GOD 



The great words " God is love " 

 are the summary expression of 

 what God has been found in Christ 

 to be. To this righteous love all 

 other " attributes " of God are 

 subordinate. His eternity and 

 omnipresence are the eternity and 

 omnipresence of love and holiness, 

 His omnipotence and omniscience 

 instruments which serve them. 

 The vast additions made in modern 

 days to our knowledge of nature 

 and of history have indeed widened 

 our conception of God's methods 

 and purposes. Art has taught us 

 to find a new revelation of Him in 

 all sublimity and beauty ; but the 

 revelation of God's character and 

 of the nature of His purpose stands 

 where Christ has left it. 



Authority and Acceptance 



This conception of God comes 

 to us at first, like other truth, upon 

 the authority of others, but it 

 needs to be verified by each man 

 for himself by consideration of the 

 experience on which it rests and 

 by the effort to share it. The so- 

 called " proofs " of God's existence 

 are simply the ways in which He 

 makes Himself known. Man's dis- 

 covery of God and God's revelation 

 of Himself to the individual and 

 to the race are two sides of the 

 same process. 



But the need of seeking after 

 God must be recognized. God's 

 revelation does not force itself 

 upon us. There must be the de- 

 sire and the effort to know, and 

 such a moral sympathy with the 

 character of God as will render the 

 revelation possible. So it is that 

 Christ says " Blessed are the pure 

 in heart ; for they shall see God " 

 (Matthew v, 8), and again " If any 

 man willeth to do God's will, he 

 shall know of the teaching, whether 

 it be of God, or whether I speak 

 from Myself " (John vii, 17). Belief 

 in God has difficulties to overcome, 

 and only those who are morally 

 faithful to the light of conscience 

 are likely to overcome them. 



Why, firstly, do we find the ulti- 

 mate ground of all that exists in a 

 personal Being ? The reason lies 

 deep in our own nature. Man is 

 conscious of himself as the cause 

 of his own actions, and of the 

 changes which they bring about 

 in the world. Soon he becomes con- 

 scious of his fellow men, as acting 

 with a will and purpose resembling 

 his own. Thus, he inevitably ex- 

 plains the changes which he sees 

 in the world by will and purpose, 

 and, as he comes to recognize the 

 unity of the world, by the will and 

 purpose of the one God. No higher 

 explanation is open to him, since 

 personality is the highest fact he 

 knows. At first he may regard God 

 simply as a magnified man, but, 



3574 



as he rises above this, he does not 

 cease to believe that God is living 

 and personal. Though the nature 

 of God in its fullness must transcend 

 our understanding, He cannot be 

 lower in the scale of being than our- 

 selves. Though He may be more than 

 personal, He cannot be less. The 

 world demands an explanation ; 

 and our minds can only rest in the 

 thought of a Being with will and in- 

 telligence as the cause and ground 

 of all that experience reveals to us. 



Secondly, the world which we 

 seek to explain is a world of order 

 and of beauty, a world which 

 everywhere exhibits the adapta- 

 tion of means to ends, and in which 

 each end when attained serves as 

 a means to higher ends beyond. 

 Though there may seem to be 

 waste in nature and disorder in his- 

 tory, there can be no doubt that 

 both nature and history are elo- 

 quent witnesses to God's wisdom 

 and power, and in some degree to 

 the benevolence of His purpose. 

 But the world has issued in living 

 beings, and in the case of man, in 

 beings who recognize the difference 

 between right and wrong, and the 

 obligation, be the cost what it 

 may, to choose the higher of the 

 courses open to them. This again 

 brings a revelation of God. 



Though conscience, like reason, 

 has been a gradual growth in close 

 connexion with man's environ- 

 ment, a true explanation of the 

 world must take account of it. 

 Man himself is the " roof and 

 crown of things," and no explana- 

 tion of the world can be true which 

 ignores the ideals which have made 

 him what he has at his best come 

 to be. A world in which beauty, 

 truth, and goodness are felt to pos- 

 sess an infinite value is a world 

 which must minister to a moral 

 purpose, and the presence of our 

 highest ideals must be our own 

 sharing in the thought of God. It 

 is this which assures us that, 

 though God is the ground of all 

 that exists, He must not be re- 

 garded as the author of evil. 

 The Problem of Evil 



The problem of evil is the great- 

 est difficulty which belief in God 

 has to surmount, but the revelation 

 of God which conscience brings 

 shows us how to regard it. Evil is 

 no part of the creation ; it arises 

 from the misuse of what is good by 

 the freewill of man. The possi- 

 bility of evil is a necessity, if good 

 is to be freely chosen. A world in 

 which evil choice was impossible 

 would be a world without struggle 

 or sacrifice ; the existence of moral 

 evil in the world, like the existence 

 of pain, with which it is intimately 

 connected, has a place to fill in the 

 development of human eouls, and 



GOD 



this is the highest purpose of God 

 which we are able to trace. It is in 

 conflict with evil that the righteous- 

 ness and love characteristic of God 

 are developed also in men. In all 

 these ways, quite apart from the 

 special revelation which the Bible 

 records, God may be known by men 

 who open their eyes to the light. 



But though these paths of know- 

 ledge are open to all, they require a 

 certain character for their apprecia- 

 tion. It is the man who himself 

 acts with the most intelligent pur- 

 pose who will appreciate best the 

 intelligent purpose revealed in 

 nature and in history, and the man 

 most faithful to his ideals who will 

 best see the character of God re- 

 vealed in them. So it is that, though 

 the best non-Christian philosophy 

 has reached results very similar to 

 the Christian view of God, its 

 influence outside Christendom has 

 been but slight. Just because the 

 acceptance of moral evil has so 

 largely blinded us, some higher 

 revelation of God is required. 

 God and the Christ 



The character of these new 

 paths to knowledge has been 

 already seen. They are not alto- 

 gether different from the universal 

 proofs, but rather the same proofs 

 brought more closely home to us. 

 The history of Israel and of the 

 Church witnesses to God as all 

 history witnesses to Him, but more 

 clearly ; the ideals of the prophets 

 witness as all ideals witness, but 

 more fully. 



The wisdom and power of God 

 shine out more clearly in Christ 

 than anywhere else, and the 

 character of God in a way abso- 

 lutely unique, while sin and pain, 

 the great hindrances to faith, 

 though not fully explained, are 

 illuminated by the Cross. God is 

 seen taking them upon Himself, 

 and making them the path to the 

 highest good. Moreover, Christ, as 

 no one else, has led men to seek 

 after God, and enabled them to be 

 sure that they have found Him. 

 The crowning proof of God's exis- 

 tence and character is the multi- 

 tude of those who have come to 

 know God, and who trace to this 

 knowledge all that is best in them- 

 selves and most fruitful in their 

 life and activity. 



Bibliography. Theism and Anti- 

 Theistic Theories, 1879, Theism, 

 1877, R. Flint ; The Idea of God, 

 Martineau, 1887 ; Personality 

 .Human and Divine, J. R. Illing- 

 worth, 1894 ; Evolution of the Idea 

 of God, Grant Allen, 1897 ; Christian 

 View of God and the World, J. Orr, 

 8th eel. 1907 ; The Christian Doctrine 

 of God, Clarke, 1909 ; The Develop- 

 ment of Religion, King, 1910: The 

 Christian Conception of God, W. F. 

 Adeney, 1912. 



