tEfre geological %ibvavy.

IS GOD KNOWABLE?

THE THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.

The need of a concise and well-written Series of Books cm the chief
doctrines of Christianity is generally recognised. Hence it is intended to
issue, at convenient intervals, a series of small books on the doctrines
which recent debate has brought prominently before the public mind.
These volumes will be condensed in expression, biblical in doctrine,
catholic in spirit, and by competent writers. The following is a list of
the volumes, price 2,s. 6d. each.

SUBJECTS.
Does Science Aid Faith in re
gard to Creation?
Is Life Worth Living?
Are Miracles Credible?
Is God Know able?
Is Dogma a Necessity?
What is Regeneration?
Is Christ Divine? .
Does God Answer Prayer ?
What is Saving Faith ?
What is the Scripture Doc
trine of the Body

a UTHORS.
Rt. Rev. Henry Cotterill, D.D.
Bishop of Edinburgh.
Rev. J. Marshall Lang, D.D.
Rev. J. J. Lias, M.A.
Rev. J.Iverach,.M.A.
Rev. Prebendary Meyrick, M.A.
Rev. Principal Angus, D.D.
Rev. T. Whitelaw, M.A., D.D.
Rev. R. McCheyne Edgar, M.A.
Rev. Proj. J. J. Given, M.A.
Rev. Henry George Tomkins.

IS GOD KNOWABLE?

BY THE KEV.

J. IVERACH, M.A.,

ABERDEEN,

Author of "The Life of Moses.'

"Wenn so Viele die menschliche Existenz ohne die Gewissheit yon Gott fiir
' ertraglich halten, und zwar in guten Glauben ; so beruht dies nur auf
Gedankenlosigkeit." — Rothe stille stunden, p. 43.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCLXXXIV.
[All rights reserved.]

Hazellj Watson, and Viney, Limited, Printers, London and Aylesbury.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. PAGE
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION ..... I
CHAPTER II.
PERSONALITY, AND THE MANIFESTATION OF IT IN
HISTORY  12
CHAPTER III.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM ....... 38
CHAPTER IV.
DEAN MANSEL AND MR. HERBERT SPENCER . . 56
CHAPTER V.
THE AGNOSTICISM OF SCIENCE . . . . -78
CHAPTER VI.
THE SEARCH AFTER GOD . . . . . .103
CHAPTER VII.
THE HEBREW SOLUTION ... . . 128

vi Contents.
CHAPTER VIII. PAGE
THE GREEK SOLUTION  1 54
CHAPTER IX.
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION ...... 183
CHAPTER X.
THE CONCEPTION OF GOD . 1 ¦ 2o8"

STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION.
IT is the question of the hour. On all sides and in
all forms it is continually cropping up. A negative
answer has been given to it, in the interests of ortho
doxy itself, and the arguments of the orthodox professor
have been borrowed by the apostle of nescience, and
made to serve as the foundation of a system, in which
all our knowledge and experience are only the working out
of equations by symbols which themselves remain unknown.
A negative answer is given in the interests of science, on
the plea that the solution of the problem is impossible, and
attention given to it is sheer waste of time. A negative
answer is given in the interests of philosophy, because it
is said that the duty of philosophy, and its only task, is to
elaborate into a system the general principles which are
common to all the sciences, and thus to be the science
of science.
On the other hand, affirmative answers of many kinds
have been given. One set of answers proceeds on the
obliteration of all distinctions between God and the world,
and God becomes a name synonymous with nature and
with the universe. He becomes the Universal Spirit and
the Universal Force, or He is hidden under some other
name, which excludes from view all those personal attri-
i

t Is God Knowable ?
butes which once were thought to be characteristic of Him.
Another set of answers takes up the burden in all its weight.
They affirm regarding God that He is spirit, personal,
self-conscious, and capable of entering into personal rela
tions with finite spirits, and that He may be known in a
very true and real sense of the word Knowledge. This
is the thesis we seek to maintain. We shall seek the help
of all those who have made an affirmative answer so far as
the answer is affirmative ; we shall have to part company
when they become negativists, and proceed on our journey
without them. We shall gladly recognise that there is " a
stream of tendency in the universe " by which all things
fulfil the law of their being, which also makes for righteous
ness ; we shall gladly recognise the great fact that thought
is in the universe, and that the relations of things are
relations of thought; we shall accept the fact of the im
manence of the universal spirit and of the consciousness of
finite spirit as elements of truth in our argument ; but we
shall- seek to advance when these stop short, and we shall
try to show that all these partial affirmations have signi
ficance and can demand standing-ground only when we
make a further advance, and affirm the existence and
working of a free, personal, self-conscious Spirit, who can
enter into most intimate fellowship with His creatures.
It is necessary at the outset to state the meaning of the
terms we are to use. In the question, " Is God knowable ? "
there are two words which need to be defined. We shall
begin with the word " knowledge." We shall not enter
into the numerous problems of a metaphysical kind which,
still awaiting solution, cluster round the word "know
ledge ; " we take for granted that knowledge is possible,
although we may not be able to explain how it is possible,
nor exactly to show how much of actual knowledge depends

Statement of the Question. 3
on the knowing subject, and how much on the object known,
and what is the exact proportion and relation between the
two. Certain aspects of these questions will need to be
discussed in the sequel ; at present we assume the un
questioned fact that men actually do know. There is a
body of verified knowledge lying close at hand in those
formulated results of human experience which we name the
sciences. In them we have a body of ascertained truth
regarding which there is no question or any room for
doubt. When, however, we pass beyond that defined
region, and inquire into the pre-suppositions on which
science is based, we enter into a region where there is
room for controversy, doubt, and denial. Still further is
there room for controversy when we pass into the
penumbra of speculation, which stretches far and wide on
every side around the firm land of science. There may be
solid land, there may only be a cloud-land, only further
research can tell.
There is, then, no distrust of science to be shown in
these pages. Its method and its results are worthy of all
praise and of all gratitude, if only we recognise their due
limits. A calm consideration of them must lead to the
conclusion that there are problems set to us by our own
knowledge and experience which are utterly insoluble by
the methods of science as these are expounded and applied.
We find these methods quite adequate to the explanation
of the laws and processes of the inorganic world, though
even in that department we hear from the highest autho
rities the mournful complaint that they know so little of the
nature of matter. The progress which has already been
made, and the rapid march of discovery in the physical
sciences, leave no room for doubt that in this sphere at
least we have got possession of a method which is

4 Is God Knowable ?
adequate to its work. Here there need be no unexplored
remainders nor any elements of uncertainty which, left out-
of account, might vitiate the whole procedure. The
mechanical certainty which obtains in the mathematical and
physical sciences has led to the desire and to the frequent
attempt to regard their method as the only sure method of
reasoning. Strenuous attempts have always been made,
and more specially in modern times, from Descartes and
Spinoza downwards, to set forth a reasoned account of the
universe from the simple assumptions of matter and motion.
Nor have these been without a certain measure of success.
By means of them attention has been called to the uni
versal prevalence of the laws of matter, and of their per
sistence in all forms of life present in the visible world.
On the other hand, it is coming to be acknowledged that
the assumptions which enable us to give a rational account
of the inorganic world are insufficient and inadequate for
the explanation of the processes of living things.
The methods of the natural sciences, while assuming
the results of the physical sciences, are yet constrained to
make fresh assumptions and to recognise new forces unheard
of and unneeded in the simpler sciences. Even the school,
which sometimes speaks as if it needed nothing more
than mechanical forces, is constrained to assume a new
force, which no chemist ever needed, — the force of heredity
| with modification. The recognition of this new law, this
new force, constrains us to the modification of an old method,
and compels men of science to widen their calculus and
provide for the new phenomena. It is not necessary here
to inquire into the merits of the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin.
All that concerns us here is the fact, that the method of the
natural sciences is different from that of the physical
sciences. The mechanical and chemical laws of matter arc

Statement of the Question. 5
modified ; their action is in the grasp of a higher law I
whenever they are taken up into the more complex sphere 1
of organic life. It is idle here to speak of the law of
parsimony, "the law which forbids us to assume the
operation of higher causes when lower ones are found
sufficient to explain the observed effects," the law which has
been grandly said to constitute "the only logical barrier
between science and superstition." For it is better, and
certainly it is more scientific, to acknowledge frankly when
we have passed from the inorganic to the organic world,
that we are dealing with a new set of forces, and to widen
our method correspondingly, than set ourselves to describe a
wide curve, by insensible degrees to minimise the differ
ence which stares us in the face, and by slow gradations
accustom ourselves to the thought of identity between the
old forces and the new. In the former case we know where
we stand, in the latter we are lost in the haze of utter
bewilderment. In any case we have to deal with .the new
forces as new, and to alter our method accordingly ; and it is \
only self-deception in science to suppose that it is working <'
with mechanical forces alone when it has also the forces of ;
life to take into account.
A still further modification of method has to be made
when organic life becomes intelligent, self-conscious, and
purposive. No doubt here also the approach has been slow
and gradual ; and it is open to any one to say that the
continuity is perfect, that there is no break in the chain
which binds into unity the first germ and simplest form of
living things and the highest form of intelligence known on
earth. It is not necessary' that we should deny the unity
of life or the gradual evolution of intelligence. All we
contend for at present is thh, that when intelligence, self-
consciousnsss, and purpose have aopeared in the sphere of

6 Is God Knowable ?
science, science has to account for these, and to widen its
method accordingly. If it could be shown, and every step
of the process proven to demonstration, that organic life
was self-developed from inorganic matter, that conscious
ness sprang from unconscious matter, and all the mani
fold phenomena of moral, intellectual, and spiritual life had
their origin and history from un-moral, unintellectual, and
unspiritual phenomena, all this would be nothing to the
purpose in the present issue. For be the origin and
history of moral and intellectual life on the earth what
they may, certain it is that science must take into account
their present state and influence. The present tendency to
\ substitute history in the place of science, and to talk of the
i! genesis and development of a thing when we desire to
| know the thing itself, may be only a passing phase of
human thought, but it is a phase which evades the problem
which lies before science and philosophy. That problem is
to give an adequate explanation of personal, intellectual,
and social life. In one word it may be described as the
explanation of personality. Science has evaded the problem,
psychology has not touched it, and philosophy seems to
fall into bewilderment whenever it comes to the confines
of it.
Our contention is shortly this, that the method which is
sufficient when dealing with the phenomena of inorganic
nature is insufficient when we enter on the sphere of
organic life ; that the method which is adequate for organic
life is insufficient to deal with the phenomena of conscious
life ; and even the method which deals with conscious life
has to be extended and modified when it deals with the
complex phenomena of personal and social life. In every
higher sphere to which science comes, it must recognise
the existence of new principles and new forces, added

Statement of the Question. 7
differences which cannot be merged in a lower identity.
We are aware that here we have all the forces and
tendencies of the present time against us, and all the special
sciences, and more particularly the ambitious philosophies
like those of Hegel and Herbert Spencer, and others which
seek to explain the universe. And yet it may: be that here
may be matter for'consideration. At all events we shall
state our case.
It is curious to find that we may read almost all the
treatises which have ever been written on psychology,
on political economy, on the other sciences which have
man for their subject, and yet not find any reason to
apprehend that there is such a thing as personality in the
universe. Impersonal elements we shall find in abundance,
innumerable discussions about consciousness, about faith
and reason, about subject and object, about knowledge
absolute and relative, but hardly ever any recognition of the
fact that all these are meaningless, unless they are referred
to a self-conscious intelligence which is personal. It is not
to be expected that a method which deals with impersonal
elements alone should ever be able to reach personality.
In the Materialistic explanations of the universe, we find
that the formula of Materialism works very well until the
phenomena of consciousness emerge, and then it breaks
down. Constrained to admit the existence of consciousness,
it yet does not know what to make of it, and is compelled
to leave it on one side, with the assertion that conscious
ness has no influence in the movement and succession of
events, which go along by themselves. What consciousness
has been to Materialism, that the fact of personality has
been to most philosophies. It has been ignored, or if
recognized, only recognized in a mystic phrase in passing,
called the abyssmal deep of personality, and left to itself,

8 Is God Knowable ?
It would be well, however, to recognize the existence of the
problem. For the methods and results already won in
psychology, true to a certain extent as they are, yet need
to be adapted to the circumstances of the new case and to
recognize the new problem set to them for solution. The
bent of all the sciences seems, however, to lead us further
and further away from the position we advocate. More
particularly the rise of the historical method of study and
the use of the comparative method, by which resemblances,
unperceived and remote before, have been brought into
nearness, and raised to prominence, have cast into the
shade the differences which are vital to the right under
standing of the truth. It is strange that all the sciences
put together cannot vindicate for us, or set forth in order
and method, that knowledge which we know we have. We
know men ; we carry about with us each day a true
conception of individual men ; we can foretell how they will
act in particular circumstances, and, in short, have a true
knowledge of what their personality is. And yet this
knowledge lies outside of and beyond all the sciences,
unrecognized by them, and occasionally denounced by
them as personal and subjective. Concretely we all know
personality, and have no difficulty in acting on our know
ledge ; as the sciences at present are, we have found it im
possible to construct personality from impersonal elements.
It may indeed be said that the problem is impossible of
solution, and that even in practical life we have to make
generalisations after the fashion of science. We have to
turn men into aspects, and deal with the aspects only. A
commander of an army ceases almost to think of his men
as individuals, and comes to regard them as an instrument
of war, to be kept in health and strength and in fitness for
the work he has to do. A political economist learns to

Statement of the Question. 9
regard man as a being who has wants to be supplied, and
sets himself to ponder the problems of supply and demand.
In all circumstances when we deal with men in the mass,
we must be content to attenuate them into aspects. But
in practical life we make allowances, for we know that our
knowledge is greater than we can formulate, too minute,
extensive, and subtile to be cast into rules. But neither
science nor philosophy can make allowances. Their
method is too absolute and their procedure too rigid for
that. It would be well if this were remembered in the
controversies of to-day, for half the trouble of our time has
come from the negative stand which science has made.
Knowledge may be outside of the method of science, ignored
by it, and yet may be true and valid knowledge ; and in no
instance is this more manifest than in the case of personality.
Let us seek to apply the method of science to a problem
in literature. Let us take, for instance, the case of Shake-
, speare. We take up the volumes which contain his works,
we observe at the outset that they are written in the English
language. They use words in meanings which are known ;
each of the words used has had a long history, and has
come to the shape and meaning it has for Shakespeare
through a lengthened evolution, conducted according to
laws of language which may be ascertained. So far there
is no need to postulate any personality for the works of
Shakespeare. Each word he uses can be accounted for
apart from any thought of him. We go a step further, and
look into the meaning of his works, and the first thing that
strikes us here is the fact that a great deal of the material
he.uses is by no means peculiar to his works. The indivi
dual characters, the historical situations, and the very plots
can be found elsewhere. We can discern here also a law
of growth ; nor is the dramatic effect and the general

10 Is God Knowable ?
purpose and plan of action singular ; they are common to
him and his contemporaries. The study of the works of
Shakespeare, if conducted in a method rigidly scientific,
will never lead us beyond the operations of general laws,
philological, historical, and dramatic ; and yet how inade
quate a solution would that be which would seek to account
for the works of Shakespeare without Shakespeare. From
every page evidence of a great personality, great in thought,
feeling, emotion, will, great in all the elements of personality,
streams in upon us, and we know that we are in intimate
personal relations with a mighty man. When we try to
formulate the evidence, which would prove satisfactorily to
ourselves, or convey adequately to others the existence of
Shakespeare, we find that we cannot. We may point to
indications which imply that here are the works of a
personal intelligence, but in the long run we find that these
indications are valueless apart from the concrete apprehen-
tion of personality in every mind, which apprehension
neither science nor philosophy has yet shown to be reason
able or justified.
We shall return to this in other relations further on in
our discussion. For the present we shall have done enough
if we have shown that there is a sphere of human knowledge,
plain and manifest to all who think, which yet lies beyond
the methods of science and philosophy, so far as these have
yet been formulated. It will be our business to show that
the mode of argument which has been held to justify the
conclusion of Agnosticism would warrant us in the denial
of that personal intelligence which produced the works of
Shakespeare. On the other hand, we shall seek to prove
that arguments of the kind and cogency which constrain us
to believe in the existence of Shakespeare are forthcoming
to constrain us to believe in God,

Statement of the Question. 1 1
As to the other word which we shall have to use frequently
in our discussion, we have to say that when we speak of
God, we use the word in the old sense of the term. We do
not mean the universal reason, nor the unknowable, nor a
stream of tendency, nor any abstract universal of any kind.
Such an abstraction may indeed be reached, and be the only
goal which can be reached on the method of science, which
has reduced all personal things to impersonal aspects ; but
such an abstraction cannot satisfy the legitimate demands of
intelligence, nor do justice to all the elements involved in
concrete human knowledge. After science has done its
work, and reached as the ultimate source of things infinite
righteousness, goodness, and love, the problem of seeing
how these converge and are united in a Person whose
attributes they are, and through whom alone they have
subsistence, remains to be solved. It may be too hard a
problem for solution, more especially as the lesser problem,
of how finite intelligence, righteousness, and love are qualities
of a finite person, remains yet unsolved. But it will be of
advantage to state the problem, and to have it recognised
as a problem, and to get away for a little while from the
abstractions of science and philosophy to the concrete
experience of men and their actual knowledge.

II.
PERSONALITV, AND THE MANIFESTATION OF IT IN
HISTORY.
IN all systems of science and philosophy, personality
either remains as an unexplored enigma, or is set aside
as of no significance in the total account. It is certainly
a problem of exceeding complexity and difficulty, and yet
one which in ordinary life receives a practical solution
every day. Personality rises out of the midst of a series of
necessities, and emerges from confluences of laws of all
sorts, yet is set in relation to them in such a way as tb find
room for itself, and scope for free and understanding action.
Fixed necessities are found in that sphere of inorganic nature
of which physical science seeks to give an account ; neces
sities no less fixed seem to rule in the sphere of organic life ;
and psychology has much to tell of ordered sequence in the
sphere of intellectual, moral, and spiritual life ; still with all
that has been ascertained regarding these fixed sequences
personality remains unaccounted for. As far as we can
see, human personality is limited, conditioned, and beset
on all sides by these necessities, yet it makes these limits
and conditions instruments for carrying out its own purpose,
and in a way as yet inexplicable makes itself the comple
ment of them and their interpreter. Fixed and unalterable
necessity becomes the condition of freedom, and unchange-

Personality Manifested in History. 13
able laws the foundation on which rises somehow the
structure of free, personal, conscious life.
No solution of the problem is to be found in the theory of
evolution. If we can trace the steps of the process whereby
intelligence has been evolved, and show how from the rudest
germ of action all the phenomena of conscious life have
arisen, — and this has yet to be done, — it would not help us
one jot in our endeavour to understand the facts as they now
exist. Of these facts the main one to be grappled with is this
of personality, of which it is not too much to say that it has
been the motive force of human history, and the main factor
in what we call civilization. There is profound truth in
what Carlyle says, " The history of what man has accom
plished in the world is at bottom the history of the great
men who have worked there." But there is a deeper
truth underlying that expressed by Carlyle — the truth to wit
that it is man who has given significance to the world, and
who has in conscious reflection turned back to read the
wondrous story of what has been transacted in it. All the
forces of inorganic nature meet in him, all the history of
organic nature is passed through by each individual, and he
is able to look back over it all, and read the story which is
written on the face of the world. He is able to give a
somewhat satisfactory account of almost all the processes of
the world, and understand many of the elements which go to
form his own personality. He has named them, and can inves
tigate their action in terms of science, so far as these are
elements common to the race. The universal aspect may be
spoken of universally. But a person is beyond rules, and in
the long run cannot be reduced to aspects. Solviturambulando,
men are wise beyond the rules of science. In all professions
there is a wide field of knowledge which is won only
through practica experience ; and there is always a wide

14 Is God Knowable ?
difference between a knowledge of man and a knowledge of
men. For a knowledge of men involves many more con
ditions, and a great number of additional circumstances have
to be taken into account than are implied in a mere know
ledge of man. This is true indeed of all knowledge. For a
practical man knows that the highest calculus we have can
not solve for him the problem of a crowbar as it is in
actual use. Mathematics can only solve the problem by
assuming that the crowbar is rigid throughout, whereas
the fact is that every particle of it is in a state of active
vibration, and in its complexity presents a problem beyond
the reach of mathematical analysis. If a problem of such
simplicity be beyond the reach of present science, what
shall we say of the problems which are of such exceeding
complexity as that of human personality ? We need a bolder,
freer method to attack such problems than those which
science has provided.
The method of literature presents a more hopeful field. In
it people are not ashamed to say that there are things which
are inexplicable, and are not afraid to say that -the law of
parsimony has it limits. Literary methods are not ashamed
to recognise the mark of personality, nor to describe its laws
and modes of operation. They delight to recognise differences,
and to point out the special features of style, manner, and
way of expression of each writer. Literary criticism has
also its method, and written literature has its laws. There
are fixed conditions of literary work. Words must be used
in the sense they usually bear, sentences must be formed in
conformity with the laws of grammar. Paragraphs must be
constructed in harmony with the laws of rhetorical speech.
Thoughts must follow each other in a certain order. And
conclusions must be inferred in accordance with the behests
of logic. When all these conditions have been observed, one

Personality Manifested in History. 15
would suppose that there was little left for the exercise of
freedom, and less for the manifestation of personality. And
yet the wonder is, that under these conditions and out of
them each person forms a style for himself, and over every
true work floats the aroma of a personal presence, which
criticism can recognise but cannot analyse. It is not the
Jhought which is in the book, nor the original work there,
nor even the contribution made by it to positive knowledge
that makes the difficulty. All these can be classified and
reduced to aspects. But the subtile thing which eludes clas
sification is just this personal thing so easy to apprehend
and so difficult to describe. In no writer is this recognition
of personal force recognised so well and described so well
as it is in the writings of Ruskin, which in this regard are
invaluable. We feel the presence of this personal power in every
great work of art, be the material of art what it may, and
yet Art is but an imperfect medium for the communication
of personal force. So much of a great personality is in his
work, and yet there is so much that cannot be put there.
We read the orations of Demosthenes and of Cicero, and feel
ourselves under the spell of these mighty masters. Great,
however, as are the fascination of the printed page and the
influence exerted on us through written words, it is in
sufficient to enable us to understand the great effects pro
duced on those who heard them. For written words
form only one channel for the communication of personal
influence, while actual spoken speech, face to face with
the audience, affords a thousand media for the communi
cation of spirit with spirit. There is the manifold tones
of the human voice, gestures, attitudes, the rush of emotion,
the subtile revelation of a thought which language can
only half express, and a number of other things which go

1 6 Is God Knowable ?
to form the whole impression made on the people, while
there is also the reflex influence which the audience have
on the speaker. Of all these the printed page can convey
nothing; and frequently those who. next day calmly read
the words which actually were spoken, are unable to
discover what moved them so deeply." Oratory is that
form of art which is so personal in its nature that the whole
complex outcome of it is limited and circumscribed to one
time and place, and is incapable of being translated into a
form which is impersonal and universal. Here is a pheno
menon of which every one must admit we have real, true,
and adequate knowledge, and yet it is a knowledge which
transcends all the methods of science.
Let us seek to analyse the relations which subsist between
the commander of an army and his soldiers. To him,
indeed, they, taken in the mass, are only an instrument of
war. They have to be fed, clothed, kept in vigorous health,
and ready to be transported from place to place. They
are so much force, which he keeps in the highest degree of
efficiency, in order that they may be hurled at the proper
time on the weakest parts of the defences of the enemy.
On the other hand, the commander is to his soldiers a
person who inspires trust, loyalty, and obedience. The
soldiers of Marlborough had the most profound persuasion
that he would find for them a way of escape from the most
difficult and dangerous circumstances. One of Wellington's
men described the feeling of the army when, on one
occasion, being hard pressed and beginning to fall back, the
Duke appeared in the midst of them, " There is the Duke,
I would rather see his face than have the help of ten
thousand men." The influence of Caesar, of Alexander, of
Napoleon over their men was quite incalculable. It is in
vain that we study their tactics, their strategy, and make

Personality Manifested in History. iy
a system from the methods they used or invented, we have
to add to all these universal elements of their procedure
that mysterious, potent charm of personality, which the law
of parsimony would exclude ere we can understand the
success of their work and their influence over their soldiers.
If we exclude the recognition of this personal force from
the number of causes which make history, or seek to reduce
it to impersonal force, we at once find that the other
causes apart from this one are inadequate to explain the
effect. The influence of an Alexander or of a Napoleon is
of a kind comparatively simple and less complex than that
we find in the case of great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle,
great poets like Horace, Virgil, and Dante, or great religious
reformers such as Mohammed and Buddha. Here the
personal force has widest reach and amplest influence.
Before we describe these, look for a moment at science
itself. I wish to learn what science has to teach me. I
come with the understanding that science is the universe
as apprehended and understood by man. It may be that
nature is greater than science, and there is in nature some
thing grander, greater, and more subtile than man has yet
known, but at present I seek to know what science has to
teach me. I begin with the mathematical sciences, and
proceed from the simplest element onwards to the most
profound and far-reaching analysis. Nothing seems present
here except definitions, axioms, and their results. I pass
on to 'physics and chemistry, and here too I find myself in
a region of impersonal forces, where all is calm and
objective. I put myself under the guidance of the masters
of natural science, and still there is speech only of necessity
and chance, of natural selection, which, on inquiry, means
only the pressure of force from behind, not the onward
beckoning of personal intelligence, working to a great and

1 8 Is God Knowable ?
adequate end. Suppose I yield myself with all loyalty and
obedience to their teaching, and try to explain the origin
and growth of things by the forces postulated by Darwin
ism ; suppose I accept the account which science gives of
the universe, on reflection I find myself pressed by another
question, — how am I to account for science ? If the larger
effect which we call nature can be accounted for by the
action of impersonal forces, may science, the lesser effect,
be accounted for in the same way ? As a candid seeker
after truth I go to find an answer. I follow the stream of
history downwards ; as far as possible I find that the exis
tence of the elements of geometry implies Euclid, that the
elementary problems of mechanics imply Archimedes,
that other mechanical knowledge implies Galileo, that the
laws of atmospheric pressure imply Pascal, that the laws
which regulate the movements of the heavenly bodies
imply Kepler, that the law of gravitation implies Newton,
and, to finish, that quaternions imply Sir William R.
Hamilton. With regard to Natural Science, I only remark
that Darwinism implies Mr. Darwin. In all the other
sciences I find every advance linked with the name of a
man ; and in seeking to know the present state of any science
I have recourse to Thomson and Tait, to Clerk Maxwell, to
Huxley, or to others, and everywhere it is found true that
science has a personal origin. It is nothing to the purpose
here to say that science so far is only a true account of
what goes on in nature. I am not asking here whether
science is true or not, but how did it arise, and how do we
account for it, and I find the solution lying close at hand,
plain, gross, and palpable ; science has, I repeat, a personal
origin. Not only so, but all the uses which man has made
of nature, from the construction of the first rude weapon of
flint up to railways, telegraphs, and other appliances, in

Personality Manifested in History. 19
their origin and development, have come from persons.
Both in the arts of war and in the arts of peace, science
and art have to make room for the discoverers of the dif
ferential calculus, and for the inventors of the bow and
the spear, and for the inventors of the printing-press and
the steam-engine. Nor does science find any difficulty in
making this acknowledgment. Men of science sometimes
write biography, and recent accounts of Mr. Darwin, written
by the most strenuous advocates of natural selection and
of the method which seeks to eliminate every personal
element from science, dilate on the greatness of the man,
on the revolution he has wrought in our ways of thinking,
and on the vast personal force which dwelt in him, apparent
to all readers of his -works, and manifest in a much more
marked manner to those who had other ways of knowing him.
The conclusion to be drawn from these accounts of Mr.
Darwin is that it takes a person to produce impersonal
results. But in what way the eulogists of Mr. Darwin, by
the methods of science, justify their account of him, does
not appear. Certainly the method which recognises only
impersonal elements has been laid aside or changed by
them when they pass from the writing of science and
begin to speak of Mr. Darwin.
In a still more striking manner does this appear when we
consider the force of personality, not in the region of
pure science, but in the sphere of human history and of
personal relations. It is true indeed that the rule of
impersonal elements has been introduced into this region
also. Recent inquiries into the phenomena of language,
law, and religion tend to the recognition of what can be
explained by the comparative method only. Not to enter
into a field so large, we shall limit what we have to say to
the subject of comparative religion. We find a remarkable

