who illuminates us; when we drink in the Spirit, it is Christ we drink in." Phillips Brooks says: "One idea held by very earnest people, embodied in very faithful and devoted lives, is the strangeness of religion to the life of man, as if some morning something dropped out of the sky that had had no place on our earth before, as if there came the summons to man to be something entirely different from what the conditions of his nature prophesied and intended that he should be. The other idea is that religion comes by the revelation of God from the heavens, but comes up under the influence of God out of the human life of man; that man does not become something else than man when he becomes the servant of Jesus Christ, but then for the first time becomes man in his true development; that religion is not something fastened on the outside of life, but is the awakening of the truth inside of his life; that the kingdom of God is but the true fulfilment of human life and society."

Is not God now in the world his power first made?

Is not his love at issue still with sin,

Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?

BROWNING. - Death in the Desert.

We see now that God's revelation of himself by his historical action gives a much fuller knowledge of him and rests on a much surer basis of credibility than could any revelation in words dictated to a prophet or written by "the finger of God." It might be thought that it would have been a clearer and more assured revelation of God if he had written on the sky in letters of stars, GOD IS A SPIRIT. But the inscription would be unintelligible unless God had previously revealed himself so that man had already attained the idea of God and spirit; it would be invisible to the inhabitants of the southern hemisphere; it must be written in some language not in existence when the stars came into being; it would be seen only in the night, so the sun would outshine and hide the revelation of God; it would be easier for the skeptic to refer it to chance than to refer to chance the actual rational and scientific constitution and evolution of the universe accordant with rational and scientific law from the minutest atom to the largest star. Thus it would be a less assured and less

1 Epistle to Serapius, i. 19.

significant revelation of God than that which we have in the constitution and order of the universe, in the constitution and history of man, and in the development of God's kingdom progressive through all the ages. The revelation of God in these ways, and pre-eminently in that line of historical revelation of which the Bible is the inspired record, is, therefore, better verified and more intertwined, identified, and accordant with the normal constitution and development of the physical universe, and of man and the moral and spiritual system, than any other of which the human mind can conceive. This historical revelation in Christ continued historically in the Holy Spirit meets the wants of humanity which have been felt in all ages and supplies the spiritual forces effective in rescuing men from sin, reconciling them to God and advancing his kingdom of righteousness and good-will. Browning in his "Cleon" expresses truly the want, felt among the non-Christian nations, of realizing union with God which God in Christ alone can satisfy. He makes Cleon say:

"Long since I imaged, wrote the fiction out,
That Zeus or other God descended here,
And, once for all, showed simultaneously
What, in its nature, never can be shown
Piecemeal or in succession:-showed, I say,
The worth both absolute and relative
Of all his children from the birth of time,
His instruments for all appointed work.
I now go on to image, - might we hear
The judgment which should give the due to each,
Show where the labour lay and where the ease,
And prove Zeus' self, the latent, everywhere!"

CHAPTER III

GOD THE ABSOLUTE BEING

WE are now to ascertain what we can know of God as the Absolute Spirit, unconditioned and unlimited by any being, power or environment independent of himself. This topic is usually designated in theology, The Attributes of God. It is objected that the so-called attributes of God are merely subjective ideas. of theologians and are not objectively real in God. But we have seen that man does not attain his idea of God through subjective speculation merely, but by God's revelation of himself in various lines; and his thinking of God carries with it knowledge of objective reality. It would be just as pertinent to object that the attributes of the sun as discovered and declared in science are merely subjective ideas in the mind of the scientist. It is also objected that in ascribing attributes to God we regard him as divided. This has force only against an erroneous conception of simplicity in God, which some theologians have included among his attributes. It would be just as pertinent to object that a man is regarded as divided when we ascribe to him intelligence, will, and other powers, or that an atom of oxygen or of iron is divided by attributing to it various properties and powers. Each of these two objections is frivolous, and, if valid, would imply that it is impossible for man to have any knowledge of God whatever. John Smith, one of the Platonic divines of the seventeenth century, says: "Though in our pursuit after knowledge we cast wisdom, power, eternity, goodness and the like into several formalities, yet in our naked intuitions of them, we clearly discern that goodness and wisdom lodge together, justice and mercy kiss each other; and all these, and whatsoever pieces else the cracked glasses of our reasons may sometimes divide the divine and intelligible Being into, are fast knit together in the invincible bonds.

