The Rev. B. Fay Mills preached not long since at Music Hall, the first sermon in a series on "Twentieth Century Theology," his subject being, "The Modern God," and his text from John, 4:24, "God is spirit."
"The last thing to change is theology," he said, "and there are some good reasons for this; but now we have come to find a contrast between religion and our theory of religion, in which we discover that our religion, poor as it is, is better than our theology.
"I am perfectly clear that it is time that some of our conceptions of God should be clearly stated as worthy only of abandonment. First I would mention the absentee god. The trouble with men has been that they have had what Phillips Brooks called, 'a meagre idea of God.' The second god that needs burying we will call the limited god. By this I mean the idea of a God who shared his power with a devil, and either ordained or permitted evil, not only for the present, but eternally. The third god whose funeral demands attention might be described as the negative god. By that I mean the idea of religion which conceives of it as consisting of negative commands. The fourth god to be buried is the unkind god. What a hideous mockery, that men of this day should think of God as angry and needing to be appeased. Dr. Savage has well said that no character of fiction is so base as the God depicted in the creeds. The fifth god awaiting burial might be described as the partial god. There have been Pharisees in every known religion, and the Pharisee of to-day is the man who would limit the fatherhood of God to the especial number of those who may chance to have certain opinions about him."
