WHY PLURALISM REQUIRES A GOD. 369 



helpless playthings of an infinite and infamous 

 Deity, the victims of a senseless tyranny of an 

 Omnipotence we can neither resist nor assist, pur- 

 posely condemned to some idle task- work or equally 

 unmeaning idleness in a purposeless world, that 

 could achieve nothing the Infinite might not have 

 achieved without our sufierinofs and without our 

 sorrows. We are now ourselves the subjects of the 

 world's redemption ; we can ourselves assist in our 

 own salvation ; we can ourselves co-operate with 

 God in hastening the achievement of the world- 

 process, co-operate in the sweet assurance that no 

 effort will be rejected as too petty or too vain, that 

 no struggle will lack divine support. It is beyond 

 the scope of an essay like this to draw out in detail 

 the practical consequences of theoretic principles, 

 and to proceed to the exhortations of practical re- 

 ligion, but it is evident that it would, be difficult 

 indeed to imagine a creed more apt than this to 

 fortify the best elements in the human soul, or to 

 appeal more strongly to all the higher instincts of 

 our nature. 



§ 29. But perhaps it may be asked, if God is not 

 identical with Nature, and if the interacting Many 

 are the ultimate nature of things, why need we go 

 beyond the phenomenal Many at all, and why com- 

 plicate our scheme of things by a reference to a 

 transcendent God and ultimate realities ? Granted 

 that the sum of things cannot fitly be called God, 

 why do we require a God besides ? Why should 

 our Pluralism be theistic ? Should we not do just 

 as well by regarding the world as it appears as the 

 world of ultimate reality, composed of interacting 

 material beings, which can admit of no God that is 

 not like it phenomenal ? 



R.ofS. j3 B 



