olitics, the form of the idea most
convenient to those who need God as an ally in the maintenance of law
and order as they conceive them.

This does not prove the idea untrue to reality; it may conceivably be
used as a strong argument to the contrary. At the same time it puts us
on our guard, warning us to look out for other forms of "domestication"
which may be less in accord with essential truth than the one I have
just mentioned. Certainly it is extremely difficult to find any form
of the idea of God which has retained a purely spiritual or religious
character throughout the entire course of its history. Between the
conception of Deity implied in the teachings of Jesus and the
conception as it appears in "God save the King" the distance is
immense; and few theologians I imagine would be so hardy or so
patriotic as to affirm that the latter conception is nearer to the
Divine Reality.

The theologian who takes up the proof of the existence of God should
make it clear, both to himself and to his audience, at which end of
this long line, which has not been one of "development," he lays the
emphasis. Any proof of the existence of "the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ" would certainly prove the non-existence of the being
adumbrated in "God save the King"; and vice versa. Which may be
expanded into a more general proposition. Reasons given in favour of a
spiritual or religious conception of God become less and less valid
exactly in proportion as we approach its secular modifications; while
reasons given in favour of these latter are worthless as proofs of the
spiritual reality. Most of our difficulties in believing in God arise
from the fact that God, in our meaning of the term, is no longer
"spirit" (as Jesus said), but spirit shorn of its freedom and reduced
to the dimensions of some human utility or purpose--that is, not
"spirit" at all.

For these reasons I will venture to suggest to anyone who is perplexed
by doubts about the reality of God, not to trust the fortunes of his
faith too unreservedly to the field of mere argumentation. If he does
so he runs a serious risk of falling, without being aware of it, into
one of the many grooves of thought, which alien interests have cut deep
into the ground of theological controversy, leading the mind in a
direction contrary to that in which spiritual reality is to be found.
Neither let him deem himself an atheist because he cannot believe in
the Deity adumbra