THE VISTBIF IS ONLY ITS SHADOW. 



73 



illusion of time " coupled with his doctrine of the present existence 

 of the future (with its inevitable corrollary the present existence 

 of the past) ; and we are clearly left with a God who not only 

 cheats us by an "illusion of evil" into thinking that sin is real, 

 but who proceeds to play on our disordered nerves with the 

 obviously absurd demand, "God requireth that which is past." 



In this system, where " Space is an omnipresent intangible 

 nothing, outside which nothing that has existence can be even 

 thought to exist," in this "new era of Religion and Philosophy " 

 where " Religion and Science are only provisional," what terms are 

 to be used in speaking of the Word who was God, in the beginning 

 with God, becoming flesh and dwelling among us ? In what terms, 

 " the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world " ? 



Col. Harry Biddulph, C.M.G., writes: — With much of the 

 general theme of Mr. Klein's paper one is in agreement, but with 

 important reservations ; that the visible is but an exponent of 

 the Invisible, probably most of us will assent to ; in Heb. xi. , 3, 

 we read, " through faith we understand that the worlds were 

 framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not 

 made of things which do appear " ; or in other words, the visible 

 was made of the invisible. Matter appears to be the expression 

 of energy under varying conditions, and the investigation of radio- 

 active matter, and of the ultimate composition of the atom, seems 

 to confirm this view. This however does not imply that the 

 Visible is unreal, or only "make believe," as the lecturer appears 

 to imply on page 55. Within its limits the Visible is real and true. 

 It is no "make believe" when a murderer, grasping a visible 

 and material knife, plunges it into the visible and material body 

 of a fellow man, and sends his invisible spirit unsummoned to His 

 Maker. The visible and the invisible, spirit, soul and body, are 

 mysteriously linked together. In the future world too, there 

 will be much that is material and visible, described under the 

 phrase, "a new heaven and a new earth," which precludes the 

 idea of an existence and state consisting of invisible forces only : 

 in fact the Deity Himself has taken into eternal union with 

 Himself man's body in the person of Jesus Christ. 



One must enter also a decided protest against the phrase on 

 page 68, " our real spiritual being, the holy son of God growing 

 up within us." The holy son of God is one, the Lord Christ Jesus, 

 none other can claim that title. 



Further on page 69, the story in Genesis ii. and iii., seems to 

 be referred to as having had introduced into it without authority, 

 " Adam and Eve and the apple to account for the paradoxical 

 existence of evil, etc." 



It is true, as the lecturer reminds us, that " when God looked 

 upon everything that He had made, behold it was very good." 

 The term "perfect" is carefully avoided; that which is merely 



