2o8 Spiritual Evolution of Society 



of men more or less from the dawn of history. All the 

 races, even the most ignorant, have a belief in the 

 supernatural. The earliest recorded conception was 

 anthropomorphic : " God walked in the garden in the 

 cool of the day." As man progressed in intelligence 

 God became the Moral Governor of the Universe. He 

 became " the Eternal not ourselves, who maketh for 

 righteousness." With the advent of Jesus He became 

 the " Father of Men, the God of Love." Wordsworth 

 has given beautiful expression to the idea of the Im- 

 manence of the Divine : 



" I have felt 

 A Presence, that disturbs me with the joy 

 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 

 Of something far more deeply interfused, 

 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 

 And the round ocean, and the living air, 

 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man 

 A motion and a spirit that impels 

 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

 And rolls through all things." 



It is only by means of the Immanence of the Divine 

 that such a conception as this is possible. 



I hope we may be pardoned if in bringing this chapter 

 to a conclusion we give the lines of Matthew Arnold to 

 his father, written in Rugby Chapel, as a great and 

 striking example of the sweet influence of Christian 

 teaching upon one noble soul, whose conception of life 

 was duty, conjoined with " sweet reasonableness " and 

 love of his fellow-men : 



" If in the paths of the world 

 Stones might have wounded thy feet ; 

 Toil, dejection, have tried 

 Thy spirit — of that we saw 

 Nothing — to us thou wert still 

 Cheerful and helpful and firm. 



