What religion is. All religion begins in cosmic emotion. It is the recognition of an essential relationship between the human soul and the great whole of things of which it is the outcome and expression. The mysterious universe is always calling, and, in some form or other, we are always answering. The artist answers by trying to express his feeling of its beauty; the scientist answers by recognising its laws and unfolding its wonders; the social reformer answers by his self-denying labours for the common good. In each and every case there is in the background of experience a conviction that the unit is the instrument of the All; religion is implied in these as in all other activities in which man aims at a higher-than-self. But religion, properly so-called, begins when the soul consciously enters upon communion with this higher-than-self as with an all-comprehending intelligence; it is the soul instinctively turning toward its source and goal. Religion may assume a great many different and even repellent forms, but at bottom this is what it always is: it is the soul reaching forth to the great mysterious whole of things, the higher-than-self, and seeking for closer and ever closer communion therewith. The savage with his totem and the Christian saint before the altar have this in common: they are reaching through the things that are seen to the reality beyond.

What the word “God” means. But what name are we to give to this higher-than-self whose presence is so unescapable? The name matters comparatively little, but it includes all that the ordinary Christian means by God. The word “God” stands for many things, but to present-day thought it must stand for the un-caused Cause of all existence, the unitary principle implied in all multiplicity. Everyone of necessity believes in this. It is impossible to define the term completely, for to define is necessarily to limit, and we are thinking of the illimitable. But we ought to understand clearly that to disbelieve in God is an impossibility; everyone believes in God if he believes in his own existence. The blankest materialist that ever lived, whoever he may have been, must have affirmed God even in the act of denying Him. Professor Haeckel declares his belief in God on every page of his “Riddle of the Universe,” the famous book in which he says that God, Freedom, and Immortality are the three great buttresses of superstition, which science must make it her business to destroy. So far science has only succeeded in giving us a vaster, grander conception of God by giving us a vaster, grander conception of the universe in which we live. When I say God, I mean the mysterious Power which is finding expression in the universe, and which is present in every tiniest atom of the wondrous whole. I find that this Power is the one reality I cannot get away from, for, whatever else it may be, it is myself. Theologians will tell me that I have taken a prodigious leap in saying this, but I cannot help it. How can there be anything in the universe outside of God? Whatever distinctions of being there may be within the universe it is surely clear that they must all be transcended and comprehended within infinity. There cannot be two infinities, nor can there be an infinite and also a finite beyond it. What infinity may be we have no means of knowing. Here the most devout Christian is just as much of an agnostic as Professor Huxley; we can predicate nothing with confidence concerning the all-comprehending unity wherein we live and move and have our being, save and except as we see it manifested in that part of our universe which lies open to us. One would think that this were so obvious as to need no demonstration. But how do ordinary church-going Christians talk about God? They talk as though He were (practically) a finite being stationed somewhere above and beyond the universe, watching and worrying over other and lesser finite beings, to wit, ourselves. According to the received phraseology this God is greatly bothered and thwarted by what men have been doing throughout the few millenniums of human existence. He takes the whole thing very seriously, and thinks about little else than getting wayward humanity into line again. To this end He has adopted various expedients, the chief of which was the sending of His only begotten Son to suffer and die in order that He might be free to forgive the trouble we had caused Him. I hope no reader of these words will think I am making light of a sacred subject; I never was more serious in my life. What I am trying to show is that, reduced to its simplest terms, the accepted theology of the churches to-day is pitiably inadequate as an explanation of our relationship to this great and mysterious universe. There is a beautiful spiritual truth underneath every venerable article of the Christian faith, but as popularly presented this truth has become so distorted as to be falsehood. It narrows religion and belittles God. It is dishonouring to human nature, and is absolutely ludicrous as an interpretation of the cosmic process. Of course, the dogmatic theologian will maintain that this is a caricature of the way in which the relationship of God to the world is set forth in religious treatises and from the Christian pulpit. But is it? I think I can appeal with confidence to the thoughtful man who has given up going to church as to whether it is or not. The God of the ordinary church-goer, and of the man who is supposed to teach him from study and pulpit, is an antiquated Theologian who made His universe so badly that it went wrong in spite of Him and has remained wrong ever since. Why He should ever have created it is not clear. Why He should be the injured party in all the miseries that have ensued is still less clear. The poor crippled child who has been maimed by a falling rock, and the white-faced match-box maker who works eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to keep body and soul together have surely some sort of a claim upon God apart from being miserable sinners who must account themselves fortunate to be forgiven for Christ’s sake. Faugh! it is all so unreal and so stupid. This kind of God is no God at all. The theologian may call Him infinite, but in practice He is finite. He may call Him a God of love, but in practice He is spiteful and silly. I shall have something to say presently about the twin problems of pain and evil; but what so-called orthodoxy has to say is not only no solution of them, it is demonstrably false to the religion of Jesus.

