isdom, and duration.

There would be no reason to complain of this if this manner of using the
word "God" were well understood. Many words have two meanings, or even
three, without any mischievous confusion of thought following. There
can not only be no objection to the use of the word God as a manner of
expressing the highest ideal of which our minds can conceive, but on the
contrary no better expression can be found, and it is a pity the word is
not thus more generally used.

Few, however, would be content with any such limitation of God as that
he should be an idea only, an expression for certain qualities of human
thought and action. Whence, it may be fairly asked, did our deeply
rooted belief in God as a Living Person originate? The idea of him as
of an inconceivably vast, ancient, powerful, loving, and yet formidable
Person is one which survives all changes of detail in men's opinion. I
believe there are a few very savage tribes who are as absolutely without
religious sense as the beasts of the field, but the vast majority for a
long time past have been possessed with an idea that there is somewhere
a Living God who is the Spirit and the Life of all that is, and who is a
true Person with an individuality and self-consciousness of his own. It
is only natural that we should be asked how such an idea has remained in
the minds of so many--who differ upon almost every other part of their
philosophy-for so long a time if it was without foundation, and a piece
of dreamy mysticism only.

True, it has generally been declared that this God is an infinite God,
and an infinite God is a God without any bounds or limitations; and
a God without bounds or limitations is an impersonal God; and an
impersonal God is Atheism. But may not this be the incoherency of
prophecy which precedes the successful mastering of an idea? May we not
think of this illusory expression as having arisen from inability to
see the whereabouts of a certain vast but tangible Person as to whose
existence men were nevertheless clear? If they felt that it existed, and
yet could not say where, nor wherein it was to be laid hands on, they
would be very likely to get out of the difficulty by saying that it
existed as an infinite Spirit, partly from a desire to magnify what they
felt must be so vast and powerful, and partly because they had as
yet only a vague conception of what they were aiming at, and must,
therefore, best express it vaguely.

We must not b