Third Discourse.

ON THE SCIENCE OF GOD.

DELIVERED JULY 16, 1871.

TRUST that you are not unwilling to return with me to the contemplation of the nature and character of God. It is a subject of never-failing and of all-absorbing interest. Deep answers unto deep. The soul is ever seeking anxiously for God, if haply it may find Him. The eyes of the spirit strain into the deepening gloom, the heart pines for a glimpse of the King in His beauty, for the light that is behind the cloud-the light that is shining in the darkness, and which the darkness comprehendeth not. We are like travellers who, seeing some lofty beacon in the night, advance towards it, but the mist rises and the winds blow, and the tempest beats in our faces and confounds us, and the clouds gather thick about the bright star on the distant summit, and all is dark; but as a stormy gust sweeps the sky clear, again we see the light, and press forwards. Once more it is

hid-surely it has been blown out, and we sit down hopeless-when in the very moment of despair it bursts forth again, and scatters the night. So it is with God and the soul. Athwart the mists and fogs of ages men have been looking on to Him. Athwart the roar and darkness of a world confused with sin men have been looking on to Him. Athwart the despair of the heart, the outward trouble of life, the pain and cruelty of life, men have been looking on to Him. And still He is seen to shine more brightly as the heart is more pure, and as the mind is more clear, and the ways of the soul more in conformity with the divine, unchangeable laws of the spiritual life. Yes, it is the understanding of spiritual laws, the deep perceptions of love, the life of the heart, the recognition of the soul's wealth and the soul's desire, the sympathy with human experience,these things make God possible, and reveal His nature to man-not the teachings of dogmatic theology—not arguments founded on texts, nor the decrees of church councils. In such temples made with hands He dwells not. He is the great open Secret.

15. Nothing so perplexes the mind of the ordinary layman as the astounding and exclusive familiarity which the clergy and writers on dogmatic theology profess with reference to the character of God and His dealings with mankind. They speak of Him as if they had seen Him lately in the flesh, as if they had been chronicling all His movements for some time, as if, in short, He was some one living in the next street. They undertake to

clear your poor head of all doubts and difficulties. They insist upon your adopting their arguments, which to you seem no arguments at all, and swallowing their explanations which explain nothing. What you want is a foundation. They can dispense with that. They can build in the air. So at one time we are told confidently about an arrangement made between the Father and the Son, whereby a certain price was to be paid for the sin of mankind, and mankind rescued, now from the devil, or from the heavenly Father, or from sin, or from an offended law. A forensic transaction of some kind has taken place between the Father and Son. The crucifixion of Christ has satisfied the wrath of God against sin, or has satisfied the majesty of offended law. It is sometimes difficult to understand what has been satisfied, nor is it easy for an average mind to perceive how, if it is sin against the law to pardon the guilty, it should be no sin at all against the law to inflict arbitrary suffering on the innocent. It has been thought by some that to add such an infliction to the remission of a penalty is to double the transgression against the majesty of offended law, not to cancel it. But such objections do not much trouble professional theologians, who reply that God's ways are not our ways, nor are His thoughts our thoughts.

Again, we are told of the tender and infinite love of God. Indeed, how loving are His ways! He appears according to some to have predestined a certain number of people to misery, and others to happiness; therefore we can repose in His love, and may be perfectly comfortable, if we are not perfectly horrified, because we

may assume that we ourselves and our friends are predestined to happiness, and why should we trouble ourselves about others? God is merciful, but then He is just, and so forth. It would not be difficult to go through the usual round of popular statements about God. But when we ask where our theologians got all their information from, our peaceful and confiding temper is likely to be a little ruffled. We find out, in fact, what they have been doing. How they have got at their facts about God and Christ, and mankind and the devil. They have put together a number of imperfect along with a few more pure conceptions of God. They have had no regard to Biblical chronology, no idea that one part of the Bible was any better than another, no respect for historical accuracy, made no allowance for idiom, style, phraseology, allegory, poetry, passion, human infirmity, or the partial state of knowledge to be found in a mass of records of various and often obscure origin, stretching over several thousands of years. They have taken the Old and New Testaments or bits of either, turned chapters upside down, fitted texts on to each other without regard to contexts, joined sentiments together which have nothing to do with each other; in short, treated the Bible with an unintentional irreverence, and an ignorance and falsification to which, perhaps, no other historical work has ever been subjected—and the result? The result is the astounding result of our popular theology, a patchwork God, an artificial Christ, and a scheme of redemption irreconcilable with any intelligible theory of either God or Christ.

In this way, with the best intentions in the world, many of our theologians have arrived at that portentous and alarming familiarity with the character of God which so scandalises ordinary folk who would like to be religious, but do not happen to be theological. But the time has come when men and women who want to be religious, are asking the clergy not what they can twist out of the Bible about God-not what they have voted God to be in seminaries, text-books, and church councilsnot what they fancy His dealings are with man, but what is God? What are the actual relations which He has established between Himself and man? And on what grounds ought our general ideas of the nature of God to be founded? Do you know or do you not know; you who pretend to teach us? That is the question which every moral teacher in every sect will have to answer before long. That is the question which the human spirit will never tire of asking, and will insist upon having solved anew in every age of the world. And the answer which does for one age will not always do for the next; new questions get mixed up with the old, and the old pass away, but the exceeding bitter cry of the soul after God remains constant, and will not be put off with your fancies and your wishes about God, but will demand, 'Tell us truly, do you know anything about it or not; do you believe anything about it yourself? Don't give us high-flown spiritualism, or low grovelling dogmatism about God, but give us some firm ground upon which we may plant our foot and say, Here is a rock. This is accurate, this is, to begin with, scientific; it may not,