CHAPTER IV

DOES GOD HAVE A BODY, AND COULD HE BECOME A MAN?

_Was Jesus God or a good man only?_

_Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?_

_Where does Jesus belong in the religious, social, and thought world?_

1. Introductory statement

Thus far our discussion of God has been largely in relation to physics. At last, however, we are ready to consider Him on a higher plane.

Our knowledge of both God and man is incomplete until we see their oneness in Jesus and in the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed. In the life of Jesus, God and man are viewed from a higher spiritual level. The world lies broken into fragments until these fragments become united in the Christ type of life. Then the body, the human mind, God, and the whole material universe coordinate to make one beautiful whole.

Starting with the Scriptural idea that all things proceed from Wisdom, or God, then strictly speaking, God is the only person in the universe who has a body of His own. All other spirits live in His bodies. This is necessarily so if all the way from its simplest elements to its most highly organized forms, nature is but the expression of the divine Will. As we have already shown, the human body is but a part of universal nature,--the finest part, the blossom. Therefore, what we call the human organism is primarily God's. Not only is it the very finest bit of His _workmanship_, but it is His to _use_, unless His child, the man soul, robs Him of His own. In these highly specialized parts of nature God has not merely one, but billions of bodies,--all the bodies there are. The Infinite Mind would find one such body utterly inadequate. With but one bodily form He would be incomparably worse off than an organist with but one finger. If God could come to articulate speech and deed through but one physical instrument, He and all His family might well despair. If as the Scriptures teach, however, each and every physical body is His very own, in which and through which He may live, then every condition is provided for a God humanly personal and infinitely satisfying. He may be as local and personal as our parents or neighbors. Though greater than all, He is yet in all and through all,

"Center and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!"

Not only is God lovingly present to every Christian heart, but at the same time He is personally revealed by every human form through which He is permitted to live and love and serve. The pity of it all is that we so often prevent God from using His own body, in which we too live, by causing it to express in word and deed that which is contrary to His thought and love.

Before we take up the subject of the Incarnation, it may be well to consider what is meant by the trinity.

2. The idea of the trinity and how it came about

When we say that God is a trinity we do not mean that there are three Gods. There is just one God who, as we have repeatedly said, is a Loving Intelligent Will.

The idea of the trinity came about in this way:

The early Christians were so deeply impressed by Jesus, and so warmly attached to their Master, that they instinctively adored and worshiped Him; for, somehow, He brought God to them even as He brought them to God. Yet the Christians, like the Jews, strenuously opposed the worship of more than one Divinity. Their stout opposition to Polytheism provoked the retort from their heathen neighbors that Christians should not be so particular about the number of Gods, because they worshiped at least two, a Father God and a Son God,--and three, if they added a Holy Spirit God. So it is not strange that the Christians, to justify their own conduct, were driven to a profound study of Deity. And though they made some grave mistakes, nevertheless they discovered some vital truths concerning the nature of personality which greatly enlarged and enriched their conception of God. It must be remembered that in the early Christian centuries many thought of God as something very remote and placid, like a sea of bliss; being infinitely happy and self-contained, He was at perfect rest. Such a One would not contaminate Himself by being identified with nature or man. To the Christian Gnostics and Jews, the idea that God became incarnate and suffered death on the cross was repugnant. Some believed that it was beneath God even to create a world like ours. They, therefore, attributed creation to lesser divinities. However, in the third century Origen stoutly maintained that God must have created the world. Yet so eminent a man as Origen believed that He created it for "tainted souls."

After much study, the Church Fathers arrived at the conclusion that God was somehow Three in One, a sort of society within Himself,--and they were right. For without something like a social experience in one's self, it is impossible to be a person at all. This is equally true of God or man. To be a person one must know himself, and this he could not do if he were not able to keep company with himself. The pen with which I am writing is not a person because it has no capacity for self-communion. But because I hold _fellowship_ with myself I am a person. Since every human being keeps company with himself more than he does with all other persons put together, may God have mercy on him if he is bad company, if he is not safe to be left alone with himself. A tree may stand alone in infinite solitude, companionless; but for better, for worse, a man must forever remain in his own company, hearing praise or condemnation from his own heart. How is this possible, unless there is something in a man's individual experience that resembles society? In self-knowledge, as in all knowledge, there are the _knower_ and the _known_. When we commune with ourselves we are, at the same moment, the subject and the object of our own experience. The self that sees may fittingly be called the father of our personality, and with equal propriety the self that we see may be called the begotten of our personality. Thus something resembling father and son is experienced in our first step toward self-knowledge. Whether the capacity to be our own subject and object amounts to much or little, it was this that the Fathers saw and rightly attributed to God.

Furthermore, there is yet another step to be taken in the act of coming to true self-knowledge. By what power does one determine that the person with whom he communes is himself? There is something in our experience resembling a third person, one who recognizes both subject and object and bears witness that they are one. The reader may say, "I can see the first and the second, but I cannot see the third." The self that sees the first and the second is the third. This power by which we complete the unity of our being is by no means trivial, as some may think. There are abnormal personalities who successfully achieve the subjective and objective in their experience and keep up an abnormal communion with themselves from morning till night, who cannot witness true. So they insist that they are "General Jacksons" or "Jesus Christs" or great "railroad magnates." Their personalities have broken down, not because they lack self-consciousness, but because they lack the power of coming to unity. A perfectly sane person, therefore, is subject, object, and witnesser all in one. If God were not this kind of trinity He would not be a person at all.

