of spirit, was made evident in a subsequent review.

So to the question, "Where is God?" we must answer that, as naked spirit, He is not anywhere, but that His instruments may express Him everywhere. Where His instruments end, or whether nature ends at all, no scientist knows. The Divine Spirit is no larger than the human spirit, for neither of them has any largeness at all. God is simply more conscious, more loving, and more intelligent than we; and His instruments are infinitely more vast than ours. Developing a soul is not making it larger, but making it more loving, intelligent, and purposeful. However, the development of the soul does require the enlargement of its instruments. An undeveloped person may be very conscious of his body and its wants and scarcely at all aware of his soul and its needs. To be infinitely self-knowing, like God, is the most concentrated and intensified reality conceivable. So the minister's wife of whom we have spoken, was mistaken in thinking God a rarified substance like ether, spread out to fill all nature. With her materialistic conception of God, she thought Him so spacially big that she could neither know Him nor love Him, whereas He is no more spread out than the mathematical point that has no dimensions. To give complete satisfaction to our friend, it will be necessary to show her the various ways of approaching this Loving Will, the Father of her own invisible self; but for this we are not yet ready.

Dr. Lyman Abbott tells of sitting at the table one day with his little grandson when the latter said, "'Grandfather, how can God be in Cornwall and in Newburgh at the same time?' I touched him on the forehead and said, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the shoulder, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the knee, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' 'That is the way,' I replied, 'God can be in Cornwall and in Newburgh at the same time.' He considered a moment, and shyly smiled his assent."

I am well aware that we have not said enough about God to make Him satisfyingly near and personal to our love; but it is a start, and we still have the pleasure of traveling together over a beautiful road until we shall stand face to face with Him whom our souls seek. We should reach this desired goal in the fourth chapter. But if we become impatient, we shall spoil the journey, for we are traveling as fast as we can go without having a wreck.

Here, a little incident from actual experience may be helpful. My eldest son, when a little child, would not say a prayer. This, beyond doubt, was abnormal, because most little children are willing to pray. As my own religious life had given me so much trouble, I concluded that he had inherited my frailties, and not his mother's virtues. Being perplexed by his attitude I would sometimes take him out to see the stars, when I would speak of the greatness and goodness of God. Then, once in awhile, though not often, I could get him to pray. We did not wish him to be unduly serious, certainly not solemn, but it did puzzle us to know why he would not say a prayer. So one day when he came into my study I thought, "Now is my chance." Taking him up, I set him on the desk before me, which permitted him to look out of the window upon the apple trees that were a bower of beauty in their spring blossoms.

"Isn't this a beautiful world?" I said.

"Yes," was his reply.

"Who made it?"

"God."

"Well, wouldn't it be nice to pray a little?" I asked.

"Oh," with a tone of aversion, "I don't want to pray!"

"You don't like to talk to God?"

"Huh!" scornfully. "I can't talk to God, He's up in heaven."

"No, God is in your heart." At that he rose to his knees and said, with an incredulous look on his face:

"Well, I guess I can't jump into my mouth!" This made me feel that he was born a little pagan, but at the same time it gave me one clue to the difficulty. He made a difference between talking and praying. That he liked to talk, I knew, but now it appeared that, to his mind, offering prayers to some one so far away was quite a different thing. Then I asked him if he thought I loved him.

"Yes, I know you love me," he said, putting his arms about my neck, and giving me a squeeze.

"Well," I asked, "can you see my love?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure you can see it?"

"Why, of course."

"Well, then, put your hand on it."

"I can't see your love, but,—I know you love me, though!"

"Yes, you do know that I love you, but you can't see my love, neither can you see me."

"Yes, I can!"—and his hand literally flew to my cheek.

"Oh, no, that is not papa; that is flesh. You didn't think I was flesh, did you? No, you can't see me because I am love, or spirit." Here I carefully felt of his head, saying, "Now, that is a bone box, but I don't talk to a bone box when I talk to you." Next, feeling of his ear, I remarked, "Isn't that a funny little thing, a piece of gristle!—but I don't talk to gristle when I speak to you." Bringing my hand down over his face, I continued, "Here is some flesh with bones under it, but I don't talk to flesh and bones when I talk to you. No, I can't see you. Yet, my love knows your love, and your love knows my love. When my love feels your love, then we say you are in my heart; and when our love feels God's love, then He is in our hearts. Isn't it beautiful, that my love knows and likes to talk to your love, and your love knows and likes to talk to my love, and that we like to talk to God's love?" He didn't wait for me to ask him to pray, but at once began in a loud whisper, saying:

"O God, help me to be a good boy, and to love papa and mamma, and everybody, and to do everything that is good." Then looking up with a smile, he asked, "Do you know what I was doing?" I said:

"I think you were talking to the Lord." With evident satisfaction he admitted that he was.

