Even the evidence he draws from stars and flowers and peacocks' tails
and sunsets, with which he is, as a rule, very imperfectly acquainted,
is, of course, heatedly disputed, and the proper authorities on these
subjects are, on the whole, not well disposed toward his interpretation.
But we need not consider that here. Where we should most logically
expect the hand of Providence is in the human order, because in that
order catastrophe is infinitely more important, in view of man's
capacity for pain. Yet it is precisely in regard to this order that the
theologian is vaguest and least satisfactory. He talks grandly of God
moving every atom in the universe, counting the hairs of our heads,
numbering (but not preventing) the fall of the sparrows, and so on; but
when we ask for the evidence of God's concern with contemporary human
events he is very vague if they are good events, and, if they are evil,
he hastily disclaims any interference of the Deity. Some of our more
advanced theologians are claiming that the finest improvement they have
made in their science is to have brought God from _without_ the universe
(where no theologian had ever put him) and make him _immanent_ in it.
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