To grasp so clearly the significance of personality was a great spiritual achievement. The Church Fathers did more than they realized; they described the elements inherent in all personalities. They saved God to the intellect and to the affections by bringing Him out of remote obscurity into the blazing light of moral and spiritual personality. God is personal because He is triune; that is, because He is complex enough to keep company with Himself and to know Himself. If the reader asks "What does all this amount to for us?" my answer is, "It amounts to the difference between a personal God and the deity who is an 'immobile placid sea of bliss.' In the second place it shows the difference between the God who is a Loving Intelligent Will and the materialist's god who is no more than a blind Samson. It also discloses the essential likeness between all personalities, however much they may differ in development."

If I were asked to put my finger on the greatest weakness in present-day thought I should unhesitatingly point out the subject of personality. Men are falling down like ten-pins before the intellectual difficulties of believing in a personal God; and many of them are even doubting the spiritual personality of man. And this is largely due to the fact that they are unable to form any mental picture of personality. One of the beautiful surprises for this generation is that the Fathers in working out the personality of God found the only conception of personality that is true to universal experience. They did not realize that they were analyzing the human spirit as well as God, because their thought was wholly on Him. But they saw God through their own personalities, and if they had not borne God's image they never could have analyzed the personality of God. In this generation we turn their analysis of God upon ourselves and find that it tallies perfectly with our experience. We at last see that the triune, or personal, man soul is the child of the triune, or personal, God Soul; and thus a deeper bond is established between the Father and His child.

The use to which the Church Fathers put this analysis of God's personality was both fortunate and unfortunate. It was fortunate because it enabled them to continue their belief in the deity of Jesus and, at the same time, their belief in the oneness of God. They were still able to oppose polytheism, and yet come to Jesus as the fountain of divine blessing. They worshiped God in the face of Jesus. In other words, they believed in a genuine Incarnation. This was fortunate beyond all calculation. Just how fortunate it was we shall have to illustrate to the best of our ability when we come to the subject of Incarnation. Thus far I have not discussed the Incarnation, neither have I had Jesus in mind while considering the trinity. For in whatever sense God is a trinity, He was such before Jesus was born.

Before discussing the divinity of Jesus we must briefly call attention to the unfortunate use which the Fathers made of their analysis of the personality of God. They thought they had solved the question of Christ's divinity when they took this objective element in the experience of God and clothed it with flesh. Though they denied that these distinctions in God were properly named by the word person, yet they admitted their inability to think of a better term. Then they so wrenched God's personality apart as to send His objective self, which was simply an element in His experience of self-consciousness, into the world to be the Messiah. And though they stoutly maintained that these three elements in God were indivisible, yet God's subjective self could stay far away in heaven while His objective self could go to earth as a man. At the same time each of the three elements in God's experience of self-hood could perform all the functions of a full personality. This was doing the worst possible violence to the personality of God; and it has wrought confusion from that day to this. As we have already seen, it takes these three elements in God's experience to make Him any person at all. The common use made of the subjective, objective, and witnessing elements in the personality of God is pure Tri-Theism, regardless of how they are united. God does not have three personalities that can be scattered about in the universe.

The idea that God's objective experience can go off on a journey, or that it can return to heaven while His witnessing experience in turn goes to earth, leaving the subjective and objective in heaven, is religious illiteracy. Neither God nor any part of God ever goes or comes. The triune, or personal God, is never far enough off to come anywhere. There is no place in the universe where for a moment He is not. He is always the Father, and Creator, and Intelligent Will in whom all creation lives, and moves, and has its being. The _second element_ in God's own act of consciousness did not become incarnate in Jesus; the conscious God Himself entered the life of man.

The baptismal formula, "In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," has no reference to the triple element in God's self-consciousness. It beautifully represents the three ways that we are to look at God, if we are to see Him in the fulness of His glory. First, we think of God as He is in Himself, and as He must be to His own infinite thought. Second, we think of Him as He has expressed Himself in nature, in humanity and, best of all, as He has revealed Himself in His obedient Son Jesus. Third, we think of God as the still small voice within, the Soul of our souls, the One to whom we speak when we have shut the door; the one to whom we whisper our deepest secrets, and ask Him if He loves and forgives us. Beyond the fact that the trinity constitutes God a person, it has nothing to do with the deity of Jesus. How God became incarnate is another question; a question to which we now gladly address ourselves.

3. Was Jesus God or a good man only?

At a meeting of city ministers, addressed by one of their own number, the speaker took from Jesus the last shred of divinity. According to this minister, Jesus was a prophet sent from God, and the best of men, but nothing more. A progressive Jewish rabbi asked if this were not the present attitude of all intelligent ministers, and whether they did not, for the sake of expediency, leave the pew in ignorance of their real belief. In the opinion of the rabbi, Jesus was one of the greatest of Jewish reformers, but not the founder of Christian religion. His contention was that Paul founded the Christian Church on a peculiar, psychic experience which came to him on his way to Damascus.

