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The idea of the relation between the finite and the infinite is not recognizable in early thought; to trace the history of such an institution as sacrifice we desire to know in what sort of feeling it originated, and we may then follow its progress to its highest definition.

Human minds are incapable of surrounding that reality because all thoughts and conceptions of it are finite, intellectual creations and not the reality of Divine Being which alone knows itself. For example, if we form a conception of Divinity as a living, almighty, self-subsisting, eternal Being, this is only a concept apprehended by a human intellectual reality.

Children, on the other hand, are bound by every tie to obey, respect, support and even worship the authors of their being. Filial duty is the greatest of all virtues, and the man who fails in this respect is despised by everyone and takes rank with worthless characters and outcasts. Our view of life is very finite. We are born, we die, are relegated to the unknown and quickly forgotten.

Here, then, is the service which Christianity the oriental element in our culture renders to us Westerns. It checks and counterbalances our natural tendency toward the passing, the finite, and the changeable, by fixing the mind upon the contemplation of eternal things, and by Platonizing our affections, which otherwise would have too little outlook upon the ideal world.

Even admitting the inability of the finite mind to fully grasp infinite principles, man is still forced to the realization of the manifest inequality and injustice of the relative positions of human beings on earth, providing that the same is thrust arbitrarily upon them; and it would seem that no amount of future reward could possibly equalize or explain these conditions.

The same connects me with all finite beings of my species, and is the universal mediator between us all.

There is a great universal intelligence and a remote finite expression of this intelligence; the lesser is always dependent upon the greater and our human life becomes the microcosmic pattern of the macrocosmic world.

As Hume taught long ago, you cannot infer an infinite conclusion from finite data and in this case the conclusion is infinite and the data are finite. They are not only finite but various: some pointing one way, some another. Finally we cannot prove moral progress by appeal to any objective standard, such as the amount of happiness existing in the world at successive dates.

I myself find no good warrant for even suspecting the existence of any reality of a higher denomination than that distributed and strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we finite beings swim in. That is the sort of reality given us, and that is the sort with which logic is so incommensurable.

If he retained his belief in a transcendent God, he must surrender belief in a triune God. He could choose between the two; but his Christology permitted no third choice. For him, the only alternative to a finite God was a lone God. As a result monophysite theology oscillated between denial of the impassibility of God and denial of his three-fold personality.