Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/17

xvi

So much for the chief sides represented in the discussion. Its significance for the existing situation in philosophy and religion can be made duly clear by exhibiting its place in that larger movement of thought which has most prominently marked the century now passing away.

This movement, so far as it affected our English-speaking communities, was in its bearing on the rational foundations of religion professedly defensive; but only so by intent, and on the surface of its thinking; in its deep undertow it was from its springs profoundly negative, — destructive in tendency. When in the mind of the early century the question first clearly uttered itself: “What will all our scientific discoveries, all our independent philosophisings, all our historical, textual, and other critical doubts, leave us of our religious tradition? — above all, is the Personal God of past faith to remain intact for us?” the pressure of the situation, having borne the anthropomorphic supports of Theism indiscriminately away, forced thinking people to ask further: “What, then, do we indeed mean by ‘God,’ since we are no longer to think him ‘altogether such an one as ourselves’? — has the meaning gone out of the word ‘God’ entirely?” To many — as, for instance, to Sir William Hamilton — it seemed that, substantially, the answer must come in this form: “God, surely, is the Absolute, the one and only unconditioned Reality; the universal Ground of all, which it is impossible not to account real: for it is impossible not to believe that Something is real, and therefore impossible not to believe there is an Ultimate Reality, What is