Not Less but more than Person.

The question may be put in your thought—"Is this God of science, admitting that science is indeed tending towards the recognition of God, to be regarded as Person, or otherwise?"

A difficult question. Yet the difficulty is chiefly one of language. I find the word person so differently used that it involves one in misapprehension either to affirm or deny that God is personal. For this reason I hesitate to use the word at all with reference to him. In a strictly philosophical use of it, or at least in my own use of it, I should answer the question affirmatively; for I find the essence of personality, not in limitation, whether physical or mental, but rather in intelligence. Dr. Mansel well says:—"Personal, conscious existence, limited though[unclear: And] page 21 man can dream, for it is that by which all existence is revealed to him; it is grander than the grandest object which man can know, for it is that which knows, not that which is known." [Limits of Religious Thought, p. 104.]

Yet if I am asked whether I believe in a Divine centre of intelligence, I should answer no. The intelligence of Nature cannot be centralized or localized; it is boundless. Infinite Mind and finite minds—I would never lose sight of that vital distinction, nor sutler either term to elude my thought. If I read science aright, both terms are equally real; and to ignore either is to destroy the grand simplicity, the profound truthfulness, of the idea of God to which the world is tending. We cannot rudely sever Man from Nature; for Man is a part of Nature, and all that is in him is in Nature too. It is not a rational question whether intelligence is found in Nature,—or conscience, or love; for these are all in Man, and if Man is not in Nature, where is he? But the question is this—is all the intelligence in Nature concentrated in Man? There are many who affirm this; but I have tried to-day to show that science is learning to recognize a universal Intelligence in Nature of which the most resplendent souls of men are but tiny sparks. "All science," says Baden Powell, "is but the partial reflection, in the reason of man, of the great all-pervading reason of the universe. And thus the unity of science is the reflection of the unity of Nature, and of the unity of that supreme reason and intelligence which pervades and rules over Nature, and from whence all reason and all science is derived." The All is conscious as the All; the part is conscious as the part; and between the two exists the most real of all relations. It is to me no empty figure of speech to breathe the words—"O Thou!" Nor can I believe that they are launched forth into unresponsive vacuity. If it be truthful to say thou only to a person, then do I believe in a personal God. Yet the thought of personality is to me so inadequate that, I confess, the word grows distasteful to me as applied to him. The utmost that we know of personal being is so trivial when we speak of Being itself, that I can find no statement so satisfying as this—God is not Less, but Infinitely Moke, than Person.

It is but just, when you hear one deny the personality of God, to ask for which reason he denies it,— page 22 whether he believes God to be lower, or higher, than himself.

To me the thought grows continually richer and more fruitful that the very highest manifestations of humanity, even thought, conscience, will, and love itself, are to God what the merest muscular contractions or unconscious organic processes are to us,—that modes of being infinitely above these pertain to him. It was a great insight of Spinoza that thought and extension, the Divine attributes to which he reduced all others known to man, should be reckoned as only two out of an infinite number of attributes, otherwise unrevealed. Modes of being as much higher than thought or will or love as these are higher than the mere cohesion that holds the molecules of a stone together, must belong to the infinity of God. Yet these human powers must be, not reversed or extinguished, but realized in him in absolute plenitude. Impossible as it is to draw a line between the Infinite and the finite consciousness, the truth of Nature is marred and broken if either is ignored—if either the Many is sacrificed to the One or the One to the Many. Science, which aims ever to do justice to both, must, I believe, come ever to a fuller and fuller recognition of them both in our human thought.

Born out of a fathomless mystery, surrounded and engulfed in mystery all our days, returning to a mystery like that whence we came, the great "thought of God is a flash of light in thick darkness. The mystery of Nature is not evaded by atheism, which only shuts its eyes to what theism but dimly sees. In the silence of lonely thought, in the hard experiences of life, it is to some of us a renewal of strength to recognize that there is that in Nature which commands the reverence and fealty even of moral being. Our own innermost life is shared with the All. Nature is no stepmother to her children. Whispers and hints of the love she bears us reach our hearts in our own best aspirations and endeavors. Dreams and visions of the poet, true to the soul as are the rigorous demonstrations of science to the intellect, awaken a consciousness of the unity between our own restricted life and the Universal Life that overlaps it all. Well did the ancients speak of the Earth as "Mother." Between the heart of Nature and the heart of Man is a unity so profound that the mere thought of it is music of sweetness unsurpassed. page 23 The song is of a Love feebly shadowed forth by human ties,—of a oneness infinitely higher even "than that of love,—and of a destiny too vast ever to be revealed in advance of the great reality. Science will never seal up the fountain-head of this inward melody, but rather open new channels for its blessedness through the whole mind of man. I care nothing for the name of the great Eternal Fact of Being. Call it Nature, or God, or what you will; it is, and will be forever, the ultimate goal of all that is best in humanity. It is the study of this infinite Reality, not "unknowable" but truly known to the extent of our knowledge of universal Nature, that gives origin to the Idea of God; and perish what may from the world's perfected thought, I believe that this Idea of God, the grandest product of the human brain, will survive forever.