YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE IMMANENCE
OF GOD

BY

BORDEN P. BOWNE
Professor of Philosophy in
Boston University

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
ffihe ffitoergibe pvt0, "ffamuribne
1905

COPYRIGHT Ig05 BY BORDEN P. BOWNB
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October, 100$

PREFACE
THE undivineness of the natural and the
unnaturalness of the divine is the great
heresy of popular thought respecting re
ligion. The error roots in a deistic and
mechanical philosophy, and in turn pro
duces a large part of the misunderstand
ings that haunt religious and irreligious
thought alike. To assist in the banish
ment of this error by showing a more
excellent way is the aim of this little
book. Borden P. Bowne.

CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION .... I
I. GOD AND NATURE ... 5
II. GOD AND HISTORY • • • 33
III. GOD AND THE BIBLE . . 66
IV. GOD AND RELIGION . . . 1 16

THE
IMMANENCE OF GOD
INTRODUCTION
THE progress of thought is slow, but
there is progress nevertheless. In every
field of life men have had painfully to
find their way. In religion man has al
ways had some sense, more or less dim,
of an alliance with the unseen and the
eternal, but it has taken ages to organize
and clarify it and bring it to clear ap
prehension and rational expression. As
men begin on the plane of the senses,
this unseen existence has been mainly
conceived in sense terms, and hence
has always been exposed to destructive
criticism from the side of philosophy.
The crude anthropomorphism of early
thought invited and compelled the criti
cism. Again, this vague sense of the
unseen has always been confronted by

2 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
the apparent realities and finalities of
the outer world ; and in comparison with
them it has often seemed unreal and
fictitious. Matter we know and things'
we know ; but God and spirit, what and
where are they? When thus skeptically
accosted by the senses, they sometimes
fade away. Hence religious faith has
always had a double difficulty to com
bat, arising from its alliance with sense
forms, on the one hand, and from sense
dogmatism, on the other. The alliance
was perpetually plunging religion into
destructive anthropomorphism ; and the
sense dogmatism led to a frequent re
jection of religion as baseless, because
spiritual realities lie beyond seeing and
hearing. But we are slowly outgrowing
this. Religious thought is gradually
casting off its coarse anthropomor
phism ; and philosophic criticism is fast
discrediting the shallow dogmatism of
sense thinking, with its implication of
mechanical and materialistic naturalism.

INTRODUCTION 3
Thus religious thought is progressing ;
and the result to which all lines of reflec
tion are fast converging is the ancient
word of inspiration, that in God we live
and move and have our being. This is
at once the clear indication of thought
and the assured conviction of faith. In
this conclusion, moreover, both religion
and philosophy find their only sure
foundation. This doctrine we call the divine imma- j
nence ; by which we mean that God is j
the omnipresent ground of all finite ex
istence and activity. The world, alike of
things and of spirits, is nothing existing
and acting on its own account, while
God is away in some extra-sidereal re
gion, but it continually depends upon
and is ever upheld by the ever-living,
ever-present, ever-working God.
This divine immanence has important
bearings on both speculative and reli
gious problems, and contains the solution
of many traditional difficulties. To trace

4 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
this doctrine into its implications is the
aim of the discussion. The thought will
centre on four leading points, — God and
Nature, God and History, God and the
Bible, and God and Religion. On each
of these points naturalistic and deistic
dogmatism has long wrought confusion
and mischief.

GOD AND NATURE
THERE is a scholastic maxim that truth
emerges sooner from error than from con
fusion. Allied to this is Goethe's remark,
that the gods themselves can do nothing
with stupidity. One is often reminded of
both of these truths in reading popular
discussions of the supernatural, whether
from the religious or the irreligious stand
point. Their most prominent feature is
confusion. Out of such a state of things
nothing but babble and Babel can result.
Our first duty in this matter is to clear
up our thought so as to know what we
really mean and desire.
And first we must find out what we
mean by nature. A great deal of bad
metaphysics is commonly concealed
under this term, and it is the unsuspected
source of many of our woes. What, then,
is nature ?

6 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
Popular thought is based on a crude
sense realism. There is a system of ma
terial things, it holds, about us in space
and producing a great variety of changes
in time. The immediate agent in the case
is matter, which by its inherent forces
and laws initiates and maintains the cos
mic processes and produces their mani
fold results. This system of things and
laws we call nature ; and all events arising
in this system and in accordance with its
laws we call natural.
This view seems to be an undeniable
fact of experience. Things and their
forces are manifestly there, and nothing
else is in sight. Whatever else may be
doubtful, there can be no question about
the reality and activity of nature. God
and spirit are hypotheses, but matter is a
solid and substantial fact.
This type of thought has always had
a strong tendency to atheism. Nature is
made into a self-running system, at least
for the present. Within the system all

GOD AND NATURE 7
things seem to be accounted for by the
system ; and as the beginning disappears
in the infinite past, and horizons vanish
in infinite space, the thought is not far
away that perhaps nature has always
been there in self-equality and self-suffi
ciency. Thus "Nature " in such a scheme
is always on the point of setting up for
itself. In any case, a division of labor is !
made between the work of God and that
of nature. Whatever can be referred to
nature is supposed to be sufficientiy
explained without further reference. If
there be any mind at all in connection
with nature, it is needed only to explain
the outstanding facts which are not yet
accounted for by the natural order. Thus
God is at best only a provisional hypo
thesis, and becomes less and less neces
sary the more the reign of natural law
is extended. Atheism is the limit of this
way of thinking. As Comte once said,
science will finally conduct God to the
frontier, and bow him out with thanks for

8 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
his provisional services. When law be
comes all-embracing, God will be a need
less hypothesis. How general this way
of thinking has been is familiar to all
who are acquainted with the naturalistic
literature of the last generation.
Our present discussion is not with the
atheist, but with the theist, who too often
holds the same conception of nature as
the atheist. He is openly or tacitly afraid
of nature, and naturalism is with him a
term of dislike or reproach. He is sus
picious of the reign of law, and is quite
depressed when some outstanding irreg
ularity is at last reduced to order. He
looks rather anxiously for breaks in the
natural order, insists especially on the
things that "science cannot explain,"
and carefully treasures reports of mir
acles as things without which religion
would vanish, but with which we may
hope to put to flight all the armies of the
aliens. And it must be admitted that his-

GOD AND NATURE 9
torically there has been much to excuse,
if not to justify, this attitude. Natural
ism often has been an atheistic doctrine.
Nature and mind have been set up
in mutual exclusion ; and the theist with
a shallow sense philosophy has seen no
relief but in decrying naturalism and
natural law and "science falsely so
called," and insisting on breaks and mir
acles and things "science cannot ex
plain." Matter might possibly explain the
solar system and even all inorganic pro
cesses and products, but it could not
explain life, it was said, with the tacit
admission, which sometimes became ex
plicit, that spontaneous generation, if it
should be established, would be the final
overthrow of theism. Meanwhile, neither
theist nor atheist suspected that perhaps
matter cannot explain anything what
ever, and as an ontological fact does not
even exist.
For the sake of the " natural realist,"
to whom this will seem manifest error,

io THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
if not raving, a word must be interpo
lated here respecting the phenomenality
and non-substantiality of the apparent
world Let us begin by admitting the
most realistic doctrine of things. This
table on which I am writing is of
course real, that is, it is no dream or
illusion. But when we begin to reflect
upon the nature of its reality, puzzles
soon emerge. The physicist tell us of
molecules and atoms which compose
the table, and when we ask concerning
them, we hear of vortex rings and cen
tres of force and various other mysteries.
When these questions are thought out,
we see that the things about us are only
phenomenal, and that the true causality
is behind them. Thus physics itself
speedily leads us away from the com
mon-sense notion of substantial things
about us with various inherent forces
which do the work of the world, and
brings us to the conception of one su
preme causality behind phenomena, on

GOD AND NATURE ii
which they all depend and from which
they all proceed. From this point of
view, the theist need not be in the least
disturbed if so-called spontaneous gen
eration were established as a fact ; for
it would only show that the supreme
cause has more than one way of work
ing. Theism is concerned with causality,)
not with method. j
But apart from this metaphysical sug
gestion, the theist's horror of naturalism
is logically inconsequent in any case. It
rests on the tacit fancy that nature is a
blind mechanical system which does a
great many unintended things on its own
account. These represent no plan or
purpose of any kind, but are just blind
happenings for which nature alone is
responsible. Whatever comes about in ac
cordance with the natural order expresses
no purpose; it is simply natural. For
purpose we must have " interpositions,"
" interferences," " special providences,"
and that sort of thing. Wherever law

12 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
can be traced we are forbidden to think
of any purposive interpretation, whether
in the individual life or in the larger field
of history.
How shallow this is, is plain upon
inspection. If nature be dependent on,
intelligence for its origin, it is equally,
dependent on intelligence for all its im- !
plications. Mechanism of itself can never '
make any new departures, or reach any
thing not implied in it from the begin
ning. If, then, we suppose that God
created a system of nature which was
intended to unfold according to inherent
laws, we must say that the creative act
implied and carried with it to the minut
est details all that should ever arrive in
the unfolding of the system. There is
no way by which things or events could
slip in which were not provided for in
the primal arrangement. And if we sup
pose the Creator to have known what he
was doing, we must suppose him to have
intended the implications. But this is all

GOD AND NATURE 13
that theism cares to assert. If an event
represents a divine purpose, or is part of
a divine plan, it is as truly purposeful
when realized through natural processes
as it would be if produced by fiat. But
we miss the reality of the purpose from
the fancy that the natural system can do
a lot of things to which it was not deter
mined by the creative act, and which
therefore are mere mechanical occur
rences without any further significance.
And when we allow the purpose, we
practically cancel it by overlooking the
relativity of our temporal judgments
and placing the purpose so far away in
time that we think it must have faded
out of the divine thought and interest
altogether. The things we planned years
ago we have forgotten or they have lost
all value for us, and we suppose it must
be so with God. Of a faithful purpose
moving across the ages and forever keep
ing tryst with foreseen need, we have no
conception.

14 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
But this is superficial to the last de
gree. Long and short are relative terms
at best, and have no significance for the
Eternal. Metaphysics, too, adds its sug
gestion, which nullifies all these tra
ditional intimidations drawn from the
measureless age of the world, that time
itself is only a relation in self-conscious
ness and has no such meaning for the
Infinite as it has for us. In that case, time|
is merely the shadow of our finitude ands
not a supreme law of all existence. Wei
need not, then, give up the belief in pur
pose because of law, or because of the age
of things. To be sure, we are often un
able to discern any special significance
in events ; but that only means that the
underlying purpose is not always evi
dent. But that the event is natural, in
the sense of occurring in an order of law,
is absolutely unrelated to the question
of purpose; and this is the only ques
tion of importance for the theist.
The theist, then, is guilty of bad logic

GOD AND NATURE 15
when he makes the order of law a reason
for denying purpose. The way in which
events occur in an order of law is one
thing; the meaning of such events in
a scheme of purpose is forever another.!
Hence we might maintain the natural
ness of all events, in the sense defined,
and at the same time might include all
events in a purposive interpretation.
Man's control of nature is realized
through mechanical processes in accord
ance with natural law, but it is informed
with purpose, nevertheless. If some lu
nar scientist, well versed in physics and
chemistry but ignorant of human per
sonality, should visit our planet, he could
rule out human purpose in nature with
the same logic with which we rule out
divine purpose. The same fact of law
applies to both, and is equally compat
ible or incompatible with both. This false
antithesis of law and purpose is one of the
great superficialities of popular thought,
and rests upon an untenable philosophy.

16 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
But both theists and atheists are alike'
guilty of bad metaphysics when they
erect the system of nature into an onto-j
logical reality in any case. The progress
of philosophical criticism has shown na
ture in this sense to be only an idol of
the dogmatic den. There is no substan
tial or ontological nature, but only natu
ral events ; and a natural event is one
which occurs in an order of law, or one
which we can connect with other events
according to rule. But this order has no
causality in it. In the causal sense it ex
plains nothing, being really only a rule
according to which some power beyond
it proceeds. Respecting the natural order
two quite distinct questions may be
asked. These concern, first, the uniform
ities of coexistence and sequence which
constitute the order ; and, second, the
underlying causality and purpose of the
order. Things exist and events happen
in certain ways. To discover, describe,
and register these ways of being and

GOD AND NATURE 17
happening is the function of science.
But when this is done, we further need to
form some conception of the causality
at work, and of the purpose which may
underlie the whole. This is the field of
philosophy. These two questions, as said,
are quite distinct, and the answer to both
is necessary to the full satisfaction of
the mind. As a result of this distinction,
which is fast making its way in the higher
speculative circles, the antithesis of nat
ural and supernatural is taking on an
other form, and one from which many
scandals that infest the traditional view
disappear. In the new conception the supernatural I i
is nothing foreign to nature and making j :
occasional raids into nature in order to re- \
veal itself, but, so far as nature as a whole [
is concerned, the supernatural is the ever-1
present ground and administrator of na
ture; and nature is simply the form
under which the Supreme Reason and.
Will manifest themselves. This is the*

18 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
doctrine of the divine immanence to which
philosophy is coming in its search after
the cosmic causality. We come down,
not to a world of lumps, nor to any im
personal principle, but to a Living Will
which worketh hitherto, and which work
eth forevermore. And nature being but j
the fixed form of the divine causality, we
must say that events in general are at !
once natural in the mode of their occur- j
rence, in that they come about accordingj
to rule, and supernatural in their causa- 1
tion, in that they all alike abut on that
Living Will by which all things stand
and from which they forever proceed.
The commonest event, say the fall of av
leaf, is as supernatural in its causation as
any miracle would be ; for in both alike
God would be equally implicated.
This division of labor between science
and philosophy has brought about a bet
ter understanding than formerly existed.
Both parties are seen to have important

GOD AND NATURE 19
interests to guard, and each party has
inalienable rights in its own field. They
can collide only through confusion. Sci
ence as such explains nothing, for it only
classifies and coordinates facts accord
ing to rule ; and philosophy as such is
empty until experience furnishes the
facts. When, then, we are told that sci
ence must never have recourse to super
natural explanations, on the one hand, or
that " science cannot explain " this, that,
or the other thing, on the other, we know
that confusion lieth at the door, and that
a distinction is in order. In the scientific
sense, explanation consists in exhibiting
the fact as a case or implication of an
empirically discovered rule ; and in this
sense we must never have recourse to
supernatural explanations. If the fact
cannot be reduced to rule of any sort,
science can only let it alone and wait for
light. But in the causal sense science
explains nothing. Here the alternative is
supernatural explanation or none. Meta-

