If The belief in God's Fatherhood is the belief in the immanence of God. It is the faith that His interests are bound up with the interests of the tiny sparrow, maimed by a stone from some
1 64 AN UNKNOWN GOD
ruthless hand, and perishing in its pain, as surely as with the spiritual progress of Augustine or St. Paul or the genius of Shakespeare. If a sparrow could fall to the ground without God, then one would have very little confidence in the Divine dealings with the greatest soul. A God unjust to a sparrow would be unjust to all. But if God is really the principle, both differenti- ating and integrating, that made and guides and informs the whole universe, that is the glory of the wayside flower, and of the farthest star ; if the hurt sparrow dies into the life that gave it being, then we have hope for the sparrow and for the souls of men. The universe was not cast off by God, to plunge itself into this terrible travail — conflict and anguish and death — without Him. His life and thought are in the slayer and the slain. At the last analysis of inorganic or organic matter we come to God. It is our name for the sum of Being — the All in All.1
He glows above With scarce an intervention, presses close And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours : We feel Him, nor by painful reason know ! The everlasting minute of creation Is felt there ; now it is, as it was then ; All changes at His instantaneous will, Not by the operation of a law Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. His hand is still engaged upon His world — Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer suspend, For is not God all-mighty ? To recast The world, erase old things and make them new, What costs it Him ? So, man breathes nobly there.2
But the revelation in Christ shows us that the true God is also transcendent — everywhere present. He was not merely within Jesus by His Spirit, He was at the same time the Father to whom Jesus prayed and whose will He ever sought to do. Immanence is not identity. Man is not himself God, nor the only temple of His presence. Otherwise there would be no God above us to worship, and whose will it is ours to do. As Eckhardt (who has often been accused of the Pantheism which he here opposes) says : " The fundamental thought is the real distinction between God and the world, together with their real inseparability ; for only really distinct elements can interpenetrate each other." As with
1 May Kendall. 2 Browning, Luria.
ACTS xvii. 22, 23 165
the growing plant, its life-principle is at once in it as the vital energy (spirit of life) which it obeys in its development, and above it as the Ideal to be realized in its perfection, so is it with man in relation to God. As Jesus taught, the ideal of our life is nothing short of God Himself in the form of sonship towards Him and likeness to Him. It is only when this ideal is reached that man is " one with God," and that in man the immanent Divine is one with the transcendent. It was this that was realized in Christ and manifested in the culmination of His life in the sacrifice of the Cross.
T[ What we need so much for our life is to believe in and realize this presence of God, both as a Holy Spirit within us and as the Infinite Spirit "around us ever." His presence within makes itself felt in that something that would always lift us higher and lead us to follow and act out that Best which has ever the supreme claim upon us. His presence without is revealed in the Providence that orders our life, in that higher Will which we cannot alter or resist, in trustful acceptance of which in every- thing we alone can have peace ; and in that Greater, Wiser, and Better than ourselves whom the heart craves for, and whom it finds in prayer, on whom we can cast our burdens and be sustained, to whom our labouring souls can come and find rest, to whom we can commit our way, ourselves, and all persons and interests we are concerned for, and find " the peace of God which passeth all understanding " guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. " Little children," writes the Apostle, " keep yourselves from idols." This is the true God and eternal life. We cannot see God, but
High above the limits of my seeing
And folded far within the inmost heart,
And deep below the deeps of conscious being, Thy splendour shineth; there, 0 God, Thou art.1
1 W. L. Walker.
I
The Beatitude of the Giver.
as?
T ITSRATURE.
Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 73.
Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, ii. 1.
Bamford (J. M.), The Burning Heart, 183.
Brown (C. J.), The Word of Life, 293.
Burrell (D. J.), The Wondrous Gross, 73.
Cox (S.), An Expositor's Note Booh, 388.
Jerdan (C), Pastures of Tender Grass, 168.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year (Miscellaneous), 300.
Leader (G. C), Wanted — A Boy, 55.