I saw, too, that from a certain point of view the stand of the agnostic is a right one. We cannot know G.o.d in the sense of knowing His being or His "Personality," any more than we can know the essence of the life-principle. Just as we know the life-principle only from what it does, so we know G.o.d only from such manifestations of Himself as reach our observation. Everything else is inference. Because we see something of His goodness we infer that He is good; because we experience something of His love we infer that He is loving; because we behold something of His power we infer that He is almighty. It is first of all a matter of drawing our conclusions, and then of making those conclusions the food of the inner spiritual man whose life is independent of the mortal heart and brain. But a sense in which G.o.d is "unknowable" to us has to be admitted.
I make this statement now in order not to be misunderstood when later I may say that G.o.d must be this or that. Though I shall do so for the sake of brevity it will always be in the sense that, if G.o.d is what we have inferred from His manifestations, He must be this or that. In other words, having to some degree worked my own way out of fear I must tell how I came to feel that I know the Unknowable, doing it with the inexact phraseology which is all I find to hand.
VI
Reaching the conclusions noted above I was relieved of the pressure of traditions and instructions. Traditions and instructions helped me in that they built the ship in which I was to put to sea. The discoveries had to be my own. The G.o.d of whom I had heard at my mother"s knee, as the phrase goes, had always been shadowy to me; the G.o.d who was served by "services" had always seemed remote. A G.o.d who should be "_my_ G.o.d,"
as the psalmists say so often, must, I felt, be found by me myself, through living, searching, suffering, and struggling onward a step or two at a time. "That"s pretty near free-thinking, isn"t it?" a clergyman, to whom I tried to explain myself, once said to me. "No," I replied; "but it _is_ pretty near thinking _free_."
To think freely about G.o.d became a first necessity; to think simply a second one. The Universal Father had been almost lost to me behind veil after veil of complexities. The approaches to Him seemed to have been made so roundabout, requiring so many intermediaries. Long before I had dared to think of what I may call emanc.i.p.ation, the "scheme of salvation," as it was termed, had struck me as an excessively complicated system of machinery, considering the millions upon millions who had need of it. In theory you were told, according to St. Paul, to "come boldly before the throne of the heavenly grace," but in practice you were expected to do it timidly.
You were expected to do it timidly because the pigeon-holed Caucasian G.o.d was represented--unconsciously perhaps--as difficult, ungenial, easily offended. He measured your blindness and weakness by the standard of His own knowledge and almightiness. A puritan G.o.d, extremely preoccupied with morals as some people saw them, He was lenient, apparently, to the narrow-minded, the bitter of tongue, and the intolerant in heart. He was not generous. He was merciful only when you paid for His mercy in advance. To a not inconsiderable degree He was the hard Caucasian business man, of whom He was the reflection, only glorified and crowned.
It will be evident, of course, that I am not speaking of "the Father" of the New Testament, nor of the official teaching of any church or theology. To the rank and file of Caucasians "the Father" of the New Testament is very little known, while the official teaching of churches and theologies is so hard to explain that not much of it gets over to the ma.s.ses of those willing to subscribe to it. I refer only to the impression on the mind of the man in the street; and to the man in the street G.o.d, as he understands Him, is neither a very friendly nor a very comprehensible element in life. Instead of mitigating fear He adds to it, not in the Biblical sense of "fearing G.o.d," but in that of sheer animal distrust.
VII
While turning these things over in my mind I got some help from two of the words most currently in Christian use. I had long known that the English equivalents of the Latin equivalents of the terms the New Testament writers used gave but a distorted idea of the original sense; but I had let that knowledge lie fallow.
The first of these words was Repentance. In these syllables there is almost no hint of the idea which fell from the evangelistic pen, while the word has been soaked in emotional and sentimental a.s.sociations it was never intended to be mixed with. The _Metanoia_; which painted a sober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the dramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression any more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss of the hysterical as to be almost discredited by men of common sense. It was a relief, therefore, to remember that it implied no more than a turning to G.o.d by a process of thought; and that a process of thought would find Him.
