THE NOT'SELF

ît is as if God were on His knees among the grasses of Time, singling out with a magnifying glass some insect for close observation, watching his every movement, putting obstacles in his way ever and anon to see how he will act, and, if He so please, amusing Himself by perplexing and teasing him.*

It is because some such view as this is held — of our Selves as being isolated, eut off, separated, alien, in the midst of the Universe — that thé problem of evil is so stubborn. As a matter of fact, the teachings of modem science and philosophy , with theology coming up somewhat tardily behind them, converge upon the conclusion that the individual Self is not separate in this fashion ; that we do not stand upon our private and peculiar points of individuality, Uke the oriental éléphant upon the tortoise which itself stands upon nothing ; that we are united in one common continuum, or Océan, of Ufe with ail that has been made, and with aU that is ; that we are members in the living organism of Nature, and that the Universal Life, or (in reUgious tenus) God, dwells in each of us.

As soon as we come to the point of view that we are not isolated from, but are living parts of and in, the great stream of Life ever-flowing, everproceeding ; that the Universe is not alien from us, but that we are organically related with it ; that God is not Some One set over against us,

1 Cf. Browning's " CaUban."