is the testimony of the soul, the voice of the witness within, in the moments of highest vision and communion.

We must ask, in fine, whether this view is consistent with the early confession of the Church. To me it seems entirely so. The objection that you cannot combine under the same formula a person and that which is not a person is, as we have seen, quite artificial; and there is nothing improper or unintelligible in saying, We believe in God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and we believe in his sanctifying power in the souls of his children, and also in the holy Catholic Church and in the communion of saints, which are united into one Divine brotherhood through his all-pervading Spirit.

CHAPTER III

AGENCY AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

THE principal questions respecting the agency and attributes of God must next engage our attention; but our treatment may be comparatively brief, because in regard to those which have the most important bearing on the spiritual life there is little difference of opinion among theologians.

It is commonly assumed that God is the sole Creator of the Universe. This seems involved in the doctrine of his unity, combined with the wonderful unity and order which the universe exhibits, and which have generally led religious men to contemplate it as an expression of Divine Thought. There is, however, the difficulty occasioned by the presence of evil; and this has persuaded many thinkers to adopt a dualistic hypothesis. Some have taken refuge in the conception of two antagonistic principles, as the Zoroastrians and Manicheans.1 Others, as some of the Gnostics, have regarded the Demiurge, not indeed as evil, but as remote from and inferior to the supreme God, and so incapable of producing a perfect world. Others have tried to solve the problem by the intractable nature of matter, which made it impossible

1 For dualism among the Hurons, showing how natural it is, see Max Müller, Gifford Lectures, Natural Religion, p. 312 sq., where he cites Horatio Hale, in the Journal of American Folklore, Vol. I. p. 180. But dualism seems not to have belonged to the primitive teaching of Zoroastrianism. See Max Müller's Gifford Lectures, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, PP. 45, 51, 180.

for the Deity to carry out fully his own beneficent designs. And others again, especially in India, have adopted the hypothesis of the pre-existence of the soul, so that the ills of this life are regarded as the result of things done in a previous state of existence. None of these opinions has commanded any permanent assent among Christian theologians; and though the old Gnostic question, whence is evil?' still remains unanswered, nevertheless the evidence of Divine goodness in creation has generally appeared sufficient to justify our faith that the apparent defects, at least outside of the moral sphere, exist in our extremely limited view rather than in the eternal reality of things. But we must return to the problem of evil in another connexion.

If God be the sole Creator, and possessed of absolute freedom, it follows that he not only formed the world, but that he produced the very matter of which it is composed. This is the view commonly held by writers on dogmatic theology. On the one hand all self-subsistence is denied. to matter; and on the other hand, although it is entirely dependent on the Divine will, it is regarded as distinct from God, so as not to be pantheistically confounded with him. Aquinas indeed describes creation as an emanation of all being from the universal cause, which is God.' But he does not imply by this a proper doctrine of emanation, which would represent the universe as consisting of the very substance of God. Regarding God as the sole self-subsistent Being, he argues that all being, in whatever way it may exist, must be from God,2 and hence that the primitive matter was created by God; but in defining creation as making something out of nothing3 he seems to exclude identity of substance. Participation precludes identity; and matter,

1'Emanationem totius entis a causa universali, quae est Deus. Et hanc quidem emanationem designamus nomine creationis.' Summa theo. Pars I. qu. xlv. Art. 1.

while participating in the being1 of God, is different from God.2 Other views are no doubt taken; but we need not discuss them here; for, so long as the supremacy of God, the eternal Spirit, is recognized, they involve us in philosophical rather than religious problems.

The question is also raised whether the universe is eternal. Its eternity, as we have already seen, would not be inconsistent with its dependence on the Divine will, but would only imply that God had been eternally creative. It was decided, however, on the ground of revelation that the universe began a comparatively short time ago. Aquinas says distinctly, 'That the universe had a beginning is held by faith alone; nor can this be known demonstratively." The actual date of the creation was determined with much nicety, one writer even thinking it 'extremely probable' that it took place about the autumnal equinox, because this was the beginning of the civil year among the Jews and other Orientals and fruits are then ripe. Happily science has demolished these puerilities, and brought before us magnitudes of space and time which, for those who have grasped their meaning, have altered many a theological problem, and rendered for ever incredible a system of belief which was founded on the assumption that this little planet was the largest and most important member of the universe. As to the date when. and the manner in which the world came into being there is no revelation. The wonderful spectacle on which we look forth upon a clear night may have a history going back for billions of years; and whether a material universe is eternal or not must be left to the dreams of philosophers. Such

1' Essendi.'

2 Alia a Deo.' This may be illustrated by the clear distinction drawn by Athanasius. All things, he admits, are Ex Toû beoù, but they are

κτίσμα ; and the

Son, the Logos, alone is οὐκ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, but ἐκ τῆς ovoías Toù beov. Epist. de Decretis Nicaenae Synodi, 19.

3 Summa theo. I. xlvi. 2.

4 Quoted in Christian Dogmatics by Rev. John Macpherson, 1898, p. 171.

questions seem to me beyond the reach of our faculties; and all that we need for piety is the assurance, grounded in the religious nature of man, and most confidently held by the souls of largest growth, that over all is the supreme spiritual Power, who carries out his vast designs according to the counsels of his own will.

Scientific writers sometimes speak of evolution as though it were antithetical to creation, and assume therefore that the theological idea has been entirely exploded by recent discoveries. But this view rests upon a misconception. By creation they mean the sudden production of some complete and complex thing, in opposition to a very gradual growth; and further, they sometimes think of creation as implying the work of an artificer, executing his plans by shaping the material from the outside, in contrast with slow formation through the action of internal forces. Such notions of creation have no doubt been held in past times, but they are not essential to the idea itself. Whether the world arose through an instantaneous fiat or through the operation of laws extending through millions of years, God may be equally its Creator. For this contrast has no reality, but exists only in relation to our own minds, the rapidity in the succession of our thoughts being the measure by which we judge. If a single thought required a million years for its conception, the evolution of an elephant might appear almost instantaneous, and the life-period of an oak would be too swift and sudden to come under observation1; and, on the other hand, if we could have a million thoughts in the time occupied by a flash of lightning, the latter would

1 See the perplexing questions proposed by W. R. Grove in his Address on Continuity,' delivered at the meeting of the British Association in 1866, published in his work on The Correlation of Physical Forces, 5th ed., PP. 317 sq. and 343. Except to our senses, the puzzle is as great with a microbe as an elephant or an oak, and such appeals to the imagination may be misleading. But while saying this, I fully accept the scientific evidence of 'continuity.'