20 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
physics shows that mechanical explana
tion must lose itself in barren tautologies
and the infinite regress, and must even
disperse existence itself into nothingness
through the infinite divisibility of space
and time. But these two types of expla
nation, the scientific and the causal, in
no way conflict. If we admit that things
hang together in certain ways, the cau
sality and purpose are not revealed
thereby ; and if we affirm a supernatural
causality, the form and contents of its
working remain an open question.
The failure to make this distinction is
well illustrated by a recent discussion in
the London " Times." Lord Kelvin, who
is well known as one of the greatest
leaders of physical science, said, in a let
ter to the " Times : " " Scientific thought
is compelled to accept the idea of Crea
tive Power. Forty years ago, I asked
Liebig, walking somewhere in the coun
try, if he believed that the grass and the
flowers which he saw around us grew

GOD AND NATURE 21
by mere chemical forces. He answered,
' No, no more than I could believe that
the books of botany describing them
could grow by mere chemical forces.'
Every action of human free will is a
miracle to physical and chemical and
mathematical science."
This letter called out considerable cor
respondence and comment. Lord Kel
vin himself seemed to think that " mere
chemical forces" would explain much,
but were not equal to the explanation of
life. This laid him open to obvious reply.
If " mere " natural forces could do so
much, who can tell where the " mere-
ness " becomes inadequate ? But neither
Lord Kelvin nor his critics, some of
whom were inclined to view his utter
ance as an outbreak of Scotch orthodoxy,
had any clear idea of what they meant
by explanation, and hence came to no
conclusion. If by explanation we mean
a view which will enable the mind to in
terpret the facts in all their aspects, Lord

22 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
Kelvin was right ; but if by explanation
we mean simply a classification of the
facts under empirical rules, his critics
were right. For such explanation the
idea of God is as little needed in science
as it is in shoemaking, and is equally
irrelevant in both ; but at the same time,
such explanation remains on the surface
and does not touch the deeper questions
of thought at all.
The same is true of explanations by|
evolution, natural selection, etc. They
simply describe an order for which they
do not account, and hence, so far as anyj
real insight is concerned, we get no help!
from them. For real insight we need to
know what the power is which is at;
work, why it works as it does, why the
arrivals and survivals are such that their i
net result is to produce an orderly and 1
progressive system ; and to these in- i
quiries mechanical naturalism has no
answer. The distinction between evo
lution as a description of method and

GOD AND NATURE 23
evolution as a doctrine of causality has
reduced this doctrine to a very sub
ordinate significance, and has deprived
it entirely of all those fearsome implica
tions which it had for superficial thought.
As a mode of procedure, it is as good as
any other ; as a doctrine of mechanical
causality and progress, it is altogether
impossible. We cannot, then, too carefully dis-;
tinguish between the description and for
mulation which science gives and the'
causal and purposive interpretation forj
which philosophy seeks. The notion that1
science is gradually enabling us to dis
pense with God is superficial almost to
illiteracy ; and the opposite notion that
would confuse scientific descriptions,
classifications, and formulations by irrel
evant theistic suggestions is equally so.
Imagine a theologian who should inter
rupt a geographer in his surveys and
measurements to ask what geography
says about God ; and then imagine a

24 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
geographer who, because God is not
needed in surveying and map-making,
should conclude that God is a " needless
hypothesis." Each would be worthy of
the other. According to Mrs. Carlyle,
"the mixing of things is the great bad ; "
and there certainly never was a greater
" bad," in its way, than the " mixing "
of the question of scientific description
and formulation with that of philosophic
interpretation, the sure result being a
"conflict of science and religion," or
some other unprofitable aberration.
The instructed theist, then, sets aside
the self-running nature and the absentee
God. For him there is no nature which
does at least the bulk of the world's
work, while God is reserved for inter
positions. For him God is the ever-pre
sent agent in the on-going of the world,
and nature is but the form and product j
of his ceaseless activity. The theist, there- 1
fore, is not afraid of naturalism ; for the

GOD AND NATURE 25
naturalism of atheistic thought he knows
to be an illusion, while naturalism in
theistic thought is merely the search for
God's familiar and orderly methods in
all his works. The theist knows that he"|
is in God's world, and that the ultimate!
reason why anything is, or changes, or
comes to pass, must be sought not in
any mechanical necessity, nor in any
natural antecedents, nor in any imper
sonal agency of any kind, but in the
will and purpose of that God in whom
all things live and move and have their,,
being. Every system of whatever sort
must come down at last to some fact, or
system of facts, of which no more can be
said than that it is. This fact, to which all
else is referred, and from which all else
takes its rise, is, for theism, the will and
purpose of the Eternal.
At the same time the instructed theist
recognizes that the divine causality pro
ceeds in orderly ways, so that events do
not happen at random but according to

26 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
rule. To discover the modes of being
and happening is the function of induc
tive science ; and practical wisdom de
pends on this knowledge. When we
know how things hang together in the
order of law, we can adjust ourselves
thereto, and to a very considerable ex
tent can subordinate nature to our pur
poses. In the fact and knowledge of
this system of law we have the condi
tion of science and practical living. In}
the insight that this system is no self-'
sufficient fact, but simply the form of al
divine causality, we have the supreme!
condition of religion.
Thus we have to correct the false con
ception of nature and the natural which
underlies popular thought. Nature is
supposed, for the present at least, to run ,
itself, and is set up as a rival of God/
so that God is needed only to explain
the outstanding facts which as yet have
found no natural explanation. With this
conception naturalism could not fail to

GOD AND NATURE 27
be looked upon as hostile to religion,
and it became a synonym for infidelity.
And there was a great deal of natural
ism of this sort, which promised to dis
pense with God altogether after a while.
This was "bald naturalism," and it was ;
met by an equally " bald " supernatural-
ism, a thing of portents, prodigies, and
interpositions, spooking about among
the laws of nature, breaking one now
and then,, but having no vital connection
with the orderly movement of the world.
Both views were bald, and they were
especially bald inside. A better meta
physics, however, enables us to set aside
with all conviction both sorts of baldness.
The cosmic order is no rival of God, but
is slmply~tne continuous manifestation
and product oTthe divine activity. There
is no longer any reason for being afraid
of naturalism, for naturalism is now
merely a tracing of the order in which
the divine causality proceeds. It is de
scription, not explanation. It classifies

28 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
events under familiar heads, but for the
causal explanation and purpose of all
events we must fall back on God ; and
that not on a God that was, but on a God
that is, and whose activity did not cease
with the end of creation's week, but con
tinues forevermore.
We are, then, in God's world, and all
things continuously depend on him. We
have not to attempt an impossible divi
sion between God's work and that of
nature, for there is no such division ; we
have rather to study the method and
contents of God's work which we call
nature, and in which God is forever im
manent. Thus the naturalistic and deistic
banishment of God from the real world
is recalled, and the doctrine of the divine
immanence is put in its place ; yet not
an immanence of disorder and arbitra
riness, but an immanence of goodness
and wisdom and law.
This general conception of the divine

GOD AND NATURE 29
immanence has only imperfectly passed
from philosophical thought into theologi
cal and religious thinking. It has, how
ever, important religious bearings which
need to be pointed out ; for too often we
mistake our sense dogmatism for science,
and our misunderstandings for religion.
In a recent number of the " Sunday-
School Times " a story is told of an East
ern king which illustrates at once our
delusion respecting natural processes,
and also God's work and presence in
them. The king was seated in a garden,
and one of his counselors was speaking
of the wonderful works of God. " Show
me a sign," said the king, "and I will
believe." "Here are four acorns," said
the counselor ; " will your majesty plant
them in the ground, and then stoop
down for a moment and look into this
clear pool of water?" The king did so.
" Now," said the other, " look up." The
king looked up and saw four oak-trees
where he had planted the acorns. " Won-

30 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
derful!" he exclaimed; "this is indeed
the work of God." " How long were
you looking into the water?" asked the
counselor. " Only a second," said the
king. "Eighty years have passed as a
second," said the other. The king looked
at his garments ; they were threadbare.
He looked at his reflection in the water ;
he had become an old man. " There is
no miracle here, then," he said angrily.
" Yes," said the other ; " it is God's work,
whether he do it in one second or in
eighty years."
Comte held that human thought be
gins in the theological stage, where all
phenomena are referred to arbitrary
wills in them or beyond them. It then
passes to the metaphysical stage, where
phenomena are explained by abstract
notions of cause, etc. These abstrac
tions are only the ghosts of the theolo
gical personalities of the earlier stage;
and when they are seen as such, thought
passes into the third and last stage of

GOD AND NATURE 31
development, the positive stage. Here
we content ourselves with simply study
ing the orders of coexistence and se
quence among things and events, and
abandon all metaphysical inquiry as fruit
less and hopeless. In this Comte was
partly right and partly wrong. His limi
tation of science to the study of the uni
formities of coexistence and sequence
among phenomena, and the exclusion
therefrom of all causal inquiry, was a
stroke of genius. His rejection of ab
stract metaphysics as only a spectral
shadow of the earlier personal explana
tions was equally profound and important
and just. Later philosophic criticism has
shown that the categories of abstract
metaphysics are only the abstract forms
of the self-conscious life, and that apart
from that life they are empty or self-con
tradictory. But Comte was mistaken in
ruling out all metaphysics. The human
mind was never more prolific of meta
physical constructions than it has been

32 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
since Comte put metaphysics under the
ban. It only remains that we give our
metaphysics a tenable form, that of per
sonality. Personalism is the only meta
physics that does not dissolve away into
self-canceling abstractions. Thus in a
way thought returns to the theological
stage again, but with a difference. We
return, not to a rabble of arbitrary and
capricious wills behind nature, but to a
Supreme Rational Will, which forever
founds and administers the order of the
world. " Back of the loaf is the snowy flour,
Back of the flour the mill ;
Back of the mill is the wheat and the shower
And the sun and the Father's will."
The Father's will is not back of these
things at some awful distance of time
and space, but is their present living
source; and they in turn are but the
form in which that will expresses and
realizes itself. For in him we live and
move and have our being.

II
GOD AND HISTORY
The deistic conception of God as an
absentee, while nature runs on of itself,
leads to a similar conception of his rela
tion to history. History is supposed for
the most part, if not entirely, to go on
according to general laws without any
supernatural interference, and probably
without any supernatural guidance. Thus
naturalism, which begins in the physical
realm, is extended into the historical
field, and considerable misunderstanding
results. The good feature in naturalism, in
whatever realm, is its emphasis of law.
We can all now see how much we owe
to it. We live in peace and sanity where
our mediaeval ancestors lived in danger
ous and destructive obsessions from lack
of knowledge of the laws of nature and

34 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
life. Life swarmed with omens, portents,
judgments, devils ; and it was as much
as a man's life was worth to have a small
measure of good sense. As for science,
it was infidel, an unfruitful work of dark
ness, a device of Satan for the destruc
tion of souls, etc. Some illustrations will
prove instructive.
The fact of law in the heavens had
to be admitted at a pretty early date,
at least for the main phenomena; and
religious thought, after divers maledic
tions, had to adjust itself as well as it
could. Of course the Copernican astro
nomy had to fight its way against texts
and ecclesiastical denunciations. "The
world also is stablished that it cannot
be moved," and " the sun knoweth his
going down." Moreover, Joshua com
manded the sun to stand still, and it
must have been moving before. Texts
like these clearly established the sun's
motion and the earth's rest. Neverthe
less, theology had to surrender at last.

GOD AND HISTORY 35
All the more was it inclined to hold
on to the "signs and wonders" in the
heavens, such as meteors, eclipses, and
especially comets. An enormous mass
of superstition grew up about these
things in the earliest times, and when
this was reenforced by various texts, in
terpreted after the fashion of the time,
a grotesque cometary orthodoxy was
produced from which it was heresy to
depart. In the " sound and safe " theo
logical learning of the time they were
tokens of divine wrath against human
sin, or they presaged distress which
should come upon the earth, such as
famine, or pestilence, or the death of
kings. Such a view had obvious advan
tages. It gave the clergy a hold on the
superstitious imaginations of their flock,
and besides it seemed to give a visible
manifestation of the divine existence.
With all these advantages, the scientific
view was denounced as godless and
blasphemous as a matter of course, and

36 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
as rooting in a wicked purpose to de
throne God. But plainly the main source
of trouble was the false supernatural.
Men forgot the 19th Psalm, and looked
for God in signs and wonders, but missed
him in the orderly heavens. Hence, when
the signs and wonders were reduced to
law, they supposed that atheism was at
the door.
The same sorry history was repeated
with meteorology. The theologian formed
a theory of storms, and especially of light
ning, for which he had the usual stock
of texts. Powers infernal and supernal
mingled in this theory. The "prince
of the power of the air," in particular,
played a leading r61e, although witches
were cast for prominent parts. Witches
were easily managed, as fagots were
cheap ; but Satan was fireproof and had
to be cast out by exorcisms, the burning
of asafcetida, and especially by the ring
ing of consecrated bells. Of course me
teorology was "a godless science," which

GOD AND HISTORY 37
was resisted as long as possible. And
the reason was that the false supernatural
had placed religion in hostility to the
notion of law.
The development of medical science
reveals the same aberration. The canon
law declared the precepts of medicine con
trary to divine knowledge. The theory
that diseases are due to natural causes
which may be discovered, and removed
or guarded against, was deprecated as
irreligious. There was something of un
belief in seeking cure by natural means.
For diseases, especially the more strik
ing epidemics, were either " visitations "
from above, or due to the devil ; and in
either case, " vain was the help of man."
To seek for help from the physicians,
especially after the doleful experience
of Hezekiah, was " flying in the face of
Providence," "endeavoring to baffle a
divine judgment," " unfaithfulness to the
revealed law of God." Every advance of
medical science was met with similar

38 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
opposition. Inoculation and vaccination
were quite infernal ; quinine was " an
invention of the devil ; " and sanitation
was a work of unbelief. The use of anaes
thetics betrayed an especial depth of re
bellion against God ; and one woman in
Scotland was burned alive for resorting
to them. The use of chloroform was
vehemently denounced as contrary to
the Word of God ; and Simpson, the dis- ?
coverer of the anaesthetic, was forced to
answer fools according to their folly by
pointing out that in the first surgical
operation on record, that on Adam for
the extraction of Eve, "God caused a
deep sleep to fall upon Adam," thus set
ting an example for modern surgical
practice! Even so late as 1853, accord
ing to Buckle, the Presbytery of Ed
inburgh thought a day of fasting and
prayer, without any sanitary measures,
would be an efficient safeguard against
the cholera ; and they were sorely scan
dalized when Lord Palmerston informed

GOD AND HISTORY 39
them that it was better to cleanse than
to fast, and that wise sanitary measures
would be more effective than humiliation.
He advised them to destroy the causes
of disease by removing and destroying
filth, and by improving the houses of the
poor. Otherwise, he said, the pestilence
would be sure to come, " in spite of all
the prayers and fastings of a united, but
inactive nation."
Palmerston's letter made a great stir.
A couple of hundred years earlier it
might have cost him his life. Now his
statements are self-evident, and serve
only to show how far we have traveled
in fifty years.
Sporadic cases of this fear of the nat
ural were often very funny. In Sweden
they sometimes have red snow and rain,
and this used to pass for a miracle. Lin
naeus looked into a case of this kind, and
found it due to minute organisms which
produced the red color. When Bishop
Svedberg heard of this " bald natural-

40 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
ism," he denounced it as an " abyss of
Satan," the aim of which was to do away
with the miracle. "When God allows
such a miracle to take place," he said,
"Satan endeavors, and so do his un
godly, self-reliant, worldly tools, to make
it signify nothing."
Coleridge relates how some students
at Jena, in the attempt to raise a spirit
for the discovery of a supposed hidden
treasure, were poisoned by the fumes of
charcoal, which they were burning in their
incantations. It was taken for granted
that the devil had destroyed them, and
when Hoffmann, a renowned physician of
the time, acquitted the devil of all direct
concern in the business, and charged
the result to the spirit of avarice and the
fumes of burning charcoal, the theological
faculty took the alarm and denounced
such teaching as hostile to religion and
tending to atheism. The Swedish bishop
and the German professors were in the
toils of the false supernatural.

