APPENDIX B 403 



in a real absolutely perfect Person, transcendent of every 

 other, immanent in none, except by the presence eternally 

 of his Image, or Ideal, before each mind; a real Being, not 

 an Ideal simply; complete in Holiness, Justice, and Love, 

 changelessly attentive to every other mind, rationally sym- 

 pathetic with all its experiences, and bent on its spiritual 

 success ; its inexorable Judge, but also its eternal Inspirer, 

 by his omnipresent reality and his ever-present Image in the 

 conscience. 



The absence of objective reality from such an ideal Being, 

 its reduction to a subjective ideal simply, as some modern 

 philosophers caught in an agnostic snare have proposed, 

 would strip moral life of the main support for its struggle 

 against wrong. Amid the manifold disappointments and 

 discouragements of the long battle with defect and wrong, 

 the merely subjective ideal would tend to fade out, to decline 

 both in vividness and in character, and so cease to attract 

 and adequately guide effort. The only adequate support — 

 and it is adequate — is the reality of God, the heavenly 

 Judge, the unfailing Beholder and Sympathiser, To him, 

 the one Absolute Conscience, in every moral disaster our 

 conscience turns for assured refuge and certain renewal of 

 moral courage ami strength. That is the real act and infal- 

 lible function of Prayer. 



I think it may justly be said that the new Harmonic Plu- 

 ralism furnishes the only valid proofs for the reality of such 

 a Being. What these proofs are, I must again spare space 

 by avoiding here to recite. For one form they take, let me 

 again refer to the preceding volume, in its concluding essay, 

 and also, in a somewhat simpler expression, in its fifth. I 

 would point out the fact, however, that all other systems pro- 

 fessedly theistic either draw their intended proofs for the 

 being of God from naturalistic considerations that must fall 

 short of all attributes properly divine, while at the same time 

 unavoidably staining the image of the Most Pligh with direct 



