ARTICLE II.

THE CONCEPT OF GOD AS THE GROUND OF PROGRESS.

BY REV. GEORGE T. LADD, MILWAUKEE, WIS.

ANY wise man, when about to take a journey through remote and obscure regions, will be inclined diligently to consider his preparations, his proposed route, and his desired end in making such a journey. To inquire as to the ground of the world's progress, is to attempt a journey through remote and obscure regions of thought. But the views and reflections already given to the readers of the Bibliotheca Sacra will help us to answer the questions, With what preparation, by what route, and with what final purpose the journey is undertaken.

The discussion in the number for January 1877 led us to this conclusion regarding the Origin of the Concept of God: It is the resultant of God's revelation of himself along many lines of his self-revealing force, and within that organon of the self-revelation which is the entire human soul. The reception of truth in general does not depend upon the quality and activities of the intellect alone; its reception is dependent upon symmetrically cultured manhood, rightly correlated action and balanced capabilities of man's different powers. But in the case of this peculiar and comprehensive concept that is pre-eminently true which Dr. Carpenter avers of certain departments of science: "Our conclusions rest not on any one set of experiences, but upon our unconscious co-ordination of the whole aggregate of our experience; not on the conclusiveness of any one train of reasoning, but on the convergence of all our lines of thought toward one centre." In proof of this view of the origin of the concept of God, the concept and the soul regarded as its organ of reception were compared. Analysis was made to show how

the various elements of the concept arise in various activities of our complex manhood, and, under the pressure of strong constitutional instinct, desire, and bias, coalesce in the incomparable whole. Thus the whole soul, in all its activities of thought, feeling, and volition, when these activities are rightly correlated and symmetrically cultured, stands pledged to the idea of a self-revealing God.

In a subsequent Article the attempt was made to classify, set forth, and in some slight degree soften, the stern difficulties which attach themselves, as to every concept worthy of the name idea, so also pre-eminently to this pre-eminently great idea of God. Among these were considered the onto logical difficulties, which are such as concern the objective validity of the idea. The view was maintained that the prime and indestructible postulates of all human thoughtviz. the universe is thinkable, and my thought corresponds to the reality of the thinkable universe-guarantee the objective validity of the idea of God. The claim was set up, that with "the fullest strength of conviction do we reach the objective validity of the concept of God as the conclusion of an indirect proof, when we consider God as the postulate of the world's evolution." "The real being of God is required by thought to serve not only as the ground of all phenomena, but as the ground for the orders of phenomena, and for all forms of human science which deal with the various orders. The being of God is the one rational explanation of nature, history, art, and politics; of the unfolding ethical and religious life of man; and of the relations which maintain themselves amongst all these complex interests and forms of growth." How we do find this idea of God underlying all forms of progress, it was promised should perhaps occupy our thought at another time. To the attempt at redemption of this promise we are come in the present Article.

And now this brief review of thoughts already dwelt upon enables us to answer the three inquiries just proposed. We are setting out upon a brief journey by thought around the rational universe. We wish to consider the phenomena

with a view to discover not what they are of themselves, but what they teach as to the being of their common ground. We start equipped with certain knowledge, fairly won, as to the idea of God and the reality corresponding to the idea. We are ready to inquire whether it be not true, as Trendelenburg declares, that "this unconditioned which supports the verity of the whole, philosophical abstraction calls the Absolute, but faith, more lively, calls it God."

And as to what shall be the route of our journey in thought we can now easily determine. The concept of God is a concept worthy to be called an idea. It is fitted to take up into itself, harmonize, and explain a vast aggregate of otherwise disparate and conflicting phenomena. The modern conception of progress is also one of sufficiently large proportions and promising construction. Our course of thought will lead us to inquire whether the latter must not find in the former its only possible ground and guarantee. The idea of progress must be analyzed, in order that it may be seen whether it do not necessarily break up into elements, every one of which requires for its rational explanation some corresponding element in the idea of a self-revealing God. The facts of progress must be examined, to see whether they do not imperatively demand, as their sole ground in reality, that real One whose reality is postulated in this same idea of God. Moreover, the idea and facts of progress are given to us under several different, but correlated types. We shall do well to see whether we are not warranted in saying that each form of science and life shows its own special progress as somehow grounded in the same idea and reality of God.

