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,1 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. expansion, acts of power, and of pervading presence like that of gravity. It is a matter of necessity to think of these things in this manner; so, for definiteness, we conceive of God as personal, infinite, all-wise, mighty, everywhere present; and unutterable is the consolation when by sacred influence, as of inward evidence, we know God as our Friend who makes our spirit pure and clear "Whose blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters day and night, By heavenly path to lead us home." Tennyson, In Memoriam, xvii. (slightly altered). Against the doctrine of a personal God, it is asserted-the existence of evil proves that such personal God is not infinitely good; or, if infinitely good, He is lamentably deficient in power, or in intelligence; otherwise, evil would not be allowed. The assertion loses all weight from the fact that "God foresees all things, but forces nothing;" and that we cannot conceive of free beings existing without a possibility of evil; their freedom forbids the exercise of omnipotence to avert it, but not the drawing out of a greater good by its occurrence. We are also told-" that which we know of intelligence implies a circumscribed and limited kind of being, adapting its internal processes to other processes which are external." Really, to talk in this way is to play fast and loose with things, for we can just as well think of Infinite Intelligence as we can of Infinite Power. We are assured-“ A personal God is a limited Deity; personality and infinity are terms expressive of ideas naturally incompatible." This again is mere play upon words. Can these men, who so talk about God, explain what they mean by infinite extension, as applied to the Supreme? Is infinite extension more correct, or more easily comprehended, than is infinite intelligence? We must take phenomenal conceptions such as can be framed ; we know that they are inadequate to represent the Ineffable Reality; but, seeing that He is a reality, we consider that mental conceptions are of a higher order than physical. To call Personality, Goodness, Intelligence, anthropomorphic in their nature is, indeed, to give them their right title; but, to forsake these and adopt energy or motion, mechanical in |