What and Where is God? Part 4

"h.e.l.lo, Jake, is that you?" Had there been a million receivers in the encircling s.p.a.ce with people listening, it would have seemed to every one of them that he was present. Though expressed in a million remote places at one time, he would not have been divided into a million persons; neither would he have been spread out to reach all the places occupied by his listeners. His instruments would have been spread out, but not his soul. His soul would still have remained sharply self-conscious. That concentrated, self-conscious will is what we mean by the soul. The soul is always a definite, personal will, to itself and to the one or the many with whom it is communicating, however short or extended its instruments.

That the young people grasped this conception of spirit, was made evident in a subsequent review.

So to the question, "Where is G.o.d?" we must answer that, as naked spirit, He is not anywhere, but that His instruments may express Him everywhere. Where His instruments end, or whether nature ends at all, no scientist knows. The Divine Spirit is no larger than the human spirit, for neither of them has any largeness at all. G.o.d is simply more conscious, more loving, and more intelligent than we; and His instruments are infinitely more vast than ours. Developing a soul is not making it larger, but making it more loving, intelligent, and purposeful. However, the development of the soul does require the enlargement of its instruments. An undeveloped person may be very conscious of his body and its wants and scarcely at all aware of his soul and its needs. To be infinitely self-knowing, like G.o.d, is the most concentrated and intensified reality conceivable. So the minister's wife of whom we have spoken, was mistaken in thinking G.o.d a rarified substance like ether, spread out to fill all nature. With her materialistic conception of G.o.d, she thought Him so s.p.a.cially big that she could neither know Him nor love Him, whereas He is no more spread out than the mathematical point that has no dimensions. To give complete satisfaction to our friend, it will be necessary to show her the various ways of approaching this Loving Will, the Father of her own invisible self; but for this we are not yet ready.

Dr. Lyman Abbott tells of sitting at the table one day with his little grandson when the latter said, "'Grandfather, how can G.o.d be in Cornwall and in Newburgh at the same time?' I touched him on the forehead and said, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the shoulder, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' I touched him on the knee, 'Are you there?' 'Yes.' 'That is the way,' I replied, 'G.o.d can be in Cornwall and in Newburgh at the same time.' He considered a moment, and shyly smiled his a.s.sent."

I am well aware that we have not said enough about G.o.d to make Him satisfyingly near and personal to our love; but it is a start, and we still have the pleasure of traveling together over a beautiful road until we shall stand face to face with Him whom our souls seek. We should reach this desired goal in the fourth chapter. But if we become impatient, we shall spoil the journey, for we are traveling as fast as we can go without having a wreck.

Here, a little incident from actual experience may be helpful. My eldest son, when a little child, would not say a prayer. This, beyond doubt, was abnormal, because most little children are willing to pray. As my own religious life had given me so much trouble, I concluded that he had inherited my frailties, and not his mother's virtues. Being perplexed by his att.i.tude I would sometimes take him out to see the stars, when I would speak of the greatness and goodness of G.o.d. Then, once in awhile, though not often, I could get him to pray. We did not wish him to be unduly serious, certainly not solemn, but it did puzzle us to know why he would not say a prayer. So one day when he came into my study I thought, "Now is my chance." Taking him up, I set him on the desk before me, which permitted him to look out of the window upon the apple trees that were a bower of beauty in their spring blossoms.

"Isn't this a beautiful world?" I said.

"Yes," was his reply.

"Who made it?"

"G.o.d."

"Well, wouldn't it be nice to pray a little?" I asked.

"Oh," with a tone of aversion, "I don't want to pray!"

"You don't like to talk to G.o.d?"

"Huh!" scornfully. "I can't _talk_ to G.o.d, He's up in heaven."

"No, G.o.d is in your heart." At that he rose to his knees and said, with an incredulous look on his face:

"Well, I guess I can't jump into my mouth!" This made me feel that he was born a little pagan, but at the same time it gave me one clue to the difficulty. He made a difference between talking and praying. That he liked to talk, I knew, but now it appeared that, to his mind, offering prayers to some one so far away was quite a different thing. Then I asked him if he thought I loved him.

"Yes, I know you love me," he said, putting his arms about my neck, and giving me a squeeze.

"Well," I asked, "can you see my love?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure you can see it?"

"Why, of course."

"Well, then, put your hand on it."

"I can't _see_ your love, but,--I know you love me, though!"

"Yes, you do know that I love you, but you can't see my love, neither can you see _me_."

"Yes, I can!"--and his hand literally flew to my cheek.