GOD AND HISTORY 41"
Facts of this kind, and their name is
legion, show what we owe to naturalism.
It is plain that religion is a very danger
ous drug unless wisely administered.
When the supernatural paralyzes intel
ligence and makes men afraid to move
because of some threatening superstition,
as is still the case with vast masses of
men in non-Christian communities, even
a period of atheism may be necessary
for the cure of the patient. Not without
reason did Lucretius declaim against re
ligion as an enemy of the race, for such
it often has been and is. The present
attitude of the clergy in large sections
of Christendom toward education is a
significant illustration.
But when we look over this sorry his
tory, the root of the trouble is evidently a
false naturalism and a false supernatural-
ism. Religiousthoughthas always rightly
held to the supernatural ; but, from lack
of knowledge, it held to it ignorantly
and superstitiously, and hence, often, per-

,42 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
niciously and destructively. Naturalism,
on the other hand, has insisted on the
fact of law, but from superficial thought
it has often done so mechanically, mate
rialistically, and atheistically, thus justify
ing the suspicion and dislike with which
it has been regarded. But to complete
our thought and keep it sane and sweet,
both elements must be united. Religion
must learn the lesson of law, and^scignce
must learn its limitations. The value of
naturalism lies entirely in its emphasis
of law, and not in the mistaken meta
physics in which naturalism has com
monly been set forth. We retain the
former and discharge the latter.
The aberration of religious thought in
this matter has been well set forth by
Buckle in his " History of Civilization in
England," by J. W. Draper in his " His
tory of the Intellectual Development of
Europe," by Lecky in his "History of
Rationalism," and by Andrew D. White
in his " History of the Warfare of Science

GOD AND HISTORY 43)
with Theology." These writers have not
always shown a perfect mastery of the
logic of their facts, but they have done
a great service in showing what a foe to
humanity even the Christian religion may
become in the hands of a false super-
naturalism which eliminates God from
the realm of law and finds him only in
signs and wonders. Happily, the more
intelligent disciples have learned the les
son ; and, on the other hand, the more
intelligent exponents of law in nature
have outgrown the fancy, once so com
mon, that law is irreligious and atheistic.
The devotion born of ignorance is now
discounted, as not especially pleasing to
God or creditable to man.
The presence of God in nature does^
not mean that God is here and there in ;
the world performing miracles, but that
the whole ^osmic ^move^rnent depends
constantly upon the divine will and is
an expression of the divine purpose. In

44 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
fl like manner the presence of God in
, history does not mean exclusively, or
j mainly, that God is working signs and
wonders upon occasion, but rather that
God is carrying on the great historical
movement and working his will therein.
The same false naturalism which has so
often reduced the philosophy of nature
to a barren mockery has wrought simi
lar effects in the philosophy of history.
Here, too, a doctrine of method has been
turned into a doctrine of causation, and
a deal of sorry stuff has been said about
the reign of law, and " the iron chain of
necessity," etc.
And this false naturalism has pro
duced an equally false supernaturalism.
Both alike have assumed a self-running
natural order, which excludes the super
natural except as a thing of interposi
tions, interferences, omens, prodigies, etc.
With this misunderstanding, the believer
in God in history has sought for him
largely in strange and striking events, in

GOD AND HISTORY 45
historical crises, in marvelous coinci
dences, rather than in the orderly move
ment and progress of human life and
society. An opportune storm, a drought
or flood, a good or bad harvest, an out
break of an epidemic, would be far more
significant to many than the greatest
mental and moral progress of society.
They are not looking for God in the;
moral realm, but in the field of physical
prodigies, and have eyes for scarcely
anything else. But the great proof of!
God's presence in history and the sole
significance of that presence lie in the
mental and moral realm. The slow moral-
ization of life and society, the enlight-j
enment of conscience and its growing!
empire, the deepening sense of respon
sibility for the good order of the world;
and the well-being of men, the gradual
putting away of old wrongs and foul
diseases and blinding superstitions, — ;
these are the great proofs of God in his- [
tory; and in comparison with these alii

46 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
physical miracles sink into insignificance,
and, except as related to these higher
interests, have no value whatever. It is/>
nothing less than pathetic to find men|
ranging through secular and religious!
history seeking after a sign, instead of •
fixing their thought upon this sign of|
signs, — the spread of reason and right- £
eousness in the earth.
And here again the chief source of
our^oubJe^^KOBSSffiee. fioncgption of
"GodLWhat the religious mind really
seeks is God, and when a false philosophy
has removed him to an indefinite dis
tance, and has thrust a baseless fiction,
the self-running " Nature," between him
and us, there is no recourse but to look
for God in prodigies and disorder in
general. This unhappy mistake puts re
ligious thought in the wrong from the
start and makes it the enemy of enlight
enment and progress, thus producing all
manner of conflicts of science and re
ligion, and what is still worse, conflicts

GOD AND HISTORY 47
of religion and humanity. A very large
part of this difficulty is canceled by the
divine immanence, which allows us to
find God as present in the ordinary move
ments of life and society as in the strange
and uninterpretable things. Life itself,
with all its normal forms and interests,
represents the divine will and purpose,
and from it God is never absent. His will
is being done in and through the laws
and movements of humanity, as it is
through the laws and movements of
nature. But as there is a true naturalism in
physical study, so there is a true natu
ralism in historical study. Without some
continuity of law, there could be no
thought or articulate experience at all.
Even if miracles were a part of the order,
we cannot suppose that they would be
wrought at random and without any ref
erence to the antecedents and environ
ment. Such unmediated, unrelated mir-

48 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
acles would be irrational interjections,
and not parts of articulate speech. Or if
freedom be a fact of life, it, too, must be
related to law, or it disappears into unin
telligible arbitrariness. Hence, however
much we may believe that God is in his
tory, or that man is free, we must also
look for rules of procedure, or the familiar
continuities which we call natural. We
may seek to trace the laws of life and
thought and development in the progress
and unfolding of history. Such study,
when thought is clear, has no tendency
to reduce history to a mechanical se
quence. It merely reveals how things
hang together in life and history accord
ing to the experienced principles of
human and physical nature, and leaves
us as free as ever to believe that an un
folding purpose underlies it all as the
final cause of the movement.
How hard it is to realize this, or how
difficult it is for religious thought to see
that the divine activity in history is not

GOD AND HISTORY 49
necessarily unmediated, finds interesting
illustration in the following from the Life
of Mr. Gladstone : " He was delighted
(March, 1830) with a university sermon
against Milman's ' History of the Jews,'
and hopes it may be useful as an anti
dote, 'for Milman, though I do think
without intentions directly evil, does go
far enough to be justly called a bane.
For instance, he says that had Moses
never existed, the Hebrew nation would
have remained a degraded pariah tribe,
or been lost in the mass of the Egyptian
population — and this notwithstanding
the promise.' "
As this was written when Mr. Glad
stone was only twenty years old, we must
not lay it up against him. But it shows
that it had not occurred to him then, as
it has not occurred to many since, that
"the promise" is one thing and the
mode of fulfillment another, and that the
promise was fulfilled through the exist
ence of Moses. We may still believe in

So THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
the promise after all that Milman or any
one else has said ; and at the same time
we may believe that Moses was an im
portant factor in its fulfillment. There is
no more reason for supposing that the
divine purpose in biblical history was
unmediated than for supposing it unme
diated in modern history. We may well
suppose a divine purpose in our national
life, but that does not remove the fact
that it has been realized in a highly
complex history, which admits of being
studied by the natural method. Here as
elsewhere causality and method of work
ing, or purpose and mode of realization,
are to be distinguished. Nowadays every
intelligent believer in "the promise"
would feel free to trace the manner of
its fulfillment in accordance with the laws
of life and history. From the standpoint
of the divine immanence, God's familiar
methods are just as divine as are his
other ways that are " past finding out."
Two things, we said, we need to know

GOD AND HISTORY 51
in the study of nature : first, the connect
tion of events in an order of law, and,
secondly, their cause and interpretation.
Similarly, in history, we need to know
the order and connection of events, and ;
also their causality and interpretation.
Without some knowledge of the order we
could be only helpless savages, indeed
we could not even live at all. But this
is not enough. Such knowledge alone
would keep us on the surface. For the
full and final understanding of the move
ment we must know more than these
historical and physical laws. We must
know the cause and meaning and goal
of it all. By eliminating the false natu
ralism of a mechanical philosophy, and
replacing it by the true naturalism of the
divine immanence, we make it possible
for faith to feel at home even in the world
of law, and indeed all the more at home
because it is a world of law.
" God is law, say the wise. O soul, and let us rejoice;
For if he thunder by law, the thunder is still his

gpTHE IMMANENCE OF GOD
It has not been my purpose in this
section to find Lrod in history, or to illus-
tratre~nls~pl:esence in history^ but rather-"
to explain what that presen^ewmfloTmean
--"<,"¦, ~.„*w~r.* raw'**---- '-.'-¦¦,B*W*J^ .----- -v-m- .— .-..^|
and where we are to seek it. There is no
objection to finding God in prodigies, if
there be such things, but it is far more;
important to find him. in. the normal ac-l
tivities of men and the unfoldings of his-;,
tory. Prodigies are vanishing quantities
in any case, in comparison with the his
toric life and development of humanity ;
and here alone does the divine presence
have abiding significance. Not less of
God but more is what both religion and
philosophy demand.
A divine purpose, a moral develop
ment in humanity, is the essential mean
ing of God in history. This history is
the unfolding and realization of the di
vine purpose. We cannot, indeed, trace
this purpose in all the details of history,
and when we begin to make specific inter
pretations, we are very apt to go astray.

GOD AND HISTORY 53
But the existence of such a purpose is
a necessary implication of theistic faith.
Sometimes the historical crisis is such,
and the co-working of complex factors so
marked, that we seem to be aware of a
divinity that shapes our ends. Then we
speak of a guiding or overruling Provi
dence. But commonly life runs on in the
familiar routine, and we seem left to our
own judgment to find the way. At such
times we have nothing to say of Provi
dence. But it is clear that the only differ
ence is that sometimes the divine pur
pose seems manifest, while at other times
it is hidden. The purpose, however, is
equally real and equally controlling at
all times, though not equally manifest.
Our eyes are holden in this matter mainly
because of our deistic philosophy with
its self-running nature and absentee God.
If this philosophy were set aside, most of
our difficulties would disappear of them
selves. Because of this philosophy, we are

54 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
compelled to look for God in the non-
natural, and there is always room for
the suspicion that if we understood all
the hidden connections of the event, we
should find it to be natural, and hence
undivine, after all. This is the universal
and stereotyped form of objection. But
this vanishes when we accept the divine
immanence. Then we come to a natural
which roots in the supernatural, and a
supernatural whose methods are natural ;
and to this neither science nor religion
has any objection.
The same false philosophy underlies
the objections to a belief in a providential
guidance of the individual life, and also
vitiates the popular understanding of the
doctrine. The objector rules out the doc
trine and refers everything to nature;
and the believer often holds it supersti-
tiously, so as to scandalize both intelli
gence and conscience.
A story told of Archbishop Whateley
well illustrates the popular thought. A

GOD AND HISTORY 55
person was once relating in Whateley's
presence a case of a wonderful provi
dence. He had been in a shipwreck, and
every one but himself had perished. This
seemed to him an extraordinary provi
dence, and a demonstration of special
care on the part of God. Whateley re
plied that he knew of a case more won
derful still. Some friends of his had sailed
for some distant port and all had arrived
safe. And not only they, but all the pas
sengers, had arrived safe. And still more
wonderful, the crew and the vessel and
the cargo had arrived safe ; and no loss
of any kind had been suffered during the
voyage. The safety of all surely testified
more eloquently of a divine providence
than the bare escape of one.
And so it would to every one who has
not been confused by the false natural
and the false supernatural.
Yet this will undoubtedly seem to
many to be a mere fetch, a scheme for
appearing to assert a divine providence

56 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
while really denying it. So it must seem
to all believers in an absentee God and
a self-running nature, which does a lot
of unintended things on its own account,
and as a kind of mechanical by-product.
But we can have no further words with
them ; what they need is an intellectual
new birth. They seek to walk by sight
rather than faith, and they fancy that
God works only through interpositions
and manifest interferences. God in the
law is beyond them.
But surely, it will be said, you do not
believe in a special providence! That
kind of thing has long been obsolete
in intelligent circles. The answer must
begin by inquiring what a special provi
dence may mean.
This word, special, has been very much
used, almost overworked, of late years ;
and pretty much every one has viewed
it as standing for an outgrown idea.
Special creation, special providence, etc.,
are rejected as impossible conceptions.

