[Sidenote: Of that Law of the Whole Loyalty to God in the Supreme
Application.]
Yet, when we come to contemplate the final and supreme object of
devotion, the Eternal Himself, it has been almost the universal custom
to make a surprising exception, and to regard religion as maintainable
only by recognition of a tremendous outward authority, to which only
such loyalty is possible as in barbarous times was fostered towards a
personal chieftain, or feudal king. Now Pantheism holds this to be an
error, and regards obedience and devotion to God as the ultimate and
most inspiring application of that principle of the loyalty of the part
to the whole which runs through all morality.
[Sidenote: Conclusion.]
Why should we be supposed to be without God because we acknowledge Him
to be superpersonal, and "past finding out"? Or why should we be
suspected of denying the divinity of evolution because we do not
believe the Eternal All to be subject to it? This instinct of loyalty,
in the sense of self-subordination to any greater Whole of which we are
part, the distinction of right and wrong thence arising, and the
aspiration after a moral ideal, are not of man's invention. Speaking, as
we cannot help doing, in terms of time, I hold that the germs of this
higher creature-life were always in the divine unity out of which man is
evolved. And in pursuing the inspirations of that higher life, as
experience suggests them, humanity has always had a guide and a saviour
in the Living God, of whom the race life-time of man is an infinitesimal
phase.
Pages:
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82