ARGUMENT. ALL language fails to express, because all thought fails to contain, adequately the Idea of God. The distinction is drawn between Thought and Consciousness, and it is shown by several examples that Consciousness transcends Thought. The Unthinkable God is a subject of Consciousness. The confession of this Consciousness, common to both Science and Religion, provides us with a ground of reconciliation between the two; for both Science and Religion assume a consciousness of the Unknowable as an indispensable basis of thought. But although God Positive can only be reached by indefinite consciousness, God Relative is fairly within the reach of Man's Thought as well as his Consciousness. The Relative Nature of God is then inferred from so much of the Universe and Man as we can be said to know, and it is argued that what is seen and known as force in Matter, Mind, Love, must have affinity or correspondence with the Unknown God whom we seek. Thus God becomes relatively known to us, as Force revealed in Matter, Mind, Love. The orderly growth and development through natural law of the moral nature, and of the religious sentiment in man, is not denied, but the reality of the Communion between God and Man is asserted and vindicated. In the next discourse on the Science of God, much of the same ground is traversed from a different standpoint. Popular Theology is declared to be unsatisfactory. The mind craves for scientific and moral foundations, however narrow as startingpoints in the inquiry, 'What is God?' The metaphysical basis has been discovered in our consciousness of the Unknowable. The scientific and moral bases are now pointed out in the discovery of a Stream of Tendency in the physical world, and a Power which makes for Righteousness in human society. Objections are then met. The Love of God is again inferred, and the possibility of a Divine Communion insisted upon. Second Discourse. ON THE IDEA OF GOD. DELIVERED MAY 14, 1871. POD dwells in light unapproachable, or He is surrounded by clouds and darkness; His ways are in the sea, His paths are in the great waters, His footsteps are not known; He is the High and Holy One that inhabiteth Eternity, yet He is not far from any one of us. He is a consuming fire, He is a still small voice. These are the kind of sentences in which man has from time to time tried to express his idea of God, yet the rush of thought and emotion ever weighs down his poor feeble brain, and all that is uttered sounds like the mere plaint of his own impotency; and often he finds himselt hurried into violent contradictions, so that his description of God at one time cannot be made to agree with his description of Him at another; but he hardly cares to reconcile his expressions-he cannot reconcile themhe is dealing with some thought which baffles him, yet D which, he cannot, he dare not, stifle, for his brain is on fire and his heart is like a restless sea. My brethren, what is the great question which is most interesting to the present sceptical age? Surely it is this the existence of a living God. Surely it is this -the nature of that God! And this-the fact and the nature of the communion between that God and man. You cannot take up a book or pamphlet without finding the very first principles of Christianity and of all religion turned over and over again. And remember the popular literature is no bad guide to the popular taste; what is much questioned there, is doubtless much questioned by very large classes of men and women, not because the doubters are perverse, but because they are in earnest-because they are craving for some solid ground of faith, because they want to know what to believe before they can find courage to practise, although they have been told a thousand times that they must practise what little they do believe before they can learn to believe more. Nevertheless, there are many people who, unless they have a sort of speculative ground, a sort of theory about God and the universe, find it impossible to get on with their religious life, and it is the business of the moral teacher and of all thoughtful people to try to put the ever-varying ideas about God and about the relations between God and man into some theology in which a man's thought may rest, and which, for a time at least, shall provide him with a solid basis for moral action. That is what I shall attempt to do to-day. By the |