SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 7 June 1930, Page 19 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

By

REV. A. H. COLLINS

MODERN CONCEPTION OF GOD. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself, strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him.” 11. Corinthians, 16, 9. Of course, that is the language of accommodation. I do not like using the cumbrous word “Anthropomorphic,” but that is the word employed by theologians, and it means the ascription to the Deity of human parts and passions. But in plain speech the meaning of the passage is that the Almighty is not in the sky, but on the earth; not distant, cold, impassive, and careless of earthly affairs, but close, observant, interested, and concerned in the life of man. Now there is nothing of such profound importance to us as the question —What is God? It is not enough to believe in a God; thousands' believe and are not one whit the better for it. “Nothing is easier than to use the word God and mean nothing by it.” To believe in the existence of a supreme Being is, of course, necessary as a starting point; but it is only a starting point, and unless you get a good deal beyond the starting point you might as well never have started. It is not what you think you think of God; but what you really think that .matters. A man may formulate a statement of belief and persuade himself that that is the notion of God and yet have at the back of his mind something entirely different. It does not matter much what is on your lips about God; it is what is at the back of your mind that ultimately tells in life. “The thought you make of God is the thought that makes you.”, THE INDEX TO CHARACTER.

AU history proclaims that the character of a people is determined by their conception of God. A nation never rises higher than its. ideal of deity. If the gods they worship are impure they themselves become corrupt, and tlieir worship becomes an orgy of vice. Mind, I am not blowing, theological soap bubbles. The miserable and shallow sophism which says it does not matter what a man believes breaks down hopelessly and pitiably in the presence of cold reason and the hard facts of history. I might go to the Book in proof of the contention that “the thought you make of God is the thouglit that makes you.” See! The Syrians warred against Israel, and were worsted in the fight. The battle was fought on the hilltops, and this is what the Syrian said, “Their God is a God of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight them in the plain and surely we shall be stronger than they.” Theirs wMs a local deity. The house of ancient Israel “practised abomination in the dark,” and then quieted their rising fears by saying. “The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath forsaken the earth.” Theirs was an absentee Gcd —a God in the sky. The Pharisees reasoned this way:—“We are the people and the truth shall die with us. But as for this multitude which knoweth not the law they are accursed.” Theirs was a God of favouritisms, and mark you in each they become like the God they idealised. But this is Biblical. So it is, and none the worse for that. Let me come to modern examples. A distinguished student in one of his books points out that “as is the Deity so must the faith be that is built upon Him.” “Find out,” he says, “the ultimate beliefs of a people and you find out the character of their institutions,” And then, he goes on to illustrate in this way. Look at China where the worship of ancestors is believed in and practised. What is the consequence? This is the consequence. China with its eyes for ever fixOd upon the past is the least progressive of all the great nations on the face of the earth to-day. Look at India, where Brahma is considered to be the universal soul. From, the head of Brahma came the men of the priestly race; from the arms of • Brahma came the warrior class; from the legs of Brahma came the yeomen; and from the feet of Brahma came the, poor, toiling, outcast multitude. So that, as Dr. Fairbairn says, “in India a religious theory has become a social tryranny.” Exactly. That is my point. The thought you make of God makes you. The application of that will come in a minute or two. But my case is not yet fully stated. What is the modern conception of God? TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE The two words that describe our ideas of God are “transcendence and immanence.” What do these great words mean? By the transcendence of God we mean that apart from and above the universe there lives and reigns a personal Creator. mean that were this world to be extinguished and were every living . tiling to disappear still would there be eternal in the heaven the spirit whom we designate as God. By the immanence of God we mean the presence of the Almighty in creation. We mean that time and space, the beauty of the spring, the splendour of the sky, the torrent and the tide, -are the vestures of the Creator, and that the spirit of the Almighty is in every man.