GOD AND HISTORY 57
But this is mostly confusion, and has its
root in the fallacy of the universal. Thus
with regard to special creation, it is clear
that all concrete existence is, and must
be, special ; and all creation of the con
crete must be as special as the product.
Special facts can be produced only by
correspondingly special acts. In some
sense nothing is special, for everything
is a case of a kind ; and in some sense
everything is special, for it is a particu
lar case. This is the necessary antithesis
of the individual and the universal. No
universal animal could be created, but
only special animals. There is no uni
versal man, but only special men ; and
the creation of each must be correspond
ingly special. Of course particular things
or events may admit of being classed to
gether in a general scheme of law ; and
as thus subordinated to a common law,
they may be described as not special.
But as actual things or events, each is
a special case, with its own specific con-

58 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
text or coefficient, and its production de
mands a correspondingly special activity.
In this sense all individuals are special
creations, each of which has its own sin
gular equation.
The same is true of special provi
dences. If there be any providence, it|
must be special ; as a providence in gen
eral would be no providence at all, but
simply the fallacy of the universal again.
Any real providence in our lives must
specify itself into perfectly definite and
special ordering of events, or it vanishes
altogether. In this sense all providences
are special providences, or they are no
thing. Here again the divine immanence
helps us. If there be purpose in any
thing, there is purpose in everything.
The creative plan must include all its
details, and the immanent creative will
must specifically realize all its special
demands. Both philosophy and religion
unite in this view. Philosophy shuts us

GOD AND HISTORY 59
up to it, and it is a postulate of religion.
But both philosophy and religion also
unite in rejecting a doctrine of special
providence which implies that things go
their own way for the most part, and
that God now and then intervenes in a
striking fashion for his favorites. On
the view of the divine immanence, events
are supernatural in their causality and
natural in the order of their happenings ;
and a so-called special providence would
be simply an event in which the divine
purpose and causality which are in all
things could be more clearly traced, or
would more markedly appear, than in
more familiar matters. But when we
know that divine wisdom and love are
in all things, we are less concerned about
" special interventions."
In the sense of the Sermon on the
Mount, that not a sparrow falls to the
ground without the Father, we may all
believe in special providences ; indeed,
this is a necessary part of any intelli-

6o THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
gent faith in God. Every life is included
in the divine plan ; and every life is as
intimately near and present to the divine
thought and care as it would be if all the
rest were away. When we reason from
our feeble powers, we think God must
grow weary and forget. When we rea
son from our vulgar notions of greatness,
we fancy that God, being so great, must
ignore us altogether. When we are tan
gled in verbal snares, we fancy that God
deals only with universals, classes, and
laws, and has nothing to do with indi
vidual cases and details. But when we
really reason, whether philosophically or
religiously, these illusions vanish, and
we see that we are in the hands of him
that made us, and that all things and
events immediately depend on him. We
may not be able to interpret his purpose
in all or even in many of the events of
our lives, but the purpose is there never
theless, and we must wait for its unfold
ing.

GOD AND HISTORY 61
In a striking passage in "The Old
Faith and the New," Strauss has told us
what an awful sense of abandonment
attends the giving up of this faith in
providence. He says, " In the enormous
machine of the universe, amid the inces
sant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron
wheels, amid the deafening crash of its
ponderous stamps and hammers, in the
midst of this whole terrific commotion,
man, a helpless and defenseless crea
ture, finds himself placed, not secure
for a moment that, on an imprudent
motion, a wheel may not seize and rend
him or a hammer crush him to pow
der. This sense of abandonment is at
first something awful." Of this engag
ing universe he elsewhere in the work
says, " We demand the same piety for1.
our cosmos that the devout of old de
manded for his God ; " and he rebuked
Schopenhauer and Hartmann for their
pessimistic utterances as " blasphemous."
This led to a trenchant retort from Hart-

62 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
mann, who did not fail to point out that
"piety" towards this "enormous ma
chine " would be misplaced.
Bacon says, " I had rather believe all
the fables in the Legend, and the Tal
mud, and the Alcoran, than that this
universal frame is without a mind." Sim
ilarly, I had rather believe all the fanati
cal and superstitious interpretations of
the divine providence which have been
the opprobrium of history, than to hold
that there is no guiding purpose and
power in the great movement of human
ity or in the smaller field of the individ
ual life. But there is no need to make
the choice. We may believe that God is
in all things and that all things are in
him, and that his will is being done, in
spite of Strauss's nightmare about the
" enormous machine." At the same time
we must guard against dogmatic and
confident interpretations of the purpose
in events. Here is where the doctrine
of providence so often becomes a scan-

GOD AND HISTORY 63
dal to good sense and reverence ; as
when the missionaries who escaped the
Chinese Boxers were said to have been
" providentially saved," leaving us a
little at a loss what to think of those who
were massacred. Was there no provi
dence for them ? Such a view would prove
embarrassing if thought out. This doc
trine of the divine care can be held only
in connection with God's eternal plan,
and needs eternity for its full vindication.
It is a long-range doctrine, — for faith,
and not for sight. God's providence in-]
volves failure as well as success, loss asl
— . . . \
well as gain, sickness as well as health,
bereavement as well as restoration. The
ninety-first Psalm expresses our expecta
tion, but the eighth of Romans expresses
the fact. In the former, no evil is to be
fall us and no plague is to come nigh our
dwelling ; in the latter, we have all man
ner of troubles, but come off more than ,
conquerors. Unless we take this larger ;
view, the doctrine of a divine providence

64 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
is a hindrance and exasperation, unwor
thy of both God and man, and continu
ally rejected by experience. But for this
larger view there is value in the doc
trine of divine immanence. It removes
the plausible but fictitious objections to
belief that spring out of the notion of the
absentee God. We are in our Father's
hands, though we cannot comprehend the
mystery of his ways. We must work out
our own salvation, and at the same time
we may believe that it is God who work
eth in us to will and do of his own good
pleasure. It is a great aid to faith to be
clear of the " enormous machine," and to
see that nature itself is providence.
It will be a great step forward when i
religious thought is adjusted to this con
ception, when we see the divine caus
ality in all things and the naturalness of
the divine working, and when instead of
melodramatic irruptions from without
we have orderly unfoldings from within
along the lines of familiar law and influ-

GOD AND HISTORY -^65)
ence. If our daily bread came to us by
raven express, or by a great sheet let
down from the skies, it would be no more
divinely sent than it is when it comes
through the springing grass, or the grow
ing corn, or the ripening harvest. Simi
larly, God works his will in history not
** > in— 11 III - I m  «*
apart from men, but through .men ;,jand
in partnersWp^itii„tJkejn ; and the work
is no less divine^ oil that account. An
angel flying abroad through the skies
to preach the everlasting gospel would
amazingly tickle the spiritual ground
ling, but devoted men and women, speak
ing from heart to heart in our human
speech of the good news of God, would
be quite as divine and more effective.
For if they hear not Moses and the
prophets, they would not be persuaded
though one rose from the dead.

Ill
GOD AND THE BIBLE
THE false naturalism of a mechanical
plfm^osopnyhaTnowh^re wrought greater
confusion than in our thought of the
Bible. Both friends and foes have been
under its influence, and thus the prob
lem has been falsified from the start.
The friends have sought to show that,
over and above all natural agencies, a
supernatural factor must be affirmed.
The foes have sought to reduce the
Bible to a purely natural product. Nei
ther party suspected that the natural
might be only the form of a supernatu
ral causality, and that the supernatural
might be the ever-present source and
ground of the natural. With such a
philosophy the result could be only a \
drawn battle, closely resembling a scuffle \
between blind men.

GOD AND THE BIBLE 67
A prominent writer in a recent num
ber of the " Homiletic Review" has the
following respecting the naturalistic view
of Christianity : " It claims to prove that
the religious teachings of the sacred rec
ords, both of the old and new covenant,
are a gradual development, chiefly or en
tirely from natural causes, to the greater
or less, or even the entire, exclusion of
supernatural agencies." Similarly, a dis
tinguished professor of theology has
recently told us that Christianity is no
development or evolution, but a piece
of information supernaturally communi
cated. If it be not that, it is nothing.;
And still another dignitary, who seems
to be a pillar, declares in megaphonic;
utterance and with all the air of finality,
" I believe in the supernatural book."
As against a false naturalism, these
statements have an assignable meaning
and are justified. As against a true nat
uralism, even their meaning is not evi
dent, and they manifestly rest on a false

68 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
naturalism. There is a fear of develop
ment, of evolution, of natural agencies ;
and there is the tacit admission that
these things so far as allowed are sub
tractions from, or denials of, the super
natural. That this has been the assump
tion in most discussion of this subject
is familiar to every reader. But in all
this the notion of a self-running nature
and an absentee God peeps through.
God js_ supposed to be needed only for
supplementing the inadequacies of .na
ture ; and if nature be adequate, God is
needless. The logic of the position neces
sitates a polemic against naturalism. But
all these fears and distresses would van
ish if God were seen to be immanent in
all development, all evolution, and all
natural agencies. Evidently a profounder
philosophy is needed.
The thought of God's immanence in
nature and history, of a divine purpose
realizing itself through law, has equal

GOD AND THE BIBLE 69
significance for our thought of the Bible.
The great desire of religion is to find
God, and it has been so zealous for a
crude supernaturalism of signs and won
ders mainly because it was supposed
that the reality of God's existence and
presence could not otherwise be secured.
No one would ever have the slightest in
terest in Balaam's ass, or Jonah's whale,
or the talking serpent, or the rib that
was made into a woman, unless it were
thought that to question these things
would lead to "bald naturalism," that
is, to atheism. The divine immanence,
rightly understood, helps to relieve this
fear. The supernatural features of the Bible
history on this view are no more divine
in their causality than the routine events
of every day. They would be simply
extraordinary events which, from their
form or the circumstances of their occur
rence, would make the divine presence
and purpose more manifest than is the

70 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
case with familiar matters. They would
be signs, or calls for attention, which
might be made necessary by the mental
and spiritual dullness of men. The tra
ditional discussion has been made void
by the traditional confusion about na
ture. Believers have often thought to
mend matters by saying that " miracles
are not wrought against nature, but
against nature as it is known." " Mira
cles are occurrences according to laws
higher than any yet known." They are
really cases of human ignorance rather
than of divine interference. But such
utterances are either " bald naturalism,"
furnished with a wig, or else they are de
clarations that miracles are not wrought
at random, but must have a sufficient
reason, — a view which no intelligent
believer in miracles would deny.
Unbelievers, on the other hand, have
generally denied the miracles outright,
or have reduced them to misunderstood
natural events. Earthquakes, landslides,

GOD AND THE BIBLE 71
volcanoes, catalepsy, resuscitation, hyp
notism, etc., serve to explain all the facts.
But these speculators fail to show how
these familiar experiences could explain
the concrete historical results which fol
lowed. The song of the angels may have
been an hallucination of the shepherds ;
but it is the only time before or since that
shepherds were so divinely hallucinated.
St. Paul may have had a fit on his way
to Damascus, but it is the only known fit
that had such mighty consequences. The
vision of the Risen One may have been
an illusion, but when we see that it is the
greatest event in all history, we begin to
wonder whether illusions can be so po
tent. In that case, surely, things that are
not are mightier than the things that are.
Both believers and unbelievers have
done some pretty superficial work on
this subject. They have discussed at
length the possibility of proving a mir
acle by testimony, and have generally
lost themselves in abstractions. On the

72 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
one hand, it was held that testimony
enough would prove anything, for we
have only to pile up the testimony long
enough, and its falsehood will be a greater
wonder than the miracle itself. To this
it was rejoined that testimony might con
ceivably prove the occurrence of an ex
traordinary event, but could never prove
it to be a miracle ! Hume, after con
structing his famous argument, in which
he opposes uniform experience to testi
mony, proceeds to limit the statement
by saying " that a miracle can never
be proved so as to be the foundation of
a system of religion. For I own that
otherwise there may possibly be mira
cles, or violations of the usual course
of nature, of such a kind as to admit of
proof from human testimony." Hume
here recants his entire argumentation,
but then he never was careful about
consistency. But such questions have only academic
existence. Abstract and unrelated won-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 73
ders might conceivably be proved by ab
stract testimony to abstract believers, but
no living belief was ever produced in this
way. The unbeliever, on the other hand,
has commonly confined himself to the
physical miracle, and has failed to see
that his denial only relocates the wonder
without removing it. If we make it sub
jective only, meaning thereby illusory,
we have to explain how illusions came
to be so potent, and we have our labor
for naught. To recur to the song of the
shepherds, it is not so strange that shep
herds should see lights and hear voices,
but such lights and such voices, com
bined into such a vision and such a song !
Here is the real wonder ; and the won
der is equally great if we make it sub
jective, for there was nothing in the com
mon thought and expectation of these
men to shape the vision into the good
news of God. If any one thinks other
wise, let him experiment with a few cow
boys or fishermen, and see if they will

74 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
see or hear anything like the shepherds'
vision or the angels' song. Again, if
nothing had come out of it, we might
well persuade ourselves that Mary or
the disciples were hallucinated in their
belief that they had seen their risen
Lord ; but too much came out of it for
any one with a sense of reality long to
rest in such a notion. After all, history
cannot be based on fictions.
There is, however, a scruple which
emerges here from the depths of specu
lation, and which may be worthy of con
sideration by both parties. When we ask
what is real and what unreal in objective
knowledge, we commonly fall back on
sense presentation as the sole mark of
reality. That is real which is there for
the senses of all ; and all else is illusion.
For the routine life of every-day fact this
test is all-sufficient, but it becomes very
doubtful when made absolute and uni
versal. There is not the slightest specu- j
lative warrant for making our senses the $

GOD AND THE BIBLE 75
measure of reality ; neither is there any
warrant for saying the range of percep-i
tion must be the same in all. If there
were persons, otherwise sane and normal,
who professed an awareness of things
beyond the common sense range, we
should have no good reason for question
ing the fact. There might be visions and
voices for the spirit and in the spirit be
yond all common seeing and hearing ;
and they might carry with them the same
conviction of independent reality that we
have in our common sense life. Or, since
voice and vision are too suggestive of
sense organs, let us say that there might
be a spiritual awareness of reality beyond
sense which should be a revelation that
could never be judged or tested by sense.
The condition of such perception might
also be a certain preparedness of spirit,
as the sea can reflect the heavens above
it only when its waters are at peace. But
the gist and test of all perception is the
conviction of reality that accompanies it.

