u

Translator of

Letters to Young Churches

BY

J. B. PHILLIPS

sI. THE TRANSFORMING FRIENDSHIP

Leslie D. Weatherhead

. 2. WHY JESUS NEVER WROTE A BOOK

W. E. Sa,!gster

Other books in this series

WYVERN BOOI(S

7

I Resident Policeman II

II Parental Hangoyer ISIII Grand Old Man 19

IV Meek-and-Mild 24v Absolute Perfection 28

VI Heavenly Bosom 3 1

Vll God-in-a-Box 35Director 39

Second-hand God 43x, Perennial Grievance 47

XI Pale Galilean 50Xll Projected Image 53

XIII Assorted 55

Part One-Destructive

AN ADEQUATE GOD:

I God Unfocused

II A Clue to Reality

III Further Clues to Reality

IV Is There a Focused God?

5

Part Two-Constructive

CONTENTS

UNREAL GODS:

INTRODUCTORY

PRINTED AND BOUND IN ENGLAND BYHAZELL WATSON AND VINEY LTD

AYLESBURY AND LONDON

PUBLISHED BY ,

THE EPWORTH PRESS(FRANK H. CUMBERS)

25-35 CITY ROAD, LONDON, E.C. I

CONTENTS

v If God Were Focused (I)

VI If God Were Focused (II)VII Has A Arrived?

VIII Life's Basic Principles (I)

IX Life's Basic Principles (II)

X Further Basic Questions

Christ and the Question of Sin

atisfactory Reconciliation

nstration with the Enemy

on ofDeath

112

117

120

123

INTRODUCTORYNOONE is ever really at ease in facing what we call'life' and 'death' without a religious faith. The troublewith many people today is that they have not found aGod big enough for modern needs. While their experi­ence of life has grown in a score of directions, andtheir m~ntalhorizons have been expanded to the pointof bewilderment.by world events and by scientific dis­coveries, their ideas of God have remained largelystatic. It is bbviously impossible for an adult toworship the conception of God that exists in the mindof a child of Sunday-school age, unless he is preparedto deny his own experience of life. If, by a great effortof will, he does do this he will always be secretly afraidlest some new truth may expose the juvenility of hisfaith. And it will always be by such an effort that heeither worships or serves a God who is really too smallto command his adult loyalty and co-operation.

It often appears to those outside the Churches thatthis is precisely the attitude of Christian people. Ifthey are not strenuously defending an outgrown con­ception of God, then they are cherishing a hot-houseGod who could only exist between the pages of theBible or inside the four walls of a church. Thereforeto join in with the worship of a church would be tobecome a party to a piece of mass-hypocrisy and to buya sense of security- at the price of the sense of truth,and many men of goodwill will not consent to such atransaction.

IN T ROD U C TORY

It cannot be denied that there is' a little truth in thiscriticism. There are undoubtedly professing Christianswith childish conceptions of God which could notstand up to the winds of real life for five minutes. But......l.U.l"L.lcUHl are by no means always unintelligent, naIve, .

immature. Many of them hold a faith in God thatboth purged and developed by the strains and

1J.l\.-·A.ll•.l\.-Q of modern times,· as well as by a small but.u.....~-L.I.~.l'J-L ..... direct experience of God Him­

seen enough to know that God isthan our forefathers imagined,

only confirms theirto comprehend the

OJ'-'.J...J.J1U.u. what we call

often within God at all.

particularly wicked or()l(1..t~lsl1.iOl1ed would say, 'godless', but

with their adult minds a'account for' life, big enough to

new scientific age, big enough tohighest admiration and respect, and

their willing co-operation.of this book to attempt two things:

expose the inadequate conceptions of Godlinger unconsciously in many minds, and

prevent our catching a glimpse of the true God;to suggest ways in which we can find the

God for ourselves. If it is true that there is Some­in charge of the whole mystery of life and death,

INTRODUCTORY 9we can hardly expect to escape a sense of futility andfrustration until we begin to see what He is like andwhat His purposes are.

Part One

DESTRUCTIVE

UNREAL GODS

I. RESIDENT POLICEMAN

To MANY people conscience is almost all that they haveby way of knowledge of God. This still small voicewhich makes ~hem feel guilty and unhappy before,during, or,after wrong-doing, is God speaking to them.It is this which, to some extent at least, controls theirconduct. It is this which impels them to shoulder theirksome duty and choose the harder path.

Navy no serious advocate of a real adult religionauld dt;ny the function of conscience, or deny that

its voice may at least give some inklingof the moralorder that lies behind the obvious world in which welive. Yet to make conscience into God is a highly dan­gerous thilJ.g to do. For one thing, as we shall see in amoment, conscience is by no means an infallible guide;and for another it is extremely unlikely that we shallever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagginginner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at bestkeeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue.

Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidlydeveloped in the sensitive person, and so easily ignoredand silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a veryunsatisfactory god. For while it is probably true thatevery normal person has an embryo moral sense by

YOUR GOD IS too .SMALL

which he can distinguish right from wrong, the de­velopment, non-development, or perversion of thatsense is largely a question of upbringing, training, andpropaganda.

As an example of the first, we may suppose a childto be brought up by extremely strict vegetarian

If the child, now grown adolescent, attemptsmeat he will in all probability suffer an ex­

rrp,tn,=-hr bad attack of 'conscience'. If he is brought uplegitimate pleasures as 'worldly' andwill similarly suffer· pangs of con-

springs of recreation.like the voice of God;

upbringing which

~.U~~Ll\~~H.,~on the moralhas been trained

to shoot a sitting bird.he will undoubt-

wrong-doing; though toin front of the muzzle

pnJd.llce any sense of guilt. Hisartificially trained, and it is thus

are maintained among the civilized andalike.

indeed many professions, can provideu...."u.~~......a.~~L instances of the moral sense trained to feel

things are 'not done', The feeling of guiltproduced by doing the forbidden thing

false, and is in mq.ny cases quite dis­to the actual moral wrong, if indeed

RESIDENT POLICEMAN 13

As an example of the third way in which the moralmay be conditioned, we. may take the way in

which public propaganda influenced those of sensitiveconscience during the last World War. It was per­fectly possible for an extreme sense of guilt to bearoused if paper were burned (because propaganda hadsaid that it should be salvaged), or if a journey by railwere undertaken (did not propaganda shout on everyhand, 'Is your journey really necessary?').

In Nazi Germany,' of course, propaganda as aweapon to pervert the moral sense became a fine art.lt soon seeme~, for example, a positive duty to hatethe Jews,. and a good Nazi would doubtless sufferp.angs of conscience if he had been kind to one of thedespised race.

These examples may be enough to show the un­.,\¥isdom of calling conscience, God. Obviously thisin.yaluable moral sense can be rightly trained and evenrightly influenced by propaganda, provided we can besurewhat we mean by right. But to define that wordwe need to discover God-for without God no one hasany authority to advance in support of his ideas of'right', except his own moral sense. Unless there isa God by whom 'right' and 'wrong' can be reliablyassessed, moral judgements can be no more thanopinion, influenced by upbringing, training, andpropaganda.

In this country of England, centuries of Christiantradition have so permeated our life that we forget howour moral sense has been conditioned by a dilute, butgenuine, Christianity. Our attitude toward womenand children, toward the weak and helpless, or toward

OUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

animals, for instance, 'Is not nearly so 'innate' as wethink. It was a shock to many men of our armedforces who were stationed abroad during the last warto discover how poor and blind was the moral sense inthese directions in countries which had no Christiantradition. No doubt many put this down to the fact

the inhabitants of these countries had the mis­-1"",,,,+,,.-.,,,, not to be English I It would be truer to say

had had the misfortune not to have hadstimulated and developed by

..........~ .........~, training, and propaganda.~~'L~~"'Lj,U~j, and non-Christian,

de<::lule in our moral sense ob­arguable that this

",~",._.~ in the first-handhas

of the moral

among professing Chris­a morbidly developed'

quite wrongly consider to beMany a housewife overdrives

some inner voice that demands per­may be her own demands o'r thetraining, but ii certainly is not

the voice of t~e Power behind the Universe.other hand, the middle-aged business man

long ago taught his conscience to come topersuade himself that he is a good-livingmay even say, with some pride, that he

never do anything against his conscience. Butnn.DOSSIible to believe that the feeble voice of the

PARENTAL HANGOVER IS

·half-blind thing which he calls a conscience is in anyreal sense the voice of Goa.

Surely neither the hectically over-developed nor thefalsely-trained, nor the moribund conscience can everbe regarded as God, Qr even part of Him. For if it is,God can be made to appear to the sensitive an over­exacting tyrant, and to the insensitive a comfortableaccommodating 'Voice Within' which would neverinterfere with a man's pleasure.

II. PARENTAL HANGOVER.MANY PSYCHOLOGISTS assure us that the trend of thewhole of a man's life is largely determined by his atti­tude in early years toward his parents. Many normalpeople, with happy childhoods behind theIn, mays~8~. at this, but nevertheless the clinics and consult­ing-rooms of psychiatrists are thronged with thosewn()seinner lives were distorted in early childhood bytneirrelationship toward their parents. Quite a lotor ordinary people, who would never dream of turningto psychiatry, nevertheless have an abnormal fear ofauthority, or of a dominating personality of either sex,which could without much 'difficulty be traced back tothe tyranny of a parent. Conversely there are manywho would be insulted by the name 'neurotic', butwho nevertheless are imperfectly adjusted to life, andwhose inner sense of superiority makes them difficultto work or live with. It would again not be difficult totrace in their history a childhood of spoiling and in­dulgence, in which the' child's natural self-love wasnever checked or directed outward into interest in

YOUR GOD IS TaO SMALL

other people. Thechild is truly 'the father of the man'.But what has this to do with an inadequate concep­

tion of God? This, that the early conception of Godis almost invariably founded upon the child's idea ofhis father. If he is lucky enough,to have a good fatherthis is all to the good, provided of course that the con­ception of God grows with. the rest of his personality.

if the child is afraid (or, worse still, afraid and feel­because he is afraid) of his own father, the

cn::mces are that his Father in Heaven will appear toBeing. Again, if he is lucky, he will out­

and indeed differentiate be­and his later mature con..

outgrow the senseare still obsessed

to do withliving God. It is

Many priestsof psychology will

abnormally afraid of' God, andable to recOgnize the psychological,

religious, significance of the fear.will have had the joy of seeing the reli­

blossom out into joy and confidence, whenPS'ITctlO14){!lCal disharmony has been analysed and

To describe that process would be outsideof this book, but it is worth observing for

of those. who may possibly suffer from anlrratllon,l! fear of, or violent revolt from, the idea of

that the root of their trouble is probably not'sin' Or their 'rebelliousness', but what they felt

their parents when they were very young.

PARENTAL HANGOVER 17

It is interesting, though rather pathetic,. to note herethat the success of a certain type of Christianity de­pends almost wholly on this sense of guilt. For the'gospel' will be accepted only by those in whom thesense of guilt can be readily awakened or stimulated.Indeed, missioners' of this type of Christianity (fiyingincidentally in the face of Christ's own example) willgo all out to induce and foster 'conviction of sin' intheir hearers. The results of such efforts are usuallysmall, a fact attributed by the missioner to the hard­ness of the hearts of his hearers. It is really due to thehealthy reactiQn against artificial guilt-injection pos­sessed by ;111 but those few whose unhappy childhoodhas left them peculiarly open to this form of spiritualassault.

This, of course, is not to deny the fact of human sinor the necessity of divine forgiveness. There is a real'c()hviction of sin' which is quite different in qualityfr()ID that produced .by high-pressure evangelism.These matters must be considered further in a laterchapter. What

lwe are concerned in establishing here

is that the conception of God which is based upon afear-relationship in childhood is not a satisfactoryfoundation for an adult Christianity. Much of the fearof God which characterized an earlier generation wasthe' fruit of fear of parents, and it was not difficult toarouse a sense of sinfulness or fear of hell in thosewhose childhood was highly -coloured by memories ofguilt, shame, and the fear of punishment.

So firmly established in the minds of some non­Christian psychologists is this connexion between thefather-image of early childhood and the later concep-

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

tion of God, that they will go so far as to say that allreligion is regressive, that is, an attempt to return tothe dependence of childhood by clinging to the idea ofa parent. It can hardly be denied that this is true insome cases, but it is manifestly nonsense in the case ofsome of the greatest and maturest personalities thatthe world has seen who have held a firm belief in aPersonal God. Moreover it is the experience of Chris­tians who· have been 'psychoanalysed' that, althoughthe process disentangles from their faith something

is childish and even sentimental, yet there re­hard core of thoroughly satisfactory adult

objected, Christ Himselfa Father. Ar~ we to reject

so long as we re­Christ taught His

Father in Heaven Heidea of God must necessarily

ideas of their own fathers. For allmay have been many of His hearerswere unjust, tyrannical, stupid, con-

.L\.-\._n..J.\~"". or indulgent. It is the relationship thatThe intimate love for, and interest

son possessed by a good earthly father repre­to men a relationship that they can understandif they themselves are fatherless I The same SOl';

relationship, Christ is saying, can be reliably reck­upon by man in his dealings with God.

There .are Christians who do not appear to under­stand thIs properly. Because Christ said that men

become 'as little children' (i.e. repudiate all the

GRAND OLD MAN 19

sham, compromise, and cynicism, of adulthood) beforethey could play their part in His Kingdom with sim­plicity and sincerity, some have supposed that Heplaces a premium upon human immaturity. It is ludi­crous to suppose that any sensible God can wish adultmen and women to crawl about in spiritual rompersin order to preserve a rather sentimental Father-childrelationship. Indeed, experience shows that it is onlythe mature Christian man who can begin to see a littleof the 'size' of his Father. He may previously havethought that the comparison of the relationship be­tween the todpler and his grown-up father with hisown relationship toward God was rather an exaggera­tion of the gulf, in intelligence at least. But in hisgrowing maturity he is likely to see that Christ, inHis kindness of heart, has certainly not exaggerated

awe-inspiring disparity between man and God.have a God, then, who is as much, or more, our

sUloerior than we are the superior of an infant childcrawling on the hearthrug, is not to hold a childishconcept of God, but rather the reverse. It is onlywhen we limit the mind's stirrings after its Maker byimposing upon it half-forgotten images of our ownearthly parents, that we grow frustrated in spirit andwonder why for u~ the springs of worship and love donot flow. We must leave behind 'parental hangover'if we are to find a 'big enough' God.

III. GRAND OLD MAN

IT IS SAID that some Sunday-school children were onceasked to write down their ideas as to what God was

l

o U :R GOD I S TO 0 SMA L L

like. The answers, with few exceptions, began some·thing like this: 'God is a very old gentleman living inHeaven ...' r Whether this story is true or not, thereis no doubt that in many children's minds God is an'old' person. This is partly due, of course, to the factthat a child's superiors are always 'old' to him and God

therefore be the 'oldest' of all. Moreover, a childr ...",.rllH'..... r,ITT told that he will be able to do such.

c:u~'U-... Ul.II.c:l thing or understand such-and-such a matteris older', that it is only natural that the

"L.L .....LHO L.L.L and wisdom must seem to himaddition to this his mind has quite

stories of God's activities. He is in consequence

.1."'"""".1.'..£"'... God as some...

no particular harm inhimself to an adult

nOthIng' wrong in his concept of annevertheless a very real danger

will imagine this God not merely as'old-fashioned'; and may indeed be so im­God's actions in 'times of old' that he may

grasp the idea of God operating with unim-energy in the present and leading forward·into

future.

even if it be admitted that to visualize God ~s'old' will do a child no harm, the persistence of theidea. of childhood beneath the surface of the mindmay well make it difficult to develop and hold anadequate idea of God in later years. In order to testwhether this 'old-fashioned' concept was persisting in

GRAND OLD MAN 21

modern young peopl~, a simple psychological test wasrecently applied to a mixed group of older adolescents.They were asked to answer, without reflection, thequestion: 'Do you think God understands radar?' Innearly every case the reply was 'No', followed of courseby a laugh, as the conscious mind re~lized the a?surd­ity of the answer. But, simple as thIS test wa.s, It .wasquite enough to show that at the back of the'tr m'mdsthese youngsters held an idea of God quite inadequatefor modern days. Subsequent discussion showedplainly that while 'they had not re~lly though~ muchabout it', the~ had freely to admIt that the Idea ofGod, absorbed some years before, existed in quite aseparate compartment from their modern experience,kl1owledge, and 'outlook. It was as though they wererevering the memory of a Grand Old Man, who was

great power in His day, but who could not possiblyexp~cted to keep pace with modern progress I

There are probably many people today with a simi­lar 'split' in their mental conceptions. The 'GrandOld Man' is treated with reverence and respect-lookwhat a help He was to our forefathers I-but He canhardly be expected to cope with the complexities andproblems of life today I If the absurdity of this 'split'makes us laugh, so much the better.

There is much in our Churches and religious teach.ing generally that tends to encourage the 'old­fashioned' concept. The Bible is read in beautiful butold-fashioned language, as a rule. Our services areoften entirely conducted in a form of language that noone uses today. We address God in our prayers ,in thearchaic second person singular-and these. prayers

GRAND OLD MAN

such ideas of God as may be stimulated in hiswill be of the Grand-Old-Man type. Histhough inarticulate, need, is not for the ofancient Hebrews, nor the God of the early Church,the God of Victorian England, but the God ofAtomic Age-the God of Energy and WisdomLove today.

Clever people often scathingly criticize the youthtoday for having 'no historic sense'. But surely that ishardly to be wondered at. So great and far-reaching.have been the changes in modern life that the youngman of today ,cannot see any but the slenderest con­nexion be):ween what appears to him the slow simpleand secure life of a bygone generation and the highly­complex fast-moving life of the world today. The his-toric sense is often the fruit of ll?-aturity, and while anexperienced Christian may be glad to think that he isworshipping the same God as did Abraham, Moses,David, and the saints of the Christian Church the,young man of today, even if he knows who Abraham,Moses, and David were, will be quite unmoved by thehistorical connexion. His clamant need is for anadequate God of Today; the historic sense may wellcome later.

It will be necessary, as we shall see in a later chapter,to look back into human history at the actual eventswhich are the foundation ofthe Christian view of God.But it will be just as necessary to return, armed with.the essential historical facts, to the modern world. Nofigure in history, however splendid and memorable,can possibly satisfy the mind which is seeking theliving contemporary God.

themselvesform that the Grandand approve. Our hymns,tions, often express a Victorian andenough' idea of God. To appreciatethey should be read aloud hi .cold blood and dis­sociated from the well-loved tunes. At baptism, matri­

and burial, we continue to use language whichpeople can hardly understand, but which

is old-fashioned and out of touchlives. They respect the Grand Old

\J\"'l-UJU.a.Jl.l.I.J',",O, but they feel no inclinationGod. "

and again are stuffedtec:hIJllc::tl terms which strike

modern heart. It is non""""rh,,,... to know that he is not only

as the saints of the past, butthe time-honoured phrases which meant so

much to But to his modern hearers (if they canbe got within earshot I) he will only seem to be in lovewith the past. His words may have beauty and dig­nity, but it is the beauty and dignity of a past age; andhis message often appears to be wholly irrelevant tothe issues of today.

