Would the absence of man cripple God?
What could an infinite God care for such a little speck?
Is not socialism the best religion there is?
1. What is man?
We do not fully know "what" and "where" God is until we know what man is, and how God and man are working through each other. Our knowledge of God grows with our knowledge of man. We can understand neither without knowing both. At every stage of the discussion our subject is made complex by the intertwining of the human and the Divine. Hence, this chapter—while introducing man—takes us deeper into the life of God.
Man does not have a soul. Neither does the sun set. Though we know better, yet for convenience, we continue to speak of the sun as setting. For the same reason we still say that man has a soul when we mean that he is a soul. Soul is person, body is instrument. The instrument does not have the person, the person has the instrument. The soul is the child of God. How strangely, therefore, it would sound to ask: Does a man have a child of God? The reverse question, however, is perfectly fitting: Does a child of God have a body?
Man is a spirit, a soul, or a person. All men are alike in that which constitutes them personalities, or self-conscious wills. It is in their individuality that men differ. In the first place, some are more developed than others; and then they have different tastes, different knowledge, different temperaments, and different occupations. This diversity of individuality clearly distinguishes one man from another, and at the same time greatly enriches society.
Like his Father, man is a loving intelligent will. Like Him, too, he is always silent and invisible, save as his instruments express his thought and wish in time and space. So far, Father and child should be defined in the same terms; for however they may differ in other respects, they are alike in being self-conscious. If either is below self-conscious will, he is something less than a person. Though man, as we find him, is not always so very loving, nor so very intelligent, yet that is what he is in his best estate. So far as we can understand, the sinless man soul lifted to the infinite power would be the same as God. This spiritual definition does not imply that either God or man exists, or could exist, without form and outward expression.
2. Who is man?