church dome was a dial-plate barren of figures, but a dark spectre pointed at it, and dead men sought to see and read. Be not like those men, vainly searching the figureless dialplate of unrecovered centuries. Be not those blind, trying to read where nothing can be read; nor those deaf, listening where no voice can be heard. Those who feed Gathering the threads of argument into some pattern of certainty, we find that those who pretend to divorce intellect from piety are in grievous error. The Tree of Knowledge, apart from Religion, is not a Tree of Life. on it only, neglecting the higher faculties of imagination and sacred emotion, often fall into that mental insanity which asserts" Behold, we know not anything!" Far from having added anything to our real knowledge of God and of human nature, their light has gone out in darkness: whereas Moses and Job, Plato and Aristotle, live as princes among men. The religious temperament enables the intellect to see clearer and further. Only in the least thoughtful of men is it manifested in simple faith and unhesitating zeal that acts rather than reflects, ventures instead of calculating. The thoughtful it moulds into the character expressing intellect and morality— wide, deep, far-seeing; and is in union with sound, sober, wellbalanced cerebral development. The highest class of minds, the eminently spiritual and thoroughly intellectual, familiarise themselves with those awfully grand subjects which are far beyond the ordinary strength of nerve and brain. This highest class is of the Christly type. In them partly, in Him fully, we find not merely spiritual, but philosophical preeminence beautifully arrayed in simplicity, purity, love. In conclusion, we confidently assert-The best thinkers in every science give up the despairing creed, and decide for religion. The great facts and doctrines of Revealed Truth are more and more approved by accurate thought. The light of Revelation illumines the invisible world; we not only look into various apartments of the material universe, but behold within them many forms of spiritual grace and grandeur. While we look, our constitution and faculties enlarge in conscious existence, and we become almost other beings in impassioned emotion and intellectuality. The promise and Piety the Crown of Intellect. 33 prophecy of higher and imperishable corporeity increase every present enjoyment. New melodies and harmonies continually break in upon the soul with delicious refreshments and assurances of heavenly help. The strength of our intellect delights in the words of inspired narrative and in glorious acts. Intelligence unites with Piety in proclaiming that God is the source of all and the disposer of all; that the birth of a human being is not a less manifestation of Divine Power than is the exit of a human being in chariot of fire. The ordinary and extraordinary acts of Divine Government are known to be relatively, not essentially, different. Having this knowledge of the Supreme, we rightly regard marvels and miracles as special messages and impressive signs. Without repugnance, we admit the Divine element in religion; only weaklings refuse it. We hold that, beyond controversy, Divinity is the very life and soul of Nature. Those apologetic commentaries, or excusing expositions, formerly accepted, do not satisfy our nicer feelings; nor will our surer confidence try to evade intelligent inquiry. We have a firm, rational hold of historic evidence, due knowledge of physics and philosophy, attesting the origin and continuance of Revelation. We disregard the petulant outcries of irreligious persons, who denounce all who know and believe more than themselves and dare to say they know. After due inquiry, it is not so much that we consent to retain our faith in Holy Scripture, as that Scripture retains us. The inquiry, renewed again and again in different ages of the world and periods of life, affords a consecutive accordance of innumerable affirmations. Book after book, chapter after chapter, verse after verse, word after word, have their own history, their own criticism, with pleadings for and against. There remains no softening to save our pride; it is not we who hold the Bible, the Bible holds us, consecrates our affections, crowns our intellect. "The purer the light in the human heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in the mind of Christ. The greater the knowledge of the development of man, the truer insight as to the increasing purpose of Revelation." Intellect is not divorced from Piety, Piety is the crown of Intelligence. D STUDY II. THE SUPERNATURAL. "A Presence that disturbs me with the joy WORDSWORTH, Tintern Abbey. WE are apt to forget, in listening to denials of the Supernatural, that they enter a region of thought where absolute demonstration, in a scientific sense, is impossible. When told by Renan that, not from one process of reasoning, but from the mass of all modern sciences, we have proof that there is no Supernatural,' the violence of the assertion carries us away, for a moment, from the fact that there neither is nor can be scientific proof of that which is so confidently affirmed. All history and all experience prove that love and belief of the Divine flourish in heathen, Christian, and scientific minds; that, indeed, the conviction of the existence and omnipresent operation of "the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise," is the universal thought of humanity-adapting itself, by inward evidence as of something felt, to the history, the poetry, the speculation, the science of every age. We may advance to the proof step by step. THE FIRST CAUSE. If a man who had searched the universe in every part were to say "There is no God," his statement would not "Ce n'est pas d'un raisonnement, mais de tout l'ensemble des sciences modernes que soit cet immense résultat-il n'y a pas de surnaturel."