20 Is God Knowable ?
agreement among the masters of the methods of comparative
mythology and comparative religion with regard to a
distinction which they make between religions which are
national and religions which are international. The one is
limited, the other is universal. The one is supposed to be
the natural outgrowth of the common spirit of the people,
is a transformed mythology organically connected with the
social system and national tendencies of the people who
formed them ; while the other is the product of person or
persons, and is marked throughout by the personal qualities
of the founder or founders. " The natural are necessarily
national religions, as incapable of becoming universal as the
language and customs of their native lands ; but the insti
tuted either are or can be made universal in aim and
endeavour. The former can extend only with the nation,
new converts being absorbed tribes ; but the latter can be
carried abroad and received by distant peoples as systems
of truth, orders, and forms of worship. We may name
as types of the first class Hellenism, Brahmanism, the
religions of Egypt and Rome; as types of the second,
Hebraism, Zoroastrism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism.
The former run back into an immemorial past, and are at
once the measure and the mirror of the people's history ;
but the latter run back into great personalities, whose
thoughts they embody, whose purposes and being they as
it were immortalise. The instituted may thus be termed
historical religions, but the natural pre-historical. While
these are studied in and through the collective people, there
can be studied through their respective founders the history
of the creative mind giving the genesis of the created faith "
(Principal Fairbairn, Contemporary Review, Dec. 1882). We-
accept that part of Principal Fairbairn's statement which
has reference to historical and universal religions. These

Personality Manifested in History. 21
indeed are only explicable through a great personality, and
cannot be rationally apprehended apart from him. But
would the comparative method have recognized this great
personality if history had not recorded his name, and laws,
institutions, and religions were not historically shown to
have their source and origin in him ? The comparative
method is bound to seek to disintegrate him, and reduce
him to elements and qualities ; and the fact that it has
been constrained to recognise a great personality in order
to account for the origin of historical religions is the
strongest testimony we can have to the presence and the
influence of personality in history. Strange and curious is
it also, that the universal religions are those which are
historically shown to have a personal founder. And
Buddhism, Islamism, Christianity, are unintelligible apart
from Buddha, Mohammed, Christ.
We have never been able to see, however, how the
assumptions made by the comparative method, assumptions
which underlie the distinctions made by Principal Fairbairn
in his usual graphic and felicitous way, can be justified
logically and historically. In the case of historical religions
we use known causes in order to account for them in a
rational way. But when we speak of a "common spirit in
life," and use other terms of a similar sort, are we not
simply using abstractions, which only express common
elements, and leave out of account distinctive differences,
which form the essence of the historical causes of the
events we seek to explain ? When we say that " natural
religions run back into an immemorial past " and are
" pre -historical," do we not in fact say that we are
ignorant of the causes which produced the historical phe
nomena which we observe in the religions of Greece and
Rome and others ? The legitimate inference would be

22 Is God Knowable?
that since the higher religions, the universal and historical
religions, run back to a great personality, — a personality so
great that history has been forced to record his acts, his
sayings, and his character, — so also the pre-historic
religions run back to persons, who either were not great
enough to stamp their impress on history directly, or
history had not then come to sufficient ripeness to have
ways and means at hand adequate to record the names
and personalities of those who first brought it to self-
consciousness ? From one cause or the other the per
sonalities of these historical persons — supposing them to
have existed — have not made an impression on history
vivid enough to resist the disintegrating influences of the
comparative method, and have easily become aspects or
attitudes of a common spirit, or become identified with
solar myths. If it is possible to do this in a reasonable
way, by all means let it be done. We are not concerned
to maintain that all the myths which we can recognise in
history have had a personal origin. For our present
purpose it is sufficient to have pointed out that the
historical and universal religions cannot be explained apart
from the person of the founder. The fact also that myths
were believed by the people of Greece, of Rome, and India
to have had a personal origin, explain the fact as we may,
makes for our argument. For it proves that personal
force was recognized by these peoples as the great practical
factor in their lives. If at one time they peopled the seas
and streams, woods and hills, and almost all natural
objects with personal existences, that of itself shows how
great an influence they recognised the personal influence to
be. If, on the other hand, we have learned to.recognise that
the phenomenon of nature can be rationally accounted for
without having recourse to such causes, it still remains true

Personality Manifested in History. 23
that scientifically we have learned that apart from the
mysterious force of personality we can give no rational
account of history.
It must be said, however, that the distinctions drawn
between national and universal religions seem insufficiently
grounded. Be the other differences what they may, the
difference emphasised by Principal Fairbairn, of which one
alternative description is that natural religions are pre-
historical, and universal religions are historical, seems to
us to be quite untenable. It simply takes advantage of
our ignorance, our necessary ignorance of pre-historic
times, and out of a vacuum constructs a positive foundation
which deludes us with a false pretence of knowledge. The
more philosophical course of procedure would be to take
the causes we know as operating within historic times, and
assuming them to be true also of pre-historic, seek to
account for mythology by means of them. But to invert
the historical method, as is so often done by students like
Max Miiller and Principal Fairbairn, and to exclude great
personalities from pre-historic times, while assuming them
as necessary to account for the phenomena of history, seems
to be somewhat unphilosophical. Is there any conceivable
reason for this, except the fact that we do not know what
may have happened in pre-historic times ? How easily any
remarkable story of modern times, such as that of
Napoleon, may be disintegrated, and may be made to read
like a solar myth, and have as much appearance of scientific
plausibility as any one in any of the books of Max Miiller
or of Principal Fairbairn ! It might also be believed to be
a true and adequate account of the modern phenomenon
were it not that we happen to know the facts of the case.
To apply to pre-historic times a course and method which
is demonstrably unfit and inadequate to the explanation of

24 Is God Knowable ?
the times we know most about, is, we repeat, unphilosophi
cal. The probability is that in pre-historic times, as in
historic, every advance coincided with the appearance of
some great personality in the midst of men, and that most
myths have a real personality for their substratum from
which they have grown to the gigantic proportions they
finally assumed. " Even if we revert to the earliest stages of
development, we can see that before natural selection got
anything worth selecting in the most primitive societies,
the creative spirit, the superior man, had first to appear.
Before primitive man could make any decided step in
advance, or could separate himself conspicuously from his
lower animal relations, some inventive individual had to
conceive and construct the first rude flint weapon, which
gave men so great advantage in the combat with wild
beasts or with their fellows ; some pre-historic Prometheus
first stole the secret of fire from Nature, and showed to the
others its uses ; some one discovered the fruitful corn
amongst the common grasses, and taught the rest to plant
it ; to some one the idea first occurred that the skin of a
slain beast, if deftly transferred and arranged, would warm
himself as it did its original owner. Again, and later,
some one invented spoken speech ; some one before Cadmus
invented the use of letters ; some one before Tubal Cain.
taught how to temper and shape the metals. But in all
these and in many other cases the first seeds of fruitful
thought or invention appeared in one mind ; the subse
quent important improvements have likewise come from
one" (Graham's "Creed of Science," p. 67). The result
seems to be that the triumph of the comparative method
is only apparent, and arises from the fact that we know so
little of pre-historic times, and consequently have so few
facts for which to account. As soon as we apply it to a

Personality Manifested in History. 25
time of which we know a little, it breaks down, and is
utterly inapplicable to any period regarding which our
information is ample and full. While we cannot be
thankful enough to those distinguished scholars who have
taught us the history of language and have wielded the
resources of the comparative method with giant skill and
strength, we must still maintain for ourselves the right of
bringing their conclusions to the test of the concrete
experience of men. And when tested by these we find the
picture painted by the aid of the comparative method to
bear as much resemblance to the real facts of history as
the typical Frenchman of British imagination bears to any
living Frenchman. By all means let us generalise when
we can, but let us always bear in mind that our generali
zations are only general, and have left out of account
the very things which most need explanation. With
regard to the conclusions reached by the comparative
method, all we say now is that they are too absolute, and
when once reached, they exert too great an influence over
the minds of those who have discovered them, and are
pushed with too much vehemence into spheres where they
have no meaning.
We have seen that personality is the main factor in the
onward progress of man. Every advance made by man
within historic time is connected with the appearance of
some great personality in the midst of a people. What is
true of historic time is likely true also of those times of
which history has no record. But to those who proceed
by the method of averages, and who refuse to lecognize
a presiding intelligence over the universe, and of a mighty
personality who is to the universe what a great human
personality is to his people, — at least so much as that,
whatever more he may be, — the emergence of a great man

26 Is God Knowable ?
is an enigma and a perplexity. He is an accident inexpli
cable and unaccounted for in their scheme of things. They
fold their hands in an attitude of resignation, or fiercely
call on chance to help them in their hour of need. No such
perplexity awaits the Theist who believes in God and
knows Him. To him there is always a reserve of personal
force, and a great human personality is a gift of God to the
people and to the race given in His own kingly way. It
is His way thus to raise men to a higher level, and by His
gifts to the race of men of science, of artists, poets, thinkers,
prophets, and of great men of all kinds, He widens the
borders of feeling, of thought, and of life, and brings the
nations to a larger life. History may be explained on the
theistic view, it is a helpless perplexity on any other.
It is to be observed also that those elements of univer
sality which have been used to oust personality from the
sphere of science are themselves functions of personality.
It is curious to find such strenuous efforts put forth by
persons to show that impersonal elements are enough to
explain the universe. Popular statements are often made to
the effect that Newton's " Principia '' would neither lose nor
gain for the scientific intelligence if it had been an anony
mous production. Kant's " Critique " or Hegel's " Encyclo-
padie " would, we are told, be a neither more nor less
important contribution to speculative science had it dropped
from the clouds ; and we are becoming familiarised with such
expressions as these, as impersonal as the universality of
reason itself, as impersonal as the love of truth and desire for
its prevalence. No doubt it would be helpful to the mainten
ance of the thesis of the impersonality of reason if Newton's
"Principia" or Kant's "Critique" had dropped from the
clouds or had slowly evolved itself by slow gradations from
the original fire mist, and come to shape and form without

Personality Manifested in History. 27
the intervention of personal intelligence. But the strange
thing is, that with the same breath the personal author
ship of these works is asserted, and the remark is added
that for the scientific intelligence they might as well be
anonymous. This may be quite true if the scientific intelli
gence be an abstraction existing outside of and apart from
the man who thinks or of men who think. But the expression
" scientific intelligence " is only another proof of the sway
which abstractions have over the minds of those who most
loudly declaim against the abstractions held by other schools.
For scientific intelligence, whether in Newton or in any
other, belongs to the man. It has no independent existence
of its own ; behind it and in it is a living person, without
whom it has neither vitality, being, nor action. We have
not here to do with the movements of an intellectual
machine, which goes along of itself or by itself, nor with
the action of pure reason, which is complete in itself ; all
the intellectual action and all the reasoning we can conceive,
however objective it may appear, has its roots in the personal,
individual man, and cannot be understood in its origin and
progress apart from him. Thought is rooted in life, and
reasoning has its beginning and its justification in the per
sona! conscious life of the individual man. The highest thing
we know is personality, and all other processes of feeling,
will, intelligence, conscience, and reason become sheer
monstrosities when looked at apart from their position and
relation to the personality in which they are, and whose
action has given them being and subsistence. They are
rational and intelligible when looked at in their living organic
unity ; when abstracted from them and made into entities,
they become as irrational and monstrous as ever were any of
the fictitious entities of the Schoolmen. For convenience of
speech we have created these expressions of will, intelli-

28 Is God Knowable ?
gence, reason, and we fall under the dominion of the
creatures we have made. We have continually to bring
the abstractions of speech to the test of our concrete ex
perience, and when we ask ourselves what we mean by sucf
terms as these mentioned, we find that they are meaning
less apart from the personal life of the person who thinks
them and feels them. It is an illegitimate process altogether
to abstract a faculty, give it a name, call it scientific intelli
gence or any other name, and proceed to confer on it an
independent existence. So strong is the conviction rooted
in our nature that personal existence is the highest form of
existence, that as soon as we have given to this abstraction
an independent existence we immediately proceed further
to endow it with all the functions of personal life, and
speak of it in language which implies will, purpose, and
intelligence. So the deepest facts of life take their revenge
upon us, and no sooner do we depersonalise persons and
make them abstractions, than the abstractions gather to
themselves the personal force again, take back the elements
of which they were denuded, and make physicists talk of
nature as if it were a person, and compel Darwin himself
to speak of natural selection as if it possessed all the
qualities of a person. Would it not be better to recognise
at the outset the assumption which lies at the basis of all
our science, art, and philosophy, — the assumption to wit
of a life which is neither thought in itself, nor feeling in
itself, nor other abstraction in itself, but a living person
who feels, thinks, and acts, whose thoughts and feelings
and acts these are, in whom they subsist, and from whom
they draw all the truth that is in them ?
Will not this land us in sheer individualism and prevent
us from recognising those principles of science and philoso
phy which we also know to be universal and necessary ?

Personality Manifested in History. 29
If we insist on the fact that reason, intelligence, and will
are only functions of personality, do we not in fact shut
ourselves out from the recognition of that common and
universal element which we also know ? Not so ; for as I
only understand what reason, intelligence, and will mean
when these are explicated to me by my own procedure,
and are continually verified to me by the results to which
I am led in my own personal action, so I am led also to
the recognition of other persons who possess the same
qualities which I find in myself. I find myself in a world
of personal relations. The thoughts which other people
think become thoughts in my mind, the feelings of other
people are felt by me, and I am irresistibly led on to the
conclusion that there are other personalities like my own.
There are other people who reason, feel, and think, and
whose reasonings, feelings, and thoughts are somehow
conveyed to me, and become thoughts and feelings in me.
The common and universal element is not found in an
impersonal reason or universal self-consciousness, which
lays hold on the individual and counts him as a mere
incident in the process ; it is rather found in the fact that
persons are alike, feel alike, reason alike, and think alike.
Because of this fundamental unity of nature in persons,
there is a uniformity of result in all the personal experience
of men, their life is one, and therefore the rational results
of life are pervaded by uniformities which can be formulated,
and reveal identities which underlie all the diversities, and
give them form and shape. In our search after truth we
shall not begin with the impersonal elements with which
science and philosophy have made us so familiar, and seek
out of these to build up the concrete personality we know.
That is a hopeless task. On the contrary we shall make the
one assumption which a concrete experience forces on us, —

30 Is God Knowable ?
the assumption that I do not belong to reason, but reason
belongs to me, that feeling does not make me, but I make
feeling, and thought does not constitute me, but I constitute
thought. The abstract force which the law of gravitation
expresses in rule and measure is meaningless to me, apart
from the experience of force which I myself have and exert.
The feelings which others have obtain validity for me only
when I also feel, and thought can only be conceived in a
living person. What we call faculties are only ways in
which personality works ; what we call laws of nature, are
only results of common experience and modes of personal
action. This assumption will also justify the universal and the
necessary end of human experience. I can enter into all the
recorded results of human experience, as these are in science,
literature, and art. It is free to me to do so. Organically
I have received the organic experiences of my more imme
diate ancestors ; but educationally I can receive the inheri
tance won for me by all the great workers of the past, and
may think the thoughts of Plato, or sing the songs of
Homer, or learn righteousness at the feet of Moses and
Isaiah. Other creatures are limited to organic change ; men
have found a more excellent, more expeditious, and a less
expensive way of recording their experience, and the
highest personal life prolongs itself in language. The
explanation is that all humanity is in every man. The
possibility of universal human experience lies before every
living person. There is thus an aim and a goal set before
every man, as to what he may attain and may become.
Great poets, great thinkers, great inventors, great leaders
in action, as those have been in former times, reveal to us
the altitudes which our common human nature has
reached, and they manifest not merely the uniformities and

Personality Manifested in History. 31
the averages, but also those elevations which the average
man may in course of time attain unto. As a matter of
fact it is not by the mere abstract result which may be
reached when personality has been left out of account
that the great men of the past have -raised the common
level of human life ; these abstract results may be tabulated
in manuals and formulated in unimpressive, dry-as-dust,
lifeless tables. It is altogether different when we go to the
great masters themselves, and find ourselves in contact
with them. Then the borders of feeling are widened, and
thought becomes vivid, and reason moves more swiftly
because we are in contact with men of a mightier mould.
But the fact that I am able to recognise their greatness proves
our kinship, and I know that their works are the outgrowth
of a personality like my own. Their relation to me and mine
to them is a personal relation. This holds true even in the
case of men who lived long ago, and it is much more true
in the case of men living at this hour.
When we pass from those relations which may be
called intellectual to those which are moral and spiritual,
we come to a sphere in which abstractions ought to have
but little sway ; and yet strange to say it is here, in the
very centre of personal life and personal relationship, that
abstractions have made greatest havoc. Here words which
have no meaning apart from personal relationship have
been raised to an independent existence, and treated as if
there were no such things as persons in the universe. The
highest reality of moral life does not consist in our relation
to law or to a rule. For the best and highest law merely
expresses our relation to a person, or to persons regarded
as a community. The moral virtues express either features
of personal character, or relations which subsist between
person and persons. We need not dwell on this truth, as it

32 Is God Knowable ?
has been set forth with truth and power in the Boyle
Lectures by Professor Wace. " If you wish to develop all
the righteousness of which a man is capable, you must
have a wise man and a philosopher constantly by his side ;
you must put righteous people around him, and in propor
tion as his heart answers to their heart will he become
righteous. It is seen that righteousness is distinguished
from love as being only a partial aspect of that higher
excellence. Righteousness, we might almost say, is the
metaphor, love is the reality ; because the reality of life
consists in the relation of persons to a person, and not in
the relation of persons to a rule " (Wace, " Morality and
Christianity," pp. 42-3. 4th Edition). The complex" of
moral relations in which we stand may fitly be summed up
in the word love. They are all parts of love ; and truth,
righteousness, courage, justice, as well as sympathy and
helpfulness, form part of the supreme ethical power which
we call love. Love maketh no ill to his neighbour, love is
the fulfilling of the law.
No limit can be fixed to the potential development of
personality, nor to the breadth, fulness, and contents of
what a perfect personality may include in itself. If we
look at the great personalities which history has made
known to us, we shall gain some conception of the height
to which it may rise. By marvellous patience and supreme
insight Newton was able to make the physical processes of
nature part of his personal experience. He entered into the
life of nature, and made it so far part of his own life. He
was able to place invisible scales, in which he could weigh
and measure the heavenly bodies, and the force which
made the apple fall caused the tide to ebb and flow, and
kept the spheres in their paths and places. He saw into
the depths of the universe, and as far as he saw, realised

Personality Manifested in History. 33
in his own personal life what he had seen. So far as
science has been able to master the secret of the universe,
and so far as any man has mastered science, precisely so
far is the life of the universe become incarnate in that man,
and the forces of nature in their highest meaning have
become part of his personal life. Similarly one who has
mastered the natural sciences, and so far as he has read the
processes of life, has taken into his own life and involved
in himself the great force of organic nature. The world of
science lives in man. In a similar way Shakespeare seems
to have made the whole round of human experience, so far
as regards their thought, feeling, action, part of his own
experience. His insight into human nature is marvellous.
We cannot speak in detail of these fine spirits, touched to
fine issues, the Platos, Kants, and Hegels of our race, who
have striven to solve the mystery of thought and life, and
even in their failures have enlarged the boundaries of human
experience ; nor of those higher spirits still, who have taken
religion as their sphere, and who believed that they saw
the living God face to face, and have felt the rapture of
fellowship and union with Him.
In these men, so far as their greatness went, the universe
attained to consciousness, and became vocal and intelligent.
The dim and mechanical, the organic and unconscious
processes of nature were lifted up by them into the
kingdom of conscious light, freedom, and purpose, and
became part of a free conscious life. In their personal life
nature lived again a new transformed life, in a higher
sphere and with wider issues. One moment of personal
life sums up ages of unconscious, mechanical striving towards
a goal and a purpose impressed on the atoms from without,
the true meaning of which was only realised when
consciousness began to be. What has been won for us by
3

34 Is God Knowable ?
the great men of the past has now become part of the
inheritance of the race, and the treasured experience ot
former ages may become food for the living personalities
of our time. The age of great men is not past, for at
present, more than ever could have been, before, room has
been won for the appearance of a great personality. The
gathered experience of the race lies at hand for appropria
tion by him who can take it home to himself, and the life
and thought of the universe may become truly the personal
life of a man.
On the other hand, the limitations of great personalities
are as instructive as their greatness. All of them have
been great in a one-sided way, and all of them lack the
fulness and roundness of an all-sided personality. Thinkers
have failed in action, and rulers have failed in thought,
heroes have been great in courage and little in all else,
while saints have been great in holiness and love, but
sometimes their views of life have been narrow and intense.
No great man, who is only a man, has been great on all
sides, great as a poet, great as a thinker, great as a ruler,
great as a hero, great as a reformer, great as a saint. But
in their limited and imperfect fashion they have revealed
to us how personality takes home to itself and makes its
own the force and the life which is in nature and in
society. Their lives also make manifest that what
they have taken from nature and society they restore
again in richer, greater fashion, with interest for the
usage. They made the most of themselves, and realised
as far as they could the personal self, in order that they
might serve men. Self-realization in order to service,
widest, deepest culture of the elements of personality
in order to fit for higher, nobler work, such is the law of
life we see in the spirits which are touched to finer

Personality Manifested in History. 35
issues, which law, whether of set purpose or otherwise,
they all manifest.
No allusion has been made up to this time to the greatest
personality yet known to history, who alone has shown to
men what human life ought to be and may become. When
we study the life, read the words, and ponder on the works
of Jesus Christ, we find ourselves in the presence of One
who has made " every human life a part of His own life."
He is great without limitation in all the lines of greatness ;
— great as a thinker, for there is more of truth and force
in the few fragmentary sayings of our Lord than in all
written words besides, When we ponder on any one of
His sayings, it grows on us as we think of it ; and as we let
our thoughts, conscience, will, and affection dwell on any
one of His words, they broaden out to an infinite reach on
all sides, and open up for us vistas of new suggestiveness
which reach forth without limit. The more men have
dwelt on His words, — and for centuries the wisest and best
of our race have given their days and nights to the thought
of them, — the more unsearchable the meaning has been
found to be. Amid the changing circumstances of the
world, and the problems raised anew as civilization grows
more complex, these words of Jesus have been found
fruitful of solutions and rich in suggestions for personal
and national guidance. It is strange to find His suggestive
words and thoughts in the writings of men who simply
ignore the facts of His life and the words which He spake.
The great conception of solidarity which bulks so largely
in current thought is to be found, both the fact and the
expression of it, in His sayings. Altruism, which appears
in certain moral systems as the culmination of scientific
ethics and as the outcome of the struggle for existence,
however illogical that is, has found far more scientific

36 Is God Knowable ?
expression in His words than they have ever yet received
elsewhere. Then how complete His insight into the laws
and processes of nature. He saw the living process as it
was. He did not need to compare and classify, abstract
and generalise. With supreme insight He looked into the
living, organic changes as they were, and uttered with full
knowledge the adequate expression of what He saw. As
was His knowledge of nature, so was His knowledge of man ;
not a mere abstract knowledge of man, thin, shadowy, and
vague, but a knowledge of the . actual living man before
Him, in concrete personality and particular differences from
other men ; be he Jew or Gentile, learned or uneducated, a
pretender or a penitent, a teacher or a friend, as soon as
he came to Jesus he was known by Him, and known
in all the peculiarities of his character. And the words
which Jesus spake on the spur of the moment were words
which fitted the occasion. Great in His knowledge of
nature, and great with unequalled greatness in His know
ledge of men, He was great in all the phases of personal
character. He was great in sympathy : no one felt the
burdens of humanity as He felt them, no one lost sight of
himself as He did. To help men, to save them from
unworthiness and guilt, to set before them the ideal of true
life, and to give them strength to live up to it, are aims
He always had in view. No higher ideal of human life has
yet been given to the world than was actually realised in
the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and the verdict of a hostile
criticism to-day is not only the negative one, We can find
no fault in this man, but also the positive one, Never man
spake like this man, as, in fact, none ever lived like Him.
We shall return to this in other relations ; at present our
object is simply to show, that while history has abundant
examples of men who are great with a one-sided greatness,

Personality Manifested in History. 27
yet also there is in history a character who is perfect,
complete on all sides, and who has gathered up into
Himself all the broken types of greatness which the world
has seen before or since, and given to all who choose to
see the name and type of what life and work here ought
to be.

III.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM.
IT is well at this stage of our argument to look steadily
at the charge of Anthropomorphism which is freely
urged against Theism by men of the most opposite schools.
It is assumed that religion alone justly underlies this accusa
tion, while science and philosophy are regarded as if they had
got quite beyond the suspicion of being anthropomorphic.
" Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is," is a say
ing of Goethe's which Mr. Matthew Arnold has made
familiar to all of us. In his peculiar way he has reiterated
the statement almost to weariness. He is evidently of
opinion, that by speaking of " a stream/' and by steadily
reading "it" wherever ordinary people read "him" or "he,"
he has got beyond Anthropomorphism, and can from this
position safely sneer at the bishops and others who have
provoked his mockery. It does not seem to have occurred
to Mr. Arnold to ask whether his favourite formula, " the
stream of tendency whereby all things fulfil the law of
their being," may not itself be anthropomorphic. It is,
at all events, a thought which men can think and can ex
press in language after the fashion of men. Goethe's
saying has a wider range than Mr. Arnold seems to have
apprehended, and has an application not only to those
questions to which Mr. Arnold has applied it, but also to

Anthropomorphism. 39
those other questions from which he has shut it out. If
it can be shown that a charge of anthropomorphism can be
brought against all the sciences and philosophies, as fairly as
it can be brought against theology, then it is time that the
charge should cease to be brought against theology. It is not
difficult to show that all the conclusions which philosophy
has won regarding man, the world, and God, are tinged
with anthropomorphism, and the systems which are most
deeply tinged with it are precisely those which were
imagined by their founders to be most free from it. To
say that theology is anthropomorphic may be true ; but the
charge can imply no reproach until it is shown that
philosophy and science are free from the same reproach.
The old proverb is here applicable, Those who live in glass
houses ought not to throw stones.
If we take the systems of philosophy which from the
dawn of speculation until now have been in vogue, or the
questions which at present divide the schools of philosophy,
we can easily show that from line to circumference they are
wholly anthropomorphic. Materialism itself, which has ob
tained so large a crowd of followers, is only, when analysed
to its elements, the abstraction of one aspect of human
nature, and this abstraction is then enlarged to the measure
of the universe, and made to do duty as the rational ex
planation of it. We are conscious of motion, of force,
and of necessity. We know it in ourselves. And we
find when we act on the assumption of its truth our action
is everywhere justified. It is one element in our life,
and it is easy to see how readily this element may take
universality home to itself, and swallow up all the other
elements- usually found inseparable from it. Let it be
remembered here that we are not inquiring into the truth
of Materialism, we are only asking whether it is or is not

40 Is God Knowable ?
anthropomorphic ; and the question answers itself as soon as
it is asked. Materialism is the projection into space of one
aspect of human life, and the shadow of it is mistaken by its
advocates for the universe itself. Nor is the matter helped
when we pass from the school of Materialism to the schools
which have recognized other elements than those of
force in the universe. Neither have these got beyond
anthropomorphism. If we take pure idealists like Berkeley,
we find that they also have taken an aspect of human life,
projected it, and enlarged it to make the universe. And
the world is only an enlarged copy of one side of human
life. If we take a system like that of Spinoza, of which so
much has been written in recent years, and of which men
speak as if Spinoza had got beyond the accidents and
limitations of human view, and saw the truth in univer
sality and purity, what is the real essence of the system
of Spinoza ? It is to be found not in his definitions, nor in
the axioms, nor yet in what he is pleased to call demonstra
tions, but in a simple fact, which he quietly slips in as if it
were of no consequence,— in the simple fact that man is both
a res cogitans and a res extensa. The universal substance,
with infinite attributes, of which, however, only two can be
known, to wit strength and extension, is, when we come
to look at it, simply man reduced to an extended and
thinking thing, and enlarged indefinitely. Surely we may
borrow here the language of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and say,
that here is a magnified, non-natural man, non-natural be
cause it is the enlargement to monstrosity of two aspects of
ourselves, and these not the highest. Yet we are told that
Spinoza has transcended anthropomorphism and approached
near to objective truth. If this be to transcend anthro
pomorphism, truly it is easy to be overcome.
As .Spinoza has put man under a microscope and has seen

