ssential being of man in this life is his
will; he exists consciously only to _do_; his main interest in life is
the choice between alternatives; and, since he moves through space and
time to effects and consequences, a general purpose in space and time is
the limit of his understanding. He can know God only under the semblance
of a pervading purpose, of which his own individual freedom of will is a
part, but he can understand that the purpose that exists in space and
time is no more God than a voice calling out of impenetrable darkness is
a man. To men of the kinetic type belief in God so manifest as purpose
is irresistible, and, to all lucid minds, the being of God, save as that
general atmosphere of imperfectly apprehended purpose in which our
individual wills operate, is incomprehensible. To cling to any belief
more detailed than this, to define and limit God in order to take hold
of Him, to detach one's self and parts of the universe from God in some
mysterious way in order to reduce life to a dramatic antagonism, is not
faith, but infirmity. Excessive strenuous belief is not faith. By faith
we disbelieve, and it is the drowning man, and not the strong swimmer,
who clutches at the floating straw. It is in the nature of man, it is in
the present purpose of things, that the real world of our experience and
will should appear to us not only as a progressive existence in space
and time, but as a scheme of good and evil. But choice, the antagonism
of good and evil, just as much as the formulation of things in space and
time, is merely a limiting condition of human being, and in the thought
of God as we conceive of Him in the light of faith, this antagonism
vanishes. God is no moralist, God is no partisan; He comprehends and
cannot be comprehended, and our business is only with so much of His
purpose as centres on our individual wills.

So, or in some such phrases, I believe, these men of the New Republic
will formulate their relationship to God. They will live to serve this
purpose that presents Him, without presumption and without fear. For the
same spacious faith that will render the idea of airing their egotisms
in God's presence through prayer, or of any such quite personal
intimacy, absurd, will render the idea of an irascible and punitive
Deity ridiculous and incredible....

The men of the New Republic will hold and understand quite clearly the
doctrine that in the real world of man's experience, there is Free Wil