-Renan, "Etudes d'Histoire Religieuse," p. 206. Denial of the Supreme. 35 be worthy of credit; from such a search God might hide. Himself. Atheism is, therefore, as to proof, impossible. The Absolute, indeed, cannot in any manner or degree be known or denied, in the strict sense of knowing. That is to say, the essence of God is inaccessible and incomprehensible. None but God can understand what God is in Himself, or the nature of the bond which binds the Divine attributes in mysterious unity; consequently, no rational being can properly deny the existence of that concerning which, essentially, he knows nothing. Denial of the Supreme, as founded on the fact of "not knowing," is irrational and unworthy of credit. With like folly the assertions-"Matter alone is eternal and divine;" "There is no agency in the world other than physical agency;' "Nothing exists that is supermaterial, or supernatural," are sought to be justified by the unknowableness of the things denied. Strange to say, ignorance, which has nothing, gives nothing, concerning those things, presumes to deny their existence. We cannot accept the denial. Knowledge reveals that every phenomenon, as it is investigated, leads from the known to that which is utterly unknown; all natural facts are unaccountable in their essence, and unknowable in their ultimate genesis. The great master fact is the unknown. Absolute existence is the Reality which persists independently of matter, cannot be identified with matter, is the Supernatural. Reverse the argument. The existence of matter or of energy from eternity is incomprehensible, even as is the existence of God from eternity. Knowledge of either is impossible; nevertheless, despite the impossibility, we cannot enter any inquiry concerning causation without eventually postulating some First Cause. We are forced to do this from sheer inability to follow out an infinite series of causes. This First Cause is infinite, for if not, we must think of a region beyond its limits and uncaused, which would be, virtually, to abandon causation. The First Cause must likewise be independent, have no necessary relation to any other being; for if the presence of anything else is necessary for completeness "quod Deo minus est, Deus non est," it is dependent and not the First Cause; therefore the First Cause is infinite, is independent, is supernatural. The position is unassailable and opponents beat a retreat. "The consciousness of an inscrutable Power manifested to us through all phenomena has been growing ever clearer, and must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty that, on the one hand, such a Power exists, while, on the other hand, its nature transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards which intelligence has from the first been progressing. To this conclusion science inevitably arrives as it reaches its confines; while, to this conclusion, Religion is irresistibly driven by criticism. And, satisfying as it does the demands of the most rigorous logic at the same time that it gives the religious sentiment the widest possible sphere of action, is the conclusion we are bound to accept, without reserve or qualification." If we apply to this, the Inscrutable Something, Anselm's definition of God-"That than which nothing greater can be thought "2-we have, in the latest result of science, an acknowledgment-not of that to which "Religion is irresistibly driven," but of the first great truth of Scripture, that God is the mighty inscrutable Power who transcends all our understanding. This Power, of which every phenomenon is a manifestation, acts through all bodies, animate and inanimate. If a stone is thrown into the air, or falls on the ground, it is according to definite laws; if a crystal is formed in a solution of salt, if plants grow and flower, if animals are propagated, if there are perception and formation of thought in man, all these, though Omnipresence is "unthinkable," are the sensible manifestations of a Divine Power immanent in the Cosmos-proof of the omnipresence of mystery. This inscrutable Power, the ultimate Cause of all things, can only be thought of as possessing specific attributes. The forms of our consciousness are such that the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be brought within them. We are unable to form any idea of eternity, infinity, omnipotence, omnipresence; we must get notions by means of duration, 1 "First Principles," p. 108: Herbert Spencer. "Proslogium," cap. 2, 3, 4. |