And now reason once again confronts us with the Sphinx-like
question--the Sphinx, in effect, is reason--Does God exist? This eternal
and eternalizing person who gives meaning--and I will add, a human
meaning, for there is none other--to the Universe, is it a substantial
something, existing independently of our consciousness, independently of
our desire? Here we arrive at the insoluble, and it is best that it
should be so. Let it suffice for reason that it cannot prove the
impossibility of His existence.
To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to
act as if He existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the
inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets
hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this
divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.
Let us see how this may be.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Lecture I., p. 36. London, 1895, Black.
[39] _No quiero acordarme_, a phrase that is always associated in
Spanish literature with the opening sentence of _Don Quijote: En an
lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme_.--J.E.C.F.
[40] W. Hermann, _Christlich systematische Dogmatik_, in the volume
entitled _Systematische christliche Religion. Die Kultur der Gegenwart_
series, published by P. Hinneberg.
[41] _Dieu a fait l'homme a son image, mais l'homme le lui a bien
rendu_, Voltaire.
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