With the
former, God is passive, and man active: with the latter, God is active,
man is passive--passive, that is, in so far as his business is to listen
when he is spoken to, to look at the light which is unveiled to him, to
submit himself to the inward laws which he feels reproving and checking
him at every turn, as Socrates was reproved and checked by his inward
Daemon.
Whether of these two theorems gives the higher conception either of the
Divine Being, or of man, I leave it for you to judge. To those old
Alexandrian Christians, a being who was not seeking after every single
creature, and trying to raise him, could not be a Being of absolute
Righteousness, Power, Love; could not be a Being worthy of respect or
admiration, even of philosophic speculation. Human righteousness and
love flows forth disinterestedly to all around it, however unconscious,
however unworthy they may be; human power associated with goodness,
seeks for objects which it may raise and benefit by that power. We must
confess this, with the Christian schools, or, with the Heathen schools,
we must allow another theory, which brought them into awful depths;
which may bring any generation which holds it into the same depths.
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