The other word was Salvation. Here again our term of Latin derivation gives no more than the faintest impression of the beauty beyond beauty in that which the sacred writer used. _Soteria_--a Safe Return! That is all. Nothing complicated; nothing high-strung; nothing casuistical. Only a--Safe Return! Yet all human experience can be read into the little phrase, with all human liberty to wander--and come back. True, one son may never leave the Father"s home, so that all that it contains is his; but there is no restraint on the other son from getting his knowledge as he will, even to the extent of becoming a prodigal. The essential is in the Safe Return, the _Soteria_, when the harlots and the husks have been tried and found wanting.
I do not exaggerate when I say that the simplicity of these conceptions was so refreshing as almost to give me a new life. One could say to G.o.d, with the psalmist, "Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compa.s.s me about with songs of deliverance"--and mean it. One could conceive of it as possible to turn toward Him--and reach, the objective. The way was open; the access was free; the progress as rapid as thought could make it. One could think of oneself as _knowing G.o.d_, and be aware of no forcing of the note.
"We can know G.o.d easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define Him." Once having grasped this truth I began to see how natural knowing G.o.d became. The difficulty of the forced, of the artificial, of the mere a.s.sent to what other people say, of which the Caucasian to his credit is always impatient, seemed by degrees to melt away from me. No longer defining G.o.d I no longer tried to know Him in senses obviously impossible. I ceased trying to _imagine_ Him. Seeing Him as infinite, eternal, changeless, formless because transcending form, and indescribable because transcending words and thoughts, I could give myself up to finding Him in the ways in which He would naturally be revealed to me.
VIII
These, of course, were in His qualities and His works.
Let me speak of the latter first.
I think light was the medium through which I at once felt myself to be seeing G.o.d. By this I mean nothing pantheistic--not that the light was G.o.d--but G.o.d"s first and most evident great sign. Then there was the restful darkness. There were the moon and the stars, "the hosts of heaven," as the Hebrews aptly called them, becoming more and more amazing as an expression of G.o.d the more we learn how to read them. Then there were the elements, the purifying wind, the fruitful rain, the exhilaration of snow-storms, the action and reaction from heat and cold.
Then there was beauty: first, the beauty of the earth, of mountains, of seas, and all waters, of meadows, grainfields, orchards, gardens, and all growing things; then, the beauty of sound, from the soughing of the wind in the pines to the song of the hermit-thrush. There was the beauty wrought by man, music, painting, literature, and all art. There were the myriad forms of life. There were kindness and friendship and family affection and fun--but the time would fail me! G.o.d being the summing up of all good things, since all good things proceed from Him, must be seen by me in all good things it I am to see Him at all.
I had heard from childhood of a world in which G.o.d was seen, and of another world, this world, in which He was not seen. I came to the conclusion that there was no such fantastic, unnatural division in what we call creation--that there was only one world--the world in which G.o.d is seen. "The soul cannot move, wake, or open the eyes without perceiving G.o.d." It is a question of physical vision, with spiritual comprehension.
IX
Seeing G.o.d breaking through all that I had previously thought of as barriers, it was easy to begin to think of Him as Universal. I say begin to think, because G.o.d"s Infinitude had been only a word to me hitherto, not a quality realised and felt. I do not presume to say that to any adequate degree I feel and realise it now; but the habit of looking on every good thing as a sign of His activity cannot but bring Him close to me.
That is my chief point with regard to the Infinite--that it must be _here_. As I used to think of infinity I saw it stretching to boundless reaches away from me; but only from the point of view of present Good being present G.o.d did the value of the Infinite come to lie in its nearness rather than in its power of filling unimaginable s.p.a.ce. On my part it was inverse mental action, seeking G.o.d where I was capable of finding Him, and not in regions I could never range.
But having grasped the fact that the Universal, wherever else it was, must be with me the purely abstract became a living influence. I felt this the more when to the concept of Infinitude I added that of Intelligence. I use the much-worked word intelligence because there is no other; but when one thinks for a second of what must be the understanding of an Infinite Mind, intelligence as a descriptive term becomes absurdly inadequate.
