SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

“BEWARE OF THE MAN WHOSE GOD IS IN THE SKY.” “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him.” —II. Chron. XVI. 9. (■Rey. A. H. Oollins, New Plymouth.) Last week, when speaking on Religion and Reform, I quoted a sentence from Mr, Bernard Shaw: “Beware of the man whose God is in the sky.” I am not surprised to know the words arrested attention, for, as I said, they are flame-tipped. A friend told me" the words set him thinking furiously. This morning I want to try to unfold their meaning. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Hinyself strong on behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him.” Of course that is the language of accommodation. Ido not like using the cumbrous word “anthropomophic,” but that is the word employed by theologians, and it means the ascription to the Deity of human parts and passions. “God is Spirit,” invisible, imponderable, universal. But we cannot imagine pure spirit, and we need to think of God as having eyes and hands and feet. In plain speech, the meaning of our text is that the Almighty is not in the sky, but on" the earth, not distant, cold, impassive and indifferent to human affairs, but close, observant, interested and concerned in the lives of men. WHAT GOD IS LIKE? There is nothing of such profound importance to us as the question, What God is like? It is not enough to believe in a God. Thousands believe that,-*and are not one whit the better for it. Nothing is easier than to use the word “God” and mean nothing. To believe in the existence of a Supreme Being is, of course, necessary as a starting point, but it is only a starting point, and unless y,ou get a good deal beyond the starting point, you might just as well never Jiave started at all. It is not what you think of God. but what you really think that matters. A man may formulate a statement of belief and persuade himself that that represents his idea of God, and all the while ’-ave no clear and ruling thought. It uoes not matter much what is on your lips about God; it is what is at the back of your mind that ultimately tells on life. For as one has said, “the thought you make of God is the thought that makes you.”

THE NATION AND ITS IDEAL DEITY. All history proclaims that the character of any people is determined by their conception of God. A nation never rises higher than its ideal of Deity. If the gods they worship are impure, th6y themselves become corrupt, and their worship an orgy of lust and cruelty. I am not blowing theological soap bubbles; I am speaking to a company of plain, common-sense folk, and I say that it is a miserable and shallow sophism to say it does not matter what a man believes, and it breaks down hopelessly in the presence of reason and facts. Turn to the Book, and you will find proof of the contention that the thought you make of God is the thought that makes you. See! The Syrians warred against Israel and were worsted in the fight. The battle Was waged on the hill-tops, and this is what the Syrians said: “Their God is the God of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.-’ Theirs was a local deity! AN ABSENTEE GOD.

The house of ancient Israel “practised abominations in the dark,” and quieted their rising fears by saying: “The Lord seeth us not, the Lord hath forsaken the earth.” Theirs was an absentee God— a. God in the sky. The Pharasees reasoned on this wise: “We are the people, and wisdom will die with us. But as for this multitude which know not the law, they are accursed.’’ Theirs was a God of favouritisms, and mark you this, the people became like the God they idealised. But this is Biblical. Yes, It is, and it is none the worse for that. Let me cite modern examples. Dr. Jackson, in one of his best known volumes, points out that “as is the Deity, so is the faith that is built upon Him. He adds: “Find out the ultimate beliefs of a people, and you find out the character of their institutions,” and he proceeds to illustrate in this way: Look at China, where the worship of ancestors is believed in and practised. What is the consequence? This is the consequence: China, with its eyes forever fixed on the past, is the least progressive of the great nations on the face of the earth to-day. Look at India, where Brahma is considered to be the universal soul. From the head of Brahma came the priestly class; from the arms of Brahma the warrior class; from the less of Brahma came the yeoman class; and from the feet of Brahma came the poor, toiling outcast multitude, so that, as Dr. Fairbairn said: “In India a religious theory has become a social tyranny.” Exactly. That is my point. The thought you make of God is the thought that makes you.

THE MODERN CONCEPTION. And now, in the light of all this, will you ask: What is the modern conception of God ? Two words describe our ideas. One word is “transcendence,’’ and the other word “immanence.” What do these words mean ? By the transcendanee of God we mean that, apart from and above the universe there lives and reigns a personal Creator. We mean that were this world to be extinguished and every living thing disappeared, still there would be eternal in the heavens the Great Spirit we call God. By the immanence of God we mean the presence of God in creation. We mean that time and space, the yrent and the tide, the beauty of f the glory of summer, the splendor of autumn, are the vesture of the Creator, and that the Spirit of the Almighty is in every man. The difference is immense and immeasurable. A God transcendent is like a painter adorning a flower with the skill and deftness of his hand. A God immanent is One who breathes His life into the lilies until they become the expression of Himself. A* God transcendent, is like a mighty craftsman who fashions fowls for flight. A God immanent lives in the bird, and breaks the silence with a song. A God transcendent is like a skilled sculptor working on the form of a man, A God immanent looks

