God and Mr. Wells: A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' — John Shaqi
God and Mr. Wells: A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King'Archer, William
Religion
God and Mr. Wells: A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King'
Archer, William
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946. God the invisible king
Though many of Mr. Wells's asseverations of the substantive reality of
his Invisible King have been quoted above, it would be easy to
lengthen their array. There is nothing on which he is so insistent.
For example, "God is no abstraction nor trick of words....[3] He is as
real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace" (p. 56). And again, on the
same page: "He feels us and knows us; he is helped and gladdened by
us. He hopes and attempts." There is no limit to the anthropomorphism
of the language which Mr. Wells currently employs. Or rather, there is
only one limit: he disclaims the notion that his God is actually
existent in space, that he has parts and dimensions, and inhabits a
form in any way analogous to ours. He is the Invisible King, not
merely, like the Spanish Fleet, because he "is not yet in sight," but
because he has no material or "astral" integument. Being outside space
(though inside time) he can be omnipresent (p. 61). But of course Mr.
Wells would not pretend that no deity can be called anthropomorphic
who is not actually conceived as incarnate in the visible figure of a
man. An anthropomorphic God is one who reflects the mental
characteristics of his worshippers; and that Mr. Wells's God does, if
ever God did in this world.
[3] The words here omitted, "no Infinite," are nothing to the
present purpose. Mr. Wells has started by making this
declaration, which we accept without difficulty. No one will
suspect the Invisible King of being an "Infinite" in
disguise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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