William Henry Chamberlin

“ His habitual activities found and sustain all of uniformity there is in nature, and his habitual activities create and sustain singularly and separately each and every body that appears in the world. And the universe is the living God, and all that it inhabit live in the light of his shining. ”

“ I also quote Bowne, who in his Personalism says, "The doctrine of evolution has seemed to many to weaken the argument for purpose in nature. In fact, however, for all who see in the antecedent stages of evolution a preparation for things to come, or the earlier phases of a progressive movement, the facts of evolution become the most impressive of all the inductive arguments for purpose in the world; for in that case the entire movement in its great outlines has the forward look, and is thereby marked as rooting in the causality of intelligence. ”

“ By individual inspiration and by sending choice spirits among men from time to time, God is no doubt always active to further the life of men. But through Jesus of Nazareth he revealed the fullest life. Of this we may be sure, as Jesus himself taught, through the fact that God cooperated with him in his mighty deeds of love, often modifying his habitual ways of acting in nature and performing miracles to aid him in the training of his disciples through a long and agonizing process of disillusionment, in which they surrendered all desires that were in the way of absolute love of him. ”

“ In conclusion, then, let us repeat, that if a Divine purpose is immanent in nature, nature's forms must be thought of as evolving in a way parallel to the unfolding of the divine purpose. The use of the theory is a most important means of advancing to a realization of God's immanence in nature and life, and a great remover of intellectual difficulties that hamper faith in so many. ”

“ Rogers, "God's purposes are constituted by the relation in which his life stands to other—finite—lives existing outside the limits of the physical world which science studies." And again: "If by cause we mean a source for the understanding of things, I am a cause—a part of the cause, that is—of events that happen in the outer world." ”

“ There is nothing whatever then in the theory of evolution to destroy a belief in God or in man's eternal character, and in his dependence upon God for all but his power to know or will. In fact the coexistence of eternal spirits with God is presupposed by the process of evolution itself, for this process when studied merely exhibits in detail how God has been reacting to the choices of eternal beings. ”

“ Unless the 'soul' continues to live for aims and interests teleologically continues with those of its earthly life, there would be no genuine extension of our self-hood beyond the grave. And in order that a man may continue to have his interests, he must have his body, which, in the words of Prof. Taylor, stands on his system of habitual reactions, and so is indispensable to his existence as a self, restored to him, and this restoration after death could only be, in our view, in case God restored his wonted activities in a resurrection of his body. ”

“ For it is now becoming more and more clear to those who think about ultimate realities that men, animals, and all intelligent beings coexist and are eternal, that "man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence or the light of truth was not created or made, neither indeed can be." This conclusion is expressed in the language of Prof. Rogers thus: "God does not create us by an arbitrary choice of his, so that our nature as human selves is merely secondary and derivative. This nature of ours is an ultimate fact of reality." ”

“ It is not to be seen, and, since its activities are not to be reproduced by us as we commonly reproduce and thus come to know the purposes of a friend with whom we are talking, its presence in nature is not subject to the test of mutual understanding. Thus all we need to know or ordinarily know of the purpose present in the extra human world is to be learned very indirectly not by sight, not by hearing and communication, but by examining the sensations we have and the way of their appearance to see if there are any signs in them of purpose. ”

“ From such a point of view for regarding the body of man, it would be as superficial and foolish to say that man's body evolved from the lower animals or from monkeys as it would be to maintain that a palace evolved from a hut through the hut's transforming itself with reference to its human environment until it became able to satisfy the needs of a king. Without reference to human activity we could never comprehend the transformation, but with it, all becomes clear. A man who knows how to make a cottage can vary his habit so as to be able to construct a mansion or a palace. ”

“ And finally the theory awakens within us from the above point of view. An expectation of the resurrection, or the renewal of God's reactions to our lives, the restoration of the spirit to the body, without which there can be little or no life or happiness. That God can do this seems certain and that he will do it is, at the very least, as certain as that the uniformity of nature that all science presupposes shall continue. Both the uniformities in nature and the resurrection depend upon the Father's love. ”

“ But there is a class of evidence for the purposive character of the evolution of organic forms which can be grasped by any body, since it is inductive and makes an appeal to familiar facts, which I merely wish to illustrate here. For this purpose I select a rough anology between human purposive activity and the process by which organic forms seem to have come into existence.
Any human purpose changes and grows only as it itself is modified. ”

“ We have tried to show how the theory of evolution helps us to realize the possibility of this intimate relation to God and Christ always; that inhere is no self-running nature, but' that God is immanent in the world; and this view renders sanity,—more adequate adjustment to our true environment, far more easy than when we thought of him as absent. ”

“ That something more than blind and haphazard forces are at work, bearing in themselves no relation of prevision to the results which actuary are accomplished, is the first and natural presumption which the spectacle of the world's history raises as it unrolls itself in the imagination—a presumption which it is not easy to eradicate so long as the eyes are not kept too exclusively on the details, and the whole massed effect is allowed to exert its influence. ”