"The Divinity of Jesus" was then assigned to me as a topic for the next meeting. Naturally, I turned to the Scriptures to see what they had to say concerning the relation of God to man. Though expecting to find on this subject a marked degree of difference between the Old and New Testaments, yet I was wholly unprepared for the facts as they appeared. Before presenting my findings, I asked the rabbi to consider whether Jesus was a "Jewish reformer," or a Jewish fulfiller,--it being my conviction that He was the latter. I then stated that, having examined the Old Testament on the relation existing between God and man, I failed to find a single passage recognizing God within the human life; and that no greater surprise than this had come to me in my recent study of the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, the nearest approach to the immanence of God in the soul was the following:

"I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," and "Is not my dwelling with the humble in heart?" But even here the divine Spirit was only _upon_ them or _with_ them. Never, so far as I could discover, did He dwell _in_ them. In some twenty-four hundred verses, God was represented as sustaining many beautiful and terrible relations to men. This relationship was symbolized by birds, beasts, and natural elements, to the very limit of the imagination. After the most solemn warnings and attractive promises, God would depart from His people for a season and then return with rewards and punishments according to their faithfulness. He scrutinized their inmost thoughts; in fact, He did everything except enter their lives.

On turning to the New Testament, however, I found a startling contrast. God dwelt not only in the hearts but in the bodies of men. "For know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? Yea, ye are the temple of the living God." "Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit?" "Walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Jesus said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" "The Father abiding in me doeth His works." "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father and ye in me, and I in you." "If a man love me he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."

As a prospector seeks for gold, I sought in the Old Testament for God in the life of man and did not find Him; but no sooner had I reached the New Testament than all was changed. Here was a new country. The prospector was in the midst of that for which he sought. No mountain was ever as rich in gold as the human heart, according to the New Testament, was rich with the indwelling God.

The religion of Jesus in contrast with that of the prophets is like a tree, which Luther Burbank has transformed into a new variety bearing strange and luscious fruit. I wondered that I had overlooked for so long a time the complete cleavage between the two parts of our Bible on this subject. Jesus was truly a Jewish reformer, but to a much greater degree He was a Jewish fulfiller. In revealing God's true oneness with man He completed the prophet's imperfect religious vision, and best of all, made the vision a fact in His own experience. At the same time He began making it a reality in the experience of His disciples.

I told the friend who in a previous meeting had stripped Jesus of all His divinity, that he had very successfully demolished some antiquated psychology, but strange to say had completely overlooked the new psychology which, in my opinion, fully restored Christ's divinity. As to his statement that "Jesus was a good man only," I reminded him that there is no such being. For, each one of us, in so far as he is "only," is a bad man. It requires the oneness of God and man to make a _good_ man. When a human soul is separated from God, he ceases to be a complete person. God and the true self always come or go together; in order to be a human soul, in any worthy sense, one must be both God and man in one. A man severed from God is but the fragment of a man, a limb broken from the tree, a lifeless branch. To touch the living branch of a tree is to touch the tree. The fruit of the branch is likewise the fruit of the tree. That any person can be a "good man only," is an idea contrary to the New Testament and modern psychology.

4. Can modern psychology any longer believe in the Deity of Jesus?

The Scriptures certainly do not teach that Jesus was God only; neither do they teach that He was man only. It is my own deepest conviction that Jesus was very God and very man. Furthermore, I believe this to be the teaching of the Scriptures, and the idea that best conforms to modern psychology. To come to Jesus is to come to God; likewise to come to God is to come to Jesus. He is at once God in man, and man in God. I believe in the God of Jesus, and I believe in the Jesus of God. How modern psychology can avoid believing in both the deity and humanity of Jesus, I do not see. Some who believe in Christ's divinity do not believe in His deity. They say, "Yes, He is divine, He is incomparable, He is altogether lovely; but He is not Deity, because Deity is God Himself." But my thesis is that Jesus was "very God and very man."

To picture this truth to our minds will be our next task. An old-time friend, while reporting to me the installation of a minister whom I knew, said:

"Would you believe it! Mr. G. told the council that he not only believed in the divinity, but that he believed in the Deity of Jesus." Here my friend threw his head back and laughed heartily, expecting me to laugh with him. When he had finished laughing, I told him that I also believed in the deity as well as in the humanity of Jesus; and that if I did not believe in His deity I did not think I should believe in any religion at all. This proved to be quite a surprise to my friend. So to his puzzled look of inquiry I replied:

"And I could make you believe it." As his curiosity deepened at this remark, I asked him,

"Do you know where I first met God--not an emanation from Him, but God; the Will that formed the worlds,--all the God there is?" "No," was his reply. "Fortunately," I answered, "I do. It was in my mother. When I was a little boy the great God at times enfolded me in human arms, and looked into my face through benignant, human eyes, and spoke tender words with a sweet accent. My silent and invisible mother was often so closely identified with God that they would be thinking and feeling the same thing concerning me. At such times the human form expressed their common thought and love; my heavenly Father, no less than my invisible mother, enfolded me with His arms. If in these supreme moments God was not in my mother, then it is useless to look for Him anywhere in the Universe. My mother was different from the non-Christian mothers in our rough frontier. Many times she so loved me _in_ God, and _with_ God, that she became a channel through which God Himself had personal access to me through all the human modes of approach."

