But the great work to be done for the better time which will arrive, and for the time of transition which will precede it, is not a work of destruction, but to show that the truth is really, as it is, incomparably higher, grander, more wide and deep-reaching, than the Aberglaube and false science which it displaces.
The propounders of 'The Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves,' are too modest when they sometimes say, taking their lesson from the Bible, that, after all, man can know next to nothing of the Divine nature. They do themselves signal injustice; they themselves know, according to their own statements, a great deal, far too much. They know so much, that they make of God a magnified and non-natural man; and when this leads them into difficulties, and they think to escape from these by saying that God's ways are not man's ways, they do not succeed in making their God cease to resemble a man, they only make him resemble a man puzzled. But the truth is, that one may have a great respect for man, and yet be permitted, even however much he be magnified, to imagine something far beyond him. And this is the good of such an unpretending definition of God as ours: the Eternal Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness;—it leaves the infinite to the imagination, and to the gradual efforts of countless ages of men, slowly feeling after more of it and finding it. Ages and ages hence, no such adequate definition of the infinite not ourselves will yet be possible, as any sciolist of a theologian will now pretend to rattle you off in a moment. But on one point of the operation of this not ourselves we are clear: that it makes for conduct, righteousness. So far we know God, that he is 'the Eternal that loveth righteousness;' and the farther we go in righteousness, the more we shall know him.
