theology in
the world. The writer is chary of assertion or denial in these
matters. He believes that they are speculations not at all necessary to
salvation. He believes that men may differ profoundly in their opinions
upon these points and still be in perfect agreement upon the essentials
of religion. The reality of religion he believes deals wholly and
exclusively with the God of the Heart. He declares as his own opinion,
and as the opinion which seems most expressive of modern thought, that
there is no reason to suppose the Veiled Being either benevolent or
malignant towards men. But if the reader believes that God is Almighty
and in every way Infinite the practical outcome is not very different.
For the purposes of human relationship it is impossible to deny that
God PRESENTS HIMSELF AS FINITE, as struggling and taking a part against
evil.

The writer believes that these dogmas of relationship are not merely
extraneous to religion, but an impediment to religion. His aim in this
book is to give a statement of religion which is no longer entangled in
such speculations and disputes.

Let him add only one other note of explanation in this preface, and that
is to remark that except for one incidental passage (in Chapter IV.,
1), nowhere does he discuss the question of personal immortality. [It
is discussed in "First and Last Things," Book IV, 4.] He omits this
question because he does not consider that it has any more bearing upon
the essentials of religion, than have the theories we may hold about the
relation of God and the moral law to the starry universe. The latter is
a question for the theologian, the former for the psychologist. Whether
we are mortal or immortal, whether the God in our hearts is the Son of
or a rebel against the Universe, the reality of religion, the fact of
salvation, is still our self-identification with God, irrespective of
consequences, and the achievement of his kingdom, in our hearts and
in the world. Whether we live forever or die tomorrow does not affect
righteousness. Many people seem to find the prospect of a final personal
death unendurable. This impresses me as egotism. I have no such appetite
for a separate immortality. God is my immortality; what, of me, is
identified with God, is God; what is not is of no more permanent value
than the snows of yester-year.

H. G. W.

Dunmow, May, 1917.

GOD THE INVISIBLE KING

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE COSMOGONY OF MODERN RELIGION