nse which I believe the generality of mankind attach to the
term. By a God I understand a superhuman and supernatural being, of a
spiritual and personal nature, who controls the world or some part of it
on the whole for good, and who is endowed with intellectual faculties,
moral feelings, and active powers, which we can only conceive on the
analogy of human faculties, feelings, and activities, though we are
bound to suppose that in the divine nature they exist in higher degrees,
perhaps in infinitely higher degrees, than the corresponding faculties,
feelings, and activities of man. In short, by a God I mean a beneficent
supernatural spirit, the ruler of the world or of some part of it, who
resembles man in nature though he excels him in knowledge, goodness, and
power. This is, I think, the sense in which the ordinary man speaks of a
God, and I believe that he is right in so doing. I am aware that it has
been not unusual, especially perhaps of late years, to apply the name of
God to very different conceptions, to empty it of all implication of
personality, and to reduce it to signifying something very large and
very vague, such as the Infinite or the Absolute (whatever these hard
words may signify), the great First Cause, the Universal Substance, "the
stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfil the law of their
being,"[1] and so forth. Now without expressing any opinion as to the
truth or falsehood of the views implied by such applications of the name
of God, I cannot but regard them all as illegitimate extensions of the
term, in short as an abuse of language, and I venture to protest against
it in the interest not only of verbal accuracy but of clear thinking,
because it is apt to conceal from ourselves and others a real and very
important change of thought: in particular it may lead many to imagine
that the persons who use the name of God in one or other of these
extended senses retain certain theological opinions which they may in
fact have long abandoned. Thus the misuse of the name of God may
resemble the stratagem in war of putting up dummies to make an enemy
imagine that a fort is still held after it has been evacuated by the
garrison. I am far from alleging or insinuating that the illegitimate
extension of the divine name is deliberately employed by theologians or
others for the purpose of masking a change of front; but that it may
have that effect seems at least possible. And as we cannot use words in
wr