nother? What can it all mean, if indeed
it has a meaning? This is what thinkers have been asking themselves
since thought began, and I have really nothing new to say about it.
What I have to say leads back through Hegelianism to the old Greek
thinkers, and beyond them again to the wise men who lived and taught in
the East ages before Jesus was born. It is that this finite universe
of ours is one means to the self-realisation of the infinite.
Supposing God to be the infinite consciousness, there are still
possibilities to that consciousness which it can only know as it
becomes limited. Any of my readers to whom this thought is unfamiliar
have only to look at their own experience in order to see how
reasonable it is. You may know yourself to be a brave man, but you
will know it in a higher way if you are a soldier facing the cannon's
mouth; you will know it in a still different way if you have to face
the hostility and prejudice of a whole community for standing by
something which you believe to be right. Perhaps you have a manly
little son; he, like you, may believe in his sterling good qualities.
But wait till he has gone out to fight his way in life; then you will
realise what he is worth, and so will he. It is one thing to know that
you are a lover of truth; it is another thing to realise it when your
immediate interest and your immediate safety would bid you hedge and
lie. Do not these facts of human nature and experience tell us
something about God? To all eternity God is what He is and never can
be other, but it will take Him to all eternity to live out all that He
is. In order to manifest even to Himself the possibilities of His
being God must limit that being. There is no other way in which the
fullest self-realisation can be attained. Thus we get two modes of
God,--the infinite, perfect, unconditioned, primordial being; and the
finite, imperfect, conditioned, and limited being of which we are
ourselves expressions. And yet these two are one, and the former is
the guarantee that the latter shall not fail in the purpose for which
it became limited. Thus to the question, Why a finite universe? I
should answer, Because God wants to express what He is. His
achievement here is only one of an infinite number of possibilities.

"God is the perfect poet
Who in creation acts His own conceptions."

This is an end worthy alike of God and man. The act of creation is
eternal, although the cosmos is ch