76 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
This can never be deduced from any
thing else or referred to anything else.
And if there were such awareness of
things beyond sense, it could be described
only in sense terms, and would thus be
liable to misunderstanding. We should
try to judge it by sense, when it might
transcend sense altogether. Reflections
of this kind might lead both the believer
and the unbeliever to see that the sense
test is not certainly final.
Of course it is well understood that
many of the Biblical descriptions of su
pernatural events are written from the
standpoint of causality. They represent
the author's faith that God was at work,
and hence the events were directly re
ferred to God as the agent without any
thought of natural law. They are inter
pretations rather than descriptions ; and
while they may be quite correct as in
terpretations, they are misleading to us
with our occidental habits of thought and

GOD AND THE BIBLE fj
speech, as we mistake them for descrip
tions. If one of those old authors had
written modern history, he would doubt
less have filled it as full of divine sayings
and doings as Jewish history. "The
Lord said unto His servant," the king, or
the general, or the preacher, or the presi
dent. "The Lord sent" the pestilence,
or the flood, or the plague of grasshop
pers, or the famine, or the earthquake.
So it would have run ; and in the causal
sense it would have been true ; but there
would have been no scenic manifesta
tions in connection with the events. And
there is no reason for thinking otherwise
of very many of the Bible narratives
of this sort. They are oriental modes
of expressing a strong conviction of
God's presence and activity. The an
cient plague of locusts probably looked
the same as a modern plague of locusts.
We may well believe that God sent the
plague in both cases, but we conceive
the phenomenal form of the visitation

78 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
in a different way. We have to distin
guish the causality from the method.
The familiar forms of religious speech
make this distinction easy. We ascribe
many things to God without intending to
affirm any miraculous manifestation. A
person of devout habit of thought and
speech might convince himself that min
isterial appointments are made by the
Lord, or that General Conference elec
tions are divinely guided ; but if he should
be present at the Conference sessions,
he would find that this divine causality
is for faith rather than sight, and that in
the phenomenal manifestation the con
tinuity and uniformity of experience are
abundantly illustrated and verified. The
mind of the Spirit is commonly revealed
only in the vote ; and even then there are
hearts that are hardened by unbelief.
"In theory," Froude says, speaking of
the council of Trent, " ecumenical coun
cils are controlled by the Holy Spirit, but
neither Charles nor Paul [the emperor

GOD AND THE BIBLE 79
and the Pope] seemed practically to ex
pect such high assistance. A profane
father at the council itself said that the
Holy Spirit would come to them from
Rome in the courier's bag." Such facts
clearly show the need of distinguishing
between the essential causality and the
method of procedure. If one were never
so sure that the Holy Spirit controls
councils, the method of control would
still remain an open question; and the
mind of the Spirit might be revealed
through the vote of the council, or even
through the "courier's bag," as well as
in other ways. The faith in divine caus
ality in no way conflicts with natural
ness of method. Of course there may be
methods and results which exclude the
thought of a divine causality, or at least
of divine approval. God in his wrath
gave Israel a king, and he sometimes
punishes wrongdoers by other wrong
doers, who are guiltier still.
But after we have made all allowance

80 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
on this account, and have also admitted
that ancient myth and legend may have
crept in here and there, there will still
remain a central history from which the
miraculous supernatural cannot be elim
inated without canceling the history. Of
course on this subject strictly decisive
demonstration cannot be expected. The
facts are too far away to make much
impression on us except as they are
embodied in present history, and in any
case it can be only a matter of interpreta
tion of the facts. And here our presup
positions will determine our conclusions.
Atheism of course vacates the discussion,
but it equally vacates science, and even
reason itself. There can be a rational
discussion of this topic only on a theistic
basis. God, as the absolute source of all
finite existence, is bound by nothing but
his own wisdom and goodness. What
they dictate, that he does. If they call
for uniformity, there is uniformity. If
they call for change, there is change.

GOD AND THE BIBLE 81
God never acts against nature because,
for him, there is no nature to act against.
His purpose, founded in his wisdom and
goodness, is alone law-giving for his
action, and all else, whatever it may be,
is but the expression of that purpose.
Nature, conceived as a barrier to God,
or as something with which God must
reckon, is a pure fiction, a product of
unclear thought which has lost itself in
abstractions. If, in addition, we conceive
God as our Father who is training us as
his children in a moral universe, we shall
have little difficulty in believing that
at times he has come, and comes, near
enough to convince us of his presence.
But if we do not share this conviction, no
historical or other evidence will avail to
establish our faith. Everything depends
on our presuppositions. If for us God is
a personal and moral being, and if his
supreme aim in human creation is a moral
one, we shall have no apriori hostility to
miracle. If we believe in a God in whom

82 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
we live and move and have our being,
and if we believe that we may and do
enter into fellowship and communion
with him in prayer and holy living, it
will seem to us the most natural thing in
the world that there should be tokens of
his presence. The size of the manifesta
tion will be irrelevant. If, on the other
hand, there is for us no God, of course
there will be no miracle, for the logical
conditions of miracle will be lacking.
We shall likely keep on talking about
"science," and "iron chains of neces
sity," and the "fixed order of nature,"
without suspicion of our logical naked
ness, and hence without the appropriate
shame. Logically, when we are without
God, we must be without hope and also
without both science and faith.
Our theistic belief may at times betray
us into credulity ; but this credulity might
be more to our credit than the opposite
incredulity that would turn even a voice
from heaven into common thunder. Our

GOD AND THE BIBLE 83
readiness to accept rumors of a friend's
good works may lead to hasty belief at
times, but that is better than a too cool
and cautious weighing of evidence lest
we credit our friend too soon. Not logic
but the historic life of humanity must de
cide these questions. As Dr. Shedd used
to say, a great and consistent system is
its own best support and proof. So far
as the Christian miracles fit into the
Christian thought of a divine revelation
of grace and are worthy factors of it,
they will never long suffer eclipse. This
•system with its past history and future
oudook is its own proof. Whatever dog
matism may say, science has no objection
to it. Historical investigation will never
do away with it. And so long as it
proves itself the power of God unto sal
vation, men will believe in it, — miracles
and all. It will never long be recom
mended to faith by diminishing its mirac
ulous character, for when it comes to be
lieving, we insist on believing something

84 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
worth while. There is no attraction in a
minimum of belief, provided the belief be
really worth believing. Of course these
considerations apply only to the funda
mental miraculous features of the system.
For us who live to-day the important
thing about Christianity is that it is a
revelation of God, what he is and what
he means, what he has done and is doing
for us, what our life means and what our
destiny is to be. This revelation makes
it humanity's supreme treasure. This
revelation is to be understood only in
its history ; and whatever in that history
is necessary for its understanding, be it
miracle or what not, we shall retain.
Neither science, nor philosophy, nor his
torical criticism can take it away. But
this history is to be studied as a whole,
not merely in its crude beginnings or in
its miraculous attendants, but also and
more especially in the moral and spirit
ual grandeur of its outcome. The pre-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 85
sent world-historical fact must be the
starting-point of our inquiry, as it is the
only thing which makes inquiry worth
while. If Christianity were not a world-
power, a great spiritual force here and
now, its origin and history would be a
matter of profound indifference to all but
a few antiquarians. The miracles, too,
are to be studied in connection with the
history, and not as isolated and detached
wonders. Miracles without moral mean
ing and religious bearing have as little
credibility as the exploits of Jack, the
Giant Killer, or the story of Aladdin's
lamp. Matthew Arnold's pen turned into
a pen-wiper, or Professor Huxley's cen
taur trotting down Regent Street, be
longs to this class. On the other hand,
there will be nothing antecedently im
probable to the Christian mind and heart
in deeds which reveal the Father's pre
sence within and behind the law, and
which throw light upon his character
and purpose.

86 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
Whatever in Biblical history does not
meet this general requirement will prob
ably go, and there will be no loss in its
going. Whatever significance it may
have had for the times of ancient igno
rance, it has lost significance for us. The
physical wonder is increasingly unim
portant. If we admit its occurrence, we
are unable to make any use of it. If the
ass did speak, or the axe did swim, we
do not seem to be religiously or other
wise advanced thereby. Our present
thought of the supernatural is rising
from the physical to the ethical and
spiritual. Whatever significance the phy
sical wonder may have had for the times
of spiritual dullness and ignorance, which
could understand nothing else, it is be
coming increasingly unimportant for us.
Devout and intelligent thought has little
interest nowadays in thaumaturgy, by
whomsoever it might be wrought, but
rather places increasing emphasis on the
spiritual miracle of God's life in the soul

GOD AND THE BIBLE 87
and the realization of his kingdom on
the earth, as the only thing really worth
while, or worthy of God.
In any case, the discussion of this
question must be carried on from the
standpoint of the divine immanence.
When the false naturalism of unbelief is
eliminated, supernaturalism will be less
disturbed if historical criticism should
cast doubt upon details. It is no longer
a question of divine causality, but of
method. Belief need not fear evolution,
or development, or natural agencies,
when it is seen that the divine will and
purpose underlie them all, and that they
are really nothing but the form of the di
vine working. And unbelief, on the other
hand, must not be thought to have tri
umphed because natural methods are
traced in the supernatural revelation.
But as there is a true naturalism in
the study of both nature and history, so
there may be a true naturalism in the

88 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
study of the Bible and our Christian
revelation. Even when we come to the
distinctly miraculous, we cannot suppose
it to break with all law. We can under
stand miracles as signs whereby sense-
bound minds are made aware of a divine
power and purpose which they would
otherwise miss, in their subjection to the
mechanical movement of nature ; but we
cannot suppose them wrought at ran
dom, and without any reference to the
antecedents and environment. Thus if
we suppose God should design to make a
revelation of higher mathematical truth,
even by way of miracle, it is clear that
the miracle would not be wrought among
the Patagonians or Hottentots, but rather
there where the development of civili
zation and of mathematical knowledge
had made a place for the reception of
the revelation. Even seed divinely sown
needs a prepared soil, if there is to be any
worthy fruitage; and thorny and stony
ground does not furnish such a soil.

GOD AND THE BIBLE 89
To continue this passage, which is
borrowed from the author's essay, " The
Christian Revelation," it is plain that
the revealing movement admits of being
studied from the natural standpoint ; that
is, we may seek to trace the familiar
laws of life and thought and history
and human development in the pro
gress and unfolding of the movement.
Assuming that God was revealing him
self in Jewish history and in the lives
and thoughts of holy men, it is still
permitted to inquire whether this revela
tion breaks with all known historical and
psychological laws, or whether we can
trace even in revelation laws with which
we are elsewhere familiar. And there is
nothing in such study to eliminate the
supernatural, or to make the presence of
the divine any less real or undeniable.
If we find Paul's thought growing and
changing with unfolding experience, if
we find the development of the church
led by circumstances into new channels,

90 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
no one need be disturbed thereby who
has not banished God from life and his
tory altogether. On the contrary, such
study lends an absorbing human and
rational interest to the problem, which is
impossible when the human is paralyzed
by the divine, and the natural is dis
placed by unintelligible arbitrariness. In
God's world the teachings of history and
the indications of experience are as truly
a revelation as any series of texts or any
voice from the skies.
This is the true naturalism of Biblical
study. It never gives any final explana
tion, but it seeks to trace the continuity
of law and rational connection through
the revealing work. Its nature and value
may be seen from the following illustra
tion : It is common to say that a man is
explained by his time and environment
For instance, Newton would have been
impossible among the Bushmen. His
work demanded the existence of civili
zation and the work of previous mathe-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 91
maticians. This is undoubted, and in
this sense Newton is explained by his
time and environment. But it would be
highly superficial to rest in this. The
time and environment were the same for
every mathematician in England ; but
they were ineffective until combined with
the special genius of Newton ; and this
is something which time and environ
ment never account for. Hence, in study
ing a man's life, we certainly need to
consider his antecedents and surround
ings; but the man himself is a factor
apart, conditioned by these things, but
not to be confounded with them or de
duced from them. In the same way the
naturalistic study of revelation can show
important preparations, historical con
tinuities, psychological uniformities, ra
tional harmonies, but we reach nothing
final until we come to the immanent,
self-revealing God.
The method of false supernaturalism,
on the other hand, which fears all rational

92 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
study of the subject, has been well illus
trated as follows: The Sunday-school
lesson is on Peter's vision as he was
sleeping on the housetop. An inquir
ing child, familiar only with our peaked
roofs, asks how Peter could sleep on the
housetop without rolling off. One teacher
sharply rebukes him for presuming to
doubt the Word of God. Another teacher
admits the propriety of the question, but
reminds the child that there is no diffi
culty, as " with God all things are pos
sible." Both teachers resent the sugges
tion that Eastern houses have flat roofs
as " bald naturalism " and " an abyss of
Satan," due to a desire to eliminate mir
acles from the Word of God, and smack
ing strongly of latent infidelity.
This well illustrates the shortcoming
of abstract supernaturalism in its treat
ment of the Bible, and the complete pa
ralysis of thought which results from it.
It is indeed true that with God all things
are possible, but it is also true that in

GOD AND THE BIBLE 93
God's world all things are not equally
probable. There is a certain divine style
which we look for in God's work. There
are ways of doing things which we ex
pect to find in anything coming from
him. Pure, unmediated supernaturalism
leads to such defenses of the faith as the
routing of the geologists by the consid
eration that God could make imitation
fishbones and put them in the rocks if he
wished, or a whale four miles long if it
were his pleasure. In the same way we
might argue for all the miracles of the
Gospel of the Infancy. The child Jesus
made clay birds and clapped his hands
over them, and they lived and flew away.
On another occasion Joseph cut some
lumber too short, and the child stretched
it by a miracle. Why not? With God
all things are possible. Against such
vagaries a true naturalism is needed to
defend us ; or perhaps a small amount
of good sense would suffice.
As against false naturalism the wise

94 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
believer insists that the fact of natural
methods in God's self-revealing work
in no way dispenses with the fact of the
divine purpose and presence. As against
false supernaturalism he insists that God
may be as present in his orderly methods
and the steadfast ordinances of the world
as in any or all miracles whatsoever.
And in any case, the important thing is
not to find miracles, but to find God and
learn his will and do it.
If we were devising a method of reve
lation which should be perfectly simple,
and which could be polemically used,
especially in the construction of " evi
dences," we should almost certainly de
cide upon a scheme of definitely dictated
and infallible texts, with a proper bolster
ing of miracles and prophecies for proofs.
This was long the scheme of traditional
orthodoxy, but it has withered away. It
was purely academic and ad hoc in its
construction, and few persons now regret

GOD AND THE BIBLE 95
its passing. God's method in revelation,
as in nature, proves to be not so simple
and compendious as we had thought.
But when we remember that God is in
all history and has never left himself
without a witness, and when we further
remember that the divine method is one
of growth and slow development out of
the natural into the spiritual, we are not
surprised to find him using the legends
and picture-stories and naive interpreta
tions of early men as vehicles for com
municating to them deeper and higher
conceptions of himself. In themselves
these things were imperfect and crude
enough, but as vehicles of revelation they
nevertheless revealed. Why should not
God begin with men where they are, in
tellectually and morally, and use even
their myths and imaginings to lift them
to higher insight? No one who has not
first banished God from both history and
the world need be offended by such a
method, if investigation should show it

96 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
to have been the fact. And the justifica
tion of the method is found in the fact
that in this way God has made a reve
lation of himself, a blessed and grow
ing insight into what he is and what
he means, which is our great and chief
source of hope and inspiration, and the
corner-stone of our civilization. The con
tents of revelation and the method of
revelation are questions quite distinct.
All that faith is really concerned with is
the divine contents ; it is willing to find
the method whatever investigation may
show it to have been.
Questions of this kind admit, of course,
of no demonstrative solution. Crude dog
matists indeed fancy that argument can
be found which will reduce all doubters
to silence and force the conclusion upon
the most unwilling mind ; but this only
shows how exhaustive and exhausting
their ignorance is. The conflict lies back
of logic. It is a conflict of world-views,
and of dispositions back of world-views.