This was the next fact which, if I may so express myself, I made my own--that not only the Universal is ever with me, but that it is ever with me with ever-active concern. There was a time when it was hard for me to believe that a Mind busied with the immensities of the universe could come down to such trivial affairs as mine. Important as I might be to myself I could hardly be otherwise than lost amid the billions of forms of life which had come into existence through the ages. To the Three in One, on the Great White Throne, in the far-away Heaven, I must be a negligible thing, except when I forced myself on the divine attention. Even then it was hardly conceivable that, with whole solar systems to regulate, I could claim more than a pa.s.sing glance from the all-seeing eye.
But to an Infinite Mind bathing me round and round I must be as much the object of regard as any solar system. To such a Mind nothing is small, no one thing farther from its scope than another. G.o.d could have no _difficulty_ in attending to me, seeing that from the nature of His mental activity, to put it in that way, He could not lose sight of me nor let me go. When an object is immersed in water it gives no extra trouble to the water to close round it. It can"t help doing it. The object may be as small as a grain of dust or as big as a warship; to the water it is all the same. Immersed in the Infinite Mind, closed round by it, it was giving G.o.d no extra trouble to think of me, of my work, my desires, the objects with which I was living, since by the nature of His Being He could do nothing else.
Having established it with myself that Universal Presence was also Universal Thought I had made another step toward the elimination of fear. I took still another when I added the truth of Universal Love.
I need hardly say that this progression was not of necessity in a strictly consecutive order, nor did it come by a process of reasoning out from point to point. I was simply the man in the street dealing with great ideas of which he had heard ever since he had been able to hear anything, but trying at last to see what they meant to him. My position might have been described in the words used by William James in one of his _Letters_ to indicate his own. "The Divine, for my _active_ life, is limited to abstract concepts, which, as ideals, interest and determine me, but do so but faintly, in comparison with what a feeling of G.o.d might effect, if I had one. It is largely a question of intensity, but differences of intensity may make the whole centre of one"s energy shift." I did have a "feeling of G.o.d" however vague; but I had more of the feeling of a Church. I could dimly discern the Way, without going on to the Truth and the Life which give the Way its value. It will be evident then that if my "discoveries" along these lines were discoveries in the obvious, it was in that obvious to which we mortals so often remain blind.
During many years the expression, the love of G.o.d, was to me like a winter sunshine, bright without yielding warmth. I liked the words; I knew they expressed a truth; but between me and the truth there was the same kind of distance which I felt to lie between myself and G.o.d. "It is largely a question of intensity," to repeat what has just been quoted from William James, "but differences of intensity may make the whole centre of one"s energy shift." My conception of the love of G.o.d lacked just that quality--intensity.
It came, to some degree, with the realisation that the Universal Thought must be with _me_. A non-loving Universal Thought was too monstrous a concept to entertain. The G.o.d who "broke through" my many misunderstandings with so much good and beauty could have only one predominating motive. The coming of my spiritual being to this planet might be a mystery wrapped in darkness, and yet I could not but believe that the Universal Father was behind that coming and that I was His son.
I could rest my case there. The love of G.o.d, after having long been like a doctrinal tenet for which one had to strive, became reasonable, natural, something to be understood. Finding that love in so many places in which I had seen mere physical phenomena, and in so many lovely things I had never placed to its credit, I began to feel that life could be infused and transformed by it, in proportion as my own perception grew. So, little by little, the centre of energy shifted, as one came to understand what the Sons of Korah meant when they sang, "G.o.d is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore _will we not fear_ though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into, the midst of the sea."[5] With Universal Thought concentrated in love upon oneself fear must be forced backward.
[5] The Book of Psalms.
