The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-10-22
MANY MODERN
IDEAS OF GOD
Deity Is Too Great for Human
Mind to Grasp, so AS
poets Differ.
FRANK FAY EDDY'S SERMON
MAN CROPPED FOR GOD BEFORE
CHRIST.

upon which Rev. Frank Fay Eddy
yesterday. Mrs. Bessie Browning sang
20 Dry Those Tears" and the Unity
quartette sang the anthem, Come Unto
Me-"
Mr.. Eddys sermon dealt with the
various phases of human conceptions of
God. The ideal relationship of man
with God is probably better portrayed
IN the gospel of John as the imagination
of this great mystical writer plays
around the enlarged and figurative
Christ of his own invention. If we take
the Christ Of the fourth gospel leaving
10 one side as irrevelant the strained
mysticism OF the logos doctrine we
find n man, nobly human, realizing in
his experience communion with God
soul 10 soul as one personality with
another. Here we nave the fatherhood
of God. the sonship of man and the
reign of spiritual truth. In this we at
tain our loftiest hope; cur aspirations
are satisfied. Mankind had CROPPED long
after God before Jesus. and mankind
have in the larger part been too stupid
or too weak to mount with the God-in-
toXicated Jesus this piece of vision
Man has ever projected himself against
the vastne55 of the unknown and called
this silhouette God. So various are the
faces God seems to turn toward man,
and all of them reflect himself: some
of them reflect his calm and strength,
some his fear and his weakness.
Gods of Past sketched
Mr. Eddy then briefly sketched the
gods of the past. First came the
ghost-gods which I'm thousands of diff
ferent ways are to be traced in an
cestTal worship, in animism and fetch
ism Then followed the local AMI po-
litical gods. OF these the Jahveh of the
Jew, a borrowed war-gOd of the INDIAN
ties. is an illustration. Next comes the
one God, but a god of magic and mira
Cles. This is the god-idea of the later
days of Judaism and early Christian
ity. Then came the era OF Christian
creed-making and verbal quibbling A
God of deductions or a metaphysical
god was created and still inhabits the
Creeds if not the living thought of chris
tendon. Side by side with all these
conceptions and misconceptions of the
Divine has lived the God Of experience, !
the sense of the living presence which
the spiritual minded knew. In q natural
trinity God and man have ever been !
bound together in the truth
Present Day God.
Turning TO the God of the present, |
Mr.. Eddy said, we sometimes realized |
God when we are lost in wonder at |
the permeating force which thrills and |
throbs through the universe. Some |
times We discern God in the great uni !
versals of truth which indestructible |
outlast the centuries. In the beautiful |
God sometimes seems to fill us with a /
rapture. Added to these manifesto
tons is that communion in the law of |
love whereby we feel the EMBEDDING |
presence of the divine fatherhood. In 1
all these mental experiences we realize |
God. but we see him one face at time |
or in one aspect at a time, according |
10 our mood and our preparation.
I'm conclusion, Mr.. Eddy said I'm |
the art of the Christian centuries we |
have attempts innumerable, designed to /
portray adequately the Christ. The |
artists have had no slightest hint as TO /
what the face and form of the Nazar-
enc might have been. Each sought to |
express some aspect Of the idealized |
figure which lived in the imagination |
If Christian believers. So we have /
Jesus the babe of Bethlehem. Christ as /
the Good Shepherd. Christ among his !
disciples at the last supper or Christ /
upon the cross. Indeed, almost every |
salient !ncident of his life is portrayed !
in art. How many and now different |
ore the faces that thus look out at US
IN Christian art.
Many Aspects of God.
Even as men in their fond ilnagin-
.ngs multiplied the aspects of that hu-
man figure which in their thought grew
into a god so do we discover that vast
and infinite divinity that lives in, aud |
oil 6n
nomena of the universe. in many as
reefs. When we are in scientific mood /
.re find the divine i'm universal and !
.;ernal force. When as q philosopher
we muse over historic sequences truth
-cfuleent rises TO dispel our doubts and
rC.rs When as an artist or a poet we
feel the rapture and ecstacy which
.omes from the appeal of beauty or the
spell of great music we approach the
Irvine from another side.
Then, again, the presence of God
seems to burst full upon cur conscious
ness i'm direct and living communion.
Thus our winged thoughts strike out
INTO the unknown and if they are born
cut of any great mood discover some
aspect Of the eternal reality we call
God.
THUS out of the shadowy past rise
The figures of a vast society of ghosts
and gods as they once lived in human
thought And in the present time we
discern God in various aspects taking
form against the vastness OF the in
finite universe With many faces the
Divine Preser ce appeals to our con-
sciousness because we are not great
enough of soul to receive in one concept
the infinite reality behind these mani
festations."