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Spiritual Personality.

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is nothing more contrary to the idea of perfection, than that it should develop; yet this is the Pantheistic illusion. Pantheists liken God to the activities of the universe; make Him a being who changes, who develops, and consequently is infinitely short of perfection. Nor is that all: their God, without the world, is incomplete; a God-wanting essence, a power— without effect, a cause-without activity, wisdom-without purpose, love-without object; such a god, without the world, is no God.

Our God, the Personal God, is the Principle, the Spirit, the Universal, who inhabits heaven, earth, infinity, and eternity; He is not, in creating, as a Michael Angelo drawing forth Moses from a block of granite; He is not, in His own life, as a grain of wheat germinating; not as an oak extending its branches; but with profounder energy and more sublime activity than matter can exhibit, or we conceive, He exists. and creates. He must not be conceived of as under the necessity of acting from within or without Himself; such conceptions are human and finite, have their limits in space, in time: God is Infinite, Eternal, Perfect. God is self-sufficient and complete, but the world is in course of development. God is in eternity-as the Eternal; the world is in time—as the temporal. The moments of time do not compose eternity; time is neither within nor without it; and, yet, eternity is the reason of its being. In like manner, the world which is incomplete-but becomes complete, is not strictly either within or without Him-the Eternally Complete; yet, He is the reason, cause, founder of it. The relation is unique, incomparable, mysterious, but a relation certain and demonstrated. Whatsoever is gross in words must be laid aside and the inner spirit only regarded: God, in eternity, eternally sees time, space, the world. In time, He sees the expression of His eternity; in space, the expression of His Infinity; in the world, the expression of the communicable powers of His Infinite Being. Our happiness consists not, nor will it ever, of full enjoyment-nothing further to know, no more to desire continual progress will find new pleasures, and ever discover new perfections in the Infinite and Eternal.

The Studies of Divine Operation in the various creative

Works of the Days, evidenced the reality, definiteness, comprehensiveness, simplicity and complexity of the Scripture narrative. In the Study, "Variety in Nature," a view was given of the endless versatility in Nature: Law is not bound with links of Fate, but beautiful in her freedom. In the Study of "The Invisible Universe," worlds were regarded as a vast procession from the unseen to the seen; to return in due order from the House of Time to the Eternal Dominion. By Follies of the Wise, we learn that there is a wisdom of the world which by its ignorance of God is proved to be folly. The argument, in all the Studies, has been variably and variously conducted; the inquiry unrestrainedly progressed along many lines of thought, that through intelligent intercourse with ourselves and nature we might see by reason, by conscience, by science, that the Bible, in giving a true account of creation, proves itself to be the Book of God: not an evolution-as a product of unaided human intellect; but a Revelation, by Divine Inspiration to man, of things wholly unknown by man.

We consider, from the whole argument, that our spirit and its laws of thought, our soul and its inspirations, our heart and its wants, testify that the Divine existence, giving reality to the Universe, bestows moral and spiritual personality on man. We are not things, but persons. Godless, we are an inexplicable enigma: possess neither mission on earth, nor hope in Heaven. Godly, we rank as chiefs on earth, and are free; being free, we are responsible. Regarding natural laws as ordinances of God, we distinguish concerning these ordinances: some we obey, some we resist; and our disciplined freedom seems to be a gleam of some more glorious Freedom, some greater Reality.

"The Kingdom of God," our present study, has several times and meanings allotted to it: 1. The Gospel period; 2. The kingdom for which we pray-"Thy Kingdom Come;" 3. The kingdom of Glory. Not in any of these senses, but in the large meaning of God's Providence and Spiritual Rule amongst men, is it now to be considered. Our investigation, therefore, is as to Religion in the world generally, and will aim at the

Natural Philosophy of Religion.

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establishment of sound knowledge concerning our Christian Faith according to which Faith we believe that God is distinct from the world, is a living God, possessing His Own life; a God to be worshipped, the Creator.

Religion and History possess a kind of organic existence, which, when understood, enables us to explain, by general laws, many past and present phenomena of human life. We can calculate and enumerate special faults habits and vices of mixed communities; and see the agreement of immense multitudes as to traditions and beliefs, "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est," extending from remotest periods to present time; from primitive culture until the high Faith of Christianity stands complete in doctrines, rites and ceremonies. It is thought that we can trace the natural growth of Faith in the world; as if it were, at first, of human origination; and, at last, a product of human culture. It is asserted that evidence as to the ancient phases of religious consciousness; evidence concerning the nature meaning and practice of rites and ceremonies; evidence of their transmission, expansion, restriction, and modification; will give a natural and human explanation of the most sacred and high powers of religion.

