immanent in Nature, we mean that at every point of space and at every moment of time this wise, holy, and loving Father is present and active. We do not mean that He fills space or moves in the succession of time as a finite object might do, but only that space and time impose no restraint on His activity. Wherever and whenever He desires to act He sets in motion all needed reserves of power. As used in Christian theology, immanence does not mean that God is everywhere present as the impersonal Power, or Idea, but in Knowledge and Power as a Person. This is a personal immanence; it is inadequate and misleading to refer to it as only an 'impersonal Principle.' To speak of impersonal Reason' can no more be justified than to speak of phenomenal existence having its source and duration in' Unconscious Will.' Modern Psychology renders both positions untenable. The view of the older Mental Philosophy which postulated a division of the human mind into 'faculties,' separable from each other, distinct entities in the mental constitution, has, of course, been abandoned. Mind is a unity; it acts as a constant and indivisible ego; each and all the differing states of consciousness are the expression of the one self. Reason, feeling, will, are moods and movements of the selfsame personality. Apart from the personality of which these constituents are the expression Reason has no existence. To speak of any one of these as separable from personality is to treat it merely as an abstraction from reality. The personal, therefore, is essential to the rational. Wherever Reason is active Personality is present; there cannot be reason apart from personality. If the Divine

Reason is immanent in Nature, the Divine Personality of which reason is an exercise is present also. For Christian thought the dictum 'the Real is the Personal' has supplemented the Hegelian principle' the Rational is the Real.' From this point of view the activity of God is never less than personal; it is never characterless, purposeless action. We acknowledge with full consent that there are degrees in which the immanent presence of God is made known; that is, that He is not personally present in the same degree of self-expression in, for instance, the original fire-mist of primitive space or in the babble of running brooks, in unfolding rose or in the instinct of the bee, as He is in the soaring thought or moral consciousness of man. But in order to assert without misgivirg these distinctions it is not necessary to reduce His presence in the former to the level of an impersonal Principle.' Directly we do this the tendency sets in which, logically developed, becomes identical with the fundamental principle of Deism. The 'Idea,' Potency,'' Principle,' postulated as resident in the world, and producing by its activity the developing order of Nature, quickly comes to be read as an independent energy. By hypothesis originating from God, it now works from and by itself. Dr. Walker writes, There was an immanent principle gradually realizing itself.' Thus under this influence' the world gradually developed, the earth took shape, became fitted for the abode of life, and in due time life showed itself.' The world, therefore, is the result of an immanent principle gradually realizing itself.' Now it was in order freely to 1 What About the New Theology? p. 92.

accept the principle of Evolution in Nature, and at the same time to release itself from a mechanical or naturalistic interpretation of the universe as the product of blind or impersonal force expressed in matter and motion, that Christian thought welcomed the postulate of the immanence of God in Nature. If this postulate is now to be expounded as merely an impersonal Principle,' it is important to ask, What is the difference between an impersonal Principle' and 'natural Law'? If these are not recognized as simply symbols for denoting the Divine presence and activity of God, who is never absent from the world, then they must be themselves entities resident in the world, originally derived from God, but now self-acting.

The fact that they appear to further a rational end in the universe is certainly of value. But this is sufficiently accounted for by the rational character of their transcendent Cause now regarded as remote in time or space. Nature now works on its own account, directed and controlled by Reason' as an impersonal Principle.' Once more, therefore, the universe comes under the subjection of' Secondary Causes.' The mechanical view of the 'Natural' reappears. We are faced afresh with the difficulties from which the immanental conception of the 'natural' relieved us. If, on the other hand, we say that God is personally present as Reason in the ordered activities of the world, we do not assert that His Personality does not transcend its immanent activities therein. Even as personal Reason, God transcends the world. The rational order of the world does not exhaust the Divine Reason. The expression of His rational Power is

still conditioned by the limitations of the finite universe, which even in its vastness is not all God' is. It is still true

Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways;

And how small a whisper is heard of Him!

But the thunder of His power who can understand? 1

If we therefore honestly maintain the distinction between God as immanent in the world and God as transcendent, we shall sufficiently guard the conception of God's personal activity in the earth which is fundamental in the We.tanschauung of Jesus as given in Matt. vi. 25-33, and which is so precious to Christian thoughts of God. At the same time we shall do this effectually without having recourse to the difficult alternative of substituting for personal immanence a cold abstraction of 'Reason' as an impersonal Principle.'

Further, we are quite as convinced that we cannot rest in the conception that the mode of the Divine immanence is sufficiently stated in terms of Will,' if Will is conceived as impersonal and therefore unconscious force. Doubtless the order of all that is is the movement of the Divine Will. Nature never resists its impulse. But will is not the fundamental or final aspect of the Divine activity immanent in Nature. Will' itself is moved by Desire,' which is Love' moving towards an end. God without 'Desire,' however fitting a conception of the metaphysical Absolute, could never become the God of the created universe. The final Cause of the universe and its inherent energy is 'Desire,' or, expressed in its religious form, 'Love'; for this is 1 Job. xxvi. 14.

the most fundamental aspect of the nature of God. If rational Will is conceived to be the form in which the Divine immanence in the world is best interpreted, then Love which moves Will also moves in and through the world. Love is creation's final Law. This comes nearest to the Christian view; because nearest to the Christian thought of God as essentially self-imparting love. Hence we maintain that whenever God is active, there His character is exhibited. His natural presence is the reflection of His spiritual perfections, and is best described in terms of these. The will of God is everywhere. It is His moral perfection. For God to live is to work; for God to live is to love. All's Law, but All's Love.'

Whether, therefore, we state the mode of the Divine immanence in Nature in terms of energy with the physicist, in terms of Life with philosophers of the Vitalistic school, in terms of Reason with the Hegelian thinkers, or in terms of Will with the traditional theologian, we maintain that each and all these must be read as terms expressing the activity of a Perfect Personality who is the Living God. Less cannot be asserted than this, that God never acts at a level below the personal.

We may notice finally that Dr. Walker seeks justification for his view of immanence as ‘impersonal Principle by pointing to the presence of cruelty and suffering in the world. He calls attention to the awful natural cataclysms of earthquake and volcano; to storms and shipwrecks; to the succession of strange, uncouth, fierce, and savage animal forms on its surface or in the waters. . . its hordes of wild animals preying