conception of God we should rigorously exclude all the limitations of size, shape, time

and space, which are essential to the world of flesh and blood. We cannot discover God

by searching or reasoning, because we have no knowledge of the conditions of spirit life

upon which to base our arguments. We depend entirely upon revelation. What God has

told us of Himself, we may know; what He has left unrecorded is entirely beyond us, and

the attempt to supplement divine revelation by human philosophy will be disastrous.

As we have already pointed out, it cannot be denied that no one person can be in two

distinct places at the same time. This is universally true in the realm of flesh and blood,

but it clearly becomes untrue when carried over into the realm of the spirit, for Scripture

makes it plain that God is omnipresent. We should be careful, therefore, not to reason in

the things of God with the limited logic of human experience. The tendency to do this,

however, is almost universal among theologians:--

But in every case where the bounds of revelation are overstepped, and the light of

philosophy substituted for the lamp of revealed truth, the argument leads its followers

into mischievous error.

Perhaps, before concluding, something should be said concerning the many passages

of Scripture that ascribe to God the organs and the feelings of a man. To the invisible

God are ascribed hands, arms, eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth and feet. To God, Who is not a

man that He should repent, is ascribed a whole range of human feelings--repentance,

sorrow, joy, jealousy, zeal and pity. We read of His instituting enquiries as though He

would learn, of remembering, of forgetting, of being reminded, of laughing, and of

hissing. Many things connected with place are attributed to God--Scripture speaks of

Him as sitting on a throne and dwelling in a sanctuary. Circumstances associated with

time, with battle, with building, with inheriting, with writing and with raiment, are all

attributed to God. Not only so, but God is represented by irrational creatures--the lion,

the lamb and the dove; roaring and bellowing also are attributed to Him, and wings and

feathers. The reader will remember many further instances, from which it becomes clear

that we are dealing here with the figure of speech known as anthropopathy,

anthropomorphism, or condescension. If God be Spirit, then unless He condescends to

be interpreted to man in human terms, He will for ever remain unrevealed and unknown.

An illustration may perhaps be drawn from the well-known properties of "wireless"

waves. Through every room in every house in the kingdom, wireless waves are beating,

yet the occupants are entirely oblivious of their presence, and unmoved by their message.

The human ear responds to the sound waves of the air, but needs the mediation of the

wireless receiving-set to translate the etherial waves, of which it is quite unconscious,

into the lower earthly waves which it can detect. In everyday language, we may say that

we have a lecturer speaking "over the wireless", but in reality we have only heard

wireless waves interpreted into sound waves. In the same way, the Bible speaks of

God's face, voice and hands, but these terms are only the interpretation of unseen

spiritual equivalents that have no counterpart in human experience. Apart from this