Psychical Miscellanea: Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc.Hill, J. Arthur (John Arthur)
Religion
Psychical Miscellanea: Being Papers on Psychical Research, Telepathy, Hypnotism, Christian Science, etc.
Hill, J. Arthur (John Arthur)
Parapsychology
well as energising through it, is greater in comparison with our spirits
than the physical universe is in comparison with our bodies. Therefore,
once more, and to a greater degree, we are out of our depth. To throw
words like finite and infinite at such a Being is to make ourselves
ridiculous. It is like a microbe sticking its own adjective-labels--if
it has any--on a man, whom the microbe's vocabulary as a matter of fact
will not apply to. God is too great for our measure. He is high as
heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know? The
measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea--yea,
than the whole universe itself.
This conclusion of Zophar the Naamathite, acquiesced in by Job at the
end of the argument, seems to some minds an evaporation of God into an
Absolute without any human attributes. We feel the necessity or at least
the desirability of regarding Him as good, loving, etc., and we shrink
from any de-personalisation. But there is a way out of the difficulty.
God is incomprehensible, as the Creed says; parts cannot comprehend
wholes. But there is something deep in us, call it what you will, which
tells us that our ideals of Good, Truth, and Beauty are divine; are God
in so far as we are able to cognise Him. Good, true, beautiful actions
and thoughts are God manifested through our personal limitations; they
are rainbow colours broken out of the pure white light of God. We do
right to worship them. They are the highest we can comprehend, though we
may reach lame hands of faith to the apprehension of the Unconditioned.
But this is a very great mystery, revealed only to the mystic. And it is
a dangerous path, for by reaching "beyond good and evil" we lose touch
with humanity and with the virtues we can exercise, risking the insanity
to which Nietzsche so logically succumbed. We may dimly apprehend the
Incomprehensible, but we must live and work among comprehensibilities.
That is what we are here for. God is conceived by us--and rightly so
conceived--as Good, Truth, Beauty, though we can see that as He really
is He must transcend them. Mr Wells's distinction between the Finite God
and the Veiled Being is not an ultimate. The two are one, seen as two
because of our limitations. They are the rainbow and its source. The sun
cannot be looked upon directly, but only when dimmed or reflected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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