Where people have been 'conditioned' by a Christianupbringing the worship of the average Church may to

some extent satisfy. In all probability they are,through long practice, 'translating' as they go along.But to the average young person of today, brought upwithout such background, conventional Christianworship will appear reactionary and old-fashioned, and

so fewBut

beenth4:)w,alllas must

stringencies of verse­the word 'mild' to

.......... nrt... p ... children's hymn

the epithets that could bethis seems one of the least appro­

For what does 'mild', as applied to a person,conjure up to our minds? Surely a picture of someonewho wouldn't say 'bo' to the proverbi~l goose; some­one who would let sleeping dogs lie and avoid troublewherever possible; someone of a placid temperamentwho is almost a stranger to the passions of red-bloodedhumanity; someone who is a bit of a nonentity, bothuninspired and uninspiring.

This word 'mild' is apparently deliberately used todescribe a man who did not hesitate to challenge andexpose the hypocrisies of the religious people of Hisday: a man who had such 'personality' that He walkedunscathed through a murderous crowd; a man so far

MEEK-AND-MILD 25

from being a nonentity that He was regarded by ,theauthorities as a public danger; a man who could bemoved to violent' anger by shameless exploitation orby smug complacent orthodoxy; a man of. suchcourage that He deliberately walked to what He knewwould mean death, despite the earnest pleas of well­meaning friends! Mild! What a word to use for apersonality whose challenge and strange attractivenessnineteen centuries have by no means exhausted. JesusChrist might well be called 'meek', in the sense ofbeing selfless and humble and utterly devoted to whatHe considered '!fight, whatever the personal cost; hut'mild', never I

Yet it is this fatal combination of 'meek and mild'which has been so often, and is even now, applied toHim. We can hardly be surprised if children feel fairlysoon that they have outgrown the 'tender Shepherd'and find their heroes elsewhere.

But if the impression of a soft and sentimental Jesushas been made (supported, alas, all too often by sugaryhymns and pretty religious pictures), the harm is notover when the adolescent rejects the soft· and childishconception. There will probably linger at the back ofhis mind an idea that Christ and the Christian religionis a soft and sentimental thing which has nothing todo with the workaday world. For there is nodoubrthat this particular 'inadequate god', the mild and softand sentimental, still exists in many a.dult minds. In­deed the very word 'Jesus' conjures up to many peoplea certain embarrassing sweet tenderness (which inci­dentally could easily be put in its proper place by anintelligent adult reading of the Gospels). The appeal

MEEK-AND-MILD 27

neither use their critical faculties nor speak the plaintruth nor meet their fellows 'naturally' for fear theysin against the meek-and-mild god. To non-Christiansthey thus appear unreal or even as hypocrites, whilethe 'love' they attempt to exhibit toward others is alltoo often a pathetic travesty of the real thing. For,like other sentimentalists, the meek-and-mild god is in .reality cruel; and those whose lives have been governedby him from early childhood have never been allowedto develop their real selves. Forced to be 'loving', theyhave never been free to love. .

There is a further offshoot of the worship of thisfalse god which must be mentioned. It is the senti­mental Christian ideal of 'saintliness'. We hear, orread, of someone who was 'a real saint: he never sawany harm in anyone and never spoke a word againstanyone all his life'. If this really is Christian saintli­ness then Jesus Christ was no saint. It is true th~t Hetaught men not to sit in judgement upon one another,but He never suggested that they should turn a blindeye to evil or pretend that other people were faultless.He Himself indulged no roseate visions of humannature: He 'knew what was in man', as St. Johntersely puts it. Nor can we imagine Him either usingor advocating the invariable lIse of 'loving' words. Tospeak the truth was obviously to Him more importantthan to make His hearers comfortable: though,equally obviously, His genuine love for men gave Himtact, wisdom, and sympathy. He was Love in action,but He was not meek and mild.

danger of the 'meek-and-mild' idea is t",":ofold.Christians believe that the character of

........,..,,··..,.,+·0 d.ePJlCtl.on in time and space of the.LJL'-'.L.L..LU.L Deity, it is apt to lead to a

woolly and sentimental. We.about this in a later chapter,

out here the impossibility ofconstrained to worship a god

emotional equipment is less developed than hisThe second danger is that since it is axiomatic

with Christians that God is love, this most terrible andbeautiful of all the virtues becomes debased andcheapened.

It· would seem that the 'meek-and-mild' conceptionof the Deity could be readily seen through, yet ex­perience shows that it is operating beneath the con­scious level of many Christian minds, particularly inthose whose childhood has been coloured by a senti­mental attitude toward 'the Lord Jesus'. Such peoplefind their actions, and even their thoughts, inhibitedby a false consideration of what is 'loving'. They can

methodsare on such is rightly regarded bynormal people as 'below the . But in fact there isno connexion between what has been rudely called the'creeping-Jesus' method and the life and character ofthe real Christ. The real beauty, love, and tenderness·of Christ's character are not, of course, being denied orminimized, but when one characteristic is caricaturedat the expense of all the others we get a grotesque dis­tortion 'which can only appeal to the Inorbidly senti-

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

v. ABSOLUTE PERFECTION

OF ALL THE false gods there is probably no greaternuisance in the spiritual world than the 'god of onehundred per cent'. For he is plausible. It can so easilybe argued that since God is Perfection, and since Heasks the complete loyalty of His creat~re~, the~ t~ebest way of serving, pleasing, and worshIppIng HIm ISto set up absolute one_hundred-per-cent s~andards ar:d

see to it that we obey them. After all, dId not Chnst

say, 'Be ye perfect'? .This one-hundred-per-cent standard IS a real menace

to Christians of various schools of thought, and hasled quite a number of sensitive conscientious people towhat is popularly called a 'nervous breakdown'. ~n~ ithas· taken the joy and spontaneity out of the ChrIstianlives of many more who dimly realize that what wasmeant to be a life of 'perfect freedom' has become an

anxious slavery.It is probably only people of certain backgrounds

and temperaments who will find the 'one-hundred-per­cent god' a terrible tyrant. A young athletic extrovertmay talk glibly enough of being 'one-hundred-per-centpure, honest, loving,and unselfish'. But being whathe is, he hasn't the faintest conception of what 'onehundred per cent' means. He has neither the mentalequipment nor the imagination to begin to grasp whatperfection really is. He is not the type to analyse hisown motives, or build up an artificial conscience tosupervise his own actions, or be confronted by aterrifying mental picture of what one-hundred-per-centperfection literally means in relation to his own life

ABSOLUTE PERFECTION

and effort. What he means bypure, honest, etc.' is just as pure and honest ascerely knows how. And that is a very different

Bu~ the conscientious, sensitive, imaginativewho IS somewhat lacking in self-confidence anddined to introspection, will find n...... "".Lhj."Lllll""llft:U-l)er-Ce~n

perfection truly terrifying. The more he of itGod's demand the more guilty and miserable hebecome, and he cannot see any way out of his Imoa1,se.I~ he reduces the one hundred per cent he is hAlr....... ·.n..-,

hIS own spiritual vision, and the very God whohave helped him is the Author (so he imagines) ofterrific dewands I No wonder he often 'breaksThe tragedy is often that thegod' is introduced into the life of the:he ~omparatively insensitive, who literallyImagIne the harm they are doing.

What is the way out? The words of Christof Me', provide the best due. Some of our .,,'"on.,-i""......,

enthusiastic Christians of the hearty type tend togard Christianity as a performance. But it still isit was originally, a way of living, and in no sense a 'formance acted for the benefit of theworld. To '!earn' implies growth; implies the ~~~.~~~~.~~!'-.

and correctIng of mistakes; implies a steady ,,~.nT<, ....rl

pro~ress towards an ideal. The 'perfection' toChnst commands men to progress is this ideal.modern high-pressure Christian of certainwould like to impose perfection of one hundredcent as a set of rules to be immediately enforced,stead of as a shining ideal to be faithfully tJUJL"UC:U.

His short cut, in effect, makes the ur.llnla~~Inat]

HEAVENLY BOSOM

VI. HEAVENLY BOSOM

THE CRITICS of the Christian religion have often con­tended that a religious faitp is a form of psychological'escapism'. A man, they say, finding the problems anddelnands of adult life too much for him will attemptto return to the q)mfort and dependence of childhoodby picturing for himself a loving parent, whom he calls

.God. It must be admitted that there is a good dealof ammunition ready to hand for such an attack, andthe first verse of a well'-known and well-loved hymnprovides an obvious example-

, Jesu, Lover of my soul,Let me to Thy bosom fly,

While the nearer waters roll,While the tempest still is high:

Hide me, 0 my Saviour, hide,Till the storm of life be past;

Safe into the haven guide,a receive my soul at last.

Here, if the words are taken at their face value issheer escapism, a deliberate desire to be hidden s~feaway until the sto'rm and stress of life is over, and noexplaining away by lovers of the hymn can alter itsplain sens~. It can hardly be denied that if this is trueChristianity then the charge of 'escapism', of emo­tional immaturity and childish regression, must befra.nkly conceded. But although this 'God of escape isq.tllte com~on,the true Christian course is set in a verydIfferent dIrectIOn. No one would accuse its Founder ofimmaturity in insight, thought, teaching, or conduct,

30 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

fied before he ought to be and drives the imaginative todespair. Such a distortion of Christian truth could notpossibly originate from the One who said His 'yokewas easy' and His 'burden light', nor by His follower,St. Paul, who declared after many years' experiencethat he 'pressed toward the mark not as though he hadalready attained or were already perfect'.

Yet even to people who have not been driven todistraction by 'one-hundred-per-cent' Christiani:y, t~esame fantasy of perfection may be masquerading intheir minds as God. Because it is a fantasy it producesparalysis and a sense of frustration. The true ideal, aswe shall see later, stimulates, encourages, and produces

likeness to itself.Ii we believe in God, we must naturally believe that

He is Perfection. But we must not think, to speakcolloquially, that He canJ?-ot therefore be interested inanything less than perfection. (If that were so, thehuman race would be in poor case I)

Christians may truthfully say that it is God's 'ambi­tion' to possess the wholehearted love and loyalty ofHis children, but to imagine that He will have nodealings with them until they are prepared to giveHim perfect devotion is just another manifestation ofthe 'god of one hundred per cent'. After all, who, apartfrom the verY'smug and complacent, would claim thatthey were wholly 'surrendered' or 'converted' to love?And who would deny the father's interest in theprodigal son when his Spiritual Index was at a very

low figure indeed?God is truly Perfection, but He is no Perfectionist,

and one hundred per cent is not God.

J2 YOUR GOD ALL

and the history of the Christian Cliurch providesthousands of examples of timid half-developed 1?er­sonalities who have not only found in their faith whatthe psychologists call integration, but have coped withdifficulties and dangers in a way that makes any gibeof 'escapism' 'plainly ridiculous.

Yet is there in Christianity a legitimate element ofwhat the inimical might call escapism?

The authentic Christian ,tradition, and particularlythe biographies of those who might he considered in

front rank of Christian 'saints', show that through­heroic men and women have found in

'--~".• ~,~' as welLas their (strength', It wouldpeople of such spiritual stature

a childish regression,farther for the explanation.

said by several modern psychologistsnot the outward storms and stresses of life

defeat and disrupt personality, but its inner con­flicts and miseries. If a man is happy and stable atheart, he can normally cope, even with zest, with diffi­culties that lie outside his personality. For example, aman who is happily married and can retur.q. daily to ahappy home is not likely to be defeated by outwardtrials and strains. But the same man could quite easilygo to pieces and find life altogether to much for himifhis marriage, for instance, were to collapse-if in factthe centre of his operations were destroyed.

N ow Christians maintain that it is precisely thissecure centre which faith in Cod provides. Thegenuine Christian can and does venture out into allkinds of exacting and even perilous activities, but all

HE A V EN L Y B 0 S 0 M 33

the time he knows that he has a completely stable andunchanging centre of operations to which he can re­turn for strength, refreshment, and recuperation. Inthat sense he does 'escape' to God, though he does not.avoid the duties or burdens of life. His very 'escape'fits him for the day-to-day engagement with life'sstrains and difficulties.

Bllt having said this-for it must be said-about thelegitimate periodical retirement of the Christian intoconscious contact with his God, let us return to theinadequate idea of God which is all too common withcertain people-t-the god in whose bosom we can hide'till the storms of life be past'.

Those who are actually, though unconsciously,looking for a father- or mother-substitute can, by con­stant practice, readily imagine just such a convenientand comfortable god. They may call him 'Jesus' andeven write nice little hymns about him, but he is notthe Jesus of the Gospels, who certainly would havediscouraged any sentimental flying to His bosom andoften told men to go out and do most difficult andarduous things. His understanding and sympathywere always at the disposal of those who needed Him,yet the general impression of His personality in theGospels is of One who was leading men on to fullerunderstanding and maturity. So far from encouragingthem to escape life He came to bring, in His ownwords, 'life more abundant', and in the end He left His

. followers to carry out a task that might have dauntedthe stoutest heart. Original Christianity had certainlyno taint of escapism.

But those who try to maintain this particular in­Y.G.-~

34 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 S lY,t: ALL

adequate god today by perpetuating the comfortableprotection of early childhood do, probably unknow­ingly, a good deal of harm. Here are examples.

I. They prevent themselves from growing up. Solong as they imagine that God is saying 'Come untoMe' when He is really saying 'Go out in My Name',they are preventing themselves from ever putting onspiritual muscle, or developing the right sort of inde­pendence-quite apart from the fact that they achieve

little for the cause to which they believe they are

infecting others with the 'to-Thy-bosom-fly'they may easily encourage those with a

remain childish and evade

critics with examples ofresponsible for a misrepresentatiol.1

which repels the psychologicallynaturally enough, have no wish to

embrace a sentimental Jesus.4. By 'retiring hurt' instead of fighting on, they

prevent the implications of the Christian message fromtouching whole tracts of human life and activity whichbadly need redeeming. The late Oswald Chambersonce asserted that 'the Christian has no right to lurkin the bosom of Jesus because his thinking gives him aheadache'-which sums up this aspect. of the mattervery neatly.

A gibe that was levelled at the early Church was thatChristians were nearly all drawn from the criminal ordebased' slave classes. The answer to the amount oftruth contained in that thrust is that those who knew

GOD - I N - A - BOX 35

they were sinners, and those who knew how hard lifecould be, were naturally more likely to respond to agospel offering a solution to the sinful and oppressed,than those who thought they were 'good' and werecomfortably protected against many of life's. cruel­ties. But the Christians did not remain criminals aftertheir conversion, and many of the spineless slavesbecame capable and responsible servants.

Today the gibe is that the message of Christianityattracts only the psychologically immature. Even ifthat charge were true, the answer to it would be thatthose who know that they are at sixes and sevens withthemselves- are more likely to respond to a gospeloffering psychological integration (among otherthings), than those who feel perfectly competent andwell adjusted. Nevertheless the true Christian does 'notlong remain either immature or in internal conflict. Itis only if he becomes 'fixed' with the inadequate godof escape that he exhibits the pathetic figure of thehabitual bosom-flyer.

V 11. ,G 0 D - I N - A - BOX

THE MAN who is outside all organized Christianity mayhave, and often does have, a certain reverence for God,and a certain genuine respect for Jesus Christ (thoughhe has probably rarely considered Him and His claimswith his adult mind). But what sticks in his throatabout the Christianity of the Churches is not merelytheir differences in denomination, but the spirit of'churchifless' which seems to pervade them all. Theyseem to him to have captured and tamed and trained

GOD-IN-A-BOX 37

ing of the Gospel for all mankind into a set ofapproved beliefs; but 'the chief cause must be the wor­ship of an inadequate god, a cramped and regulatedgod who is 'a good churchman' according to theformulas of the worshipper. For actual behaviourinfallibly betrays the real object of a man's worship.

All Christians, whatever their Church, would ofcourse instantly repudiate. the idea that their god wasa super-example of their own denomination, and it isnot suggested that the worship is conscious. Never­theless, beneath the conscious critical level of the mindit is perfectly }i>ossible for the Anglo-Catholic, forexample, to. conceive God as particularly pleased withAngl07Catholicism, doubtful about Evangelicalism,and frankly displeased by all forms of Nonconformity.The Roman Catholic who asserts positively thatordination in the Anglican Church is 'invalid', andthat no 'grace' is receivable through the Anglicansacraments, is plainly worshipping a god who is aRoman Catholic, and who operates reluctantly, if atall, through non-Ronlan channels. The ultra-lowChurchman on the other hand must admit if he ishonest, that the god whom he worships 'dis~pprovesmost strongly of vestments, incense, and candles on thealtar. The tragedy of these examples, which could bereproduced ad nausean1 any day of the week, is notdifference of opinion, which will probably be with ustill the Day of Judgement, but the outrageous follyand damnable sin of trying to regard God as the PartyLeader of a particular point of view.

The thoughtful man outside the Churches is notoffended so much by the differences of denominations.

L

:Solmethl.ne: that is really far too biglittle man-made boxes with neat

upon them. He may never think of putting itinto words, but this is what he thinks and feels.

'If', the Churches appear to be saying to him, 'youwill jump through our particular hoop or sign on ourparticular dotted line then we will introduce you toGod. But if not, then there's no God for you.' Thisseems to him to be nonsense, and nasty arrogant non­sense at that. 'If there's a God at all', he feels rather

'then He's here in the home and in the street,in the pub~and in the workshop. And if it's true

in1:er.ested in me and wants me to love andHe's available for me and every other

wants Him, without anyIf God is God,

e-eJneJrOllS and magnificent, and J can't seecan say they've made a "corner" in God,

in their particular box.'course, is easy to leap to the defence of the

Churches, and point out that every cause must beorganized if it is to be effective, that every society musthave its rules, that Christ Himself founded a Church,and so on. But if the Churches give the outsider theimpression that God works almost exclusively throughthe machinery they have erected and, what is worse,damns all other machinery which does not bear theirlabel, then they cannot be surprised if he· finds theirversion of God cramped and inadequate and refuses to'join their union'.

