Joseph Warschauer

“ Everyone knows that a manner which inspires confidence, a happy blend of cheerfulness and suave authority, is of at least equal value to a physician as his skill and diplomas; and it is probably true, approximately at any rate, that a man can no more be cured of a serious illness unless he believes in his curability, than he can be hypnotised against his will. But between the recognition of such a fact, and the description of a cancer as an obstinate illusion, or a crushed limb as an "error of thought," there is just the difference which separates sanity from extravaganza. ”

“ Press the idea of the infinite to its utmost extent, till it is alone in the universe, or rather is the universe itself, in this heaven of abstraction, nevertheless, a cloud begins to appear; a limitation casts its shadow over the formless void. Infinite is finite because it is infinite. That is to say, because infinity includes all things, it is incapable of creating what is external to itself. Deny infinity in this sense, and the being to whom it is attributed receives a new power. God is greater by being finite than by being infinite . ”

“ We can only say that such a superficial optimism seems infinitely more open to objection than the temper which, in the face of so much suffering and sin, has to struggle hard sometimes to preserve its faith in the Father's love, and half-wonders if some personal power of evil is not actively engaged in marring God's workmanship. Anyone who can believe that every man, just as he is, represents the Divine intention in concrete form—anyone who can believe this, and glory in the thought—must inhabit a strange world, remote from reality. ”

“ But not only does the universe exhibit a sublime order which is the very contrary of what we can associate with the blind workings of chance; not only do the circling immensities of the stars and the microscopic perfections of the snow-crystals alike point to a shaping and directing Mind and Will: what nature reveals—what is implied in the very term evolution—is not merely order but progress. ”

“ Just as a billion, minus the billionth fraction of a unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity itself, limited though it be but by a hair's-breadth, is no longer, strictly speaking, infinite. Once we admit this Divine self-limitation as a working theory, we shall no longer be troubled by the unreal difficulty of having to reconcile the principle of Divine immanence with the fact of individual existence. The Divine spark may burn in man, brightly or dimly as the case may be, and yet be separate from the central and eternal Fire whence it has been flung forth ”

“ The soul, in other words, is not to be compared to a mere quantum of raw material, or to a cupful of water temporarily drawn from an infinite deep into which it may be poured back, and nothing lost: it is, on the contrary, a highly individualised product, so individual as to be unique, and in simply being merged in the totality of being all that is most valuable in it would be lost and wasted. We have no difficulty in believing that mere life—the potentiality, the material out of which higher things evolve—may go back into the all, to arise again in new manifestations and combinations ”

“ If we are to argue on a priori grounds, we are on the contrary justified in saying that the human mind, which has discovered and is capable of co-ordinating the myriad facts concerning the world of matter that make up modern science, is itself something far more wonderful than any of its discoveries, or the sum of them. If we are asked, "Is it conceivable that suns and stars shall pass away—as they undoubtedly will—and that man shall persist?" ”

“ But if God is immanent in the cosmos as its pervading and sustaining Power and Life; if He is immanent in man as that moral and spiritual principle which reaches out after fuller communion with the Most High: where shall we say that He Himself is personally present, since He is not so present either in nature or in man? And assuming that such a supreme and full revelation of God has been given in history, shall we not do well to distinguish in some manner between it and every lesser manifestation of immanence? ”

“ The unmistakeable purpose of that process is the production of the higher from the lower; all through the ages the vast design works itself out in a ceaseless ascending movement, the theme expanding, its meaning becoming more apparent. Then, when a certain point in this development has been reached, evolution takes a direction such as no one could have forecast: "its operation upon the physical frame is diverted to the mind, the centre of interest transferred from the outward organism to the inner forces of which it is the vehicle"—and man becomes a living soul. ”

“ To the Christian there is one experience which settles this problem fully and finally for him; it is the experience which Paul embodied in the cry, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me."
For Monism the individual is a mere surface ripple on an infinite ocean, alike impermanent and impersonal; for Christianity the soul is a child of the Father of all souls, loved with an everlasting love. Between these two conceptions we have to choose, remembering that each utterly excludes the other. There is no third alternative. ”

“ Picton calls "the peace of absorption in the Infinite"; would it not be simpler to call it annihilation, and have done with it? Dissolve a bronze statue and merge it in a mass of molten metal, and it is gone as a statue; dissolve a soul and merge it in the sum of being, and as a soul it is no more. That is not immortality, but a final blotting out—a fit conclusion from those pantheistic premises which, consistently worked out, mean the end of religion, the end of morality, the end of everything. ”