GOD AND THE BIBLE 97
These have to fight it out in the field of
life and history in the supreme struggle
for existence. And when we take the
revelation as a whole, viewing it not only
in its crude beginning, but also in its
growing history and divine outcome, the
religious mind will have no difficulty in
believing that God spake in past times
unto the fathers by the prophets in divers
portions and in divers manners, and at
the end of those times spake unto us by
his Son. And the irreligious mind will
go its own way with, to say the least, no
better logic, and without any inspiration
for life. History shows pretty clearly how
the survival of the fittest will decide be
tween them. y
This matter of the Bible has been so
generally confused in popular thought by
the failure to distinguish between revela
tion and its method that some further
discussion seems desirable. In particular
the conservative has decided what reve-

98 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
lation must be, and how it must be made,
and any departure from his view is held
to make the Word of God of none effect.
With this prejudice in mind, he rarely
makes an inductive study of what reve
lation really is, or how it has been made.
As he knows what must be, this is quite
unnecessary. He infers the truth of the
Bible from its inspiration, instead of
inferring the inspiration of the Bible
from the greatness of its contents. And
the meaning of inspiration is inferred
from apriori reflection, rather than from
a study of its products. The method
is essentially apriori and rationalistic.
" Logical consequences " are invoked to
cast discredit and opprobrium on any
thing the conservative may dislike. In
errancy must be affirmed, or we are all
at sea. To admit error in the Scriptures
must destroy all reverence for the super
natural authority of the Bible. The theo
logians who make such an admission
may be able to split the hair with suffi-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 99
cient dexterity to convince themselves of
their own expertness, but they never can
convince the common people of good
sense that the Bible can be of God and
yet have man's imperfections. If it is not
wholly supernatural and absolute truth
from God, men ask where is the basis
for the religious faith and theology of
Christianity ; for such knowledge cannot
possibly come except by revelation and
inspiration from God. It must be a " piece
of information supernaturally communi
cated " and verified.
So the conservative reasons. If the
Bible is not technically infallible, it is
worthless as a religious guide. If the ass
and the serpent did not speak, or the axe
did not swim, we may not believe in
Jesus Christ as the light of the world,
nor accept his revelation of the Father.
But the short and easy method of the
verbalist and the peremptory decisions
of the logical - consequence maker no
longer carry conviction, but rather serve

100 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
only as the occasion of a reminiscent and
compassionate smile. The truth is, that
this conservative doctrine of Scripture,
so far from being a source of power, is a
prolific source of doubt and difficulty.
Unwittingly, of course, but nevertheless
in effect, the conservative of this type is
one of the chief enemies of the faith. If his
view were simply unscholarly, we might
endure it by thinking of something else ;
but it is the chief hindrance to faith with
well-meaning men, and the great point
of attack by opponents of Christianity.
Accordingly we find in our schools that
the persons most likely to fall into infidel
ity are those who have been brought up
in a mechanical conservatism, and have
been allowed to know only what was
supposed to be safe. And as for oppo
nents of Christianity, I have read a deal of
anti-Christian literature in the last thirty
years, and, excepting that of the atheis
tic and materialistic type, practically all
of it consists of objections springing, not

GOD AND THE BIBLE 101
out of the essential truths of Christianity,
but out of gratuitous difficulties arising
from the traditional doctrine of Scripture.
No greater external aid to faith could be
found than the modification of this doc
trine which the facts are forcing upon us.
Again, conservatism of this type should
be reminded of its own history. It should
recall its exploits and adventures with
astronomy and geology and biology. It
should remember that scarcely a step
of progress has been made which has
not been resisted by some one on the
ground that it would overthrow faith in
the Bible. The claims of this sort make a
most grotesque collection, ranging all the
way from attacks on astronomy and geo
logy and geography and political eco
nomy to demurrers against anaesthetics,
lightning-rods, fanning-mills, and women
speaking in religious meetings. This
humiliating history would be a profitable
subject of reflection for any one who is
inclined to resist any departure from his

102 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
conception on the ground that it would
make the Word of God of none effect.
The most pronounced conservative now
holds many things which were once re
jected as heresy ; but his mental attitude
is fixed. He is ready to build the tombs
of dead prophets, but living ones must
be stoned.
The conservative should also remem
ber that questions of fact can never be
settled, so as to stay settled, by authority,
but only by the appropriate methods of
investigation and evidence. Bulls against
comets are futile. The good church fa
ther who refused to look through Gali
leo's telescope, lest he should see Jupiter's
moons, has had many imitators, but he
was not a model investigator. And even
after the motion of the earth had been
renounced and cursed, the earth kept
on moving as before. Conservatism has
inflicted not a little humiliation and
disgrace upon religion at this point.
As a rule, it has at first denied or de-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 103
nounced the facts, and has shown that
they could not be facts as they would
make the Word of God of none effect,
or, still worse, were contrary to the Con
fession of Faith or the " Consensus of
the Church." After a while it has admit
ted that they were facts, indeed, but of no
importance ; and finally it has forgotten
that it ever denied that they were facts.
Come and let us reason together and look
at the facts together, must be the schol
ar's motto ; and he must always aim
at adjusting his thoughts to the facts,
and never at adjusting the facts to his
thoughts. For facts still remain stubborn
things, and sooner or later will have way,
— Popes, Bishops, Councils, General As
semblies, and General Conferences to the
contrary notwithstanding.
But now some good conservative will
ask if we are not dissolving everything
away. Is anything left after such reason
ing ? This question roots in the failure to

104 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
distinguish between the essential truths
of revelation and the conception respect
ing the mode and method of the reve
lation. The truths stand fast; but the
conception concerning the mode and
method varies. We have substituted for
immediate dictation the conception of a
historical and gradual unfolding in ac
cordance with God's general laws in life
and history and humanity, but we believe
no less in the revelation ; indeed, it seems
to us diviner than ever, now that it has
become more human ; and more super
natural than ever, now that we trace
God's universal natural methods in it.
And this leads to the reflection that all
critics, advanced and conservative alike,
should fix their attention on the central
ideas of revelation and discern the sub
ordinate and relatively unimportant na
ture of their inquiries. Christian thought
does not centre around the authorship
of the Pentateuch or the unity of Isaiah,
the inerrancy of the Biblical record or

GOD AND THE BIBLE 105
the historicity of Daniel. It centres in the
thought of God the Father Almighty, of
Jesus Christ his Son and our Lord, of the
sanctifying, inspiring, life-giving Spirit,
and of the kingdom of God. This is the
gist and root of the whole matter ; and
from this our thought should go out and
to it our thought should ever return ; for
this is what gives meaning and value
to Bible history and Bible study. The
supreme thing is not to affirm or deny
higher criticism, not to affirm or deny the
Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, not
to affirm or deny the historicity of Dan
iel, but to preach the Gospel and bring
in the kingdom of God. This only is of
faith concerning the Scriptures, that God
has revealed himself through them and
the history which they record as a God
of righteousness and grace. And this
only is of faith respecting Christianity,
that it is God's great and supreme reve
lation of what he is and what he means
for men. To depart from this faith is

106 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
heresy. To live and work in this faith
is to be a child of the kingdom. Given
these central truths and the accordant
life, we may be sure that all other mat
ters will adjust themselves in time. If the
radical be over-radical, life and reflection
will restrain him. If the conservative
be unduly timid, experience and further
study will encourage him. And on the
plane of a common devotion to this
kingdom and Lord, all Christians should
meet. They would then find their dif
ferences fading away entirely, or at least
sinking into relative insignificance ; and
they would keep the unity of the spirit
in the bonds of peace. Moreover, out of
this method of life will come a conviction
of the truth which can be reached in no
other way, and which will dissolve away
all the formal doubts which swarm about
the speculative and deductive treatment
of the subject. And this is the only
method by which living conviction can
be attained. Abstract reflection on mira-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 107
cles and prophecies, after the manner
of the traditional apologists, never con
vinced anybody, and never will, unless
his mind be made up in advance.
And this recurrence to the central
truths of revelation and their realization
in life contains the solution of another
difficulty which the conservative often
feels, and which is indeed his chief theo
retical difficulty and the foundation of his
polemics and the source of the fearsome
" logical consequences " which infest his
imagination. What security, he asks,
have we, if we do not maintain the strict
inerrancy of the Scriptures ? This diffi
culty is a real one with many, and it
continually reappears in conservative
polemics. It is only an echo, however,
of an apriori rationalism which has van
ished from the field of philosophy and
maintains a precarious existence among
conservative Biblical critics. More spe
cifically, the conservative here is puzzling
over the problem of certainty and ulti-

108 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
mate authority, which he evidently thinks
is a matter of logic and demonstration.
But this problem is purely academic
and barren, and is several generations
out of date. The question has long been
shelved as idle and futile. Philosophy, to
which the problem belongs, long since
made the discovery that real and concrete
certainty is always a matter of practical
experience and not of speculation. Ab
stract discussion and consequence-mak
ing can go on forever ; but contact with
reality gives the decision. For instance,
the trustworthiness of the senses could
be debated world without end; and if
we remained in the closet, we should
conclude that the senses could never be
trusted, because we can lay down no cer
tain standard. But the matter settles itself
when we come out of the closet and use
our senses. Then we learn that though
theoretically their authority is open to
question, practically we can depend upon
them.

GOD AND THE BIBLE 109
Philosophy has made the further dis
covery that concrete certainty in general
has a complex root in life as a whole.
There is no simple and single objective
standard, labeled certainty, which may
be mechanically applied for the testing
of truth. The living mind itself, with its
interest and tendencies and furniture of
experience, is the only standard ; and this
mind, in immediate contact with reality,
attains to certainty about many things,
and ignores the skeptical challenge as
an antiquated verbal contention.
The application to the Scriptures is
obvious. Their value and authority can
be determined only in the concrete life
and experience of the church. Syllogiz
ing and fearsome logical consequences
are as empty here as they are in the
problem of knowledge in general. They
make a show of rigor and vigor, but are
only sound and fury, signifying nothing.
And in addition to being concrete, the
problem is also complex. Those who

no THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
would find the source of certainty and
the seat of authority in the Scriptures
alone, or the church alone, or reason and
conscience alone, rather than in the com
plex and indivisible co-working of all
these factors, should be reminded of the
history of religious thought. The stiff-
est doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has
not prevented warring interpretations;
and those who would place the seat of
authority in reason and conscience are
forced to admit that outside illumination
may do much for both. In some sense
the religion of the spirit is a very impor
tant fact, but when it sets up in opposi
tion to the religion of a book, the light
that is in it is apt to turn to darkness.
Individual dark lanterns never contribute
much to the light of the world. But, on
the other hand, book and church have
had to yield to the growing spiritual
insight of the religious community. The
stoutest verbalist and ecclesiastic to-day
would not tolerate things on which once

GOD AND THE BIBLE in
they vehemently insisted, but which have
been outgrown, although the texts once
relied on still exist. All interpretations
of words must be functions of the in
terpreters as well as of dictionaries
and grammars. Even papal infallibility,
which would seem to be a simple doc
trine, according to a good Catholic lawyer
means only that the Pope is the court of
last resort, something like the doctrine
that the king can do no wrong. Plainly,
no mechanical religious standards can
save us from falling back on the com
plex life of the religious community as
the real interpreter and judge.
Again, the Bible does not exist as a
storehouse of arguments for confound
ing the unspiritual and compelling the
assent of unwilling minds. Had this been
its purpose, it could have been greatiy
improved. But it is rather a book of
religion, a revelation of God. And when
it is used in the honest desire and pur
pose to know God's will, it will always

112 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
indicate its supreme religious significance
in spite of the closet philosopher, the
verbal quibbler, the higher critic, and the
dealer in logical consequences. In this
field experience is the only source of
certainty and test of truth. Here, as
elsewhere, the caviler and logical-conse
quence man can pick flaws ; and here, as
elsewhere, good sense ignores him. The
appeal must always be to life and expe
rience, and not to abstract theorizing.
We need no infallible authority, whether
of book or church ; and in any case we
have no such authority. What we need,
and what we have, is a truth that carries
practical conviction with it. This convic
tion is weakened only when we begin to
look for some external authority which
shall be subject to no objection. It is
well known that the argument for the in
fallibility of any alleged authority always
has to work with evidence so fallible that
the conclusion must ever remain logically
precarious. There is always a link in the

GOD AND THE BIBLE 113
reasoning, or a factor in our presupposi
tions, which logically opens a wide door
to fallibility. Such argument is of use
only for those who have already made
up their minds, or who wish to intimi
date others. Logically it is always open
to fatal objection ; and psychologically
it overlooks the actual process of the
mind in attaining living belief. Except
to writers of old-fashioned apologetics
and dealers in proof-texts, it is not im
portant that the Bible should be verbally
inspired and technically infallible ; but it
is important that men should find God
in it and through it. And that God can
thus be found, even without profound
learning and critical apparatus, is the
concurrent testimony of the saints of all
ages. There is a divine immanence in
the Word as well as in the Work, which
makes it"The fountain light of all our day,
A master light of all our seeing."
Not abstract miracles and prophecies, but

114 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
this abiding, world-historical significance
of the Bible in the religious life of human
ity is its great evidential support, and all
that gives it any claim upon our faith.
A story told by Sabatier about an old
monk named Serapion illustrates the
distinction between a doctrine and the
conception of the doctrine, and the im
portance of bearing it in mind.
Far back in the early times, the story
runs, Serapion, a most worthy monk, fell
into the error of the Anthropomorphists.
The Bible seemed to him full of anthro
pomorphic expressions, and he took them
literally; and one day Paphnutius, a
priest, and Photinus, a deacon, called on
him, hoping to recover him from his
delusion. They pointed out that God is
a spirit, and as such can have no form
or organs. Finally, pardy by their argu
ments and partly by their authority, they
persuaded Serapion to renounce his error.
Then Paphnutius and Photinus pro
ceeded to give thanks to God for hav-

GOD AND THE BIBLE 115
ing restored the holy man to the true
faith. But in the midst of their thanks
giving Serapion threw himself on the
ground weeping and wailing because
they had taken away his God and left
him no one to pray to.
Which thing is an allegory. Sera
pion could not distinguish between the
doctrine and his own crude conception ;
and when the latter was set aside, he
thought the doctrine itself gone. There
is a certain pathos in such cases, ancient
or modern, yet not without a touch of
the ludicrous. Childish things are not
attractive when they outlast childhood.
Whatever sympathy we may feel for
Serapion, we must not allow him to fix
our doctrine of Scripture, or anything
else.