There are doubtless many reasons for the degenera­tion of Christianity into churchiness, and the narrow-

38 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

.To him, iJ;1 his happy ignorance, these are merely thenormal psychological variations of human taste andtemperament being expressed in the religious sphere.What he cannot stomach is the exclusive claim madeby each to be th~ 'right one'. His judgement is rightlyempirical-did not Christ say, 'By their fruits ye shallknow them'? If he were to observe that the Churchwhich makes the bolde,st and most exclusive claim tobe constituted and maintained according to AlmightyGod's own ideas was obviously producing the finestChristian character, obviously wielding the highestChristian influence, and obviously most filled by the

Spirit of God-he could perhaps forgive theexc:lu!':tve claim. But he finds nothing of the kind.· NodeIlornulat:Lon has a monopoly of God's grace, andnone has an exclusive recipe for producing Christian

It is quite plain to the disinterestedAh'~""""<T""'" that the real God takes no notice whatever ofthe boxes; ·~the Spirit bloweth where it listeth' and issubject to no regulation of man.

Moreover, our thoughtful observer who is outsidethe Churcl).es has done a good deal of thinking on hisown. The discoveries of modern physical and bio­logical science, of astronomy, and of psychology, haveprofoundly influenced his conception of the 'size' ofGod. If there be a Mind behind the immense com­plexities of the phenomena that man can observe, thenit is that of a Being tremendous in His power andwisdom: it is emphatically not that of a little god. Itis perfectly conceivable that such a Being has a moralpurpose which is being worked out on the stage of thissmall planet. It is even possible to believe that such a

MAN A GIN G D IRE C TOR 39

God deliberately reduced Himself to the stature ofhumanity in order to visit the earth in Person, as allChristians affirm. But the sort of thing which outragesreason and sets Sanity rocking on her seat is to be toldthat such a God can only operate where there is anunbroken succession of bishops I

The 'outsider' who knows nothing of the mixture oftradition, conviction, honest difference, and hiddenresentment, that lies behind the divisions of theChristian Churches sees clearly the advantage of aunited Christian front and cannot see why theChurches cannot 'get together'. The problem is doubt­less complicated, for there are many honest differencesheld with equal sincerity, but it is only made tnsolublebecause the different demonstrations are (possibly un­consciously) imagining God to be Roman or Anglicanor Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or what haveyou. If they could see beyond their little inadequategod, and glimpse the reality of God, they might evenlaugh a little and perhaps weep a little. The resultwould be a unity, that actually does transcend dif~

ferences, instead of ignoring them with public polite­ness and private contempt.

V I II. MAN A GIN G D IRE C TOR

THERE IS a conception of God which seems at firstsight to be very lofty and splendid, but which provesparadoxically enough on examination to be yetanother of the 'too small' ideas. It is to think that theGod who is responsible for the terrifying vastnesses ofthe universe cannot possibly be interested in the lives

40 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

c.>f the minute specks of consciousness which exist onthis insignificant planet.

To have even the beginnings of an appreciation ofthe greatness of the Power controlling the incredibleSystem that science is beginning to reveal to us is astaggering but salutary experience. We may feel, sinceGod is so huge and our whole sphere of life (let alonean individual man) is so minute by comparison, thatwe cannot conceive His taking the detailed interest in asingle human life that the protagonists of the Christianreligion affirm.. To those, and they are not '8. .few, whoare wishing for release from moral responsi­

whose every argument about religion isthe desire), this may be a great relief-the

a schoolboy might find in realizingthousand boys his peccadilloes are

be noticed by the headmaster. Toinsignificance may be deso­

not so much set free as cast adrift.whatever a man's reaction may be to the idea of

the terrific 'size' of God, the point to note is that hiscomment is this: 'I cannot imagine such a tremendous

.God being interested in me', and so on. He 'cannotimagine': which means simply that his mind is in­capable of retaining the ideas of terrifying vastnes~

and of minute attention to microscopic detail at thesame time. But it in no way proves that God is.)n­capable of fulfilling both ideas (and a great manymore).

Behind this inability to conceive such a God thereprobably lies the old unconscious,but very common,cause of 'inadequate gods'-the tendency to build up

MANAGING DIRECTOR 41

a medtal picture of God from our knowledge andexperience of man. We know, for instance, that if aman is in ch~rge of fifty other men he can fairly easilymake himself familiar with the history, chara.cter,abilities, and peculiarities, of each man. If he is incharge of five hundred he may still take a personalinterest in each one; but it is almost impossible for himto know and retain in his memory personal details ofthe individual. If he is in charge of five thousand menhe may in general be wise and benevolent; but hecannot, indeed he does not attempt to, know his menas individuals. ,The higher he is, the fewer his in­dividualcontacts. Because in our modern world we aretending more and more to see men amassed in largenumbers, for various purposes, we are forced to realizethat the individual care of the 'one in charge' mustgrow less and less. This realization has permeated ourunconscious minds, and we find it almost inevitablysuggested to us that the Highest of All must have thefewest contacts with the individual. Indeed if He isInfinitely High the idea of contact with an infini­tesimal individual becomes laughable.

But only if we are modelling God upon what weknow of man. That is why it is contended here thatwhat at first sight appears to be almost a super­adequate idea of God is, in reality, inadequate-it isbased on too tiny a foundation. Man may be made inthe image of God; but it is not sufficient to conceiveGod as nothing more than an infinitely magnifiedman.

There are, for example, those who are considerablyworried by the thought of God simultaneously hearing

42 y 00 SMAL

and answering the prayers and aspirations of people allover the world. That may be because their mentalpicture is of a harassed telephone operator answeringcallers at a switchboard of superhuman size. It isreally better to say frankly, 'I can't imagine how it canbe done' (which is the literal truth), than to confusethe mind with the picture of an enlarged man perform­ing the impossible.

All 'lofty' concepts of the greatness of God need tobe carefully watched lest they turn out to be meremagnifications of certain human characteristics. Wemay, for instance, admire the ascetic ultra-spiritualtype which appears to have 'a mind above' food, sexualatt:ra4:tlCJn. and material comfort, for example. But if

I01'mJ.ng a of the Holiness of God we are1.,"t"'n-1nn- this spirituality and asceticism to the

forced to some peculiar conclusions.may find ourselves readily able to imagine

interest in babies (for are they not 'little bits ofHeaven' ?), yet unable to imagine His approval, letalone design, of the acts which led to their conception I

Similarly it is natural and right, of course, that theworship we offer to God in public should be of thehighest possible quality. But that must not lead usto conceive a musically 'Third-Programme' god whoprefers the exquisite rendering of a cynical professionalchoir to the ragged bawling of sincere but untutoredhearts.

To hold a conception of God as a mere magnifiedhuman being is to run the risk of thinking of Him assimply the Commander-in-Chief who cannot possiblyspare the time to attend to the details of His sub-

SEC 0 N D - HAN D GOD 43

ordinates' lives, Yet to have a god who is so farbeyond personality and so far removed from thehuman context in which we alone can appreciate'values', is to have a god who is a mere bunch of perfectqualities-which means an Idea and nothing more.We need a God with the capacity to hold, so to speak,both Big and Small in His Mind at the same time.This, the Christian religion holds, is the true and satis­fying conception of God revealed by Jesus Christ, andwe will study it further in a later chapter.

IX. SECOND-HAND GOD

MOST PEOPLE, naturally have a somewhat restrictedview of life, and they rely to a far larger extent thanthey realize on the vicarious experience of life to befound in books, films, and plays. Few of us, forexample, have known at all intimately a detective, adress-designer, . a circus-proprietor, a pugilist, or aHarley Street specialist. Yet a skilful writer can makeus feel that we have entered the very hearts and livesof these, and many other, people. Almost withoutquestionwe add what we have read or seen to the sumtotal of what we call our 'experience', The process isalmost entirely automatic, and probably most of uswould be greatly shocked if it could suddenly berevealed to us how small a proportion of our ac­cumulated 'knowledge of the world' is due to first-handobservation and experience.

The significance of this second-hand knowledge oflife to the subject we are considering is this: the con­ception of the Character of God which slowly forms in

LL

the conclusions we draw'lu<ige:melnts' of life. We

largely from way in which He(or not to deal with) His creatures.

our knowledge of life is (unknown to usall probability) faulty or biased or sentimental, we

are quite likely to find ourselves with a second-handgod who is quite different from the real one.

There are three main ways in which fiction (inwhich term we include books, films, and plays) canmislead us, and in consequence profoundly affect theidea we unconsciously hold of God and His operationinbuman life.

tnrv lt"rt'""n1'''1'1rt' ot God and all (religious' issues

presents life as though thereall, and men and women had no reli­

pers(m~llitles whatever. We may for.HLIL~VJL~. charming people who exhibit

most delightful qualities, surmount incredibledifficulties with heart-stirring courage, make the mostn9ble sacrifices and- achieve the utmost happiness andserenity-all without the slightest reference to God.The reader is almost bound to reflect that all the fussChristianity makes about 'seeking God's strength' andso on is much ado about nothing.

Conversely, we not infrequently read of evilcharac­tel'S who, for all their lust, cruelty,. meanness,' or pride,never seem to suffer the faintest twinge of conscience.There appears to be no spiritual.force at work pointingout to them, at vulnerable moments, a better way ofliving; and repentance is unthinkable. The reader is

SEC OND-HAND GOD 45

again, unconsciously, likely to conclude that God doesnothing to influence 'bad' characters.

This by-pass which neatly avoids God and thereligious side of life is hot characteristic perhaps of thevery best fiction,but it is extremely common. In filmsin particular, with a few notable exceptions, 'provid­ence' is subject to almost cast-iron conventions. Theseinclude the socially desirable 'crime-does-not-pay'ethic, and the inevitable happy ending. But anyresemblance between the celluloid providence a:qr thereal actions of God in human affairs is purely coin-cidental. ·

In actual life, as any parson worth his salt wellknows, ordinary people do at times consider God andspiritual issues. The evil, and even the careless, areoccasionally touched by their consciences. Moreover,the tensions and crises which are the breath of life tothe fiction-writer are the very things which frequentlystimulate the latent spiritual or religious sense. It isan extraordinary phenomenon that the modern writerwho has, Heaven knows, few reticences and who issometimes almost morbidly analytical of his charac­ters' actions, should so frequently use the by-pass roadround the whole sphere of a man's relations with hisGod.

2. The wilfttl misrepresentation of religiorzIt can of course be argued that it is no part of the

duty of a writer of fiction to provide Christian propa­ganda-and that is perfectly true. But it is equally nopart of his work, which is 'to hold up a mirror to life', to

X. PERENNIAL GRIEV ANCE

To SOME people the mental image of God is a kind ofblur of disappointment. 'Here', they say resentfullyand usually with more than a trace of self-pity, 'is Onewhom I trusted, but He let me down.' The rest ofth~ir lives is consequently shadowed by this let-down.Thenceforth there can be no mention of God, Church,religion, or even parson, without starting the wholeprocess of association with its melancholy conclusion:God is a Disappointment.

Some, of course, rather enjoy this never:-failing wellof grievance. The years by no means dim the tragic

PERENNIAL GRIEVANCE 47

The whole tragedy of King Lear might be said todepend on Shakespeare's manipulation of the charac­ter of Cordelia. Because she is unable to see (thoughevery schoolgirl in the pit can see) the probable conse­quence of her blunt 'Nothing' the tragedy is launched.But it would be a profound mistake to confuse theorganized disasters of even the greatest writer oftragedy with the complex circumstances and factorswhich attend the sufferings of real life.

Conclusions as to the nature of Life and God canonly in very rare instances be inferred from the arti­ficial evidence of fiction. We need therefore to be con­stantly on qur guard against the 'Second-hand god'­the kind of god which the continual absorption offictional ideas nourishes at tbe back of our minds. Onetiny slice of real life, observed at first hand, providesbetter grounds for our concludons than the wnolefairy world of fiction.

IS TOO SMALL

g~ve the impression that Christianity and the Churchare no more than a subject for ridicule. It may ofcourse be great fun for him-he may be working off achildhood grudge against an Evangelical aunt-torepresent clergymen as comic, bigoted, or childishlyignorant of life, and Christians as smug hypocrites. Hemay even feel that there is more dramatic value in therector who is a domestic tyrant or the nonconformistdeacon who is a secret sadist than in the genuinearticles. But he is not, in so doing, being fair to theeactual facts of life, even though his writing may provehighly gratifying to the reader who is only too readyto welcome this endorsement of his own feeling that'religion is all rot anyway'.

Again, this criticism cannot fairly be levelled at the'best fiction, but it is extremely common in the populartype, and slowly but surely affects the conception. ofreligion and of God in the minds of many readers.

3. The manipulation of providence

The author of fiction (and this is not the least of theattractions of authorship) is in the position of a god tohis own creatures. He can move in a mysterious way,or an outrageous way, or an unjust way, his wondersto perform; and no one can say him nay. If he worksskilfully (as, for instance, did Thomas Hardy) he maystrongly infect his reader with, for example, the senseof a bitterly jesting Fate in place of God. He cancommunicate heartbreak by the simplest of mani­pulations, because he is himself providence, but he isnot thereby providing any evidence olthe workings ofreal life. ,

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

d,etails of the Prayer that was Unanswered or theDisaster that was Undeserved. To recall God'sunfaithfulness appears to give them the same ghoulishpleasure that others find in recounting the grislydetails of their 'operation'. Others find, of course, thata God who has Himself failed is the best possible ex­cuse for those who do not wish to be involved in anymoral effort or moral responsibility. Any suggestion ofobeying or following God can be more than counteredby another glance at the perennial Grievance.

Such a god is, of course, in the highest degreeinadequate. It is impossible for people who havep~rsuaded themselves that God has failed, to worshipor s~rve Him in any but a grudging and perfunctoryspirit. What has usually happened to such people isthat they have set up in their minds what they thinkGod ought or ought not to do, and when He appar"ently fails to toe their particular line they feel a senseof grievaD;ce. Yet it is surely more sensible, as well asmore fitting, for us human beings to find out, as far aswe ~an, the ways in which God works. We have todiscover as far as we can the limits He has set Himselffor the purposes of this Great Experiment that we callLife-and then do our best to align ourselves with theprinciples and co-operate with the purposes that wehave certainly had no say in deciding, but whichnevertheless in our highest moments we know aregood. God will inevitably appear to disappoint theman who is attempting to use Him as a convenience, aprop, ora comfort, for his own plans. God has neverbeen known to disappoint the man who Is sincerelywanting to co-operate with His own purpos~s.

PER E N N I A L G R I E V A NeE 49

It must be freely admitted that, in this experimentalworld, to which God has given the risky privilege offree-will, there are inevitably 'ills and accidents'.Moreover, the cumulative effect over the centuries ofmillions of individuals' choosing to please themselvtz.~

rather than the Designer of 'the whole show' hasinfected the whole planet. That is what the theo­logians mean when they call this a 'sinful' world. Thisnaturally means that, so far as this world is concerned,the tough, insensitive, and selfish, will frequentlyappear to get away with it, while the weak and sensitivewill often suffer.- Once we admit the possibilities offree-will we can see that injustices and grievances areinevitable. (As Christ once said: 'It must needs bethat offences come.') We may not agree with the riskthat God took in giving Man the power to choose-wemight even have preferred God to have made a race ofrobots who were unfailingly good and cheerful andkind. But it is not in the least a question of what Godcould have done, but a question of what He has done.We have to accept the Scheme of Things as it is, and ifwe must blame someone it is surely fairer to blameMan who has chosen wrongly and produced a worldawry.

The people who feel that God is a Disappointmenthave not understood the terms on which we inhabitthis planet. They are wanting a world in which good isrewarded and evil is punished-as in a well-run kinder­garten. They want to see the good man prosperinvariably, and the evil man suffer invariably, here andnow. There is, of course, nothing wrong with theirsense of justice. But they misunderstand the condi~

tions of life in which God with­holds His hand, in order, so to speak, to allow room forHis plan of freewill to work itself out. Justice will befully vindicated when the curtain falls on the present~tage, the house-lights go on, and we go out into theReal World.

There will always be times when from our presentlimited point of view we cannot see the wood for thetrees. Glaring injustice and pointless tragedy willsometimes be quite beyond our control and our under­standing. We can, of course, postulate an imaginaryGod with less good sense, love, and justice than wehave ourselves, and we may find a perverse pleasure inblaming him. But that road leads nowhere. Youcannot worship a Disappointment.

XI. PALE GALILEAN

IF THEY were completely !lOnest" many people wouldhave to admit that God is to them an almost entirelynegative force in their lives. It is not merely that Heprovides that 'gentle voice we hear ... which checkseach fault', but that His whole Nature seems to deny,to cramp, and inhibit their own. Though such peoplewould never admit it, they are living endorsements ofSwinburne's bitter lines:

Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean;the world has grown grey from Thy breath.

Compared with their non-Christian contemporariestheir lives seem to have less life and colour,lessspontaneity andless confidence. Their god surrounds

PALE GALILEAN 51

them with prohibitions but he does not supply themwith vitality and courage. They may live under theshadow of his hand but it makes them stunted, pale,and weak. Although the thought would appear blas­phemous to his devotees, such a god is quite literallya blight upon human life, and no one can be surprisedthat he fails to attract the loyalty of those with spirit,independence, and a keen enjoyment of the colour andrichness o'f life.

The words written above are a plain exposure of afalse god, but of course the unhappy worshippers neversee their bonda"ge as clt~arly as that or they wouldbreak away.. They are bound to their negative god byupbringing, by the traditions of a Church or party, bythe manipulation of isolated texts of Scripture or by amorbid conscience. At last they actually feel that itis wrong to be th~mselves,wrong to be free, wrong toenjoy beauty, wrong to expand and develop. Unlessthey have their god's permission they can do nothing.Disaster will infallibly bring them to heel, sooner orlater, should they venture beyond the confines of 'hisplan for them'.

Such people, naturally enough, can only by strenu­ous efforts maintain their narrow loyalty. They do notget the chance to admire and love and worship in word­less longing One who is overwhelmingly splendid andbeautiful and lovable. At best they can only love andworship because their god is a jealous god, and it is hiswill and commandment that they should. Their livesare cramped and narrow and joyless because their godis the same.

the worship of suchthese.

that the and freedom of those whonot subscribe to the worship of the negative god is

just an illusion. Negative god worshippers often sus­tain themselves by imagining and elaborating uponthe inner strains and conflicts of those who do notknow their god. In fact, the strains and conflicts ofordinary life are quite rightly felt by sensible peopleto be preferable to the intolerable and never-endingstrain of worshipping a god who drains life of all itsvitality and colour.

2. There is a certain spiritually masochistic joy inbeing crushed by the juggernaut of a negative god.This is perfectly brought out in a hymn which is stillsung in certain circles:

Oh to be nothing, nothing,Only to lie at His feet,A broken and emptied vesselFor the Master's use made meet.

