204 THE LIGHT OF DAT 



times and refuses to open at others. Undoubtedly 

 a man has or has not a capacity for great and high 

 thoughts. How the thoughts arise is as great a 

 mystery to him as to another. In our speech of to- 

 day we do not ascribe these things to God — to any 

 objective agency or power external to ourselves ; it 

 is a purely subjective phenomenon, as much so as 

 the seeing of visions or the dreaming of dreams. 

 Mohammed thought he saw and talked with Gabriel 

 and once with God ; St. Paul believed he heard a 

 voice and saw a light from heaven : we call these 

 things mental hallucinations, the man's own con- 

 science or fears or hopes or thoughts seen externally ; 

 but they were as real to them as any outward object. 

 All that lies back of our conscious powers, all the 

 not me, the pious soul calls God. And indeed how 

 little we are in and of ourselves. Look at yonder 

 water wheel doing its work. All the not me in that 

 case is the water that flows, and gravity that makes 

 it flow, and without them the wheel is nothing. In 

 our own case we draw quite as largely upon the uni- 

 versal, upon that which is not ourselves. Call all 

 the not me God and we have some idea of the close- 

 ness and immanence of God to the old Hebrew pro- 

 phet. Science shows all this not me to be imper- 

 sonal force ; it shows how much of it is race or 

 family or climate or environment or physiology 

 or geology; how the mind itself is a part of the 

 body ; how the conscience itself arose, how the 

 church, the state, and all institutions. A certain 

 order of minds stamps this force with personality. 



