" Professor Overstreet, in "The Democratic
Conception of God," _Hibbert Journal_, volume XI, page 409, says: "It
is this large figure, not simply of human but of cosmic society which
is to yield our God of the future. There is no place in the future for
an eternally perfect being and no need--society, democratic from end
to end, can brook no such radical class distinction as that between a
supreme being, favored with eternal and absolute perfection, and the
mass of beings doomed to the lower ways of imperfect struggle."
[Footnote 10: _Les Formes elementaires de la vie religieuse_, p. 322.]
There is certainly a striking immediacy in such language. We leave for
later treatment the question as to the historical validity of such
an attitude. It certainly ignores some of the most distinguished and
fruitful concepts of trained minds; it rules out of court what are
to the majority of men real and precious factors in the religious
experience. It would appear to be another instance, among the many, of
the fallacy of identifying the part with the whole. But the effect
of such pervasive thought currents, the more subtle and unfightable
because indirect and disguised in popular appearance and influence,
upon the ethical and spiritual temper of religious leaders, the
very audacity of whose tasks puts them on the defensive, is vast
and incalculable.
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