The sense of humour is, of course, suspended by thenegative god, or his devotees would be bound to see theabsurdity of anyone's ambition being to be 'nothing',~ 'broken' and, not unnaturally, 'emptied' vessel lyingat God's feet! Better still, the N~w Testament (a bookfull of freedom and joy, 'courage and vitality) might besearched in vain to supply any endorsement whatso­ever of the above truly dreadful verse and the concep­tion of God it typifies. If ever a book taught men to b~

'something, something', to stand and do battle, to befar more full of joy and daring and life than they ever

PROJECTED IMAGE 53

were without God-that book is the New Testament!3. The comforting idea of being 'something special'.

Wotshippers of the negative god often comfort them­selves by feeling that what is good enough for 'theworld' is not good enough for them: the chosen, theunique. Even though this means a life denuded of thebeauties of art, of normal pleasures and recreation, alife cramped in all normal means 'of expression-thatis a small price to pay for being the separate, theunique.

This pathetic idea of being 'something special' isclung to with desperation, so that we find worshippersof the negative god who know' in their secret heartsthat their lives cannot really exhibit any superiorqualities to those of their 'worldly' or 'worldly Chris­tian' friends, clinging tightly to their rules of 'separate­ness'-so that they may. at least feel that they aremarked out as the especial favourites of their god!

All this is very unattractive and unpleasant, but itis quite common among religious people. The ques­tion for them is: dare they defy and break away fromthis imaginary god with the perpetual frown and findthe One who is the great Positive, who gives life,courage and joy, and wants His sons and daughters tostand on their own feet?

X II. PRO J E C TED I MAG E

JUST AS the cinema apparatus projects on to the screena large image from a picture about the size of a postagestamp, so the human mind has a tendency to 'project'on to other people·ideas and emotions that really exist

eX"lID1Jle, will project onand disapproval, even though

ignorant of his guilt. This, ofpsychological phenomenon.

We tend to do same thing in our mental concep-tion of God. (As has already been pointed out thereare some who would go so far as to say the whole ideaof God is simply a 'projection' in adult life of thechildish desire for a Father's protection; but this wecannot accept for the reasons given above.) A harshand puritanical society will project its dominantqualities and probably postulate a hard and puritanicalgod. A lax and easy-going society will probablyproduce a god with about as much moral authority asFather Christmas.

The same tendency is observable in individual cases.We have already noted in 'God-in-a-box' how a certaintype of keen churchman, for example, tends to pro­duce a god of Impeccable Churchmanship. But, ofcourse, the inclination'goes farther than this, andthere is always a danger of imagining a god with moralqualities like our own, vastly magnified and purified ofcourse, and with the same blind spots. Thus the godwhom we imagine may have his face set againstdrunkenness (an evil for which, though it does nottempt us, fills us with horror and indignation), mayturn a blind eye to our business methods because hefeels, as we do, that 'business is business' I

Obviously, unless the conception of God is some­thing higher than a Magnification of OUI' own GoodQualities, our service and worship will be no more and

ASSORTED ~

no less than the service and worship of ourselves. Sucha god may be a prop to our self-esteem but is, natur­ally, incapable of assisting us to' win a moral victoryand will be found'in time of serious need to fade dis­concertinglyaway.

Moreover, we are so made that we cannot really besatisfied with a mere projection. Even Narcissus mustat times have grown tired of admiring his own reflec­tion I The .very fact that in choosing a friend or a life­partner men frequently choose someone very differentfrom themselves is, enough to show that'they are notonly and for eve; seeking an echo of their own per­sonalities. It'we are to be moved to real worship andstirred to give ourselves, it must be by Something notmerely infinitely higher but Something 'other' thanourselves.

The Christian answer to, this need we shall considerlater on, and we will do no more than point out herethat the god who is wholly, or even partially, a mereprQjection of ourselves is quite inadequate for life'sdemands and can never arouse in us true worship orservice. Indeed he is as real a danger as the poolbecame at last to Narcissus.

XIII. ASSORTED

THE FOREGOING round dozen do not by any means ex­haust the little gods which infest human minds. Toomuch space would be occupied by fully describingthem all, but a brief description of a few more maysuffice to expose their falsity.

God of Bethel

There are quite a number of religious people whomight fairly be said, if the truth were told, to be moreat home with Jehovah than with Jesus Christ. TheOld Testament, again if the truth were told, meansmore to them than the New.

These are the people who see religion as a contract:

ASS ORTED 57are visions waiting for him in his study I

The New Testament does not subscribe to this flat­~ering view of those with a gift for mystic vision. ItIS always downright and practical. It is by their fruitsthat men shall be known: God is no respecter ofpersons: true religion is, expressed by such humdrumthings as visiting thos~ in trouble and steadfastlymaintaining faith despite exterior circumstances. It isnot, of course, that the New Testament considers it abad thing for a man to have a vision of God, but thereis a wholesome insistence on such a vision beingworked out in love and service.

It should. be noted, at least by those who acceptChrist's claim to be God, that He by no means fits intothe picture of the 'mystic saint'. Those who arefascinated by the supposed superiority of the mysticsoul might profitably compile a list of its character­istics and place them side by side with those of Christ.The result. would probably expose a surprising con·clusion. ' .

There is, in fact, no provision for a 'privileged class'in genuine Christianity. 'It shall not be so amongyou,' said Christ to His early followers, 'all ye arebrethren.' .

which should be quite plain toaccept the revelation of God in Nature and

the ;Bibl~ it is that He is never in a hurry. LongpreparatIOn, careful planning, and slow growth, wouldseem to be leading characteristics of spiritual life.Yet ~here an~ many people whose religious tempo isfever~sh.. With a fine disregard for its context theyflour:sh lIke a ?anner the text, 'The King's businessrequIreth haste, and proceed to drive themselves and~heir ~oll~wer~ nearly ma~ with tension and anxiety!ConsIder, crIes the paSSIOnate advocate of foreignmiss~ons, 'that ~very second" thousands of pagan soulspass ~nto a Chr~stless eternity.' 'Evangelize to a finishIn thIS generatIOn I' cries the enthusiastic young con.vert at his missionary meeting. ' ,

~t is refreshing; and salutary, to study the poise andqUIetness of Christ. His task and responsibility mightwell have driven a man out of his mind. But He wasnever in a hurry, never impressed by numbers, nevera slave of the clock. He was acting, He said, as Heobserved God to act-never in a hurry.

God for the Elite

It, is characteristic of human bein2's to create and, •• 0

revere a prIVIleged class', and some modern Christiansregard the mystic as being somehow spiritually a cutabove his fellows. Ordinary forms of worship andprayer may suffice for the ordinary man, but for theone who has direct apprehension of God-he is liter­ally in a class by himself. You cannot expect a manto attend Evensong in his parish church when there

faithfully lookThese are the people

papers and say, 'if only' the mitionthe Ten Commandments then God would

victory, or rain, or fine weather, or whatever theneed of the moment rnay be. They like everythingcut-and-dried and even the Gospel is reduced to aformula; so that if you sign on the dotted line, so tospeak, you are all right for Heaven! They prefer theletter to the spirit and definite commandments tovague principles. They more usually refer to 'theLord' than to 'God'.

Such people have not appreciated the revolutionarycharacter of God's)invasion of the world in Christ,though they •• would be horrified if it were suggestedthat they have not yet accepted the import of his pro­nouncement: 'Ye have heard that it was said of oldtime ... but [say unto you/

But their Old Testament God will not suffice for thehunger of modern man, howe~er they may wring theirhands at the 'unbelief' of today. God is not a God ofthe dead, but of the living.

God without Godhead

This conception is one of the most 'enlightened' and'modern'. God is completely de-personalized andbecomes theUltimate Bundle of Highest Values. Suchan id~a is usually held by those who lead shelteredlives and who have little experience of the crude stuffof ordinary human life. It is manifestly impossible forany except the most intellectual to hold in his mind(let alone worship. and serve) a God who is no more

ASSORTED ~

than what we think to be the highest values raised tothe nth degree.

Gods by any othe~NameMan has rightly been defined as a 'worshipping

animal'. If for some reason he has no God he willunquestionably worship something. Common modernsubstitutes are the following: the State, success,efficiency, money, 'glamour', power, even security.Nobody, of course, calls them 'God'; but they have theinfluence and command the devotion which shouldbelong to the real, God. It is only when a man findsGod that he is,able to see how his worshipping instincthas been distorted and mis-directed.

TRANSITIONAL NOTE

Before proceeding to the second part of this workthe author feels that a ,short word of explanation isdue.

It is not our intention to build up merely a biggerand better god, who may be just as much an arti­ficiality as any of the unattractive galaxy we have dis­carded. What we are going to try to do is to open thewindows of the mind and spirit-to put it crudely, toenlarge the aperture through which the light of thetrue God may shine. If a man lives in a light-proofroom the sun may shine in dazzling'splendour and theman himself will know nothing of it. He may lighthimself a candle or he may bore a hole in his prison.In the first case he can never have more than an arti­ficial glimmer, and in. the second he will get only a

daylight. Some of the gods weCOltlSI;ael:ea are nothing more than artificial; some

inadequate pin-hole glimpses of the trueWhat we are going to try to do, then, is not tq

fresh candle~ but to take down the shutters.There is no reason why we should be content with thecandle or the pin-hole if a little determined thinkingand a little sincere action will remove the shutters.

Part Two

CONSTRUCTIVE

AN ADEQUATE GOD

T. GOD UN Foe USE D

IT MAY seem to some that a great deal of time hasbeen spent in 'clearing the ground'; but it is absolutelynecessary. We shall never want to serve God in ourreal and seqet hearts if He looms in our subconsciousmind as an arbitrary Dictator or a Spoil-sport, or asone who takes advantage of His position to make uspoor mortals feel guilty and afraid. We have not onlyto be impressed by the 'size' and unlimited power ofGod, we have to be moved to genuine admiration, re­spect, and affection, if we are ever to worship Him.

First, however, let us fling wide the doors and win­dows of our minds and make some attempt to appre­ciate the 'size' of God. He must not be limited toreligious matters or even to the 'religious' interpreta­tion of life. He must not be confined to one particularsection of time nor must we imagine Him as the localgod of this planet or even only of the universe thatastronomical survey has so far discovered. It is not, ofcourse, physical size that we are trying to establish inour minds. (Physical size is not important; By anyreasonable scheme of values a human being is of vastlygreater worth than a mountain ten million times hisphysical size.) It is rather to see the immensely broad

R GOD IS TOo SMALL

sweep of the Creator's activity, the astonishing com­plexity of His mental processes which science labori­ously uncovers, the vast sea of what we can only call'God' in a small corn<::..J: of which man lives and movesand has his being.

To Ineditate on this broadness and vastness will domuch to expose the inadequate little gods, but if westop there we may get no farth~r than sensing a vague'unfocused' God, a de-personalized 'Something' whichis after a while peculiarly unsatisfying.

There are those who would make this 'Something'the God of the future. Building up a mental conceptfrom known values like Goodness, Truth, and Beauty,they would have us hold in our minds and worship inour hearts the Source of Supreme Values. Such a Godis not a Person in any sense, and though such an ideaseems to satisfy some of the most intellectual of ourtime it does not, and probably will never, satisfy theordinary man. It certainly does not appear to supplya Gospel to redeem the despairs and futilities of life,nor does it in practice appear to provide a spear-headagainst old-established evils. To worship, to love, andto serve, implies for most of us a Person with whom wecan establish some personal relationship, although onecannot help pointing out that one great attraction ofa non-personal God is that no claim can be made uponus! He (or It) may be used as much or as little as welike I

Thus we can see the dilemma, though often un­conscious, of many modern people outside organizedreligion. If they use their minds and imaginationsthey cannot help seeing that if there is a Supreme

GOD UNFOCUSED

Being He must be infinitely vaster than our fore­fathers' conceptions. The more they know, the morescience reveals to them, the wider grow the mentalhorizons and the more inadequate grow the old littlegods. And yet this vastness seems to de-personalizeGod more and more until he becomes a vague un­focused Abstraction.

In the face of this dilemma many abandon the ideaof knowing God, and pin their hopes and apply theirenergies to the 'progress' of the human race. In de­spair at ever coming to terms with 'eternal' values, theyget a certain amount of satisfaction in improving the'here and now', concerning themselves with presentvalues of which they are reasonably sure.

Yet in fact unless we can relate this activity to God,i.e. to'Something beyond time and space, it is a sin­gularly fatuous thing to do, and we only need a fewlogical steps to appreciate it. Let us admit for themoment that we are making progress, that the humanrace for, all its devastating wars is becoming slowly andsurely more and more healthy, wealthy, and wise.Suppose that this process, notwithstanding set-backs,continues for thousands, even millions of years. Pre­sumably, then, at some time in the very remote futurethe human beings then living on this planet will haveconquered Nature by scientific knowledge, will haveresolved all tensions and maladjustments of personalrelationships by vastly improved psychologicalmethods, and will be living lives of almost unbeliev­able health and happiness <;lnd satisfaction. That, wemay fairly say, is the aim of those who freely givetheir energies to the progress of the human race, and

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

who exhort us to 'live for posterity'. But what then?This planet, eventually, will as far as our knowledgegqes, either become too cold to support life (even byartificial means), or it yvill be destroyed by collisionwith some other heavenly body. That means that thetotal result of human progress, of every effort andaspiration and ideal will be annihilation in the deathlycold of inter-stellar space. And there is nothing moreto come.

Yet this-human progress-is to many the greatestvalue for which to live. Of course if they stop short ofthe final scene they may persuade themselves that theeventual happiness of our descendants a million yearshence is a worthy ideal for which to live and die. Butif the end is nothing, sheer non-existence, surely noreasonable person can regard it as an ideal to com­mand the whole loyalty of an adult mind and heart.

I I. A CLUE TOR EALIT YTHE DISCOVERY of the' enormous energy released bynuclear fission and the unforgettable demonstrationsof the destructive power of the 'atom bomb' have doneus a service in our quest for Reality that perhaps wehardly realize. They have demonstrated before thewhole world that what we call 'matter' is in factdestructible. Tho~e things that. We formerly regardedas almost imperishable, such as armour-plate and con­crete, could, under certain conditions, be dissipatedintq vapour less substantial than the smoke from acigarette. Indeed, since the whole stuff of our planet,animate and inanimate, is composed of variously

A CLUE TO REALITY

arranged atoms, it is by no means unthinkable thatsome experiment or deliberate act might result in achain-reaction, exploding, so to speak, every atom ofwhich this world is composed. Whether we like it ornot we live now under the shadow of such universaldisintegration. This can hardly do other than set ourminds to value far more highly than ev~r before the'spiritual' values. By these we mean the qualities ofspirit, of personality, which are recognizable andassessable, but are incapable either of scientific weigh­ing or measuring-and incapable of physical destruc­tion. In the light ~f the probable ultimate fate of theplanet and oLthe present (far more impressive) threatto human life, we are driven to reconsider whetherafter all there is reality beyond the physical, measurQ

able reality. We begin to wonder whether the wholeposition is not now the reverse of what men oncethought. They used to talk of the 'spiritual' values asshadowy and unsubstantial, and the physical as solidand 'real' and reliable. They are beginning to see thatthe opposite may well be true. We can certainly seeevidence of the universal destructibility of matter:perhaps it is after all true that 'reality' lies in anotherrealm altogether, and that its values are not unsub­stantial after all.

This, of course, is far more readily believed by sometemperaments than by others. The poets, artists, andphilosophers, as well as a great many other undisQ

tinguished people, of many ages, have probably beenmore or less acutely conscio'us that the 'spiritual' is ofvastly greater importance than the material. To all ofthem, speaking broadly, this present physical life is

Y.G·-3

66 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

!he visible and tangible stage or battlefield of spiritualforces: ~niversaJ values, such as truth, goodness, andbeauty, were often considered to exist apart from, aswell as being exhibited in, the life of this world. Tosome of them this present life is merely the prelude,lived under difficulty and handicap, to a free unfet-tered life of the spirit. The latter is reality-the formeris an important but transitory incident.

This age-long intuition is now being forced uponhumanity as a strong and workable hypothesis by thethreatened disintegration of the merely physical. Andthere is enough inward assent to itin the hearts of mostmen to give them at any rate one powerful clue toreality. It makes the idea of God far more sensibleand far mOre desirable.

After all, if it should be true that the nature ofreality is spiritual and it is only quite temporarily andincidentally involved in matter, it is not unreasonableto want to know something of the Spiritual Being be­hind the Scheme of Things. And on those unimagina­tive people to whom the spiritual has always soundedfanciful and unreal, it is slowly dawning that the physi­cal world which is so real and tangible to them is mostuncomfortably unreliable. A man used to be able toreckon on a good number ofyears of active material life,which were a most efficient buffer between him and thenaked spiritual realities which in his more vulnerablemoments he suspected might be true. Now his bufferof material things has been shown to be far from de.;,pendable. At any moment he might be pitch-forkedinto the world of the spirit. His anchors are slipping,and if he feels the need of anchorage (and who, at heart,

FUR THE R C L U EST 0 REA LIT Y 67

does not?) he must find it in the world of the spirit'-he must find God. .

NOTE. It must not he supposed that what we callspiritual (and which is at present invisible) is lessisolid' than matter. It may well prove, since it is inde­structible, to be in a sense, more solid. It is only ourpeculiar way of looking at things which makes a man'smuscles, for example, appear more solid than hisispiritual' assets of personality. This idea of the realworld being more isolid' is most ably and ingeniouslyworked out by Dl;. C. S. Lewis in his fantasy of HeClvenand Hell: The Great Divorce.

I I I. FUR THE R C L U EST 0 REA LIT Y

IN ALL probability everyone is sensitive to beauty,although obviously some are far more so than others.Yet experience shows that even those who are appar- 'ently most prosaic are touched, even to their own sur­prise, by certain fprms of beauty. The line alongwhich this half-melancholy, half-magic touch maycome varies enormously with different people. Forsome it is the appealing grace of childhood, for somethe surge and thunder of the sea, for some the dazzlingsplendour of mountain peak, for some the song ofbirds in spring, for some the smell of wood-smoke orof frosty autumn evenings, for some-but the list isendless. All poetry and music, and art of every truesort, bears witness to man's continual falling in lovewith beauty, and his desperat~ attempt to inducebeauty to live with him and enrich his common life.

68 - YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

True beauty always seems to bear with it a note ofgentle sadness, sometimes very poignant; and it maywell puzzle us why this should be so. If the beautifulis so desirable and so welcome it should surely bringunqualified joy. There is rarely accompanying sad­ness in other earthly joys. In the enjoyment of a heartymeal, in the successful solving of a difficult problem,or in the fulfilment of creative activity, there is joy, butno melancholy. Is it possible that beauty is a hint ofthe real and true and permanent: so that we feel with­out conscious process .of thought: ~This is what lifeshould be, or what it is in reality.' And therefore tocompare that with our ordinary everyday experiencewith all its imperfection and ugliness gives rise to thepoignant pain? Or is it, as some hold, fancifully per­haps, a kind of nostalgia-what Wordsworth wouldcall an ~intimation of immortality'. Is it the eternalspirit in a man remembering here in his house of claythe shining joys of his real Home?