Two days after this he came into my study while I was reading a book and put his hand on my knee. Giving my knee a hard shove, he said:

"This isn't papa, is it? This is papa's body." My book went out of the way in a hurry, I can assure you, and there was a dear little upturned face smiling, which said, "We are spirits, aren't we, papa?" Never after that did he refuse to pray.

Some years ago a successful minister, about forty-five years of age, consecrated, eloquent, and revered by his people, asked me how I conceived of God when I prayed. The conversation revealed the fact that he was struggling with all the questions that troubled the little boy. This unhappy condition was due to the fact that theology begins too far down the stream, leaving unanswered and unconsidered the best questions of all, the questions of children and fools.

Once, when a little child, I was told by my mother that God saw all my naughty thoughts. Immediately, I asked, "Where is God?" She answered, "Everywhere." "In the sky?" "Yes." "In this house?" "Yes." "In the logs of the walls?" "Yes." "In the table leg?" "Yes." "If I were to saw the table leg off, would I hurt God?" "Sh-h, be careful what you say about God."

That last question was as legitimate as the previous ones, and was asked with equal sincerity. It clearly revealed my materialistic conceptions of God. My present opinion is that it would not give Him pain to saw off the leg of a table, but that it would give Him pain to amputate a human leg. God knows the thrill of a nerve better than we do, or else He has much to learn.

A relative, visiting in my home, remarked that she was utterly confused about God; and that she had been reading some of the new cults of the day with the hope of finding something satisfying. Consequently, a little conversation followed on how God was immanent in all nature. So, when she put her little boy to bed that night, she told him that God was not away off in heaven but near, and in everything that was good. To this the little fellow replied, "Oh, gee! then He is in strawberry shortcake, isn't He?" The poor mother was at the end of her wits, and felt that the devotion which followed was not very successful. We teach that God is in everything, without comprehending how He is in anything, and herein lies the difficulty.

The question of how God is in nature was again before us. Some one suggested, "If He is in strawberry shortcake, is He likewise in the garbage can?" "Horrors!" exclaimed another. A third voice, "Now where are we!—do we believe, or do we not believe that God is in all nature?"

A garbage can may be most repulsive if allowed to breed life; yet chemically and biologically viewed, its contents are more beautiful than any fairyland ever described. The odor and sight are repugnant to us, because the refuse is not wholesome food for human beings; but to some other animals it is more delicate than a perfume bottle. The other animals would probably think the perfume horrid stuff. The "Loving Intelligent Will" is not in nature in the same way that strawberries are in shortcake. After that manner God is neither in nor out of anything. This, however, will be made more plain in the consideration of the next question.

Whether or not the reader likes these illustrations, at least they are out of the raw experience of life, and reveal the crude conceptions that linger concerning God and His relations to the universe. A child can ask many of the vital questions concerning religion and life before he can count ten; and if his questions are answered, he will ask almost all the religious questions before he has learned the multiplication table. This is because nothing else is so near to him as life and religion. The mathematical faculty is a later development.

I should never crowd a child in his acquisition of religious knowledge; but when he wants to know, if we ourselves know the way, it is much better to start him on the right track.

4. What does God do?

"What does God do all day?" asked a little boy of his mother.

We used to think that He made the universe in a week, and that ever since He had been keeping Sunday. During this long Sabbath we believed Him to be engaged in religious work; though He may have regulated the universe a bit now and then. Now, however, we see that nothing is finished. Even new worlds are being formed, and the old ones are constantly being changed. It is deeper truth to recognize God as making the universe all the time, to think of nature as God at work. For, should God cease working there would be no world. We used to say, and rightly, too, that the world is crammed so full of meaning and purpose that it must have had a wise Creator; that there never could have been such a world without a God. With equal propriety, we may now say that there could no more be a God without a world than a world without a God; because a God who was so indolent and purposeless as to think nothing, and feel nothing, and project nothing, would not be worthy of a second thought.

At last we have come to the point where we can see how science, in a peculiar way, has saved religion. Men have always been pondering over God's relation to the wonderful forces of nature that envelop us. They could get along pretty well with either a God or a world, but found it difficult to harmonize both thoughts. There appeared to be a spirit world over against the great lump of a dirt world. The bulk of things often seemed such a hindrance that men dreamed of deliverance by ultimately getting rid of the material universe altogether. Even God, it was thought by some philosophers, did the best He could with the stubborn clay at His disposal. When my brother was killed, I could not decide whether God or the great machine world killed him. Just when the world acted, or just when God acted, was to me a profound mystery. For, in my thought, the world was a great automatic machine, that ran entirely by itself, except when God occasionally interfered. Whether He was a sort of spiritual ether penetrating all things, or what, I could not at all decide. But like the Yale professor, I still believed that if He existed, He must have a visible nucleus all His own in heaven. God, at the center, was a ghost, whom His ghost children would find only after death. According to the common teaching, Jesus had left His Father and happy home in heaven, having come to this sinful earth to be clothed with a physical body. Of course, the Father's spirit was represented as being with Jesus, but the Father Himself had remained in His far-away home. So my confusion was worse confounded by thinking.

