226 THE REV. A. E. WHATELY, M.A., D.D., ON 



more satisfying Evolutionism appears, than the old Paleyan, or 

 Thomasian, position. The latter bids us regard the Almighty as 

 the supreme Mechanic. So far, quite allowably ; for if skilful 

 mechanism is an element in perfection, and if all perfections are 

 summed up in God, then we must count it among His attributes. 

 But if we rest in such a conception we place ourselves at a great 

 disadvantage in face of Modern Thought — the Modern Thought, 

 I mean, not only that is around us, but that stirs, whether we 

 will or no, in our own breasts, A mechanic is alien from his 

 material : he is not, except in a very relative sense, a creator. 

 We have to pass beyond mechanism to that view of a God in 

 Whom His universe lives and moves and has its being, the 

 Creator Whose power dwells in the deepest roots of the being 

 of His creatures — that modern view of God which so transcends 

 mechanism that it almost seems to contradict it. 



Most assuredly this revised Teleology, as I have just stated it^ 

 is itself one-sided. But it is at least philosophical, and it makes 

 an appeal to the sense of continuity, the demand for an organically 

 unified world of Thouoht and Beincr, from which we shall never 

 escape. 



We must, therefore, restate our doctrine of the Being and 

 Attributes of God, so as to settle its relations with Modern 

 Thought. A mere polemic against Modernism as such would 

 at least be a confession that the old defences, if not the old 

 expositions, are not sufficient. But a mere polemic is futile. 

 It places us between the horns of a dilemma. If our polemic is 

 unsympathetic, it cannot possibly show that Modernism does 

 not meet deep-lying needs of our nature and answer to a really 

 progressive movement of human mind — cannot show this 

 laecause we do not try to penetrate into its true 

 inwardness and appreciate its ideals. On the other hand, if 

 sympathetic, it becomes in spirit modern itself — that is to say, 

 liberal — and aims to adjust the old and the new together. But 

 then it is practically transformed from mere polemic. In 

 adjusting the old to the new, intelligently and adequately, it 

 cannot but also adjust the new to the old. This need not 

 mean mere compromise. True Evangelical Liberalism seeks, 

 under the wholesome pressure of new ideas, not to tamper with 

 the definiteness of its faith in a personal God and an historic 

 revelation, but to find and intensify the focus of its faith. If it 

 discards some old formulas, that is not because the enemy has 

 captured outposts, but because an invigorated vitality has of 

 itself shed the encumbrances. 



We must, then, in this sense, restate our doctrine of God : 