No one, of course, can say. But the appeal of beautywhich is universal, however distorted or debased itmay have become, cannot be lightly dismissed. It is apointer to something, and it certainly points to some­thing beyond th~ present limitations of time and space.We can at any rate say that beauty arouses a hungerand a longing which is never satisfied (and some wouldsay never can be satisfied) in this world.

The second clue to the natureof reality is what wecan call only by the slightly fprbidding title, of ~good­

ness'. Disabusing our minds of self-conscious right­eousness, goody--goodyness and mere absence of evil,there is something unavoidably attractive abo\lt the

FUR THE R C L U EST 0 REA LIT Y 69

good. However far from the ideal our own practicemay be, we have an automatic respect for such thingsas honesty, sincerity, faithfulness, incorruptibility,kindness, justice, and respect for other people. Indeed,we hardly saw the significance of our acknowledge­ment of the worth of these things until they weredirectly challenged by the late Nazi regime. Even nowa great many people have hardly grasped the signifi­cance of the fact that we, in common with millions ofothers, denounced the treachery, brutality, lies, andcynical denial of traditional moral values, as ~evil

things'. Unless our feeling for goodness is a clue toultimate Reality the most we can do is to say that wepersonally dislike the characteristics of the Naziphilosophy. Unless there is some moral standard towhich we are (unconsciously) referring the question, itcan be no more than mere difference of opinion. TheNazi has a perfect right to say that he disliked 'ourmoralvalues, and who is to say whether he or we werein the right? To reply that methods of treachery,brutality, and inhumanity, offend the universal con­science of mankind is to estaplish more firmly thepoint we are trying to make. Why is there this almostuniversal moral sense? Why do we consider that~good' is a better thing than ~evil'? Surely this recog~

nition of good, so deeply rooted and so universal, isanother far from negligible pointer to Reality.

Both beauty and goodness, then (no doubt in differ­ent ways), exert an effect upon men which cannot beexplained in terms of the world that we know, and tothis we may add his search for truth. He is not onlywanting to' know facts, though the careful dispassion-

70 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

ate amassing of ascertained facts ilil. surely one of hismost admirable activities, but he also wants to findsome meaning to the puzzle of life. Scientific research,philosophy, and religion, all in their different waysatte&t this reaching 'out of man to grasp more andmore truth. And yet-why should he? Why shouldhe not rest content with what he has and what heknows? Why can he not accept death and evil anddisease without worrying about them? Why does he,in all ages and in all countries, reach out to find Some­thing-something which will harmonize and explainand complete life's bewildering phenomena? Here,too, is surely a pointer. Arguing, as we must,fromwhat we know to what we do not 'know, we may fairlysay that as food is the answer to hunger, water theanswer to thirst, and a mate .to sexual desire, this uni­versal hunger for Truth is unlikely to be without itsanswer and fulfilment, however hard to find it may be.

IV. IS THERE A FOCUSED GOD?

BEAUTY, GOODNESS, and Truth, wherever they. occur,are certainly clues;' but they seem to be like camerasfocused 'to infinity'-we cannot tell how far and howgreat is the Reality to which they are pointing.

Now although everyone knows what is meant byBeauty, Goodness, and Truth, it is impossible to visual­ize them as absolute values. We can visualize a beauti­ful thing, but not beauty; a good man, but notgoodness; a true fact, but not truth. Yet once we have abeautiful thing held in our minds it is comparativelyeasy to fill the mind with other beauties; once we con-

1ST HER E A F 0 CUSED GOD? 7 I

sider a truly good man we can expand and develophis qualities until we begin to get some idea of good­ness; while if we are once convinced of a certain fact(particularly if we have discovered it ourselves), we canat once think of a world of truths~webegin to visual­ize the absolute quality of Truth.

We see beauty, then, when it is first focused for us ina beautiful thing; goodness when it is focused in a goodman; truth when it is focused in a fact of which we aresure. Absolute values may exist as mental conceptsfor the trained philosopher; but the ordinary man

, must see his vall1es focused in people or things that heknows before he can grasp them.

Let us now make a further step. The mystic claimsto be able to grasp something of God in the Absolute.But the mystic is. even more uncommon than thephilosopher, and any attempt by the ordinary man to'imagine' God results in nothing but the 'vague oblongblur' complained of by those modern people who makethe attempt. Yet if a man can see God focused andbe convinced that he is seeing God, scaled-down butauthentic, he can, as in the case of Beauty, Truth, andGoodness, add all the other inklings and impressionsthat he has of the majesty, magnificence, and order ofthe Infinite Being, and 'see God'.

But can he so see, God 'focused'? There must bemore than elusive sparks and flashes of the divine­there must be a flame burning steadily so that its lightcan be examined and properly assessed.

It is a fascinating problem for us human beings toconsider how the Eternal Being~wishing'to showmen His own Character focused, His own Thought ex-

72 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

pliessed, and His ownPulipose demonstrated-couldintroduce Himself into the stream of human historywithout disturbing or disrupting it. There mustobviously be an almost unbelievable 'scaling-down' ofthe 'size' of God to match the life of the planet. Theremust be a complete acceptance of the space-and-timelimitations of this present life. The thing must be doneproperly-it must not, for example, be merely an actput on for man's benefit. If it is to be done at all Godmust be man. There could be no convincing focusingof real God in some strange semi-divine creature whoenjoys supernatural advantages. Nor, though it isplain that many men have been 'inspired'·· to uttertruth, to create beauty and to demonstrate goodness,could it suffice for a unique and authentic focusing todepend on one 'super-inspired' man. For completedependability, for· universal appeal, for a personallyguaranteed authenticity to which all other truth is tobe related, God must do it Himself. I

Suppose, then, that God does slip into the stream ofhistory and is born as Baby A. A will, as far as thelimitations of time, space, and circumstance allow,grow up as God 'focused' in humanity, speaking alanguage, expressing thoughts, and demonstrating lifein terms that men can understand. Having onceaccepted A's claim to be God expressing Himself inhuman terms, men would have a great deal by whichto live. .

First, they will know now for certain what sort of'character' the eternal God possesses. For He is cer­tain to inform them that the man who observes Himis observing God.· Secondly, the facts about man and

IS THERE A FOCUSED GOD? 73

God, the perennial anxieties abhut such things as painand sin and death, the dim hopes of a more permanent'world to follow this one-these and scores of otherclamant questions will now have a fixed referencepoint, by which they can be adjusted if not settled.Thirdly, man will be able to gain at first hand in­formation as to 'what life is all about'and as to how hecan co-operate with the Plan and the Power· behindtime and space. Fourthly, if they are convinced, aswe are assuming, that tl;1e one before them is really God­become-man, they will be able to observe so:r;nethingabsolutely uniq.ue in· the history of the world: .GodHimself coping with life on the very terms that He hasimposed upon His creatures. They will be seeing Godnot seated high on a throne, but down in the battle­field of life.

A, of course, having genui~ely entered the space­time world and having become a human being, mustenter at some particular time and must live in someparticular locality. He will thus, as far as some in­cidentals and externals are cORcerned, be to some ex­tent moulded, modified, and limited. He cannot,therefore, be a full expression of God-there is neithertime nor space enough for that. But within the limithe sets himself he will be a perfectly genuine and ade­quate focusing of the nature of God. He will not onlybe information and example, but the aperture throughwhich men may see more and more of God. If menare once convinced of the genuineness of His extraor­dinary claim, they will probably find that God is, So to­speak, visible through an A -sh(lped aperture. Know­ledge, experience, and appreciation may all expand

74 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

enprmously as the years pass, but that will not meanthat Inen 'grow out of' God. For A will have suppliedby his demonstration in time and space one sure Fact,around which everything else of Truth, Goodness, andBeauty, may be appropriately' and satisfactorilycrystallized.

V. IF GOD WERE FOCUSED (I)

IF A, THEN, does enter the life of this planet there willbe certain phenomena which would appear to be in­evitable, unless (on a possibility we are not consider­ing) the normal rules of life are temporarily suspended.

In the first place it is unlikely that A will be recog- /nized as Godin any real sense, at any rate for sometime. Men would almost certainly judge any allegedpersonal appearance of God in life by two criteria.First, they will probably expect some definitely numin­ous quality to be invariably present. They ,wouldexpect to feel frightened or to see an aura of divinity,or witness supernormal powers. In other words, theywould not expect God really to be man, but only to be

, pretending to be one-and that is not the same thingat all. God pretending to be man could, for example,achieve all kinds ofsuperhumanfeats in themoral,men­tal, spiritual, or even physical realm. That might im­press, but it would leave a man where he was before; hewould be no nearer understanding or knowing God.Re might be da~zled, but he would remain unillumin­ated. Secondly, '. men would almost certainly, if thefirst 'possibility did not occur, expect to see a 'holy..man' of the super-mystic type, someone whose wisdom

IF GO D/ WE REF 0 C USE D (I) 75

is too profound for words and whose eyes are too in­tent upon heavenly realities to be au fait with the com­monplace world. If A then is revealed as a perfectlyadjusted, wholesome, sane, and non..:fanatical man, hisclaim to be God (which he must make in due course,unless someone suddenly grasps the truth) will belooked upon as fantastic and blasphemous. If A makeshis appearance among those who have so exalted theirconception of God that for Rim ever to wear the soiledrobe of sinful humanity is an unthinkable degrada~

tion of His Godhead, the task for A will be immeasur­ably harder. But if he appears among those who havealways thol,.lght that there was some hint of God inthe character of man, then some at least may well seewhat is happening. It would be those who depreciateor even despise humanity in order to exalt their ideaof God who would in all probability be completelyblind to A's identity.

Yet there will be, naturally, something about A inaddition to a well-balanced and wholesome personality.There will, for instance, be a certain tone of authority-the quiet assurance of the expert speaking on hisown subject-when he speaks of the basic facts of life,of man, and of God. Unless their inklings and intui­tions are all wrong, men will find, probably not with­out emotion, that in A)s teaching is the quiet logicalassembly of all the isolated flashes of insight that theyhave ever experienced. 'What this man is saying',SOlne of them at least are bound to feel, 'is true. Thisis reality. This is what WG have always hoped Godwould be like, and this is what we have always feltthat life shou14 be like'. For unless this is a completely

I

76 YOUR GOD I ST a 0 SMALL

insa:p.e world or a hopelessly evil one, A's words muststrike an answering chord in the hearts of manyordinary people.

It will not of course be only A's words that telL Ifhe is to enjoy no supernatural advantages, he will gethis share of trouble and temptation, trial and dis­appointment, and his reactions to these, as well as toevery other part of life, pleasant or unpleasant, willproduce a certain definite impression. He will 'berevealing a character. Whether his friends and ob­servers realize it at the time or not, he will be showingthem not only the character of the Invisible Godfocused and functioning in ordinary human circum­stan"ces,but an· example of perfect humanity. Whatactually happens to him will of course depend onwhen and where God decides on this insertion of Him­self into history, but in a sense it would always be thesame, for the Character expressed in human terms willbe the same and the Example will always follow thesame pattern. This is an important point, for it makesthe demonstration, provided that then~ is an accuraterecord of it available, of universal value. The personalinvasion need not be continually repeated.

We may reasonably surmise, that the world beingwhat it is, there will be other reactions than the gladrecognition of A's teaching as true. For in practicemen do not by any means always 'love the highestwhen they see it', and truth is not always a welcome,visitor. We could probably therefore credibly forecasta good deal of opposition and misrepresentation.These things we should certainly look for in A's visit:

I. A challenge to current moral values, and possibly

IF GOD WE REF a C USE D (I) 77

even some downright reversals of conventional judge­ment. The love of money or position, the lust for suc­cess, and the desire to keep all unpleasant matterssafely out of sight, warp the world's judgement prob­ably more than it knows. A's values are thereforelikely to be found more than a trifle disconcerting,though probably they will be dismissed as 'fine idealsbut wholly impracticable'.

2. A disturbing probing into motive rather thanmeasurable performance. A, seeing life from the trueinstead of the conventional point of view, will seem tohave disconcertipg insight into what is normally con.cealed. Thi~ will make him enemies as well as friends.

3· An insistence on real human values, and par­ticularly on love of the right kind. A will naturallysee through the glamours and clevernesses that fogmany people's judgement, and will put his finger onthe real problem of the world, i.e. that there is notenough love to go round. Most love is either turned inon itself or restricted to a small selected circle. A willpoint out that Life, Reality, God, and even considera­tion of their own safety, demand that men shouldlearn to extend the circle of their love' and under13tand.ing. He will be certain to insist that love toward Goddoes not exist without love to fellow humanity.

4· An endorsement of humanity's own groping to­ward truth. For example, true love and self-sacrificehave always been the most deeply moving humancharacteristics. A will probably show that this is be­cause those who truly love and those who give them­selves for others are more nearly reflecting the char­acter of God than anyone else.

78 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMA

5.; We may reasonably expect A's endorsement alsoof our appreciation of the loveliness of nature, of thetouching grace of childhood, and of the wholesomebeauty of family life. His ideals will certainly behigher than the finest of ours, but they will not befantastic or so wholly different from what we alreadyknow, as to be unacceptable. The probable reactionof the honest man to A's revelation of the real truthwill be 'this rings true. This is what in my secret heartI have always known to be right and real.'

6. We need not expect that A, like some religiousreformers of history, will go about denouncing men as'miserable sinners'. Indeed there would be no need ofthat. Insincerity always feels uncomfortable in thepresence of sincerity, unreality in the presence ofreality, and selfishness in the presence of love. We mayexpect then that in the presence of a morally completeman, a good deal of spiritual discomfort will be spon­taneously aroused, sometimes dully and sOluetimesacutely. Some men would be stimulated to an intensehunger for wholeness, but some would be angered andresentful and determined either to get out of range ofthe cause of their discomfort or to get rid of it.

7. Then we might expect that there will be a con­flict with the conventionally religious. A is"more likelyto have trouble here than anywhere, for he will beright up against false gods, self-righteousness, (quidpro quo' religion, and particularly those who havedivorced religious life from real living, and are nowonly 'playing a part' instead of living life on thehuman level.

8. We could certainly expect a call to all who will

IF GOD WE REF 0 C USE D (II) 79

listen, to re-centre their lives on the real God, insteadof on things or on themselves. Men, especially worldly­minded men, will probably conclude that A is n9wcalling them 'miserable sinners' and telling them to'repent'. In fact he will be almost imploring them to'look at life differently'-as he knows it really is-withGod the centre and all else derived from Him.

V I. IF GOD WE REF 0 C USE D (n)ALL THIS, and a great deal more that we can vaguely.imagine, would certainly meet A and, if he is, as wehave suppo£ed, really human, would be heart-break­ing. For he would be in the position of a man seeingthe truth and yet largely unable to make other mensee it. He would see them blind on their God-wardside and drifting farther and farther away from reality.To a sensitive man this would prove an agony: natur­ally we cannot imagine what it would mean to God­become-man.

We can imagine A then as a fully human figure, notfloating ethereally in a mystical atmosphere, but withhis feet solidly on the earth. His foursquareness tolife, his joy in beauty and all' good things, his spon­taneous love of men and women, will no doubt shocksome men as much as his new view-point, standards,and values. They could perhaps tolerate a saintlyother-worldly figure, who never sees any harm in any­one, claiming to be God in human form; but for areal man, who seems to be the embodiment of all thatis truly human, as well as being quite plainly en rap­port with the hidden meaning of life, claiming to be

80 YOU R GOD I S TOO SMA L L

Godl, is a very shocking thing. Eyes that penetratelife's little disguises, a tongue that expresses truth in apeculiarly undiluted and memorable form, a person­ality without the slightest fear and yet quite obvi­ously filled with the highest kind of love-these areformidable things to meet, even for the best of men.

The world frequently conspires to muzzle or de­stroy its truest seers. The way of the prophet and re­former has usually been hard and not infrequentlyfatal. There is no reason to suppose that any differentfate will be the lot of A (always assuming, of course,"that he has bound himself not to accept celestial in­tervention). Indeed, just because this .is It) real Truth,real Goodness, real Beauty, real God fOcused inhuman form, it is not unreasonable to imagine that allthe truth-hating and self-loving spiritual powers willjoin forces against this unwelcome intruder. Mis­representation, slander, the dead-weight of age-longcustom and authority, false propaganda-all theseweapons will be used against A. He"\\;ill, if he proves,as he must, unrepentant and incorruptible, suffer thefull impact of evil. He will probably get imprisoned,he may even get sentenced to death on..some fantasticcharge. If this happened it would, of course, be anironical situation without parallel in the history of theworld I God plans and engineers a Personal visit to Hisown world, and the reaction of the world is to get ridof Him I

Of course this is only one side of the picture. Therewould probably be many who saw what A was driving "at, and who were deeply stirred by his personality andlife. There would probably be not a few who would

HAS A ARRIV ED? 81

little by little see that his fantastic claim to be Godmight well be true. However long or short his careeras. a teache~ of Truth might be, something of what he·said and dId would be memorized or committed towriting, and even if he were hustled off to a concen­tration camp, or judicially murdered, the truth wouldremain. Probably a few who really did see the signi­ficance of the human being with whom they had livedand worked and talked, and who grasped the enor­mous value of his teaching to mankind, would attemptto tel~ the world. "But without being unduly cynical,we mIght reasonftbly conclude that in a world whichwould not ~ccept the leadership of God when it wasright before their faces in an understandable formwould not, except for a small minority, take ver;seriously the claims of a handful of devotees of a manwho was dead.

VII. HAS A ARRIVED?

QUITE A number of people in all parts of the worldhave come to the conclusion that the hypothetical Ahas appeared in history-that A in fact equals the manJesus, who was born in Palestine some nineteen cen­turies ag~. Most of t.he possibilities that we have sug"gestedmight occur If God were to enter this worldhum~nly and h~storica~ly, were, they feel reasonablycertaIn, fulfilled In the hfe and teaching of Jesus. Andthere were some remarkable additional features whichcould hardly have been surmised, and which we willconsider in due course.