IV
GOD AND RELIGION
THUS far we have considered the bear
ing of the divine immanence upon our
thought of nature, history, and the Bible.
We have seen that it discharges the false
or " bald " naturalism of popular thought,
and dispels the fears of naturalism which
haunt so much religious discussion. In
stead of a self-sufficient mechanical na
ture, it gives us a supernatural natural,
that is, a natural which forever depends
on the divine will and purpose, and a
natural supernatural, that is, a divine
causality which proceeds according to
orderly methods in the realization of its
aims. We have now to consider the sig
nificance of this doctrine for the religious
life. And here, too, popular thought has
been confused greatly by the traditional

GOD AND RELIGION 117
misconception of the natural. As God
was supposed to be in nature and his
tory only, or at least mainly, in the form
of signs and wonders, so he was sup
posed to be in the soul only, or at least
mainly, in the form of manifestations of a
somewhat anarchic and prodigy-working
type. And as the familiar laws of nature
were supposed to represent no divine pur
pose, but only a mere determination of a
blind and unpurposed mechanism, so the
familiar laws of life and mind, and all the
normal workings of human nature, were
supposed to be unrelated to any divine
purpose, and were dismissed as " merely
natural." Of course, in both cases, by the
logic of the situation it was necessary to
look for the divine in the extraordinary
and anomalous. And the dealers in such
things verily thought that they were
defending religion, and never suspected
that they were really the victims of a
shallow philosophy. The uproar over
Dr. Bushnell's "Christian Nurture" fifty

118 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
years ago is a good illustration. Many
ark-savers experienced the severest
alarms at what seemed to them an ig
noring of the supernatural.
Now here again the divine immanence
helps us. We are in our Father's house
and Father's hands ; and though we may
not be able always to trace his presence
or interpret every feature of his work,
yet his will is being done. And this is
really what faith seeks for in this matter.
The soul longs to find God, to believe
that it has not fallen into life headlong,
to feel that it is in the hands of him that
made it, and that he is ever near. The
religious soul fears naturalism because
nature seems to be a barrier between
God and itself, and to thrust him into a
past so distant as to make him doubtful
and to put him beyond any real, living,
present interest in us. And a naturalism
of that sort is to be feared, as in its pre
sence high faith is sure to wither, or cry
out in mortal anguish. It is not nature

GOD AND RELIGION 119
or law that the soul fears, but nature or
law without God in it. It is not the bur
dens and distresses of life that oppress
and depress us, but burdens and dis
tresses that spring from nothing and lead
to nothing. If they are appointed by our
Father for our discipline and develop
ment, we can bear them with good cour
age and unrepining hearts ; we break
down only when we view them as the
blind raging of a storm. Now from this
distress the belief in the divine imma
nence saves us. He is in the darkness as
well as in the light, in failure and sorrow
as well as in success and joy, in death as
well as in life. He is the God of all things,
and is God over all things, and is blessed
forevermore. This view, we repeat, is
what religious thought really desires to
reach in its opposition to naturalism and
its emphasis on the supernatural. Its
real aim is to find God, not prodigies ;
but it errs and strays from the way be
cause of the crude philosophy which

120 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
banishes God from the natural and finds
him only in the strange, the anomalous,
the chaotic. And this illiteracy culmi
nates in the fancy that this is the only
religious view.
But after we had driven off false natu
ralism from the philosophy of nature and
history, we found a place for a true nat
uralism. Similarly here, after we have
driven off false naturalism from the spirit
ual life, we find a place for a true natural
ism. In other words, the conviction that
we live and move and have our being in
God does not decide the form and mode
of God's work in us ; and to learn this,
we must fall back on experience.
The great error of religious thought in
this matter is the same as its error at the
corresponding point in its thought of God
in nature. It has sought to walk by sight
rather than by thought and faith. Hence
the conception has been almost exclu
sively thaumaturgic. A changed life, a

GOD AND RELIGION 121
clean heart, a strengthened will, a deeper
moral insight, and a purer devotion would
be very poor marks of a divine indwell
ing in comparison with some psycho
logical exaltation which, by its strange
ness or excess, might impress persons
of wonder-loving mental habit. Hence,
again, there has been a very general
tendency in the history of the church to
look upon emotional_ebulliencies, anar
chic raptures, anomalous and spectacular
experiences, as the truly classical mani
festations of religion, while the inter
action of religious feeling, intellect, and
moral will has been viewed as a falling
away from the highest and only classical
form. To guard against this error, we
must analyze our problem somewhat at
length. And first of all we must bear in mind
that it is not a question of the reality
and necessity of God's work in the soul
in order that we may attain unto the life
of the spirit. Upon occasion we should

122 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
steadfastiy deny any Pelagian self-suffi
ciency of the human will, and that for
both philosophical and religious reasons.
It is simply a question respecting the
form of this divine co-working. Is it
natural or supernatural ?
This question at once reveals the fact
that these terms have peculiar meanings
in religious speech. Natural is often used
to mean the sensuous in distinction from
the spiritual, as in the text, " That was not
first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural." Sometimes it means that which
is possible to man's unaided powers ;
and the affirmation of a supernatural
means a power from above which rein
forces our weakness. And sometimes
natural means that in which an order of
law can be observed and traced. It is in
this last sense that we use it here. We
are far enough from affirming that man
is sufficient unto himself in the spiritual
life. Such a view is a mark of gross phi
losophic and religious illiteracy. The

¦ \

GOD AND RELIGION 123
professional defender of the faith seldom
discriminates these widely differing mean
ings, and thus begins, continues, and ends
in confusion.
God's work in nature and history, we
have seen, is not against law, but through
law. The thaumaturgic element, in any
case, is a vanishing factor in comparison.
A moment's reflection convinces us that
the same must be true of God's work in
the soul. It is not against the laws of
mind, but through them, that God real
izes his purposes in us. This is an abso
lute condition of our mental and moral
sanity. If we are to lead a moral and
rational life of any sort, there must be an
order of life on which we can depend.
If religion is not to be an excuse for indo
lence, we must work out our own salva
tion. It is indeed God who worketh in
us, but he works according to law, and
in such a way as to call for all our effort.
He gives us spiritual bread as he gives
us daily bread. In the latter case the

124 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
bread supply does not come by any
celestial express, but through the spring
ing corn and the ripening harvest ; yet
it is from God after all. In like manner
spiritual blessing is not conferred in any
scenic and unmediated fashion, but by
power moving along the lines of normal
life, and manifesting itself in its products
rather than its abnormal methods. And
in the case of both physical and spiritual
bread, we have to work for it
The religious life is the last realm to
be brought under the notion of law.
Law is now a matter of course in physics,
astronomy, meteorology, medicine, hy
giene, education, but it is very imper
fectly apprehended in its religious bear
ing. In all those subjects we see that
there are conditions to which we must
conform if we would accomplish our
ends. No one would expect to get a
harvest by prayer alone, while neglect
ing to plow and sow. No one would

GOD AND RELIGION 125
expect to become educated without ap
propriate labor. But in religion we have
not yet learned this lesson. We expect
God to work in the spiritual realm im
mediately and without reference to law.
We are simply to ask and receive. To
speak of law is to thrust a barrier be
tween the soul and God. To suggest
conditions is an act of unfaith. To work
for spiritual blessing through the laws
God has made is to lean to our own
understanding and have confidence in
the flesh. Education is the work of man ;
as for the work of the Spirit, we cannot
tell whence it cometh nor whither it
goeth. In all this the false naturalism
and false supernaturalism of untrained
thought are manifest. God's action is
supposed to be above and apart from
law, rather than through it, or in accord
ance with it ; and religion is supposed
to be something apart from living inter
ests, a thing of frames and retreats and
special exercises, rather than a spiritual

2& THE IMMANENCE OF GOD

principle for all living, the abiding inspi
ration of all work.
» Religious thought cannot too soon
junlearn this false supernaturalism and
learn the lesson of law. We must lay to
heart and remember that the fact that
God worketh "in us in ho. way vacates
the rule that we must work out our own
salvation. The wise man proceeds in
spiritual things as in physical things.
In the latter case, he inquires for the laws
which rule and adjusts himself to them.
In the former case, he asks for the laws
of successful and developing life and ad
justs himself to them. He avails himself
of all his knowledge and of every means
of influence in both cases. This we must
all do. We must study the order of life,
and avail ourselves of all the normal
means of influence for developing char
acter and of all the great institutions
evolved by humanity on its upward way.
We must look upon the family, the school,
the social order, the great industrial and

GOD AND RELIGION (127
commercial activities, as ordinances of
God, or as instruments through which
he works as certainly as through the
church and formal religious exercises.
Prayer and meditation of course will
always have their place and function, but
they are by no means the only way of
reaching God and securing his aid. Wei
must discern the divine presence and/
agency in life as a whole, and work with/
him along the natural lines which he haa
established, in the full faith that thus wel
are co-workers with God, and that re-!
suits thus reached are as divine as they:
would be if reached by some miraculous!
fiat The undivineness of the natural is 1
the great heresy of popular religious I
thought, and a great source of the weak- 1
ness of the religious life. Good inten
tions, zeal, and deep religious desire
often come to nought from being left to
lose themselves in formless religiosity,
instead of being directed into normal
lines of effort in accordance with human

128 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
needs and human nature. And there
will be no lasting reform in religion until
we return to a true naturalism in this
matter, recognizing that only God can
give the increase, and also that God will
give no increase unless we plant and
water, and further recognizing the natu
ral order of things as a part of the divine
appointment for our spiritual training,
and as the field for our life's work.
Furthermore, in our search for God in
life, we must clearly define to ourselves
what the divine aim is in all his deal
ing with us. This is necessary to shut
out another error springing from the doc
trine of the divine immanence itself. In
a purely metaphysical sense this imma
nence means only that all finite things
immediately depend on God ; and in this
sense the doctrine carries no moral qual
ity with it. From this point of view it
would be easy to use the doctrine in such
a way as to cancel moral distinctions.

GOD AND RELIGION 129
We escape this result by distinguishing
an ideal order in life which by no means
always coincides with the actual. Meta
physically, God is equally in both, but
only the former represents his highest
purpose ; and in this sense of approval
and sympathy God is in the former and
not in the latter. Thus the conception of
the supernatural, or of the divine pre
sence, undergoes still another transforma
tion. It has now a moral test or mea
sure, and only that which conforms to
such a test is to be called divine. God is
indeed in all things, but in some things
for their furtherance and in others for
their destruction, in some things in love
and in other things in wrath and judg
ment. This point has its significance only in
relation to the moral world. When we
are dealing with a purely physical sys
tem, there is no difficulty in making all
things and events the immediate work of
God ; but some embarrassment emerges

130 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
when we come to the moral field. Here
some very undivine things are done with,
apparently, very undivine consequences.
Some weak heads have been so heated
by the new wine of immanence as to put
all things on the same level, and make
men and mice of equal value. But there
is nothing in the dependence of all things
on God to remove their distinctions of
value. One confused talker of this type was
led to say that he had no trouble with
the notion of a divine man, as he be
lieved in a divine oyster. Others have
used the doctrine to cancel moral differ
ences ; for if God be in all things, and if
all things represent his will, then what
ever is is right. But this too is hasty.
Of course even the evil will is not inde
pendent of God, but lives and moves and
has its being in and through the divine.
But through its mysterious power of self
hood and self-determination the evil will
is able to assume an attitude of hostility

GOD AND RELIGION 131
to the divine law, which forthwith vin
dicates itself by appropriate reactions.
These are not divine in the highest or
ideal sense. They represent nothing
which God desires or in which he de
lights ; but they are divine in the sense
that they are the things to be done under
the circumstances. The divine reaction
in the case of the good is distinct from
the divine reaction against evil. Both are
divine as representing God's action, but
only the former is divine in the sense of
representing God's approval and sympa
thy. All things serve, said Spinoza. The
good serve, and are furthered by their ser
vice. The bad also serve, and are used up
in the serving. According to Jonathan
Edwards, the wicked are useful " in being
acted upon and disposed of." As " ves
sels of dishonor" they may reveal the
majesty of God. There is nothing, there
fore, in the divine immanence, in its only
tenable form, to cancel moral distinctions
or to minify retribution. The divine re-

132 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
action against iniquity is even more sol
emn in this doctrine. The besetting God
is the eternal and inescapable environ
ment ; and only as we are in harmony
with him can there be any peace.
This point also deserves considera
tion, for here too a false naturalism has
betrayed popular thought into error.
Punishment is an unpleasant concep
tion, and many have thought to escape
it by reducing it to natural consequence.
But they have failed to ask what natural
consequence means and whence it comes.
If they would pursue this inquiry, espe
cially in view of the divine immanence,
they would discover that God's will and
purpose are immanent in all natural con
sequence. Thus preeminently in " nat
ural consequence" is God's will being
done, and his attitude and purpose
revealed. What God thinks of sin, and
what his will is concerning it, can be
plainly seen in the "natural conse
quences " that attend it. The inner dis-

GOD AND RELIGION 133
cord, the mutual distrust, the aching
void, the atrophy of faculty, the depoten-
tialization of the spirit and its gradual
sinking toward lower forms, — all these
are highly significant "natural conse
quences." We see natural law busily
engaged in rooting out an evil stock, —
which means only that God will not give
them living room any longer. Some per
sons are in the current just above the falls.
Some are going on the rocks. Some
are sowing to the flesh and are reaping
the appropriate corruption. Whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap, is
the great law of natural consequences ;
and there is not much comfort in it for
one who thinks to escape God by dodg
ing behind nature and law. In law itself
we are face to face with God ; and natural
consequences have a supernatural mean
ing. With this distinction between the ideal
and the actual in mind, it is plain that the
supreme mark of the divine presence in

134 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
the higher sense must be found in the
moral and spiritual realm. Nothing what
ever that could happen in the physical
world in the way of signs and wonders
would be of the slightest significance ex
cept as it was related to some spiritual
end ; and in God's world such unrelated
wonders must be forever incredible. A
show of celestial fireworks which ended
in itself would be unworthy of both God
and man. Similarly, no extraordinary
occurrences in the psychological world
in the way of outpourings, exaltations,
emotional fireworks, would be of the
slightest significance except as they led
to deeper moral and spiritual life. Apart
from this outcome we have psychology,
neurology, pathology, rather than reli
gion. From failure to make this spiritual
connection we fall back into " mere nat
uralism." And this, too, is a point which the re
ligious teacher cannot too much lay to
heart. Every minister of much experi-

