Editorial note — LESSON XII.
Reading edition
[Footnote A: On this point Sir Oliver Lodge has a passage at once advanced and bold, and yet for which he claims Christian warrant. It is, however, far removed from modern Christian orthodoxy, though splendidly true: "The universe is not a 'being,' but a 'becoming'—an ancient but light bringing doctrine when realized,—it is in change, in development, in movement upward and downward, that activity consist. A stationary condition, or stagnation, would be to us simple non-existence: the element of progression, of change, of activity, must be as durable as the universe itself. Monotony, in the sense of absolute immobility, is unthinkable, unreal, and cannot anywhere exist: save where things have ceased to be.
"Such ideas, the ideas of development and progress, extend even up to God himself, according to the Christian conception. So we return to that with which we started: The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe, above its struggles, and taking no part in the process, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined and complete; no, it is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by himself as part of himself, who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to condition as the Soul of it all: conditions not artificial and transitory, but inherent in the process of producing free and conscious beings, and essential to the full self-development even of Deity.
"It is a marvelous and bewildering thought, but whatever its value, and whether it be an ultimate revelation or not, it is the revelation of Christ." ("Science and Immortality," p. 292.)]