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of eternity." The truth in this is that God reveals himself to us as the one absolute Reason or Spirit, but in many ways and in various aspects; and by studying these revelations we must apprehend, as well as we can with our finite minds, what God is as thus revealed in the various aspects and attributes of his being. So the sun has been revealing itself to men through the ages in various ways and various aspects, and they have been studying the revelation to ascertain and declare in science what the sun as thus revealed is. And as the powers and qualities which we find revealed in the sun are objectively real in it, so the attributes which we find revealed in God are objectively real in him. But they are powers and attributes of him in his indivisible oneness as the perfect Spirit. Thus we reject the agnostic and pantheistic speculation which recognizes no distinct powers and qualities in the absolute Being. On the other hand, we must equally reject the superficial conception of a real division or separation. In man we distinguish reason, will, feeling, and their manifestations. But the one undivided person is revealed in every act So God's attributes are the varying but harmonious aspects of his indivisible personality in which they are all at one, And in his consummate revelation of himself in Christ this harmony of his unchanging righteousness and benevolence, this unity of all the attributes, are most conspicuously manifested.

In speaking habitually of the attributes as the object of investigation there may be danger that the thought will rest on the attribute as an abstract idea instead of passing through it to God. As Sir Isaac Newton says, "It is not eternity and infinitude, but the eternal and the infinite Being." It is important, therefore, in all our study and phraseology to keep in mind that we are seeking to know the one only living God in all the aspects in which he has revealed himself.

2

Theologians have proposed various classifications of the_attributes of God. They have been most commonly classified as Natural and Moral. It seems to me that the most obvious and reasonable classification of what we know of God must rest on the two aspects of his being as the absolute Spirit. By unfolding what God is as the absolute Being, so far as he has revealed 1 Select Discourses, 2d ed., Cambridge, 1673, p. 94. 2 Principia: Scholium Generale.

himself, we get one class of his attributes. By unfolding what he is as absolute Spirit, so far as he has revealed himself, we get another class of his attributes. These would comprehend all which we can know of what God is in himself.

In this chapter we are to ascertain what we can know of God as the absolute Being, unconditioned and unlimited by any power or environment independent of himself. God in this aspect of his being can be defined only by negation. Hence some theologians have designated this class of the attributes of God as Negative, and the attributes of God as Spirit, Positive. This is misleading; it gives occasion to specious pantheistic and agnostic objections and covers not a little false reasoning. The negation is only in the definition, and is the negation only of limits and conditionedness. It is, therefore, itself the affirmation of real power beyond all limits and conditions. All the attributes of God, whether as absolute Being or as Spirit, are real and positive. fact the affirmation of finiteness, as denying the existence of power beyond a definite limit, is the real negation. evident that the modes of God's existence and action as the absolute Being thus defined by negation of limits and conditions cannot be pictured in the human imagination. Man never passes beyond the limits of the finite and has no data for picturing the absolute.

In

We have already seen that, in our intellectual processes ascertaining the reasonable grounds of our spontaneous belief in a divinity and what we can know of him, we find at the outset that it is a universal principle of reason that some absolute Being must exist. Then we ascertain that the absolute Being reveals himself in various ways as the absolute Spirit. Now we see that, because the negations implied in defining God's absoluteness have no meaning except as denying conditions and limitations of positive powers, we carry with us into our thought of the absolute the positive attributes of God as Spirit. In this way the absoluteness of God, though defined negatively, has always a positive significance. We do not deny the essential powers of the personal Spirit by denying that they are limited and conditioned; on the contrary, we affirm that they are great beyond all limits. Thus we never lose our grasp of the known and essential attributes of God as Spirit in our thought of him as the absolute