It is, of course, a very big step intellectually (and

82 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

em,ptionally and morally as well, it will be found) toaccept this famous figure of history as the designedfocusing of God in human life. It is not made anyeasier by the clinging mass of sentimentality, super­stitious reverence, and traditional associations whichsurround Him. It is emphatically not an easy matterfor the honest modern mind to pierce the accretionsand irrelevancies and see the Person, the Character~

particularly as the records, though they have beenexamined ,far more closely than any other historicdocuments, are undeniably meagre. Further, manypeople who have a vague childish affection for a half­remembered Jesus, have never used their adult criticalfaculties on the matter at alL They hardly seem to seethe paramount importance of His claim to be God.Yet if for one moment we imagine the claim to betrue the mind almost reels at its significance.. It canonly mean that here is Truth, here is the Character ofGod, the true Design for life, the authentic Yardstickof values, the reliable confirming or correcting of allgropings and inklings about Beauty, Truth, and Good­ness, about this world and the next. Life can never bewholly dark or wholly futile if once the key to itsmeaning is in our hands.

Although an honest adult study of the availablerecords is essential, to decide that Je$us really was theembodiment of God in a human being is not a merelyintellectual decision. Our unconscious minds willsense (even if the conscious mind does not) that toaccept such a unique Fact cannot but affect the wholeof our life. We may with complete detachment studyand form a judgement upon a religion, but we cannot

HAS A ARRIVED? 83

maintain our detachment if the subject of our inquiryproves to be God Himself. This is, of course, whymany otherwise honest intellectual. people will con­struct a neat by-pass around the claim of Jesus to beGod. Being people of insight and imagination, theyknow perfectly well that once to accept such a daimas fact would mean a readjustment of their own pur­poses and values and affections which they may haveno wish to make. To call Jesus the greatest Figure inHistory or the finest Moral Teacher the world has everseen commits no one to anything. But once to allowthe startled minp. to accept as fact that this man isreally focus~d-Godmay commit anyone to anything!There is every e~cuse for blundering in the dark, 'butin the light there is no cover from reality. It is becausewe strongly sense this, and not merely because we feelthat the evidence is ancient and scanty, that we shrinkfrom committing ourselves to such a far-reaching be­lief as that Jesus Christ was really God.

But of course we are not entirely at the mercy of ourown disinclination to commit ourselves! We want tosatisfy our cravings for reality, we want to know themeaning of life, and to have spiritual fundamentalsupon which we may build a faith by which to live.We want, in short, to know God. Jesus Christ gavethree remarkable indications by which men couldknow (not by scientific 'proof', but by an inward con­viction that is perfectly valid to him in whom it arises)that His claim and His revelation are true. They arecontained in three sayings of His which are well knownto anyone even moderately familiar with the Gospels.They are:

84 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

%(a) If any man will do his (i.e. God's) will, he shall. know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or

whether I speak of myself (JOHN 711).

(b) He that hath seen me hath seen the Father(JOHN 149

).

(c) I am the way, the truth, and the life: no mancometh unto the Father, but by me (JOHN146

).

These three sayings, especially the last two, are in­tolerably arrogant if they come from a purely humanmoral teacher, but they must inevitably be said by A,or Jesus Christ if He is really God. Let us considertheir significance:

(a) Jesus says, in effect, that there will be no inwardendorsement of the truth of the way of living he putsforward as the right one until a man is prepared to dothe will, i.e. co-operate with the purpose, of God. Thisat once rules out arm-chair critics of Christianity andany dilettante appraisal of its merits. 'You can'tknow', says Christ, 'until you are willing to do.'

It is plain from the Gospels that Christ regarded theself-loving, self-regarding, self-seeking spirit as thedirect antithesis of real living. His two fundamentalrules for life were that the' 'love-energy', instead of

'being turned in on its~lf, should go out first to Godand then to other people. 'If any man will come afterme', he said, 'let him deny himself (i.e. deny his ten­dency to love himself) and take up his cross (i.e. bearthe painful cos,t of that denial) and follow me (i.e. livepositively according to the principles that I teach anddemonstrate).' Now the moment a man does this,

HAS A ARRIVED? 85

even temporarily and tentatively, he finds himself intouch with something more real than he has knownbefore. There is a sense that he is touching a deep andpowerful stream that runs right through life. In otherwords, the moment he begins really to love, he findshimself in touch with the life of God. {And, of course,if God is love, this is only to be expected.) He nowknows beyond any doubting that thi$. is real, happy,constructive living. He knows now that the teachingof Christ is not a merely human code of behaviour,but part of the stuff of reality. He may deliberatelyseek this way of living, he may touch it by accident oreven by force of necessity (as for instance when aselfish husband is shaken out of his selfishness by hav­ing to minister to a sick wife): and of course he mayrelapse into his former way of self-loving. But all thetime he was approximating to the livingpurpose of Godhe knew that this was real life. This, of course, maybaffle and even infuriate the detached critic, but it isa pragmatic, universal test whose validity cannot fairlybe denied.

(b) Christ unquestionably claims to present accur­ately and authentically the Character of God. As wehave seen above, he cannot present the whole of God,but he can present in human form a Character thatmay be understood,admired, loved, respected-or evenfeared and hated.

Those who accept this claim find that he is the aper­ture through which the immensity and magnificenceof God can be begun to be seen. Nothing that sciencereveals, nothing that all the complexity of' modernthought can demand in its conception of .God, either

86 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

out~trips or outmodes the Character that has been re­vealed. It would indeed be a mistake to suppose thatthe eternal God is no 'bigger' than Jesus of Nazareth,limited as He was by time and space and circumstance.But the biggest, widest, and highest ideas of God thatmind can conceive arrange themselves without disso­nance or incongruity around the Character Jesus re-vealed. .

Again we have no scientific 'proof' of this. Butwhereas those who reject the claim of Jesus have tomanufacture, and strenuously uphold by continualmental effort, a nebulous God of ultimate values, thosewho accept the claim find, possibly to their surprise,that without effort God becomes real and 'knowable'.

(c) If Jesus Christ was God He must say that IHeisthe way, the truth, and the life, or words of equivalentmeaning, and we find He adds as a matter of unalter­able fact that no one comes into contact with Godexcept through Him. This is the third empirical test.Do people in fact know God except through Christ?It is certainly possible that some stumble on Christ'sway of living, even on Christ's Spirit, without realiz­ing quite where they are. But it is very significant thatthose who reject Christ's claim as fantastic, or evenignore it, do not know God; whereas many simplepeople with little theology or philosophy do find thatthey 'know God' when they give their confidence tothe Character that they can trust and love. It is atleast possible that a good deal of the scoffing of thesuperior intellectual at 'simple faith' springs from acertain envy. The detached intellectual who will notcommit himself knows in his secret heart that he does

LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES (I) 87not know God, indeed may be a million miles fromHim for all he knows. Yet the man who has acceptedthe claim of the 'focused God' finds God a living real­ity, and argument and scorn will, naturally, alike leavehim cold.

It is therefore clear that to accept the claim of Christafter proper and careful thought is not entirely aleapinto the dark. For the very decision will, as thousandshave proved, carry with. it an incontrovertible innerendorsement that is worth any amount of argument.

V I I I. J-. I FE'S BAS I CPR INC I P L E S (I)

IT IS by no means easy to make an accurate summaryof the Character and Truth revealed by Jesus Christ,even if we do not omit those parts of the records whichwe personally .~hink distasteful or discordant. In this'Christian' country we nearly all have some precon­ceived, even though vague, idea of the Christ-charac­ter and we need to be on our guard against 'readingback' into His deeds and words what is already in ourminds about Him. Men have tamed and modified and'explained' so much of His message that a great dealof its edge has been blunted. Nor does our reverencefor the superb literary quality of the familiar Author­ized Version do anything but hinder. Truth thatshould be regarded asfact comes to be regarded as 'abeautiful thought': at best it is 'a religious truth'rath~r than a reliable and workable fact on which toact ~nd build. A 'fact' of psychological research or ofmedical science for example is accepted by the mindas being lllore 'true' than a statement of Christ. Yet if

88 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

Christ was God it should be the other way round.It may help, therefore, to re-state the basic prin­

ciples of Jesus Christ in somewhat unfamiliar form.The truth taught by Jesus Christ is the right way to

live. It is not primarily a religion, not even the bestreligion, but God Himself explaining in terms thatmen can readily grasp how life is meant to be lived.Naturally, since there is a God and life is His idea,'and since 'religion' is by definition what connects manand God, there will be a religious flavour to the matter,but we shall fall into a familiar error if we fail to seethat Christ is giving direction to the whole of life, andis not Himself, as we so often are, dividing off a par­ticular section and calling it 'religious'.

If we accept Christ's claim to be God we have aright to expect. that certain basic facts will be told uson His authority, so that at any rate it beomes pos­sible for us to be intelligent and willing co-operatorswith that whole Scheme of Things which we call Life.Here then are our basic requirements, put into theform of simple questions:

I. What sort of Person is God?

Christ's answer is quite unequivocal. He is 'theFather'. When we hear this familiar truth we nearlyalways read back into God's Character what we knowof fatherhood. This is understandable enough, but itreverses the actual truth. If God is 'the Father', inNature and Character and Operation, then we derive(if we are parents) our characteristics from Him. Weare reproducing, no doubt on a microscopic scale andin a thoroughly faulty manner, something of the

LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES (I) 89

Character of God. If once we accept it as true thatthe whole Power behind this astonishing universe is ofthat kind of character that Christ could only describeas 'Father', the whole of life is transfigured. If we arereally seeing in human relationships fragmentary andfaulty but real reflections of the Nature of God, aflood of light is immediately released upon all the lifethat we can see. People, and· our relationships withthem, at once become of tremendous importance.Much of life is seen to be merely its setting, its stage,its 'props'-the business of it is in the realm of person­ality: it is people not things that matter. It is thusquite impossible to divorce Christianity from life.Those who attempted to divorce the religion of theirday from ordinary life were called by Christ, 'play­actors' (hypocrites), i.e. they were acting a part andnot really living at all.

2. Wha~ is the purpose of Life?

Christ did not give an answer to this question in itsmodern cynical form which implies, 'Is it worth livingat all?' but He did answer those who wanted to knowwhat to do with the vitality, affecti0ns, and talents,with which they were endowed. He also answeredthose who already saw intuitively that this present lifewas transitory and incomplete and wanted to knowhow to be incorporated into the main timeless Streamof Life itself. The questions are really much the same.In both cases men wanted to know how they could beat one with Life's real purpose. And of course theystill do. He said that there were really two main prin­ciples of living on which all true morality and wis-

90 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

dam ,might be said to depend. The first was to loveGod with the whole of a man's personality, and thesecond to love his fellow men as much and in the sameway as he naturally loved himself. If these two prin;.ciples were obeyed Christ said that a man would be inharmony with the Purpose of Life, which transcendstime.

These two principles, one of which deals with theInvisible and Unchanging, the other with the visibl~

and variable, cover the total relationships of a man'slife'.· Christ made them intensely practical and indis­solubly connected. The expression of love for Goddid not lie in formal piety nor in mystical contempla­tion, but in obedience to what He believed to be thewill of God, which very often meant, in fact, the suc­couring and service of other men. A man could notbe 'friends with' God on any other terms than com­plete obedience to Him, and that included being

,'friends with' his fellow men. Christ stated emphatic­ally that it was quite impossible in the nature of thingsfor a man to be at peace with God and at variancewith his neighbour. This disquieting fact is oftenhushed up, but it is undeniable that Christ said it, andthe truth of it is enshrined (or should we say moreproperly elnbalmed) in the petition for forgiveness inthe all-tao-familiar 'Lord'sPrayer'.

The purpose of Life would seem to be the gradualwinning of men to a willing loyalty to these two prin­ciples, the establishing of the Rule of God. Christlabelled the first one 'primary and most important',probably because unless principles and values are firstestablished by loving the true God there will not· be

LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES (II) 91

'enough love to go round'. The world would go onloving its own selected circle, despising, exploiting orhating those outside it unless their hearts were firstattuned to 'the Father'. Those who have exalted thesecond principle to. the neglect of the first have againand again proved the wisdom of Christ's choice oftheir order.

IX. LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES (II)

3. What is Really vVrong-with t}z,e World?

THIS IS an extremely important question if only be­cause it is asked so often and answered in so manydifferent ways. Christ answered it, not directly, butquite plainly by implication. It is here, in diagnosis,that it is perhaps most important of all to realize theparamount authority of what Christ said. None of usthinks or speaks or feels without bias, and all of us areprone to fit facts to a theory. Christ had no bias andno theory: He came to give us the facts, and they are,quite plainly, that this 'power-to-Iove' which Herecommended should be expended on God and otherpeople, has been turned in on itself. The basic prob­lems of happiness are not intellectual, but emotional.It is 'o:ut of the heart', according to Christ, that thereproceed all those things. which spoil relationshipswhether between individuals or between groups ofpeople. .

It is obvious, if we accept Christ's two great prin­ciples, that 'sin' will lie in the refusal to follow them.To Christ the most serious sin was not the misdirec­tion of the love-energy, which might be due to ignor-

92 YOU R GOD 1ST 00 SMA L L

an~e or mere carelessness, but. the deliberate refusal toallow it to flow out either to God or other people. Thisaccounts for some of His surprising reversals of con­ventional moral judgement. It was pride and self­righteousness and the exploitation of others whichcalled forth His greatest anger. Self-love in fact Hesaw as the arch-enemy. It was this which must berecognized and deliberately killed if a man were tofollow His way of constructive love.

A few moments' thought will show us how true wasHis insight. While there is no 'sin' that we can namewhich does not spring from love of self, yet the sinswhich do most damage and cause most suffering arethose which have tile highest content of self-love.

Christ's time, in the circumstances, was short andHe wasted none of it in dealing with mere symptonls.It was the motive and attitude of the heart, i.e. theemotionat centre, with which He was concerned. Itwas this that He called on men to change, for it isplain that once the inner affections are aligned withGod the outward expression of the life willloak afteritself.

4- What sort of people does God intend men to be?

To this question Christ gave an explicit ~nswer

which, if considered seriously, is .a real shock to themind. He gave a complete reversal of conventionalvalues and ambitions, though many people miss thisundoubted fact because of the poetic form and archaiclanguage of what are now called the 'Beatitudes?Their revolutionary character becomes apparent atonce, however, if We substitute the word 'happy' for

L I FE'S BelP L E S (II) 93

the word 'blessed' fair), and if weparaphrase the . the AuthorizedVersion and .put the thoughts more into the form inwhich we. normally accept facts and definitions. Wemay.furtlier .throw .their real·character into relief bycontrasting each 'beatitude' with the normal view ofthe man of the world throughout the centuries. Wecan doit like this:

Most people think:l Happy are the pushers: for they get on in the world.

'), H ap'PY are the hard-boiled: for they never let lifehurtihem.

3 Happy are they who complain: for they get theirown way in the end.

Happy are the blase: for they never worry over theirSlns.

-fHappy are the slave-drivers: for they get results.bHappy are the knowledgeable men of the world: for

they know their way around;Tappy are the trouble-makers: for people have to

take notice of them.

Jesus Christ said: "t".,J

Happy are those who realize spiritual poverty: ~'f~}they have already entered the Kingdom ofReality.

1-$f!fft,J;l....~re they who bear thei~ share of the world's'tfpazn:;n the long run they wtll know more happi­ness than those who avoid it.

f Happy are those who accept life and their' own limi­. tations: they will find more in life than anybody.

S (II) 95

set of arbitrary

UJ,~)vu.)(;. injustice,

recognizeregulations.

5·

as the greatest .L.I....JL... U..L u ......~~

part of the stuff of life. He did. not pretendthat do not exist. He coped with them personallyby restoring, wherever possible, the true order ofhealth, sanity, and constnlctive goodness. He made nopromise that those who followed Him in His plan of

. re-establishing life on its proper basic principles wouldenjoy special immunity from pain and sorrow-nordid He Himself experience such immunity. He did,however, promise enough joy and courage, enoughlove and confidence in God to enable those who wentHis way to do far more than survive. Because theywould be in harmony with the very Life and Spirit ofGod they would be able to defeat evil. They wouldbe able to take the initiative and destroy evil withgood.

Although Christ gave no explicit explanation of theexistence of pain and evil in the world, He gave certainimplied facts which are well worth our serious con­sideration.

(a) The 'breaking of the rules' means suffering. Theoperation of self-love on a huge scale, which means awholesale breaking of His two fundamental rules forhuman life, cannot but mean a highly complex andwidespread 'infection' of suffering. Men are not iso­lated units and their every action in some degree affects

It is quite plain that Christ is setting up ideals ofdifferent quality from. those commonly accepted. Heis outlining the sort of human characteristics whichmay fairly be said to be co-operating with the purposeof Life, and He is by implication exposing the conven­tional mode of living which is at heart based on self­love and leads to all kinds of unhappiness.

.It should be noticed that this 'recipe' for happy andconstructive living is of universal application. It cutsacross differences of temperament and variations incapacity. It outlines the kind of character which ispossible for any man, gifted or relatively ungifted,strong or weak, clever or slow in the uptake. Once'more we find Christ placing His finger not upon theexternals, but upon the vital internal attitude.

It should also be noted that although we have calledHis definitions 'revolutionary' they are not fantastic.Indeed a great many people would probably realizethat in following them men would become their realselves and not the greedy, competitive, self-loving char­acters that cause so many of the world's troubles.Christ is restoring the true order, which/man can

94Happy are those who long to be

will fully realize their ambition.Happy are those who are ready to make allowances

and to forgive: they will ~n~'!E!!!:~l?v,e~od.Happy are those who are reattn the~f thoughts and

feelings: in the end they will see the ultimateReality, God.

Happy are those who help others to live together:they will be known to be doing God's work.

C 11? L E S (II) 97

that Christ spoke,is a power of

fact His

there can beand acted, onevil 0p1eratmlQ'claim to be

We aregard evil as 'error',tion,. or simply as a'n In(~x1=Hlcable on...r ..""'''......

more the mind does notGod's own explanation-that a spirit ofoperating in the world. We find Christ speaking quiteplainly of this spirit as responsible for disease and in­sanity as well as bdng the unremitting enemy of thosewho want to follow the new, true order.

Modern man has a lust, for full explanation andhabitually considers himself in no way/morally boundunless he is in· full possesion of all the facts. Hence, ofcourse, the prevalence of non-committal agnosticism.Yet it would seem that Christ, God-become-Man, didnot give men a full explanation of the origin and oper­ation of the evil forces in this world. (It is perfectlypossible that in our present space-time existence wecould not comprehend it, anyway.) But He did recog­nize evil as evil, not as a mere absence of good: Hedid, wherever He found it possible, destroy evil. Hedid indicate the lines along which evil could be de­feated and He did talk of the positive resources whichwould be necessary for such defeat, and these we mustconsider a little later.

96 yo :IT R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

other people. The multiplication of the effects ofcountless acts by millions of self-centred, instead ofGod-centred, individuals may reasonably be thoughtto be destroying the world. The only way of beingrescued from the vicious sin-suffering-death circle inwhich the world is involved is for men to re-centretheir lives on God. This they can do by deliberatelygiving their confidence to the Character which Christexhibited in person and thereby seeing that real liv­ing, in harmony with God, lies in following Him andHis basic principles.