During many centuries, scholars were grappling with the thought of spirit; and they did some good thinking in spite of their mistakes. Spirit was being more and more clearly defined. It increasingly appeared to be a self-conscious will, but how this Infinite Will was related to the great lump of nature, was the supreme difficulty.

Finally the scientists took the lump into the laboratories, when behold! it melted as quickly as a lump of sugar melts in the mouth of a boy. They discovered that nature was no lump at all, but a bundle of beautiful, complex energies. Nature as substance scientists have driven to the vanishing point; so much so that no great physicist would dare to say that there is any substance. Yet nature was never so potent in the lives of men as since it has been reduced to invisible energies. The knowledge of these invisible forces and the power to manipulate them make men almost like gods in their achievements.

The present situation, then, is a little like that of putting the tunnel under the Hudson. One gang beginning on the Jersey side, and another on the New York side, they bored down and onward, sometimes going far below the water; but when the workers came together under the Hudson, they had varied from each other only by the least fraction of an inch. Just so the philosophers and theologians began on the spirit side, reducing spirit to purposeful energy; while the scientists began on the nature side reducing it to purposeful energy; and when the two sets of workers broke through, they were apparently at the same point. The Christian scholar looked up with joy and amazement, saying, "Why, this invisible, purposeful energy of nature is simply what God is thinking, and feeling, and willing. Whether there is any substance we do not know, but whether there is, or is not, nature is Will in action. God continually purposes all these energies and they go forth. Light-energy, and all other beautiful forces constituting nature, are the modes of God's continuous will."

"What does God do all day?" Why, everything that is being done in the universe, except that which other wills are doing. And the child will is only combining his Father's energies and thinking his Father's thoughts. The child never works apart from his Father's enfolding powers. If we could comprehend all the dynamics of the universe, we should know what God is doing on that plane of His activities. Or, if we could know all His loving thoughts and higher purposes concerning His children, who are striving and building in the midst of these simple, enfolding energies, we should know what God is doing in the moral realm. The wall of partition is broken down, the veil is rent in twain; we live in the Holy Presence, since there is no other place to live. With Browning, we feel that the atmosphere "Is the clear, dear breath of God who loveth us." The pavement on which we walk is the power of the Great Will bearing us up. Likewise, the buildings along the street are more of His beneficent energies, providing shelter and rest for His loved ones. Our bodies are also His energies, highly sensitized, through which we become beautifully aware of our surroundings. All the vitality in the quivering beams of ships, and all the propelling force in their engines, is but the power of a Will, and that Will is the Father of our spirits. Leaving out of mind for the present the thought of the vast universe, measure, if you can, the ocean in its breadth and depth, which in its ceaseless rising and falling raises and lowers ship-cities as if they were snowflakes; and then remember that, if rightly applied, there is power enough in each cup full of water to destroy a ship, and that all the energy of the boundless worlds is but the will of Him in whom we "live and move and have our being." Having done this, if you are not something less than a man, you will fall down and adore in wonder, love and praise. To be brought face to face with God in the beauty and awfulness of nature is the only cure for the irreverence of this generation.

But some one says, "This makes God too great. Have you looked, and staggered before the limitless heavens?" Yes, but is it not claimed that God is Infinite?—and we have not yet found the equal of infinity. With all our insistence upon the infinitude of God, perhaps it offends some to think of Him as being equal to His universe,—or even to the little part of it that we can imagine. However, God must be greater than all His works.

This is pantheism, says another. No, pantheism though containing many beautiful truths is, nevertheless, a golden mist. Its advocates have eliminated personality, they have broken the mast of their ship, and all the riggings have fallen down with it. Being the perpetual cause of all things, Self-conscious Will is the greatest fact in the universe. There is a clear distinction between God and His deeds, even as there is a distinction between myself and what I am now thinking and doing. This Creative Will is what the intelligent Christian means by the term God. He conceives of this Will of the universe as being the Father of all other wills. We are not to think of God as making a dirt planet which He has tossed off into space as something separate from His will. He never put His children on such an isolated Earth as that would be, to roam about and care for themselves as best they might. The world is the complex energy of His will never-ceasing, with which He enfolds His children. He carries them in His loving powers and will not let them go. This is His cosmic relation to us; but it is by no means the only relation which He sustains to His children. His more personal relationship is equally beautiful and necessary.

Something like this twofold relationship exists between man and man. We know that it is best for us to build railroads, though many are sure to be killed by them however careful we may be. Yet we should be something more than railroad operators; we should be personal friends and, if occasion should arise, minister to the wants of those who are injured by our railroads.

