ion of the Eternal had
dissolved--and dissolved into nothingness. May we not surmise that nine
times out of ten this is precisely what has happened when we hear the
question asked, "But how _can_ God be personal?"

In by far the greater number of cases, that is to say, the problem arises
simply and solely from the questioner's failure to dissociate
_personality_ from _materiality_; a "person" suggests to him a tangible,
visible, ponderable form, with arms and legs and organs of sense--and
when he has reflected sufficiently to understand that such a description
cannot apply to God, he concludes that _therefore_ God cannot be
personal. The next step is usually that, having seen this visibly
outlined Deity disappear _parmi les nuages_, he passes into absolute
unbelief; for somehow an impersonal "Power," while it may possibly
inspire awe, cannot move us to worship, cannot present to us a moral
imperative, cannot, above all, either claim our love or give us its
affection. It is really the identical difficulty, stated a little {76}
more pretentiously, which the "rationalist" author of _The Churches and
Modern Thought_ presents to us by remarking that in all our experience
that which makes up personality is "connected with nerve structures," so
that we cannot attribute such a quality to "a Being who is described to
us as devoid of any nerve structure." "I know of no answer," he quaintly
adds, "that could be called satisfactory from a theistic standpoint." [1]
It is evident that Mr. Vivian does not remember the famous passage in the
_Essay on Theism_ where John Stuart Mill explains that "the relation of
thought to a material brain is no metaphysical necessity, but simply a
constant co-existence within the limits of observation," and concludes
that although "experience furnishes us with no example of any series of
states of consciousness" without an accompanying brain, "it is as easy to
imagine such a series of states without as with this accompaniment." [2]
According to Mill--hardly a champion of orthodoxy--there is no reason in
the nature of things why "thoughts, emotions, volitions and even
sensations" should be necessarily dependent upon or connected with "nerve
structures "; so that Mr. Vivian's argument palpably fails.

But what about this popular notion which identifies personality with
materiality, and {77} therefore denies the former attribute to God? One
would think that even the most circumscribed experience, or