endeavour to co-ordinate our thoughts that we are expressly concerned. Now Logic is defined as being precisely the exact science of these laws.

For

It is also in explicit relation to what we adopted as our starting-point in this discussion, viz., the meaning and function of creeds. the whole doctrine of the syllogism is, as its very name imports, concerned essentially with securing consistency of statement, and especially of statement formulated, distinct, and unambiguous. And to express dogmatic positions in this form, and in articulate connection, is the very raison d'être of a creed while the further procedure of elaborating these articles of dogma into a theological system, involving as it does at every step an inferential process, implies throughout a tacit appeal to the canons of logical validity.

And yet, notwithstanding the wide range of application implied in such a definition of Logic as that just given, the moment we take it up, and ask what it can do for us in our search after Truth, its necessary limitations will surely appear disappointing.

For, as Dr. Newman says, 'It can give us no

access to the concrete.' Yet are not we and our world necessarily in the concrete ?

While when we inquire after the measure of its contribution to our assurance of certitude in a case where there is in question such a knowledge of Truth as means our spiritual grasp and possession of Reality, its helpfulness seems to dwindle to a minimum.

Putting aside, then, all the accretions which have clustered round the real nucleus of the Science of Logic, and which swell the bulk of most logical text-books, we may say that its whole office and end is to secure a clear consistency among our thoughts-be they true or false-and among the carefully formulated statements of them; so that they may stand validly together without self-contradiction. More especially is Logic concerned with the inferential process; supplying us with rules for our safe passage from thought to thought, from statement to statement; giving us, the while, clear notice that all such thoughts and statements are simple 'data,' not to be questioned by the logician, save as they may chance to be deductions from still prior propositions, which, as

being grounds of deduction, receive the name

་

of Premisses.'

The question, then, of Truth or Falsity only enters into the jurisdiction of Logic when raised in relation to validity or invalidity of inference.

So that if one may recur to that useful word 'Consistency,' we may employ it in a threefold connection, and say:

That the whole of Scientific endeavour is to gain and secure consistency between our thought and the co-existences and sequences in the world around us, which make up what we commonly name the constitution and course of nature.

And, secondly, in the Ethical sphere the contemplated purpose in practical morals is to secure consistency between the voluntary conduct and habits of a human life and that ideal of human nature which claims its obedience and allegiance.

So, thirdly, the consistency which Logic prescribes, and wherein all its virtue and cogency reside, is narrowed down to that which obtains between certain data somehow received or arrived at-data expressed in explicit and unambiguous propositions. That is to say, that,

ultimately, everything which claims to be proved by logical process rests upon the unproved.

Sufficiently obvious as this is, it is not infrequently overlooked by those eager reasoners who are giving their exclusive attention to the links in their ratiocinative chain, leaving unregarded the question of those fixed points to which its first premisses must finally be attached.

Entirely dependent as it is on pre-suppositions otherwise obtained, which it has no authority to question, the utmost it can do is, with many warnings as to the pitfalls arising from the ubiquitous ambiguities of language, to guarantee us a valid passage from premisses to conclusion. With regard to what at first seemed its high claim, as Sovereign of our thinking, to aid us in the discovery of Truth, it is revealed as possessing little or no competency. The whole process of demonstration is obviously, so far as absolute truth is concerned, entirely hypothetical: the hypothesis being always this that the premisses be accepted as true. This is the first thing thing for our Christian thinker to see clearly, and to keep ever in

view, viz., that every conclusion

that is urged

upon his acceptance as logically certain is ultimately dependent on what, if certain, cannot logically be proved to be so that no carrying upwards of the sequent links of our logical chain can ever render us other than entirely dependent on these fixed points, which, if indeed absolutely secure, must have been certified to us in some other way.2

Our point, then, is to see quite clearly what this logical process of proof really amounts to, and within what limits its acknowledged cogency is strictly confined; and especially to keep in view the question, what bearing these two considerations have on the Christian man's assurance of the actual validity of that faith in God and in Christ by which, beyond dispute, he lives, and which is finally certified to him by the responsive consent of his whole spiritual nature.

Now, when our inquirer has put aside all that is, for this purpose, purely outlying and irrelevant, or at least is but the development of principles for purposes of special application, and asks: What is the tap-root, so to say, of this many-branched, highly organised product of our

2 See Note 9.