: Problems of Immanence: studies critical and constructive by Warschauer Joseph - Immanence of God

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INTRODUCTION

DIVINE IMMANENCE

The God without he findeth not, Who finds Him not within.

In a word, the Divine immanence is not the goal of our quest of God, but it is the indispensable starting-point.

SOME PROBLEMS OF IMMANENCE

I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts. . .

But the world which is the dwelling of that something "far more deeply interfused" of which Wordsworth sings, does not consist exclusively of

the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky. . .

--it contains also dismal, fever-breeding swamps, dreadful deserts, dreary wastes of eternal ice, plunged into darkness half the year; are we going simply to ignore these realities when we speak of the Divine indwelling in the world? And, once more, shall we assert this doctrine when we remember the cold cunning of the spider, or the delight in torture displayed by the domestic cat?

Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins Running, Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; Taking all forms from M?h to M?hi; and They change and perish all--but He remains.

And thus we may perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what direction we must look for the solution of our problem of universal immanence--a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false construction of that doctrine. We conclude that every portion of the cosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such aspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest--His Power, His Purpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity upon whosoever would violate it; but His own Essence, His Character, could be revealed only in One whose soul harboured no single element at variance with the Divine Goodness, One who could be described as "God manifest in the flesh"--even that unique Son whose oneness with the Father was undimmed and unbroken by any diversity of will. It required the perfect Instrument to give forth the perfect Harmony.

We cannot forbear quoting two pungent lines of Mr. Hamish Hendry's, in which the outcome of such theosophising seems to be not altogether unjustly described as--

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