There is thus no easy answer to the evil and suffer­ing problem and no easy road to its solution. ButChrist tackled the matter radically and realisticallyby winning the allegiance of a few men anq women toa new way of living. Most people, he said, were drift­ing along the broad road of· conventional standardswhich has in it the threat of destruction. The narrowroad of following the basic rules .which, because it is inharrno:t:lY with God, is not affected by what we calldeath, was being followed by comparatively few. His

, plan of rescue (or salvation, to use a much misusedword) had to begin with a tiny minority. They wereto be the spear-head of good against evil.

(b) Christ definitely spoke of a power of spiritualevil, and, using the language of His contemporaries,He called this power 'Satan', 'theDevil', or 'theEvilOne'. Now whatever mystery lies behind the existenceof such an evil spiritual power-whether we accept aMiltonic idea of a fallen angelic power or whether weconceive the evil spirit in· the world as arising out ofthe cumulative effects of centuries of selfish living-

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

X. FUR THE R BAS I C QUE S T ION S

What is the truth about sin and forgiveness?SOONER OR later this question in some form or othermust be asked and answered. For the problem of im­perfect man's safe approach to the Moral Perfectionof God is the business of every religion worthy of thename. Because most people in this modern age havealmost no sense of God there is also almost no senseof 'sin'-for in human experience there is a significantconnexion between the two. Where the sense of Godbecomes something like a reality there springs. up,sooner or later, a sense of guilt and failure. This isequally true of the most primitive as well as of themost highly developed religions of mankind. Andwhere there is this sense of sin there is a deeply rootedconviction that 'something ought to be done about it'.Animal, even human, sacrifices, propitiatory offeringsof various kinds, and acts of ceremonial cleansing-alltestify to the desire to 'do something' to bridge themoral gulf between the holiness of God and the sinful­ness of man.

A great deal of sentimental (i.e. unreal) stuff hasbeen spoken and written about the matter of sin andforgiveness, and we must therefore clear our minds alittle more before we see the significance of whatChrist had to say about this very important subject.Let us start, then, by making these observations.

I. We are not concerned with (artificial' guilt or sin

In the first part of this book we considered how con~

science could make a man feel guilty simply because

certain ~T~nrl~~.~~

his mindligions, '-"~~..I..I."L.l.a.Ull

to excite inwhichactual beforewhich Christ attacked with bitter scorn, rel)re~Selt1ts

tendency at its highest, but it is a to\ thinkthat Pharisaism disappeared after the death of Christ.The danger of such a system, and the reason whyChrist attacked it so violently, is that its values areartificial. The proud and correct feel 'right with God'just when they are not, and the" sensitive humble manfeels hopeless and overburdened for the wrong reasons.(Christ's little cameo of the Pharisee and the tax­collector at their prayers is an unforgettable comment­ary on this point.)

2. We are not concerned with mere comparison withperfection

We have already spoken in the first part of thisbook of the dangers of worshipping 'one hundred percent' as God. A great deal of the sense of sin andshame and gu~lt induced in certain types of people issimply due to their (imaginary) comparison of theirhuma~ standards with what they conceive to be theDivine Standards. Of course they feel failures! Youhave only to raise the standard, and go on raising it, tomake anyone feel a hopeless blundering idiot. Thismay be what we are in comparison with the wisdom ofGod, but, to put it at its crudest, it would be an extra­ordinarily ungentlemanly thing for Him merely to

100 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

keep raising the standard I After all, it is a foregoneconclusion that no man can compete with his Creator,and there is neither sense nor justice in thinking thatthe Creator intends His creatures to feel permanentlyinferior and humiliated compared with Himself I Yetthis comparison, cloaked and disguised, is often madein a certain type of sermon and a certain type of. re­ligious book. But the feeling of hopelessness and in­adequacy it engenders is quite wrongly taken to be'conviction of sin'.

3. We are not· concerned with mere humiliationQuite a lot of people, if psychologically tested, would

react with resentment to the words 'sin', 'guilt', 'dis- .obedience', 'punishment',and so on. This is by nomeans necessarily because their adult lives are so proudand complacent that they resent criticism, but becausethere still exists in their mind~ a tender, touchy.areaconnected with the misdemeanours of childhood. Un­less they were exceptionally lucky it is quite probablethat, though they have long ago forgotten the circum­stances, they still half-consciously remember tneshame, rage, impotence, and humiliation of childishnaughtiness and its punishment. It was not withoutstrain and conflict that they won free from adultdomination, and it feels to them like a voluntary re­sumption of the humiliations of childhood to confessthemselves 'guilty sinners'. For a little boy to besmacked on his behind may be of little significance,but for an adult ma~ to be beaten is an unspeakabledegradation. It is of course not really a renascence ofthis childish guilt and humiliation that the reputable

STIONS 101

contact(though by no meansalong at least four differentattempt to illustrate.

(a) We will suppose that a man who is rather proudof his ability to knock off a quick effective little paint.;ing discovers a bit of canvas fastened to a wall. For hisown pleasure and the appreciation of his friends herapidly paints in a bright, effective,' and amusing littlepicture. Stepping back to see his own handiwork bet­ter he suddenly discovers that he has painted his littlebit of nonsense on the comer of a vast painting ofsuperb quality, so huge that he had not realized itsextent or even that there was a picture there at all.His feelings are rather like what a man feels when hesuddenly sees the vast sweep of God's design in life, .and observes the cheap and discordant little effort hisown living so far represents when seen against thatbackground. That is real conviction of sin.

(b) To illustrate the second way in which a realsense of sin may come, we will use a story which webelieve is true, though it has not been possible to checkits source. A young man of the 'incorrigible' varietygrows up work-shy, and by a certain native quicknessof wit manages for years to escape serious trouble. Hisfavourite saying is: 'I live my own life, and I don'tcare tuppence for anybody.' Eventually, however, hisself-confidence overreaches itself and he is convicted of

102 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

serious crime and goes to prison for three years. Whilein prison he is hard and quite unrepentant. 'What Ido with my life,' he says defiantly, 'is nobody else'sbusiness. I shan't make the SRlne mistake twice.' Indue course he leaves prison anq, since he has nowhereelse to go, decides to spend a few nights at home whilehe 'looks around'. He hasn't seen his mother since hesaw her, plump, rosy, and tearful, out of the comer ofhis eye, at his trial. But when the door of his home is

, opened to him by a worn, grey-haired old woman, hedoes not see at once what has happened. For a secondor two he simply stares, then he cries, 'Oh, mother,what have I done °to you?" and bursts into the' tearsthat, neither punishment nor prison had ever wrungfrom him.

This story is simply an illustration of how a manmay suddenly realize the hurt he does to others by hisown self-centredness. It does not, unfortunately, oftenhappen that a man sees as vividly as in that story theconsequences of his wrong actions. But when he doeshe may experience a genuine conviction of sin. WhenSaul Kane in Masefield's Everlasting Mercy had hiseyes opened, he suddenly saw 'the harm I done inbeing me'. That is just it. When a man sees notmerely that his life is ou~ of harmony with God's pur­pose, but realizes that that disharmony has injuredand infected the lives of other people, he begins to feela 'sinner' in earnest.

(c) To illustrate the next point we must tell a simplestory which will no doubt make the sophisticate~

smile. Two young men of the same age choose diver­gent paths. A is determined to squeeze all th~ pleasure

103can. B is equally

gibes of his friend,hard in his spareSU'ODC)Se that the

for several'got on'

and has a Tesponsible has ad-vanced very little. His reactions seeing B againmay quite ~ossibly be just unreasonable envy, butequally pOSSIbly A may say to himself: ~What a foolI've been I What opportunities I threw away. B is justthe sort of man Lcould have been!'

This nalYe little tale illustrates quite well how agenuine 'conviction of sin' may arise. A man who haslived selfishly and carelessly meets someone who has'plainly found happiness and satisfaction in co-operat­ing with what he can see of God's pUTpose. The formeTmay pass the whole thing off as a joke. 'Of course, oldso-and-so always was a bit religious'-but he may quitepossibly see in the other man the sort of person hehimself might have been. The standards he mockedand the God he kept at arm's length have produced inthe other man something he really very badly wants.If his reflection is, 'What a fool I've been' he too isbeginning to get a genuine sense of sin. ' , ,

(d) 'Ihe fouTth roadalong which the 'conviction 0fsin' may come is rather harder to explain. It is reallythe discovery of the enormous and implacablestrength of real goodness and real love. The insincereman hates and fears the real truth: the sexually irre­sponsible man affects to be cynical about real and en­during passion, but secTetly he hates and feaTS it: the

feel a passing sympathyof sacrifice found in primitivewill need some assuring that he can be, andis, ac(:entedinto fellowship with God. He wants, desperately some­times, to be in harmony with the meaning and pur­pose of life, arid yet he feels helpless to 'make theatonement' that he senses is necessary.

To anyone therefore who takes the unique claim ofChrist seriously it is of the very greatest interest andsignificance to observe how He dealt with the questionof sin and man's reconciliation with .God. The follow­ing facts emerge from the records:

(I) Christ very rarely called men 'sinners' and as far.as we know never attempted deliberately to makethem feel sinners, except in the case of the entrenchedself-righteous, where He used the assault and batteryof scathing denunciation. (This, we may surmise, isan instance of what He saw to be a desperate ill requir­ing a desperate remedy.) Some evangelists, whosechief weapon is the production of a sense of sin, wouldfind themselves extraordinarily short of ammunitionif they were obliged to use nothing but the recordedwords of Christ. This is not, of course, to say that thelife and words of Christ did not produce that genuinesense of guilt and failure which is outlined above, but

X I. C H R IS TAN D THE QUE S T ION 0 F SIN

THERE ARE, of course, several other genuine ways Inwhich a man feels a moral failure before God. Buthowever he may arrive at the point of realization hewill, sooner or later, realize what may be described asthe bankruptcy of his position. He sees, for instance,that his life has done harm to others, that he hasspoiled the Design, that he has played the fool with agood deal of his life. He realizes, dimly perhaps, thathe has offended against the Order of Things. Yet

104 YOU R GOD I S TOO SMA L L

egocentric man hates and fears the incalculable forceof the personality selflessly devoted to a cause. Inshort, self-centred and evil people really fear the good.They express their fear by mockery,' cynicism, and,when circumstances allow, by active persecution.

Now when this sense of the strength of goodnessand love touches a man, whether it be by someoneelse's life, by something he reads or sees, or by aninner touch in his soul, he is really convicted of sin.He knows that sooner or later the game is up-theNature of Life is Good and not Evil. He· suddenly.sees. that the goodness and love he had despised asweakness are in reality incredibly strong. Peter oncefelt this about Christ and in a momeJ:)t of panic criedout: 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lora!'Some people, of course, succeed in keeping the fear ()f,goodness (*hich is really the fear of God) at a safedistance alL. their lives, but they live in continualdanger of reality breaking in. And when it does therewill be a strong sense of sin.

10 7that a deliberate truthand love would resultciliation with God Impo:ssil)le.

N ow if it is true Godwill readily be seen that the n-.-.~n+""+

reality, hypocrisy, deceit, lying,choose to call sins against truth,makes fellowship with other peopletreatment impossible. Forgiveness must thenin a restoration to Reality, i.e. Truth and Love.

(3) We must now ask whether Christ had anythingto say about the clamant question of 'atonement' men­tioned above. He certainly hinted at it. He spoke ofgiving His lifeas 'a ransom for many', and at the lastmeal which He shared with His followers He spoke ofbreaking His own body and shedding His own blood'for the remission of sins'.

Now it is surely possible that to this question ofatonement (as to the question of surviving death)Christ, whom we are considering as God in humanform, could give the best and most complete answer byactual demonstration. He personally, being both Godand Man, effected the reconciliation that man alonewas powerless to make.

There are innumerable theories centring aroundthe death of Christ as the atonement for the world'ssins, and many of them frankly do not commendthemselves to the honest modern mind. May we sug­gest the following way of 1001<:ing at the matter.

We have already spoken of the vicious sin-suffering­death circle in which the world is involved, and of theindividual man's helplessness to free himself from the

106 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

it is undeniable that He did not set out to impress asense of sin on His hearers.

(2) We find Christ unequivocably claiming the right'to forgive sins', but the grounds on which the sin ofman can be forgiven are not, in the recorded words ofChrist, the conventional ones presupposed by manyChristian.s. We find in Christ an intimate connexionbetween the .forgiveness of sins and the existence oflove in a man's heart. 'Forgive us our trespasses as weforgive them that trespass against us' is so familiar inour ears that we hardly grasp the fact that Christjoined fellowship with God and fellowship with otherhuman beings indissolubly. 'Except ye from yourhearts forgive everyone his trespasses', He is reportedto have said after a particularly telling parable,'neither will my heavenly Father forgive you yourtrespasses'. Moreover, on one occasion He said of awoman who was apparently something of a notorietythat 'her sins, which are many, are forgiven: for sheloved much'. It seems to me consonant with Christ'steaching to hold that love is a prerequisite of forgive­ness, and I take His consequent little story to thePharisee to be another of those apparent 'non sequiturs'of which the reply to the question 'Who is my neigh­bour?' is a classic example.

On the other hand, it would seem that there is apossibility of a man's putting himself outside forgive­ness by the 'sin against the Holy Spirit'. This, froman examination of the context, would appear to be acombination of refusing to. recognize truth and refus­ing to allow the heart to love others. If God Himselfis both Truth and Love it would be logical to suppose

108 YOU It GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

ent!anglement of his' own wrong-doing, let alonecleanse himself from the cumulative infection of theworld's selfish living.

Suppose now that God, who has become humanand represents in one person both His. own Godhoodand Humanity, allows Himself, though personallyguiltless, to be involved in the complex. God, now,who made the inexorable rules of cause and ~ffect, .de­liberately exposes ·Himself to the consequences of theworld's self-love and sin. Because He is God, <to dosuch a thing once in time is indicative of an eternalattitude, and we view the Character of God in an en­tirely different light if we see Him not abrogating jus­tice, not issuing a mandate of reversal of natural lawand order, but overcoming a repugnance which wecannot begin to imagine by letting Himself· be Repre­sentative Man and suffering in His own Person thelogical and inevitable suffering and death which theworld has earned. The Moral Perfection which a manquite rightly dreads, has deliberately consented to be­come under the limitations of humanity, the focalpoint of the assault of evil. We cannot imagine whatthis would involve, but even to begin to think that itmight be true takes the breath away.

Christians believe that this ,act of reconciliation wasthe inner meaning behind the rather sordid historicalfact of Christ's death. The unreality, the pseud,p­religion, the bitter hatred, the greed and jealousy thatlay behind the judicial murder of Christ were. themere setting. The fact would have been the samewherever and whenever Christ appeared : evil wouldclash with Incarnate Good, and whether it was a cross,

109gas-chamber,humaI).ity~s

XII. S

WE SHPILL.attc~mlJt

&imply record It ISthat when a man sees that.establishing a rapprochement between tilms:elfMan and underwent the (for Him) indescribable igno-miny of death; his attitude toward God is from thenon profoundly changed. The inarticulate but incurablesense that 'something ought to be done aboutit', towhich we referred above, is almost miraculously set atrest. Though it may defeat his reason to define exactlywhat has been done, a man knows that the 'something'has been done. The idea of God, which was almostcertainly a discomfort and possibly a threat, howeverreason'might argue the point, is entirely changed. Theformer inevitable Judge is seen to be Lover and Res­cuer, and if the revision of ideas is at all sudden thereis bound to be a considerable emotional release.

To assent mentally to the suggestion that 'Jesus diedfor me' is unhappily only too easy for certain types ofmind. But really to believe that God Him&elf cut theknot of man's entanglement by a personal and un­believably costly act is a much deeper affair. The big­ger the concept of God the more the mind staggers atthe thought, but once it is accepted as true it is nottoo much to say that the whole personality is reorien­tated. For most men in whom a moral sense is operat-

110 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

ing" at all, are, unconsciously perhaps, trying to 'putup a case' to justify their own conduct. The effort mayonly rarely reach the conscious level of the mind, butit is there, and the real 'conviction of sin' which wedefined above, however much it may be held at arm'slength, is always in the offing. To realize that theeffort to justify oneself, the hopeless effort to repay theoverdraft, can safely be abandoned, is an unspeakablerelief. It was all based on a false idea, that the centralconfidence of life should be in the self. It is a blow tothe face of pride and a. wrench to the habits of themind to transfer that central confidence to the OneReal Perfect Man, who was, and is, also God. But ifthe change-over is effected, the relief and release isenormous and energy formerly repressed, is set free.This is what the New Testament means by being savedby faith in Christ.

This is, of course, far from being mere theory.People· in all ages, of all nations, and of widely differ­ing temperaments, have reacted in much the sameway to Christ's Act of Reconciliation. Indeed so greatis the weight of evidence that it would be sensible toadmit that, if we cannot understand what happenedand are at a loss to explain it, there is a mystery herebeyond our powers of definition. We might even havethe humility to say that God-become-man did some­thing incalculable, the greatness of which we can onlyappreciate in a very limited degree.

But, though we may well be awed, we need not ceaseto use our minds, and we cannot but admire thesuperb psychological accuracy with which this Actwas designed to touch the characters of men. Those

init is the 'rich' who are .+.,,~~~. .,-,I

empty away'.Nevertheless, although we have here a touchstone

to reveal existing character, we have a great deal morethan that..Should the proud and s~l£-lovingman oncesee that God is like that, there may be, and sometimesis, a revolution in his whole scale of values. Should thecareless-living man once see that this Act is a crystal­lizing in time of what is always happening-that everykind of sin, including apathy, is at heart seeking todestroy God-he too may &ee life with very differenteyes. God may thunder His commands from MountSinai and men may fear, yet remain at heart exactlyas they were before. But let a man once see his Goddown in the arena as a Man, suffering,. tempted, sweat­ing, and agonized-finally dying a criminal's death,he is a hard man indeed who is untouched. ForChrist's claim to be not only God but RepresentativeMan has had an almost incredible magnetic power.Over nineteen centuries have passed since that judicialmurder in that turbulent little country of Palestine,yet still men see the Death as a personal matter. Itseems to be designed to meet their own half-consciousneeds. 'The Son of God who loved me and gave Him-

whether the Resurrectionfundamental issue on whichreally depends. Argument on bothsides has been con­tinuous and vehement for centuries, and it is not verylikely that at this distance from the event any freshevidence, 'Or even fresh opinion, will emerge. It doesnot seem to be a matter that can be finally settled bythe most careful study or the most ingenious argu­ment. The very lack of chronological arrangementand careful mutual endorsement that characterizesthe. stories of the Resurrection appears to one side asevidence of their slipshod and .even imaginativenature, while to the other the same things seem to bethe ingenuousness of those who were so convinced ofwhat they had seen that they had no need to build upa foolproof body of evidence. Again, the fact that therecorded appearances were made only to those whowere 'on Jesus' side' is enough for one group to con­clude that they are of purely subjective value, whilefor the other it is plain proof that only those who areat. heart reconciled to God can even see the reality ofLife once it is detached from the present space-timelimitations.

