Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/909

about the personahty of God. In fact, the conclusions he arrives at are such that many will feel they need no proof at all. God, he says in effect, is both personal and more than personal. He can enter into personal relations with His worshippers at the same time that He far transcends them. In the theological language which Mr. Webb effectively alternates with that of modern philosophy, He is both immanent and transcendent. This is surely in accord with the demands of the most highly developed forms of normal religious consciousness, and is the view approximated by the less highly developed forms in which the concept of personality, itself a late development, is alréady nascent. Mr. Webb's plea for the admission of the Logos or Mediator on the same footing as the immanence and transcendence of the Deity is more open to question, though it is by no means the least mteresnng or suggestive portion of his book.

But, setting aside his conclusions along with his arguments, we would emphasize that the real value and significance of Mr. Webb's book lies, as we have already hinted, by the way. Mr. Webb does not write for children, and we travel a long road with him from the first page to the last. But when we are through we find that, though he adheres conscientiously to his theme, his book has meant far more to us than by itself any simple treatment of such a theme could mean. We find that there is more here than meets the eye, and that under the irresistible impulse to follow further the suggested speculation somehow contained in Mr. Webb's admirably straightforward sentences, we have gone through a metaphysical experience involving no small spiritual excitement. Let an example suffice.

"I will . . . ask whether in Dante's introduction of himself among the characters of his Comedy we may not find an analogue to that personal intercourse with human souls which Religion ascribes to God, but which it seems to philosophers of Mr. Bosanquet's school impossible to ascribe to the Absolute, because human souls are included within the Absolute."

It is only a hint, thrown out by the way, and quite in the order, too, of his general discussion. But it contains a refreshing well of suggestiveness. Around such genuine originalities grow up, if we