“ But Pantheism identifies not only God with the universe, but ourselves with God. Now if this view is accepted, if there is no real dividing line between man and God, then we can only once more point out that we have no personality either; we are mere fragmentary expressions of God's life, without selfhood or self-determination, no more responsible for our acts than a violin for the tune that is played on it. ”

“ And just as one would not like prussic acid to lie about promiscuously where all and sundry could have access to it, lest there should be a great deal of accidental poisoning, so we are justified in viewing the broadcast dissemination of determinist theory not merely with the antipathy one may feel towards intellectual error, but with the apprehension excited by a moral danger. Every system or movement which involves the denial of evil or of freedom—the denial or under-emphasis of sin—menaces not only religion in the narrower sense, but the structure of civilisation itself. ”

“ When we reflect that anyone who consistently believes that "nothing is good or ill, but thinking makes it so," will inevitably, first or last, apply that comforting maxim to his own acts, we can see in what direction the ethics of Monism—in reality a return to the ultra-subjectivism of the Sophists, who made man the measure of all things—are likely to lead men. And yet, if the monistic presuppositions are valid—if the universe in all its phases expresses only one will—we do not see how these conclusions can be repelled. ”

“ A certain extremely important thing has been done—we will not say perfectly, but nevertheless done—in a certain way and by certain means for a very long time; anyone who assures us that he will accomplish the same important thing for us without the means which we have hitherto deemed indispensable, can hardly be surprised if we reply that while we do not doubt his entire good faith, we cannot possibly content ourselves with his bare promises in so vital a matter. ”

“ And when we remember that that Love shines out most brightly from the Cross, and that the world's greatest tragedy has been the world's greatest blessing, the turning-point in the history of the race, we may well hush our impatience, refrain over-confident criticisms, and commit ourselves to the Father's hands even while we can only see His purposes as in a glass, darkly. We may believe, with the psalmist of old, that by and by we "shall behold His face in righteousness; we shall be satisfied, when we awake, with His likeness." ”

“ In accepting the pain and shame of the Cross, Jesus worked His Father's will; but that will was not imposed upon Him from without, but freely responded to from within. As the author of the Theologia Germanica has it, a man should strive "to be to the Eternal Goodness what his hand is to a man": but all the ultimate splendour of the achievement is bound up with the initial possibility of the striving. Not only the yearning love of God, but the conquering freedom of Man is finally attested by that blood-red seal which bears the impressure of a Cross. ”

“ But Spinozism distinctly denies the possibility of God's entertaining any feelings towards individuals—indeed, Spinoza condemns the individual's desire for God's personal love; at most he will admit that "'God, inasmuch as He loves Himself, loves men,' because men are parts and proportions of God. . . The complacency of the Universe in its self-awareness, the love of God towards Himself, as Spinoza has it, includes us in its embrace, and that is enough." ”

“ Without this divinity of substance as it might be called, we should never have the finished product, divinity of character; but the latter can only be achieved through arduous and persevering endeavour. Without a genuinely divine element—without the Spirit breathed into man by his Creator—we could not even realise our failure, nor aspire after a fuller portion of that same life-giving Spirit; it is what we have that tells us of what we lack, and directs us to Him who alone can supply our want out of His inexhaustible fulness. ”

“ It seems, then, as though, in order to escape from palpable inconsistency between theory and fact, we should have to make a surrender either of His immanence, or His omnipotence, or His benevolence, or the reality of evil.
To surrender the Divine immanence will not really solve our problem. Near or far, closer to us than breathing or dwelling beyond the furthest star, God is still the Author of our being, the Framer of the world and all that therein is, the Cause without which there would have been no effects. ”

“ Now, try as we will, such a conception can never take the place of the thought of God as our Father, and that for the simple reason that the universe is not even what we mean by personal. As Schopenhauer shrewdly remarked, "To call the universe 'God' is not to explain it, but merely to burden language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'universe.' Whether one says 'the universe is God' or 'the universe is the universe' makes no difference." ”

“ Kepler's shrewd, homely remark gives its last touch of absurdity to the suggestion {83} that a world which we see to be pervaded by unfailing law has come together by sheer, incalculable accident. Not so much as a salad of respectable calibre could be accounted for upon such a theory; how much less credible is it that the universe began with a cosmic dance of unconscious atoms whirled along by unconscious forces, and happening so to combine as to produce order and sequence, life and consciousness, will and affection! ”