It appears, then, that the idea of God as remote from the world is not likely to survive the revolution in thought which the rapid increase of modern knowledge has inaugurated. The knell of anthropomorphic or Augustinian theism has already sounded. This conclusion need not, however, disturb us when we consider how imperfect a form of theism this is which mankind is now outgrowing. To get rid of the appearance of antagonism between science and religion will of itself be one of the greatest benefits ever conferred upon the human race. It will forward science and purify religion, and it will go far toward increasing kindness and mutual helpfulness among men. Since such happy results are likely to follow the general adoption of the cosmic or Athanasian form of theism, in place of the other form, it becomes us to observe more specifically the manner in which this higher theism stands related to our modern knowledge.

To every form of theism, as I have already urged, an anthropomorphic element is indispensable. It is quite true, on the one hand, that to ascribe what we know as human personality to the infinite Deity straightway lands us in a contradiction, since personality without limits is inconceivable. But on the other hand, it is no less true that the total elimination of anthropomorphism from the idea of God abolishes the idea itself. This difficulty need not dishearten us, for it is no more than we must expect to encounter on the threshold of such a problem as the one before us. We do not approach the question in the spirit of those natural theologians who were so ready with their explanations of the divine purposes. We are aware that "we see as through a glass darkly," and we do not expect to "think God's thoughts after him" save in the crudest symbolic fashion. In dealing with the Infinite we are confessedly treating of that which transcends our powers of conception. Our ability to frame ideas is strictly limited by experience, and our experience does not furnish the materials for the idea of a personality which is not narrowly hemmed in by the inexorable barriers of circumstance. We therefore cannot conceive such an idea. But it does not follow that there is no reality answering to what such an idea would be if it could be conceived. The test of inconceivability is only applicable to the world of phenomena from which our experience is gathered. It fails when applied to that which lies behind phenomena. I do not hold for this reason that we are justified in using such an expression as "infinite personality" in a philosophical inquiry where clearness of thought and speech is above all things desirable. But I do hold, most emphatically, that we are not debarred from ascribing a quasi-psychical nature to the Deity simply because we can frame no proper conception of such a nature as absolute and infinite.

The point is of vital importance to theism. As Kant has well said, "the conception of God involves not merely a blindly operating Nature as the eternal root of things, but a Supreme Being that shall be the author of all things by free and understanding action; and it is this conception which alone has any interest for us." It will be observed that Kant says nothing here about "contrivance." By the phrase "free and understanding action" he doubtless means much the same that is here meant by ascribing to God a quasi-psychical nature. And thus alone, he says, can we feel any interest in theism. The thought goes deep, yet is plain enough to every one. The teleological instinct in Man cannot be suppressed or ignored. The human soul shrinks from the thought that it is without kith or kin in all this wide universe. Our reason demands that there shall be a reasonableness in the constitution of things. This demand is a fact in our psychical nature as positive and irrepressible as our acceptance of geometrical axioms and our rejection of whatever controverts such axioms. No ingenuity of argument can bring us to believe that the infinite Sustainer of the universe will "put us to permanent intellectual confusion." There is in every earnest thinker a craving after a final cause; and this craving can no more be extinguished than our belief in objective reality. Nothing can persuade us that the universe is a farrago of nonsense. Our belief in what we call the evidence of our senses is less strong than our faith that in the orderly sequence of events there is a meaning which our minds could fathom were they only vast enough. Doubtless in our own age, of which it is a most healthful symptom that it questions everything, there are many who, through inability to assign the grounds for such a faith, have persuaded themselves that it must be a mere superstition which ought not to be cherished; but it is not likely that any one of these has ever really succeeded in ridding himself of it.

According to Mr. Spencer, the only ultimate test of reality is persistence, and the only measure of validity among our primary beliefs is the success with which they resist all efforts to change them. Let us see, then, how it is with the belief in the essential reasonableness of the universe. Does this belief answer to any outward reality? Is there, in the scheme of things, aught that justifies Man in claiming kinship of any sort with the God that is immanent in the world?

The difficulty in answering such questions has its root in the impossibility of framing a representative conception of Deity; but it is a difficulty which may, for all practical purposes, be surmounted by the aid of a symbolic conception.