One does not have to believe in the same kind of a god as did the seers and singers of long ago in order to obtain the spiritual values which they found in the thought of his nearness to them. David and Browning, Isaiah and Whittier, with all the centuries between them, still come to the same thought—we know that Thou art near.
Through all ages and in all peoples this sense of that which is other than ourselves, from which our highest good comes, towards which our ideals and aspirations strain, the ultimate force of our being, this feeling after the infinite is universal. It is the essential and determinative mark of every religion.
When those singers of long ago tried to express their sense of the infinite life and love they used words which make it appear that they thought only of some being larger, mightier, wiser than themselves, yet, after all, like themselves, a great man deified because He was great. Perhaps that really was their conception; still, we use precisely the same language, even though our ideas are entirely different.
It makes relatively little difference what their conceptions were, so far as ours are concerned. Their words are not accurate, detailed pen pictures of some being who can be described or photographed. No man has seen the infinite at any time. The great thing is that ever and everywhere men find themselves with a hunger after this sublime unseen.
One may use terms of personality and another terms of power; to one the infinite may be but a local deity; to another, that which embraces all spirit and being, and each may have all of the divine his heart is capable of containing. Here none may dogmatize for others.
Religion does not depend on uniformity of conceptions of the divine. It depends more upon universality of consciousness of the infinite and openness of mind and life to whatever we may feel and know, from any source or through any means whatsoever, of that life or energy which lies back of all life and energy, of that love and light which cheer and lighten every son of man.
Definitions determine nothing, but they do work great damage when minds capable of being stereotyped to them agree to impose those definitions on their fellows as final, authoritative, and essential to their welfare. The divine is neither infinite nor sublime when you can say, Here are His lineaments and He has no other likeness or appearance.
To the question, How shall we think of the divine? there can be but one answer—in higher, wider, deeper, nobler, purer ways than yesterday. The conception must be a developing one. A man's spiritual capacities develop as his inner vision becomes more keen. The soul takes wider flight, and in our deep thoughts we discover that which language cannot compass.
There are those who think they must be atheists because they cannot believe in the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Old Testament—a limited personality. But the genuine atheists are more likely to be those who are without a sense of the divine, because they have taken definitions and descriptions prepared by others instead of seeking truth for themselves.
We are but poor learners of those ancient teachers if we have not discovered that their greatest lesson to us is not truth, as they had found it, but the blessing of the persistent search after truth. To cherish as final past presentations of truth is to be false to its present possibilities.