The Vinita daily chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1902-1913, 1912-05-07

lIshed a few years before his death a
little book on The Idea OF God in
which he contended. on evolutionary
principles. that the idea Of Cod could
not have arisen and maintained itself
in the human mind II God did not exist.
The critics Of Christianity say that the
Christian experience by which We
claim to have learned something of
God is all Imagination Herbert
spe yer. writing from the standpoint
q science. proves that all we really
know about the world is just our i'm
pressions and our ideas. We only real
ly know what is going on in our minds.
when We say that We saw a fash Of
lightning. Whether the fash Of light.
ming happened out side of us or inside
Of us, we have no way of proving. We
have just as much right TO accuse the
scientist OF imagining the world. as
he has to accuse us OF imagining God.
The possibility of knowledge Of any
kind depends on our trusting our
faculties. 1t is an old trick, but an
illogical one, to use philosophical
scepticism to discredit the knowledge
we don't want to accept. and play that
II doesn't apply to the kind that We
want to believe.
me new thought of God. partly in
luenced by yscience, partly by deeper
study of the teaching of Jesus, does not
locate Him away from the earth, in
some inaccessible Heaven. Spencer
shows that every fact in nature of life
is manifestation of what He calls
the Unhnowable. That's just his
name for God. Jesus taught that God
cares for the flowers and the birds.
Not sparrow falls TO the ground. he
said, but God knows it, The flowers
and the grass of the field are clothed
in beauty by Ills power. Paul says
that in God we live, and move, and
have our being. We have come to re-
allze that, If we are to conceive God
as Infinite, we must conceive Him as
here, today or nowhere at any time.
II God is not in yinita. He never was
in Jerusalem. II He is not in the
home or the store, He is not in the
church. Goethe's phrase is a pregnant
one; Nature is ''the living garment of
God" He is the Artist who paints
the sunsets, as we'll as the Artist inn
plicit in the soul of the man who APP
preciates their glory And history, as
we'll as Nature, is the process of God.
1t is under His guidance, as Browning
was so fond of illustrating in many
ways, that life has grown and develop
ed from protoplasmic jelly to man, and
that man has grown and developed
from savagery to civilization Not
only the groves were Gods first
temples" but they are His temples
stiIl. If there is any place in the uni
verse where you cannot find God, then
it is no use for you to seek Him any
where.
The presence of God in the universe
is the foundation of the regularity and
order which the scientist expresses in
his conception of the laws of Nature.
Nature always works the same way,
because God is always consistent with
Himself Thus the conception Of mir
acle is still a possibility; but we are
coming to have less respect for God
who works miracles. than for God
who doesn't have to. If We are not
careful to think clearly. We shall be
afraid of this conception of God, be-
cause it will give room for the seeptic
to say. Then you believe the Titanic
disaster was the act of God?" No