Anthropomorphism. 41
those aspects of him which he regarded enlarged to the
utmost limits of existence, so certain followers of his, who
have also drunk deeply of the scientific spirit of modern
time, have looked at man from a distance so great as to see
him reduced to the size of an atom. But both the universe
of Spinoza and the atom of Prof. Clifford are formed in the
image of man. Mind-stuff is simply man minimised and
brought down to atomic dimensions. " A moving molecule
of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness,
but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff. When mole
cules are so combined together as to form the film on the
tender side of a jelly fish, the elements of mind-stuff which
go along with them are so combined as to form the faint
beginnings of sentience. . . . When matter takes the
complex form of a living human brain, the corresponding
mind-staff takes the form of a human consciousness, having
intelligence and matter" (Clifford on Mind, No. IX., p. 65).
In this essay on the natures of things in themselves, Prof.
Clifford, with that remarkable clearness of statement charac
teristic of all he wrote, has set forth the conception which
was dimly hovering before the mind of Spencer and of Bain,
which has now come to be known as the double aspect
theory. Mind corresponds to matter as the concave of a
circle to the convex. They are inseparable, and appear in the
molecule, as in larger and more complex measure they appear
in man. It is not our purpose here to criticise this view. A
trenchant criticism of it from another point of view than
ours will be found in the work of Mr. Malcolm Guthrie, en
titled On Mr. Spencer's Unification of Knowledge. What we
seek here to point out is how anthropomorphic all this is.
So in truth are all systems of philosophy, for they
deal with the relation of mind to matter, and of matter
to mind. They always start with these factors of our own

42 Is God Knowable ?
personal life, and they always come back to them with
what experience they have gained by the way. They arc
anthropomorphic, whether with Spinoza they postulate a
universal substance which has the known attributes of ex
tension and thought ; with Kant a manifold of sense, with
a priori forms which make knowledge and experience
possible ; with Hegel a universal self-consciousness," which
constitutes the objects of its knowledge, and makes them
possible to be known as objects ; or with Spencer, an
inscrutable power which must ever remain unknown, and
yet, strange to say, can be named by man. All these great
constructive systems, strive as they may, never get beyond
anthropomorphism ; and the more they strive to get beyond
it, the more anthropomorphic they become. Even Darwin
ism, or evolution, which is thought by some, Strauss, for
example, to have won an objective view, is, when we con
sider it, more anthropomorphic than any other system. It
is simply an extension of Malthusianism to the animal
world ; and the fierce struggle for existence which he sees
going on throughout all life is only an enlarged form of the
competition with which we are all familiar. Darwinism
is Malthusianism writ large.
It is remarkable to find how much more anthropomorphic
than in former days are the systems of philosophy now in
vogue. Formerly the world had an independent existence.
The discovery of modern psychology is that the world
arises in consciousness. Formerly unity was supposed to
reside in the objects themselves ; now the "highest category
is self-consciousness. Certain schools have a way of
talking about the progress of science, and delight to point
out how science is removing further and further from the
anthropocentrical point of view. Once the earth was
regarded by man as the centre of things, but that was by-

Anthropomorphism. 43
and-by displaced by the truer system which makes the
sun the centre around which the planets move. And this
we are told is a type of how the sciences make progress.
It is not necessary to enter into detail, for details sufficient
may be found in all the organs of literature at the present
time. Alongside of this view is to be placed the view of
Kant, which shifted the centre of gravity from the objects
known to the knowing subject. He himself has compared
his work with the master-work of Copernicus ; and others
are never tired of telling us of the revolution he has wrought
in the relations between the human intelligence and the
objects of its study. His system is great, fruitful, and the.
principles he unfolded have commended themselves to the
thinkers of the time which has elapsed since he wrote.
But the revolution he wrought is precisely the reverse of
that wrought by Copernicus. Copernicus removed the
centre to the sun, and made man and his dwelling-place
a satellite. Kant places man in the centre of the world,
and makes all other existences satellites of him. There
is no unity in the world, nor order, until categories native
to intelligence come as form to shape and twist together the
manifoldness of the world.
Both the later criticisms and the developments of
Kantianism, more particularly the criticism and the deve
lopment by Hegel and his followers, proceed along the
same path inaugurated by the master of modern philosophy.
The most anthropomorphic of all systems of philosophy is
that of Hegel. " The centre of the world lies in our own
nature as self-conscious beings, and in that life with our
fellows, which, in different . aspects, constitutes alike the
secular and the divine community. The spirit fostered
by physical science, and the mood familiar to all of us — the
mood which weighs man's paltry life and its concerns

44 Is God Knowable ?
against the ' pomp of worlds ' and the measureless fields of
space — is in reality less philosophical than that of the poet
and humanist to whom this pomp is barren save as the
back-ground of the human drama. Ordinary people get
most of their metaphysics through religion or through
poetry, and they probably come nearer to the truth that
way than if they went to the professed philosophers " (Mr.
Seth, in "Essays on Philosophical Criticism," p. 27); — a
statement sufficiently firm and by no means without
justification in the present state of opinion. With all its
drawbacks, we find that this school is almost alone in its
indication of the right of men to recognise higher categories
than are admitted by the prevailing tendencies of English
thought. No doubt they have introduced a peculiar phan
tasmagoria of their own, and their language is as elusive as
a will-o'-the-wisp. Sometimes, yea often, one does not know
where to have them. But alone of philosophies at the
present time, the Hegelian school are face to face with the
problems of philosophy and of life, and alone recognise the
breadth and complexity of them. The solution they offer
is, in many respects, as we think, untenable, but we must
acknowledge the fairness and manliness of the grapple and
the breadth which mark their apprehension of the issues.
One of the most marked of the features of the thought
of our time is the prominence of what may be called the
sociological problem. It is attacked by all schools and by the
most diverse methods. The positivist, who restricts human
knowledge, and confines it to the ascertainment and registra
tion of phenomena, is yet constrained to admit an exception
when he speaks of humanity. He has here been forced to be
come metaphysical, and has instituted a worship of humanity
to afford a direct expression of the religious need unfelt by
him, and unrecognised at the earlier stages of the development

Anthropomorphism. 45
of his system. He has personified human nature, and with
the same breath declares it to be impersonal. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, who has so many points in common with Positivism,
and also strives with all his might to- elaborate points of
difference, has been able to advance to the thought that
society is an organism. The typical organism, according to
Mr. Spencer, is a living body, and he has been able to find
many likenesses between society and a living body. These
likenesses we need not enumerate, for in the long run
Mr. Spencer is stopped by the fundamental unlikeness
between the two. For every organism, he finds on reflection,
has an apparatus of nerves, a sensorium from the integration
and differentiation of which it has grown to what it now is.
On the principles of his philosophy, he can do nothing with
out a sensorium. As however no sensorium is forthcoming
big enough to serve for the social organism, he is constrained
to let his conception sink from the altitude of the organism
to the level of an aggregate. This has grave results for his
ultimate view of what ethics and philosophy may mean.
For one thing he is constrained to deny that the welfare of the
aggregate apart from that of the unit is an end to be sought.
For another thing, as, according to him, knowledge has its
origin in nervous shocks, however abstract knowledge may
become, nervous shocks accompany it all through ; when he
passes into a region where nervous shocks are not available,
he must perforce stop short, or get incoherent.
Nor are these workers in philosophy in England, who,
more or less under the influence of Hegel, are seeking to
solve the problems set to us by our own experience, in a
much better case for the solution of the sociological problem
than Mr. Spencer is. Self-consciousness is their highest
category. Where Mr. Spencer postulates a sensorium, they
postulate a self. When Mr. Spencer cannot find a sensorium

46 Is God Knowable ?
he candidly says so, and lets his system take, the conse
quences. He has not the fertility of resource which our
Hegelian friends have. And he has not yet been able to see
how a thing can be and not be at the same time. Of course
such amazing fluidity of language is a great help in exposi
tion, and due advantage is taken of it by those who study
philosophy under the auspices of Hegel. A universal self
is their grand panacea for the surmounting of difficulties and
for the reconciling of contradictions. Where shall we find,
then, a universal self to correspond to the hypothetical unity
of the social organism ? When we have learnt the new
language and mastered the new categories, which meet us
at every turn, and come to know the universal, the particular,
and the synthesis of the two in the individual, we shall
have advanced a little way towards the comprehension of
the universal self, as it is the organ of the social organism.
It is very likely that if we venture to disagree that we shall
be told we do not understand the problem or the solution.
The social organism is an organism of organisms, we are
told, and society comes to self-consciousness and attains its
purposes in the self-consciousness and purposes of every
individual. Then we ask, What and where is the unity, the
individual self-consciousness of the social organism ? It
is as far to seek and as difficult to find as the sensorium
which is desiderated by Mr. Spencer. It is somewhere in
the air, ready to settle down on any individual self-con-
sciousness' able to receive it. When we ask them to be
more definite, they complain sadly of the lamentable
ignorance which prompted us to ask such a question. For
that only reveals to them how far we are from having appre
hended the true significance of the universal and the parti
cular and the Hegelian doctrine of limit. For it appears that
"there exists no such thing as individual self-consciousness."

Anthropomorphism. 47
Common people who think they have an individual self-con
sciousness have not really asked themselves how is self-con
sciousness possible, and have not apprehended the greatness
of the highest category. It is not our purpose to enter into a
criticism of the Hegelian philosophy in its more recent mani
festations ; our purpose is to ask whether it is not anthro
pomorphic ; and when we ask the question we find at once
that it is more anthropomorphic than any other system. It
begins with self-consciousness, it magnifies it. It postulates
a self co-extensive with society, and in the interests of the self
of the social organism, makes the individual an abstraction.
It still further enlarges the self we know to the magnitude of
the universe, and the great first postulate of Hegel, when
accurately scrutinised, is identical with the simplest problem
of human knowledge. Up and down, right and left, we are
continually turning round in the same turnpike stair ; and the
only vision we get a glimpse of is simply ourselves, some
times enlarged and sometimes reduced to small dimensions.
The question we have been asking is apparently one
which philosophers and men of science have not asked them
selves when they were denouncing Anthropomorphism. The
question before their mind seems to be this, Is there not
a tendency in human nature to read itself into the universe ?
and ought this tendency to be vigorously controlled by a
constant adherence to a fixed process of investigation, and
by bringing the results of our own work, and of the work
of others, to a rigid verification by reference to this method ?
" The perceiving mind has mixed itself "up with the thing
perceived, and not merely in the way in which it always
must, in the way which constitutes cognition, but in quite
other and arbitrary ways, by wishes, by prejudices, by
crotchets, by dreams" ("Natural Religion," p. 9). The region
of the scientific method is a contrivance whereby we are

48 Is God Knowable ?
enabled to get rid, as far as possible, of our human wishes,
prejudices, crotchets, and dreams. It is a way of making
sure that the voice we hear is really the voice of nature,
and not the echo of our own voice. It is not anthropo
morphic for the mind to mix itself up with the thing per
ceived in the way which constitutes cognition. But it is
anthropomorphic to do this in arbitrary ways. The reason
of the one reservation made by the author of " Ecce
Homo " is that in the one case we must do so because we
must ; necessity justifies the anthropomorphism. But the
other case is arbitrary, and must be overcome. Now no doubt
there is here a valid distinction drawn, and one neglected
duty of science is to show how the wishes and crotchets are
possible, — a task it has not yet faced. But when we ask our
selves what is this rigorous scientific method which is to
distinguish always between the necessary and the arbitrary,
we find that it is precisely that method which consists in
reducing a problem to its lowest terms, eliminating every
thing that is distinctive of the special problems of the
more complex sciences, and making problems of life and
spirit to be only special cases of the conservation of energy.
Will, purpose, and personality are considered as kinds of
prejudices or crotchets ; even if they have any reality as
they are in man, they are considered as utterly without
justification when they are looked at as having significance
for the universe at large. No doubt there are prejudices
and crotchets abroad in the minds of men ; and one of these
is the persistent notion that man can be accounted for by any
thing less universal than what we find in him. One of the
most persistent dreams of science is the confidence it shows,
that in course of time it will understand and account for the
world from within the world. This has been the dream
of science and philosophy from the beginning, that it can

Anthropomorphism. 49
construct the universe from within ;— a vain dream, as shown
by the failure of every constructive system up to this time.
Not one of them has withstood hostile criticism. The
vainest of all dreams is the scientific dream, for its postulates
necessarily imply what lies beyond itself. Its assumption is
that the quantity of matter in the universe is fixed, and it
cannot answer the question of how or by what it is fixed.
And the latest generalisation, the great conception of the
conservation of energy, which means that the sum of
energy is constant, raises exactly the same questions. By
whom or by what has the quantity of matter and energy
in the universe been determined ? Any answer which
science can give to these questions has not in reality
advanced beyond the standpoint of Lucretius ; and no answer
can be given on the terms of science, except that matter and
energy determine their own quantity, or chance determined
it. Either answer is irrational.
A similar difficulty lies before all the constructive
systems of philosophy. It is too large a problem for
solution with the material man has in hand, when he
confines himself to the world in itself, or even when he
takes himself in as part of the world. The attempt to con
struct the universe from within has led to the one-sidedness
of philosophy, to the hypostatising of abstractions, and the
depersonalising of men. So we have the monstrous self-con
sciousness of the Hegelian school, the impersonal will of
Schopenhauer, and the unconscious intelligence of Hartmann.
So must it ever be so long as men pursue this dream. We
need to change the conditions of the problem, as in very
truth history has already done for us, and by changing it
we get a problem, difficult indeed, but one which is more
within our grasp. The new problem, which is also old, is,
not to construct the universe and God out of the elements of
4

50 Is God Knowable ?
human experience, but taking for granted that in the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth, then to
justify the ways of God to man and to the world. The
new problem is not to construct God, but to seek to under
stand His relation to the world.
As a consequence of the attempt to construct the universe
out of the elements of human experience, we have the
curious result that the human mind stands to-day before
nature in the same attitude as it stood in the infancy of
the race. The description of Natural Religion contained
in the new book by the author of " Ecce Homo " differs in
no essential particular, from a description of Natural
Religion as it might be written from a' study of the
mythologies of Greece and Rome and India. No doubt
Natural Religion has been able to work into the description
all that men have been able to learn in the interval
regarding nature, its laws and processes. No doubt also
in all that belongs to second causes, the attitude of the
modern mind is more intelligent than the attitude of the
early fathers of men. But a deeper analysis reveals the
fact, that in the presence of the power manifested in nature,
the modern man of science is just as helpless as those who
first began to think of the mystery of the world. Those
people knew a region of ordered sequence, and a sphere
where law reigned, and, as far as science is concerned, the
only difference is, that the sphere of law which we have
recognised is larger than theirs. We have seen law when
they only saw caprice. But when we press on to the
further question of what law and order mean, and from
what and from whence they came, science seems to get
irrational. Most men of science are quite contented to
ascertain the facts, and to measure the forces and their
ways of working, without further inquiry into the reason

Anthropomorphism. 51
or origin of them. But when science gets philosophical,
and seeks the reasons of things, it usually takes refuge
with chance, or accident, which as men of science use it is
simply an occult cause about which they know nothing.
What a large part chance has to play in the theory of
evolution, and how diligently its advocates seek to conceal
its working ! In this relation and on these lines no advance
has been made by men towards a solution of the problem
of life. Their aim is to get rid of caprice and arbitrariness ;
the result of their speculation has been that these return
on them in a more absolute form than before. Formerly
-caprice was ascribed to the waywardness of imperfect
personal beings. Modern speculation has postulated it as
inherent in the very system of things. The evolutionist
can explain the origin of new varieties only by having
recourse to " occasional freaks of nature." " The lucky
accident, the casual combination of circumstances which
produced the first elongation of the receptacle in the
strawberry, has never happened to befall its more modest
kinsfolk. For on such occasional freaks of nature the
whole evolution of new varieties entirely depends " (Grant
Allen, "The Evolutionist atLarge," p. 24). Are the occasional
freaks of nature any more rational or more adequate to
serve as a scientific explanation than the caprice of the
gods of Greece ? It was open to us to regard the world as
natural, and to hope that by patient study we might come
to know the laws and processes of nature. If we accept
evolution we are shut out from that hope, for, con
fessedly, caprice is enthroned as the only principle which
can enable us to account for the evolution of new varieties.
When we seek to know what has been the real course and
the actual history of life on the earth, at every stage where
new varieties appear we have only to lift up our hands i n

52 Is God Knowable ?
astonishment and piously say, " A new freak of nature."
This is all that we can do, and no rational explanation is
forthcoming to satisfy our legitimate curiosity. This is one
consequence of the attempt to construct a rational theory
of the course of life from elements which are within, to
the exclusion of any directing agency from without. It
leaves us helpless, to bring in freaks of nature as a dens ex
machina in our hour of need.
The history of the ancient mythologies enforces the same
truth. It shows what has been accomplished by man
when left face to face with nature, and a study of it
shows how hopeless an attempt it is to have an intelligent
view of man or of the world if no distinction is made
between God and the world. A study of modern science
in its speculative aspect, and a study of modern constructive
philosophy, give rise to the impression, that with enlarged
means of knowledge and with a wider experience man is
going through a similar process and repeating a similar
course of reflection, to be brought again to a similar
conclusion. As Bishop Martensen profoundly says, " The
mythical consciousness must go through all the manifold
forms in which it is possible to fake the world-idea instead
of God. It must roam through various ranges of existence
and make of each a form for the divine. It sees the highest
powers of life in the stars, in the heavenly luminaries ;
it surmises the secret of the All-living in the silent vege
table world; it regards the animal creation as a sort of
hieroglyphics, the mystical disguise of the Deity, until
the sphinx of Nature is thrown down, and man himself is
recognised as the true form of God, — a perception which
gives to the myths of Greece and of the North a loftier
spirituality than that of the nature myths of the East "
(Martensen, "Dogmatics," p. 228, Clark's Translation).

Anthropomorphism. 53
Martensen sees in mythology a progress from the natural
to the spiritual, and from the impersonal to the
personal. In the conscious reflective process of Greek thought a
similar process is made manifest. Greek thought begins
with an attempt to find a physical explanation of the universe.
It was the easiest and most obvious course to find in some
outward physical principle the explanation of the world.
Water was the origin of all things, or fire was, or, as their
thought and their expression of it widened and their first
explanations were seen to be inadequate, matter itself
became to them indestructible, was confused with existence
in general, and was treated as the sufficient explanation and
reason of things, until at length came as the summation ot
that tendency the atomic theory of Democritus, and his
entire rejection of the supernatural. This way of explain
ing things could go no further ; it was exhausted, and a new
and higher tendency arose, which to matter added mind,
and the highest philosophy to which unaided human
intelligence has arisen was reached in the life and thought
of Socrates, of Plato, and of Aristotle. Unaided human
speculation has never risen to a higher level than it has
done in Greece. Democritus is as good a type as any
which modern times have given us of the speculation
which makes matter to be first and the sufficient explana
tion, as that which has from the outset the promise and
the potency of all forms of life. The problems of Greek
thought are the problems of modern thought, and the
solutions also have a remarkable resemblance. There is no
system of philosophy in vogue now but has had its prototype
in Greece, and the failure of Greek philosophy and science
to satisfy the needs of man's nature, or to attain to perma-
nance, reveals to the thoughtful student that somehow soms

54 Is God Knowable ?
of the elements which are essential to a true solution have
been left out of account.*
It is sad to think of the unavailing toil and effort which
have been spent on these attempts to construct the uni
verse from within. The attempts of modern thought have
not been more successful than those of ancient thought,
and mainly for the same reason, because they will persist
in treading a path which ever returns on itself, and
presents in various forms the old solutions of Materialism,
Idealism, Pantheism, or some combination and modifica
tion of these olden views. Greek philosophy sought to
explain the universe as a whole. It set itself to make
such an analysis of the world known to man as to
enable him to name one element cause and the rest
effect of it : what is the unity of the world ? what its
cause ? and what its purpose ? He sought to find a single
cause, be it personal or impersonal, conscious or uncon
scious ; let it be only such as to give him a fulcrum from
which to work, and every solution he found was inadequate,
whether it was the atoms of Democritus, or the self-thinking_
t ought of Aristotle. So also are the modern equivalents,
whether these be the universal substance of Spinoza, or
* We can only hint at the parallelism between Greek and modern
speculation. But any competent .history of the progress of Greek
thought will give the facts ; more particularly they will be found in
Zeller's works on Greek philosophy, and in "The Greek Philosophers,"
by A. W. Benn. The last work is particularly valuable, inasmuch as
it establishes a conclusion quite contrary to that which the author
thinks it proves. He has been able to show how closely the course of
modern thought resembles the course of Greek speculation. The
resemblance is very close indeed, and the inference he draws is that of
Agnosticism, whereas the true inference ought to be a doubt regarding
¦the validity of the method which lands us in such strange results,
— results which if acted on would paralyse every high aspiration of our
pature, and would land us in hopeless pessimism.

Anthropomorphism. 55
the panlogismus of Hegel (as Hartmann felicitously calls
it), or the unknowable power of Spencer. But history has
already made an analysis for us if we would only accept it,
— an analysis which enables us to speak rationally of the
cause of the universe and the universe, as effect, which
enables us to give a rational account of the progress of life
on the globe, which enables us to pass from artificial
selection, under man's guidance, to natural selection, with
out a break, which enables us also to understand human
history, and to look forward to a goal, when, as the result
of the long struggle for existence, life shall be realised in
freedom and fulness, in righteousness, holiness, and joy.
This analysis was effected long ago, in and by means of the
Hebrew race, to whom it was a settled basis of conviction
that in the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. The modern, mind. has surely travelled long enough
in the other path ; might not the Agnostic turn to look at
this problem, and try to see how life and duty look in the
light of it ? It would relieve them from the painful duty of
denial, and of placing themselves in flagrant contradiction
to many of the deepest convictions of men. It would
permit them to retain all that science has won regarding
the order of the world, physical, organic, and moral, and
would give them a hope that the results obtained through
the long struggle of life in the earth would not pass away
at the time when the physical' energy of the universe is
exhausted and nature becomes dead; in a word, there
would on these terms be the sure and certain hope that life
would continue and love would abide and the long and
painful struggle would not have been in vain. These
things are sure if the analysis reached through the Hebrew
race is true, and if there is a distinction between God and
the world,

IV.
DEAN MANSEL AND MR. HERBERT SPENCER.
THE question which we seek to answer is not one
which makes a statement of the Theistic argument
necessary. From our point of view we are entitled to
regard Theism as a datum, and not as a result won by
laboured investigation and prolonged argument. In any
event, we might dispense with such an investigation, inas
much as in the works of Dr. Flint, Dr. Conder, De
Pressense, Janet, and others, we have an adequate vindication
of the Theistic argument, and both its essential validity
has been shown, and its compatibility with all the recent
conquests of science, in all the spheres of scientific work.
It is not necessary for us to agree with these eminent writers
in every position they assume, but when all allowances are
made, and peculiarities taken into account, enough remains
to prove, that apart from Theism there is no intelligible
world, and no sufficient explanation of the origin, history,
progress, and purpose of the universe. The existence of
God is necessary as an intelligent datum for the explanation
of the world. But those arguments and considerations
which go to prove the existence and attributes of God from
our point of view are of supreme value as indications of
some of the ways by which He may be known. We are
relieved from the arduous duty of proving from man and

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 57
nature the existence of God and of the supernatural. For
such a mode of proof is constrained to leave out of account
so much that really forms a great part of the whole impres
sion made on us, and is compelled from the nature of the
case to dwell so much on what is merely formal and intel
lectual in the argument, that readers of books on Theism
invariably feel how utterly inadequate has been the state
ment of the springs, sources, and grounds of our belief in the
Living God. Our Theistic arguments are not without
cogency, and have been of the highest service, both positively
and negatively — positively in so far as they have established
or gone to establish the conception of the being and
character of a living Maker and Ruler of the universe, who is
beginning and end, cause and purpose of everything that is ;
negatively, as they have critically shown how utterly inade
quate every other conception is. Here, however, we do
not attempt to set forth these arguments in order ; nor do
we seek to enumerate the avenues by which the higher
and spiritual power manifests and may manifest itself to
the lower. We simply take as many of the results of the
Theistic arguments as we really need, and look at them as
ways or means by which the Living God manifests Himself
unto men.
Although we are enabled by the form of our problem to
dispense with the statement of the Theistic argument,
yet that freedom only brings more vividly before us the
difficulties which metaphysics and speculative science have
gathered round the conception of God. If we speak of the
conception of God as a person with consciousness and will,
we are immediately confronted with endless discussions
regarding the absolute, the infinite, the unconditioned, and
other phrases of that order. On the other hand, speculative
science, which has already so many unverified notions of

58 Is God Knowable ?
its own, refuses to allow us to speak of any conception
which has not been verified by the method of, the physical
sciences. The curious thing here is the confusion of parties,
and their no less strange agreement. An apologist, in the
interests of revelation, and with a view to the silencing of
opponents, affirms that we have no true knowledge of God,
and his arguments are adopted by the Agnostic, who makes
the " unknowable " a mysterious and convenient background
to an omniscient system which seeks to explain the universe.
With regard to the views of Sir William Hamilton and
Dean Mansel it is not necessary to say much. Had we been
writing a quarter of a century ago, a critical examination of
their views would have been indispensable. For at that
time the philosophy of the unconditioned had a real exis
tence, and was a living influence in the minds of men. It
has now disappeared, and left no trace behind save in a few
quarters where the unfit survives. It has left its influence,
no doubt, on the system of Mr. Spencer, but the part it has
to play in that system is more ornamental than useful.
For the " unknowable " has no vital relation to what can be
known, and only appears when the system of knowable
relations gets into a difficulty, from which it has to be
violently delivered. It is not surprising that the philosophy
of Hamilton and Mansel should have no living influence on
thought at the present time. When we take up the once
famous Bampton Lectures, and read them over again, we
are irresistibly reminded of the old Greek puzzle about the
possibility of motion. No doubt that puzzle caused some
trouble to speculative thinkers at the time, but all the while
actual movement in space was possible to every living man
at Athens. So while the Dean was drawing out his verbal
contradictions, and confounding the sceptic with a scepti
cism more absolute than his own, the life and thought of

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 59
the time were moving on in utter disregard of these verbal
dexterities to quite other issues. For philosophy has
quietly accepted these contradictions, and has sought to
show how they can be reconciled in a higher unity. While
the work of scientific thinkers has tended more and more to
the raising of those issues which the Dean sought to fore
close, science and philosophy have disregarded these verbal
quibbles, and in so doing have been absolutely right. For
the triumph of Dean Mansel's logic could only result here
as the paralysis of all the higher powers of man ; no axiom
of Euclid, no definition of geometry could survive the
destructive analysis of such sceptical logic.
Yet, on reflection, the fallacy in the argument of Dean
Mansel is obvious. It is only a matter of definition. Grant
to him that the absolute and infinite are what he defines
them to be, and contradictions without number can easily
be manufactured by a pen less dextrous than his. If we
demur to the definition, and with Ulrici say that "the abso
lute is not conditioned by anything else, and so far it is the
unconditioned, but yet only because it is itself the positive
condition of everything else," then the contradictions
elaborated by the Dean vanish into thin air. Along with
them vanish also the tribe of imbecilities and powerlessnesses
of the human mind of which so much has been made. It
is easy to make contradictions when our definitions are
arranged with a view to bring about that result. Our defi
nitions must, however, correspond to what is real, and a
real basis for our conception of the absolute is found when
we regard it as the positive condition of all else. This view
relieves the conception of all difficulty, and will be found
on examination to satisfy all the uses made of the word in
common and in scientific speech. The absolute implies
relation, and is itself the ground of relation, without which

60 Is God Knowable ?
the conception of relation were inconceivable. As property
implies substance, as predicate implies subject, and as
action implies agent, so relation implies the absolute. The
strength of the argumentation now in view lies in the
assumption of the unrelatedness of the absolute, — an assump
tion not justified either by the use of language or by the
laws of thinking. For in the reasoning of Dean Mansel the
absolute ultimately becomes the unmeaning.
WThen it is gravely argued on the footing of such an
assumption and on the ground of such a definition of the
absolute that a true knowledge of God is impossible
because knowledge is only of the relative, this only raises a
fictitious difficulty, and overlooks the real problem of know
ledge. There is no problem where Dean Mansel has
placed it. The distinction between absolute and relative,
between infinite and finite, does not mark the boundaries
between true and valid knowledge and knowledge which is
only seeming. The true problem of knowledge is raised
long before we can come to such distinctions and definitions.
The real problem is, Can we know real things, things which
have existence? If we can know these, then the question
as to the extent of the object known, whether it be absolute
or relative, finite or infinite, is quite irrelevant. The
mystery of knowledge is one, whether our knowledge be of
the " flower in the crannied wall," in which there is no
question of the absolute and infinite in Dean Mansel's
quantitative sense of the term, or of the Living God, the
Maker of heaven and of earth. If knowledge is possible,
then the question of what we know and of what we cannot
know has other boundaries and distinctions than those which
artificially separate the infinite from the finite.
It is curious to notice in this relation how, in the con
fusion of the conflict, opponents have changed swords. It is