"Oh, no, that is not papa; that is flesh. You didn't think I was flesh, did you? No, you can't see me because I am love, or spirit." Here I carefully felt of his head, saying, "Now, that is a bone box, but I don't talk to a bone box when I talk to you." Next, feeling of his ear, I remarked, "Isn't that a funny little thing, a piece of gristle!--but I don't talk to gristle when I speak to you." Bringing my hand down over his face, I continued, "Here is some flesh with bones under it, but I don't talk to flesh and bones when I talk to you. No, I can't _see_ you.

Yet, my love _knows_ your love, and your love knows my love. When my love feels your love, then we say you are in my heart; and when our love feels G.o.d's love, then He is in our hearts. Isn't it beautiful, that my love knows and likes to talk to your love, and your love knows and likes to talk to my love, and that we like to talk to G.o.d's love?" He didn't wait for me to ask him to pray, but at once began in a loud whisper, saying:

"O G.o.d, help me to be a good boy, and to love papa and mamma, and everybody, and to do everything that is good." Then looking up with a smile, he asked, "Do you know what I was doing?" I said:

"I think you were talking to the Lord." With evident satisfaction he admitted that he was.

Two days after this he came into my study while I was reading a book and put his hand on my knee. Giving my knee a hard shove, he said:

"This isn't papa, is it? This is papa's _body_." My book went out of the way in a hurry, I can a.s.sure you, and there was a dear little upturned face smiling, which said, "We are spirits, aren't we, papa?" Never after that did he refuse to pray.

Some years ago a successful minister, about forty-five years of age, consecrated, eloquent, and revered by his people, asked me how I conceived of G.o.d when I prayed. The conversation revealed the fact that he was struggling with all the questions that troubled the little boy.

This unhappy condition was due to the fact that theology begins too far down the stream, leaving unanswered and unconsidered the best questions of all, the questions of children and fools.

Once, when a little child, I was told by my mother that G.o.d saw all my naughty thoughts. Immediately, I asked, "Where is G.o.d?" She answered, "Everywhere." "In the sky?" "Yes." "In this house?" "Yes." "In the logs of the walls?" "Yes." "In the table leg?" "Yes." "If I were to saw the table leg off, would I hurt G.o.d?" "Sh-h, be careful what you say about G.o.d."

That last question was as legitimate as the previous ones, and was asked with equal sincerity. It clearly revealed my materialistic conceptions of G.o.d. My present opinion is that it would not give Him pain to saw off the leg of a table, but that it would give Him pain to amputate a human leg. G.o.d knows the thrill of a nerve better than we do, or else He has much to learn.

A relative, visiting in my home, remarked that she was utterly confused about G.o.d; and that she had been reading some of the new cults of the day with the hope of finding something satisfying. Consequently, a little conversation followed on how G.o.d was immanent in all nature. So, when she put her little boy to bed that night, she told him that G.o.d was not away off in heaven but near, and in everything that was good. To this the little fellow replied, "Oh, gee! then He is in strawberry shortcake, isn't He?" The poor mother was at the end of her wits, and felt that the devotion which followed was not very successful. We teach that G.o.d is in everything, without comprehending how He is in anything, and herein lies the difficulty.

The question of how G.o.d is in nature was again before us. Some one suggested, "If He is in strawberry shortcake, is He likewise in the garbage can?" "Horrors!" exclaimed another. A third voice, "_Now_ where are we!--do we believe, or do we not believe that G.o.d is in all nature?"

A garbage can may be most repulsive if allowed to breed life; yet chemically and biologically viewed, its contents are more beautiful than any fairyland ever described. The odor and sight are repugnant to us, because the refuse is not wholesome food for human beings; but to some other animals it is more delicate than a perfume bottle. The other animals would probably think the perfume horrid stuff. The "Loving Intelligent Will" is not in nature in the same way that strawberries are in shortcake. After that manner G.o.d is neither in nor out of anything.

This, however, will be made more plain in the consideration of the next question.

Whether or not the reader likes these ill.u.s.trations, at least they are out of the raw experience of life, and reveal the crude conceptions that linger concerning G.o.d and His relations to the universe. A child can ask many of the vital questions concerning religion and life before he can count ten; and if his questions are answered, he will ask almost all the religious questions before he has learned the multiplication table. This is because nothing else is so near to him as life and religion. The mathematical faculty is a later development.

I should never crowd a child in his acquisition of religious knowledge; but when he wants to know, if we ourselves know the way, it is much better to start him on the right track.