But what ends are to be served in following such a course of thought? We strive to serve at least two. We hope to understand the idea and facts of progress better after attempting to understand them as resting upon their ground. We expect, also, to obtain proof, additional to that already offered, for the validity and comprehensiveness of the true idea of God. We start upon our journey already persuaded that God is the ground of the world's progress. We expect

to reach its end with a clearer view of progress. We expect, also, to derive a stronger proof of the being and attributes of God from our consideration of him as the sole rational ground of this progress. Nor is this a vicious circle, in either definition or argument.

That profoundest of all historians of the church, the beloved Neander, begins his great work by placing in its candlestick the idea in the light of which he will read the history. "Our knowledge here," says he, "falls into a necessary circle. To understand history it is supposed that we have some understanding of that which constitutes its working principle; but it is also history which furnishes us the proper test by which to ascertain whether its principle has been rightly apprehended." So when "we read the great world-poem in the idea of God," our knowledge falls into this necessary, but legitimate circle. For, as says Trendelenburg, "Experience and idea demand each the other; and the greatness of the cognition lies in this, that both are mutually interpenetrating." The effort to ground the idea and facts. of progress in the idea and reality of God brings us new proof of the truth of the old impression - what a focus for all converging beams of light, what a hearth of all diverging rays of heat, is this same concept of a self-revealing God! We claim the right to use this "necessary circle," over whose whole circumference "experience and idea demand each other." One other right we claim as legitimate and necessary to our argument. This is the right to approach. the subject with that "good faith" which, as says a writer on logic, "is the parent of the grand truth of the reason that the world is a systematic whole, nay, that the universe is such a whole."

Suppose that we analyze this comprehensive idea called progress, and find that its elements are all grounded in the idea of God; it is still possible for scepticism to inquire, What then? and to say, You have resolved one idea into another without showing that either corresponds to any

1 Untersuchungen, ii. p. 494.

reality. To scepticism the reply must be, that idea corresponds to reality in the case of the present argument, is one of the grandest and most conclusive applications of those same postulates of all observation and reasoning, to which attention has already so frequently been called. We postulate that the universe is thinkable, and that our thought corresponds to the reality of things, in this, as in every argument. We start out with "good faith" when we go forth to read the great poem of the universe in the idea of God. He who is unsound in his philosophy, and at the same time logical in his deductions from that philosophy, cannot be otherwise than hopelessly sceptical concerning the proofs, cosmological and teleological, which theology has to educe. He only who is enough of a philosopher to avoid the gross credulity of relying upon his intellect for the rejection of intuitions and postulates which lie at the foundation of all its work, is able in appropriate good faith to start upon our journey.

As truly as the idea of progress is grounded in the idea of God, so truly are the facts of progress grounded in the reality of God. For, the orderly movement of the universe forward toward a goal is not merely the subjective scheme or framework in which we, through being deluded, set all the varied phenomena of history and present life; it is a great objective reality as well. The self-revelation of God in the universe involves both subjective process and objective fact. It is not made once for all; it is being made through all time; it is not, and cannot be conceived as being, statical; it is dynamical. So man conceives it; so it really is. That is indeed true of this all-embracing divine institution of the cosmos, which Schmidt has declared true of the believer's holy supper; "divine institutions are not to be conceived as somewhat once for all time made ready." Legitimate "good faith" in the postulates of all thinking and being enables our observation of phenomena to reach the conclusions that the universe is really moving forward toward a lofty goal, and that God is the one who gives the force, thought, and final