We do not propose, therefore, to attempt to marshalthe arguments on one side or the other, but merely to

XIII. DEMO NS TRATIO N WIT H THE ENEMYWE HAVE mentioned above. that Jesus Christ did not,as far as we know, say a great deal about the questionof sin and its forgiveness, but gave a complete and satis­factory answer by personal demonstration. The samething is true of His reply to the· other question whichhas always been in men's minds: 'Is there life, afterdeath?' For although in His recorded teaching theexistence of a real world, unaffected by time and space,is assumed, the complete and satisfactory answer tothe question of whether a, human being could survivethe universal experience of death was given by per­sonal demonstration. An observed historical fact, a.s inthe case of the. Act· of Reconciliation, provided themost effective reply to mankind's questioning.

It is, of course, impossible to exaggeratethe import­ance of the historicity of what is comJUonly known asthe Resurrection. If, after all His claims and promises,Christ had· died and merely lived: on as a fragrantmemory, He could only be revered as an extremelygood but profoundly mistaken man. His claiJUs to beGod, His claims to be Himself the very principle of

lIZ YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

self*£or me', wrote St. Paul, as though for the momentthe Act affected him alone; but the words have beenechoed unprompted by an imposing number since hisday. So wide has been the acceptance of this recon­cili(ltion that we simply cannot easily dismiss it, par­ticularly as the only possible alternative way ofthought is a simple denial of the impasse which is a'fact' to every spiritually sensitive person.

II4 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

ask three questions which must in fairness be answeredif the historical fact of the Resurrection is rejected.

I. What changed the early disciples?No fair reading of the records can deny that almost

all the disciples of Jesus deserted Him at the disasterof the Crucifixion, and that afterwards, with theirLeader"dead and their hopes at zero, they were livingin considerable' personal apprehension. Yet within avery short time we find them, quite a considerablebody of men, filled with an extraordinary courage andspiritual vitality, defying the power of both paganand Jewish authorities. They are proclaiming openlythat they had themselves seen Jesus alive, not once,but several times, after His public execution, and call­ing all men to share their belief that this Man wasindeed God. Nor was this a short-lived spurt of defiantcourage, but a steady flame of conviction whichbaffled, embarrassed, and infuriated the authorities foryears as the movement began to spread throughoutthe then-known world. It is surely straining credulityto bursting point to believe that this dramatic andsustained change of attitude was founded on hallucina­tion, hysteria, or an ingenious swindle. We maythoroughly disapprove of the Christian faith, but itisimpossible to deny that the early Christians quite defi.;;nitely believed that they had seen, touched, handled,and conversed with Christ after He had been crucified,taken down, and laid in a rock-hewn vault sealed andguarded by Roman soldiers.

all four of . with supernaturalon the'part of Christ, and unless each man is

going to constitute himself a judge of what Christ saidand what He did not say (which is not far from everyman being his own evangelist), it is impossible to avoidthe conclusion that He believed Himself to be Godand spoke therefore with quite unique authority. Nowif He believed thus and spoke thus and failed to risefrom the dead, He was, without question, a lunatic.He was quite plainly a young idealist suffering fromfolie de grandeur on the biggest possible scale, andcannot on, that account be regarded as the World'sGreatest Teacher. No Mahomet or Buddha or othergreat teacher ever came within miles of making sucha shocking boast about himself. Familiarity hasblinded many people to the outrageousness of Christ'sclaim and traditional reverence inhibits them fromproperly assessing it. If He did not in fact rise, Hisclaim was false, and He was a very dangerous person­ality indeed.

3. Why are so many. Christians sure that Christ notonly rose) but is alive today?

Though this question may enrage the critic it is aone. The common experience of Christians of all

and of a great many nation-

thepenetrating chal­

r'A-nn'lnr'Prl that Christ is alive.

XIV. THE ABOLITION OF DEATH

THE 'FOCUSED' God, Jesus Christ, revealed to man notmerely adequate working-instructions for meeting lifehappily and constructively, but also the means bywhich he could be linked with the timeless Life· ofGod. 'Heaven'is not, so to speak, the reward for 'beinga_good boy'(though many people seem to think so),bl}t is the continuation and expansion of a quality oflife which begins when a man's central confidence istransferred from himself to God-become-man. This'faith' links him here and now with truth and love,anA it is significant that Jesus Christ on more thanone occasion is reported to have spoken of 'eternal life'as being entered into now, though plainly to extendwithout limitation after the present incident that wecall life. The man who believes in the authenticity of

message and puts his confidence in it alreadypos­the quality of 'eternal life' (John 38

\ 524, 641

,

comes to bring men not merely 'life', but lifeand more enduring quality (John 101 °,1028

,

n6 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

aliti<:!s for nineteen centuries cannot be airily dismissed.Men and women by the thousand today are convincedthat the One whom they serve is not a heroic figure ofthe past, but a living Personality with spiritual re­sources upon which they can draw. A man may find

, difficulty in writing a poem, but if he cries, 'Oh; Wil­liam Shakespeare, help mel' nothing whatever hap­pens. A man may be terribly afraid, but if he cries,'Oh, Horatio Nelson, help me!' there is no sort ofreply. But if he is at the end of his moral resourcesor cannot by effort of will muster up sufficient positivelove and goodness and he cries, 'Oh, Christ, help mel's9mething happens ,at once. The sense of spiritualreinforcement, of drawing "spiritual vitality from aliving source, is so marked that Christians cannot helpbeing convinced that their Hero is far more than anoutstanding figure of the past.

The fact that this conviction only comes to thosewho have centred their inner confidence on JeSllSChrist seems to rob it of all validity in the eyes of thehostile critic. Yet if, by an effort of imagination, sucha critic would concede for a moment that the claimsof Christ were true, he must admit that the phenome­non is logical. If Christ revealed the true way of livingand offered human beings the possibility of being inharmony with the Life of God (i.e. 'eternal life'),.itmust follow that anyone living in any other way is bythat continued action incapable of appreciating thequality of real living unless and until he 'takes theplunge' into it. A man may write and argue and evenwrite poems about human love, but he does not knowlove until he is in it, and even then his knowledge of it

bitter , and restm(~la:nCJJ.OJ.y images were brought face to face

fact: 'Jesus Christ hath abolished death.'The fact seems to many to be too good to be true.

But if it does seem so, it is because we have not reallyaccepted the revolutionary character of God's personalentry into the world. Once it dawns upon us that God(incredible_as it may well sound) has actually identifiedHimself with Man, that He has taken the initiative ineffecting the necessary Reconciliation of Man withBimself, and has shown the way by which littlehuman personalities can begin to embark on that im­mense adventure of Living of which God is the Centre,death-the discarding of a temporary machineadapted only for a temporary stage-may begin toseem negligible.

We have so far spoken only of 'death' as it affectsthe man whose inner confidence is in Christ, His Char­acter, His Values, and above aU His claim to be theexpressed character of the Inexpressible God. There is

brightly cheerful note in either the Gospels or thethe New Testament for those whose real in­

is in their own capabilities or in the schemesworld-system. It is (as St.

nauseam), only 'in) Christ, 'in)also God, that death

118 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

cal death: not merely that it is an experience robbed ofits terror, but that as an experience it does not exist atall. For some reason or other Christ's words (whichHeaven knows are taken literally enough when menare trying to prove a point about pacifism or divorce,for example) are taken with more than a pinch of saltwhen He talks about the common experience of deathas it affects the man whose basic trust is in Himself.'If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death'(John 851

), 'Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shallnever die' (John II 26). It is impossible to avoid theconclusion that ,the meaning that Christ intended toconvey was that death was a completely negligible ex­perience to the man who had already begun to live lifeof the eternal quality.

'Jesus Christ hath abolished death', wrote Paulmany years ago, but there have been very few sincehis day who appear to have believed it. The power ofthe dark old god, rooted no doubt in instinctive fear,is hard to shake, and a great many Christian writers,though possessing the brightest hopes of 'Life Here­after' cannot, it seems, accept the abolition of death.'The valley of the shadow', 'Death's gloomy portal','the bitter pains of death', and a thousand other expres­sions all bear witness 'to the fact that a vast numberof Christians do not really believe what Christ said.Probably the greatest offender is John Bunyan, writingin his Pilgrim)s Progress of the icy river through whichthe pilgrims must pass before they reach the CelestialCity. Thousands, possibly millions, must have beeninfluenced in their impressionable years by readingPilgfim)s Progress. Yet the 'icy river' is entirely a pro-

to causethey It is

a mistake to in general the l<eceiving of thisgift led to excitable demonstration. Its normal func­tion was to produce in human life the qualities whichPaul catalogues in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace,patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, adaptability,and self-control.. These are in fact the very qualitieswhich men so easily 'run short of', and which, takentogether, comprise a character corresponding to theRepresentative Man, Christ Himself.

It is this invasion of human life by something (orSomeone) from outside which the modern mind findsdifficult to accept. We are all 'conditioned' by themodem outlook, which regards the whole of life as aclosed' system. A great many things may happen in­side that system, but it is unthinkable that the wholehuge cause-and-effect process should in any way beinterfered with from 'outside'.

But when we suppose, even only for the sake of argu­ment,. that the teaching of Christ is true-that· this

life is acted against an immeasurable backclothtm:leless existence-it does not appear in the least

certain conditions of harmonythat Perfection of

120 YOU R GOD 1ST 0 0 SMA L L

corned. We have no reason to suppose that death isanything but a disaster to those who have no grip onthe timeless Life of God.

XV. THEORY INTO. PRACTICE

IF A man accepts the fact that the Character of God isfocused in Christ, if he accepts as true the Act ofReconciliation and the Demonstration with Death;and if he himself is willing to abandon self-centred liv-.ing and follow the way of real living which Christboth demonstrated and taught, he is still not out of thewood. For he finds that apart from exceptional effortor spasmodic resolution he is not spiritually robustenough to live life on the new level. He simply has notgot it in him to live for long as a pioneer of the newhumanity. He can see that it is right, and he candesire, even passionately, to follow the new way, butin actual practice he does not achieve this new qualityof living. He may blame his own past, he may blamethe ever-present effect of the God-ignoring world in

. which he has to live, he may even reach the melan­choly conclusion that it is all a beautiful theory butthat it cannot be worked out in practice.

Thi,s very natural impasse was, of course, anticipatedby Christ. He knew very well, for example, that thefollowers of His ow1.l day would very quickly collapsewhen the support and inspiration of His own person- .ality were removed by death. He therefore promisedthem a new Spirit who should provide them with allthe courage, moral reinforcement, love, patience, e:t;l­durance and other qualities which they would need.

122 YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

come~upon something of beauty, truth, goodness, orlove, and find the 'other end' is connected with thePermanent. At such times -the closed-system idea isquite plainly inadequate.

N ow we may wish, especially if we are more thana little tired of the closed-system idea and faintly butdefinitely conscious of the Real World, that these in­vasions might be more frequent or more demonstrable.Nevertheless, this much we do know, and can reason­ably expect, that if a man honestly wants to followway of Christ and,. as it were, opens his own T'\pr"r\n_

ality to God, he will without any doubt'receive some­thing of the Spirit of God. As his own capacity growsand as his own channel of com;munication widens hewill receive lllore. John goes so far as to call this thereceiving of God's own heredity (I John 39

). This doesnot, of course, turn a man into a spiritual~st medium IThe man's own real self is purified and heightened,and though he will come tQ bear a strong family like­ness to Christ he will, paradoxically enough, be more'himself' than he was before.

We may here point out the great difference that hascome to exist between the Christianity of the earlydays and that of today. To us it has become a per­formance, a keeping of rules, while to the men of thosedays it was, plainly, an invasion of their lives by a newquality of life altogether. The difference is due surelyto the fact that we are so very slow (even though we

. realize our impotence) to discard the closed-systemidea. We have so little of what the New Testamentcalls 'faith'. And since it is fairly obvious that 'faith'is the first requisite in making contact between this

teaching oftantalizing but un­sooner or later you

rn,~ncrphuman nature'. Idealspoverty, and cynicism and

the coming is itself a shatteringof the closed-system idea which dominates our

thinking. And what else is His continual advice to'have faith in God' but a call to refuse, despite allappearances, to be taken in by the closed-system typeof thinking? 'Ask and ye shall receive, seek and yeshall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you'­what are these famous words but an invitation to reachout for the Permanent and the Real? If we want toco-operate the Spirit is immediately available. 'If yethen, for all your evil, know how to give good giftsunto your children, how much more shall yourheavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that askHim?' .

XVI. SUMMARY

possible now to make a summary of theof our existence on this planet (and be­

n01ne:stly commended to meet bothabserve them, and

said in a n""'"UU...'n" Ch:ap1:et.this extra-human OV~U.LJ.V.l.l

comes alive when it iscritic must leave his arm-chair if is to join the num­ber of those who become convinced that here is Truth.

It app€ars that the strategy of Christ was to win theloyalty of the few who would honestly respond to thenew way of living. They would be the pioneers ofthe new order, the spearhead of advance against the·massed ignorance, selfishness, evil, 'play-acting', andapathy of the majority of the human race. The goalwhich was set before them, for which they were towork and pray-and if need be, suffer and die-wasthe building of a new Kingdom of inner supreme loy­alty, the Kingdom of God. This was to transcend everybarrier of race and frontier and-and this is impor­tant-of time and space as well.

'Church', which became the name of the spear~

has been, and is, open to a good deal of criticism,great deal of hard-won progress. It

to_carry out the divine plan, and.woft'lCLnP along the lines of real Truth

fail-anymore than

124 YOU R GOD IS TOO SMA L L

the :Q;lore scientific knowledge (in whatever field) ad­vances, the greater becomes our idea of His vast andcomplicated wisdom. Yet, unless we are to remain be­fogged and bewildered and give up all hope of everknowing God as a Person, we have to accept His ownplanned focusing of Himself in a human being, JesusChrist.

If we accept this as fact,_ as the Fact of history, itbecomes possible to find a satisfactory and compre..hensive ans"Yer to a great many problems, and, whatis equally important, a-reasonable 'shelf' on which-theunsolved perplexities may be left with every confi­dence.

The 'way in' to this faith is partly _intellectual andpartly a matter of moral commitment. The diagnosisof the world's sickness (and, therefore, of the indi­viduals who comprise the world) is that the power tolove has been wrongly directed. It has either beenturned in upon itself or given to the wrong things.The outward symptoms, and the results, of this mis­direction are plainly obvious (at least in other people)in what we call 'sin' or 'selfishness'. The drastic 'con­version' which God-become-Man called for is the re­versal of the wrong attitude, the deliberate giving ofthe whole power to love, first to God, and then to otherpeople. Without this reversal He spoke quite bluntlyof a world doom.ed to destruction. Where it genuinelytakes place He spoke plainly of men being able _to'know' God, to begin a new quality of living _whichphysical death is powerless to touch. The three prob­lems which this raises, (a) the question of rapproche­ment between the morally infected man and the Good-

-the rescale ancontrol'has beetheynot twar!ther

127a large

ition toinfluence

cond placeTlstianity. It is

ure to reform theere it is accepted

complaint, but it does notso fail. It.is a revelation of the true way of living, theway to know God, the way to live life of eternal~uality, anq is not to be regarded as a handy sociallI~strument .for reducing juvenile delinquency or thedlvorct; rate. Any 'religion', provided it can beaccepted by the majority of people, can exert that sortof restrictive pressure. The religion of Jesus Christch.anges people (if they are willing to pay the price ofbeIng changed) so that they quite naturally and nor­mally live as 'sons and daughters of God', and ofcourse they exert an excellent influence on the com-

o munity. But if real Christianity fails, it fails for thes~me :easons that Christ failed-and any condemna­tIOn nghtly falls on the world which rejects both Himand it.

126 YOU R GOD 1ST a a SMA L L

some Christians talk brightly of 'the earth being filledwith the Knowledge of the Lord as the waters coverthe sea' and of 'the Kingdoms of this world becomingthe Kingdom of our God and of His Christ'-asthough the world-wide acceptance of the reign of Godwere just round the corner. This is, of course, non­sense. Those who respond to the Truth have alwaysbeen a minority, and when God visited the earth inPerson the response, even to Him, was not very large.Indeed it would appear that Christ (knowing howfirmly evil and selfishness are entrenched and how hardit is for men to break away from their own self-love),did not anticipate a full-scale establishing of God'sKingdom on this planet even by the time when a haltwas called to the experiment which we call Life(e.g. see Luke 188

).

The follower of the new way is therefore called to doall he can to spread 'the good news of the Kingdom',but to realize at all times that the success or failureof the Kingdom can never be judged by simple refer­ence to statistics of 'Christians' at any particular time.The Kingdom is rooted in Real Life (what we some;.times call 'eternity'), and as time goes on the numberof those, belonging to it and taking part in its activi­ties, but who have passed from the space-and-time set­up, will naturally exceed more and more the numberof active members existing at any particular momentin the present world.

Critics often complain that if the world is in itspresent state after nineteen centuries of Christianity,then it cannot be a very good religion. They maketwo ridiculous mistakes. In the first place Christianity

THE TRANSFORMIN~FRIENDSHIby LESLIE D. WEATHERHEAD

A modern vision ofJesus who has only to be truly seen to blo~ed and followed. Christianity is the acceptance ofHis frienShIp. To all He was the same kindly, sympathetic FrienPoverty or riches made no difference to Him. That very Chrisof History becomes the Christ of Experience, and renews thnature of all who receive Him. This friendship is eternal. TheCross is a timeless revelation of the love of God which neverceases to encircle the world.

WHY JESUSNEVER WROTE A BOOK

by W. E. SANGSTER

'Is very readable and cannot fail to hold the attention of threader.'

-Scots Ob.yqrver.

'His style ispicturesql1e, vigorous and direct. Dr. Bangstcertainly throws inspiring lights on an old message.'

-Liverpool Post.

PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY TODAby DONALD O. SOPER

Dr. Donald O. Soper, preacher, author, broadcaster amaster of television technique, is one of the best known ofmodern Christian figures. On Tower Hill, in Hyde Park,Kingsway Hall, on radio and television, he is known as a Chrtian controversialist who never shrinks a straight answer tstraight question and in argument never pulls his punches.