introduce elements which by our capacity are not to be combined with the others. We must conceive the characters as literally creating their own parts as the play proceeds, instead of merely enacting a part created in advance, while none the less, eternally regarded, the story is a unity apprehended as such. This baffles our understanding; but we are baffled at the very point where we ought to be baffled, for it is at the point where the finite seeks to comprehend

the infinite.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATURE OF GOD

"The relation of the Spirit to the world is that of a lover to his beloved, or of a creative artist to a wild mass of unpromising material, out of which he is perpetually evolving, by a divine and loving art, the most surprising and beautiful combinations -anything but the relation of a power-loving potentate to his subjects, which is the very last thing that should be thought of in such a connexion.”—L. P. JACKS.

We have seen that Reality consists of distinguishable grades whose nature is such that the higher require the lower for their existence, but the lower require to be possessed by the higher in order that their whole potentiality may be realised. We have found, further, that if there is in our experience any principle which explains the Universe as a whole, so that not only is it rational within itself but that its very existence is rational also, it is the principle of Will; but a Will which is thus the origin of the Universe is plainly the Creator, i.e. God.

Now Will emerges within the system of the Universe in Man, who is the highest grade hitherto in the stratification of Reality, and who is first able to raise the question of the rationality of the Universe. This is natural enough, for it means that the capacity to raise the question is one aspect, while the capacity to answer it is another aspect, of one nature.3

When we passed on to consider that one nature,

1 Chapter I., pp. 4-6.

Chapter I., pp. 7-9.

3 Of course 66

"" to answer it means to give the answer in principle, not to supply a detailed solution of the question as regards all particular facts.

we found that the Will is a completely unified activity of the whole nature in all its parts, so that in fact no human act or effort perfectly fulfils the whole ideal of Will; moreover, an act of pure Will is one wholly determined from within, as no act of a finite nature can ever be, for every finite nature must be itself in part determined by its environment. But for the Will that Creates the Universe there is plainly no environment. It must supply entirely the grounds of its own action and remain independent of what it calls into being.

Further, Will acts for the realisation of Value. But the actual Value of the actual world largely consists in the process of history-the moral struggle and progressive effort both of individuals and communities. And the significance of this process, we saw, must be in the whole course of the process itself, that is in eternity conceived as the completed totality of the temporal. Therefore the Creative Will must be the active energy of a Nature enjoying in literal fact the spectacle of all time and all existence.

Now, if we think of the Time-process as a whole, we may regard the Creation as one act, and the divine apprehension as one act; God's thought externalised itself in His work, and His work is comprehended in His thought. Into the experience of that omniscient comprehension it is not possible for us to enter. From the nature of the case, only omniscience can know what omniscience feels like. For every mind that is not all-comprehending is conditioned throughout its experience by its limitations; and in principle this remains true however widely the limits are extended. Infinity is not a very big finite; it is always something more, and, still more, something other. We have enough of knowledge to know that our knowledge is limited and that an all-comprehensive Mind is in principle possible; into the experience of such

1 Chapter II.

a mind we cannot enter at all. Before the awful sublimity of absolute Godhead, man can only adore in wondering humility.1

Now if God does not apprehend the historic process as a process, then either that process has no meaning, which we saw to be unreasonable, or else there is some significance in creation which evades the omniscience of the Creator, which is absurd. Therefore we must suppose that He apprehends the process not only as a block in its completeness, but as a movement in its changes. But what He thus apprehends is the creation of His own Will. Consequently it is reasonable to hold that God Himself is active in the process itself. Indeed, this seems to be necessary. For our view is not that God once made the world, and thereafter watched and watches its course, but that its course is itself the object of His creative Will and comprehending Mind. Hence it is necessary that just as He contemplates His own. act in History as a whole, so in that same History as a process He is enacting that which eternally He creates and contemplates.

And this rather highly abstract argument finds support in a department of human experience on which hitherto no part of our argument has rested, though we have attempted some account of its nature, -religious experience. This form of experience is, to the religious man, as much its own witness as is the experience of sight or hearing, of enjoying or knowing. But it is no more explicable to the irreligious man than colour is to the blind man. Moreover, it involves, as sense experience does not, a special kind of philosophy. Consequently in this department as in no other the validity of experience is challenged. But it is as real as any other form of

1 Here assuredly we confront Otto's Mysterium Tremendum-something which to us is" wholly other," with a remoteness which our partial apprehension only serves to emphasise.

experience,1 and the fact that it supports, and finds support in, the general course of our argument is evidence for both; indeed the strongest intellectual foundation for theism is, as was said earlier, neither purely philosophic argument in itself nor purely religious experience in itself, but the coincidence of these two. We have seen that on the side of Knowledge there can be no complete fellowship of man with God, if by knowledge we mean intellectual grasp of an articulated system of fact: here man is subject to limitation and all his experience is relative. But in another direction man reaches a true finality-he can appreciate absolute Value.

We have already seen that man has actual fruition of absolute Beauty and Goodness, such as he cannot have of absolute truth except in so restricted a sphere as only to indicate what the apprehension of absolute Truth would be.2 But it is not on this for the moment

that the argument rests. Man appreciates absolute Value mainly through the sense of absolute obligation which it imposes, and this is as real in relation to Truth as it is in relation to Beauty and Goodness. And it is through this chiefly that man first actually experiences God. For if there is an absolute obligation, and if there is a Will on whose act all existence depends, then that obligation must be the injunction of that Will; just as, taking another point of view, if there is a Creative Will, the end of its action must be absolute Value. Therefore to be conscious of absolute Value is already to be in some form of intercourse with God; and this form of intercourse with God comes to every human being.4

This religious experience in its more developed

1 See Chapter III., where, it will be remembered, the apprehension of absolute value is regarded as the primary form of religious experience. I should maintain that absolute value (when apprehended as such) always has the character described by Otto as Numinous.

2 See Chapter II.

3 Cf. Genesis iii. 5.

Cf. Chapters II. and III.