For him, God is the Universal
Spirit, the Absolute Reality immanent in all phenomena, the Love which
reason finds in Goodness and intuition discovers in Beauty, the Father
of men, the End and the very Spirit of Evolution. And Jesus, so far as
human thought can reach into the infinite, is the Messenger of God, the
Revealer both of God's Personality and man's immortality, the great
Teacher of liberty. What else He may be we do not know, but may discover
in other phases of our ascent. Enough for the moment of duration which
we can human life to know that He unlocks the door of our prison-house,
reveals to us the character of our Father which is in Heaven, and the
nature of the universe in which we move and have our being.
If this should appear vague to the dogmatist who finds it impossible
either to love God or to do the will of Christ without going into the
arithmetic of Athanasius, and reciting an unintelligible creed, and
celebrating in Christian forms the rites of those mystery religions
which competed with each other for the superstition of the Greco-Roman
world in the third century, he will find no vagueness at all in Dr.
Jacks's interpretation of the teaching of Jesus. He may perhaps find in
that interpretation a simplicity, a clarity, and a directness which are
not wholly convenient to his idea of a God Who repents, is angry, and
can be mollified.
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