POPULAR LECTURES ON THEOLOGICAL THEMES. LECTURE I. GOD-HIS NATURE AND RELATION TO THE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: We have met together this afternoon to engage in the first of a proposed series of discussions of the chief questions in theology. It is not my purpose to attempt to present you with new truth, or even with unaccustomed views of truth long known, but simply to set before you in logical perspective the whole assemblage of the things that from the beginning have been most surely believed among us, so that their symmetrical proportions and harmonious relations may be more clearly discerned and appreciated. In this view of the matter the most important question is that of order. The perspective of every landscape differs endlessly with the various points of view from which we look upon it. As you sweep rapidly on a railroad among the Alps, the vast mountain-peaks apparently revolve through involved curves and group themselves in innumerable combinations as in a dance, the law of which we are unable to unravel. But when we once gain the central summit in which the whole geological system culminates, we look down upon all the members of the landscape, each in its appropriate place and relations, and the picture is complete. As long as men were confined in their imaginations as well as in their bodies to this small and ceaselessly revolving sphere the movements of our fellow-planets, moving with us, were absolutely incomprehensible. But the instant Copernicus taught us to occupy in idea the solarcentric point of view all was seen to be the simplest and most orderly movement possible. All theology must therefore be theo-centric, must have God for its beginning and end. There is a great deal of confusion of thought arising from substituting words for thoughts in the pious claim in vogue now-a-days that all theology must be grouped Christo-centrically. There is an immense sense in which every loyal Christian will recognize this as true. In the first place, the revelation. of God in Christ is so infinitely more clear and full than in all the universe besides that we may well say not only that Christ is God, but also that there is no God other than the One whose consummate self-revelation is in Christ. In the second place, Christ is undoubtedly the Author and Finisher of our faith and the beginning and ending of human salvation. The entire scheme of salvation begins and ends in his person and work. And, in the third place, all power in all worlds is put in Christ's hands, so that all events are controlled by his will, all history revolves around his person and all science finds its key in his doctrine. Notwithstanding all this, however, Christ is central because Christ is God. The unincarnate God and his natural relations ... to the universe must be logically prior to and more fundamental than the incarnate God and his gracious relations to his creatures. The apostle Paul has a deep meaning when he says (1 Cor. 11:3): "The head of every man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God;" which is equivalent to saying, "The centre of every man is Christ, and the centre of Christ is God." Three questions therefore obviously lie at the foundation not only of all man's religious knowledge, but equally at the foundation of every possible form of knowledge: (1) Is there a God? (2) What is God? (3) What is God's relation to the universe? And if he does sustain a relation to the universe which is in any degree intelligible to us, a fourth question emerges: (4) What is the sphere, nature and extent of his providential action upon or in reference to his creatures? The answer to the first question, as to the fact of God's existence, we propose in these lectures to assume as granted. The most certain of all truths is the existence of God. I. The second question, therefore, presents itself: WHAT DO WE KNOW AS TO THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD? God reveals himself to us through the simultaneously concurrent action of two sources of knowledge, neither of which could give us the information separately. We are, each one, immediately conscious that we are intelligent, moral, voluntary agents and true causes. This, and all that this involves, comes to us by consciousness It is the most immediate and certain of all knowledge, and that upon which all other knowledge rests; and we give definite expression to this self-knowledge when we call ourselves spirits and persons. It is precisely this, and nothing else, that we mean by the words "spirit" and "person." When we come to look upon the course of external nature, to reflect upon our own origin and history internal and external, and upon the history of the human race and the life of the general community of which we form a part, we immediately and indubitably discern everywhere the presence and control of a Being like ourselves in kind. In that intelligible order which pervades the infinite multiplicity and heterogeneity of events, and, which makes science possible, we see and certainly know the presence of intelligence, of personal will, of moral character-i. e. of all that is connoted by our common term "personal spirit." God is seen to be of common generic character with ourselves. The great difference we see is that while we are essentially limited in respect to time or space or knowledge or power, God, the personal agent we see at work in nature and history, is essentially unlimited in all these respects. The only reason that so many students of natural science have found themselves unable to see God in nature is that their absorption in nature has made them lose sight of their own essential personality. Hence they have attempted to interpret the phenomena of self-consciousness in the terms of mechanical nature, instead of interpreting nature under the light of self-conscious spirit. But the scientist, after all, comes before his science, the reader before the book he deciphers. And the intelligibility of nature proves its intelligent source, and the essential likeness of the Author of nature, who reveals himself in his work, and of the interpreter of nature, who retraces his processes and appreciates alike the intellectual and the artistic character of his design. Since God is infinite, of course a definition of him is impossible. Obviously, no bounds can be drawn around the boundless. God can be known only so far forth as he has chosen to reveal himself. And being essentially infinite, every side and element of his nature is infinite, and every glimpse we have of his being involves the outlying immensity or the transcendent perfection which cannot be known. But since we have been created in his likeness, and since we discern him in all his works. as, like ourselves, an intelligent and moral personal spirit, we can define our idea of him by stating (1) the genus or kind to which he is known to belong, and (2) the differentia, or differences, which distinguish him from all other beings of that kind. The best definition of the idea of God ever given is constructed on this principle. First, as to his kind: God is a personal Spirit; second, as to his difference from all other spirits: God is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and in all his moral attributes absolutely perfect, and he is infinite, eternal and unchangeable alike in his being, in his wisdom, in his power, etc. etc. First, as to his kind. God is a personal Spirit. We mean by this precisely what we mean when we affirm that we ourselves are personal spirits. This conception comes wholly from consciousness, and it is absolutely certain. We see and know God, as manifested in his activities alike in the whole world within us and around us as far as the remotest star, to be another of the same kind with ourselves. We know ourselves to be intelligent causes. We see him likewise to be an intelligent |