Tj You can feel the sort of pessimism and scepticism which is round about us, in the very literature of the land. One man said the other day, that the poets who used to sing the Divine hope into the heart of man are singing agnosticism, pessimism, scepticism. John Davidson writes —
Sunset and sunrise came,
The seasons passed, the years went slowly by,
But still to me the Universe was dumb.
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William Watson describes his search for the voice of God, and this is how he concludes —
Above the cloud, beneath the sod, The Unknown God, the Unknown God.
And that is all. And Swinburne, most brilliant of all, says this —
We have said to the dreams that caressed us,
The terrors that smote us — good-night and good-bye.
"Good-night and good-bye" to every dream of God that ever came to men in the form of religion ! " Good-night and good- bye " to the summons of your God to a holier life, and the offer of God of forgiveness, courage, peace, and all things that make life worth living! Oh, how different it is from the men who spoke to the generation that has just gone by — a bigger generation, take it all in all, than ours. Listen: there was Browning describing himself as a man who was very sure of God. You know the story how a lady once, towards the end of his life, asked him about his faith. And he quoted three lines of his own —
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows.
And then he added : " That is the Face of Christ, and that is how I feel it." And when a man has looked up into the face of Christ like that, he has got something to teach us then that is worth teaching — very much better than to teach us to say to the dream that caressed and the terror that smote us "Good- night and good-bye."1
III.
The Only Living and True God.
"What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you."
1. Notice how St. Paul meets his hearers on their own ground. He recognized a form of genuine piety (so the word used in the original Greek for " worship " implies) as shown in the existence
1 C. Silvester Home.
160 AN UNKNOWN GOD
of the altar. " That Divine nature which you worship," he says, "not knowing what it is (notice, he did not say 'ignorantly worship,' as in the Authorized Version), this very thing I set forth to you." In these words lay the answer to the charge that he was a " babbler," a " setter forth of strange gods." " I " is emphatic : I whom you regard as a mere babbler proclaim to you, or set forth, the object which you recognize however dimly, and worship however imperfectly.
2. It was a bold thing that St. Paul did when he stood up to tell the men of Athens the nature of the true God. The philosophers of an earlier time, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, had had splendid visions of the truth, but they had not done much to enlighten the people. In the world of St. Paul's day there were " gods many and lords many " ; and yet there was nothing that the world of St. Paul's day so greatly needed as the knowledge of the true God.
3. There is nothing that the world of our own day more greatly needs than the knowledge of the true God. For it is only the thought of a God, present indeed within, but in every respect above us, that can uplift humanity and lead it onwards to its goal. Present-day philosophy seeks to support religion, but its exponents have such disputations amongst themselves that those who have not specialized in their lore scarce know what to make of it. They seem all to have a measure of truth, but none of them, perhaps, the whole truth. But, although we may have doubts as to how far " the Absolute " of some modern philosophers can answer to the idea of " God," whether indeed it be not a gulf rather than a God, it is cheering to see how almost all, whether Absolute or Personal Idealists, Ideal Eealists, Spiritual Monists or Pluralists, Pragmatists or Humanists, seek to maintain in their own way the reality of God, the value of Faith and Eeligion, of Freedom and Immortality, without meaning to sacrifice either Divine or human personality.
4. Not only the old Atheism but even Agnosticism is already being left behind. There may be a good deal of practical undefined agnosticism. But the theologian, and the person whose direct interest is religion, will do well to hold fast to the fact of
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Eevelation; only it must be more broadly and more truly conceived. We can know God only in so far as He reveals Himself. He is partly revealed in nature ; but if we stop with nature we shall come short of the knowledge of a God who is really higher than ourselves. For man is more than nature. St. Paul certainly pointed the Athenians to God as the Creator of the world who, just because He is " Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands ; neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing that he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." He declared His omnipresence and nearness to all, " for in him we live and move and have our being"; and he quoted the saying of certain of their own poets: "For we are also his offspring." So far, his teaching might be expressed in terms of the Eastern fable of the fishes who sought to behold the sea —