So God must either will a cosmos, or not will it. He cannot obliterate a part of the world, every time one of His wilful or ignorant children gets in the way. It is not even best for His children that He should do so. It is far better to have a definite and orderly world, though it may hurt many. Yet God never forsakes His injured children, but leads them out of their injuries into something better, if they are willing.

Comforting as these thoughts are, we must yet travel a long way before we come to a completely satisfying idea of God. However, this is not discouraging, because we like to travel when the prospect grows more pleasing at each stage of the journey.

Some think there must be a dirt world because they see it. In a way I seem to see my wife when I look at her picture; yet I only see a bit of paper irregularly faded. Likewise a shining light appears to be a complete thing in itself, whereas the sun, doubtless, is as dark as blackness. The light which the scientist studies is waves of energy, traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second, but that is not the sweet something that we experience as light. The light coming from the sun is not shiny until our sensations are added. And even then, it is our feelings that are brilliant because our nerves were struck by these rapid waves of energy. When we think we see a real face, it is only a shadow on the retina of the eye; which eye is only another bundle of energies, and not the substance that it appears to be.

We live in a picture world, produced by God's energies beating upon other energies which He has intimately associated with our wills. We thank God for these pictures because they are the visible language of "loving intelligent wills," wills that in themselves are silent and invisible. Yet these wills are known in consciousness as a bit of final reality. They are like unto God who causes the vital energies that result in the pictures of a living, rational experience. Experience, therefore, with its inner consciousness and its outer symbol, or picture, is all we know. So when they would take us out of personal experience into a universal "substance" called spirit, they are offering to take us out of the known into the unknown; for they do not know whether there is any substance.

"Why, then," some may ask, "does God combine His energies to form a poisonous rattlesnake?" God has expressed everything imaginable; the beautiful and ugly, the safe and harmful, the pleasant and painful, the gentle and terrible, and all these are but the alphabet of a soul. If He had given us nothing but abstract definitions, we never should have learned the meaning of anything; and scarcely more, if He had given us only the beautiful and pleasant without their opposites. But He has made us feel the meaning, so that it may be real to us. From this marvelous alphabet which He has provided, we learn to spell, then to read, and finally to live. When we have learned the meaning of poison and its opposite, we may kill the rattlesnake, or cause its energies to dissolve and pass into something more beautiful and safe. Thus we become more and more immune from all that is ugly and harmful, and more appreciatively attached to all that is beautiful and good. The ugly and harmful were desirable things to know in contrast with the beautiful and good, that we might reject the one, and cleave to the other. The deeper meaning of things thus learned will give significance to our beautiful world long after we have passed beyond the evil which we have come to loathe. I am entirely convinced that this so-called evil world with its epidemics, earthquakes, and cyclones is the best conceivable place in which to begin a soul; not the best possible world as yet, for it is our business to help make it better. Neither should we forget that the terrible is often the overture to us of some mighty, beneficent energy which we have not yet learned to use.

Again we affirm that God is doing everything that occurs in the universe, except those things which are being done by His children. Nothing ever occurs that is not directly or indirectly the act of some will.

5. If the Ancients made their gods, how do we know that we are not making our God?

Doubtless, the great fallacy in this question is the supposition that the Ancients made their gods. No one ever made his God or his gods; for all men have the same identical God, living and moving and having their being in Him. They have Him regardless of whether they know either His name or His character. Since there is no other God or thing to have, all must have Him. Neither can they avoid being conscious of Him, nor escape having opinions concerning Him. All religious opinions, however sane or grotesque, are about the same God. The Ancients, being conscious of our God and their God, were sometimes comforted by His presence, while at other times they were greatly frightened. As they could not escape Him they tried to explain Him; and in the act of explaining, they made a theology and not a god. Whoever expresses a religious opinion is guilty of starting a theology. Even the Ancients were moved by an objective reality, and not by a mere idea. Though their idea often failed to describe the reality with accuracy, yet if the reality had disappeared, the idea would have perished from among them. It seemed to them that there was a god of thunder and, according to our interpretation of the universe, there was; for if our God had not been there thundering, they never would have thought of a god of thunder. Neither were they mistaken when they thought there was a god of harvest; because our God was there making their harvests grow as He does ours, and was feeding them as He feeds us. We all make worse mistakes than that. These crude men may be excused for thinking that a crashing thunderstorm was a big enough task for one god; or that the fructifying of all vegetation was ample employment for another.

Those early men worshiped our God in divided form simply because they could not think of a God great enough to carry on all the diverse activities which they beheld. Another reason why these crude children conceived of Him as many gods was that they could not understand how one person could be so gentle and terrible at the same time. Nevertheless, they would not have had gentle and terrible gods if our God had not been both gentle and terrible. They, therefore, no more made their gods than they made their stars. Their gods were our God, and their stars were our stars. We call their theology mythology, and their astronomy astrology. Yet mythology is crude theology, and astrology is unscientific astronomy. Astrology arose because men were influenced by real stars, and were impelled to offer such explanations as they were able. Without astrology we never would have had astronomy. In like manner men were disquieted by the same Infinite Power that disturbs us to-day, and were moved by that Power to offer their best interpretation. But without their mythology we never would have had our theology. The development of astronomy will never cease while there are intelligent men for stars to shine upon. Nor will the idea of God cease to expand while men are enfolded in the vast purposeful energy called the universe.

