Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive

while an impersonal God can be, as we have already seen, of no value for religion, there is no mistaking the fact that this very question-

on, like any other sovereign, presented no problem to the understanding; but if God was not merely transcendent but also immanent-not merely somewhere but in some indefinable manner everywhere-then to predicate personality of {75} such a One seemed a very paradox. In one of Feuillet's novels there occurs a phrase which sums up in a few expressive words a very common spiritual misadventure: the hero says,

ral imperative, cannot, above all, either claim our love or give us its affection. It is really the identical difficulty, stated a little {76} more pretentiously, which the "rationalist" author of The Churches and Modern Thought presents to us by remarking that in all our experience that which makes up personality is "connected with nerve structures," so that we cannot attribute such a quality to "a Being who is described to us as devoid of any nerve structure." "I know of no answer," he quaintly adds, "that could be called satisfactory from a theistic standpoint." [1] It is evident that Mr. Vivian does not remember the famous passage in the Essay on Theism where Joh

man passing a house in process of erection, and being killed on the spot by a piece of falling timber. He is left as a material form; he is decidedly not left as a person. Something has disappeared in that fatal moment that no one had ever seen or handled-his self-consciousness, his intelligence, his will, his affections, his moral sense: with these he was a person; without them, he is a corpse. If, then, it is these unseen, intangible qualities, and not flesh and bone

th students, still enjoys a good deal of popular vogue. We are, of course, referring to the Spencerian system, in which the word "Absolute" is used as a synonym for what we should call the Deity; but, argues the Spencerian, since "Absolute is that which exists out of

nowledge"-otherwise as "the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." But the corner-stone of all our knowledge can be such only because, so far from being unknowable, it is intimately related to all our experience-which is tantamount to saying that it is not absolute at all; and again, if God be the Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed, that Energy must be thought of as related to all things-in other words, it is the very reverse of absolute. And hence the imaginary impossibility of thinking of the Deity as conscious and intell

"; but since our guide, a few pages later, quotes with approval the dictum that "unless we cease to think altogether, we must think anthropomorphically," we may be pardoned for declining to believe that "the further progress of thought must force men hereafter" to "cease to think altogether." Such a suicide of though

inite Person, therefore, is to talk of something that is at once infinite and

ers. The first may be made in the unpreju

the word 'person' simply implies 'a nature endowed

re not concerned to defend any inference that might be drawn from the infinity, in the sense {81} of the "allness" of God. We do not deny,

rom His alleged absoluteness or infinity-raises any real bar to His being thought of as personal. We are now in a position to inquire positively whether there is su

uld not be sustained, for life is only possible in a world of orderly sequences and uniform laws; but seeing that as a matter of fact such orderly sequences and uniform laws meet us everywhere {82} in nature, is not the inference fairly inevitable? Let us be quite clear on one point: there are two ways, and two only, in which any phenomenon can be accounted for-design or chance; what is not purposed must be accidental. Does, then, nature impress us as the outcome of chance? If we saw a faultlessly executed mathematical diagram illustrating a proposition in Eucl

hen," said I aloud, "that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of oil and vinegar, and slices of eggs, had been floating about in the

er, incalculable accident. Not so much as a salad of respectable calibre could be accounted for upon such a theory; how much less credible is it that the universe began with a

gress. As Fiske has it, "Whatever else may be true, the conviction is brought home to us that in all this endless multifariousness there is one single principle at work, that all is tending towards an end that was involved in the very beginning." In other words, the supreme certainty brought home to us by the researches of modern science is that all creation is thrilled through by an al

vity are constituents never found apart from personality. But, we are told, "the choice lies, not between personality and something lower, but between personality and something inconceivably higher." [5] We reply that we have already made the acquaintance of this idea of a "super-personal" Deity, and found that for all practical-i.e., religious-purposes the super-personal is simply the impersonal under another name.[6] And when we remember that the "inconceivably higher than personal" ultimate Reality of the agnostic possesses neither {85} consciousness, nor will, nor intelligence, we simply fail to see how

rse." For our own part, we find it difficult to believe that such a forecast could have been framed by anyone possessing a first-hand knowledge of what "the religious {86} emotions" are; we say with the utmost confidence that no such emotions can be felt towards a Power which "cannot be thought of as conscious," let alone as benevolent or personally interested in us. We well know that we can be nothing to such a Power-nor can It be anything to us; for a God who does not care, does not count. We cannot commune with this chill and awesome Unknown; we can only pray t

Modern Thought, by

on Religion, R.P.

n from pp. 108-119 of Prof. Hudson's Introd

cit.,

n, op. ci

upra,

8