established must be recognized in the study and teaching of theological doctrine. My own conviction is that this remarkable movement of thought is tending to results favorable both to the confirmation of the truth of theism and of Christianity and to a clearer and more comprehensive knowledge of their significance and their practical application and power.

We therefore enter on the study of theological doctrine with humility and reverence, but also with courage and hope. We have the record of God's revelation of himself in the Bible. "God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. iv. 6). The Spirit of God abides with us, as Christ promised, "to take of mine and show it unto you; he will guide you into all the truth" (John xvi. 13, 14). His promise is to us, as it was to Peter, "What thou knowest not now thou shalt understand hereafter" (John xiii. 7). Our path is to be "as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. iv. 18). And we hope to walk this ever-brightening path till we so come into the presence of the Lord and into union with him that " his servants shall do him service; and they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night no more; and they shall need no light of lamp, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God shall give them light. The glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof" (Rev. xxii. 3-5; xxi. 23). If God has revealed himself, man would renounce his own reason if he did not bestir himself to ascertain what God is in his relation to the universe as thus revealed and what the universe is in its relation to God, the harmony of what is revealed with the principles of reason and with all knowledge, and its adaptation to the practical needs of man. All knowledge is sacred as immediately or remotely connected with the knowledge of God. Had we minds comprehensive enough, we could trace all knowledge up to theology and theology outward to all knowledge. We could show the relations and harmony of theology with all facts of science as being all one harmonious revelation of God, the different pipes of one organ through which are breathing the different parts of one eternal harmony. What is revealed to faith is also to be included in the system of reason. Men may say what they will of philosophizing about the Christian revela

tion; but it is a necessity of the human mind to philosophize. Nothing less than the extinction of rationality can prevent it. It is the work of reason bestirring itself to build within its own domain a sanctuary for the revelation that has descended to it from heaven; building the great hewn stones, the cedar wood, the gold and silver and fine twined linen of its own gathering and workmanship, into a temple for this heaven-born truth. That work will yet be done. Every stone and beam, every plate of gold and every gem, every hanging and hook and flower of reason's treasures, shall be fitly adjusted around the Holy of Holies of God's revelation, its defence and ornament. profound truths of philosophy alone, but the facts and laws and systems of all science shall be built into the temple, as columns that support or ornaments that beautify it; the inventions of art shall be laid as the tongs and flesh-hooks on its altar, and reason shall minister reverently as its high priest.

Not the

CHAPTER II

GOD THE ABSOLUTE SPIRIT: MISCONCEPTIONS OF HIS REVELATION OF HIMSELF AS SUCH

THE designation of God as the Absolute Spirit indicates the two essential aspects of the one indivisible and only God. One of these aspects is his transcendence of man and the universe as the Absolute Being, unconditioned and unlimited by any power or condition independent of himself. The other is that he is rational Spirit energizing in the universe. Therefore man is in the likeness of God as rational spirit and is capable of knowing him so far as he has revealed himself. God is rational Spirit in the form of the absolute. Man is rational spirit in the form of the finite. In the chapters in the First Part of this volume we aim to ascertain what God is in these two aspects of his being so far as he has revealed himself. This must be the beginning of all efforts to attain the knowledge of theological truth; because the idea which one forms of God determines his whole theological thinking, his conception of man and the universe in their relation to God, and the type of his religious life.

In this chapter I propose to correct certain misconceptions as to God's revelation of himself. It has been a common impression that the supernatural and divine is something foreign from the universe and incompatible with its order and law; that it can reveal itself among men only by abrupt irruption into the fixed course of the universe, interrupting its continuity, uniformity and law. Hence has arisen the conception of an impassable chasm between science and revelation, issuing in the denial of all revelation of God as incompatible with science and the order of nature. Christian believers themselves have been conscious of difficulty in believing in a revelation involving the miraculous and the supernatural. This disbelief, skepticism, and doubt arise, in part at least, from various misconceptions. These it is important to correct at the outset.

I. REVELATION, BELIEF, REASON. The knowledge of God originates in spontaneous belief. The belief presupposes God's action revealing himself to rational persons. It is verified and developed into rational knowledge by intellectual investigation of the various lines of God's revelation of himself, and of what he is as thus revealed in his relation to the universe, and especially to man, and of what the universe and man are in their relation to God.

1. The knowledge of God originates in spontaneous belief. It is a common misconception that man finds God only at the end of his intellectual processes in investigating the so-called proofs of God's existence. Hence it is objected that we attain only a speculative and subjective idea of a God, without objective reality, not in contact with man in his actual life, not a power active in man's development. The fact is just the contrary. God is so present and active in the life and history of man that the idea of God and the belief in his existence arise, not at the end of these intellectual processes, but spontaneously before these processes begin, and are the occasion of man's beginning them. Man is so constituted and environed that the knowledge of God and communion with him are essential to his right knowledge of himself and of his environment, and to his normal development. Therefore, when he wakes to consciousness of the outward world and of himself he finds himself in the presence of God. The idea of a Divinity and the belief that the Divinity exists arise spontaneously in his consciousness. This spontaneous belief is often called faith. But because in the Bible and in speaking of the religious life faith denotes trust in God, which of course presupposes belief that God exists, it is better to use the word belief, and so avoid a common ambiguity. This spontaneous belief is the occasion of the waking of the intellect to ascertain whether there is reasonable evidence that a Divinity exists, and what can be known of him. This intellectual investigation verifies the belief in a Divinity, corrects errors, and enlarges the knowledge of him. This is true in all religions. In the childhood of the race primitive men may have made little effort to verify the belief in a Divinity or to define what the Divinity is. So far as they have done so, they may have used imagination rather than the reasoning power and have reached inadequate conclusions. Yet the belief in a God is spontaneous in all religions; and it is in important particulars

verified, and is also clarified, corrected, and developed, by the larger knowledge and clearer thinking of men as they have advanced in knowledge and civilization. Thus man's knowledge of God begins in spontaneous unelaborated belief; and this belief is verified and man's knowledge of God corrected and enlarged by thought and investigation under the guidance of the principles and laws of reason. This is true of man's belief in God and his knowledge of him as the absolute Spirit, in both these aspects of his being.

This is true of man's belief in God and knowledge of him as the absolute Being. In the religions of the world the Divinity is always spontaneously felt to be a power transcending man and the universe, a mysterious Being contemplated with awe. A savage does not attain a philosophical conception of the absolute and name it. But he feels its transcendence and is awed by it. As man advances in development and civilization, this spontaneous consciousness of an absolute and transcendent Being continues in all religions. For example, Lao-tse, founder of the second religion in China, says:

"There is an infinite being, that existed before heaven or earth.

How calm it is, how free!

It lives alone, it changes not.

It moves everywhere, but it never suffers.

We may look on it as a mother of the universe.

I, I know not its name." 1

Rev. George Owen, of Pekin, China, writes in the "Chronicle of the London Missionary Society": "The old Chinese classics show a wonderful knowledge of God. There are passages in those classics about God worthy to stand side by side with kindred passages in the Old Testament. The fathers and founders of the Chinese races appear to have been monotheists. They believed in an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, the moral governor of the world and the impartial judge of man.” F. Max Müller has shown that the one God, under the same name, Dyaus, was recognized in India, Greece, Italy, and Germany. The Babylonian legends represent that in the creation

1 Quoted by Charles H. S. Davis, "The Egyptian Book of the Dead," Introduction, p. 6.

2 Science of Religion, Lect. III.