Our early brothers were trying to comprehend and interpret our God who was as present to them as He is to us. And here we are in the year nineteen hundred and twenty, A. D., still trying to expound Him; because the need is not less now than then. Those who know most about God best realize the need of knowing more. When we no longer try to increase our knowledge of God, we shall cease to love Him.

6. May we not be communing with a mere idea?

No, that is impossible. Because, whatever it is, it is at least an objective reality. Its grip is that of the universe. We can not let it go because it will not let us go. We are worshiping more than an idea; we are worshiping what we live in; we call it God; we think it is "Loving Intelligent Will." We believe that the power that enfolds us knows itself and us. And that we are not mistaken in this, our assurance deepens as our knowledge increases. We find that if we do not neglect or stultify any portion of our nature, our insight grows. If we invest our all on the conception of a spiritual universe we get astonishing results to the individual and to society. Then follows more insight and the incentive to invest again our talents that have doubled in the using of them. Of this, however, we shall have more to say later. For the present suffice it to say, the object of my worship is the great reality; all the reality there is, except my will and the other wills whom I call brothers. To state clearly what we mean, before trying to tell why we believe it, is of the utmost importance. With an experimental knowledge of God, and with ideas of the universe that harmonize therewith, our heads and hearts are thoroughly anchored in Him. If our every line of vision converges to this end, our insight gives us God as the great enfolding reality. Our further task is to make the idea of God clear and to show how the lines of vision converge. In this task, modern knowledge is the Christian's best ally.

CHAPTER III

DOES MAN HAVE A SOUL, AND WHAT IS HIS PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE?

What is man?

Who is man?

Would the absence of man cripple God?

What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?

Is not socialism the best religion there is?

1. What is man?

We do not fully know "what" and "where" God is until we know what man is, and how God and man are working through each other. Our knowledge of God grows with our knowledge of man. We can understand neither without knowing both. At every stage of the discussion our subject is made complex by the intertwining of the human and the Divine. Hence, this chapter—while introducing man—takes us deeper into the life of God.

Man does not have a soul. Neither does the sun set. Though we know better, yet for convenience, we continue to speak of the sun as setting. For the same reason we still say that man has a soul when we mean that he is a soul. Soul is person, body is instrument. The instrument does not have the person, the person has the instrument. The soul is the child of God. How strangely, therefore, it would sound to ask: Does a man have a child of God? The reverse question, however, is perfectly fitting: Does a child of God have a body?

Man is a spirit, a soul, or a person. All men are alike in that which constitutes them personalities, or self-conscious wills. It is in their individuality that men differ. In the first place, some are more developed than others; and then they have different tastes, different knowledge, different temperaments, and different occupations. This diversity of individuality clearly distinguishes one man from another, and at the same time greatly enriches society.

Like his Father, man is a loving intelligent will. Like Him, too, he is always silent and invisible, save as his instruments express his thought and wish in time and space. So far, Father and child should be defined in the same terms; for however they may differ in other respects, they are alike in being self-conscious. If either is below self-conscious will, he is something less than a person. Though man, as we find him, is not always so very loving, nor so very intelligent, yet that is what he is in his best estate. So far as we can understand, the sinless man soul lifted to the infinite power would be the same as God. This spiritual definition does not imply that either God or man exists, or could exist, without form and outward expression.

2. Who is man?

We think of Man, the soul, as a child of God, or a god-child. Therefore, he is worthy of his brother's highest esteem, and his Father's tenderest affection. He is a very son of the infinite God; and all created spirits, being his brothers, are members of one family. Again we say, "O god-child, how wonderful you are, and what a pity it would be if you failed to recognize your divinity, or allowed anything to drag you down from your divine possibilities!" Man must know himself if he would attain unto the goal of life.

Though man is a soul, yet without the body he cannot so much as come to self-consciousness. Just how or when a soul begins, we do not know; but it does not appear until some time after the body is born. A new-born babe can neither see, feel, nor hear, with any intelligent meaning of the words. It will stare into the most glaring light without intelligence enough to shut its eyes. It does not recognize objects for some time, and when it does, misses the object for which it reaches. The infant is likewise slow in distinguishing sounds or names. If the soul exists when the body is born, it is only a latent personality which has not yet come to self-realization. Personality is self-conscious will, and this the child has not yet achieved.