GOD AND RELIGION 135
ence knows how much of this non-mor
alized religion there is among ignorant
people. They seek for the divine in the
wrong place, and mistake pathology for
religion. Of course we may not prescribe
what the emotional forms of religious ex
perience shall be in all cases, nor what
manifestations it may please God to make
to the seeking soul, but we may affirm
with all conviction that no psychological
fact whatever has any religious value
whatever apart from its moral and spirit
ual contents. Unless it leads to holiness
of heart and life, it is only a phase of
abnormal psychology without any truly
religious significance. St. Paul thought
little of " tongues " in comparison with
love and righteousness.
We are willing, then, to allow religious
experience to be anything whatever,
within the limits of decency and sanity ;
but when it comes to giving it a divine
significance, we insist on applying the
rule, " By their fruits ye shall know them ; "

136 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
and we further insist on rejecting as mere
delusion everything whatever that will
not stand this test. This is the one and
only sure mark of the presence and work
of the Holy Spirit. According to St.
Paul, " the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, kindness, good
ness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control."
Thus he makes his abode with us.
If this position needed any support, it
would find it in the more extensive and
careful study of religious phenomena with
which the educated world is now gener
ally familiar. The religious history of hu
manity, quite apart from Christianity, is
full of strange and abnormal experiences
which are supposed to be peculiarly reli
gious. Mohammedanism and Hinduism
abound in phenomena of this sort. They
are even possible on the purely physio
logical plane through the influence of
alcohol and anaesthetics and narcotics.
Such things are interesting as showing
certain mysterious possibilities of human

GOD AND RELIGION 137
nature, at least in some of its specimens ;
but they are far more interesting as show
ing the necessity we are under of esti
mating the value of all such experiences
by their moral and spiritual contents.
Apart from these contents we are not
dealing with religious facts in the Chris
tian sense, but only with strange psy
chological and neurological phenomena ;
and if they were never so well attested,
they would not bring us morally one step
nearer to God. Opium, ether, and chlo
roform are no keys to the kingdom of
heaven. Not the narcotized, but the pure
in heart, are to see God. Our communion
with him must take place through love,
through the conscience, through active
cooperation with him in bringing in the
reign of love or righteousness. What
ever does not attain to this is illusion and
delusion. Whatever mysticism we allow
must be subject to law for the sake of the
intellect, and to righteousness for the sake
of the conscience. Only that is divine

138 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
in this matter that helps men spiritually
Godward, and makes them more effec
tive in working the work of God upon
the earth. This is the one sure distinc
tion between the work of the Holy Spirit
and the revelations of chloroform, the
contagion of religious crowds, the ima
ginations of ignorance, and the self-hyp-
notizations of conceit.
The aberrations on this point of the
supernatural in religion have had a very
complex root. The deepest source of the
error was the false naturalism and false
supernaturalism which led to looking for
God only in unmediated manifestations
outside of the order of natural law. This
was complicated with a fear of Pelagian-
ism, leading to extravagant assertions of
divine sovereignty and human inability.
And in strenuous times this surely led to
a high-pressure religion of spiritual strug
gles and intense emotions. Because of
man's inability, everything must be of
God ; and because of the false super-

GOD AND RELIGION 139
naturalism, God was surely manifested
only in unmediated and, so far as the
order of life goes, anomalous ways. This
necessarily led to excessive introspection
and unwholesome subjectivity; and men
were set to studying their own subjective
symptoms, instead of being taken out of
themselves and put upon the objective
and positive task of doing God's will in
the world and thus bringing in his king
dom. A double evil resulted. First, a
great many good men and women of
stable nerves and good sense were kept
out of all joy and peace in their religious
life because of their mistaken expecta
tions ; and, secondly, other persons, often
of inferior intellect and character but
psychologically suggestible, were able to
imagine they had the prescribed expe
riences and were not a little damaged
thereby. And these evils are by no means
ended yet.
In his work, " The Varieties of Reli
gious Experience," p. 200, Professor Wil-

140 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
liam James gives an interesting passage
from Jonathan Edwards which shows
that Edwards already understood the
influence that suggestion, expectation,
and imitation often have in moulding
experience. Edwards says : —
"A rule received and established by
common consent has a very great, though
to many persons an insensible influence
in forming their notions of the process
of their, own experience. I know very
well how they proceed as to this matter,
for I have had frequent opportunities of
observing their conduct. Very often their
experience at first appears like a con
fused chaos, but then those parts are
selected which bear the nearest resem
blance to such particular steps as are
insisted on ; and these are dwelt upon in
their thoughts and spoken of from time
to time, till they grow more and more
conspicuous in their view, and other
parts which are neglected grow more and
more obscure. Thus what they have

GOD AND RELIGION 141
experienced is insensibly strained so as
to bring it to an exact conformity to
the scheme already established in their
minds. And it becomes natural also for
ministers who have to deal with those
who insist upon distinctness and clearness
of method, to do so too." — "Treatise on
Religious Affections."
Edwards had not the language of
modern psychology, but he had recog
nized the fact of suggestibility and the
influence of expectation in the religious
field with all clearness. In his works
written after the " Great Awakening,"
one clearly sees a growing conviction on
his part that " manifestations " are very
uncertain tests of a work of grace. And
the only way out of all these confusions
is never to aim at " experience," but to
aim at righteousness, and find the essen
tial and only sure mark of the divine
presence, in a religious sense, in the
fruits of the Spirit. And along with the
marked and sudden transitions of char-

142 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
acter which may occur in mature per
sons of strenuous type, we must make
place for a gradual training of the will
under the divine education of life, or for
quiet, unreflective growth into the king
dom of heaven. Here too the divine
immanence helps us. We are no longer
compelled to set nature and grace, the
secular and the religious, the human and
the divine, in mutually exclusive anti
thesis; but rather find them in mutual
penetration. If some days were ushered in with a
mighty bang, and other days came with
the quiet of the dawn, we might con
ceivably have an astronomical school of
bangers and one of anti-bangers ; and
they might so confine their attention to
the bang as to forget that the only point
of any real importance is to have the day
come, with or without a bang. Com
pared with this, the bang question is in
significant. We have these schools in
religious experience, emphasizing the

GOD AND RELIGION 143
bang or the non-bang and overlooking
the only matter of importance, — the
dawn of the spiritual day.
This false supernaturalism in the inner
religious life of the subject has led to
corresponding error in determining reli
gious duty. The result has often been
an abstract religiosity and other-world-
liness, which has sometimes made sad
work of the life that now is. Submission
to the will of God is indeed the central
thing in religion, and its importance can
not be overestimated. Hence religious
thought has occupied itself largely with
securing this harmony without inquiring
what that will is in its positive contents.
The result has been a body of deter
minations, largely negative, and for the
rest mainly concerned with the securing
of tempers, dispositions, and aspirations
supposed to be peculiarly spiritual.
When this result is combined with the
disastrous separation of the secular from

(144) THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
the religious, it leads straight toward
asceticism and monasticism. In the Pro
testant bodies it has led to fixing atten
tion too exclusively on sin and salvation,
abstractly conceived, as the matters of
supreme importance in religion.
Now this may be good as far as it
goes, but it certainly does not go very
far. To be sure, submission to the divine
will must be secured, if it be wanting ;
but what is that will for men ? After man
has returned from his willful wanderings,
he is only at the beginning, not the end.
Now he must begin to work the will of
God. As worldliness consists less in what
is done than in the spirit of the doing, so
religion consists less in what is done than
in the spirit of the doing. Both the world
ling and the Christian have to do largely
the same things. But the worldling loses
himself in the outward and sense life, and
fails to relate it to any divine meaning
and purpose. The Christian, on the other
hand, is in the same sense life, but he

GOD AND RELIGION 145
relates it to a divine order, and seeks to \
glorify that life by filling it with courage
and devotion. Religion conceived as a*"]
specialty, as a matter of prayers and ritesj
and ceremonies, is a minor matter, anc
one of no great importance ; but religior
conceived as a principle which knows ng
distinction of secular and religious,„buJ
pervades all life, and perpetually offerj ,
"unto God in living sacrifice as its con-
tinual spiritual worship the daily round
with ail its interests and activities j
tified by the filial spirit, — this is the idealj
of humanity. So long as we form at
lower conception of religion than this,
so long will religion be only one interest
among many, and life will lack its true
unity. This I conceive to be the deepest aim
of Christianity. The forgiveness of sins
is essential, but it is only introductory.
The forms of worship and the practices
of piety are important, but they are
only instrumental. They are not the

>THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
thing, and their significance consists
entirely in what they help us to. The
thing, the central thing, is the recognition
of the divine will in all life, and the loyal,
loving effortto make that will prevail in
all life : first of all in the hidden life of the
spirit, and then in family life, in social
life, in political life, in trade, in art, in lit
erature, in every field of human interest
and activity. Only thus can religion be
saved from unwholesome and baneful
subjectivities. Only thus can it gain the
healthy objectivity needed to keep it sane
and sweet. The religious spirit must
have all fields for its own ; and at the
same time we must remember that all
that is normal to man and demanded
by his life has its place in the divine
purpose and its justifying function in
the divine training of men. To think
otherwise is atheism.
One of the good signs of the religious
times is the growing recognition of this
fact. We are outgrowing the conception

GOD AND RELIGION 147
of religion as a thing of rites and cere
monies, of cloisters and retreats, of holy
days and holy places, and are coming
to view it as the divine principle for all
living, whatever the day or the place or
the work. We are coming to deny the
distinction between secular and religious
work, and to adopt into holy places all the
normal and necessary work of the world.
All of this is a divine ordinance, and ex
presses God's will concerning us. Men
are tiring of the cloister and the smell of
incense. They are tiring equally of the
barren inspection of their spiritual states,
and of churning up artificial emotions.
They need to be taken out of themselves
and given some worthy task to perform
under some worthy inspiration ; and this
they find in the realization of the king
dom of God upon earth, and the doing
of his will here under the stars as it is
done in heaven. It is under the uncon
scious influence of these impulses, which
are really strivings after God, the present

148 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
God, the immanent God, that men grow
dissatisfied with the formal and barren
exercises of traditional religion.
The need of the divine help in order to
live the life of the spirit is as manifest as
it ever was. The sense of a divine pre
sence in our lives is not dying out, but it
is taking on a new form in accordance
with a more careful psychology and a
greater precision of thought. Instead of
being something sensuously presentable
or emotionally definable, it is rather the
assurance of faith and the sense of reality
which comes in spiritual living. Along
with this has come the insight that it is
preeminently in the conscience, the pure
heart, the surrendered will, and holy ac
tivities that God makes his abode with
us. From this we may expect great gain
to religion. We shall lay aside our irra
tional fear of naturalism and also our
crude supernaturalism. We shall find
God everywhere, not merely in unmedi-

GOD AND RELIGION 149
ated and miraculous manifestations, but
also in the world he has made, in the
laws he has ordained, in the great forms
of life and society which he has ap
pointed, and in the multitudinous activi
ties which life necessitates. We shall
come into communion with God in prayer
and meditation, and also in work of all
kinds, as we seek to build up his king
dom in the earth. We shall work more
definitely along lines of training, culture,
education, the improvement of all the
conditions of human life in accordance
with the laws of our being, yet without
closing the spirit to direct contact with
the Divine. In so doing we shall mani
fest ourselves as wise sons of God, and
the divine manifestation will correspond.
Indeed, there is no telling what God
would do for a community thoroughly
bent on doing his will and using all
the means of influence in their power.
Nature is no closed system, but forever
becomes that which God wills it to be.

yd THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
Along with a moralized humanity might
well go new heavens and a new earth.
To them that have shall be given. At
this point I more than suspect that I am
what Professor James calls himself, "a
crass supernaturalist" My " crassitude "
is limited, not by any respect for nature
as something having metaphysical exist
ence and rights of its own, but solely by
the insight into the necessity of an order
of experience on which we can depend.
Without that, we should be equally at
sea in both mind and morals. We must,
then, learn the lesson of law and self-help.
For some time, at least, the keynote of
religious progress must be found, not in
vague and illiterate utterances about the
supernatural, but rather in the diyineness
ofjdiejaaJjaraLand theji^raJnes&1oi4h»
divine. This term supernatural has so
many misleading associations, and is still
the subject of so many misunderstand
ings, that we would do well to abandon
it altogether and in its place write God ;

GOD AND RELIGION 151
and then, in the assured faith that we are
in his world and his hands, resolutely
set about our Father's business, looking
not for signs and wonders, but for the
coming of the kingdom of God in the
form of higher and holier living.
Thus we see the deep significance
of the divine immanence for religious
thought. It dispels that great cloud of
difficulties, born of crude naturalistic
thinking, that haunt popular religion.
This is largely a negative service, but it
is important nevertheless. It recalls God
from the infinite distance in space and
time to which sense thought must banish
him, and where we so often lose him, and
makes him the omnipresent power by
which all things exist and on which all
things continually depend. This meta
physical presence does not indeed secure
spiritual sympathy and fellowship on our
part, but it removes the speculative ob
stacles thereto that exist in many minds,

152 THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
and thus makes room for the spiritual life
of communion and sonship. This life
itself can be secured only in devout and
faithful living by each for himself, but it
is something to have the speculative in
timidations removed that sometimes, like
Bunyan's lions, frighten pilgrims from
the way. It is something to know that
this world, however mysterious and even
sinister in many of its aspects, is after all
God's world ; that we are not standing
helpless and hopeless in the midst of
Strauss's "enormous machine" world
with its pitiless wheels and thundering
hammers, but we are in a personal world,
a moral world, where character is being
wrought out and a kingdom of right
eousness is being set up. In such a world
it is permitted to see visions and dream
dreams, and devote ourselves to the ser
vice of the highest and best, in the sure
faith that they are also the truest and
most real, the abiding and essential stuff
of the universe.

GOD AND RELIGION 153
But we also see the necessity of uniting
this thought of the divine immanence
with the thought of law. All is law ; all
is God. All is God ; all is law. We read it
either way, according to the emphasis de
manded by the times and circumstances.
For those who have not learned the les
son of law, who are seeking short cuts,
and who are not availing themselves of
the natural means of growth and influ
ence, we say, All is law. For those, on
the other hand, who have lost God in the
law, and who have fallen into the para
lyzing notion of a self sufficient mechan
ism, we say, All is God. In both cases
alike we say with the apostle : Work out
your own salvation with fear and trem
bling ; for it is God who worketh in you,
both to will and to work for his good
pleasure. For in him we live and move
and have our being.

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