I think if
there had been no gods before, I would call this God. But I feel that
there is a great danger in doing this sort of thing unguardedly. Many
people would be glad for rather trivial and unworthy reasons that I
should confess a faith in God, and few would take offence. But the run
of people even nowadays mean something more and something different when
they say "God." They intend a personality exterior to them and limited,
and they will instantly conclude I mean the same thing. To permit
that misconception is, I feel, the first step on the slippery slope
of meretricious complaisance, is to become in some small measure
a successor of those who cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."
Occasionally we may best serve the God of Truth by denying him.

Yet at times I admit the sense of personality in the universe is very
strong. If I am confessing, I do not see why I should not confess up
to the hilt. At times in the silence of the night and in rare lonely
moments, I come upon a sort of communion of myself and something great
that is not myself. It is perhaps poverty of mind and language obliges
me to say that then this universal scheme takes on the effect of a
sympathetic person--and my communion a quality of fearless worship.
These moments happen, and they are the supreme fact in my religious life
to me, they are the crown of my religious experiences.

None the less, I do not usually speak of God even in regard to these
moments, and where I do use that word it must be understood that I use
it as a personification of something entirely different in nature from
the personality of a human being.

2.3. FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION.

And now let me return to a point raised in the first Book in Chapter
1.9. Is the whole of this scheme of things settled and done? The whole
trend of Science is to that belief. On the scientific plane one is a
fatalist, the universe a system of inevitable consequences. But as I
show in that section referred to, it is quite possible to accept as true
in their several planes both predestination and free will. (I use
free will in the sense of self-determinisn and not as it is defined
by Professor William James, and predestination as equivalent to the
conception of a universe rigid in time and space.) If you ask me, I
think I should say I incline to believe in predestination and do quite
completely believe in free will. The important belief is free will.

But does the whole universe