“ Rogers thinks: "Every conscious act whatsoever involves the reaction of at least God's experience; stated empirically, even thought involves brain changes." The brain thus would be the phenomenal sign to us of God's life in interaction with our own, and this intimate living relationship suggests how he could cooperate with or dampen the ardor of our desires and urge us to heightened activity, and how it is that, "The light which now shineth, which giveth us light, is through him who enlighteneth our eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth our understandings." ”

“ Then, just as when a friend utters a word we can be aware that he has meaning and purpose, thought and feeling, which we cannot see and which is intangible, so when we observe our bodies we find ourselves able to believe that divine power and purpose is active there, even the intelligence or "light which is in all things; which giveth life to all things;" ”

“ The body of a man is to us the phenomenal sign of a vast system of purposes going on now in the divine mind. The body of a fish in Devonian times would have been, if seen by us, significant of a purpose in many respects similar to the purposes now alive for the sake of men, and even of horses or of animals generally. ”

“ The world not only moves, but it lives! It is involved in and is a part of a vast, dynamic, purposive process. This is a conclusion now almost uniformly held by men trained in the criticism of world views; and if it is true, it follows that sanity of action in man requires a careful search into the character of the world purpose and proper efforts to adjust his acts to the life of the World Purposer. ”

“ From the standpoint of man, God's activities for his sake are only to be measured by many millions of years. Such continuous activity implies a measureless interest in our welfare. Bodies were created for animals, first lower in grade, then higher. New forms came in to displace the older bodily forms perhaps, as biologists say, as sports. These sports would represent a new effort on the part of the Divine Spirit in behalf of the growing powers of eternal beings capable of limitless development. ”

“ Neither can it lessen the value or dignity of a man's body to know that the habit involved in the formation of the essential features of a fish persist in the formation of the essential features of man's body. As the king does not despise his palace because it has in common with an ordinary house rooms and doors and windows, so a man should not despise his body because it has in common with that of a monkey a backbone, or eyes and ears. ”

“ We are limited, that is, if there is any purpose in the extra-human world, to the discovery of analogies between the ways of the extra-human world and human ways. Now there are analogies many and profound between the two realms of activity, the human and the extra-human. ”

“ Finally, this theory removes obstacles in the way of so many to belief in the resurrection. Such a God, who through millions of years has striven to make such lives as we now enjoy possible, could not allow us to go out in a night This thought is nobly expressed by the great geologist, Prof Le Conte: "Mature is the womb in which, and evolution the process by which, are generated sons of God. Now,—do you not see?—without immortality, this whole purpose is balked—the whole process of cosmic evolution is futile. ”

“ From time to time and in accordance with law and moral purpose, God could attend consciously to our needs and prayers and the "sudden strokes of ideas" awakened within us at such times would make the presence of the Spirit seem like that of a visitor when He is so near us always. ”

“ As we understand and love Christ, the whole world becomes transformed and full of new and religious value, and when the power to know this world is achieved by us, we can adequately adjust our thoughts and acts to our true environment ”

“ What can be sensed when we study the human purpose being expressed when the word LOVE or the word BENEFIT is being uttered, contains signs as we have shown above of all the purposes which have been involved in a long process of development. ”

“ At an appropriate time the creation of a body adequate to the needs of man was achieved. (Whether the creation of man's body took place here or in some other world would not concern the method of creation.) At the very beginning of man's career, it is possible that the Divine Creator would cause to appear upon the earth in connection with this new creation one of the most intelligent of spirits who would strive and suffer to enrich men in their activities. ”

“ Now in regard to any purpose whatever from the grossest to the most ethereal, it never exists save as it involves sensation elements through which its character is able to be comprehended by others, and yet it can never be grasped by others save in terms of these sensations awakened within them. All purposes are invisible, inaudible, intangible, and none of them can be comprehended in terms of sensations alone. ”

“ New purposes are never formed except on the basis of old ones, and the old purpose always survives and manifests itself as a potent factor or element in the new purpose. Thus there is telescoped into any purpose now manifesting itself a long system of the purposes that have in the history of the individual and the race been used in making it possible. ”

“ The inference from the analogy is, that since intelligent purpose is needed to account for the forms we now see in language and every human product, so intelligent purpose is necesary to account for the facts now so well established in the sciences of geology and embryology concerning living organic forms. ”

“ The purposes expressed by one are accompanied by sensations of sound in another, but his purpose becomes known to the other only as it assumes a form that is judged to adequately express the purpose of the other as is shown by how the two get along with each other. ”

“ It does not lessen for us the dignity and value of the palace to know that essential things arising through the habit of foundation forming, or wall and roof forming, concerned in the building of a cottage, are also found in a palace. ”

“ This is true, and the cause or reason for the existence of any phenomenon, a matter abstracted from in all scientific activity, is never to be found save in terms of the purposes of God in reference to the purposes of other eternal intelligences. ”

“ Henceforth there would be. caused to appear among men from time to time as needed, bright spirits to accelerate their increasing life. At all times and among all men the Divine Spirit in whom we live would co-operate with men, aiding in the formation of ideals, inspiring to their realization and conserving advances in life. This He would do largely by habitual, perhaps in the main, semiconscious, reaction to our acts or desires. ”