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 61
almost incredible that we should find the sword of Spinoza
in the hands of Dean Mansel, and yet the fact is so.
Spinoza affirms that intellect and will in man bear no
resemblance to these attributes as they are in the Deity.
" Intellectus et voluntas, qui Dei essentiam constituerent, a
nostro igtellectu et voluntate toto ccelo differre deberent, nee
in ulla re, prseterquam in nomine, convenire possent ; non
aliter scilicet, quam inter se, conveniunt canis, cceleste sig-
num, et canis, animal latrans " ("Ethics," Pars. I., Prop, xvii.,
scholium, p. 55, bi-centenary edition). It may be observed
in passing that this opinion did not prevent Spinoza from
building his system on the nominal resemblance between
the dogstar and the dog which barks. He cut down the
branch which sustained his weight. And he went on to
construct a system to explain the universe, as if he had
obtained some way of knowing what intellect and will could
mean in the Deity apart from the only intellect and will
which we do know. What those means of knowledge
were, he has not explained. Not to dwell on this one
among the many inconsistencies of Spinoza, we notice in
it the essential features of the system of Dean Mansel.
There is the assumption that when we attach the adjective
infinite to any quality, by so doing we remove it from
the category of known things. According to his reasoning
the term infinite applied to an object renders it incompre
hensible. Obviously, however, this is to use the word
in its strict etymological meaning as the negation of the
finite. If we have regard to the origin of the conception,
and to the way in which the idea of the infinite opens
out to us, we shall find that instead of being the negation
of the finite, it is the fulness and consummation of it.
A finite existence is one to which we can set bounds and
limits ; an infinite existence is simply that to the fulness

62 • Is God Knowable ?
and excellence of which we can assign no limit. As of
existence itself, so of the positive qualities through which
existence is manifested. There is no positive quality
of things which we cannot conceive ot as magnified to
infinitude. We can conceive of boundless strength, of
endless power, and yet know that there is no change of
strength in its nature, but only in its magnitude. Iri a
similar way we can speak without contradiction of an
endless series or of an infinite progress, nor does the
assertion that parallel lines never meet alter the positive
conception we have of parallelism.
Dean Man'sel has the courage of his convictions, nor
is he afraid to push his inferences to their most disastrous
issue. It might be possible to avoid serious consequences
to the trustworthiness of our thinking, even on Dean
Mansel's theory of the conditioned, if he had found out
some way of saving our moral and spiritual convictions
from the wreck and ruin he has wrought. But these have
to go with the others, and we are left in the sad condition
of being unable to say whether those qualities of truth,
righteousness, goodness, love, and mercy, which we know
in human history and in human life, can be recognised by
us as existing in an absolute degree and on an infinite
scale. He allows us to believe in their existence. He
opens a back-door, by which he seeks to bring them back
after he has formally shut them out, and denied the possi
bility of their justification on rational grounds. When
they are thus brought back, they have got a new name,
and we must now call them regulative truths, — truths which
may be believed and acted on, but which we cannot know.
Short work is usually made of truths which stand on such
a footing. Men will not be bullied into the acceptance of
truths which are to be held as mere rules, and which have

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 63
previously been demonstrated to lie beyond the range of
our knowledge. This distinction between regulative and
speculative truth makes an absolute breach in the founda
tions of our knowledge, and, when pushed to the uttermost,
makes the working of our intelligence to be untrustworthy.
One can see the good intention of the Dean in making this
distinction. His desire was to place faith on an unassailable
foundation, and the particular view of faith he sought to
conserve was faith in a dogmatic revelation. The old
mediaeval doctrine of revelation regarded revelation as a
system of truth, out of relation to the intelligence and heart
of man, to be accepted on authority. This view was never
overcome by Dean Mansel. Regulative truth, as defined by
him, is a survival of this olden doctrine. Most theologians
have now departed from it, and. have come to look on
revelation not as the revelation of dogmas, ready made,
to be accepted under pains and penalties, but as the mani
festation by the Living God of Himself to man in ways
which they may apprehend and understand. When we
see that Revelation mainly consists in facts which, like the
facts of science, have to be classified, arranged, and inter
preted, we come to the conclusion that the distinction
between regulative and speculative truth formulated by
Dean Mansel is as inexpedient as it is unphilosophical.
The aspect of the question is changed, and we are set free
from the burden of defending a revelation the essence of
which is dogmatic truth of the regulative kind. We have
enough to do in defending and understanding those truths
and principles given us by the nature of the human mind,
or given us by the nature of things, without adding other
burdens, which are necessary only on a false view of the
issue at stake.
Much of the confusion which undoubtedly reigns in

64 Is God Knowable ?
this discussion has arisen from the tyranny of language
and the necessary use of abstract terms. We are so apt
to forget when we are using such terms as power, force,
cause, that we are dealing with abstractions. We must
use such terms, but we can use them safely only when we
remember that they are of our own creation, and do
not truly stand for real things. For our own convenience,
constrained thereto it may be by the conditions of the case,
we speak in the form of judgment, separate subject from
predicate, and a thing from its attributes ; and ere we are
aware of it, the separated predicates and attributes take
back reality to themselves. When we think of it we at
once admit that things do not consist of a substance
to which attributes are externally attached, as if it could
exist apart from the attributes. We see at once that a
thing and its qualities are one. The unity of properties
makes the thing. Here, then, is a problem essentially the
same in kind with the problem which occupied the thought
of Dean Mansel. It is as difficult to understand how mani-
foldness consists with unity, as it is to understand how
finitude, relativity, and change can consist with the
attributes of infinitude, absoluteness, and unchangeableness
which we assign to God. It is argued that the ideas of the
infinite, the absolute, and the first cause as attributes of one
and the same being are mutually destructive. Similarly
it might be argued, and shown in detail, were it worth
while, that unity excludes manifoldness, and manifoldness
is incompatible with unity: either the manifold is reduced
to illusion, or the unity disappears in a plurality of oppo
sitions. It might thus be shown that the polemic of Dean
Mansel has other results than those he saw, and is destruc
tive not of our knowledge of the absolute and infinite only,
but also destructive of all true knowledge whatsoever.

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 65
But attributes are not things stuck into the substance in an
external manner, like pins in a pin-cushion. On the
contrary, attributes express the ways of the activity of the
thing, and so incommensurable attributes may belong to
the same thing, and the One may be manifold without
being many. In other ways also it might be shown that
the difficulties created or expounded by Dean Mansel are
difficulties which belong to the nature of knowledge, and
not to its extent.
We are thus again led back to the initial mystery of
knowledge ; and the oldest problem of speculative thought
is also seen to be the newest. This is not, however, a
metaphysical treatise on the possibility of knowledge, and
our answer to the argumentation of the philosophy of the
conditioned is complete when we have shown that the
theory which limits our knowledge to the relative and the
finite, when pushed to its logical conclusion, would shut out
the possibility of any knowledge even of the relative and
the finite. But something more may justly be said in this
relation when we consider the use which Mr. Herbert
Spencer has made of the philosophy of the conditioned.
Mr. Spencer has resolutely shut the back door of belief by
which Dean Mansel allowed the unconditioned to enter in,
and continue to have an abiding influence on human
conduct. He places belief and knowledge on the same
footing. " Some," says Mr. Herbert Spencer, " do indeed
allege that though the Ultimate Cause cannot really be
thought of by us as having specified attributes, it is yet
incumbent on us to assert these attributes. Though the
forms of our^ consciousness are such that the Absolute cannot
in any manner or degree be brought within them, we are
nevertheless told that we must represent the Absolute
to ourselves under these forms, as writes Mr. Mansel in
5

66 Is God Knowable?
the work from which I have already quoted largely — 'It
is our duty, then, to think of God as personal ; and it is
our duty to believe that He is infinite.' That this is
not the conclusion here adopted, needs hardly be said.
If there be any meaning in the foregoing arguments,
duty requires us neither to affirm nor to deny per
sonality ; our duty is to submit ourselves with all humility
to the established limits of our intelligence, and not per
versely to rebel against them. Let those who can believe
that there is eternal war set between our intellectual faculties
and our modern obligations : I for one admit no such
radical vice in the constitution of things " ("First Principles,"
p. 108, ed. 1862). The passage which immediately follows
we forbear to quote at present, as it must have a more
detailed examination. Meanwhile we shall look at this
statement in the light of Mr. Spencer's subsequent procedure.
He had formerly said that he could not better state the
fundamental principles of the Agnostic system than they
were stated for him in the words of Dean Mansel. But the
relation of these principles to the system which follows he
evidently has not seen. He has undertaken the weighty
task of bringing the inscrutable and the unknown into
known and definite relations; he is bound to show how
this is possible. For in his system there is nothing given
or taken for granted, every fact is to be looked on as a
product. The task of philosophy is to set forth the passage
of the universe from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
What homogeneousness is, how we know it, and where we
are to find it, is not shown or illustrated at all. Here,
without apparently recognising it, Mr. Spencer is face to
face with the problem which perplexed the schools of
Greece. Homogeneousness and heterogeneousness is only a
big way of saying the one and the many. But the bigness of

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 67
the language must not be allowed to disguise the nature of the
problem. This homogeneousness seems to be at one time
diffused matter, but the form it most constantly assumes
in the pages of Mr. Spencer is that of persistent and un
knowable force. We shall not repeat here the criticisms
which have been poured on this definition by eminent
physicists, from the physical point of view. They have
pointed out that force is a verbal abstraction, and that energy
expresses both the thought and thing.
Not to dwell on this, however, we remark that it is
amusing to watch the process by which Mr. Spencer seeks
to win for this inscrutable, which he names persistent force,
the necessary degree of abstraction and simplicity. On
the one hand he must find language sufficiently abstract
to express the idea of force pure and simple, and which
will not readily suggest to the reader any notion of things
or of persons who exert force and can act. He is much
annoyed with the concrete implications by which conser
vation implies something or some one who conserves,
and at last he has fallen on the word persistence, being
always careful to explain that this must not be understood
to imply the existence of any persisting thing or person. On
the other hand, the abstract persisting force must be thought
of in such a way as to make it possible to enter into
relations and manifest differences. Evidently Mr. Spencer
must walk warily in order to be abstract enough, and yet
not too abstract. This homogeneous something floats
hazily before our mental vision, and all we are permitted to
say to it is that it is homogeneous and nothing more. Not
yet are we allowed to see in it any difference or distinction.
The difficulty is continually present to the mind, How is
Mr. Spencer to get the homogeneous into action ? How or
whence the primary differentiations are to come is a mystery ;

68 Is God Knowable ?
there is no explanation of the process by which identity
passes into difference. Here, then, is the same fatal rock
on which the system of Spinoza made shipwreck. He could
not pass from the one substance to the attributes he professes
to deduce from it. Nor can Mr. Spencer pass from the
homogeneous to the heterogeneous, without the confession
that implicitly all the differences have been there from the
beginning. We repeat that this is fatal to the system of
Mr. Spencer. Those who are content to take matter and
its laws as given, do not feel the necessity of proving that
they are evolved from the homogeneous ; but Mr. Spencer
has undertaken to show how the universe has passed from
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity, and has failed at the outset. The truth is,
that the homogeneous as postulated by him is a mere
abstraction which has only a verbal reality.
Suppose we shut our eyes and take the leap, we find
ourselves, we know not how, in the midst of distinctions and
differences, such as we used to know in elementary works
of natural philosophy. The indefinite has somehow become
definite, and the unknowable has- become manifest in known
relations. The homogeneous has ceased to be homogeneous,
and, in fact, never was so, and the part it had to play
was simply ornamental. Mr. Spencer's problem has been
changed, and has become the ordinary problem of Material
ism ; namely, given matter, and its laws, to account for all
the forces and phenomena of the system. Mr. Spencer has
strange notions of the necessity of proof, and a singular — we
do not know whether to call it a singular want of knowledge
of, or a singular disregard of the difficulties and perplexities
which beset, the path of former workers in philosophy. He
passes by and takes no account of problems which the
history of philosophical thought regards as of the highest

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 69
importance, and calmly assumes, as settled by a passing
allusion, propositions which the keenest thinkers of all the
ages have pondered over, and regarded as insoluble. There
is a statement which Mr. Spencer elevates into a law, and
regards as the law which is to help his system to pass from
the homogeneous. This principle he calls the instability of
the homogeneous ; and his method of proving the principle
is peculiar. It is to be remembered that the homogeneous,
according to the former demonstration of Mr. Spencer, is
one and alike in every part. It represents all that is, and
outside of it there is nothing. It is in stable equilibrium ;
and as there is nothing to interfere with it from without,
there is no reason why it should not go on for ever. We
are intensely desirous of finding out how Mr. Spencer gets
instability into this homogeneous unity. We turn to his
proof of it. We can scarcely believe our eyes when we
read what is to be taken as proof and illustration. We
expected a detailed analysis of the homogeneous, or, at all
events, a description of the process by which difference
emerges from identity. Instead of this, we begin with the
mechanical definition of unstable equilibrium ; and it is
gravely added, that "the state of homogeneity, like the state
of a stick poised on its lower end, cannot be maintained."
Then follow what Mr. Spencer describes as "a few illustra
tions," the peculiarity of which is that they do not illustrate.
The illustrations from mechanics are a pair of scales, a
mass of water, a red-hot iron. Illustrations from the action
of chemical forces follow, which it is* not needful to notice
in detail. For the fatal objection to all these illustrations
is that they have no reference to the proposition which needs
to be proved. The stick poised on its lower end is a stick
subject to influences beyond itself, and already there is a
difference between the stick and its environment. The

70 Is God Knowable ?
relevant thing would be for Mr. Spencer to show, supposing
a stick as large as the universe to exist, without a possibility
of being influenced from without, how internal changes might
be brought to pass in that stick. For the proof and illustra
tion of the instability of the homogeneous, Mr. Spencer has
taken us among concrete realities, in which all the differ
ences he needs are present and active. In all the vagaries
of so-called reasoning, we have never seen one which so
completely misses the issue as the attempted proof of the
instability of the homogeneous. Indeed, the opposite of his
proposition is true. Instability implies difference. The
homogeneous postulated by Mr. Spencer, like the substance
postulated by Spinoza, is a merely formal notion, without
definite context, and can never advance beyond itself.
The truth is that there is, in the procedure of Mr.
Spencer, a continual see-saw between the formal and
abstract principles on which his system is professedly based
and the concrete realities of every-day experience. From
the most abstract to the most concrete he passes at a bound,
and never seems to see or care that at any step of the process
he falls into self-contradiction. A slight examination of the
phrase " instability of the homogeneous," will reveal that Mr.
Spencer has striven to unite two contradictory notions in the
same judgment, and the laboured argumentation borrowed
from Sir William Hamilton and Dean Mansel has a more
direct reference to his own system of thought than it has to
any other. Nor is he, even formally, consistent in the
exposition of the principle of the instability of the homo
geneous. Without notice it suddenly changes itself into its
opposite. For we find a new principle at work : when Mr.
Spencer proceeds to talk of inorganic combinations, then
" the stability decreases as the complexity increases ; and
then when we pass to the compounds that make up organic

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 71
bodies, we find this general law still further exemplified ;
we find much greater complexity, and much less stability."
To put this in other words, we find, then, that this general
law may be put thus, " Instability varies directly as com
plexity, and inversely as simplicity." The more complex
a combination is the more unstable. It is to be remembered
that this general law occurs in proof and illustration of Mr.
Spencer's more general principle of the instability of the
homogeneous. Perhaps Mr. Spencer is of opinion that one
way of illustrating the truth of a principle is gravely and
carefully to bring forward facts which contradict it. If this
be so, it casts a certain light back on the foundations of his
system,-and enables us to understand somewhat better the
strange relation which, in the opening chapters of the first
principles, the known bears to the unknowable.
A careful and critical perusal of Mr. Spencer's numerous
works reveals many strange and abnormal things. We do
not deny that, in relation to particular sciences, Mr. Spencer's
work has been of great value. But as a philosophy or
rational explanation of knowledge and experience, it is
about the most curious system in the lengthened course of
philosophical speculation. The transition from the un
knowable to the known is a glaring petitio principii. Let
that pass, however. The persistence of force is his great
panacea, and yet he can draw no inference from it, until he
surreptitiously introduces a difference and somehow gets to
speak of attraction and repulsion. Then at every stage of
the onward progress the differentia of each particular science
are introduced, and we are gravely assured that these are
explained by the persistence of force. To deny them is to
deny the persistence of force. But nowhere are there
shown why and how the persistence of force should have
these effects and no other. Sometimes, indeed, Mr. Spencer

72 Is God Knowable ?
forgets himself and proceeds to speak like an ordinary
mortal of new factors, until suddenly, when we travel
onwards to the study of biology, we find that the problem
has transformed itself, and the system of Mr. Spencer
becomes teleological. We have a new set of terms, and a
set of necessities utterly different from those we knew in
the former works of Mr. Spencer. New needs arise, and
nature acts with a purpose, ends are foreseen, means are
provided for the end in view, and means vary and are
adapted according to the necessities of each case. All
these things are brought in as Mr. Spencer requires them,
and have no necessary relation to the abstract principles
elaborated by Mr. Spencer. What has come out in the
process of nature must have somehow been first placed
in it. No doubt inattentive readers, or readers who are in
terested only in the varied information on all sorts of sub
jects which abounds in the books of Mr. Spencer, will fancy
that he has made good his promise of deducing all the
sciences from the axiom of the persistence of force. He
unquestionably says so many a time, and repeats it on
every favourable occasion. Sometimes he attempts to
show that all the laws of matter, and its. distribution in
masses, result from the persistence of force; but the attempts
result in failure. For, on examination, the so-called deduc
tion turns out to be a mere assertion that the result must
have been what it is ; to suppose otherwise would be to
suppose force not to persist. He never gets beyond an
abstract necessity, which patiently waits on the evolution
of facts, and as each new series of facts emerges, contents
itself with regarding it as the outcome of necessity. As
far as the abstract necessity goes, any other series of facts
would as well have satisfied the logical requirements of the
case. But we may at once observe that mechanical laws

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 73
no more account for the distribution of matter in space,
nor for the intricacies of the planetary system, than they
account for the distribution of streets in a city or the sizes
and styles of the houses ; all these must be consistent with
mechanical laws, or they will speedily disappear. On the
other hand, there are elements of arbitrariness or of intelli
gence in them which pass beyond the scope of the laws of
mechanics. We cannot do better in this connection than
quote the words of one of the most thoughtful, wise, and
profound of the metaphysicians of our day. We refer to
the work, " Metaphysics : a Study in First Principles," by
Borden P. Bowne, Professor of Metaphysics in Boston Uni
versity : —
" A paragraph must be devoted to this phase of neces
sary evolution. It regards the forms and order of the
system as a necessary outcome of the nature of matter.
From the standpoint reached in the last two chapters, this
view is utterly untenable, unless matter be defined in a
way quite foreign to the common view. Matter conceived
as a manifold of discrete elements is incapable of explain
ing anything without the co-operation and co-ordination of
a basal one. It may be worth while, however, to allow,
for the sake of argument, the self-sufficiency of matter, and
inquire into the possibility of constructing the system on
a purely material and mechanical basis.
" The great source of faith in such a possibility seems
to be a certain misunderstanding of mechanical necessity.
When the laws of motion are said to be necessary, and the
laws of force are said to be fixed, ..the fancy is entertained
that there is no room for choice or purpose, for the fixed
laws make only one result possible. We shall hereafter prove
that the laws themselves bear no marks of necessity ; but
at present we allow them to be necessary, and point out

74 A God Knowable ?
that the necessary laws themselves determine nothing, but
only when combined with certain arbitrary data. To attain
any specific effect in mechanics, the necessary laws must
work under peculiar conditions, which may be called the
arbitrary constants of the system. Gravity is compatible
with dead rest, with motion in a straight line, and with the
greatest variety of orbital motions. The fact in each case
is decided, not by gravity, but by the peculiar character
of the arbitrary constants; in this case, by the peculiar
disposition and velocity and mass of the attracting matter.
The same is true for all the other general laws and forces of
matter. As general they contain no account' of any specific
fact, but are just as compatible with any other specific
fact whatever. The explanation of the peculiar outcome
must be sought entirely in the arbitrary constants. It is
this fact that has led to the general conviction that a
mechanical explanation of an effect can never be ultimate.
This is expressed by the statement that the collocations
of matter can never be explained by the laws of matter,
and the collocations are the chief facts to be explained.
And it must be confessed that the peculiarites of the system
find no explanation in the fact that it is subject to invariable
or necessary mechanical laws. The peculiar forms and
directions of the system find their explanation only in the
arbitrary constants of the system. Mechanical necessity,
therefore, is always hypothetical ; the effect is necessary
only on the assumed truth of the data. But the data them
selves will always have an arbitrary character. It is at
this point that Theism has always triumphed over me
chanical Atheism. It is willing to allow that effects may be
realised in nature by a system of mechanical necessity,
but insists that the arbitrary constants of the system were
chosen with reference to the end to be realised. When,

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 75
then, the atheist dwells upon the necessity of every event
in nature, the theist points out that this alleged necessity
has an arbitrary element in it which looks amazingly like
choice. It is at this point that a reconciliation is possible
between teleology and mechanism. Purpose may deter
mine the arbitrary data, and mechanism may realise the
purpose " (Bowne's " Metaphysics," pp. 157-8).
We refer the reader to the pages of Professor Bowne
for a further luminous discussion of this subject. We can
only give his conclusions, with which we cordially concur : —
" A mechanical cosmology is not possible on the basis
simply of matter and mechanical laws, but only on the
basis of matter so arranged, and with such peculiar pro
perties and circumstances, that, if left to itself, it must
infallibly realise the present system. But these arbitrary
constants, which condition the products of the fixed laws,
contain the very gist of the matter, and are left unexplained.
The collocations of matter are not inherent necessities of
matter in general, any more than the plan of a building
is inherent in its material." Again, " The present order
cannot be understood as the outcome of any logical or
ontological' necessities. It has all the marks of contingency,
in that all its circumstances might conceivably have been
otherwise. Hence we know that it is the product of
necessity, simply by assuming that it is so. No reflection
on the formal categories of being, cause, dependence, etc.,
will give any insight into any of the specific features of
the system. The order, then, must be assumed as an
ultimate fact, of which no account can be given, or we
must leave the plane of mere analogy and logical categories,
and rise to the conception of intelligence and purpose "
{Op. cit, p. 161).
In the extract quoted above, Mr. Spencer says, " Our

76 Is God Knowable ?
duty is to submit ourselves with all humility to the
established limits of our intelligence and not perversely to
rebel against them." We assent cordially to the spirit of
the exhortation. But then we are surely entitled to ask,
What are the established limits of our intelligence ? We
have seen that the limits set up by Dean Mansel and
sanctioned by Mr. Spencer are artificial and manufactured.
We have seen that Mr. Spencer himself constantly trans
cends these limits, and that his method is at once artificial
and inconsistent. He cannot move without bringing back
surreptitiously what he has previously branded as illegiti
mate. Nor can he pass from a simpler science to a more
complex, without recognising the new factors which make the
complexity of the new science. Nor can he make any
progress in biology without the assumption of principles
which recognise ends, adaptation, purpose. It was neces
sary to say so much by way of direct criticism on the
method and philosophy of Mr. Spencer, because of the
influence attributed to it nowadays. We have pointed
out, with perhaps undue brevity, only a few of many
blemishes, a few out of a number of inconsistencies in the
system of Mr. Spencer. But these few suffice to show
how baseless that system is, and how inadequate it is as
a solution of the complex problem of human experience.
If we had space to extend our criticism to his treatment of
sociology and ethics, numerous other flaws might be
pointed out ; but this would far exceed our present limit? .
Our main purpose is fulfilled when we have shown that
Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the persistence of force does not
help us to understand in any degree the mystery of the
universe. The origin, development, and progress of the
universe must have a more complex cause. With his
usual energy Carlyle says, " It is flatly inconceivable that

Dean Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 77
intellect, moral emotion, could have been put into us by
an entity that has none of its own." This inconceivability
is certainly of larger importance and better grounded in
the nature of man and of things than the formal incon
ceivabilities manufactured by Mr. Spencer on so large a
scale. Yet the truth is that the unknowable of Mr.
Spencer by no means remains unknown. The formal
negative becomes positive, and when he speaks of the
inscrutable Power, the Power frequently ceases to be
inscrutable, and becomes a known and measurable thing.
It is convenient, no doubt, to have an adjective and a
substantive combined after the fashion of Mr. Spencer's
formula. For when hard pressed he can take refuge in
the adjective, to creep out quietly in an unobserved hour,
and expatiate on the known quality of power. With him,
as with most other Agnostics, the main part of their system
of thought is positive, and based on the positive qualities
of the power which lies behind phenomena. It only
becomes negative when they proceed to deny other positive
features of that Power in which we live and move and
have our being.

V.
THE AGNOSTICISM OF SCIENCE.
THERE is something unquestionably great and striking
in the positive conception which lies at the basis of
speculative science at the present time. Science has
widened our thought and enlarged our conceptions of the
universe. Geology has carried us back into a busy and
immeasurable past, and has shown us the slow process of
creation from the rudest beginnings to the highest ends.
Physical science has helped our conception of the nature
of the infinite, and helped our thought to get rid of the per
plexities arising from an indefinite number of independent
and unrelated units, by showing us that the causal energy
at work in nature is one, capable, of taking many forms, yet
one in essence. The doctrine of the conservation of energy
helps our thought to conceive the unity of the universe
in the midst of multiform manifestations. Everywhere
science has assumed and has verified the conception of a
great and settled order, both in the sphere of nature and
in the sphere of human history; and we are beginning to
get glimpses of a larger method, which will enable us to
see how freedom also may largely and royally move within
the bounds of law, and, by means of law, realise its glorious
purpose. We who are theists do not need to disparage the many
conquests of science. For we also believe that nature is an

The Agnosticism of Science. 79
ordinance and a revelation of God. Nor have we any
controversy with the author of "Natural Religion" in so far as
he sets forth in that suggestive work the greatness of the
conception which fills the mind of the earnest man of
science, or the earnest artist, or the sincere lover of his kind.
We have much to learn from the teaching of the writer of
" Ecce Homo." While dissenting from much of what he says,
and specially dissenting from the teaching which makes
Nature and God one, we yet find much truth in the following
paragraph : — " If we will look at things and not at words,
we shall soon see that the scientific man has a theology and
a God, — a most impressive theology, a most awful and
glorious God. I say that man believes in a God who feels
himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself,
and is immeasurably above Himself, — a power in the con
templation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of
which he finds safety and happiness. And such now is
Nature to the scientific man. I do not say that it is good or
satisfying to worship such a God, but I say that no class of
men since the world began have ever more truly believed
in a God, or more ardently or with more conviction
worshipped Him. Comparing their religion in its fresh
youth to the present confused forms of Christianity, we think
a bystander would say that though Christianity had in it
something far higher and deeper and more ennobling, yet
the average scientific man worships just at present a more
awful, and, as it were, a greater Deity than the average
Christian^ In so many Christians the idea of God has been
degraded by childish and little-minded teaching ; the
Eternal and the Infinite and the All-embracing has been
represented as the head of the clerical interest, as a sort of
clergyman, as a sort of schoolmaster, as a sort of philan
thropist. But the scientific man knows him to be eternal ;

80 Is God Knowable?
in astronomy, in geology, he becomes familiar with the
countless millenniums of His lifetime. The scientific man
strains his mind actually to realise God's infinity. As far
off as the fixed stars he traces Him, ' distance inexpressible
of numbers that have names.' Meanwhile, to the theo
logian, infinity and eternity are very much of empty words
when applied to the Object of his worship. He does not
realise them in definite facts and definite computations."
" But it is not merely because he realises a stupendous
power that I call the scientific man a theist. A true theist
should recognise this Deity as giving him the law to which
his life is to be conformed. Now here it is that the resem
blance of modern science to theology comes out most
manifestly. There is no stronger conviction in this age than
the conviction of the scientific man that all happiness depends
upon the knowledge of the laws of nature and the careful
adaptation of human life to them" ("Natural Religion," pp.
19, 20). We gladly acknowledge that there is much truth in
what has been said so powerfully in this and other para
graphs by the author of "Natural Religion;" we acknowledge
that the tribute he has paid to the belief and conduct of
scientific men is true of many of them. Their creed is a
lofty one, no doubt, and their earnestness is undeniable.
This is of itself a great gain, and a great advance in many
ways on the creed of science in former times. We would
that Theists and Christians were as earnest and sincere in
the larger, truer creed they do profess. But while we
acknowledge the earnestness, the sincerity, and the love of
truth purely and passionately manifested by many men of
science, we have to inquire if they are not themselves
better than the creed they profess, and better than the
object they worship, as the creed and the object of worship
are set forth for them by the author of "Natural Religion"?

