Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-06-26
THE GROWTH OF MIND
As Indicated in the Change From
Polytheism to MonOtheism.
REVELATION Is PROGRESSIVE.
The Conception of the Trinity Is Another
Advance in Thought
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY AGREE

other" The Old Testament and the New
agree in that assertion. A Jewish scribe
said it, and Jesus Christ approved the say
ing.
| Here religion and philosophy are in ac-
cord. The saints and the scientists alike
maintain the unity of God. Authority and
reason join thus far in the recitation of the
creed. God must be one, cannot be other
| than one. Polytheism is possible only
| among people who have not learned to
! think. With the growth of intelligence,
with the increase of ability to reason from
effect to cause and so back to the initial
cause, the unity Of God becomes one of the
! imperatives of thought. 1t is out of the
question that there should be two Gods or
three Gods There is one God, and there is
| (and can be) none other
The revelation of G cd is of necessity pro-
| gressive. All education is progressive.
Because all knowledge is conditioned by the
| mind of him who knows You may take q
whole ocean of water, but you can get only
two piAts Of it into quart cup. The water
is conditioned, is limited. by the cup. So
is knowledge conditioned by the mind.
Truth does not grow greater, but some
people know more of truth than other
people, because of a difference in their ca
pacity for truth.
Conceptions OF the Supreme Being.
The highest truth which the mind can
touch is truth about God. The supreme
knowledge is knowledge of God. But this,
like all other knowledge, is conditioned by
the mind of him who knows. God changes
not; but year by year in the life of man,
and age by age in the life of the race. the
conception of God changes. It is like the
ascent of hill which overhangs a plain.
The plain does not change, does not get
wider mile by mile, as the beholder climbs
up foot by foot No; the beholder changes.
The higher up he gets the more he sees of
the plain. Step by step as the race grows,
as the man grows, the human conception of
God becomes more adequate, more true;
man gets to think Of God more nearly as
he is.
Thus religion grew out of belief in God as
many into belief in God as one. Some have
seen a curious trace of this old change out
of the polytheistic into the monotheistic
idea of God in the fact that at the beginning
of the Bible the name of God is plural,
while the verb which is written with it is
singular. Men began to zee that the gods of
their imperfect creed were but personifca-
tions of the attributes of the one God. In
and above the gods, men began to find God.
That was lesson hard to learn. 1t is evil
dent in the Old Testament that faith in the
unity of God won its way little by little.
The greatest men held it, but people in gen.
eral were slow to realize it
Many References to Other Gods.
Even in the psalms, God is often spoken
of ha ornof at of he podc Tahovoh N ha
tribal god Of Israel. The other nations also
had their gods The highest thought that
most people were able to think was that their
God was mightier than any other The
revelation of God is slow, but when the new
truth is learned it becomes one of the
permanent conditions of mems thinking.
1t is almost impossible to unlearn it. We
can scarcely imagine ourselves as believing
that there is one God for Pennsylvania and
another for Ohio as men believed in the
days of Moses and David. Nor even that
there is one God for the United States of
America and another for the British EN-
pire.
Perhaps the only trace of that old tribal
theology, of that obsolete polytheism, is to
be found in the language of those who
speak as if the God who is prayed to in the
prayers of the pagans is somehow not our
God but theirs. Other people talk as if the
God of the Old Testament were God who
is now dead. They say all manner of hard
words about Him, and rejoice that He has
been driven out of the throne of the uni
verse. But these people are polytheists
only in their language, 1t would be good
deal better if they would speak not of
pagan gods, but of pagan ideas of God, not
of the Hebrew God, but of the Hebrew
idea of God
Tho Savage idea of the Creator.
All religion, however imperfect and mis-
taken, Is an endeavor after better knowl-
edge of Gcd. And as men grow, they are
able to know more-to know more about
everything, even about God. And so God
is able to reveal him self more and more
At first, every tree is god. Then there is
a god of the trees, and then OF all the uni
verse and of man in it God is one Then
there grows in the heart of maD an increas-
ing application of the righteousness of God.
The savage in the forest cannot understand
God who is love. Love, in that sense, has
no place in his vocabulary. You might as
we'll expect a baby to understand demon
stration in quadratic equations. The baby
has got to be educated up 10 that. The
savage has got to be educated up to that.
Between the man who believes that God de-
sires him to extirpate the Canaanites, to
kill the whole community of them, and
their wives and little children, and the man
who knows that God desires him to love his
enemies-what q diameter of differencel
But the difference is not in God; 1t is in the
man.
We have not yet learned all the truth of
God. We have not yet quite learned, for
example, that God cares great deal more
for deeds than he does for creeds. But we
have learned that God is one. At least we
have abandoned polytheism.
Tho Doctrine Of the Trinity.
The Christian doctrine of God, then, does
not mean that there are three gods. 1t has
seemed to be its meaning, but all such
teaching is mistaken. God is one. The
doctrine of the Holy Trinity begins with
that truth, and depends upon it, and is to
be tested by it. Whatever contradicts that
essential assertion about God is false.
The Father is God, and the Son is God, ?
and the Holy Ghost is God; and yetahey
are not three Gods but one God.
The Father is God. This is the first idea
of God, that he is the source of life. This
vast iiIimitable universe about us-where
did it come from? These manifold and in
terminable wonders which are revealed by
microscope and telescope and spectroscope
what Is the cause OF them? This varied
life going on necessarily about us and
within us, we ourselves in the midst of this
world OF marvels-who can tell the story of
the beginning7 Thus we look up to God.
There is no proof which is irresistably con-
vincing of the existence of God. There is
no infallible demonstration of the existence
of God There Is "an unreasoned conscious
ness of dependence on Being or Beings
who are to US invisible" And this is en-
phAsized by arguments from the appear
j..