I then told my friend of an experience with my mother at church in the little frontier schoolhouse. I was lying on the seat with my head in her lap, tickling my nose with her boa. When the time came for prayers, my mother bowed her head to the desk in front of her. While her lips moved in prayer, I observed that her dear face was troubled. As she was unconscious of my gaze, I continued to look into her sorrowful face. Though but a little child, I fully understood what she was doing, and was able to mark the stages of her progress. My invisible mother was talking with our invisible Father, and the face gradually changed until finally I could tell that her will had merged completely with His will; and then her face, which was primarily His face, became radiant with spiritual beauty. I had seen the dear human face of God, and at the same time it was the face of my mother.

I called my friend's attention to the fact that once upon a time the invisible God said to the invisible Clara Barton:

"Clara, let us go out onto the battle-field where the poor soldier boys languish and die;" and Clara responded to His thought and love. Then the invisible God and the invisible Clara Barton went to the battle-field in God's body, because Clara had no body exclusively her own. So, when that form bending over the soldier boy wiped away the dust and blood and pain, while whispering of home, of mother, and of God, it was the Father, as much as it was Clara Barton, who was performing the deed; and He, not less than she, was visibly and humanly present. The ministering hand was as truly His instrument as it was hers; while the stronger will and deeper love were the Father's. Before Clara Barton thought of it, the Father, knowing all and feeling all, suggested to her the kindly deed; nor did He stop loving the soldier boy when she began.

Again addressing my friend, I said:

"It is impossible for me to understand you. You have always believed God to be immanent in all nature; you have seen Him in sticks and stones and stars; but you now fail to recognize Him in His highest, His only instrument through which He is capable of coming to articulate speech and deed. How I pity your poor helpless God who is buried fathoms and fathoms out of sight. He can neither see, nor hear, nor breathe; nor can He walk or talk. But you see, _my_ God can get clear to the surface in audible word, and visible deed. When my God finds a good, clean Frenchman, He begins talking and writing French. If you doubt this, either you are not familiar with French literature, or else you do not know God. Under similar conditions God speaks all the languages. How beautifully and abundantly He has spoken through the German and English tongues! While in Greek and Hebrew, God has uttered mighty words of wisdom, and has filled the earth with His glorious paeans. Human wisdom alone could never have spoken thus. If we but have eyes to see and hearts to feel we shall realize that all about us God is getting to the surface through devoted Christians. When the true preacher lifts the souls before him into the will of God, he sees a divine expression upon their faces; and if he is spiritually wise, he will realize that for the time being these are the dear human instruments of God, as truly as they are the faces of human spirits; and when he has poured out his soul in behalf of some great cause of God for which he would be willing to die, he will find someone with outstretched hand ready to meet him and willing to cooeperate, if need be, even unto death, and then it is his privilege to know that, while shaking hands with a brother spirit, he was at the same time shaking hands with the infinite God. In these rare experiences of ours, the invisible God no less than the invisible man has come to outward expression, and this He would always do, if our wills were not contrary to His will. Our feeble and infrequent inspiration is but intermittent incarnation, while full incarnation is permanent inspiration.

"Why," I asked, "should you hesitate to think of Jesus as God and man? If the Father-Spirit and the child-spirit were thinking and willing the same thing, which one came to expression through the words and acts of the body? If A and B were lifting an object, would it be truthful to say that A was lifting it? The visible form that lived and taught by the shores of Galilee was as truly God as it was man, unless the child-spirit did not know and do the Father-Spirit's will. Sometimes a whole congregation of wills express themselves joyfully and forcefully through one written resolution. God never speaks an audible word, except through one of His bodies in which He has enfolded a child-spirit. When, however, the child-spirit rebels against the Father, and causes the instrument to speak or act vile things, the Father is dumb. His child has robbed Him of His body. We have grown so accustomed to this form of robbery that we naturally think of human spirits as having bodies all their own, while we conceive of God as a vague, disembodied influence. We speak of God as sending men, forgetting that He never sends a man anywhere without sending him in His own body and accompanying him with His own spiritual Presence. And that which the messenger says is not worth hearing if it fails to express the Father's thought and will. The God who, through beautiful chemical energies, makes the ear, hears; and the God who makes the eye, sees; and He who makes the lips, speaks. Either God knows the thrill of nerves, or else He has an infinite amount to learn. Why then should we say that Jesus was only a good man, when the body was God's very own, and the guiding will was that of the Father? A man is all God except the invisible human spirit; and in the case of Jesus, even the human spirit rendered such filial obedience that the Father, for once in human history, got to the surface through His own instrument in a steady flow of luminous words and loving deeds. If the composite life of Jesus were named after its major elements, then Jesus should be called God. However, as that would be both confusing and false, we state the truth as it is, and say that Jesus was both God and man, that is, a God-filled man, or a God-man."

"Oh well," said my friend, "if you mean it that way!"

"Did I not tell you," I replied, "that you would believe it? The trouble with you is that you forget it. You should be proclaiming it from the housetop that God has got clear to the surface in human form, and that men have clasped His hand, and heard His voice, and seen His face."