The Agnosticism of Science. 81
The true and the right and the beautiful, — are these to be
found in the object which the scientific man worships ? Let
us accept all he says about nature, and ask when we stop
short at nature, Have we any right to say that we have
reached the true, the right, and the beautiful ? Let us
follow in the footsteps of science for a little, until we gather
some of the implications and suggestions which make up
the conception of that power " in the knowledge of whose
ways alone is safety and well-being, in the contemplation
of which they find a beatific vision." Is it possible apart
from a goal and purpose not yet reached to find a beatific
vision in the contemplation of Nature? Taking Nature alone,
taking the present as the outcome of the past, and adding
whatsoever scientific foresight may discern as the promise
of the future, up to the time when the degradation of energy
finds its result in the dead level of temperature which will
make movement and life impossible, we ask, Is the gain
worth the struggle ? Does the outcome justify the means by
which it has been accomplished ? Evolution is and must
be optimist; but on the scientific view of nature is it
.possible to escape pessimism? For the outcome we now
see has been the result of endless, unceasing, abiding
struggle. For the beginning of the story which science has
to tell us lies in movement and convulsion : a fiery vapour
fills all space ; it pictures for us the whirl and crash of atoms
in the elemental warfare of perpetual collision. Molecules of
matter seek to coalesce in definite masses, only to be broken
up anew and pass into other forms, until by loss of heat
they settle down into solid bulk and shape. This has no
sooner happened, and a solid crust been formed, than
the conflict begins anew. The uncooled masses, pressed
beneath the superincumbent weight of the solid crust,
presses back in turn, upheaves, breaks asunder, and tortures
6

82 Is God Knowable?
into strange shapes what has already won some measure
of consistency and hardness. The conflict and collision
continue until around the sun there are differentiated
masses of matter, in all of which the struggle goes on anew;
out of the physical chaos emerges some form of order, until
we reach the time when an atmosphere surrounds the earth
and on it have been formed mountain and river, sea and
land. The earth is fit for life.
Life comes somehow ; but with life comes a keener and a
fiercer struggle, — a struggle of all life with the conditions of
life, an internecine warfare of life among living creatures
themselves. Life advances, ebbing and flowing under the
conditions with which it struggles. Sometimes it has to pass
through the coldness of an ice age, before which life recedes ;
sometimes vast floods sweep over the globe, and many
forms of life disappear. Myriad kinds of life appear, and
are born only to perish. Thousands and millions of insects
are born every day, and perish with the day. In every
sphere we find overcrowding and pushing and stirring,
and everywhere the weakest go to the wall ; and the
stronger is tearing, stamping out, and destroying the
weaker. Every individual and every race, in the desire of
self-preservation, takes advantage of every subterfuge,
makes the most of every accidental gain, until we, as we
look in at the picture which science has painted for our
vision, are filled with horror and amazement. Every
where the same law of destruction and the same endless
struggle for existence.
The weaker races disappear and the fittest survive ; new
races emerge with keener senses, a quicker vision, stronger
in beak and claw, swifter in flight, more cunning in subter
fuge and combination, and these have gotten them the
victory and have become the winners in life's race. In this

The Agnosticism of Science. 83
conflict science shows us the victory and supremacy of man.
Man has been the most subtle of the beasts of the field.
In this game of sneaking and snatching, of crushing and
grinding, of writhing, struggling, and pushing, man has been
more cunning than his companions, and has succeeded.
Among the myriad forms which life has assumed, this
vertebrate form has proved itself the most cunning of the
innumerable subterfuges which life has contrived; this subter
fuge of sense and intelligence has been proved to be the
most successful, and this combination we call man has be
come the last and greatest of the combinations of life. For
on the view we are now considering, all the gifts which
distinguish man from other forms of life are only so many
contrivances for the advantage of the individual or of the race.
Sense is the sentry which life has placed on guard ; obser
vation is the watch it keeps on its enemies, — a means of
discovering their ways of action, and so win or keep
advantage ; knowledge is great and valuable as it finds or
invents ever new weapons for the warfare ; memory keeps
count of the past, and stores up the remembrance of former
perils and victories for future use ; and foresight is valuable
inasmuch as it helps to make future combinations available
before they are needed. As of the physical and mental
attributes of man, so also of those qualities which we call
moral. Truth is only the vantage ground which the stronger
seeks to keep, in order to make the weaker still more weak
by depriving them of all those subterfuges, mimicry, and
lying, which are the natural resources of weakness. Right
and wrong, too, must, on the other hand, be regarded as rules
of the game, rules of the road, which the weak desire the
strong to observe that they may struggle with the more
advantage. In the light of the evolution theory of morals,
all- the faculties of man, all the personal and social virtues,

84 Is God Knowable ?
must be regarded as contrivances in order to struggle with
advantage, and are become only so many weapons by which
the game may be won.
Nor is the matter mended when we allow the author of
"Natural Religion" to say: "We are concerned here with
Nature as opposed to that which is above Nature, not with
Nature as opposed to man. We use it as a name com
prehending all the laws of the universe as known in our
experience, and excluding such laws as are inferred from
experience so exceptional and isolated as to be difficult of
verification. In this sense, Nature is not heartless or un
relenting ; to say so would be equivalent to saying that pity
and forgiveness are in all cases supernatural. It may be
true that the law of gravitation is pitiless, that it will
destroy the most innocent and amiable person with as little
hesitation as the wrong-doer. But there are other laws
which are not pitiless. There are laws under which
human beings form themselves into communities, and set
up courts in which the claims of individuals are weighed
with careful skill. These are laws under which Churches
and philanthropists are formed, under which misery is
sought out and relieved, and every evil that can be dis
covered in the world is redressed. Nature, in the sense in
which we are now using the word, includes her necessity,
and therefore, so far from being pitiless, includes all the
pity that belongs to the whole human family, and all the
pity they have accumulated in and, as it were, capitalised
in institutions, political, social, and ecclesiastical, through
countless generations" ("Natural Religion," p. 68). By the
supposition that " Nature, including humanity, would be our
God," it is thought that the charge of mercilessness may be
obviated. The character of the God of the scientific man
might be read in the pity, sympathy, and love of man, as

The Agnosticism of Science. 85
well as in the earthquake and the storm. If, however, we
are to say those who believe in Nature only still believe in
a God who "has so much of personality that He takes
account of the distinction of virtue and vice, that He
punishes crime and that He relieves distress," we have to
ask, How does the author of " Natural Religion " make his
statement good ? For on this view what are virtue and
vice ? We cannot forget that the author has formerly said,
" Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and
expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice — all these
words which seemed once to express elementary and
certain realities, now strike us as just the words which,
thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once "
(p. 8). Looked at in the light of the scientific method,
in its negative aspect at least, they have been dissolved,
and yet they appear again fresh and vigorous, reborn from
the crucible, when the argument requires that the God of
science should have so much personality as to take account
of the distinction of virtue and vice. It is not possible,
even for this distinguished writer, both to eat his cake and
to have it. He must really take one side of the alternative
or the other. Nor has he much choice in the matter. He
must elect to stand by the scientific method, and regard
virtue and vice simply as disguised forms of strength and
weakness, conditions set to life by the struggle for
existence. The author of " Natural Religion " cannot be allowed to
make selections from the qualities of human nature, in
order to find in Nature a "God who punishes crime and
relieves -distress." For on this view He also must make
the crime and impose the distress. And the crime is really
as virtuous as the punishment. For here in the light of
science moral distinctions have vanished, and all that is

86 Is God Knowable?
left are the contrivances which make for vigour and
strength. It is hardly necessary for us to refer to the
history of the human family. But a brief reference may
not be uninstructive, if we are to have an adequate con
ception of the gain to the scientific conception of God
which has been obtained by including humanity in nature.
What do we find in history ? We find carnage, strife, and
struggle everywhere. It is a roll written within and
without with weeping, lamentation, and woe. Even where
history has no written record, and has left only the anti
quarian relics of a pre-historic time, we distinguish the
periods, otherwise unknown, by the names of the material
of which their weapons of war were made. When
history becomes conscious of itself, its earliest stories are
stories of oppression and cruelty on the one hand, suffering
and sorrow on the other. In Assyria, Chaldaea, and Egypt,
in Palestine", Greece, and Rome, as one by one the empires
of the world rise, flourish, and decay, as they pass in
review they only add to the long roll of carnage, bloodshed;
and crime, — a fit sequel, on the scientific view, of that
struggle among the races which partly ended in the
supremacy of man.
Modern history is quite as full of carnage. Take the
story of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as told
by Gibbon, — take the story of the Holy Roman Empire as
told by Bryce, or the story of the making of England as
told by Green, or any other history which describes the
rise of the European system and the present state of the
nations of Europe, and we shall find few traces of the power
which punishes crime or relieves distress. Every nation
in Europe is armed to the teeth, and is constantly on the
watch. And the armed men of Europe are counted by
millions. The nations seem on the borders of a warfare

The Agnosticism of Science. 87
which shall dwarf all other wars which the world has ever
seen. The next war will likely be a war of races.
Nor does hope seem any brighter when we look at the
internal condition of any particular nation. A formal
political economy has justified fierce competition as the
right rule of trade, and the ethics which is professedly
based on science has taken as its fundamental principle of
action the avoidance of pain and the culture of pleasure.
Men have massed themselves into large cities, the miseries,
inequalities, and cries of which have grown to an unsur
passed height. The accumulation of wealth is greater, and
the wretchedness of poverty more intense, until poverty is
becoming vocal, and the next war within each nation is
likely to be a war of class against class.
What message has the God of science, as He is defined
by the author of " Natural Religion," to the mass of men
who are in the state we have briefly described ? The old
notions which guided the lives of man are, we must
remember, in the scientific crucible, and, when they have
been re-cast, must obtain a new meaning. Conscience,
duty, love, stood for something great and good in former
times. Now they tend to pass into illusions, which the
cunning of Nature has cast over the minds of men. We
in our turn have become cunning, and have read the riddle
of Nature, and laid bare her secret. Now we are able to
see that pity, sympathy, and love are only Nature's ways of
increasing the cohesion of society, and making united men
more powerful to resist the disintegrating forces with
which they have to struggle. Selfishness has put on an
altruistic garb, but it has not changed its character or its
aim. By the union of individuals in a society, by binding
them together in a larger bundle, the gain has been great.
Intelligence has been quickened, reason has made large

88 Is God Knowable?
strides, and many social emotions have got names, which
many believe to be true and valid, and to represent great
realities. But the scientific method has overthrown the
fond illusion, and we are left face to face with the sad
reality that all these reasons which thrilled us with great
emotions, and roused us to self-forgetfulness, are only
chronic disguises of the selfish instincts, and nothing else
but the contrivance of Nature for the perpetuation of the
race which is fittest for the struggle. We find that in this
relation our work has been done for us, better than we can
do it for ourselves, and we transfer the picture from the
pages of Mr. Courtney to our own. Mr. Courtney is speaking
of the scientific moral man, the last and highest product of
evolution. " He was an ape, he is a man, he will be dust ;
he raised himself by well calculated selfishness ; he main
tains himself by an equally well calculated altruism. What
is to guide him in his present state ? That which has all
along guided him, —the preference of pleasure to pain. His
reason is granted him to enable him to be more successfully
happy, and to help others to secure their happiness so long
as they do not interfere with his own. He is first and
foremost an animal, then he is an animal blessed (or
cursed, according to the pessimists) with consciousness;
lastly, he is a social animal. His consciousness raises him
from the /Aovoxpovos -^Sovrj, the short-lived satisfactions of
the animal; his sociability enables him to combine devotion
to his kind with devotion to himself, to solve somehow the
contradiction between altruism and egoism. Personal
immortality he does not of course possess : his body is
resolved into the elements whence it has been slowly
evolved. Nor yet is his spirit absorbed into some vast
impersonal spirit ; that is a metaphysical delusion ; there
is no such opposition between body and spirit as older

The Agnosticism of Science. 89
philosophers supposed. But if he lives on at all, it- is in
the life of human beings who come after him, and that
only in virtue of certain social cosmopolitan acts by which
he has enriched society at large. And if we ask what a
right act or a moral act means in contrast with a wrong and
immoral act, the answer is clear. A right act in the long
resort must be defined as one which is in accordance with
that systematic action by which man, as he is now, was
evolved. That is to say, a right act is a natural act, guided
by the reason which grasps at chances of pleasure and
success, self-perpetuation and longevity. A right act is first
and foremost a natural act, one done in obedience to the
promptings of nature ; only nature in the largest sense,
the nature of man as a conscious, selfish, social animal. If,
too, we may trust Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, like most
evolutionists, is and must be optimist, in the course of time
the right act becomes easier and easier. ' Not he who
believes that adaptation will increase is absurd, but he who
doubts that it will increase is absurd,' he says with the
solemnity of a man who is quoting some text of Scripture.
' Pleasure will eventually accompany every mode of action
demanded by social conditions.' And then the millennium,
when the evolved man is as wise as a serpent and harmless
as a dove, a marvellous compound of selfishness and un
selfishness, whose animality is cunningly blended with his
benevolent sociality" ("Studies in Philosophy," by W. L.
Courtney, pp. 131-3).
At the furthest goal of history and of progress we see
this smug, selfish altruist, who has got his modes of action
to correspond to social conditions, and finds his pleasure
therein. The vision is not beatific. But what hope is
there of its accomplishment, before the sun grows cold and
the earth unfit for life ? for we cannot allow the optimistic

90 Is God K//owable ?
picture to shut our eyes to the ugly facts which meet us
everywhere. When the author of " Natural Religion," in
the passage quoted above, speaks of the pity capitalized in
institutions, and of the mercy and pity of the whole human
race, we must not forget that there is another side to the
picture. The poor as much as the rich are the product of
evolution, and the condition of the poor grows more
appalling year by year. Down in the courts, in the back
lanes and streets of our cities, not a hundred yards from
palatial residences, children are born, and grow up under
fearful conditions. They do not get a glimpse of what
goodness and purity mean. It is not possible for them to
know good from evil, nor right from wrong. Some are
systematically trained to crime, and in them are developed
to a new keenness all the savage instincts of selfishness.
Pressed down, trodden on, crushed on every side, they turn
with terrible ferocity on their oppressors, and around us on
every side are elements of greater barbarism than the
ancient world had ever known. The people who have been
crowded together, to herd as they can, have no opportunity
of learning better things, — will evolution ever change the
conditions which bind these millions of poor wretches to
their misery, and which do more to develop anti-social
instincts than we can well conceive ? Nay, they are them
selves, they and their condition, the product of evolution ;
nor is there any hope of progress for the race' in the vision
set before us in the pages of " Natural Religion."
We can understand how the sight of the misery of man,
and the contemplation of the hopeless condition of so many
millions, should drive men to the despair of unbelief. This
keen feeling of the misery of man lies at the root of the
revolutionary tendencies of our times. Intense sympathy
with men of sorrow and misery has become bitter hatred of

The Agnosticism of Science. 91
oppression ; and if the social conditions which have made it
possible for millions cf the human family to live lives of
degradation and misery, without hope or love to shed one ray
of brightness on their hapless lot, cannot be changed, — if
human life be not better in the future than it has been in the
past, — if there be no hope of immortality nor any prospect
beyond the present life, who shall be bold enough to say
that the existence of the world and of the people upon it is
justified ?
If we are to judge fairly of the character of the substitute
for God which has been depicted for us in the pages of
"Natural Religion," we must have regard not only to the pity
and the piety of some peoples, but also to the state of
humanity as a whole. When we look at the sad facts of
human life, and steadfastly regard the fearful history of the
past, we cannot have much hope for the future. It is no
wonder, though, (hat men should despair, when they find
themselves to be much better, more kind, and more loving
and more virtuous than the only God which science allows
them to retain in their knowledge. Nature, including
humanity, is their only God; and if they who are thus shut
from the faith of their fathers, are educated Englishmen
of the nineteenth century, we need not be surprised that
the result is pessimism of the darkest colour. To act as
the positivists do — select as the representatives of humanity
only those who are best and bravest, purest, most wise,
upright, and thoughtful of the sons of men — or to hint at the
sympathy and pity to be found in the whole human family,
as the author of "Natural Religion" has done, is altogether
illegitimate. On what principles and by what right do they
leave out of account all the darker elements of human life ?
A view which would justify the existence, of the world as
rational, and good in the final result, must take account of all

92 Is God Knowable?
the facts, and must not make an arbitrary selection from
them. Formerly we have seen that the scientific view is unable
to give a rational account of the origin of things : now we
have by the course of our argument been brought to ask
whether the goal and consummation of things foreshadowed
by scientific speculation are sufficient to justify the process
by which they have been reached. If we accept the views
expressed in " Natural Religion," we must give a negative
answer. For one of the surest prophecies of science is the
prophecy of the approach of the time when the human
race must perish from the earth. All its achievements
must also vanish. The organic structure of man wrought
out through countless ages, the intelligence evoked at so
much cost, the moral gain won through suffering, — art,
science and literature, religion and its glory, vanish with
the vanishing race of man, and leave no trace behind I Let
us look at this picture painted by the hand of one who sees
in man nothing but the outcome of natural forces. Here is a
description from the pen of Dr. Maudsley, which we may
place over against the picture drawn by Mr. Spencer. Dr.
Maudsley is speaking of humanity as it increases in age and
retrogrades in nature. " It will not, in fact, reproduce
savages with the simple mental qualities of children, but new
and degenerate varieties, with special repulsive characters,
and savages of a decomposing civilization, as we might
call them, who will be ten times more vicious and noxious,
and infinitely less capable of improvement than the savages
of a primitive barbarism ; social disintegrants of the worst
kind, because bred of the corruption of the best organic
developments, with natures and properties virulently anti
social " ("Body and Will," p. 321). "If the force at the
back of all becoming on earth is that which the sun has

The Agnosticism of Science. 93
steadily supplied to it through countless ages, and still
steadily supplies, it is plain that when it fails, as fail it one
day must, there will be a steadily declining development
and a rapidly increasing degeneration of things, — an undoing
by regressive decomposition of what has been done by pro
gressive combinations through the succession of the ages.
The nations that have risen high in complexity of develop
ment will degenerate and be broken up, to have their
places taken by less complex associations of inferior indi
viduals ; they in turn will yield place to simpler and feebler
unions of still more degraded beings. A few scattered
families of degraded human beings, living perhaps in snow
huts near the equator, very much as the Esquimaux live
near the Pole, will represent the last wave of the receding
tide of human existence before its final extinction, until at
last a frozen earth, incapable of cultivation, is left without
energy to produce a living particle of any sort, and death
itself is dead" (Maudsley, "Body and Will," p. 320).
Truly on this view, life " Is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Evidently the contemplation of the Power revealed by
science can give us no abiding beatific vision. For it is
obvious, on reflection, that in Nature taken alone, or in Nature
including humanity, we do no't find those deeper distinctions
of good and evil, of right and wrong, on the acknowledg
ment of which social life depends. On the view set forth in
"Natural Religion," these distinctions have no corresponding
reality in the nature of things. Nor is it possible to main
tain the existence and validity of these distinctions apart
from the distinction between God and nature on which they
are founded.

94 -& God Knowable?
But the question may fairly be put to Theists, Do not
the same difficulties meet us in the theistic view ? If
nature is an ordinance of God and a revelation of His truth,
does it help us to solve the problem of moral evil, when
we say that God is separate from nature and above nature ?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the solution of the problem cf evil
lies beyond our power. But by holding fast to the Theistic
position we save for ourselves the persuasion that goodness,
righteousness, and truth lie at the root and centre of
things, that love and mercy are true qualities of the Maker
of the universe. When we identify God with the sum of
things, we must attribute to Him without distinction all the
qualities we find in the universe ; and we can have no good
ground for saying that sin and crime are less justified in the
nature of things than goodness, righteousness, and truth.
By holding fast to the Theistic view, and by steadfastly
holding to the conviction that the Maker and Ruler of the
world is right, we certainly do not get rid of the problem
of evil, but we shift its bearings. We can recognize that
evil exists, without permitting the admission of the fact to
overturn the "moral foundations of the universe. Having
always the conviction that goodness, righteousness, and
truth are firmly and everlastingly fixed in the nature and
being of God, we can patiently inquire into the problem of
evil, and seek for reasons to explain its meaning and its
purpose. Taking for granted the Theistic position, we ask
again the question put at the beginning of this chapter, Is
there any justification for the suffering of the world ? and
we can give an answer full of hope. We saw that, on the
scientific view, life is a hopeless and an aimless thing. The
cost of the movement of life, organic, intellectua moral,
and spiritual, is lost, vanished into death, both the death of
the individual and of the race. On the other hand, let us but

The Agnosticism of Science. 95
be permitted to see as the goal and purpose of the intense
conflict going on now, and which has been going on through
all the past, a consummation large and great enough to
justify it, and we shall be reconciled in fact and in thought
to the laws of life as those now are. We shall see that the
struggle for existence is God's way of making the creatures
make themselves. In our view of it, conscious life is worth
all the cost of the struggle which went on before conscious
ness began to be. Moral life also is worth all the cost of
the suffering by which it has been obtained ; but only on
the condition that the gain is a permanent gain, and that there
is no turning back of the shadow on the dial. Let us have
the hope of a goal and the sure promise of fulfilment, and
we can justify the ways of God to man, and reconcile in
thought the fact of a suffering world with the goodness of
God. We can read over again the record of the endless
struggle of creation, as science has unveiled it to us, and
read it now to higher ends and uses than Dr. Maudsley will
allow us to perceive. We see that it is through the struggle
and conflict and sacrifice of the lower that the higher has
been evolved. We see that out of all of the rude beginnings
of sensation the glorious web of rational thought has been
woven ; that out of the feelings of self-preservation and the
desire for the propagation of the race, the moral duties,
love, mercy, and self-sacrifice, have grown ; and this without
conscious desire on the part of living things themselves. As
the ages pass on, however, these unconscious forces become
conscious, moral, and rational; moral duties arise in all their
breadth and grandeur before the eyes of men. Life has
become, through its long struggle and its wearisome learn
ing, fit to bear the strain of the consciousness of a higher
life. Life turns upward to seek the author of it, and God
had waited, — shall I venture to say it ?• — with intense

96 Is God Knowable?
desire for the moment when created life could hear and
see Him.
Not yet, however, can there be uninterrupted fellowship
with God. Nor can creation yet unite- with the Creator ;
there must be a new training, a new kind of sorrow, and a
new kind of suffering, until moral life should freely learn
to choose the otherness of self and to become one in abiding
fellowship with God. At this point, then, we see the union
of Creator and creature, and the Creator stooping down to
meet the aspirations -of created life, — to meet those aspira
tions which He had implanted in them by the long career
of striving after Him and of suffering by which they learnt
to climb upwards to higher things. By the long process of
suffering and of gain won through suffering, human nature,
the crown of created life, has become fit for the reception
of God; not merely able to receive the word of God, not
only to be capable in some measure of knowing and of
loving God, but able to receive God Incarnate in the flesh.
And God indeed dwelt with man on the earth.
Then began a new moral and spiritual movement, by
which we are enabled to understand that the Living God
did not disregard nor was indifferent to the sufferings of
His creation. For the suffering was His way of making
the moral world and of creating His spiritual world. In
the Incarnate God we see suffering and sorrow by deliberate
resolution freely chosen, and taken home to Himself. With
conscious freedom Christ Jesus came to save others and to
lose Himself, to give Himself for others. What had been
forced on others from without, by the laws of life and by
the conditions of existence, He freely chose as the one way
by which life could enter into conscious living fellowship
with Him who is the Lord of life. Let it be understood
that we are speaking now only of one aspect of the work

The Agnosticism of Science. 97
and of the cosmical relations of the Lord Jesus Christ.* We
should like it to be borne in mind, that we have in view
all the fuller relations of His work to the race of man, to
the sin of the world, and His relation also to the manifesta
tion and revelation of the Living God to man. But of these
we have no space and no call to speak at the present time.
What we wish to insist on here and now is the light which
the sufferings of the Man of sorrows casts on the travailing
of the groaning creation, constrained to struggle upward to
the light. The groaning creation is met by the Maker of
it, Who enters into its suffering, meets its sorrow, shares
its groaning and its agony, and lifts it up into the sacred
circle of divine life.
But suffering and sorrow as shared and endured by the Man
Christ Jesus have been transformed and transfigured by the
light of Heaven. In Him, and as endured by Him, suffering
and sorrow have become voluntary, deliberately chosen,
and chosen for great and adequate ends. They are set free
* It is difficult, without cumbering the argument unduly, to bring out
all that is implied in it. But we may say in a foot-note that, as the
reader has, no doubt, observed, there has been no allusion made to the
great doctrine of the fall of man ; we have allowed the statement of the
struggle of man after light and love and purity to follow without inter
ruption on the statement of the struggle for existence depicted for us by
science. Still, if there were time for the exposition, there is room for the
doctrine, and it may be held in consistency with the argument of the
chapter. For the doctrine of the fall is the expression of man's former
unfitness for his high calling, and of the necessity for a further trial and
struggle with conditions of a different kind, ere he could fulfil God's great
purpose. In another view also it gives expression to the great truth
that man or the creation unaided could not attain to fellowship with the
Creator ; so the statement of the text is not to be treated as if it utterly
ignored the fall of man ; nor is the statement regarding the work of
Christ to be read as if it was expressed in any fulness. We have taken
as much of the doctrine regarding man and regarding the Redeemer as
we needed in the present, relation. 7

98 Is God Knowable?
from self-seeking ; free also from the nearer gain to the
individual, the nation, or to the race, on which all other
people had set their hearts. For the suffering was under
taken and the sorrow borne by Him with the view of
lifting the children of men into abiding fellowship with God.
As borne by Him, the sorrows of sinful and imperfect beings,
—sorrows which came on other people through their sins
and their mistakes, and as the result of their shortsighted
ness and folly, have become the outward signs of a compas
sion, sympathy, and love which pass knowledge. Through
Him we learn that the moral heroism, the calm resolve
tD suffer and to work, the sympathy with sorrow, which we
have known and admired in human history, have their
home in the heart of the Maker of the universe.
Seen in the light of Christ's life and teaching, the dreary
picture drawn by Dr. Maudsley loses its horror and its
gloom. It has no new terror to the thought of the Theist.
For when considered rightly, it only transfers to the race
what we have always known to be true of the individual.
The faith and the thought which have overcome the
thought of death and annihilation of any man is quite
adequate to win the victory over the thought of death as
applied to all men. It is indeed fatal to the optimism of
the Positivist ; fatal also to any optimism which leaves God
and immortality out of account ; and utterly ruinous to that
religion set forth in " Natural Religion " as the religion of the
scientific man. In the Christian view, the gain won through
suffering is not lost. The moral and spiritual results are
only transferred to another sphere fitted to new conditions,
and set free for a larger and wider development to glorious
issues yet unknown.
Nor is it necessary to allow the sad outlook of the dark
picture drawn by Dr. Maudsley to obtain too large a dominion

The Agnosticism of Science. 99
over us. It has been a familiar thought to Christian Theology,
while science was yet in its infancy, that the present system
of things must have an end. But the on-coming of that
catastrophe did not prevent them from going forth to make
the world new. The Christian fathers had a sure and certain
hope — a knowledge of God, of His will, and of His purpose,
which led them to act and labour for the regeneration of
the world. In the light of that knowledge they lived
and spoke and worked, and in their own lives at least
kept a clear space where righteousness, truth, and love
should dwell. Nor is there anything in the ascertained
results of science contradictory of that hope. When we
keep firm and fast our faith in and knowledge of the Living
God, the long progress of the race is seen to have a purpose
and a goal. What has already been won is the earnest of
what yet shall be. Although it is sadly true that sin and
crime abound still, and the waifs and strays on our streets
rise up in judgment to condemn us, it is also true that the
number of loving, righteous, and unselfish men and women
on the earth is greater to-day than ever before in the
world's history. We have learned that the races of high
morality are foremost in the world to-day ; and those are the
strongest who are also the most benevolent ; keenest, and
quickest in sympathy, whose love of purity, justice, and truth
is most fervent and vivid. We have learned also that all
forms of selfishness weaken in the long run, that vice saps
strength, that injustice, violence, hate, and lust tend to
weaken, to destroy, and to disorganise.
This was, however, by no means a self-evident proposition.
It was by no means obvious that self-denial, sympathy, and
trust were stronger in the long run than self-assertion, sus
picion, and mistrust. ;In order to the establishment of this
truth, in such a way and by such experiments as science could

ico Is God Knowable?
recognise, it was necessary that this way of living should
be tried by a sufficient number of people, and for a sufficient
length of time. Experience could not predict its success
before experience began to know the good results which
followed on sympathy and love in active exercise among
men. It is a matter of plain historical fact, which can be
demonstrated to the satisfaction of all competent people, that
the first great trial of the way of sympathy and love and of
bearing one another's burdens was made in connection with
the work of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and with the beginning
of the Christian Church. He went about doing good ; and
He was able to persuade men to accept His example as the
highest ideal of human life. He stated anew for men the
golden rule, that "whatsoever ye would that men should
do unto you, do ye so unto them." But He gave them a
higher rule than even this ; He gave them a new measure
of duty, of love, of self-sacrifice : " Love one another as
I have loved you." He and His apostles and His
followers persuaded men to try this more excellent way ;
enabled them to outgrow the old way of exacting an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, of self-assertion and
resentment of injuries for a new way of meekness, 01
returning good for evil, of forgiveness of injuries. Through
these Christian people a new standard of heroism came
into the world. And as the ages passed on, the new proved
itself to be the stronger and the more vigorous. However
imperfectly the new aim was realised, and however great
was the interval of short-coming between the pattern and
the copy, enough was accomplished during these eighteen
hundred years to make it possible for science to come to
the new conclusion that, on the whole, selfishness was the
weaker and sympathy the stronger power. Apart from the
history of Christianity there are no data on which to base

The Agnosticism of Science. 101
this ethical law. Nay, apart from Christianity we have no
reason to suppose that the stern love of truth which is the
great characteristic of the man of science would have been
his. The truthful races, or rather we should say the most
truthful races, are those who have been emancipated by the
spirit of Christianity ; and the love of truth for its own sake
is a distinctly Christian virtue, and may be historically
shown to be such.
We observe, too, as a matter of history, as the outcome
of the power and influence of Jesus Christ on men, a new
passion in man for the relief of suffering. Pity became
active, and found vent in seeking out and relieving the
sufferings of those forgotten by the world. The followers
of Christ, wherever they went, cared for men and women,
overlooked all distinctions of race and class, and filled the
hearts of men with the thought of a new brotherhood. It
is not necessary to write much on this topic ; we may refer
to it .as a notorious fact of history, and for the purpose of
showing that, seeing what has already been accomplished,
we need not despair of making this world a world of
righteousness and peace. When we shall gather courage to
live up to the Christian ideal ; when we shall come to look
on war as a relic of unchristian times ; when we shall
cease to regard fierce and selfish competition as the only
legitimate rule of trade ; when we shall regard holiness and
not pleasure or happiness as the end of life; when the rich
man shall begin to impose a limit on the accumulated gains
of capital, and regard all above a certain limit as goods held
in trust for the help of others, or for the advance of science
culture, and religion ; when,' in short, a nation shall have the
courage and the faith to allow the teaching, the power, and
the spirit of Christianity to have fair play, — then we shall
make such an assault on the vice and sin and disorganizing

102 Is God Knowable ?
forces of society, as will issue in a progress undreamed of
yet in the highest moment and most exalted moods of the
greatest lover of his kind.
Our aim in this chapter has been to show, that if we are
to keep possession of the knowledge of a power beyond
ourselves which the Agnostic allows us to have, we must go
beyond the Agnostic position. If we have any rational under
standing of nature, any hope of vindicating the laws of life
as good in the final outcome, any stimulus to right the
wrongs, relieve the sufferings, and better the condition of men,
we must get beyond nature and humanity, and reach up to
the Living God, in whom we live and move and have our
being. We have got so far as to have shown that, on
rational grounds, if we are to have an intelligent view of
the world ; on moral grounds, if we are to have a sufficient
explanation of the sufferings of the world ; on practical
grounds, if we are to have strength for living and for work
ing to-day, — -on all these grounds the Theistic position is
i bsolutely necessary. Without God, no true knowledge, no
in< ral life, no abiding work is possible for man.