Let us here consider the relation of a new-born body to God and the universe. God begins His creative activities in what the scientists call stellar ether, where His energies combine and recombine in a more and more complex world, until the solar system appears with planets in the condition of our earth. After more combinations and recombinations, out on the surface of all things His activities blossom in the finest bit of organism, the sensitized thing which we call the human body. This body, the flower of all God's activities in nature, requires all nature for its support. Furthermore, the chemical energies constituting the body itself are what God is thinking, and feeling, and doing. Strictly speaking, it is His body, the first instrument in the whole order of development, the only body on earth capable of articulate speech and loving deed. If God did not continually will the body and all the supporting energies of the universe, the body would cease to be. Before the man soul appears at all, we have God's world culminating in what we call the human body. When a man soul awakes, it is in God's own bosom, in His own body. Man awakens in God's enfolding energies, and not outside them; for outside of God he could not exist.

It is amusing to hear a little boy speak of his father's automobile as "my car"; but it isn't his, even though the father is pleased to see the little fellow spread himself in it and claim ownership. Yet it is his too, in the sense that the father gladly shares it with him. And some day when the child is too big to be a little boy, and too little to be a big boy, he may take his father's car and run it into the ditch. But even the wreck is his father's wreck. In the same way, if we live at all it is in our Father's enfolding instrument. His body is ours because He gladly shares it with us. However, if we do not use it in harmony with His will, we wreck it in the ditch.

God wakes His child to consciousness in His own body, by making all kinds of impressions upon the sense organs. There are many rappings on the door, and flashes of light through the windows until the soul wakes. And when the soul becomes conscious, God may not cease beating upon the instrument with myriad forces, lest His child fall asleep.

Some morning when a loved form bends over the infant body, the baby smiles, and the soul begins to appear. That is a wonderful day when the baby gives its first smile. Little by little the child becomes aware of itself and of its mother. Should the baby be fortunate enough to have two or three brothers and sisters, he will learn some day, when he is a little older, that they all want the same thing at the same time. Then he will be very conscious of other wills.

We know that other wills exist because they live in our enveloping world, and constantly use it in a way that we approve or resent. If they did not know and disturb our world, we should not be aware of them even if they existed. We know that other wills exist because they sell us coats that they have made, and cut down trees in our forests, and shape them into things that have meaning for us and them. They modulate the atmosphere in which we live, producing sounds that stand for objects with which we are familiar. They learn our words and facial expressions, and use them to make us feel happy or uncomfortable. Nature is the common instrument of all wills.

As we cannot come to the consciousness of ourselves, nor of other wills, except through the body and its environments, neither can we develop the soul without cultivating the physical instrument and that which surrounds it. There is always a corresponding development between soul and body. As Browning says,

"We know not whether soul helps body more than body helps soul."

We simply know that soul and body develop together, and that if either is injured the other is harmed. A physical change in our bodies takes place with every thought. We cannot silently love without disturbing the gray matter. We make paths through our nervous system with every thought and deed. If we had a means of photographing all the muscular and nervous conditions wrought in our bodies by our thoughts and actions, they would correspond to every growth of spirit. The face becomes beautiful with a beautiful soul, and the body becomes refined by every improvement of the spirit.

I once shook hands with the great French organist, Guilmant. When I clasped his hand I forgot everything else; the hand was so soft, and yet so firm! All the inspiration and purpose of his soul had been registered in his body. And what a hand it was! I shall never forget that touch. It gave new meaning to Tennyson's beautiful line, "Oh for the touch of a vanished hand!" Our looks, smiles, accents, and very gait become the expression of the soul.

We once had a maid who came home in the dejected state following intoxication. When I appeared she said:

"I has me faults the same as others, but me heart is all right." Now, could her heart be right and her body wrong? Can we have a pure soul and an unclean body? Can we have an honest heart and a pilfering hand? Certainly not. For as the pure soul cleanses the body, so the degraded body pollutes the soul. Soul and body must grow together,—and alike. Sometimes we speak of a purely spiritual experience apart from all physical excitability; but such a thing is impossible, because every spiritual thought has its beautiful, physical accompaniment. The physical may run riot, as with some musicians who are principally noise and bluster; but the fact still remains that the most bilious and cold philosopher enjoys his gentle nervous thrill.

All worthy education means the spiritualizing of the body. Both before death, and after, the good man has a spiritual body. Not a spirit body, but a spiritual, a refined and sensitive instrument of the spirit. Throughout eternity man will be spiritualizing his body, or else degrading it.

We soon outgrow our immediate bodies, and find it necessary to augment them with all the forces of nature. These enlarged bodies must likewise be spiritualized or they will pervert the soul,—as is proved by every degraded form of institutional life.

The early man dimly realized that if he could get a larger hand, he would be a greater man. So, augmenting his hand with a club, he achieved a new growth in mind and character. Finding himself a greater man, he tried once more to increase his hand. Next, finding a sharp stone with which he could hack down small trees, he created a new mental and moral demand for a still finer instrument of his spirit. Then, in turn, he augmented his hand with bronze and iron until all great thundering mills and all cunning tools appeared as the mighty hand of the human will. This required an enormous soul growth in knowledge and character, and a corresponding growth in social consciousness and self-consciousness. To further our soul growth there is still a pressing demand for enlarged instruments. So it must ever be an even race between soul growth and hand growth.