through human eyes, thinks through human brains, and lives in human lives. THE GOD TRANSCENDENT. Now, the former of these conceptions of God held sovereign sway for centuries. It was the creed of Augustine, Calvin, John Kno>_, and the Puritans, and there is no denying it had tremendous influence and fashioned tremendous men. But Calvinism is dead. Its doctrine of election and reprobation was icy cold and iron hard, and the pendulum has swung over to the other side. The conception of God that holds the world to-day is the immanence of God. It is not simply God above us, but God within us, that is the watchword of the hour. I cannot stop to trace the influences which have led to the change, but 1 am anxious to point to the effect of the change, and in so doing I may shed light on the words: “Beware of the man whose God is in the sky.’- For it marks the connection between modern theology and modern sociology. It means a change in our thought of the universe. God is not a spectator; He is a participator. He is not aloof; He is near. He does not stand apart, in solitary state, watching man’s generations rise and fall, with no more concern than the colossal Sphinx that fronts the desert of Egypt. He is in the world, sharing its life, feeling its sorrows, bearing its load and directing its manifold activities. There is nothing common or unclean. Things are sacred and sublime. Wherever creation is, God is. Though man be far away, the solitude, where there seems to be no watchful eye, no listening ear, overflows with the glory of a thinking, ruling, loving Presence, for Cod is there, “rejoicing in the works of His hands. It is a« Bryant puts it: “Thy Spirit is around, Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along, And the Eternal sound: Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng, Like the hesounding sea, Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee.” BEARING ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Does that seem far away from the pinch of things? Has that no bearing on social problems? Well, it is not far away. It has a most direct and practical bearing on social life. The universe is the dwelling place of the Almighty. Things are God’s things. We only need to recognise that to change the face of the world. If your God is in the sky, I don’t wonder work is shunned or slummed, and polities are a vulgar scramble between “ins” and “outs.” ’ If your God is in the sky, I don’t wonder so much if business is honeycombed with fraud and greed, and men lie and cheat, and riot and wanton. If your God is in the sky, I don’t, wonder Paradise is turned to pandemonium, and money has on it the sweat of men, the tears of women, and the blood of little children. If God is in the sky you need not wonder earth is in th emire. But once let the sense of God’s presence in the world become regnant in the thought and life of men, and all that will be changed. Contracts will be honesty prices will be fair, day books and ledgers will be holy as Bibles, factories will be sacred as churches, merchants will be devout as ; ministers, and the whole round earth will be a temple wherein everything cries: “Holy, Holy, Holy!”

Moreover, this new conception means a new thought of “His Majesty's Man.” We have thought of man as a cog in a machine for grinding out gold. He has been used as a means to an end, instead of being, as Emmanuel Kant says, an end in himself. When the “Mayflower” carried the Puritans to New England i they took their Calvinism with them. | Jonathan Edwards ruled the religious thought of America for many a long year, and America was the last great stronghold of slavery! Is there no°connection between doctrine and practice? Do you think the surfeit of horrors in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” would have been possible if the Southern States ' had realised that God was not in the sky, but in the cotton plantations? That every stroke of the lash which fell on a black man’s quivering flesh woke echoes in the heart of God.

CALVINISM AND ITS EFFECTS. Ah! But our industrial system grew up under the reign of Calvinism. God was in the sky, and hence man’s inhumanity to man, hence dear bread and cheap manhood, hence prisons choked with putrid prisoners, women and children worn to death by hopeless toil, and a dark and turgid stream of poverty and wrong! Will anyone tell me that such things had been .possible if men had understood that there was a bit of God in every one of these victims of oppression ? It is simply unthinkable. So we come to our starting point and say: “The thought you make of God is the thought that makes you,” makes your social system, and makes your nationhood. We have worshipped force and made gold our God, and it has made us hard, cold, metallic. We have bowed she knee to success, tind it lias killed tenderness, sympathey, brotherliness. It does matter what we believe; it matters tremendously. I said Calvinism is dead. I take the word back. Calvinism is dead in the living faith of the Church; but it -survives in the commerce of the world, and hence the warning, “Beware of the man whose God is in the sky.” God is not in the sky: He stands amid the lilies and he scans the ways of men. “No man hath seen God at any time: the only b.egotten Son of the Father, hath revealed Him.” “■See, the Christ stands.”