How can such a great, powerful, and superior God meddle with the tiniest details, be worried about the smallest acts and minimal thoughts of each individual? Such is the question that is frequently asked.
In this current state of inferiority men can hardly understand an infinite God, because they are limited and circumscribed themselves, and consequently consider God finite and circumscribed as well; by doing so they see God as their own image. The paintings that show God with human traces do not contribute little to feed such mistake in the spirit of the masses, that adore more the form than the thought in God. The most, God is a powerful sovereign, on an inaccessible throne, lost in the immensity of the skies, and since their faculties and perceptions are restrict, they cannot understand that God may directly intervene in the smallest things.
Given the impotence of man to understand the essence of divinity, he can only make an approximate idea, helped but necessarily much imperfect comparisons, but that can at least show the possibility of something that, at first sight, seem impossible.
Consider a fluid that is subtle enough to penetrate all bodies. It is evident that each molecule of this fluid will produce, upon each molecule of the matter with which it is in contact, an action identical to the one that the totality of the fluid would produce. It is what chemistry shows us.
Since it is not intelligent, this fluid acts mechanically only through the material forces. But if we suppose this fluid with some intelligence, endowed by perceptive and sensitive faculties, it will no longer act blindly, but with discernment, with will and freedom; it will see, hear, and feel.
The properties of the perispiritual fluid can give us an idea about it. It is not intelligent by itself, because it is matter, but it is the vehicle of thoughts, of sensations and perceptions of the Spirits; it is due to the subtleness of this fluid that the Spirits penetrate everywhere, scrutinize our thoughts that they see and act from a distance; the superior Spirits owe their gift of ubiquity to this fluid, once they have achieved a certain degree of depuration; they only need a beam of their thoughts sent to multiple points to be able to simultaneously manifest their presence there. The extension of this faculty is subordinated to the degree of elevation and depuration of the Spirit. But the Spirits, however much elevated they are, are limited creatures in their faculties. Their power and the reach of their perceptions, from this point of view, could not approach that of God. They can, however, be used for comparison. What the Spirit can only realize in a restricted horizon, God that is infinite realizes in infinite proportions.
There is still another difference, that the action of the Spirit is momentarily and subordinated to the circumstances, whereas the action of God is permanent; the thought of the Spirit can only embrace a restrict space and time, whilst God embraces the universe and eternity. In short, between the Spirits and God there is the distance between the finite and the infinite.
The perispiritual fluid is not the thought, but the agent and intermediary of that thought. Since it is the fluid that transmits it, it is somehow impregnated, and given our impossibility of isolating the thought, it seems to make one with the fluid, as the sound seems to combine into one with air, so much so that we can, as a way of speaking, materialize it. In the same way that we say that the air becomes sonorous, taking the effect by the cause, we could say that the fluid becomes intelligent.
Regarding the thought of God, be it like that or not, meaning, whether that thought acts directly or through a fluid, to facilitate our understanding, we represented it in the concrete form of an intelligent fluid filling up the whole infinite universe, penetrating every part of creation. The whole nature is embedded in the
Divine fluid; everything is submitted to its intelligent action, its providence, its solicitude; not a single being, however tiny it might be, isn’t, in a way, saturated by that fluid.
Thus, we are constantly in the presence of the divinity; there isn’t a single action from our side that can avoid its eyes; our thoughts are in contact with its thoughts and that is the reason why it is said that God reads the most intimate parts of our hearts; we are in God as God is in us, according to the words of Jesus Christ.
To extend solicitude to the tiniest creature, God has no need to look down from the heights of infinity, nor there is a need for God to leave the dwelling of glory, since that dwelling is everywhere. Our prayers do not need to transpose the space, nor do they need to be said in a reverberating voice, because our thoughts are embedded by and incessantly interacting with God’s thoughts.
The image of an intelligent universal fluid is not more than a comparison, but adequate to give a fairer idea of God than the images that represent God as an old man with a long beard, covered by a mantle. We can only apply comparison by using things that we do know; that is why we daily say: the eye of God, the hand of God, the voice of God, the breath of God, and the face of God. In the infancy of humanity, man applies these comparisons verbatim; later, being more capable of abstractions, the creature spiritualizes the material ideas. The idea of an intelligent universal fluid, penetrating everything, as it would be with the luminous fluid, the caloric fluid, the electric fluid
[1], or any other, if they were intelligent, has the objective of explaining the possibility of God being everywhere, to be involved with everything, watching over the blossoming weed as well as the worlds.
The distance between God and us was removed. We understand His presence, and when we address our thought to Him it gives us more confidence, for we can no longer say that God is too far away and that He is too great to be worried about us. But such a thought, very reassuring to the humble and to the good man, is terrifying to the hardened bad and proud one, that had kept God away given the distance, but from now on will feel His influence and power.
Three is nothing that precludes us from admitting a center of action to the principle of sovereign intelligence, irradiating non-stop, inundating the universe with His emanations, like the light of the Sun. But where is this focus? It is likely that it is no more localized in a determined spot than its action. If simple Spirits have the gift of ubiquity, this must be a boundless faculty to God.
Assuming that God fills up the whole universe, it could be hypothetically admitted that such a focus does not need to be transported, and that it may be formed in all places where God’s sovereign will desires, from what it could inferred that God is everywhere and nowhere.
Our reason must be humbled before these fathomless problems. God does exist: we could not doubt it; God is infinitely just and good: it is God’s essence; His solicitude reaches everything: we now understand it; by being permanently in contact with God, we can pray to him, certain that we are heard; God can only wish our wellbeing, hence we must trust God. That is essential. As for the rest, let us wait to be worthy of understanding.
[1] The modern knowledge of electricity, such as electromagnetic induction and the field theory, were in their early days, thanks to the work of great 19
th century minds such as Michael Faraday and James Maxwell. Maxwell’s field equations set of four papers were first published in 1861, in the Philosophical Magazine in Britain. (T.N.)
