The Deep Things of God

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1      SCIENCE reverses the evidence of the senses in the-
         ology, on the same principle that it does in astronomy.
3      Popular theology makes God tributary to man, coming at
         human call; whereas the reverse is true in Science. Men
         must approach God reverently, doing their own work in
6      obedience to divine law, if they would fulfil the intended
         harmony of being.

         The principle of music knows nothing of discord. God
9      is harmony’s selfhood. His universal laws, His unchange-
         ableness, are not infringed in ethics any more than in
         music. To Him there is no moral inharmony; as we shall
12    learn, proportionately as we gain the true understanding
         of Deity. If God could be conscious of sin, His infinite
         power would straightway reduce the universe to chaos.

15    If God has any real knowledge of sin, sickness, and
         death, they must be eternal; since He is, in the very
         fibre of His being, "without beginning of years or end of
18    days." If God knows that which is not permanent, it
         follows that He knows something which He must learn
         to unknow, for the benefit of our race.

21    Such a view would bring us upon an outworn theological

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1      platform, which contains such planks as the divine repent-
         ance, and the belief that God must one day do His
3      work over again, because it was not at first done
         aright.

         Can it be seriously held, by any thinker, that long after
6      God made the universe, — earth, man, animals, plants,
         the sun, the moon, and "the stars also," — He should so
         gain wisdom and power from past experience that He
9      could vastly improve upon His own previous work, — as
         Burgess, the boatbuilder, remedies in the Volunteer the
         shortcomings of the Puritan’s model?

12    Christians are commanded to grow in grace. Was it
         necessary for God to grow in grace, that He might rectify
         His spiritual universe?

15    The Jehovah of limited Hebrew faith might need
         repentance, because His created children proved sinful;
         but the New Testament tells us of "the Father of lights,
18    with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."
         God is not the shifting vane on the spire, but the
         corner-stone of living rock, firmer than everlasting hills.

21    As God is Mind, if this Mind is familiar with evil, all
         cannot be good therein. Our infinite model would be
         taken away. What is in eternal Mind must be reflected
24    in man, Mind’s image. How then could man escape, or
         hope to escape, from a knowledge which is everlasting in
         his creator?

27    God never said that man would become better by learn-
         ing to distinguish evil from good, — but the contrary, that

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1      by this knowledge, by man’s first disobedience, came
         "death into the world, and all our woe."

3      "Shall mortal man be more just than God?" asks the
         poet-patriarch. May men rid themselves of an incubus
         which God never can throw off? Do mortals know more
6      than God, that they may declare Him absolutely cognizant
         of sin?

         God created all things, and pronounced them good.
9      Was evil among these good things? Man is God’s child
         and image. If God knows evil, so must man, or the like-
         ness is incomplete, the image marred.
12    If man must be destroyed by the knowledge of evil,
         then his destruction comes through the very knowledge
         caught from God, and the creature is punished for his
15    likeness to his creator.

         God is commonly called the sinless, and man the sinful;
         but if the thought of sin could be possible in Deity, would
18    Deity then be sinless? Would God not of necessity take
         precedence as the infinite sinner, and human sin become
         only an echo of the divine?

21    Such vagaries are to be found in heathen religious his-
         tory. There are, or have been, devotees who worship not
         the good Deity, who will not harm them, but the bad
24    deity, who seeks to do them mischief, and whom there-
         fore they wish to bribe with prayers into quiescence,
         as a criminal appeases, with a money-bag, the venal
27    officer.

         Surely this is no Christian worship! In Christianity

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1      man bows to the infinite perfection which he is bidden to
         imitate. In Truth, such terms as divine sin and infinite
3      sinner are unheard-of contradictions, — absurdities; but
         would they be sheer nonsense, if God has, or can have,
         a real knowledge of sin?