famous volume of apologetics--with what
justification this is not the place to discuss--that it raised more
difficulties than it professed to settle; and a somewhat similar charge
has more than once been brought against the doctrine of Divine
immanence, _viz._, that if it succeeded in throwing light upon some
problems, it created new ones of a particularly insoluble character.
The old deistic notion which interposed a distance between the Creator
and His creation, and in particular represented God as _there_ and man
as _here_, might be untenable in philosophy, but it was at least
intelligible and practically helpful to ordinary minds; but does not
the idea of God's immanence in the world and in man tend to efface that
distinction, and thus to introduce confusion where confusion is least
to be desired?

In the present chapter we shall attempt to glance at some of the main
questions which arise in connection with this doctrine; and, to begin
with, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier
than to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a
manner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply
meaningless--in any case repulsive from the religious point of view.
This, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when
God's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is _de facto_
one with his Maker. What could the general reader think when he was
told with vehemence, "You are yourself the infinite"--"You are yourself
God; you never were anything else"? If that reader was lacking in
mental balance, he was likely to be swept off his feet by such a
declaration, and to accept, with all its implications, a view so
flattering to human vanity; if, on the other hand, he was a person of
soberly religious outlook and experience, he inquired what was the
doctrine in whose name such a proposition was offered to him for
acceptance--and on learning that the name of that doctrine was the
unfamiliar one of "immanence," straightway set it down as the worst of
brain-sick heresies. Thus, not for the first time, has a cause or
truth been wounded and discredited by injudicious advocacy.

For the purpose which we have in view we cannot do better than state
what we consider the fundamental misinterpretation of this doctrine in
the considered words of one of its most popular exponents, who
expresses it as follows: "God _in_ man is God _as_ man. _There is no
real Divine Imman