What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern SoulSwain, Richard La Rue
Religion
What and Where is God? A Human Answer to the Deep Religious Cry of the Modern Soul
Swain, Richard La Rue
Christianity; God (Christianity)
Man is a spirit, a soul, or a person. All men are alike in that which
constitutes them personalities, or self-conscious wills. It is in their
individuality that men differ. In the first place, some are more
developed than others; and then they have different tastes, different
knowledge, different temperaments, and different occupations. This
diversity of individuality clearly distinguishes one man from another,
and at the same time greatly enriches society.
Like his Father, man is _a loving intelligent will_. Like Him, too, he
is always silent and invisible, save as his instruments express his
thought and wish in time and space. So far, Father and child should be
defined in the same terms; for however they may differ in other
respects, they are alike in being self-conscious. If either is below
self-conscious will, he is something less than a person. Though man, as
we find him, is not always so very loving, nor so very intelligent, yet
that is what he is in his best estate. So far as we can understand, the
sinless man soul lifted to the infinite power would be the same as God.
This spiritual definition does not imply that either God or man exists,
or could exist, without form and outward expression.
2. Who is man?
We think of Man, the soul, as a child of God, or a god-child. Therefore,
he is worthy of his brother's highest esteem, and his Father's tenderest
affection. He is a very son of the infinite God; and all created
spirits, being his brothers, are members of one family. Again we say, "O
god-child, how wonderful you are, and what a pity it would be if you
failed to recognize your divinity, or allowed anything to drag you down
from your divine possibilities!" Man must know himself if he would
attain unto the goal of life.
Though man _is_ a soul, yet without the body he cannot so much as come
to self-consciousness. Just how or when a soul begins, we do not know;
but it does not appear until some time after the body is born. A
new-born babe can neither see, feel, nor hear, with any intelligent
meaning of the words. It will stare into the most glaring light without
intelligence enough to shut its eyes. It does not recognize objects for
some time, and when it does, misses the object for which it reaches. The
infant is likewise slow in distinguishing sounds or names. If the soul
exists when the body is born, it is only a latent personality which has
not yet come to self-realization. Personality is self-conscious will,
and this the child has not yet achieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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