As further evidence of confusion on this subject, a young man from one of our good colleges seeking membership in my Church, informed me that he had peculiar views. Spirit, whether applied to God or man, had no meaning for him. He wanted to join the Church because in that way he believed he could render a better social service. In his thought, God was neither a person nor a spirit, but a force. Having no satisfactory idea of spirits he had banished the thought of them entirely from his mind. All through my own period of doubt I conceived of God's spirit on earth as something emanating from a glorious spiritual _form_ in heaven. Thinking that this form in heaven was a spirit made it only the easier to believe that God himself could appear to men if He cared to do so. That He did not care to appear to His children and thereby settle the question of His existence beyond all doubt seemed preposterous. And it would still seem so to my moral sense, if I retained my former conception of spirit. Of course He should not come near enough to "consume us," but He might come near enough to convince us. The "New Thought" people, struggling with the meaning of spirit, have arrived at the conclusion that there is just "_One universal substance called spirit_." So, God is not to them _a_ spirit, but simply spirit, "a universal substance." Two or three other cults believe that man's spirit is simply his physical breath. To say that God is a spirit, then, with any of these gross conceptions in mind, is sadly to misconceive Him. _Whether we say God is a Spirit, a Soul, or a Person, our meaning is the same._ Of these three expressions, however, the word _Person_ is the best because, being the scholar's term, it is clearly defined. So when we have learned the signification of the word _Person_, we shall attribute the same meaning to all three words, using them interchangeably. In speaking of God as a person the scholar never has in mind either form or substance, however rarefied. He does not know even that there is material substance, much less spiritual substance. He knows very well what personality is as experience, but beyond that he knows nothing about it. Personality, to him, means _a Will that knows itself_, and then knows _Other Wills_. When we say that God is a Spirit, or Person, we should mean that He is a _Loving Intelligent Will_. In speaking of God as the Soul of the universe we should have in mind the same idea. There is no harm in thinking of God as a force if the force is intelligent, and knows itself; but a force that does not know that it is a force, is not God. A progressive Jewish rabbi expressed the wish that we could get rid of the word God altogether, and substitute some such word as "Cosmos." When asked if the "Cosmos" knew that it was a cosmos, or that we were talking about it, he replied that he did not think so. "Then I would rather worship you," I said, "than your cosmos, for you would at least know that I reverenced you."