But the inference is not unfair that the world of matter is to a considerable degree, and perhaps altogether, a world of man's own creation. That is to say, while God is doing one thing with it, the human mind understands another. For the human point of view to develop and develop and develop till it becomes identical with God's is perhaps the whole purpose of existence.
IV
To me personally it was no small help in overcoming fear when I saw the purpose of existence as expressed in the single word, Growth. That, at least, is a legitimate inference to draw from the history of life on this planet. Assuming that the universe contains an intelligible design of any sort, and that life on this planet is part of it, a vast development going on eternally toward complete understanding of Infinite Right and Happiness would give us some explanation of the mystery of our being here. Beginning, for reasons at which we can only guess, far away from that understanding, we are forever approaching it, with forever the joy of something new to master or to learn. New perceptions, new comprehensions, new insights gained, new victories, even little victories, won, constitute, I think, our treasures laid up in that heaven where neither moth nor wear-and-tear destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Where this treasure is, there, naturally enough, our hearts will be also. Looking back over the ages since the life-principle first glided into our planet waters—how it did so is as yet part of our unsolved mystery—what we chiefly see is a great surging of the living thing upward and upward toward that Highest Universal to which we give the name of God.
V
That is a point which we do not sufficiently seize—that God is not revealed to us by one avenue of truth alone, but by all the avenues of truth working together. With our tendency to keep the Universal in a special compartment of life we see Him as making Himself known through a line of teachers culminating in a Church or a complex of churches; and we rarely think of Him as making Himself known in any other way. To change the figure, He trickles to us like a brook instead of bathing us round and round like light or air.
But all good things must express the Universal; and all discovery of truth, whether by religion, science, philosophy, or imaginative art, must be discovery in God. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are discoveries in God, but so are the advances in knowledge made by Plato, Aristotle, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Edison. He shows Himself through Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and St. Paul, but also through Homer, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Darwin, George Eliot, William James, and Henry Irving. I take the names at random as illustrating different branches of endeavour, and if I use only great ones it is not that the lesser are excluded. No one department of human effort is specially His, or is His special expression. The Church cannot be so more than the stage, or music more than philosophy. His Holy Spirit can be no more outpoured on the bishop or the elder for his work than on the inventor or the scientist for his work. I say so not to minimise the outpouring on the bishop or the elder, but to magnify that on everyone working for progress. This, I take it, is what St. John means when he says, "God does not give the Spirit with limitations." He who always gives all to all His children cannot give more.
When our Lord restores sight to a blind man, or Peter and John cause a lame man to walk, we see manifestations of God; but we see equal manifestations of God when one man gives us the telephone, another the motor-car, and another wireless telegraphy. Whatever declares His power declares Him; and whatever declares Him is a means by which we press upward to the perception of His loving almightiness. The advance may be irregular but it is advance; and all advance is advance toward Him.
VI
That is to say, we are rising above a conception of life in which matter is our master; and yet we are rising above it slowly. This is my chief point here, because by understanding it we see why we still suffer from material afflictions. We have overcome some of them, but only some of them. It is a question of racial development. As we glance backward we see how much of the way we have covered; as we look round on our present conditions we see how much there is still to be achieved.
To diminish fear we should have it, I think, clearly before us that the human race has done as yet only part of its work, and put us in possession of only part of the resources which will one day belong to us. If we could compare ourselves with our ancestors in the days, let us say, of Christopher Columbus or William the Conqueror we should seem in relation to them like children of a higher phase of creation. If we could compare ourselves with our descendants of five hundred or a thousand years hence we should probably be amazed at our present futility and grossness. Our ancestors in the Middle Ages could do certain great things, as we, too, can do certain great things; but in general access to the Universal Storehouse which is God we have made progress in ways unknown to them, as our children will make such progress after us.