The fault, or weak part in the Natural Philosophy of Religion, is that as the culture of science and art, of history and philosophy, displays a world-long evolution of civilisations wrought out wholly by men in their ascent toward highest development; the same process is assumed as to religion, but the great fact of the Supernatural, on which all religion rests, and without which all religion is vain, is either denied or persistently ignored. Ignored despite the truth that, from earliest days till now, the universal consciousness, conscience and intelligence of mankind, accepted and accept the Supernatural. Ignored despite the fact that, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Zoroastrism, and all other Faiths down to lowest brutal Fetichism, claim Divinity in their origin and continuance.

The folly of ignoring the miraculous becomes more evident when we learn-"the relation of savagery to barbarism and semi-civilisation lies almost wholly in præ-historic or extra

1

historic regions. . . Direct history hardly tells anything of the changes of savage culture. . . . Perhaps no account of the course of culture in its lower stages can satisfy stringent criticism." The philosophy of religion, which professes to account for the origin, nature and development of religion, is confessedly ignorant of that origin, and can trace the course only a little way back. Moreover, Mr. Tylor says " Separation of intelligence from virtue, which accounts for so much of the wrong-doing of mankind, is continually seen to happen in the great movements of civilisation." He adds-" ethno

graphers consider the rude life of primæval man under favourable conditions to have been, in its measure, a good and happy life."3 Knowing, further, the fact thus expressed by Bishop Butler-"Mankind are for placing the stress of their religion anywhere rather than in virtue;" it seems, if the doctrine or philosophy of a natural evolution of religion be true, that uncultured ancient men devised supernatural restraints on vice and encouragements to virtue; but that cultured men, "in the great movements of civilisation," through unbelief discard those supernatural restraints and separate intelligence from virtue. The conclusion is irresistible-Religion, far from being an evolution by advancing intelligence, is that very thing which secularism, through dislike of restraint, sets itself to destroy.

This dethroning of virtue, banishing of the supernatural, and establishing the throne of mechanical or animal reason apart from those high emotional faculties which are the essence of humanity, has brought to trial the long and intricate world-history of right and wrong. In this trial secularism, while utterly refusing the supernatural, and undertaking accurately to formulate all knowledge, has been forced to own the remarkable fact that all natural phenomena rest on the transcendental-on the unknown. The tools that opponents of the Supernatural perverted into weapons of destruction are being restored to their real use: to clear, trim and adjust appropriate thoughts and facts for that contentment of religious

1 "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 35: Edward B. Tylor.
2" Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 25.
"Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 27.

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emotion and satisfaction of intelligence which are the great want of our day.

Some of the facts and processes of thought lie distant from us in time, as the stars are distant from us in space, but the laws of mind, like those of the physical universe, are not bounded by the direct observation of our senses. History, philosophy, science, are bringing to view factors of natural philosophy as foundations of positive morality—morality resting on a consciousness of the Supreme. Hence, scientific thought which, as by a polarising force, separated the natural from the supernatural to the utmost limits of repulsion, now recognises that-as in material things, so in spiritual-the ultimate cause is the Unknown, the Divine. The end of things, the beginning of things, are hidden in impenetrable mystery. We are naturally incapable of understanding the nonentity out of which they were drawn and equally unable to comprehend the infinity into which they are translated. Proceed to the verification of this.

The order in which various stages of doctrine and rite succeed one another in the history of religion, and the fact that most of those doctrines and rites are not products of the particular systems sanctioning them, but results of previous systems, carry back all knowledge of religion, as universal, to that early stage which is præ-historic or extra-historic. Hence, religious feeling springs from that universal desire of the human race to establish a relationship between itself and those super-human and supernatural powers upon whose will the course of nature and the well-being of men are felt to be dependent. This fact roots religion in the beginning of the life of our race, in the deepest recesses and essential elements of our nature, and clothes it with the highest authority which antiquity, reverence and reason can afford.

The various symbols with which this consciousness may clothe itself, the external practices and forms of words, may change and die; but among all the superficial differences are a few certain unchangeable and undying truths. Only three need to be mentioned :

I. The conviction of a Divine and Supernatural Power is always accompanied by an attempted twofold intercourse

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