t this is non-existent.

CHAPTER V. ORTHODOX THEISM

We have seen that Pantheism fails to satisfy, inasmuch as it requires us
to mean something different by the word "God" from what we have been
in the habit of meaning. I have already said-I fear, too often-that no
conception of God can have any value or meaning for us which does not
involve his existence as an independent Living Person of ineffable
wisdom and power, vastness, and duration both in the past and for the
future. If such a Being as this can be found existing and made evident,
directly or indirectly, to human senses, there is a God. If otherwise,
there is no God, or none, at any rate, so far as we can know, none with
whom we need concern ourselves. No conscious personality, no God. An
impersonal God is as much a contradiction in terms as an impersonal
person.

Unfortunately, when we question orthodox theology closely, we find that
it supposes God to be a person who has no material body such as could
come within the range of any human sense, and make an impression upon
it. He is supposed to be of a spiritual nature only, except in so far
as one part of his triune personality is, according to the Athanasian
Creed, "perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting."

Here, then, we find ourselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, we are
involved in the same difficulty as in the case of Pantheism, inasmuch
as a person without flesh and blood, or something analogous, is not a
person; we are required, therefore, to believe in a personal God, who
has no true person; to believe, that is to say, in an impersonal person.

This, as we have seen already, is Atheism under another name, being, as
it is, destructive of all idea of God whatever; for these words do not
convey an idea of something which human intelligence can understand
up to a certain point, and which it can watch going out of sight into
regions beyond our view, but in the same direction-as we may infer other
stars in space beyond the farthest that we know of; they convey utterly
self-destructive ideas, which can have no real meaning, and can only be
thought to have a meaning by ignorant and uncultivated people. Otherwise
such foundation as human reason rests upon-that is to say, the current
opinion of those whom the world appraises as reasonable and agreeable,
or capable of being agreed with for any time-is sapped; the whole thing
tumbles down, and we may have square circles and round trian