:h. 111,1 COSMIC THEISM. 429 



evident that the law of gravitation is but an expression of a 

 particular mode of Divine action. And what is thus true 

 of one law is true of all laws. The Anthropomorphist is 

 naturally alarmed by the continual detection of new uniformi- 

 ties, and the discovery of order where before there seemed 

 to be disorder ; because his conception of Divine action has 

 been historically derived from the superficial contrast be- 

 tween the seemingly irregular action of will and the more- 

 obviously regular action of less complex phenomena. The 

 Cosmist, on the other hand, in whose mind Divine action is 

 identified with orderly action, and to whom a really irregular 

 phenomenon would seem like the manifestation of some 

 order-hating Ahriman, foresees in every possible extension 

 of knowledge a fresh confirmation of his faith in God, and 

 thus recognizes no antagonism between our duty as inquirers 

 and our duty as worshippers. He will admit no such in- 

 herent and incurable viciousness in the constitution of things 

 as is postulated by the anthropomorphic hypothesis. To him 

 no part of the world is godless. He does not rest content 

 with the conception of " an absentee God, sitting idle, ever 

 since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his universe, 

 and ' seeing it go ; ' " for he has learned, with Carlyle, " that 

 this fair universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, 

 is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through 

 every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every 

 living soul, the glory of a present God still beams." * 



From the anthropomorphic point of view it will quite 

 naturally be urged in objection, that this apparently-desirable 

 result is reached through the degradation of Deity from an 

 "intelligent personality" into a "blind force," and is theie- 

 fore in reality an undesirable and perhaps even quasi-atheistic 

 result. To the theologian the stripping-off the anthropomor- 

 phic vestments with which men have sought to render the 

 Infinite representable in imagination, always means the 

 ^ Sartor Besartua, bk. ii chap, vii ; bk. iii. chap. Vvx. 



