MR WELLS'S "FINITE GOD."

Timaru Herald, Volume CVI, Issue 16310, 11 August 1917, Page 4

MR WELLS'S "FINITE GOD."

Mr. Britling's progress toward a phase o: religious conviction and consolation seemed to presago another book from Mr Wells. This is furnished now in "God the Invisible King," which ' 'presents :i well-rounded theory : of God and of religion, as he believes [ the modern world begins to envisage them,' 1 says a sympathetic reviewer in the 2*<ew York "Times." This reviewer seems to think that Mr Wells is "voicing a very profound movement of the religious feeling which is stirring the heart of Great Britain ns it has not been stirred, perhaps, in all its history." The novelist, indeed, does not put forth his view as a personal invention—a new theistic theory; but as an interpretation of what lie calls "a renascent religion"—something that is "crystallising out of the intellectual, social, and spiritual confusions of the present." At the same time Mr Wells admits thai; the faith which he seems to see growing in others has reallv J-Town j n hi mse lf. it is hi s religious belief. It is not orthodox Christianity, ho tells us; "is not, indeed, Christianity at all," but "its core, nevertheless, is a profound belief in a, personal and intimate God." The most fundamental difference between this new faith and any recognised form of Christianitv, he sets forth, is that, "knowingly or unknowingly, it worships a finite God." Continuing in this vein: "Directly the believer is fairly confronted with the plain questions of tho case, tho vague indentifications that are still carelessly made with one or all of the persons of the Trinity dissolve away. He will admit that his God is neither all-wise, nor all-powerful, nor omnipresent; that he is neither tho maker of heaven nor earth, and that lie has little to identify him with that hereditary God of the' Jews who became tho 'Father' in the Christian system. On the other hand, ho will assert that his God is a god of salvation, that he is a spirit, a person, a strongly marked and knowable personality, loving, inspiring, and lovable, who exists, or strives to exist, in every human soul, jle will bo much less certain in his denials that his God has a close resemblance to the Pauline (as distinguished from the Trinitarian) 'Christ.' "Tho modern religious man will almost certainly profess a kind of universalism ; he will assert that whensoever mou havo called upon any God and have found fellowship and comfort and courage and that sense of God within them, that inner light which is the quintessence of tho religious experience, it was the True God that answered them. For the True Gnd is a generous God; not a jealous God; the very antithesis of that bickering monopolist who 'will havo none other gods hut. me'; and when a human heart cries out—to what name it matters not—for a larger spirit and a stronger help than the yisiblo things of life can give, straightway the nameless Helper is with it and the God of Man answers to ilie rail. The true God has no scorn nor hate for those who have accepted the many-handed symbols of the Hindu nr the lacquered idols of China. Where there is faith, where there is need, iliere is the True God ready to clasp the hands that stretch out seeking for j him into the darkness behind the ivory and gold.

'•The fact that God is 'finite' is one upon which those who think clearly among tho new believers arc very insistent. He is. above everything else, a. personality, and to bo a personality is to have characteristics, to be limited by characteristics; lie is a Being, not us but dealing with us and through us, lio has an aim and that means be has a, past and future: ho is within time and nob outside it. And they point out that this is really what every one who pt'avs sincerely to God or gets help ircm God feels and believes. Our practice with God is hotter than our theory. Nono of us really prays tu that fantastic. unqualified 'danse a. trois. : the Trinity, which the wrangling? and disputes of the worthies of Alexandria and declared to be God. We pray to ii'i.. single understanding, person. Eur. Mi far the tactics of those. Trinitarians at Nicaea, who stuck their fingers in their ears, have prevailed in this world; niis was no matter for discussion, they declared, it- was a Holy Mystery full o! magical terror, and few religious people have thought it worth while, to tevive these- terrors i>v a deiinite con-tradiet-ion. The truly religious have teen content to Japse quietly into tha j comparative sanity of an unformulated Ariauism. tliey have left- u to the se->Hiiti'j: Atheist- to mock at- the patent [absurdities of tile olticial creed.'' i One ot the attributes of God that (he new i-eliftimi insists upon is that, of youth. "\Ye are presented with "the • 'inception uf a young and energetic (li.c!, an invisilile I'rince growing in ii'irli and wisdom, uho (-ills men ati't v.-<)ii;eu to his service and who j K.-v«r. -alva; ion from self and mortality | only through self-abaiKlonmem- iu his

service. ' I his, up arc told, inrolres "a demand for a complete revision and i orientation of the life of the convert.'' His modernism is intensely 01' to-d;iv: "llie now Conceptions do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or democracies. Its implicit, command to all its adherents is to make plain the way ro the world theocrey. Its rule of lifo is the discovery and service of the, will ot God, which dwells in tho hearts of u-en., and tile performance of that will, not. only in tho private life of tho. believer, lint in the acts and order of the State and nation of which he is a part. [ give myself to God not only because I am so and so, but because I am mankind. I become in a measure responsible for every evil in the world of men. I become a knight in God's service. I become my brother's keeper. I become a responsible minister of my Iving. I take sides against injustice, disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors, princes, landlords, and owners who set themselves up against God's rule and worship. Kings, owners, and a.ll who claim rule and decision in the world's affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow servants of the believer or become the objects of his si.odfa.st, antagonism. . . . '"lt. comes as no great shock to those wlvo have, grasped the full implications of the statement that God is Finite, to hear it asserted that the first purpose of God is the attainment of clear knowledge, of knowledge as a means to more knowledge, and of knowledge as a means to power.

"And as God gathers power he uses it to an end that he is only beginning to apprehend, and that he will apprehend more fully as time goes on. But it is possible to define the broad outlines of tho attainment he seeks. It is the conquest or death. "It is the conquest of death: first, the overcoming of death in tho individual by the incorporation of the motives of his life into an undying purpose, and then the defeat of that death that seems to threaten our species upon a cooling planet beneath a cooling sun. God fights against death in every form, against the great death of the race., against the petty death of indolence, insufficiency, baseness, misconception, and perversion. Ho it is and no other who can deliver us 'from the body of this death.' This is the battle that grows plainer; this is tho purpose to which he calls us out of the animal s round of eating, drinking, lusting, quarreling, and laughing and weeping, fearing and failing, and presently ot wearying and dying, which is tho whole life that living without God can give And from tlieso great, propositions there follow many very definite maxims and rules of life." "MY Wells's ibook, thinks, the writer in the "Times," is written' with "the sincerity and simplicity or utter conviction, whatever opinion one may have of its message." Furthermore: "It hjis also the vividness'of phraseology that comes from vividness of experience and depth of conviction, and a certain flame combined of kindled imagination and exalted feeling glows through all its pages-. In precision of idea and clarity of statement, in keenness of insight and closely argued prestation, it shows Mr Wells at his best. Nothing else that he has written has so embodied and blazed forth his own strong and vivid personality. He believes, very sincerely apparently, that the hook is a compact, comprehensive account of a widely spreading new religion.-- But, on its own face, one can not be sure that the volume, is more than a statement of Mr Wells's religion."