Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IDEALIST PHILOSOPHY: ITS MERITS AND ITS DEFECTS ; THE CONCEPTION OF GOD ; HOW SHALL WE CONCEIVE THE SYNTHETIC UNITY OF GOD, MAN, AND THE WORLD? —THE KINGDOM OF GOD Religion is possible only if man feels that he is related to God. A God above us, but also a God who is within us, is a perennial belief of man, common to all religions. It has obtained the most complete expression in the highest religion known, Christianity, yet it has been present in every religion. God as the universal father and all men as His children, this is the expression of the relationship between God and man. It is the general expression of the relationship that we take at present, without entering on the particular doctrines that articulate it into a scheme. Nor at this stage do we dwell on the proof of the statement that this appears in every religion. For this has received proof in almost every book dealing with the history of religions. We may take it for granted here. The relationship between God and man, which is a postulate of the religious life, has found various forms of expression, and has demanded many meansfor its satisfaction. The need for fellowship is imperative. Yet as religious thought advanced, and the conception of God advanced with the growth of human intelligence and character, the difficulty of fellowship appeared to become greater and greater. For God seemed to become farther and farther removed from man in proportion as man conceived Him in higher and higher terms. He became in man's conception of Him, the all-knowing, almighty, all- present One, in Whom all things lived and moved and had their being, and His ethical attributes became more and more distinct; justice, holiness, righteousness, truthfulness, and love came to be predicated of Him, and these conceptions of Him grew wi...