"MAKE US GODS TO GO BEFORE US."
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—When I read Dr. Carpenter's letter in your last number, I feared it would be misunderstood ; and that fear was con- firmed by an abstract of his letter in an evening paper. The picture of the eminent scientific man agreeing with the eminent cleric that "each of us makes his own God," will remind the hasty or careless reader of the merriment of the Roman Augurs. There are too many already who have lost the belief in a living guide, and frame some idol to go before them out of the gold images which have been stolen from Egypt or elsewhere; while others elect to live wholly without religion, rather than content themselves with a mockery of its substance. The vital question of the day is, not whether there is a God, but what we may believe about Him. That there are ideal gods many and lords many, which are "neither more nor less than the believer's own idea of God," no one can deny. It appears to me, however, that Dr. Carpenter intends to say that the God imaged in each mind takes shape indeed according to the nature of that mind, but is caused by the external force of which it is the reflection. The sun shines upon leaf and pool; the one gives back green rays, the other a brightness not unlike that of the sun itself. The greenness and the splendour are wholly unlike each other, yet each is due to the action of the one object which is equally distinct from leaf and water. So one mind conceives of God as an enormously magni- fied man, another as an all-pervading spirit; but it is the action of the same God, on each mind, which produces these differing results. That this is Dr. Carpenter's view seems to be evident, when he says that each man's idea of God is made by himself, in the same sense in which he makes his idea of his friend. God, therefore, is as truly a guide, outside of and distinct from ourselves, conversing with us, and able to hear and answer, as the friend whom we know in like manner only through the medium of imperfect and possibly misleading senses. But it is important to the perplexed men and women of this generation that the leaders of thought should speak quite clearly, when they touch on the highest subjects. If, as I believe, Dr. Car- penter means that each mind " makes " its own God, as the still water, the river, and the grass reflect the same sunlight in different ways,—that we can converse with him, and be guided by him, although our own nature modifies our conception of his will; then I venture, through you, to ask whether the descrip- tion of "a living personality, in sympathetic relation with his sentient offspring," as "neither more nor less than the believer's own idea of God," is not open to misconception.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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