STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH.

"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, even God." (Mark x. 18.)

PART 2. CAN WE BELIEVE IN A GOOD GOD?

ONE of the hardest problems that faced the men of the Old Testament was the reconciling of sin, suffering, and triumphant evil with a good God. This is the very heart of the problem in the book of Job. And yet, as I indicated in Study IV., the Christian religion definitely sets forth such a God. Is there any justification for such a conception, and what shall we say to the man who doubts it?

There came to me once for an interview a college man who had been born into a house of infamy, who bore on his body the marks of his mother's sins, whose life had been one long, hard struggle against this evil inheritance, and whose struggle to get an education was scarcely short of a tragedy. He told me his story and asked if I could help him to see that there was a moral principle at the heart of the universe.

First, one had to go over the ground of the last study, leading up to the thought of an intelligent first cause. Then I attempted to show him that the religious nature of humanity demands a chance to worship. His coming to me was an expression of that same inner need. As we have seen in a former study, there must be reality in this religious sense, else we cannot trust our natures to give us truth at all. This I tried to get him to see. Then I said: "Unless God is good, there can be no real religion; for religion is a sense of fellowship with a higher kindred power, with whom we desire to live on terms of friendship. But unless God is good, there is no higher power. Goodness is the final term, and men having a spark of goodness would be far more Godlike than a God without goodness, or, as Browning puts it:

The loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless God
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

There cannot be any such thing as religion if there is not a good God. We are led back at once to our old trouble: unless there is a good God then all our aspirations for fellowship with such a God are false tenders, paying dross instead of gold; we are in a false world, a world in which we dare not trust our highest natures, which cannot be.

"Again, if God is not good," I said to my student, "then man's petty goodness is the final goodness that now exists, and there is no complete or perfect goodness in existence. The universe, in other words, according to the estimate of man's best nature, has had left out of it the supreme principle-goodness. There is a canker at the very heart of things which makes life useless and a failure. Since there is no principle of goodness at the heart of things, then my little effort at goodness is useless, for there is no ultimate standard by which to measure my life, and my striving like as not is in the wrong direction instead of the right. Here again we are forced back upon the conclusion that if God is not good, we are completely undone and are living in a false world where we are not sure we can discriminate between right and wrong. But we all know this is sheer nonsense. We know we can tell the difference. We are all practical philosophers in that we act as though there were at the heart of the universe a principle of goodness—that is, a good God." "It is more difficult to account for life on the supposition that there is no good God than it is to convince one's self of such a God. But how can I come to feel his goodness?"

I urged him, since he saw that it was more reasonable to believe in a good God than not to believe in him, to put himself on the side of intellect and act as though there were such a being that is, test it in the laboratory of experience. If God is good and loving, then he wants us to speak to him. So I urged my student to pray. He is interested in every man and wants every man to have life. So I urged my student to begin loving and serving his fellow-men. Surely he has spoken to his children and has pointed out the way to a larger life; so I urged my student to begin Bible study. Finally this student with the tragic life said that he would try, and a day or two later he was one of the men who rose publicly and declared his intention of being a friend to God.

STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH.

"Bless Jehovah, O my soul,

And forget not all his benefits:

Like as a father pitieth his children,

So Jehovah pitieth them that fear him." (Ps. ciii. 2, 13.)

"If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also: from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him." (John xiv. 7.)

PART 3. HELPING THE MAN TROUBLED ABOUT GOD'S PERSONALITY.

THE writers in the Testaments have absolutely no doubt that God is possessed of full personality. In fact, some of the writers of the Old Testament set forth a God with much of the limitations of human personality, and this meagerness of conception has caused many modern Christians to draw away from the idea of God as a person. Christ had a distinct consciousness of God as his Father. All his prayers to God and his statements about God are expressed in personal language. The question which arises here is whether we as modern thinkers can accept as reasonable this conception of divine personality.

At the University of Illinois there came to me a postgraduate student who had been in his undergraduate days an active worker in the Young Men's Christian Association. But he had begun to question the personality of God, and, feeling that this was central, had fallen away from his former Christian activity. Here was an earnest seeker for the truth, who had once believed in this fact of personality, but whose study had led him afield. What could be said to him that would bring back his old conviction in a new and more vital form?

First, I made clear to him that personality is not physical form; these two must be kept absolutely distinct. Then I said to him: "We cannot make for ourselves a mental picture of even human personality. We can only understand the attributes which go to make that personality. The attributes

are intellect, sensibility (love, etc.), will power. Every man is conscious of having united in himself these three in greater or less degrees of development. The conscious union of intelligence, affection, and will makes personality. Whatever being has this has personality. No others have. This is perfectly clear, and yet we cannot picture personality to ourselves. It is, however, none the less real. This my postgraduate finally acknowledged.

I then went on to say that personality does not mean limitation, as is often thought and as he himself had said. On the contrary, personality is a conscious union of these three attributes; and as these attributes become more and more perfect that is, limitations are removed the possessor of them becomes more and more completely personal. This makes it possible for Dr. W. N. Clark to define a perfect person as "the being in whom these essential powers which constitute personality (intelligence, affection, and will) exist in perfect quality and degree, and are perfectly bound together and welded in use in the unity of self-directing consciousness. This is the perfect person.'

This is, as I pointed out to my student friend, perfectly conceivable.

I have a little intelligence. I trust my mind to give me fragments of truth. This mind is continually developing, so that I am much more intelligent now than I was twenty years ago. I can conceive of a mind, therefore, that has no limitations in the realm of truth; a mind that knows all truth intuitively. Likewise I have a love nature which is growing. I can conceive of a person who loves instinctively everything that is worthy of love. In similar manner I have some will power. I can do certain things, or I can refuse to do them. I am a moral agent with a free will. Now I can conceive of a person in whom this will is unlimited, who always chooses the right and immediately acts upon it. Thus I can conceive of a person who has perfect intelligence, perfect love, perfect will, a complete and unlimited personality. This person I call God.

Man's soul is moved by what, if it in turn
Must move, is kindred soul.

-Browning's "The Sun."

STUDY IX. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE CHRISTIAN

FAITH.

"And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for man shall not see me and live. And Jehovah said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand until I have passed by: and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not be seen. (Ex. xxxiii. 20-23.)

"Behold, I go forward, and he is not there;

And backward, but. I cannot perceive him;

On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot
behold him;

He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot
see him." (Job xxiii. 8, 9.)

PART 4. HELPING THE MAN TROUBLED ABOUT GOD'S PERSONALITY

(Continued).

In my discussion with the postgraduate at the University of Illinois the question arose: If God is a person, and wants to make himself known to men, why is it so hard for men to come to know him? This difficulty was faced in Job and others of the Old Testament writings, and is likewise found in the New Testament. Vaguely, perhaps, even the writer of Exodus understood that it would be death to human personality to be brought face to face with the overmastering personality of the Almighty.

One of the greatest dangers of a strong and masterful personality is that it shall so graft its will upon those about it that these lesser wills shall be entirely smothered. How frequently has one seen just this thing happen in the case af a boy or girl in a home where there is a parent with strong personality. The parent takes all responsibility, detides all questions in advance, and does not advise with the child but settles questions by command. The result is a hot