VI.
THE SEARCH AFTER GOD.
THE Substitute for God described with such graphic
power in the pages of " Natural Religion," and the atti
tude of the scientific mind towards that Power, which is
described as worship, are not without parallels in the history
of religious thought and practice. A close parallel may be
found in the worship of earthly sovereignty, which, begin
ning in the time of Augustus, culminated in the claim of
Domitian to be called "Our Lord and God."* The Roman
Empire was then the supreme world-power. The arms of
Rome had carried its dominion far and wide around the
shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From Britain to Persia,
from Egypt to the centre of Germany, nations and powers
were subject to the Roman sway. The visible presence
and felt power of Rome, the equal laws and rights of all
Roman citizens, the care which Rome bestowed on all her
provinces, and the right of an appeal to Rome which was
the birthright of every citizen, were ways by which the
supreme power, majesty, and justice of Rome were brought
home to the imagination of the people. The state was the
symbol of what was permanent, sovereign, and good ; and
* " Dominus et Deus noster hoc fieri jubet. Unde institutum posthac,
ut ne scripto quidem ac sermone cujusquam appelaretur aliter"
(Suetonius, Domit. C. 13. Quoted in Schaff's Church History, vol. ii.,
p. 427).

IC4 Is God Knowable ?
the emperor was the state. He was the embodiment of
triumphant force. When, therefore, the visible world is
the measure and the limit of hope and aspiration, the
most conspicuous and most powerful of the forces of the
world will form the object of worship.
The advance of Rome also, and her supremacy over
different peoples, had brought into prominence before the
minds 6f the people the inadequate nature of polytheism,
and its powerlessness to satisfy the religious need. The
tribal gods were dwarfed in the presence of the Roman
power. It was needed to have gods more universal, more
abstract; and the more abstract they became, the more
were they removed from the minds and thoughts of men.
It is necessary for man that the power he worships shall be
a power present, operative, and real. The Roman Empire,
embodied in the Roman sovereign, was visible, real, and
powerful. Nor was the transition great from the worship
of the mythological gods to the worship of the Roman
emperor. The objects of worship were on the same plane,
and not greatly different in nature. From the decay of
faith in the gods of Rome and Greece, and from the visi
bility and dominance of the emperor, it came to pass that
the worship of success and power became a fact in the first
centuries of Rome's existence as an empire.
For Rome read science, and we shall have a pretty ac
curate account of the natural history of the system which has
found its highest literary expression in " Natural Religion."
The conquests of science during the last few centuries have
been like the conquest of Rome, great, rapid, and compre~
hensive. Now and then science, like a Roman general,
celebrates its triumphs, and leads forth in review the
trophies of its victory. Physical science, from the time of
Newton onwards, has gone forth conquering and to conquer,

The Search after God. 105
and within the last half-century its triumphs have increased
in a geometrical ratio. The natural sciences also have made
vast strides, and they are confident that soon they will have
full possession of the field. Year by year conquerors of
science meet, to tell their tale of progress, to map out new
work for the coining years, and to utter songs of triumph
over enemies defeated and slain. We need not be surprised
that, intoxicated with success, men of science have become
idolaters of the only power known to them, nor that a man
of supreme literary gifts should come forth to show that
this Power which science knows is a supreme and awful
object of adoration. It is the adoration of success, the cul
mination of a worship lower in nature and development than
the hero-worship of primeval times. Domitian, too, may
have had his laureate, and orations may have been spoken in
his time, setting forth the greatness and awfulness of the
Roman state embodied in the Roman emperor, as eloquent
in form, as touching in pathos, and as lofty in aspiration as
are the pages of " Natural Religion." And with as good a
right. For the Roman Empire, with its equal laws and
supreme dominion and majestic justice, was as good an em
bodiment of visible power as it was possible to have. If
the visible world be all, then the worship of the Roman
state was justified.
But the Roman power and the Roman worship neglected
to take account of forces lying deeper than the visible
world. At the time when idolatrous worship assumed its
highest and purest form, and the worship of the state had
become a system, One was born into the world who was
destined to work a mighty revolution in men's way of
thinking, and to re-instate the unseen and the eternal in
more than their ancient glory. The Empire of Rome had won
a consolidated shape. It was supreme. The commands of

1 06 Is God Knowable ?
the emperor were obeyed to the utmost limits of the empire.
The vanquished were spared, and the proud were subdued,
and the master of many legions seemed to sit secure, while
the religious instincts might seem, and did seem to many, to
have abundant scope and satisfaction in the worship of the
state embodied in the emperor. In a distant province of
the empire, among a set of people hated and despised by
their neighbours, one appeared with no visible power on His
side, with no weapons in His hand, with no parade of learn
ing, and in a few years He and His followers were able
to overthrow the gigantic system of the Roman Empire,
There could be no greater contrast than there was between
Jesus of Nazareth and the emperor who sat on the throne of
Rome. The emperor was obeyed, feared, and worshipped ,
thousands waited to do his bidding. Jesus of Nazareth stood
solitary and alone. He called a few working men to be
His companions and His followers. They seemed to be
poor scholars for a work of a kind so great as that which
the Master had in view. He walked with them and talked
with them for a few years, and then at Jerusalem He
suffered and He died. His life was passed in deepest
obscurity ; His appeal was to that which is purest,
highest, noblest in man : no base motives nor selfish aims
were to be allowed among His followers. He spoke to the
poor, the outcast, and the degraded, and He was able to
awaken them to sympathy, love, and power. He spoke of
things unseen and eternal, taught His followers to know
the Father, and gave them the prospect and the promise
of another life beyond the grave.
In a few years the followers of Christ were to be found
in every city of the Roman Empire. Multitudes of people
had learned to love, honour, and obey the Lord Jesus
Christ with a pure and passionate devotion. He took the

The Search after God. 107
place among His followers which the Roman Emperor had
sought as the head of the Roman system. And the Invisible
Lord of the Christian community was loved and obeyed as
Roman Emperor never was. The two empires went on side
by side, often standing towards one another in armed
neutrality, quite as often in the relation of persecutors and
persecuted. Both claimed to be universal, and both claimed
the whole world and all the life of man. Rome with its
grand system of positive law, its grand supremacy of force,
its appeal to outward order and political well-doing, was con
fronted with a society based on a felt relation to an unseen
Master, whose laws were summed up in love to Christ and
to each other for Christ's sake, whose citizenship was
recognised by themselves to be in the unseen world, and
whose highest aim it was to secure for themselves and for
all men a share in the common brotherhood. These two
societies stood together : the one having its roots, its
activities, and its hopes in the visible and temporal world ;
the other, while laying a strong practical grasp on the duties
of common life, yet pitched its motive, encouragement, and
goal far beyond the present world ; and the issue of the
conflict was decided within a few centuries of its commence
ment, and Rome had to say, " Thou hast conquered, O
Galilean." It may be said on behalf of science that however great may
have been the majesty, power, and dominion of Rome, the
object which the man of science worships is immeasurably
greater and more majestic. It is freely granted that Nature is
greater than the Roman Empire. We gladly acknowledge
the grandeur of the conception which informs science at the
present time. But our contention is that the difference
between the object of worship as set forth in " Natural
Religion " and the object as set forth in the Roman worship

io8 Is God Knowable?
of the state, is one of degree and of magnitude, not of kind.
They are both on the same plane, both make the same
affirmations and the same denials, and both ignore in the
same way the deeper needs of human nature. No doubt at
the present hour the noise of the conflict is great, and
were we to listen to the voices of men of science as they
glorify their negatives, we would be inclined to say that they
have gotten the victory. But any system which ignores the
spiritual and eternal, is from the nature of the case inade
quate and fore-doomed to failure. In the earlier conflict
with the great Roman power, the Christian faith overcame
because it had regard not only to the things which are seen
and temporal, but also to the things which are unseen and
eternal. Nor will the present conflict have any other
issue. Affirmatives are stronger than negatives, especially
if they are grounded on what is rational and true in the
nature of things, in the nature of man, and in the character
of God.
We have seen in the former chapter that it is possible to
take a hopeful view of the final outcome of the history of
the world, th sin, suffering, and misery of the world
notwithstanding. If there is good ground for holding that
a great purpose rules the progress of things, and a great
consummation lies at the end, then the past history obtains
a new and loftier meaning. If there be truth in the facts
on which Christianity is based, then we see that the moral
heroism which has been manifested in human life has its
prototype in the Divine life. God has come to meet and to
help the strivings of His creatures after life and purity; has
taken His own share in that striving; and has shown to
man a heroism pure and great, untinged with the admixture
of earthly or selfish elements.
Nor is this all. As God has come to meet and help man's

The Search after God. 109
strivings after life and holiness, and to crown them with
success, so He has come to meet and to crown man's
strivings after truth, and to give him a right apprehension
of the truth which underlies the shifting appearances of the
world. The story of the religions of the world and
the history of man's speculative thought assume a new
significance when we look at them in the light of the new
manifestation of Himself God has given us in Christ.
The strivings after God, the reaching forth after Him if
haply they may find Him, dark and dismal as they are in
themselves, become rich in meaning when regarded in the
light of the absolute and universal truth of Christianity.
Both the measure of truth which the religions reached, and
the failure to reach permanent truth, become full of signifi
cance. Christ is the justification of a suffering world,
Christ is also the justification of the course of human thought,
the answer to the questions of the intelligence, and the
solution of the moral difficulties which have perplexed
human hearts through all time. The numerous works on
the science of religion, the gathered and classified facts
regarding the religions of the world now available to the
student of religion, have brought fresh light to the signifi
cance of Christianity, and the religions themselves receive
fresh light from it. The numerous works which tell, from
various points of view, the story of science and philosophy
from the dawn of human thought onwards, have an interest
for us of a surpassing kind. They tell us what human
thought needs to solve its own problems, they formulate
for us what answers have been found, and enable us thus
to state the question and to show how every problem of
life, thought, and duty receives a hopeful solution, or at
least the hope of a solution, through the person, life, work,
and teaching of Jesus Christ our Lord.

no Is God Knowable ?
We do not mean that Christianity is a revelation of
science and philosophy. What we mean is this, that there
is in Christianity the manifestation of a new set of facts and
of a new spiritual order, which, taken in connection with
the facts and order with which science and philosophy have
hitherto had to deal, set them in a new light, and give them
a higher significance. Each step in the actual process of
human history and human thought becomes of larger
importance, for they were efforts to reach the higher truth,
which brings all lesser truths into harmony. When the facts
of Christianity are seen in relation to the nature of man
and to the purpose of the world, all the strivings of the
past, both in thought and in life, receive a hew meaning.
The more we learn about the course of human thought, the
more do we perceive that Jesus Christ has met human
needs, satisfied human thought, and has given us the
absolute and universal truth we need.
It is premature as yet to write a philosophy of religion,
or to construct a formula sufficient to express the organic
movement of religious thought in former times. The facts
are not yet ascertained nor properly classified, and we
must wait a while if we are not to bring our theory to the
facts, and then torture the facts to make them fit the theory.
To speak of an organic development of religion, to range
religions in a historic line, and regard each successive
religion as taking up the problem of religion at the stage to
which it had been brought by former religions, is, at the
least, premature. It is customary to write the history of
modern philosophy in this way, and with better show of
reason. For in modern philosophy we do have a succes
sion of great names, a literature in which the influence
exerted by a philosopher on his successors may be traced,
and a series of attempts to state and solve the problem of

The Search after God. 1 1 1
philosophy ; and yet it has been found impossible to write
the history of modern philosophy in such a way as to bring
out an organic movement of human thought. Still less is
it possible to place the religions of the world in such a
position as to make it manifest that they are successive
stages in the organic evolution of thought.
It can be shown, on the contrary, that the great religions
of the world have each had a separate development, and
more particularly that the religions of India and China
had no connection with and no influence on the religions of
Israel and of Greece. It is only within recent years that
the Western nations have become aware of the rich stores
of treasured human life and thought laid up in the literature
and history of India and China. We have learnt a little of
the earnestness and power which have marked the struggle
of our Aryan kinsmen to attain to life and duty and truth.
But there is much yet to learn not only with regard to the
actual history of the Eastern peoples, but with regard also
to the influence which the study of the facts may have on
Western thonght and life. While therefore we do not
venture to pronounce an opinion on matters not yet ripe
for decision, we may be permitted to say that the study of
Eastern religions has opened up to us a new set of
questions, and has widened our view of what is required
to satisfy the intellectual, moral, and spiritual needs of man.
From the study of these religions we come back with wider
thoughts and larger conceptions to the study of Christianity
and of Christ. We are taught to look at them with a
quickened vision, and we proceed to draw forth anew
the principles and truths we already know, and to place
them in the new relations disclosed to us by a study of
the religions of the world. We are beginning to under
stand that the nations, in their striving after truth and life,

H2 Is God Knowable ?
had obtained some measure of success ; at least they were
so far successful as to make manifest that a religion which
is absolute and universal must meet and satisfy every
individual and social need of men. Each religion of the
world is the manifestation of a human want ; and the value
of each religion consists in showing how far that want was
supplied by the partial truth contained in it.
The study of all the religions of the world will make
known to us what a religion which is to meet and satisfy
the needs of men requires to be. We go to China, and we
learn from China that a religion which is to satisfy the
needs of man must recognise and manifest that there is a
moral order in the world. It must recognise the sacred-
ness of common life and common work, and bind men to
the performance of duty in all spheres and relationships.
It cannot surrender the hope of making this world a sphere
wherein righteousness and truth shall dwell and reign.
For in the Chinese sacred books these things stand out as
ascertained truth. Their moralists insist on the golden rule
as the law of life. Their system of moral truth is full and
great; they have anticipated the highest ethical teachings of
recent times. And in the ethical sphere, considered simply
as a system of moral rules, their gain has been singularly
great. Can the religion of the Christ conserve to them
what they have already gained, and also give to them
what they have not yet found,— an ideal which will make
their moral rules full of life and vigour ? "In a world
which habitually and systematically divorced the human
from the divine, in an age which regarded with despair
all manifestations of the seen and temporal, in a com
munity which looked upon man's chief end as a life of
asceticism and contemplation, the religion of the Chinese
empire struck out a path of novelty which modern life has

The Search after God. 1 1 3
made a path of permanence. It pointed to the fact that
there is a divine order in mean things, in little things, in
prosaic things; that the drudgery of daily toil has something
to do with the interests of universal government, and that,
in union with these interests, the daily toil may hope for
its reward. It has bequeathed to Europe the inheritance
of a thought which would make Europe its perpetual
debtor, — the belief that religion has a share in the establish
ment of human civilization, and that the goal of a perfect
civilization is the formation of a Kingdom of God. China,
the most seemingly irreverent of all nations, has here
joined hands with Judea, that nation which of all others has
been most' impressed with the personality of God. Ap
proaching the subject from different angles, and looking
at the problem with a contrary bias, they have arrived in
• one respect at the same goal. They have reached that
thought to which the continent of Asia has been otherwise
a stranger, that there is a sacred element underlying all
secular phenomena, that the sphere of religion embraces
the things which are present as well as the things which
are to come, and that the recognised thrones and dominions
of the world are as much agencies of God as the unknown
principalities of the heavenly places " (The Rev. George
Matheson, D.D., " The Faiths of the World," pp. 106-7).
While China has thus attained in large measure to moral
truth within the ethical sphere, it has not found how to
touch morality with emotion, "and hence," as Dr. Flint
says with great eloquence and power, " notwithstanding its
admirable common sense and equally admirable moral
sense, China remains almost dead and immobile, with its
heart and hopes buried in the past, not only not progressing,
but not even dreaming of progress ; a vast monument of
the insufficiency of earth without heaven, of moral precepts 8

114 & God Knowable ?
without spiritual faith, of man without God ; an instructive
and impressive warning to Europe as to what any gospel
of positivism may be expected to do for her " (" Faiths of
the World," p. 419). China has, however, on a large scale
and throughout a long history, taught us the one lesson she
has to teach, that the absolute religion must be one which
recognises the sacredness of common things, and must
maintain a hope for the life that now is.
This conception of religion as morality and nothing
more is the ruling idea of Chinese religion. Even those
forms of Chinese religion which recognise something be
yond the present life and the visible world, yet conform
to the main type. Buddhism, when it passed into China,
modified itself and took a local colour ; and the speculations
of Laou-tsze, though they passed beyond the bounds which
Confucius had set to human thought and speculation,
were constrained to recognise and provide for the great
aims of practical life and duty. " The great object of Laou-
tsze seems to have been to elucidate and develop his idea
of the relations between something which he calls Taou
and the universe. To this Taou, Laou-tsze refers all things
as the ultimate ideal unity of the universe. All things
originate from Taou, and to Taou they at last return. Form^.
less, it is the cause of form. It is an eternal road ; along
it all beings and all things walk ; but no being made it,
for it is being itself, and yet nothing. It is the path and ¦
also the path-goers, and everything and nothing, and the
cause and the effect ot all " (Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Ninth Edition, p. 664). The system of Laou-tsze may be
looked at as a reaction and protest against the narrowness
of the positive conception lying at the basis of Confucianism.
But the strong hand of Positivism was laid on it, and it
also was bound to become self-controlling in practical life.

The Search after God. 1 1 5
Practically we may regard the Chinese demand as a
universal and absolute religion to amount to this, that
such a religion must be a guide and stimulus to men, in
order that they may live their life in hope, and do the work
of their generation. It must be a religion which above all
things recognises morality.
India, however, has more to teach us than China regard
ing the mind of man and the nature of that religion which
will satisfy the whole nature of man. For the religious
and literary history of India is rich in thought and full of
instruction. How fascinating are the pages in which Max
Miiller describes for us the guesses at truth of our Aryan
kinsmen ; how deep are their thoughts on the nature of
existence; and their meditations on the fleeting. nature of
earthly life are fraught with interest to all who think. The
history of the growth of the system which we call Brah
manism is being slowly read, and will soon be told to us
by the united labours of the distinguished scholars who
have given their lives to this task. As matters stand at
present, we are able dimly to see the great conception
which lies at the foundation of the Brahman system. It
is a moot question as yet whether the original faith of the
Indo-European peoples was monotheistic or pantheistic.
Principal Fairbairn, a high authority, is of opinion that
" to Indo-Eurppean man, Heaven and God were one, not
a thing but a person, whose Thou stood over against his /"
(Fairbairn's " Studies," p. 38). Much is to be said in favour
of this view, more especially when it is considered that in
a later stage, during the Brahmana period, when the course
of thought had become distinctly pantheistic, room was
found for Pragapati, the personal creator of the world.
The type of thought of Brahmanism is pantheistic. It is
a cosmogony in which the universe is considered as the

1 1 6 Is God Knowable ?
emanation of Deity. The sole self-existent spirit has
produced from his substance various creatures, and placed
himself in creation, to be known as the father and creator of
a 1 things. There is only one being, and all finite exist
ence becomes evanescent and unreal. Side by side with the
pantheistic speculative thought of India, which affirmed the
existence of the universal spirit and the nothingness of all
else, there ran the tendency to make this abstract, colourless
deity assume a form which could awaken the sympathy of
those who were accustomed to anthropomorphic worship.
Pantheism and polytheism are not contradictory. Nay,
pantheism demands polytheism as its complement and affir
mation. So the abstract unity of things becomes the triple
manifestation of the divine, in Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva,
or the processes of creation, preservation, and' destruction
in the universe. So also there is room in Brahmanism for
the multiplication of local embodiments of the divine. And
to-day, as Sir Alfred Lyall has so well shown, the process
may be witnessed in India. We may see mythology in the
process of growth, and Brahmanism makes room for all,
without contradiction to its fundamental principle. In the
life of Lord Lawrence we are told of a sect which took
General Nicholson as the representative to them of the
Divine, and other cults rise from day to day.
A good deal remains to be accomplished ere we can trace
the development of Indian thought, or describe the various
tendencies, speculative and practical, which were merged in
Brahmanism. On the one hand it is plain that meditations
on the nature of being, on the relation of the infinite to the
finite, on the mystery of life and death, led directly on to
the affirmation of the unity of Brahma, and of the impersonal
nature of the one being. On the other hand, it is equally
plain that the popular and practical belief of India never

The Search after God. 1 1 7
rose to the height of this great abstraction, that they con
tinued to worship local gods. Whether consciously or
unconsciously, the abstract unity had to become concrete
and widen itself to the recognition of popular needs, and the
gods of the people found a place in the pantheistic system.
It would be endless to enter into detail. Suffice it to say
that the Indian mind is rooted in this fundamental thought.
The Indian mind had wandered far from the strong, fresh
feelings of life and hope which find expression in the Vedas.
They had felt the burden of thought and the perplexity
of problems which they could not solve. The mystery of
suffering and retribution was heightened by the general
belief in transmigration. " The accepted and general belief
was that the souls of men had previously existed inside the
bodies of other men, or gods, or animals, or had animated
material objects ; and that when they left the bodies they
now inhabited they would enter upon a new life, of a like
temporary nature, under one or other of these various
individual forms — the particular form being determined by
the goodness or evil of the acts done in the present existence-
Life therefore was held to be a never-ending chain, a never-
ending struggle, for however high the conditions to which
any soul had attained, it was liable, by one act of wickedness,
or even of carelessness, to fall again into one or other
of the miserable states " (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures,
p. 17).
Without entering at further length into the intricacies of
this system, we have said enough to show the demand
which India makes on the universal religion. The wander
ings and struggles of the Indian mind reveal to us some of
the wants of human nature. An absolute religion must
conserve the .sovereignty, the permanence, and the unity
of the one God. He must be first and last, cause, origin, and

1 1 8 Is God Knowable ?
purpose of everything that is. The God whom India seeks
and must find is a God who is eternal and unchangeable.
In very truth the religion of India may be regarded as the
demand of the human heart and spirit for a fixed, unchang
ing foundation on which man may rest amid the changes of
this fleeting world.
The transmigration doctrine also has its lesson. It teaches
us that we must not only have a true doctrine about the one,
but we must reach a truth which shall conserve the reality of
the finite. This also is a human need, and the strange
forms which the transmigration doctrine assumed attest the
truth, that deep down in the Indian consciousness there
was the conviction of the persistence of the human spirit
across all changes. The transmigration could not destroy
the identity of the spirit of man, nor break the link which
bound it to the past and the future. The true way of meet
ing this want lay in the revelation of the truth of the immor
tality of man, and of the close connection which lies between
our present and our future. What India sought for and
did not find was a true doctrine of God and of man, and of
the possibility of correspondence between God and man.
And the history of Indian religion is a manifestation of this
need, on a scale and with a subtlety never manifested before
in human history.
The strange blending of pantheism with polytheism,
which is characteristic of Brahmanism, led to many striking
practical results. Where everything is -divine, and regarded
equally as the manifestation of divinity, it is obvious that
the desire of change is removed. There can exist no motive
to induce men to strive for the alteration and removal of
existing facts. Accidental forms and unequal laws and
institutions tend to perpetuate themselves, and are apt to be
regarded as partaking of the sacredness of divine sanction.