In the life of Jesus, religion reached a new and distinct stage of development. It was in Him that the essential _oneness_ of Deity and humanity first became clearly manifest. To the friends of Jesus, God was no longer a disembodied spirit. The Christian's God is clearly the God of Israel, but He is the God of Israel become human and visible. The world has been slow to grasp the meaning of Christ's life and teachings. To maintain the uniqueness of Jesus, it has denied the universality of the truth which He proclaimed: namely, the organic and moral oneness of God and man. If the union of God and man as realized in Jesus was so beautiful, a similar union between God and all men would be equally beautiful. That God desires such a union with all His children there can be no doubt; and that He is inspiring His disciples with the glorious hope of its accomplishment is equally certain. Yet for the present, even the most devoted followers have not nearly attained unto the fulness of the stature of Jesus; but some glad day they shall be wholly like Him whose image they already unmistakably bear. This is the Christian's noblest hope.

If God has ever united His personality with that of even one man, then there is a way of doing it. And if there is a way, what finer goal is possible, than that such a union between God and every man be consummated? Really, that is what the Christian Religion is about. Not only may God and every man be similarly united, but the sin of man alone can prevent such a union from taking place. If there were no sin or rebellion in a man's heart, he would instantly become a God-man on the plane of his present human development; and as he "Advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men," he would be a God-man on a higher level. If the human side of the Christ has continued thus to grow for more than nineteen hundred years, on what altitudes of knowledge He is a God-man by this time, we can but faintly surmise. And with the possibility of a complete purging from sin, and the possibility of an infinite growth in wisdom, we, too, may yet be God-men on what would now seem to us dizzying heights; we shall ever be attaining "Unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." No matter what one's conception of the trinity in God's personality may be, God is capable of uniting with every man in the same way that He united with the man Jesus. If we prefer to believe that God had an Eternal Son who came to clothe himself in a man, the problem of union would in nowise be changed. A Son-God, if He existed either in the Father or out of the Father, could not be less than a person, and the manner of uniting Himself with a man would be the same. My interest in the metaphysics of the trinity is that it gives us a firm grasp on the personality of God and the personality of man. I rest on the fact that the Personal God became incarnate and still seeks the souls of men for his dwelling-place. I further believe that when we do not read a later metaphysics into the Bible, the Scriptures wholly support the more modern conception. In the beginning was the Logos, Word, or Wisdom. Wisdom was with God from the beginning; that is, God was always Wisdom, and not a material thing. All things were made by Wisdom, or God. Life was in God, and God's life was the light of men; and though it was shining into the darkness the darkness apprehended it not. The God who is wisdom, and not matter, was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but it knew Him not. Finally Wisdom, or God, became flesh, and tabernacled among us, and we discerned His glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father, full of grace and truth. The author seems to me to believe that the Personal God became incarnate, and that the one in whom He dwelt, in contrast with other men, looked like an only son of a father.

Notwithstanding this glorious possibility, there is always a tendency for religion to revert to a lower type; and this tendency is particularly noticeable just now. Not being able to believe in the divinity of Jesus according to the old metaphysics, multitudes are ceasing to believe in Him as Emmanuel,--or "God with us." At a time like this, when a forward movement is the only hope of saving our great material structure from becoming another Tower of Babel, a retrograde movement is lamentable. What we especially need is a new interpretation of Jesus, followed by a finer devotion to Him, and a whole-hearted commitment of ourselves to His ever-widening program. God is becoming altogether too hazy and inarticulate, at a time when the consciousness of His holy Presence is especially needed, if we are to shape and sustain a civilization that is quadrupling itself in weight and extent by reason of the growth and application of material knowledge. Any quickening of God that is to be highly beneficial must result in His further advent into human lives and human institutions after the pattern of Jesus.

That a mere God of nature is insufficient was forcibly brought home to me while I was watching a circus performer throw daggers and toss balls. The performer, placing a man against a wide board, some ten feet distant, hurled a bunch of daggers into the board on either side of the man, each time missing him by only one or two inches. Then he began tossing balls until the air seemed full of them, and not one ball fell to the ground. Having witnessed with amazement his great dexterity, these thoughts occurred to me:

"I wonder what he is like when he talks? If he is married what does his wife think of him? If he has children how do they feel toward him? Or if he is a single man, what would I think if he should wish to marry my daughter?" I then realized that I knew absolutely nothing about him except that he was a dexterous machine. Then falling into a homiletical mood I thought of the great skill of God. "How wonderfully _He_ can toss balls, and strew the milky way, and hurl Pleiades and Orion! Before such infinite skill the performance which I have just witnessed is ridiculous." Then the thought forced itself upon me, "What would God be like if He were to talk? What kind of a person should we find Him to be if He walked our streets, and engaged in business, and sat at the table as one of the family circle?" I then realized that if God could only toss balls and direct atoms we should really know nothing whatever of His character. If He were no more than the uniform power of nature's laws He would too closely resemble gravity, or electricity, to be satisfying to His children. The human heart demands that, in addition to all this, God be individual, and spontaneous, like other persons whom we know, and with whom we hold fellowship. We enjoy seeing our friends run machines, but what an awful life it would be if every person in the world gave no heed to anyone or anything except the machine which he uniformly and incessantly operated! What a monstrous and oppressive idea it is to think of God, silent as a sphinx, spending an eternity with His mind so riveted upon the operation of His machine-world that He has neither time nor capacity for anything else. If such a God had time to think of it, He surely would envy the little child who can prattle, and laugh, and sing.

