p. 132Well, where are we now?—I begin to feel that there is nothing for it but to accept the stupendous truth of God’s existence. It seems inevitable.
It is unquestionably inevitable. There is no logical alternative. Stupendousness is before us whatever we may say to it. It is stupendousness of death or stupendousness of life; stupendousness of insanity or stupendousness of wisdom. You cannot hesitate as to which of the stupendousnesses it is. It is not the stupendousness of death, for the universe is alive throughout. It is not the stupendousness of mindlessness, for the universe bears the stamp of intelligence in every atom and fibre. You have but to introduce one more idea to complete the inevitable truth.
What is it?—The stupendousness is either a stupendous unity or a stupendous agglomeration of heterogeneous and unconnected parts. Which of p. 133 them it is cannot be in doubt for a moment where any ordinary knowledge of creation exists. The system is absolutely ONE. It is under a common government throughout, and is wheeling in one stupendous motion round a common centre. It is therefore a stupendous unity we have to deal with in contemplating the system of the universe.
But how does that bear on the conclusion?—Well, if you have a stupendous unity containing life and wisdom, you have God.
I don’t know that I follow you there: that appears to me to be Pantheism.—No: Pantheism does not discriminate between God and the universe, which is the expression of God in the concretion of His wisdom and power. I do not point to a unified, living, wise universe as being God, but as declaring Him. The unity and the life and the wisdom are all in the universe, but they are not the attributes of the things forming the universe, but of a power underlying and outlasting the universe. This is plainly seen when we consider any element of the universe by itself. Take ourselves as the principal element for us: the life and the faculty we have are in us but not of us, but anterior to us. We are but of yesterday. A little way back, we were babes in the cradle: a step further back, we were nowhere. Yet the power by which we live and think existed, otherwise we never could have come to live and think. So with all animals, all plants, all minerals, and therefore of the entire globe, and every other body forming the universe: the powers they have and which they exemplified are but the incorporation of a Power preceding them. The powers they have and which they exemplify are in them, but they are not of them, but separable from and independent p. 134 of them. Can you not see the application of this to the stupendous unity of the living universe?
I would prefer you to define the application.—Well, here is a universe full of life, and wisdom and unity, and no part of that universe possesses these things as inherent attributes of its substance or form. Therefore there must be a wise and living unity underlying and antedating and separable from the whole. This wise and living unity is God. He stands there declared before us in the universe as it is. This is not Pantheism, which says: “Look at the universe and you look at God.” The view I am presenting says: “Look at the universe and you look at the expression of God.” There is a great practical difference between the two views.
What is the difference?—Well, you see the difference in the fact that Pantheism denies revelation and salvation, or their possibility, while the view I am presenting leaves the way open for both, and inductively involves them.
That may be a practical difference between the two theories; but why should there be such a difference? Why should Pantheism exclude revelation and salvation, and why should your view admit of them?—The reason is obvious. Pantheism, in teaching that the universe is God excludes the personal volition which is essential to revelation and salvation. There is no personal volition in the universe as such. A stone is a stone, and a planet is a planet. Both are governed by mechanical laws in which they are as helpless as a chip floating in the current. Man has volition, but it cannot act beyond the limited possibilties of his frail and perishable organization. In teaching that the universe is God, Pantheism gives us a God that cannot save: a huge p. 135 helpless blind machine—that can only work as we see it work, by mechanical law, without will, without speech, without the capacity of forming a purpose. But the view I am presenting discriminates between God and the universe. It points to the universe as proclaiming God, but as proving at the same time that God must be something separable and separate from the universe which He has contrived, and therefore capable of operating further than He has yet gone, if He see fit. It leaves the way for this thought, that as He has operated in the visible ways already before our eyes, He can operate in other ways:—that as He has given us one life, He can give us another; that as He has endowed us with the faculty of declaring thought by speech, He can Himself reveal His thoughts to us if He choose. Pantheism gives us the universe only and calls it God. The truth gives us the universe plus God, as the Power in which it subsists, of whose existence it recognizes the universe as proof. You must allow this is a great difference.
Yes. I must allow the greatness of the difference.—In the one case, we have a Father; in the other, we are but bubbles on a passive, dumb life-ocean which has no more capacity to take notice of us or care for us than the sea has for the fish that dart in its waters.
But might not a Pantheistic creation bring forth salvation by some process of Evolution in the same way as it is supposed to have brought forth the present order of life?—Salvation is the restoration, renovation, and glorification of the individual. If we are to be guided concerning the future by what we see in the order of Nature now, there is no ground for going so far as even a “might” in the direction of p. 136 your suggestion. Nature in itself is evidently incapable of purpose or deviation. It is barely conceivable that Nature, if the self-evolving system which Pantheism assumes, might some day, ages hence, develop a creature that would live so long as practically to be immortal; but this would not be salvation in the Bible sense. It would not be the resuscitation of lapsed lives in a better state for reasons operative in a previous state.
It would be something better than what is now.—Yes, it would, if—; but what a tremendous if. And even “if” it came, against which the chances on the spontaneous natural plane are billions to one, it would lack the fine elements of interest and joy that will come with previous history and character and desert of the Bible plan. The people would not be “saved” people, but merely an improved breed without character, title, or gratitude. But the fact is, there is no ground of hope at all in a Pantheistic universe—a mythical universe truly, for a universe without a moving force of intelligence and power is an impossibility.
In the other view, you think there is hope?—Unquestionably. A God separate from, though containing, the universe, has no bound to His power. He can do higher things than the universe yet shews. He can produce a higher life than we now possess. He can impart a higher knowledge than we can of ourselves acquire. It is all a question of whether He purposes so to do, and this to us, is a question of whether He has revealed Himself on the subject, and this is a question of history, and this is a question of no doubtful answer. The history of the Jewish nation and of the Christian religion, and the character of the Book which has come to us in connection with p. 137 both, constitute together the proof that God has revealed Himself with the delightful double result of explaining to us the cause of the evil that now prevails, and of imparting to us a rational hope of a day when life will be what we can now only imagine and desire in vain.