The Search after God. 1 1 9
We find accordingly that as Brahmanism attained to maturity,
it laid a strong hand on society, elaborated its creed of caste,
and bound the various classes with this inflexible chain.
Conceived mainly in the interests of the class which was
dominant at the time, and taking advantage of the various
artificial social divisions then existent, Brahmanism per
petuated and made sacred this state of things for all the
future. To all the dissatisfaction and unrest caused by the
very nature of their religion and philosophy were added
the misery and sorrow caused by the Brahmanical doctrine
and practice of caste. To thoughtful minds the sense of
misery grew intense, and there was no relief from the ever-
pressing thought of the wretchedness of man. The division
into classes and ranks left men without the consolation of
the thought of society ; for Brahmanism had become utterly
anti-social. These are among the circumstances which go to account
historically for the rise of Buddhism. Other circumstances
no doubt there were, but on these we do not dwell at
present. No doubt also there was the great personality
of the founder of Buddhism, and his gentle, sympathetic
nature, which are essential factors in the rise of Buddhism.
At all events, this great religious movement had its origin
in the profound sense of human misery and sorrow, and
it was essentially a movement for man's redemption from
them. Man was in the presence of an irresistible power,
whose goings he could not trace, from whose influence there
was no escape. Behind or in this power was the weight of
the universe, and it pressed directly against the individual
On his side, too, the individual felt that he had been in the
presence of this power not only during the time of his
conscious life, but during the former stages of his exis
tence, and during the stages yet to be he will feel the

I 20 Is God Knowable ?
presence of this irresistible power. Conscious life had
become a burden in itself, and the burden was made
heavier by the meditative thought of the Hindu and by the
social circumstances of the time. The power above and
beyond them was impersonal ; by the stress of need
Gotama was driven to seek relief from the thought of
human misery by making man impersonal also. It had a
true thought at the root of it. Self-renunciation has a true
and right ring about it, and has its real place in human
life. But Buddhism carries renunciation so far as to
renunciate even the self. The teaching of Buddhism circles
round the thought of pain, its cause, its prevention, the
way of overcoming pain. Existence is only pain or sorrow,
the cause of pain and sorrow is desire ; but in Nirvana
pain and sorrow cease, and the way by which Nirvana
is reached is by means of the laws formulated by
Buddha. On the basis 01 this absolute renunciation of self, which
reaches even to the annihilation of self-consciousness,
there is built a system of ethics, full of benevolence and
self-sacrifice. Theoretically, at all events, the system of
Buddhism is so. What Buddhism is practically is another
question altogether. It inculcates charity, self-sacrifice,
purity, justice. The passive and gentle virtues receive
from Buddhism a recognition which is unique in the
religions of Heathenism. The power of meekness, of
benevolence, of self-sacrifice, is nobly set forth in the life
of the founder of Buddhism. The way to Nirvana is by
the destruction of malice, passion, 'and delusion. But
what Nirvana itself means, whether it refers to existence
after death or to a salvation from the sorrows of life here
and now, is a question yet under discussion. But apart from
that, it appears to be made out that in the long run it means

The Search after God. 121
the absorption of the individual into the great stream of
being ; the loss of self-consciousness and of all that makes
the individual. This much appears certain, and, indeed,
forms the charm of Buddhism to certain Western thinkers
at the present time.
Looking at Buddhism, we ask what is the demand it
makes on the absolute and universal religion, and the answer
is plain. The universal religion must recognise and
proceed on the fact of human pain and sorrow. It must be
prepared to have a gospel of deliverance from pain, must
proclaim a way of relief, and provide consolation for
those who have suffered. It must be filled with a passion
for the relief of human suffering, otherwise it will not
meet the needs of those who have embraced the tenets of
Buddhism. It must be powerful to control the instincts of
selfishness, to supply an adequate motive for self-renuncia
tion, and a desire strong enough to expel desires which
tend only to self; and, above all, it must provide a way and
a hope for the race, that in the future a goal may be
reached which will satisfy the human longing of Buddhism
for the extinction of passion, malice, and delusion.
The religions of which we have now been speaking have
no historical connection with Christianity, yet in Christian
ity are the answers to the deep questions they have asked.
For Christianity lays as much stress on the sacredness oi
common life as China does, has as deep a sense of the
eternity of the unchangeable God as Brahmanism has,
and is as full of the spirit of meekness, of gentleness, and of
helpfulness as Buddhism. While it possesses all these, it
has them in harmony with other truths ignored, denied, or
contradicted by each of these systems of religious thought.
Jesus Christ has laid the strong hand of His purity on
CDmmon life, and has lifted up the common round of duty

122 Is God Knowable ?
into the sacredness of religious life. Diligence in business
is also a precept of Christianity, and is enforced by the
example of the Master, who did not disdain the use of the
workman's tools, nor the weariness which comes from toil.
He knew from personal experience the lot of the workman.
With the Chinese He also recognised the relations in which
people stand to each other, and bound them to the per
formance of mutual duties. Benevolence in the ruling class
and sincerity in the governed were added virtues brought
in to sweeten the breath of society. The only relationship
which approaches to the ideal in this religion of China is
that of friend to friend. Here we find ourselves under the
sway of an ampler motive, and on this common ground we
meet the Chinese, are able to acknowledge the truth and
goodness they have found, but we can lift them upwards
to a higher sphere, and in the light of Christ replace these
diverse distinctions by the thought of a common brotherhood.
For we have got a new standard of human action, and a new
example of obedience, and a new law of love in the words,
" Love one another as I have loved you."
Further, the formulated need of China is met by Ciirist
when He lays His hand on the future of the world and
claims it for His own. He does not surrender the future of
the world to sin, hatred, and unrighteousness. He is making
this world to be a world of peace, righteousness, and
holiness, — a world where the good of each finds its reali
zation in the common good, and the good of the whole- is
reconciled with the highest good of each. The Chinese
demand in Christ, which in another form is the demand of
Mr. Spencer, is fully provided for, and is secured by the
personal striving of the Christ, — a surer guarantee of pro
gress than can be obtained by the working of a law of
evolution, which works backwards as readily as forwards,

The Search after God. 123
is as satisfied with degradation as with progress, with law
lessness and selfishness as with law and order.
India comes with her deep claim on the Christ, and asks
satisfaction for her needs also. She has travailed greatly,
has been burdened with the mystery of existence, and has
sought long and eagerly for truth, light, and life. She has
sought to know the mystery of the infinite and of the finite,
and has been bewildered with the perplexity of change and
time. She has found no resting-place. For she has not
had the key to unlock the gates, and to let her enter into
the great reconciliation given in the thought of Christianity.
She has lost her hold both of the infinite and the finite, and
to her neither the one nor the other has any abiding reality.
For she has lost, if she ever had it, the distinction between
the Maker of the world and the world He has made. The
infinite and the finite were the same in kind. The finite is
a mode of the infinite, partakes of the infinite substance, or
is an emanation of the divine. All finite manifestations are
only the necessary outcome of the infinite, links in the
chain of mechanical causation, in which there is no room
left for purpose or for freedom. The world and all that is
therein are only the putting forth into visibility of the
hidden potentialities of the one being. Nature and God
are one, and nature is the adequate manifestation of God.
Now the truth which India seeks is one which must set
forth and adequately conserve the abiding and the perma
nent. The desire of India must find satisfaction, and it is
found' in the higher manifestation of God, which is em
bodied in the facts of Christianity. Here thought has come
to meet the highest thought of man, and facts are mani
fested which meet their deeper needs. The Creator is
greater- than the creation, and He has reserved for the
fulness of the times the expression of those higher thoughts

1 24 Is God Knowable ?
and greater facts which could not be expressed until then.
Nature is the work of God. But nature is not God, nor
does nature exhaust the power, wisdom, and energy of the
Divine. To the thought of India, which ever has sought
for the permanent and universal, Christianity comes with
the manifestation of the one God, eternal and unchangeable,
who has made the world and all that is in it, and who
comes to speak to His creatures words which they can
understand. The infinite is real, for God is one.
But the finite is also real, and is not illusion, nor the
merely passing flow of transient appearances. Man is
real also, and the mystery of identity across the waves of
change — which lies at the basis of the transmigration
theory — receives its explanation when we recognise the
existence and reality of finite spirits. We can only satisfy
the need of personal, finite spirits when we hold fast to the
truth that a personal infinite spirit lies at the basis of
things, makes them, upholds them, and assigns to all of
them the mode and measure of their working and the
sphere of their energy. When we say that the living God
is the maker, upholder, and ruler of the world, we provide
for the abiding and permanent ; when we say in Him we live
and move and have our being, we recognise the depen
dence of created life on the Creator ; and when we say
that we can have fellowship with Him as persons with a
person, we provide for the relative independence of finite
spirits, and their reality, which the thought of India also
demands. For Nirvana is only a makeshift, and the
desire for non-existence is to be looked at as the outcome
of despair. For where there was no personal life at the
basis of things, and no self-consciousness in the Maker of
the universe, India could find no place or ground for the
permanence of self-consciousness in finite persons. Nirvana

The Search after God. 125
was welcomed as a relief. But where God is believed to
be a person, the belief in immortality becomes rational and
desirable. A transformed condition of this problem we shall look
at in connection with the religious thought of Greece.
Meanwhile we proceed to say that Buddhism has expressed
as deep a need of human nature as any which has yet been
formulated among natural religions. It passes away from
the ground of nature to human nature. While keeping a
firm hold on the fundamental thought of India, it looks at
that thought in the light cast on it by misery, sorrow, and
wretchedness. Buddhism is the human demand for a
saviour, and in lieu of a saviour it found relief in deeds of
mercy and of love, and sought to bind men together in the
bonds of mutual helpfulness. By the way of self-renuncia
tion it sought to reach the oblivion of self and of all the
illusions which compassed men about on every side. It
culminated in negation, and it could do nothing else, for
it had a negation as its starting-point. Its god was negative,
and therefore existence was vain, and eternal nothingness
was its highest good. But all these negatives are only
the expression of a want which Buddhism could feel, but
could not answer. Let us seek to look at these negatives
in the light of the affirmations of the Christ.
Instead of the blank negation which takes in Buddhism
the place of the Divine, we have through the Christ the
conception of the Living God, the Maker of the world, who
stands to finite spirits . in a relation which is best described
as that of Fatherhood. A living personal intelligence
abides as the centre, source, and cause of the universe.
Worlds are to Him what words are to men, and they are
but the vesture of His thought, the expression of His ways
of thinking and modes of action. His care over His

126 Is God Knowable?
creatures is so great that not even a sparrow can fall to
the ground without Him; and His ceaseless, energy sustains
in being everything that is. If we can verify such a thought
and find this conception true, then everything becomes full
of hope, and goodness may be the goal of things. It is
strange to find the opposite view to this, the essential view
of Buddhism, finding expression from the lips of Dr. Land.
But yet it is not surprising when we find that the main
conception of Buddhism is also the view which commends
itself to him. " A little inquiry would show that even
Materialism, Pantheism, Atheism, and other such ways of
thinking, in which the majority can see nothing but back
sliding and perversity, have mostly an ethical impulse, and
draw strength from the fact that a man will accept from
an impersonal nature-power what cannot content him if
coming from the hands of a personal being, of infinite
wisdom and love" (Spinoza, Essays, p. 72). The kind of
acceptance which a man gives to the working of an im
personal nature-power is simply a submission, sullen or
resigned, to the inevitable. Buddhism, without much
choice, found itself in the presence of the naturerpower,
and sought by its creed to get rid of the consciousness
altogether. It is rational to expect that the highest outcome
of things shall somehow be preserved, and we have a
rational expectation when we place ourselves in the hands
of a personal being of infinite wisdom and love.
We find, further, that suffering and pain gain a new
meaning. For in the light of the life of the Christ we see
how it is possible for a man to become perfect through
suffering. And self-realisation, not self-renunciation, becomes
the highest end of life. Renunciation is but the means to
an end, and the end is fulness of life. It is not necessary
to carry it so far as to destroy the possibility of its exercise,

The Search after God. 127
and it is only in certain ways and in certain relations that
renunciation is a duty. For in Christ we have gained
a new conception of renunciation, and have found thiough
Him that desire is good and great and eternal. Through
Him we have received an object which is fitted to call forth
the energies of our being into the profoundest activity, which
also will enable us to realise in our life what unpassioned
goodness is. To the nerveless, emotionless, unimpassioned
conception of the Hindu Buddhist, Christ opposes His own
ideal of human life, as a life full of energy, and full of
desire, passion, power, rich in imagination, great in thought,
ardent in the pursuit of truth, and full of love to others, — a
love so great that all thought of self is lost sight of and
swallowed up in it.
Still further we have the reality of what Buddhism sought
for and needed, — the fact of a Saviour, who has come to the
help of man, an incarnation of the Divine, but an incarnation
which has not permitted itself to be sinful or impure. The
Incarnate One can bear the burdens of sin and yet .remain
sinless, can save others and lose Himself, and in order to
help men, He became man, but kept one human life pure
from the touch of sin, made one human life to be pure,
holy, and sinless, and so found a place into which all sinful,
unholy, weak, suffering, and miserable people might enter
and find peace, purity, and rest.

VII.
THE HEBREW SOLUTION.
IN order further to elucidate the sure knowledge of God
which we have obtained through the Christ, we shall
proceed to speak shortly of the two religions with which
Christianity stands in direct historical relation, viz., the
religion of Israel and the religion of Greece. Christianity is
related to the religion of Israel as fulfilment to promise.
There is no other instance of this kind among the religions
of the world. The only approach to it is in the relation of
Buddhism to Brahmanism. But the connection between
these is that of reaction and opposition, not that of
development and fulfilment. While Mohammedanism may
be left out of account, inasmuch as it has contributed no new
element to the religions of the world. Of the Hebrew race it
may be said with truth that their religion is unique.
They alone retain a sure hold on the living God. And for
them God's existence was the one thing of which they
were sure. As a consequence of this settled conviction and
habit of mind, human life and human duty assumes a
greater, higher significance than elsewhere. Evil assumes
a darker form, and becomes sin. It is no longer the result of
conflict, nor a stage in a further progress ; it is a traversing
of life's aim, a blameworthy act, or a degradation for which
man is responsible. Good also has won a.higher form than

The Hebrew Solution. 129
elsewhere. Here for the first time we find that good means
blessedness, not mere happiness, and not prosperity, but
holiness. With clear open-eyed vision the Hebrew walked onwards
with a definite aim in life, and a definite hope before him.
For the best and bravest of their race, life and life's work
meant to walk with God and to abide with Him. Moral pro
blems and moral difficulties pressed on them as on the
nations around, and pressed all the harder because of their
faith in God. There is no such statement of moral perplexity
and doubt in any literature as we find in the Book of Job ;
nor any provisional answer which has so much of truth in
it. They laid a- firm hold on the facts of this world's life,
looked at the facts of life without shrinking, and everywhere
they see God, trace His steps, and live under the con
sciousness of His presence.
The features common to Christianity and Judaism, and
which separate them from all other systems, consist in
this, that the object of worship and of thought is a person.
They are not separated merely by the truths they teach, for,
as we have seen, the religions of the world and the thought
of the world are full of truth ; undoubted and unquestioned
truth. If ethical and moral truth were all that man needs,
then enough of that kind of truth is to be found in the
ethical systems of the world. It is from another reason
that the religion of the Old Testament has maintained its
perennial power. It is because over against us in the pages
of the Old Testament stands the living God who can say,
" I am ! " who manifests Himself unto man, and can
command, exhort, and draw people unto Himself. He is not
only a " stream of tendency," a power not ourselves that
makes for righteousness, but He is the person who makes
the righteousness, and makes it possible for man. In the
9

130 Is God Knowable?
Hebrew Scriptures we find a God with whom we can enter
into personal relations, and therefore duty becomes rational,
and the performance of it a reasonable service. For duty
is the expression of a relation between persons ; a duty to
God becomes irrational and impossible were we driven to
accept the theory of an unknowable God. But in the Hebrew
Scriptures the two correlatives to duty are presented in the
loftiest fashion, and all the Old Testament views of life and
work are based on these correlatives, which are the person
ality of God and the personality of man.
Theories and speculations are not abundant in the Old
Testament. But there are facts without number, and there
is a consistent and hopeful progress from beginning to
end. When we look at the facts recorded in it, we find
ourselves in a region of more consistent thought than we
find elsewhere. Here the dark nature ground passes out
of view, and we have no pantheistic confusion between good
and evil, between God and the world. Moral distinctions
stand out with startling clearness. The freedom of God, His
holiness, His wisdom, and love are consistently conserved.
Nor is matter, nor force, looked at as datum objective to
God. Underlying the Hebrew facts there is a theory of
creation greater and more consistent than the most recent
theories on the question.
Creation has it origin in the free act of the Creator. By
this conception mechanical causation is transformed and
becomes the causation of purpose, which is the action of
intelligence and freedom working for an end by the use of
adequate means. Nature finds its first beginnings in
freedom, which makes it intelligible that freedom should be
its final outcome. Mechanical causation is what it is
because the nature and relations, the being and becoming
the action and interaction of particular things, are deter-

The Hebrew Solution. 131
mined for them by the action of the Creator, who out of an
indefinite number of possible worlds chose to make the
particular world we know, and made it for a certain purpose.
This is the only view which can consistently recognise and
without intellectual confusion realise in thought the un
deniable fact- that the qualities of things seem to be
arbitrary, and not determined by any inherent necessity of
nature, or, as Sir John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell have put
it, the ultimate atoms of matter bear the stamp of manu
factured articles. Their nature, the mode and the measure
of their working, are determined for them, and bear evidence
that they are the result of freedom and intelligence working
to definite end.
The mind and heart of the Hebrews rested in this
thought. Things and their qualities and inter-relations
were what they were because of God's appointment. The
day and the night were to them forms of the covenant
which God made with the creation. And the uniformities
of the world were such in virtue of the Divine action and
appointment. Thus the relation of God to the world with
the Hebrews assumed also a unique form. They escaped
the difficulty and danger which arise when we conceive the
world to be an effect of which God is the cause. For when
we think of relation through cause and effect, we regard
cause and effect as on the same plane of being. Nothing
is in the effect which was not in the cause, and the cause
passes over into the effect. To speak of God simply as the
cause of the world is to make the world equal to God, and
to make it the adequate measure of the Divine. By the
strength of their concrete thinking, and by their firm grasp
on revealed facts, and by the power of their fundamental
principle, the Hebrews escaped this danger. They did
conceive a relation of God to the world, but not the simple

132 Is God Knowable ?
relation of cause and effect. It was something far more
vital and far more complete, and far more difficult to
express in adequate terms. It was not the relation of a
thinker to his thought, nor of a workman to his work, nor
of an agent to his act, though each of these analogies has a
part in the preformed conception of the relation of God to
the world which underlies the Hebrew Scriptures. Creation
is the work of God, yet not all His work. It is formed
and fashioned by His thought, yet He has more thought
than He has embodied in the world. It manifests His
wisdom, goodness, and power, and yet He is greater than
the world. And the world does not express the fulness of
God. It has indeed been often said that the thought of God in
the Hebrew mind is so great and so vividly felt that the
world became to them unreal and unsubstantial. God
was so real to them that all else became as the shadows
of a dream. No doubt there are expressions in the Hebrew
scriptures which, taken by themselves, can bear this
meaning; but a deeper consideration of them, and a
thorough study of the Hebrew Scriptures, make it manifest
that the Hebrew never lost hold of the reality of the world,
nor regarded it as the fleeting manifestation of something
lying beyond. He never lost the persuasion of his own
reality nor lost consciousness of his own personality as one
to whom God could speak and who could speak to God.
The visible world was very real, and the kingdom of God
in the world was an abiding fact. Both the world and
himself were real simply because they were both the
creation of God; and He who was from everlasting to ever
lasting brought them forth, gave them their being, and
sustained them in being.
Here then we come again to a radical divergence of

The Hebrew Solution. 133
thought. According as we take one or other view, so our
whole thinking and speculation will be determined. To
the Hebrew, all is finite except God. He alone is infinite
and eternal ; and the universe is made by Him. All things
are created by Him. In trying to express Hebrew thought,
theology has borrowed the language of science, and has
said all things are made out of nothing, in a certain way
and in a certain time. The Hebrews themselves have
not tried to express their fundamental thought in that way.
What they have said is that creation means the bringing
into existence of something which before was not, and that
the creation was brought into existence in such a way
that the Creator is no less after the act than He was
before. The universe is finite, created, made, and created
by God. It is possible for thought to rest in this concep
tion, if we have any true knowledge of God. This is one
view; and there is only another view possible, though it
has many forms. All these other forms proceed on the
assumption of the unity of God and the world. In this
relation there is really no difference between the view
which regards the world as the outcome, result, and
manifestation of the force which is one and unchangeable
in nature and quantity ; or the view, which regards the
universe as a system of signs, an embodied divine
language ; or the view which regards the universe as a
system of thought-relations which exist only for thought.
For all these views agree in this, that they assume both
sides of the equation to be equal. The sum of the
manifestations makes up the force ; or the contents of the
notion of mind are equal to the contents of the notion of the
world ; in other words, whether the system we advocate be
materialistic or idealistic, whether matter determines mind,
or mind determines matter, is really nothing to the purpose.

134 Is God Knowable?
For in the one case matter is held to contain in itself all
the outcome of the universe. It has the promise and
the potency of all forms of life. In the other case, mind
is held to be first, and to have moulded matter for the
manifestation of itself. But in the long run both elements
formally coalesce, are mutually expressive of each other.
Each is the other in the end. Our systems of philosophy,
when followed to their logical result, lead by necessity
of thought to the identification of God and the world ;
and it is scarcely possible, if we yield to them, to save
our deepest .convictions from the ruin wrought by that
entanglement. It is difficult, owing to our Western habits of thought,
to obtain a clear view of what the Hebrew Scriptures
really mean. We bring to them many pre-suppositions
derived from other sources altogether. And even theolo
gians often insist on bringing the categories of philosophy
to the bolder, wider, grander thought which underlies the
Hebrew Scriptures. They will insist on assuming that
(he "principles of cosmical multiplicity must be in God ; "
which in a sense may be true, — in the sense, to wit,
that all the variety and beauty and glory of the world
must have had their source and origin in God. They took
form and being by His appointment : He commanded and
it was done. Yet it by no means follows that all the
principles of Divine life and action are in the world, or
that the distinctions which are in the world represent
distinctions in Him. For this would lead us again in
another form of the emanation theory, — the theory which
looks on the universe as a necessary evolution and manifes
tation of the Divine. The Hebrew view is different. It
is that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the world
manifests His wisdom, glory, and power.

The Hebrew Solution. 135
In this relation let us listen for a moment to the
judicious Hooker : — " Moses, in describing the work of
creation, attributeth speech unto God : God said, Let
there be light ; Let there be a firmament ; Let the waters
under the heavens be gathered together into one place ;
Let the earth bring forth ; Let there be light in the firma
ment of heaven. Was this only the intent of Moses to
signify the infinite greatness of God's power by the easiness
of his accomplishing such effects, without travail, pain, or
labour ? Surely it seemeth that Moses had here besides
this a further purpose, namely, first to teach that God did
not work as a necessary but a voluntary agent, intending
beforehand, and decreeing with Himself that which did out
wardly proceed from Him : secondly, to show that God did
there institute a law naturally to be observed by creatures ;
and therefore, according to the manner of laws, the insti
tution thereof is described as being established by solemn
injunction. His commanding those things to be which
are, and to be in such sort as they are, to keep that tenure
and course which they do, importeth the establishment
of nature's law. This world's first creation, and the
preservation since of things created, what is it but only
so far forth a manifestation by execution what the eternal
law of God is concerning things natural. And as it cometh
to pass in a kingdom rightly ordered, that after a law is
once published, it presently taketh effect far and wide,
all states framing themselves thereunto ; even so let us
think it fareth in the natural course of the world : since
the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of His law
upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto His voice,
and their labour hath been to do His will : He made a
law for the rain ; He gave His decree unto the sea, that
the waters should not pass His commandment " (Hooker,

136 Is God Knowable?
"Ecclesiastical Polity," Dean Church's Edition, pp. 12,
13)- " God did not work as a necessary but as a voluntary
agent." Here is the distinctive note of Hebrew thinking, in
which it stands apart from all other thought known amongst
men. " In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." Creation was a free act on the part of the
Creator. The being, nature, and mode of working of finite
things were freely ordered and determined by Him. But
the Hebrew thought goes further, and reverently regards
the Creator as binding Himself to proceed in His creative
work in a certain line, and for the manifestation of a certain
purpose. A divine thought is in creation which can attain
to complete expression only in a gradual manner. A divine
order and progress are in the world, and will attain com
pleteness when the Divine purpose is accomplished. Thus
the Hebrew conceived the world to have an absolute begin
ning in the free act of God ; but when the creation began to
be, the first step had a determining influence on all that fol
lowed ; not a determining influence in the way of absolute
external necessity binding on God, but an influence of a
binding kind, because the first outline of creation must be
consistent with its final outcome. It takes to the Hebrew
mind the form of a binding covenant between the Creator and
His creation. In fulfilment of this purpdse we find in the
Book of Genesis the conception of a progressive creation ;
the origin and working of a definite plan of organization
and of life. Creative energy appears at successive epochs,
when a fulness of time was come, and passes into the
sustaining activity of God. The forms of life passed from
a less perfect to a more perfect form, from one stage to
another of the manifestation of the Divine thought, until
man came, who sums up in himself the whole creation.

The Hebrew Solution. 137
To use the words of Robert Browning, a thinker and a
poet, who has thought more deeply, and has entered with
broader sympathy into the grand old Hebrew way of view
ing man and the world than any other poet or thinker, —
Browning, who is to us the greatest Christian poet of our
time — " Thus God dwells in all,
From life's minute beginnings up at last
To Man — the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life ; whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o'er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole ;
Imperfect qualities throughout creation
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man :
Power — neither put forth blindly, nor controlled
Calmly by perfect knowledge, to be used
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear ;
Knowledge — not instruction, but the slow,
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil
Strengthened by love ; Love — not serenely pure,
But strong from weakness, like a chance-sown plant
Which, cast on stubborn soil, puts forth changed buds
And softer stains, unknown in happier climes ;
Love which endures and doubts, and is oppressed
And cherished, suffering much and much sustained,
And blind, oft-failing, yet believing love,
A half-enlightened, often chequered trust : —
Hints and previsions of which faculties
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last. So far the seal
Is put on life — one stage of being complete,
One scheme wound up ; and from the grand result

138 Is God Knowable?
A supplementary reflux of light
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle." *
By one supreme effort the Hebrews succeeded in separat
ing the spiritual from the material, the Creator from the
creature. They had the conception of one living and true
God, the Maker of heaven and earth, and because its
Maker, distinct from it. From the first the grand central
truth of the unity of God stands out in absolute distinctness,
There is no hesitating search after God, no progress in the
discovery of truth. The Old Testament no doubt does
contain the view of a progress in the knowledge of God,
and His character is unfolded with increasing clearness as
the years pass on ; but in regard to the doctrine of the
unity of God, His distinctness from nature and His person
ality, the earlier records of the Hebrew people are clear
and emphatic, as clear and emphatic as anything contained
in the later Scriptures.
It would lead us too far afield to inquire into the cause of
this singular achievement on the part of the Hebrew people.
Of the truth of it no one can doubt. We are concerned at
present with the truth, and not with the way by which it
was reached by the Hebrew people, who were the witnesses
to the world of the unity of God. Leaving this inquiry as
unnecessary for our purpose, we ask at present whether this
conception of the divine unity and of the distinction of God
from nature can leave room for the investigations of
science, and for the prevalence of method, law, and order
in nature? Is it consistent with evolution, for example?
and consistent with the movement of relative independence
we find in nature ?
* Robert Brmvning's Poetical Works, Vol. I., " Paracelcus,'' pp.
388.9.