Every man believes in God. For the moment what I want to make clear is this. No man should refuse to assert his belief in God because he cannot bring himself to believe in the God of the typical theologian. Remember that the real God is the God expressed in the universe and in yourself. The question is not whether you shall believe in God, but how much you can believe about Him. You may think with Haeckel that the universe is the outcome of the fortuitous interaction of material forces without consciousness and definite purpose behind them, or you may believe that the cosmos is the product of intelligence and “means intensely and means good,” but you cannot help believing in God, the Power revealed in it. As I write these words I am seated before a window overlooking the heaving waste of waters on a rock-bound Cornish coast. It is a stormy day. The sky is overcast toward the western horizon; on the east shafts of blue and saffron have pierced the pall of darkness and flung their radiance over the spreading sea. The total effect is strangely solemnising. The suggestion of titanic forces conveyed in the rush of wind and wave upon the unyielding cliffs, conjoined to the majestic march of the storm-clouds across the heaven from the west, is somehow elevated and composed by the mystic light that streams from the east. I have never seen anything quite like it before. It tells me of a beneficent stillness, an eternal strength, far above and beyond these finite tossings. It whispers the word impossible to utter, the word that explains everything, the deep that calleth unto deep. So my God calls always to my deeper soul, and tells me I must read Him by mine own highest and best, and by the highest and best that the universe has yet produced. Thus the last word about God becomes the last word about man: it is Jesus. Materialists may tell me that the universe does not know what it is doing, that it goes on clanking and banging, age after age, without end or aim, but I shall continue to feel compelled to believe that the Power which produced Jesus must at least be equal to Jesus. So Jesus becomes my gateway to the innermost of God. When I look at Him I say to myself, God is that, and, if I can only get down to the truth about myself, I shall find I am that too.

What does the universe mean? But why is there a universe at all? Why has the unlimited become limited? What was the need for the long cosmic struggle, the ignorance and pain, the apparently prodigal waste of life and beauty? Why does a perfect form appear only to be shattered and superseded by another? What can it all mean, if indeed it has a meaning? This is what thinkers have been asking themselves since thought began, and I have really nothing new to say about it. What I have to say leads back through Hegelianism to the old Greek thinkers, and beyond them again to the wise men who lived and taught in the East ages before Jesus was born. It is that this finite universe of ours is one means to the self-realisation of the infinite. Supposing God to be the infinite consciousness, there are still possibilities to that consciousness which it can only know as it becomes limited. Any of my readers to whom this thought is unfamiliar have only to look at their own experience in order to see how reasonable it is. You may know yourself to be a brave man, but you will know it in a higher way if you are a soldier facing the cannon’s mouth; you will know it in a still different way if you have to face the hostility and prejudice of a whole community for standing by something which you believe to be right. Perhaps you have a manly little son; he, like you, may believe in his sterling good qualities. But wait till he has gone out to fight his way in life; then you will realise what he is worth, and so will he. It is one thing to know that you are a lover of truth; it is another thing to realise it when your immediate interest and your immediate safety would bid you hedge and lie. Do not these facts of human nature and experience tell us something about God? To all eternity God is what He is and never can be other, but it will take Him to all eternity to live out all that He is. In order to manifest even to Himself the possibilities of His being God must limit that being. There is no other way in which the fullest self-realisation can be attained. Thus we get two modes of God, the infinite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being; and the finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited being of which we are ourselves expressions. And yet these two are one, and the former is the guarantee that the latter shall not fail in the purpose for which it became limited. Thus to the question, Why a finite universe? I should answer, Because God wants to express what He is. His achievement here is only one of an infinite number of possibilities.

“God is the perfect poet
Who in creation acts His own conceptions.”

This is an end worthy alike of God and man. The act of creation is eternal, although the cosmos is changing every moment, for God is ceaselessly uttering Himself through higher and ever higher forms of existence. We are helping Him to do it when we are true to ourselves; or rather, which is the same thing, He is doing it in us: “The Father abiding in me doeth His works.” No part of the universe has value in and for itself alone; it has value only as it expresses God. To see one form break up and another take its place is no calamity, however terrible it may seem, for it only means that the life contained in that form has gone back to the universal life, and will express itself again in some higher and better form. To think of God in this way is an inspiration and a help in the doing of the humblest tasks. It redeems life from the dominion of the sordid and commonplace. It supplies an incentive to endeavour, and fills the heart with hope and confidence. To put it in homely, everyday phraseology, God is getting at something and we must help Him. We must be His eyes and hands and feet; we must be labourers together with Him. This fits in with what science has to say about the very constitution of the universe; it is all of a piece; there are no gaps anywhere. It is a divine experiment without risk of failure, and we must interpret it in terms of our own highest.