In the same way, man developed soul and legs. It became necessary to make swifter legs or suffer a dwarfing of his soul. Consequently, he increased his speed with camels and horses; but even these became inadequate for his soul's growth. Then ensued a race of soul and legs, until to-day automobiles, steam cars, and every means of swift locomotion are but the augmented legs of man. The growing man soul is still in quest of swifter means of locomotion, and as these appear society is changed to its very foundations. New trades, new mental powers, new moral conditions confront him everywhere; and still he is speeding up.

When man made for himself far-seeing eyes in the telescope, the heavens opened; and what he saw in the heavens made for him a new earth. Then making for himself a short-seeing eye in the microscope, he discovered within and beneath things a new world, which in turn was a vast commentary on the heavens above. Likewise it may be truthfully said that soul and eyes have made an even race in their development. The same is true of soul and ears. Said a great building contractor of Chicago thirty-five years ago, "No man in the past ever dreamed of such a business as we are conducting, for it would have been impossible without the telephone." The telephone is but the enlargement of man's ears and mouth. This contractor moved men and materials, at will, over a radius of a hundred miles. Even the musical soul found a new incentive when the mouth was enlarged by piano, pipe organ, and orchestra. Every enlargement of the mouth calls for new musical skill in complex technique, and in finer inspiration and fuller elaboration. In short, every man soul is in quest of omnipresence. Living as he does in his Father's enfolding energies, he can know himself, and grow himself, only so far as he makes the instruments of his Father's will the instruments of his own will. The man soul is in the process of taking on the whole universe as his enlarged body. Two hundred pounds is quite large enough for the little body which he ever carries, and cares for, but to be a growing son of God he must progressively make the universe his augmented body. At night he may lay off his big body and rest; but in the morning he must put on his larger body, the universe, as he puts on his clothes and his boots, and go forth to live and work with God, his Father.

3. Would the absence of man cripple God?

Yes, the absence of man would thoroughly cripple God. Without the possibility of a family, God would just as well never have been. This is not an unbecoming or irreverent remark, but a statement that is very pleasing to God; it vindicates everything that is highest in His Holy Nature. His wisdom, character, and love are all involved in His purpose to have a family.

If we eliminate the thought of His family, what wisdom is there in anything God has made? The production of coal is a wonderful display of wisdom, love, and power; but apart from the thought of children who would discover the coal and put it to all its marvelous uses, what motive could there have been in such an act? God, as a solitary will in the universe, never intended to mine coal, warm houses, cook food, or fire engines. All the marvelous by-products of coal could have no value or meaning apart from a complex society; but with a family in mind the production of coal becomes a sacrament worthy of a God, and lays the foundation of a kingdom, all glorious in wisdom, love, and power.

Iron, likewise, has a rational, moral, and social significance beyond all power to express. Its uses, all the way from steel bridges and engines to the hair springs of watches, suggest the imagination of a mind infinite and loving. The human family never could have climbed to glory except on an iron stair; but take away the family, and iron means nothing.

The large part that wood has supplied in the development and happiness of the race is beyond the imagination of any but an infinite mind. To what infinite uses it has been and may yet be put, from the homeliest utilities to organs and violins! Soft woods, hard woods, and precious woods have entered into the very warp and woof of human life. Wood is a miracle, robbed of its wonder because the gift is so lavish. Yet what sense would there be in creating wood in all its varieties, with no one to put it to any of its sacred uses? These same thoughts would equally apply to all the precious metals.

Why should God create a chemical world unless He had chemists in mind? What would it amount to if there were not those who could take nature apart and recombine it to infinity for His glory and their happiness? But there is no end to questions of this kind that might be asked concerning God and His works. In short, a depopulated universe is robbed of all its meaning and glory. Without a family, God would be reduced to a child god playing with a toy world. And being alone, He could not so much as complete His toy. At best the universe is but raw material until His children have turned it into a finished product. When God and His children begin turning nature into finished products the highest creation is just begun. By transforming nature into a social institution that reflects God's wisdom and love, common nature is glorified. Without a family there is no sense in anything, and God Himself would be without moral worth or meaning. To be sure, He could get along without a few of us if we should utterly refuse to coöperate with Him; but without a loving family, God would be completely defeated. He "So loved the world," and with equal propriety it might be said He so needed the world, "that He gave His only begotten Son."