Fortunately this higher demand upon God is fully met in the religion of Jesus. For while our Father is a wonder-worker and a world builder, at the same time He has myriads of human bodies through which He can live a thoroughly social life. He is the most social Being in the universe; His desire and capacity for social relations are unlimited. He does not willingly leave one individual outside the circle of His friends. All His work in nature is for the purpose of providing instruments and conditions for a family of free children, among whom He may live as the free and adorable Father. It is no wonder that men cease to pray, when in their thought God is divorced from everything individual and social. When men conceive of God as the mere operator of the cosmos, their highest concern is to keep out of the way of the machine. It never occurs to such men that God is able to treat them as sons, after the most personal and human manner. It is only in the laws of nature that His actions are mechanically uniform. In social relations His moods and actions change to suit the feelings and conduct of His sons and daughters. In _nature_ God sends the rain and sunshine on the just and the unjust alike, but in _human-nature_ He smiles or frowns according to each individual's deserts. In Jesus, God might say, "Come unto me," or He might make a whip of cords and drive the people out of the temple. Prayer does not cause God to change His wise and loving purpose, but it does determine _how_ He shall execute His holy will. If the conduct of a child does not change the father's actions toward him, then the father is both foolish and immoral. Men should learn that God is even greater in humanity than He is in nature. For in the one, He is uniform power, while in the other, He is Father, Redeemer, and Friend. In the world of wills, God is individual and human. And His inner communion with us is greatly intensified and clarified when there is added to it His audible voice from without. The voice of God speaking to us through human lips awakens the voice of God within us. How wonderfully clear was the Divine Voice in men's hearts when God spoke to them through Jesus! Likewise when the apostle Paul went to a new community, it seemed to receptive minds that God had come to town; and they were wholly justified in thinking so, for though God had been there all the time, powerfully through nature's laws and feebly in their darkened hearts, yet for the first time God was within their city in clear articulate speech, wooing them to Himself. This not only made God seem real to them, but it made it easy for them to believe and be baptized. Though able to rejoice for a time, yet heaviness soon came upon them after Paul's departure, because God too seemed to have departed from their midst. Neither were they mistaken in this, for God had no instrument remaining through which He could make Himself so humanly real to them, after His devoted and tried servant had gone away. As a result of Paul's early departure there would follow unbelief and conduct unworthy of Christians. To meet this sad state of affairs in the mission churches, God would write them a letter, or better still, make them another visit in Paul.

Once there was brought home to me in a very beautiful and unexpected manner the Christian truth about God's essential oneness with humanity. Weary from my afternoon calls, I had just returned home. Entering the side hall that was already dark, I saw through the door slightly ajar my little son and daughter at play. Philip, eight years old, was building up blocks on the floor, while Esther, two years younger, was standing under the electric light with both arms raised as high as she could stretch them over her head. Seeing her dramatic position, and the unusual look on her face, I remained silent in the hall knowing that something was coming. With intense feeling she said:

"Oh, Philip! of course we would kiss God!" To which Philip replied:

"Oh, you couldn't kiss God. He is a spirit. Why, God is in you,--and in me."

Still standing in her dramatic position with the light shining full on her face, she began lowering her arms slowly, and as her expression of comprehension deepened she said:

"Oh well then, Philip, if God is in you and in me, if we were to kiss each other we would kiss God."

"Yes, that is right, you would," was his response. Then said she:

"Let us kiss God." He arose promptly, and the children, throwing their arms tightly around each other, kissed God.

If ever there was a glad father I was one. Standing there in the dark hall I thought:

"God bless the dear children, they have the evangel. That is the very essence of the Christian religion, 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these ye did it unto me.'"

Of course we all realize that there are certain proprieties which adults must observe, but what could be more beautiful than for a little brother and sister so to recognize God in each other as to be able to kiss Him? The idea here involved, if carried out in every relation of life, would be the Kingdom of God realized. Furthermore, there is no other way of making the Kingdom of God a reality, either on earth or in the life beyond. Doubtless God never will be seen outside the bodies which He provides for Himself and His children to use in common. However, we shall have more to say about that later.

A Christian woman has beautifully related an incident which brought to her Christ's idea and experience of religion. Said she:

"It was my custom to retire each day to my own room for devotion. On one occasion when my heart was deeply oppressed my prayers seemed all in vain. Nevertheless, I continued to plead, 'O Lord Jesus, reveal thyself to me.' After awhile there came a rap at my door. It was the maid seeking comfort. She had broken a choice piece of china. But I drove her away rather harshly, saying, 'You know you are not to bother me at this hour.' Then I continued, 'O Lord Jesus, reveal thyself.' After more fruitless prayer, my little girl came sobbing for comfort as she had broken her first doll. I even drove _her_ away saying, 'My child, you must not disturb your mother now.' After resuming what seemed to be a useless petition, there came to me a suggestion as distinct and forceful as if spoken. 'Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these ye did it not unto me.' I arose from my knees, unlocked the door, and went out. In the kitchen I found the maid sullen and angry, to whom I spoke comforting words. Seeing the light come to her face, I went on to find my little daughter. From under the grapevine where she had already cried herself to sleep, I picked her up; and after kissing her and wiping the tear stains from her cheeks, I told her that I would get her another dollie,--one ever so much nicer than the first. Having comforted others for His sake, and for their own sake, my soul was filled with inexpressible peace! And once more something spoke to my innermost being, 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these ye did it unto me.'"

