Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/137

124 the world of matter, aided by the history of the past and the achievements of the present, it is not difficult for him to set forth and establish the idea of God as infinitely perfect; philosophically from these materials he constructs the idea of the infinite God, the absolute Being, with no limitation. God must have all conceivable perfection—the perfection of Being, self-existence, eternity of duration, endless and without beginning; of power, all mightiness; of mind, all knowingness; of conscience, all righteousness; of affection, all lovingness ; of soul, all holiness, absolute fidelity to himself. These words describe the idea of God, and distinguish it from all others, but these qualities do not exhaust the perfections of God, only our present conception thereof. To one with more and greater faculties, other qualities must doubtless appear in his conception of the Infinite. Look up at the heavens and consider the worlds of matter, revolving there visible to the unarmed sight; multiply those dots of light by the function of the telescope, consider each but the centre of a system of other worlds all full of motion and of conscious life; with a microscope study a bit of Dover chalk, or slate-stone from Berlin, and see in a single inch the million-million tiny monuments of what once was life, its epitaph now published in such small print; close your eyes, and imagine those astral schemes of suns each as the centre of a planetary system, and every orb as full of life as this, but variant in character as in circumstance and condition, then ask if you can comprehend the consciousness of the Being who is the Cause and Providence of all this—ay, of the creator of a single drop of ink! What we can know of the infinite God is but a whisper from a world of harmony. Still, though inadequate, the idea may be free from contradiction, and contain no thought which does not represent a quality in God, as the fly on the dome of St Peter's, who sees but an inch, may yet see the nail he perches on. Thus conscious of the limited extent of human powers, I like not to call God personal, lest my idea be invested with the defect of human personality; or impersonal, lest the limits of matter be crowded about the idea of God. For certainly God's infinite consciousness must differ from our finite and dependent consciousness as the creative power of