4. What does G.o.d do?

"What does G.o.d do all day?" asked a little boy of his mother.

We used to think that He made the universe in a week, and that ever since He had been keeping Sunday. During this long Sabbath we believed Him to be engaged in religious work; though He may have regulated the universe a bit now and then. Now, however, we see that nothing is finished. Even new worlds are being formed, and the old ones are constantly being changed. It is deeper truth to recognize G.o.d as making the universe all the time, to think of nature as G.o.d at work. For, should G.o.d cease working there would be no world. We used to say, and rightly, too, that the world is crammed so full of meaning and purpose that it must have had a wise Creator; that there never could have been such a world without a G.o.d. With equal propriety, we may now say that there could no more be a G.o.d without a world than a world without a G.o.d; because a G.o.d who was so indolent and purposeless as to think nothing, and feel nothing, and project nothing, would not be worthy of a second thought.

At last we have come to the point where we can see how science, in a peculiar way, has saved religion. Men have always been pondering over G.o.d's relation to the wonderful forces of nature that envelop us. They could get along pretty well with either a G.o.d or a world, but found it difficult to harmonize both thoughts. There appeared to be a spirit world over against the great lump of a dirt world. The _bulk_ of things often seemed such a hindrance that men dreamed of deliverance by ultimately getting rid of the material universe altogether. Even G.o.d, it was thought by some philosophers, did the best He could with the stubborn clay at His disposal. When my brother was killed, I could not decide whether G.o.d or the great machine world killed him. Just when the world acted, or just when G.o.d acted, was to me a profound mystery. For, in my thought, the world was a great automatic machine, that ran entirely by itself, except when G.o.d occasionally interfered. Whether He was a sort of spiritual ether penetrating all things, or what, I could not at all decide. But like the Yale professor, I still believed that if He existed, He must have a _visible_ nucleus all His own in heaven. G.o.d, at the center, was a ghost, whom His ghost children would find only after death. According to the common teaching, Jesus had left His Father and happy home in heaven, having come to this sinful earth to be clothed with a physical body. Of course, the Father's spirit was represented as being with Jesus, but the Father Himself had remained in His far-away home. So my confusion was worse confounded by thinking.

During many centuries, scholars were grappling with the thought of spirit; and they did some good thinking in spite of their mistakes.

Spirit was being more and more clearly defined. It increasingly appeared to be a self-conscious will, but how this Infinite Will was related to the great lump of nature, was the supreme difficulty.

Finally the scientists took the lump into the laboratories, when behold!

it melted as quickly as a lump of sugar melts in the mouth of a boy.

They discovered that nature was no lump at all, but a bundle of beautiful, complex energies. Nature as _substance_ scientists have driven to the vanis.h.i.+ng point; so much so that no great physicist would dare to say that there is any substance. Yet nature was never so potent in the lives of men as since it has been reduced to invisible energies.

The knowledge of these invisible forces and the power to manipulate them make men almost like G.o.ds in their achievements.

The present situation, then, is a little like that of putting the tunnel under the Hudson. One gang beginning on the Jersey side, and another on the New York side, they bored down and onward, sometimes going far below the water; but when the workers came together under the Hudson, they had varied from each other only by the least fraction of an inch. Just so the philosophers and theologians began on the spirit side, reducing spirit to purposeful energy; while the scientists began on the nature side reducing it to purposeful energy; and when the two sets of workers broke through, they were apparently at the same point. The Christian scholar looked up with joy and amazement, saying, "Why, this invisible, purposeful energy of nature is simply what G.o.d is thinking, and feeling, and willing. Whether there is any _substance_ we do not know, but whether there is, or is not, _nature is Will in action_. G.o.d continually purposes all these energies and they go forth. Light-energy, and all other beautiful forces const.i.tuting nature, are the modes of G.o.d's continuous will."

"What does G.o.d do all day?" Why, everything that is being done in the universe, except that which other wills are doing. And the child will is only combining his Father's energies and thinking his Father's thoughts.

The child never works apart from his Father's enfolding powers. If we could comprehend all the dynamics of the universe, we should know what G.o.d is doing on _that plane_ of His activities. Or, if we could know all His loving thoughts and higher purposes concerning His children, who are striving and building in the midst of these simple, enfolding energies, we should know what G.o.d is doing in the _moral realm_. The wall of part.i.tion is broken down, the veil is rent in twain; we live in the Holy Presence, since there is no other place to live. With Browning, we feel that the atmosphere "Is the clear, dear breath of G.o.d who loveth us."