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+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.
Nothing can extricate us from this dilemma, except that what we think evil is not really evil at all, but hidden good. If the views of Divine power and responsibility set forth in this book are true if, i.e., we are justified in having recourse to a theory of Divine self-limitation it will be clear that Mr.
This neglected truth of God's self-limitation of His power needs to be far more explicitly avowed than has generally been the case.
"And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fullness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?" Others affirm the self-limitation of God.
A little further thought shows us that if there is to be a world, a universe at all, this can only be by the One Existence conditioning Itself and thus making manifestation possible, and that the very Logos is the Self-limited God; limited to become manifest; manifested to bring a universe into being; such self-limitation and manifestation can only be a supreme act of sacrifice, and what wonder that on every hand the world should show its birth-mark, and that the Law of Sacrifice should be the law of being, the law of the derived lives.
There is a true asceticism, a discipline a 'gymnastic unto godliness, as Paul calls it. And if our faith is to grow high and bear rich clusters on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky, we must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Without rigid self-control and self-limitation, no vigorous faith. And without them no effectual work! It is no holiday task to cast out devils.
There seems, however, one other possible explanatory hypothesis, though it is here advanced only in the most tentative manner: may it not be possible for the Most High to impose a limitation upon His infinite knowledge corresponding to that self-limitation of His infinite power which we regard as a necessary assumption?
So far as its authority is of the heart only, so far as it has organized the religious life itself without regard to other ends and free from intellectual, historical, and governmental entanglements that are supplementary at most, he needs no formal act to be one with its spirit; and, however much he may deny himself by his self-limitation, he remains a Christian."
This is the veil of matter which makes possible the birth of the Logos, Mary, the World-Mother, necessary for the manifestation in time of the Eternal, that Deity may manifest for the building of the worlds. That circumscription, that self-limitation, is the act of sacrifice, a voluntary action done for love's sake, that other lives may be born from Him.
It must embrace that part of religion that glows for us, the thing which we find beautiful in other souls, the art, the poetry, the tradition, the love of nature, the craft, the interests we hanker after. It need not contain all these things, because we can often do better by checking diffuseness, and by resolute self-limitation.
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