Let no one draw the conclusion that her habit of devotion was worthless, for it is not very likely that all this peace and revelation would have come to her if she had been less inclined to pray. The intense desire of her prayer, coupled with the unpleasant incidents of the day, brought to her the fuller truth.

Though a minister may not neglect his sermons, yet there have been times when I have grown so desperate in my effort to prepare a vital message that I have thrown down my insipid and stupid manuscript to go out and find some needy, suffering person whom I could bless in His name. Whenever I have done this I have found God and my soul and a sermon.

5. Where does Jesus belong in the religious, social and thought worlds?

When the God Soul and the man soul unite, they so lift nature's forces up into personal life that the universe no longer lies in broken and confused fragments. Jesus is at the center of all things because all things center in pure personal life. In Him, the Father-spirit, the child-spirit, and nature's forces were so correlated as to be newly manifest; the child was completing himself in the Father, and the Father was fulfilling Himself in the child, while nature was serving as the common instrument of both. Separate the God Soul, the man soul, and nature's forces, and no one of them is revealed. Unite them as they were in Jesus and the meaning of all three appears. Christ's type of life brings all reality into accord because it combines everything into a composite, personal life.

If you wish to know God in the most perfect way, go to Jesus; if you care to know man as he should be, go to Jesus; if you would look upon God, man, and nature's forces in one radiant, wooing personality, go to Jesus. If it is the purpose of religionists, sociologists, and philosophers to trace reality to its highest form of expression, let them go to Jesus. Yes, let all men go to Jesus with their wealth of technical knowledge which they have gained in the wide fields of research; and in His presence, their treasures, like precious gems, will scintillate with a divine light. This conjunction in Jesus of all streams of reality makes Him the light of the world. In the same way, and for the same reason, every person would be the light of the world if the child-spirit rendered an obedience to the Father equally loving and intelligent. But this is the tragedy,--who has rendered such obedience! It is the belief of many of us that Jesus was never disobedient, even as a little child. Though it were admitted that this could not be proved, still it would remain a fact that as Jesus "Increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man," His filial obedience identified Him with the Father. The oneness of Deity and humanity was so certainly achieved in Jesus that no one can rob him of His glory nor of His place as the Messiah. He was the first to open wide the door to God; yea more, He was the door. In Jesus, we come face to face with the personal God and with our Elder Brother who lived in God. In Him, the perfect God was living in man, and the perfect man was living in God, while unitedly they were living among men as a visible member of society.

Taking the world as it is, the presence of God in humanity could but bring both peace and trouble; it brought joy to the pure in heart, and bitter hatred and strife to those who loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. The weary and the noble were attracted to Jesus, while the vicious and the self-willed hurled themselves against Him with mad fury; but it was ever so, from the beginning of human history until the present hour. Whenever God has made His approach in human life, the evil-in-heart have opposed Him; they have killed the prophets, and stoned God when He came unto them. In our own day, many who speak beautifully of God in nature, are fiercely angry with Him when He appears among them in a good man; they are willing to believe that God is in that part of nature which soothes their senses, but they are not willing to believe that He is in the man who irritates them by opposing their wicked ways, or by hindering them in their pursuit of ill-gotten gains and illicit pleasures. Therefore, when God in Jesus so fully and perfectly entered society, it is not strange that they put Him to death. However, in killing Jesus they unwittingly exalted Him; in this act they brought to light the heinousness of sin, the inexpressible love of God, and the compassion of the child Jesus for his sinful brothers. It is before the cross, if anywhere, that men are led to repentance; it is there, if anywhere, that the heart is both broken and healed. Before such wondrous love the world may well pause and sing:

"In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time, All the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime."

