Now why should not all these various avenues be filled with the knowledge of God, thus effecting the displacement of a vast throng of mean and loathsome influences which would otherwise run riot there?
Surely that must be a singular process of reasoning by which the Most High is altogether banished from these avenues into which it is alleged He cannot possibly condescend to enter. We are confident there is some misapprehension here; let us therefore try to point out its probable nature.
We have assumed that a study of creation leads us up to some conception of God—that we are driven by the faculties which He has given us to acknowledge the existence of a Paramount Power, and inasmuch as scientific thought leads us to regard The Universe as both infinite and eternal, so are we driven to regard this Power which underlies all phenomena as infinite and eternal also.
This at least appears to us to be the conclusion to which we are driven if we endeavour to reduce mental confusion to a minimum. It is, however, manifestly absurd to imagine that by means of this process we can ever comprehend the essential nature of God. We can no more comprehend His essential nature by this means than we can the essential nature of matter or of life. But surely we can judge of His character by the various modes in which He influences us, and indeed all scientific generalisations—even the simple conclusion that the sun will rise to-morrow—are in a sense expressions of our faith in the unchanging character of God. Now if we examine the process by which we have obtained this conception of God it will be seen that we start with a single intellectual being who is applying himself to a scientific study of the works of nature. The idea of our neighbour does not enter into it, and we agree to regard ourselves as intellectual rather than as moral or social beings. The result is that having voluntarily confined our argument to one channel, we obtain a knowledge of God’s character—that is to say, of His manifested relations towards us—which is necessarily incomplete. But are we therefore entitled to say:—Because we obtain a very imperfect conception of God by this method, we will not believe there is any other method by which this conception may be rendered more complete?
Sound argument, it appears to us, leads the other way altogether. For if we assume that the knowledge of God derived from one source is incomplete, ought we not to try whether it can be supplemented by knowledge derived from other sources? Undoubtedly if other sources furnish, or seem to furnish, conceptions of God which are fundamentally inconsistent with that which we have derived through the scientific channel, we are entitled to sit in intellectual judgment upon them until the source of confusion is in some way removed.
But does this inconsistency as a matter of fact exist? We do not think it does. The statements in the New Testament scriptures regarding God are necessarily mysterious, but mystery can be no test of their truth or falsehood, inasmuch as it must in such regions be the almost inevitable accompaniment of truth.
The question is not whether they are mysterious, but whether they are consistent with themselves, and with the knowledge we derive from other sources. We therefore devote considerable portions of this volume to a proof that the conception of God which the majority of Christians derive from the New Testament is in no way inconsistent with that deduced from scientific principles.
Meanwhile, and in conclusion, we must be allowed to express our conviction that much evil has been wrought by a certain class of sincere and well-meaning men in the various churches of Christ. By dint of contemplating lofty truths from one point of view, and only one, and by dint of developing excessively, and in one direction only, those analogies by which the mysterious has been rendered thinkable, they have produced a result for which they themselves are mainly to blame. With a strange reversal of the process by which Satan transforms himself into an Angel of Light, we have the noble, the beautiful, and the true presented to us by these men in a form which is fit only to inspire aversion or to create disgust.
It is in such terms that we reply to those of our critics, on the one hand, who attack us for adopting what they call a narrow and gloomy theology; and to those, on the other hand, who regard as dangerous the method of discussion we have pursued. We have tried honestly to view things with two eyes,—the eye of knowledge and the eye of faith: first with one, then with the other, finally with both. To what extent we have succeeded is, after all, a matter of minor importance if only the lawfulness of this mode of vision be ultimately allowed. And just as we have a better appretiation of the form and distance of natural objects when we view them with both our physical eyes, so, we venture to think, must it prove with the truths of which we now speak.