Year: 1876

1t is not only certain that the new sciences
need not harm Christian doctrine, but it is
possible they may absolutely reform our
ideas of God. When we inherited the notion
OF the Almighty being person like human
person, We fell heir 10 very inferior con-
ception. A Deity fashioned hike the colos-
sal David of Angelo has not been the best
form through which or In which the human
family could behold its maker and Judge.
The Deity thus embodied, thus centralized,
was too easily removed from the homes and
paths OF men. All human hearts have al
ways thought of Him us being elsewhere,
and hence He has been too far away to
alarm the sinful and to comfort the SORROW
ing. Wicked men have felt that they could
hide from Him; that millions and millions
! of miles lay between their little actions aud
the White Throne. Devout hearts have
looked up with tears, wishing for the wings
OF dove, or the wings of light and thought,
that they might fly away and find the inf
n:te rest. In his error and weakness, the
Christian has compared his prayer to tele-
graph that ran from earth TO the realms of
the Father. II any science can come with
power to overthrow these childish symbols
of Deity and to give us a Father filling all
space with his presence, we shall oil hasten
to call that science the noble benefactor of
religioH. 1t must be remembered that a
personal Cod does not imply localized
or humanized God. A personal God is
power conscious of self-a mind--a con-
sciousness. To picture this mind as per-
son like king or judge was the error of
the infant-man. II, by degrees, science
can remove this idea from the Garth, erase
it from the memory of us who are living
and exclude it from the generation to come,
Cpiy tn ha la halia of in N ,spA Oh,
penetrates and permeates the whole uni
verse, and which hence envelopes every
heart, it will have poured into mortals
new motive and into death itself new con-
ISOLATION. And it does indeed seem that the
new science, should it ever be established,
will be followed, not by atheism, but by
new conception Of the omnipotence OF God.
Instead of dressing up the Deity in the form
Of Moses or David, the universe will all
become the form of the Almighty; every
constellation will be included in His dia-
dem, every flowery world be interviewer in
His wreaths; all the floods of light become
the folds and trains of His garments. In
all times Christians have loved here and
there to venture upon this thought. From
st. John, who saw the creative word CON-
ing from all the universe and encamping in
the Christ, to all the mystics of the seven





bring the Infinite nearer to itself. But the
fear of pantheism on the one hand, and tho
feebleness of the intellect on the other, have
always come to lead the head back to great
man on throne as being the lawful repre-.
sentations of the Eternal. Oh, that some
science may come, if come it has not, that
shall throw down our craven images in our
temple, and shall cast our hearts into an
omnipresent soul, as drops of water are cast
into the seal Do you desire to believe that
a million years ago Deity placed in certain
seeds the germs of life2 Would we not bet
ter feel that the Father is still in the sun
beam that plays around ouu pathway at
noon and in the moaning winds that sigh at
midnight2 1t Is high time that those who
break the laws of right, whose loves are full
Of all injustice and vice, should feel that
there is an omnipresent mind and power
whose empire they insult and whose very
presence they pollute with their deeds and
character. The human soul needs-fo4 .sseS-s
virtue ruling mind never ts~De absent,
never to be evaded hut always present with
reward or punishment; the religious heart
needs to have Its love influenced by the
thought that the Being it worships is in the
very air that touches the cheek, and IS
mysterious agency in the very tomb where
the earthly body returns to dust. Such a
Deity, rescued from the iron-like form of
the past Imagination, can become incarnate
in Christ, can enter the soul of the penitent,
can explain the mental and moral pheno-
mena of earth, explain its learning, its pro-
gress, its love, its beauty, and then can en-
ter the chamber of death and make it the
gateway of a second existence.