And especially when you add to that the concept of Almighty Power. This fourth and last of the great attributes is the one with which I, as an individual, have found it most difficult to clothe the Infinite. I mean that it is the one for which it is hardest for me to develop what William James calls "a feeling," an inner realisation. I lay no stress upon this. It is a question of growth. The Presence, the Thought, the Love have become to me what I may be permitted to call tremulously vivid. In proportion as they are vivid I get the "feeling" of Almightiness exercised on my behalf; in proportion as they are tremulous the Almightiness may remain in my consciousness, but it seems exercised on my behalf but slightly.
In other words, the Infinitude of Thought and Love are, to some extent, apprehended by my inner self, while the Infinitude of Power is as yet to me rather an intellectual abstraction. What my inner self may be I am not prepared to say, but I know that it is there, as everyone else knows that it is in him. "Strengthened with might by the Spirit in the inner man,"[6] is what St. Paul says, and I suppose most of us recognise the fact that our inner self is stronger or weaker in proportion as it is more nourished or less nourished by our sense of the Being of G.o.d. It is largely a question of intensity. If I interpret William James aright he means by "a feeling" an intellectual concept after it has pa.s.sed beyond the preliminary keeping of the brain, and become the possession of that inner man which is the vital self. To this vital self the sense of Almighty Power really used for me is still, to a great degree, outside my range.
[6] Epistle to the Ephesians.
I make the confession not because it is of interest, but because it ill.u.s.trates a main deduction which I should now like to draw. It is to the effect that G.o.d is with us _to be utilised_. His Power, His Love, His Thought, His Presence, must be at our disposal, like other great forces, such as sunshine and wind and rain. We can use them or not, as we please. That we could use them to their full potentiality is, of course, not to be thought of; but we can use them in proportion to our ability. If I, the individual, still lack many things; if I am still a prey to lingering fears; it is probably because I have not yet rooted out a stubborn disbelief in His Power. If I succeed in this I shall doubtless be able to seize more of His bounty. It is not a question of His giving, but of my capacity to take.
The contrary, I venture to think, is the point of view of most of us. We consider G.o.d somewhat as we do a wealthy man whom we know to be a miser, forming the shrewd surmise that we shall not get much out of him. The G.o.d who fails to protect us from fear fails, I believe, because we see Him first of all as a n.i.g.g.ard G.o.d. He is a n.i.g.g.ard not merely with regard to money but all the good things for which He has given us a desire, with no intention of allowing that desire to be gratified. Once more, He is the hard Caucasian business man, whom His subordinates serve because they don"t see what else to do, but whom they rarely love.
We shall not, in my judgment, overcome fear till we see Him as He surely must be, generous beyond all our conceptions of generosity. Years, experience, many trials, and some knowledge of the world, have convinced me that we have no lawful or harmless cravings for which, _as far as G.o.d is concerned_, there is not abundant satisfaction. I am convinced that absolute confidence in G.o.d"s overflowing liberality of every sort is essential to the conquest of fear. If we don"t profit by that liberality the fault is not His but our own. I am tempted to think that the belief of so many generations of nominal Christians in a G.o.d whose power was chiefly shown in repressions, denials, and capricious disappointments is responsible, in so small measure, for our present world-distress.
In my own case it was a matter of re-education. To find G.o.d for myself I had to be willing to let some of my old cherished ideas go. They may have been true of G.o.d as He reveals Himself to others; they are not true of Him as He makes Himself known to me. The Way that leads _me_ to the Truth and the Life is undoubtedly the Way I must follow.
Doing that I have found so much, mentally, emotionally, materially, which I never had before, that I cannot but look for more as my absorbing power increases. The process is akin to that of the unshrivelling of the inner man, as a bud will unfold when the sunshine becomes strong enough. The transformation must be in thought. There must be first the _Metanoia_, the change of mind, the new set of concepts; and then the _Soteria_, the Safe Return, to the high, sane ideal of a co-operative Universe, with a loving, lavish Universal Heart behind it.
"To the chief Musician for the Sons of Korah:
""G.o.d is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.... Come, behold the works of the Lord.... He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, he cutteth the spear in sunder, he burneth the chariot in the fire.... _Be still then, and know that I am G.o.d,""_[7]
[7] Book of Psalms.
CHAPTER III