6. Can God die?

_Yes, God can die._ Three years ago after the Sunday morning service I received a telegram saying, "Mother died this morning at six-thirty. Come!" Now, what did my sisters mean by this information; did they intend to convey the idea that our mother had become extinct? Not at all, they only meant that she had lost the dear old instrument that we had known for so many years in this earthly home. Death never signifies more than this to the Christian. Though we said she was dead, we believed our mother to be more alive than ever. If death is simply the loss of our instrument, the body, then God too can die, for He may lose His body. God died on the cross with His child, because the Father-spirit, no less than the child-spirit, lost His beautiful instrument in which He had walked by the shores of Galilee, teaching and comforting the people. If Jesus would not forsake the Father in the agony of the Garden, we may be sure that the Father did not forsake His child on the cross. As they were united in life they were undivided in death. To think that Jesus any more than the Father was conscious of the pain, is to make Jesus greater than God. The God who creates the body, moment by moment, must know the thrill of every nerve, since they are His own nerves which He shares with His child. Yet it is not the pain nor the indignity heaped upon the Father and His Holy Child that we are here emphasizing, but the fact that He lost the instrument by means of which He had been a living person among men. The disciples scattered in sorrow and bewilderment, when God and His Child Jesus died on the cross. The Father had no form left on earth through which He could continue to speak _unerring_ words of wisdom and love. One year before my mother died she enfolded me once more in her arms and blessed me, saying, "My son, I shall never see you again on earth." Hastening home at the summons of my sisters I looked again on the dear old instrument, but the hand of welcome was not extended, and the lips did not speak. In like manner when the limp body of Jesus was taken from the cross, the lips no longer said, "I and the Father are one, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Those lifeless hands were no longer outstretched, and pleading, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." Yes, God can die; He can lose His human instruments on earth. He can likewise die to society by being _robbed_ of His highest instruments. If no man, woman, or child in my city would let God come to articulate speech or deed through his body, God would be stone dead in Bridgeport; He would be as dead as the spirits whose bodies lie in our cemeteries. As already indicated, I do not mean, even in that sad event, that God would not still be in Bridgeport as the power of the all-pervading atmosphere, or as the mighty force of the waves that lash our shores. His energy would still be scintillating in the lamps of the white way, and shedding a soft light in the smaller lamps that brighten our homes; His would still be the energy propelling all the thundering mills of industry, and the power sustaining the nerves and muscles that operate the machinery; He would still be present in the blazing sun by day and in the twinkling stars by night; He would still wrap us round, and enfolding us in His great universe He would watch over us by day and brood over us by night; and yet for all this, if we entirely robbed Him of all His human bodies He, as a member of society, would be completely dead in Bridgeport. If in his own life every one killed God, men would then devour one another. As it is, God is partly dead and partly alive in my city, as in all cities; and hence we are sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse to one another. God may be manifestly alive in one person, and nearly dead in the same man's nearest neighbor; and He is more or less dead and alive in the best of us. When God can no longer get to the surface through men's souls, and bodies, and institutions, He is dead in that locality. And when God is dead through the loss of men, society is spiritually dead through the loss of God. The _living_ God is not one who is driven out of His kingdom and reduced to a mere operator of the cosmos. The living God is not one who is persecuted by His children and driven from home while His business is going to rack and ruin. A living God must be active in His universe from center to circumference. Until our bodies are God's obedient instruments there is no kingdom of God. There is not the slightest reason for thinking there is a kingdom of God anywhere in the universe unless God has children somewhere who are permitting Him to live through the instruments with which He enfolds them. Until God is permitted to live in His own bodies, He is dead and His children are languishing.

If the Christian religion were understood and believed and practiced, what a transformation it would work! For instance, if every man, woman, and child in my city rendered perfect obedience to God, then every human body in Bridgeport would become His very own to use, and God Himself would throng our streets. We should meet Him face to face in individuals and crowds. It would be Emmanuel, or "God-with-us" everywhere. All faces would be bright with the wisdom and goodness of God. Every individual would be our Infinite Father and our brother in one. What a rapid human growth would ensue! Every living person would be a window through which the light of God would shine. There would be young minds like the child Jesus in the temple, just waking to the mind of God, and ripe saints and sages flooding the community with God's vaster wisdom and profounder love. Not only would our immediate bodies be cleansed and transformed, but our augmented bodies would be brought into harmony with the divine Will. Our city would become a heavenly abode, and our industries would become the instruments of love and righteousness. We should tap a thousand sources of power that now remain idle, and finding unlimited resources within ourselves and our environments, we would work wonders. While making God's energies our enlarged and purified bodies, we should at the same time turn them into instruments of God's love. If God were permitted to come to the surface perfectly in all our lives, and in all with which we have to do, three years would not pass until people would be making pilgrimages from the ends of the earth to see the city "where _God_ lives."

In a previous chapter I said that God, as a solitary person in the universe, would not mine coal, and run steam engines; but now allow me to say that if there is anything God wants to do it is to get into the railroad business; and if He does not, it will be because men vote Him out. But in shutting God out of railroad corporations, what are we doing? Though not fully aware of it, yet we are really saying, "O God, you may be the energy in the steel rails, you may be the power in the wheels, you may be the expansive force of the steam, you may manage the chemical combinations of the wheat or other cargo, you may furnish us with our bodies, you may do everything but dictate terms of business. If, however, you want to sit at the desk as the senior partner then our answer is, 'Get down and out, O God.' We are glad to have you as our slave and lackey, we are delighted to use you and exploit you, but woe to the man or men who plead your cause in connection with our private business."

Such is the enormity of our sin, and the denseness of our ignorance when we shut God out of our business affairs. If God may not be in our daily enterprises He will not deign to be in our prayer meetings. This is the message of Jesus to all men, to employers and employees alike; this is the will of God, that _in_ and _through_ His children He may make all things vocal with His wisdom, and beautiful with His love. Scholars may look into nerves and brain, but the spirit is fully revealed _before_ the face and not back of it. So the infinite God and Father of our spirits is fully revealed, if at all, in benignant eyes, friendly hands, willing feet, and gracious words. It is the way we grow our bodies, and shape our institutions, and manipulate all the forces of nature that we reveal what manner of spirits we are. If our spirits are evil, then God is denied bodily expression. There is no use saying Lord, Lord, if we do not the things which He tells us.