The difference is immense and immeasurable. A god transcendent is like a painter adorning a flower with the skill of his de,ft hand. A god immanent is one who breathes his life into the lilies until they become an expression of himseli. A god transcendent is like a mighty craftsman who fashions fowls for flight. A god immanent lives in the bird and breaks the silence with a song. A god transcendent is like a skilled sculptor working on the form of man; a god immanent looks through lr man brains, and lives in human lives. . Now the former of these conceptions of God held sovereign sway for centuries. It was the creed of Augustine and Calvin. John Knox, and the. Puritans, and there is no denying that it had tremendous influence and fashioned tremendous men. But Calvinism is dead. Its doctrine of election and reprobation was icy cold and iron hard, and tlie pendulum has swung to the .other side. The conception of God which holds the thought of Western Christendom to-day is the divine immanence. It is not God above us but Gcd within us that is the watchword’of the hour. I cannot stop to trace the influences that have led to the change of view; but I am anxious to point to the meaning of the revolution before

I close, and in attempting this I shall perhaps shed some light on the meaning of Bernard Shaw’s words, “Beware of°the man whose "God is in the sky” : and help you to see the connection between sociology and theology. THE GOD WHO IS NEAR. 1. It means a change of thought concerning the universe. God is not a spectator, °He is a participator. He is not aloof, He is near. He docs not stand apart in solitary state, watching man’s venerations rise and fall with no more Concern than the colossal Sphinx that fronts the wilderness of Egypt. He is in the world, sharing its life, feeling its sorows, bearing its load, and directs its manifold activities. Things are not “common and unclean.” They are sacred and .may be sublime. Wherever creation is God is, though man is far away the solitude, where there seems to be no watchful eye and mo listening ear, overflows with the glory of a thinking, ruling, loving presence, for God is there, “rejoicing in the works of His Hands.” “Thy Spirit is around “Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along, “And the eternal sound, “Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng, “Like the resoudning sea. “Or like the rainy' tempest, speaks of Thee.”

Does that seem far away from, the pinch of things? Has that no bearing on social questions? It is.not far away. It has a most direct bearing on social life. The. universe is the dwelling place of the Almighty. Things are His things and we only need to recognise that to change the face of’the world. If your God is in the sky I don’t wonder that work is shunned and politics are a squalid scramble between ' “outs.” If your God 1 is in S don’t wonder that business is combed with dishonest practices, and men lie and cheat and wanton and riot. If your God is in the sky I don’t wonder that Paradise is changed to pandemonium. I don’t wonder that money has on it the tears of women, the sweat of men, and the blood of little children. If God is in the sky, depend upon it earth will lie in the mire. But once Jet the sense of Gods presence in the world become regnant in the life and the thoughts of men and all that will be changed. Contracts will be honest, prices will be fair, rents will be just, daybooks and ledgers will be as holy as Bibles, factories will be as sacred" as a church, merchants will be ministers, and the whole round earth a temple where everything cries holy. THE NEW CONCEPTION. 2. The new conception means a new view of man. Man has been thought to be simply a cog in a machine for grinding out wealth. He has been used as a means to an end, instead of being, as Kant points out. an end in himself. When the Mayflower carried the Puritans to New England they took their Calvinism with them. Jonathan Edwards ruled the religious thought of America for many a long year, and America was the last great stronghold of slavery. Do you think the surfeit of horrors in Uncle Tom’s Cabin would have been possible if the Southern States had realised that God is not in the sky, but in the cotton plantations and the slave’s cabin? That every stroke of the lash which fell on a black man’s flesh woke echoes in the heart of God? Ah! But our present industrial system grew up under the reign of Calvinism. God was in the sky, and hence man’s inhumanity to man. Hence dear bread and cheap manhood; hence prisons choked . with putrid prisoners, maddened to crime by poverty; hence women and children worn to death by hopeless toil; hence the foetid slum and the dark, turgid stream of poverty and wrong. Will anyone tell me that such things had been possible if men had realised that there is a bit of God in every one of these victims of oppression?' It is simply unthinkable. So then I come back to my starting point, and say: The thought you make of God is the thought that makes you, makes your social system, makes your nationhood. We have made gold our god, and it has made us hard and cold and cruet We have worshipped material sucsess, and it has killed tenderness and sympathy . and brotherliness. It does matter what we believe; it matten? tremendously. I said Calvinism is dead. I take back that word. Calvinism is dead in the living faith of the church, and hence the warning,_ “Beware of the man whose God is in the sky.” God is not in the sky; He stand,? amid the lilies and scans the ways of men. . .