anging every moment, for God is
ceaselessly uttering Himself through higher and ever higher forms of
existence. We are helping Him to do it when we are true to ourselves;
or rather, which is the same thing, He is doing it in us: "The Father
abiding in me doeth His works." No part of the universe has value in
and for itself alone; it has value only as it expresses God. To see
one form break up and another take its place is no calamity, however
terrible it may seem, for it only means that the life contained in that
form has gone back to the universal life, and will express itself again
in some higher and better form. To think of God in this way is an
inspiration and a help in the doing of the humblest tasks. It redeems
life from the dominion of the sordid and commonplace. It supplies an
incentive to endeavour, and fills the heart with hope and confidence.
To put it in homely, everyday phraseology, God is getting at something
and we must help Him. We must be His eyes and hands and feet; we must
be labourers together with Him. This fits in with what science has to
say about the very constitution of the universe; it is all of a piece;
there are no gaps anywhere. It is a divine experiment without risk of
failure, and we must interpret it in terms of our own highest.

CHAPTER III

MAN IN RELATION TO GOD

+What is man?+--So far we have seen that the universe, including
ourselves, is one instrument or vehicle of the self-expression of God.
God is All; He is the universe and infinitely more, but it is only as
we read Him in the universe that we can know anything about Him. We
have seen, too, that it is by means of the universe and His
self-limitation therein that He expresses Himself to Himself. Now what
is our relation to this process? What are we to think about ourselves?
Who or what are we?

A witty Frenchman once sardonically remarked, "In the beginning God
created man in His own image, and man has ever since been returning the
compliment by creating God in his." But what else can we do? It
follows from what has already been said that we know nothing and can
know nothing of God except as we read Him in the universe, and we can
only interpret the universe in terms of our own consciousness. In
other words, man is a microcosm of the universe. What the universe may
be in reality we do not know,--though I am not so sure as some people
seem to be that appearance and reality do not correspond,--we can only