Before God's family arrived He was simply getting ready to do the supreme thing. But with His children about Him, loving and alert, the meaning of all things from the beginning commences to appear, and the glorious end is dimly discerned. No greater travesty on the nature of God could be conceived than that which makes Him independent of His children. And to think that God's desire for mere adoration is His chief need of man is but slightly less a travesty. God yearns for the love and adoration of His children, and with no less desire, He calls upon them to help Him carry forward His work of creation. Love without work and achievement is first insipid, and then stale. God can no more fulfill Himself without children than men can fulfill themselves without Him. If God's highest works fail Him, then God Himself has failed.

The permanent absence of children would stultify God's reason and character by rendering useless all that He is and all that He has made.

4. What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?

It would be interesting to know who originated this question, for he should wear the badge of his own ignorance. In his mind, the little "speck" probably signified the human body. But as we have already seen, that is not man; it is only his instrument. And besides, man may progressively augment his little body, causing it to articulate with the whole body of nature. Moreover, the human body is primarily God's, the flower of all His works in the vast unfolding universe. Does God care for these myriad blossoms of his universe? One might as well ask, "What could a horticulturist care for the little blossoms on his apple trees?" Let the insects sting them, or the frosts bite them, he has big trees to absorb his attention!

Unless God's world could blossom into myriad, delicate forms, as homes for man souls, the universe would be as useless as a barren apple tree. The little flower is not something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the tree. Neither is the human body something apart, its production taxes the entire strength and purpose of the universe. As the flower is the tree's glory and promise of fruit, so the human body is nature's glory and promise of souls.

If, however, the "speck" refers to the real man, the spirit, then the question is equally foolish. An intelligent will is neither a "speck," nor something spread out like ether. Furthermore, that which can be so deeply impressed by the vastness of the universe is not insignificant in itself. A mastodon would not be overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. Neither is the great universe overwhelmed by a sense of its own magnitude. In his sense of awe, the foolish man who asked the question transcends the great universe itself. To be overwhelmed with our inability to know the universe is partly knowing it, or else we should not be so completely overwhelmed. That is not insignificant which can measure the distance to the stars, and weigh the planets, and mark out the shape and size of their orbits. That is not insignificant which can discover the very elements of which the sun is composed. Man's primary body may be relatively small, but it is so highly organized that he can augment it until his instrument reaches the stars. Though the sun is approximately ninety-three million miles from our earth, yet the intelligent mind of man discovered helium in the sun before he discovered it upon the earth. This feat of His child must have given the Father keen delight.

Man's body is potentially as great as the universe because, being so delicately organized, it can articulate with the world elements to the farthest sun that twinkles in the blue.

The Luther Burbanks are revealing our supremacy over the vegetable kingdom. The animal kingdom is known to be equally plastic under our shaping hand; for juggling with animal life is one of man's pastimes. By using pressure, he has taken a single cell life and divided it into twins. He has taken two separate cells and formed them into a giant. Taking off the head and tail of some lower forms of life, he has made the head grow where the tail was, and vice versa.

No one mind can find time to learn of all the wonders achieved by the human family in the realms of nature and of social well-being. A simple statement of man's achievements in the twenty or thirty allied sciences is more thrilling than all the romances ever written. Man's power for good or evil is stupendous and overwhelming. It is in the realm of human life that God Himself will be victorious, or else defeated. All creation will fail if man fails. I here speak of man in the sense of God's children, wherever they may be in the universe. The people on this earth might fail without bringing universal disaster; but if God's children throughout the universe should fail Him, then all is lost. If God did not "care for" His children, it would be the same as not caring for Himself, since all His aims and purposes culminate in His family. God has crowned man with glory and honor, by putting all things under his feet.

The world is as ignorant of man as it is of God; and the prevailing idea of either is a caricature.

It is doubtful whether a self-conscious moral will could be awakened outside of a body, or inside of one if it were less highly organized than the human body. The higher animals share our sensations of pain and pleasure, but it is extremely doubtful whether any of them share in our self-conscious, moral purposes. Possibly a soul must appear in any such highly organized form of God's energies as a human body, and cannot appear where the organization of His energies falls short of this high standard. If we believe the body to be the integration of God's own energies it would not be strange if the body proved to be the incipient soul. We have not yet sounded the depths of God's creative wisdom either in the soul or the body; we only know that soul and body are bound together, and that God's highest achievement and deepest interest center in them. How infinitely precious in the sight of God are His children, the crown and glory of all His wisdom, love, and power!

5. Is not socialism the best religion there is?

When socialism means the Kingdom of God, it is the best religion conceivable. And it is a pity that either religion or socialism should ever mean anything less than the Kingdom of God; for when they drop below that standard, the one is spurious religion while the other is counterfeit socialism; the former discarding society, and the latter eliminating God, both alike become a menace.

Last summer in Madison Square, New York, I listened to a socialist who was ridiculing the very idea of God. Exhorting his listeners to have a little sense, he advised them to get rid of God, priests, ministers, churches, and King Capital. He said:

"You have but one life to live, and it is short; if ever you get anything, you must get it now."