The Hebreiv Solution. 139
The doctrine of creation, as we find it in the Hebrew
Scriptures, leaves room for every legitimate inquiry of
science, and for every investigation of philosophy. Stuart
Mill once remarked, " The laws of nature cannot account for
their own origin ; " and the doctrine of creation, when we
have got it, does not of itself tell us what particular kind of
world it is which God created. It simply tells us that in
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But
what the material, forces, laws, and modes of working of the
world are, we must discover for ourselves as best we can.
Here we are left uncontrolled, and free to ascertain all that
can be found out regarding the particular system of things
in which we find ourselves. It makes no difference in this
inquiry whether we regard the world as self-caused, self-
regulated, and self-preserved, or as ordained by God. In
either case the laws remain the same, and may be investi
gated, ascertained, and classified. The law of gravitation is
equally true whether it be so by God's appointment or by
blind necessity. In like manner all that belongs to second
causes are what they are, apart from any theory of how
they came to be.
The doctrine of creation, then, leaves room for science
and its investigations into the nature of things and the laws
of their working. It seeks only to account for the origin
and cause of them. And yet the doctrine of creation
must not be limited to the calling into existence of the first
rude beginnings of the world. The view of the Scriptures
is this, that creation was not confined to one act, but, on
the contrary, consisted of repeated and successive acts of the
Divine will. We find that modern thought is not at all dis
inclined to accept the idea of a single originative creative
act, which called matter and its forces into existence. It
gives them a beginning, and allows them to go on from that

140 Is God Knowable ?
starting-point. They will permit the supernatural to act
in the remote past, and under other conditions, if they can
get rid of the thought of what is above nature here and
now. No difficulty is found in the supposition that non
living matter attained to life in some mysterious fashion
in the far-off past, though they recognise that now life only
comes from life. But the Hebrew conception was greater
and more consistent. There was a series of progressive
creative acts, each of which proceeded on all that went
before, and prepared the way for all that was to follow.
Creation went on according to order, method, and law.
These, however, were not in the created things themselves,
but in the plan and purpose of the Creator. Each step in
advance is creative ; but as each creative act is done, it takes
its place among the forces and laws which make up nature.
The thought of the Hebrews has other grander and
more far-reaching issues than even those already indicated.
They seem to have anticipated the remark of Hume that
"the world is a singular effect." For God could make a
living world and people it with creatures which have life
and movement and growth, have a certain power of self-
development, which can live their own life, and yet never
lose their dependence on their Creator. In this relation
the Hebrew conception far transcends the thought of Greece,
from which we have received the tradition which regards
the relation of God to the world in the light of the analogy
between a workman and his work. The technic concep
tion falls short, in every way, of the greatness of the Old
Testament idea of the relation of God to the world. The
order of the world is grounded by them in the will of God,
and the advent of successive orders of beings on the earth
finds a rational explanation in the creative agency of the
Living God, which is conditioned in turn by the preceding

The Hebrew Solution. 141
creative acts already ordered, and sustained by the Divine
activity in the natural order of things as soon as they are
created.*
' It thus appears that when we trace out the hints of the Old
Testament Scripture, and discover their underlying thought,
we find a view of the world, its origin and its laws, which
is consistent in itself, and consistent with all the legitimate
claims of science. When we add to this the conception of
God as the sustainer and preserver of everything that is,
we get a worthy thought of the being and preserving of
the world. The physical universe is every moment, in all
its events and processes, dependent on God. This does not
deny, it rather affirms, the reality of the world and the
efficiency of second causes. It does not reduce the pro
cesses of the world to a mere seeming, or make them illu
sory, as is done in all pantheistic schemes of thought.
They are real processes, and natural causes are true causes.
But these causes have being and efficiency because they are
interpenetrated and made effective by the fiat of the Living
God. God is regarded as the founder and conductor of the
world's processes, and therefore this working of His is
in time. So far as He has put Himself into the world, and
embodied His will and thought in finite things, God may be
said to live a life and to do a work in time. He abides in
the world, and the temporal activity of the world is His
activity. But His abiding in the world is, on the Scriptural
view, with the purpose of making the world a fit and
adequate place for His tabernacle. Finite creation could
not receive God, but in the long process of the Divine
working may be made fit for the dwelling-place of the Most
High. There is more of the Divine in the organic world
than in the inorganic world, and more in the intelligent

142 Is God Knowable?
world than in the merely organic, and more in the spiritual
world than in the merely intelligent ; and each higher
nature more fully receives and manifests the Divine.
Here then we begin to lay hold of the order and progress
which give form and shape to the growth of the Hebrew
Scriptures. How shall creation become the adequate ex
pression of the Divine thought and the fit dwelling-place of
the Divine presence ? — this is the ultimate question in the
Hebrew mind. It no doubt assumed many forms as the
years passed on. But underlying all particular questions
is the one fundamental thought that somehow man could
come to union and fellowship with God. This is the more
wonderful when we have regard to the amazing loftiness
of the conception of the power, holiness, and righteousness
of God which filled the Hebrew mind. How great and
sublime these thoughts of the majesty of God were, is known
to every reader of the Psalms and Prophets; and yet they
regarded this God as a God whom they could know, love,
and serve. In one aspect of the Scriptures, the doctrine of
God seems to be developed in such a way as to remove
Him farther and farther from the world and from man. In
times of formalism, when life and faith were cold and with
out power, this conception dominated every other, until
Scholastic Judaism would not write the ineffable Name
and would not speak nor think of God save in words of a
negative kind. Alongside, however, of the growth of their
knowledge of the majesty and greatness of God and their
consequent increase of reverence and awe of Him, there
was the growth of friendship and love, which drew them
ever nearer to Him, and led them to speak of Him and to
Him in the language of passionate personal appropriation.
There is something singularly striking in this strange
union of the deepest awe and reverence with the most

The Hebrew Solution. 143
direct personal love and friendship. The greater their
conception of God became, the more passionate grew their
longing to find in Him their refuge and their strength.
Many questions remained unanswered, many problems
could not yet obtain a direct solution, more specially the
problem of the moral government of the world laid its
heavy burden on the Hebrew mind. But in the midst of
these unanswered questions and unsolved problems, they
held fast to their fundamental principle, nor ever lost the
hope that there would be a justification of the ways of God
to man. The hope of this was grounded in the doctrine
that man was made in the image of God, and because man
was made in the image of God, the hope of redemption could
never be lost. To them came also a more definite hope as
the time passed on and the distinctive features of the religion
of Israel came into view. Modern criticism has not in any
measure or degree touched the great outstanding feature of
the religion of the Hebrews. The Messianic hope and ex
pectation remain, and with them remain the particular form
which the desire for fellowship with God assumed. In the
future and in connection with the Messiah, God would
indeed dwell with man, and righteousness would reign on
the earth.
In connection with this expectation of the coming of the
Messiah we find the richest development of Hebrew
thought and the widest outlook on man and on the world.
Their doctrine of creation must also be looked at in this
light. For the Messianic hope has helped to give firmness
and strength to the reality of the world and to the validity
of second causes, as these were held by the writers of
Scripture. Apart from this hope, it would almost appear
as if, sometimes, the Hebrew mind lost hold of the reality
of things, and the phenomena of the world became, at such

144 Is God Knowable?
times, simply the manifestation of the mind, the presence,
and the power of God. The Messianic hope laid hold on
the mind of Israel, and caused all the lines of Israel's
thinking to become fruitful. The movement and life in
creation become a movement full of hope, for it is move
ment towards a goal. The successive acts of creative
might, and the product of these acts, assume a larger
meaning. Without the Messianic hope, Israel would
have still given to men the great thought of creation.
They would have surpassed the human mind in the con
ception of the omnipresence of God and the extent of His
kingdom which ruleth over all. To them we would have
owed that thought that He who is from everlasting to ever
lasting is also the dwelling-place of His people in all gene
rations. But in the light of the Messianic hope, the world
attains to a vaster meaning and obtains a real existence.
Closely connected with the Messianic hope is the doctrine of
Wisdom, and the doctrine of Wisdom is one way of setting
forth the relation of the world to God. In another view
the doctrine of Wisdom sets forth the order of the world,
and its onward progress towards a goal. Wisdom was
with God when " He prepared the heavens, when He set
a compass upon the face of the deep, when He established
the clouds above, when He strengthened the fountains of
the deep, when He gave to the sea His decree that the
waters should not pass His commandment (Prov. viii. 27-29).
Wisdom had thus a share and part in the laying of the
foundations and in the building up of the framework of
the world. But wisdom was also in the working out of the
course of the world, and has its part — the supreme con
trolling part — in the moral progress of men. Moral order,
stable government, and onward progress were possible,
because wisdom abode in the world and in the lives of

The Hebrew Solution. 145
men. " By me kings reign and princes decree justice. By
me princes reign and nobles, even all the judges of the
earth " (Prov. viii. 15, 16). The settled order of the world
is possible, because Wisdom is present to lead in the ways
of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment.
The Hebrew mind was thus enabled to obtain a firmer
hold of the Divine quality in creation, and to find a basis
for the reality of the world and of the world's history.
For by this means they were able to see that the movement
of the world was part of the Divine activity. The Divine
presence was in the world. There was for a time a
tendency in Hebrew thought in the direction of making
the Divine in the world and in history to be the full and
adequate measure of the Divine working, and the complete
manifestation of the Divine presence. " The idea," says
Dr. Davidson in the article "Job," in Encyclopedia
Britannica, " of what God was in Himself was in complete
harmony with His manifestation of Himself in providence,
in the events of human life, and the history of men and
nations. The philosophy of the wise did not go behind
the origin of sin, or refer it to the freedom of man ; but
sin existing, and God being in immediate personal contact
with the world, every event was a direct expression of His
moral will and energy : calamity fell on wickedness, and
success attended right-doing. The view of the moral
harmony between the nature of God and the events of
providence in the fortunes of men and nations is the view
of the Hebrew wisdom in its oldest form " (Encyclopedia
Britannica, vol. xiii., p. 699 a).
While this is undoubtedly true of the Hebrew wisdom
in the aspect of it to which Dr. Davidson more immediately
refers, there is another aspect of it which has more imme
diate reference to the sustaining activity of Cod in cieation.
10

146 Is God Knowable ?
It is true that every event of providence was the expression
of the moral will and energy of God ; but the Hebrew
wisdom, even in its earlier form, had some insight into a
deeper relation between God and the world than has found
expression in the Book of Job. Shall we venture to express
it in this way ? — Wisdom represents to the Hebrew mind
that Divine activity, that energy of Himself which God has
put into the world. It represents the immanence of God in
the world. The wisdom which was with God when the
foundations of the world were laid continued to be in the
world, was, in short, the abiding principle of order in the
physical, the organic, and the moral world. But the
recognition of wisdom as the immanent form of divine
energy which gave to the world its order and progress,
tended to raise the other questions discussed in the Book
of Job and in many of the Psalms. The tendency to make
the sustaining activity of God and His ways in providence
to be the only and the adequate manifestation of God, led
to grave confusion of thought. It was impossible on this
view to vindicate the ways of God. And therefore the
Hebrews moved on to the thought that the world was yet
incomplete, and the Divine purpose was not yet realised.
In this way the thought of God in the Hebrew mind was
rescued from this entanglement. The Hebrew doctrine of
Wisdom was grasped by the Messianic hope, and lifted up
into a larger sphere. Creation was as yet unfinished, and
so it could not be the full expression of the Divine purpose.
Still Divine activity was in the world ; the moral action of
God was in immediate contact with the events of human
history; and the hand of God was on the helm to guide
events to their purposed and destined end. The Hebrews
learned to wait in hope for the coming events which should
reveal God, and justify His ways to man and to the world.

The Hebrew Solution. 147
The Divine thought would come to fruition, and Divine
Wisdom, embodied in the order and life of the world, was
the forerunner of the Word which would become incarnate, —
the Word which had created, did preserve, and would
redeem the world.
The Messianic hope of the Hebrews had indeed other
forms, — forms which arose out of and were determined by
the peculiar events of their own history. Though coloured
by the peculiar history of Israel, the Messianic hope had a
significance wider and more universal than at first sight
appears. They expected a prophet to reveal God, and to
make known His will to man ; a priest to make intercession
and atonement for the sins of the people ; a king to rule
and defend them, to subdue enemies, to win and keep the
loyalty and love of His own people. These were some of
the forms taken by the hope of Israel, but these hopes
varied from age to age, according to the need of the time
and the kind of help they most . required at any particular
era. In one shape or other it coloured all the life and
determined the thinking of the people. A larger discussion
of this topic is quite unnecessary, we only allude to it here,
as without it there can be no true conception of the in
debtedness of mankind to the Hebrews, nor any true
measure of the Hebrew solution of the problem of man's
knowledge of God.
It is true, indeed, that the Hebrew people were little
addicted to metaphysical speculation, and did not think out
the problem of an essential relation of God to the world.
They held fast by certain fundamental assumptions, but did
not follow these out into detail. God is, to them, exalted
high above man and nature, yet man is created in the
image of God, and the personality of God and of man is
fundamental and always acknowledged. The relation

148 Is God Knowable?
between God and man is ethical, and is placed on a reli
gious basis. It assumed the form of a Divine condescension.
God in His condescending grace communicates Himself to
man, and writes a new law on the hearts of His people.
Jehovah is by no means regarded as far off from the world,
nor regarded as uncommunicative ; He, on the contrary, is
nigh unto the world, filling it with His omnipresence. He
revealed Himself to the patriarchs in a manifold manner,
and in a special way to His covenant people, as their Law
giver, Judge, Avenger, who inspired prophets, rulers, and
artists, and by many appearances and signs made Himself
known unto men. The Hebrew religion, in opposition to
the whole heathen world, upheld and maintained the truth
of the holy personality of God, and testified continuously to
the fact that God was pure and highly exalted above nature
and the whole world.
On the other hand, however, there are indications not a
few in the Scriptures of the Old Testament of an intense
desire on the part of Israel to find a closer bond of union
between the Divine and human. Taking up the scattered
hints and tracing out their meaning, we find a number of
passages which throw light on the relation of God to the
world as it was conceived by the Hebrews. There is first
the idea of the Maleach Jehovah, the mediator between
God and the patriarchs ; between God and the theocratic
people. Here is shadowed forth the idea of one who
is at once in the world as a part and helper of the world's
process, and also one in fellowship with God. The Maleach
Jehovah has not merely a theocratic function to fulfil; in
some of the Psalms a cosmical significance is attributed to
Him. In this respect the idea of the " Angel of Jehovah "
gave definiteness to the conception of God's relation to the
world.

The Hebrew Solution. 149
Again light is cast on the Hebrew conception by the
doctrine of the Divine Word. Without entering on the
subsequent development of Jewish speculation we may say
here that the Word of God took to itself an objective shape
and form. It was a Word which could be sent, a Word
which could undertake a work of creation, of government,
of preservation, and of redemption.
We have already spoken of the doctrine of Divine
Wisdom ; and these three forms may suffice to indicate how
the Hebrew mind sought to conceive the relation of the
world to God. No doubt with -regard to this aspect of the
question of the knowledge of God, the Hebrew thought
never arrived at a clear expression. But then the hints and
outlines of the subsequent development of Christian thought
are to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures, and there is
nothing in them contradictory of or opposed to the Christian
conception which looks on the creation as finding its
completeness and perfection in Christ Jesus our Lord.
There is an inward movement in the world ; a spiritual
and divine power is immanent in creation : there is the
possibility of union darkly and vaguely foreshadowed in the
Old Testament, which finds its full realization in the New.
Let us here sum up what we have found to be the main
contributions of the Hebrews to the solution of the problem
of our knowledge of God. We have found that the Hebrews
are alone in holding clearly and firmly a lofty conception of
the spirituality, oneness, and holiness of the living God.
They are alone also in holding a doctrine of creation, which
makes creation to be an ordered world, with a definite
beginning, progress, and end. With their defined doctrine
of creation and providence, they alone were able to hold
firm and fast the abiding reality of moral distinctions, and
the consequent final victory of good over evil. They

150 Is God Knowable ?
believed in God, they knew Him, and therefore they held
fast to the hope of the future. They were able to look
forward to the consummation of the world plan and the
realization of the Divine purpose. The basis of this hope
lay in the fact that they had not sought after God, but God
had sought after them. The Hebrew knew and was
persuaded that by searching he could not find out God ;
that he could not unaided stand in the presence of the
inaccessible Light. At the same time he knew that God
could reveal Himself unto man. He could know the God
who had called Abraham his friend. So. the Hebrew
Scriptures have this additional peculiarity ; they are
professedly the record of God's seeking after man.
As a consequence of this fundamental fact, let us note
, another thing ; let us note the fearless confidence with which,
in the Hebrew Scriptures, God commits Himself to man.
He is not afraid of being misunderstood. He condescends
to use human language to express thoughts which human
language can hardly compass. He adapts the revelation of
Himself to the moral and spiritual state of the people to
whom He speaks. Nay, He will speak of Himself, and will
allow His people to speak and think of Him as if He were
a tribal God. The record of His revelation He has also
permitted to remain in such a state as to bear traces of all
the successive stages through which He led Israel from the
first beginnings of their knowledge of Him until they rose
to the height of that great conception of the height, majesty,
purity, and love of God which stand forth in unequalled
grandeur in the closing pages of Old Testament revelation.
In the Hebrew Scriptures we find that God has not
shrunk from committing the revelation of Himself to the
imperfect ways of human speech and human thinking, nor
has He refused to use these imperfect ways in order to

The Hebrew Solution. 151
communicate such knowledge of Himself as the people of
the time were able to grasp ; and yet all such imperfect
ways of communicating the knowledge of the one Living
God are so used that the earlier stages do not fall out of
harmony with the later, and the developed revelation of
God and the fuller knowledge of a riper time are entirely
consistent with the first beginnings of the knowledge of God
given unto man.
At the same time it falls to be said, that on all sides and
in all relations the Hebrew solution was incomplete. It was
preparatory, full of promise ; yet within the bounds of the
Old Testament it was only promise. Everywhere there are
questions asked, and answers could not yet be given.
They knew that God is one, that He is the living God, and
the God of the living. They knew Him as a God of
redemption, who came into closest relations with His
people. They knew that He was merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and slow to anger, abundant in goodness and
truth. They knew that sin would be overcome, and
righteousness and peace would somehow come to reign on
the earth. But the way and manner lay hidden in the
distant future, and they waited patiently for the disclosure
of further truth and doing of Divine deeds, which would yet
more clearly manifest the character of God and His great
purpose in creation, providence, and redemption.
But the greatest gain of Hebrew thought and life lies in
the distinction consistently maintained between God and
the world. Here the gain is absolute. For the possibility
of progress in theology and of any sure knowledge of God
depends on this distinction, — a distinction which all the
lines of modern speculation tend to obliterate. If, however,
we are to hold fast to the conception of a personal God, if
there be a Divine self-consciousness, then the Divine thought

1 5 2 Is God Knowable ?
has other contents in addition to the thought He has put
into His creation. God and the world cannot therefore be
held to be two sides of an equation, nor can the contents of
the one be equal to the contents of the other. The Hebrew
conception of creation as a voluntary act of the living God
for ever sets that idea aside as untenable. On the other
hand, however, the Hebrew conception of creation provides
for the thought of a real world, and for a progress which
ends, where human speculation usually begins, in the union
of the Creator with His creation. Hebrew thought does not
start from the datum of a mixed mass of mind and matter,
or a confused existence of subject and object, out of which
order, method, and intelligence slowly evolve themselves in
fixed and necessary succession. It starts with the datum
of the living God, who created all things, and gave them
their being, power, and mode of action. It proceeds on the
assumption, which always is verified in the actual events
of history, that this living God is greater than the world He
has made, yet is always longing to impart Himself to the
life of the world.
And the story of the Old Testament is simply the story
of the striving of the living God to communicate Himself
unto men, as light, as life, as love. What the religions of
the world desired as a starting-point, the religion of Israel
looks forward to as the goal. And this makes a great dif
ference. For by this means we are enabled to preserve all
the moral distinctions of good and evil, of light and darkness,
which in the other event are obliterated. On the view of
Israel, in the final consummation sin and evil are overcome,
darkness and imperfection are destroyed, ignorance and
separation have disappeared in the light of knowledge and
in the glory of union between God and His creation. Death
is swallowed up in victory, and tears and sorrows have had

The Hebrew Solution. 153
their day, fulfilled their purpose, and shall vanish for ever
more. Ere we close this chapter we would add this other
remark. The Hebrew conception of God, in Himself and
in His relation to the world, while it shuts out all tendencies
to pantheistic modes of thought, leaves room for that aspi
ration after the Divine, and for that longing after union with
God, the centre and source of all being, which are the
strength and charm of Pantheism. In fact, in all the more
recent pantheistic schemes of thought we find traces of
borrowing from the sublime idea of God embodied in the
Hebrew Scriptures. Of this we shall speak later when we
come to consider the developed conception of God.

VIII.
THE GREEK SOLUTION.
WE have already referred to Greece, and have stated
generally the attitude of the Greek mind to our
question. As the religion of Greece is, however, the only
other religion which has a direct historical connection with
Christianity, we may devote a few pages to a short descrip
tion of its character and tendency. We cannot do this in
detail ; but a general conception may be obtained, which will
be sufficiently accurate for our purpose. As Mr. Gladstone
has observed, " We see in the Greeks, beyond all question,
these two things — first, a peculiar and powerful element of
Anthropomorphism pervading their religion, and giving to
it a distinctive character, securing a remarkable fulness,
clearness, subtlety, elevation, and precision in their concep
tion of human nature, taking shape in, or at least accom
panying, an immense vigour both of speculation and of
action; a language of marvellous reach, elasticity, variety, and
power ; a really scientific excellence in art never elsewhere
attained ; and an eminence in the various branches of
letters which has given to them, for more than two thou
sand years, the place of first authority in the cultivated -
world" (Gladstone's "Gleanings," vol. vii., p. 78). This witness
is true ; and the truth of it is sufficient to warrant us in
devoting a few pages to the Greek solution of the problem
of our knowledge of God.

The Greek Solution. 155
At the outset it is apparent that the religion of Greece
was developed by the people out of the primitive concep
tions common to the Indo-European family. We take for
granted that there were such common beliefs, and a com
mon language which embodied them, ere the races
separated from their ancestral home. We shall not here
inquire how far the religion of the Greeks was influenced
by other races in its earlier stages. For it is plain and
manifest, what answer soever may be given to such ques
tions, that the story of Greek religion and of Greek thought
is mainly the story of an inward movement developed by
the people themselves, independent of influences from
beyond themselves. They had much in common with their
kindred ; but the peculiar contribution they have made to
our knowledge of God is due to themselves alone.
Hebrew religion begins, as we saw, with God, with the
story of a Divine action, with the Spirit that moved on the
face of the waters, with the creative Word at whose com
mand light and all the forms of life began to be, and were
maintained in existence. Greek religion, on the contrary,
begins with chaos, with a confusion in which all definition
is lost. No doubt all the possibility of being and life lies
latent in the dark and formless chaos. Germs of being are
within the mass, and by chance or necessity, in one way
or another, are evolved by degrees into the things we
actually know. The Greeks have no conception of a crea
tion. To attain to so high a thought would have been
impossible without a sure knowledge of the living God. All
definite existence was to them a product of something
which went before. Behind all else, and underlying all
particular manifestation of being, was the dark ground of
nature, the source, rule, and origin of everything. What
this in itself was is hard to tell. Nature stood over against

156 Is God Knowable?
all particular forms of being, an inscrutable fate, determin
ing everything — itself remaining undetermined. We
might describe it in the words of Mr. Spencer as an
inscrutable power, for ever unknowable. For the story of
Greek life and thought began where Mr. Spencer begins, and
the interest of the story consists in this, that the Greeks
were able to overcome their starting-point, and to see how
this inscrutable power actually became known to man.
The Greeks were able to attain to some measure of light
and freedom and of spiritual insight. They fought their
way out of the primeval conceptions, set themselves in
large measure free from the dominion of the blind
forces of nature, and came to some true knowledge of the
Power in whom we live and move and have our being.
Beginning with the powers of nature, like other families jaf
the Aryan race, they fought their way to the conception of
a kingdom of spirit and freedom and light. No doubt it
remains true that they never attained to the conception of
a Creative Word, who said, " Let there be light, and there
was light ; " but still they were able to reach the thought
that light forced its way out of the darkness which
imprisoned it, and attained to the manifestation of itself.
Spirit and freedom oyercame the powers of nature, and
wrested their sceptre from them. The old nature powers
were superannuated, retired into the background, and had
no active part in the government of the universe. The
development of Greek religion can only be understood when
we remember that the nature powers form only the
point of departure. Nature was given, the powers of
nature are then to be overcome, and to be transformed
into something higher, or thrust into retirement.
How great an achievement this was, we only learn when
we contrast the Indian with the Greek mythology. In India

The Greek Solution. 157
we hardly ever get beyond the powers of nature. Even
the founders of some forms of religion become myths
again, and the natural, physical attributes overcome the
moral and spiritual. There is in Indian mythology no
war of the gods, no overthrow of the Titans by the race of
Zeus. In Greece, on the other hand, the nobler and more
beautiful of the gods of Greek mythology developed them
selves through conflict, through the conquest and overthrow
of the Titans, of the rough and formless forces of nature.
It was a great advance to displace the cosmogonical forces,
and to enthrone in their room the presiding deities of
political life and organized society. For the Titans are
merely physical, natural existences, and have no spiritual
or moral significance. The war with them, and their over
throw, represent the first great victory of the Greeks over
the original nature worship they brought with them to
their original home. Henceforth with them reason is
greater than necessity, and freedom is better than fate.
Only through conflict and war can the nature powers
be dethroned, and the spirit of light and freedom take
their place. Here also we come into contact with one of
the great achievements of the Greek peoples. They con
ceived the possibility of victory over the blind forces of
nature. That they regarded the conflict as having taken
place, not among men, but among the heavenly powers
themselves, does not interfere with the great moral signi
ficance of this war of the gods. For it represents the
victory which the Greeks themselves had already won, and
the conflict through which they had gained this result.
They were now able to conceive of themselves as standing
over against nature ; and their own moral and spiritual
being were something higher and better than nature. The
new gods are greater than the old because they haye at-

158 Is God Knowable ?
tained to personality. They are not personifications of the
forces of nature, which is simply the first stage of the
progress of Greek religion. But the Greeks advanced
beyond that stage, until the nature ground was left almost
altogether behind. Almost, but not altogether ; for there
still cleaves to the deities of Greece some trace of the force
from which they were developed. Zeus is the head of the
new divinities, and retains his lightnings and thunder, and
in some phases of his activity cannot be distinguished
from the heaven overhead in its various manifestations of
brightness and gloom. But Zeus is also the god who
maintains the moral order of the world, is the protector
of hospitality, and upholds the social world. Oceanus was
only the elemental force of the sea, the personification of
its massiveness and its restlessness. But Poseidon has
become ethical. Wild and uncertain in his action like the
sea, and so bearing traces of his origin, he yet becomes
the god to whom is ascribed the building of walls and the
production of the horse. So it may be said of almost all
the personages which inhabit the Greek Pantheon. •» They
have the marks of elemental forces, and in some respects
never rise above their origin ; but in other respects they
shake themselves free, attain to moral and spiritual energy,
and represent the highest qualities of Greek personal and
social life. Helios is the sun, and continues to be the sun
as a merely natural object. But the deification of natural
objects could not long maintain its rule over the Greek
intelligence. They transformed the sun, recognised as
the source of light, into Apollo, the god of foresight and
insight, who makes everything clear, in whose light every
thing could be discerned in its true nature and relations.
The sun was the source of heat as well as the giver of
light, and his influence on life and growth was apparent.

The Greek Solution. 159
Instead, however, of the gross and impure conceptions
which in other races attended the worship of the sun-god,
the Greeks purified the myth of all its grossness, and
Apollo became the healer and the strengthener, the god
who exacts vengeance, and yet propitiates and purifies the
children of men. The monstrous rites of Baal-worship
had no place in Greece. Apollo himself is pure, and if he
be anthropomorphic, it is anthropomorphism of the highest
kind. For it is to be observed that the gods of Greece are not
abstractions, but concrete personalities of the most energetic
kind. " Though the names and fundamental traditions of
the several deities were wholly or in great part imported
from abroad, their characters, relations, and attributes passed
under a Hellenizing process, which gradually marked off
for them special provinces and functions which appear to
have been mainly original and indigenous, and to have
been taken by analogy from the division of labour in
human life and in political society. As early as in Homer,
while the prerogatives of Apollo and Athene are almost
universal, yet the Olympian community has its comple
ment of officers and servants with their proper functions.
Hephaistos moulds the twenty golden thrones which were
automatically to form the circle of the councils of the gods,
and builds for each of his brother deities their separate
palaces in the deep-folded recesses of the mighty mountain.
Music and song are supplied by Apollo and the Muses ;
Ganymede and Hebe are the cup-bearers; Hermes is the
agent ; Iris is the messenger ; while Themis, in whom is
personated the idea of deliberation and of relative rights,
is the summoner of the eKKXijo-ta, or great assembly of the
Twentieth Iliad, when the great issue of the law is to be
determined" (Gladstone's " Gleanings," vol. vii., pp. 51-52).

1 60 Is God Knowable ?
The Greeks were able in large measure to purify the
myths they had in common with their kinsmen. They
were led on to think of the gods as personal, and of the
divine system as social. The gods are so far free as to
find full scope for the bent of their nature ; and over them
all was the supreme rule of Zeus, whose rule, however,
was not absolute, but conditioned in various ways. Behind
him and all others lay the dark background of fate and
necessity, which neither gods nor men could resist. The
highest reach of attainment on the part of the Greeks did
not advance beyond the conception of order and beauty,
and their most noble conception of the divine left the gods
they worshipped still entangled in the meshes of their
natural origin. Nor had they any sure and well-grounded
hope of the progress of the world. The return of chaos
and of darkness was always possible, and the Titanic forces
might again gather strength, and overcome the gods with
whom lay the hope of the moral order of the world. For
great as was their conception of the power and spirituality
of the gods, it was not sufficient to transform completely the
non-moral character of the physical forces, from which the
gods had their first beginning in the thought of the Greeks.
Both in the Olympian system and in the individual gods
themselves the original non-moral element persisted, and
came to light in strange unexpected ways.
It was scarcely possible for the Greeks to reach the
thought of a divine purpose running through the ages, nor
yet to regard the gods as fair, just, and right in their
dealings with men. Their favour and displeasure were
distributed at random. The gods were also themselves
dependent, and behind them lay the fate which determined
their conduct and character. We find traces, however of
a persistent struggle on the part of the Greeks to advance

The Greek Solution. 161
beyond these imperfections, and to reach a rational order,
and a source of harmony and beauty in the world and
in human life. Slowly the nature myths become more
pure, and were stripped more and more of non-moral
qualities, until we reach the great conceptions of Apollo
and Athene, and on the other hand men were exalted to
divine rank, as the reward of work well done and of
sorrows manfully borne. Sometimes, indeed, we find a
solar myth so transfigured by the Greek mind that it can
scarcely be recognized. Even where we can still trace the
outlines of the myth, the story has been humanised so
greatly that the myth can never explain it wholly. " The
solar foundation of the mythus is wholly valueless and
unimportant; in other words, is alien to its essence, when
compared with the moral import it acquired among the
Greeks. It is the conception of life-long service to duty,
of strength combined with patience, of glory followed at the
cost of ease, of godhead achieved by manhood through
arduous endeavour — it is this that is really vital in the
myth Herakles. By right of this the legend entered the
sphere of religion and of art. In this spirit the sophist
enlarged upon it when he told how Herakles in his youth
chose virtue with toil rather than pleasure, incorporating
thus the high morality of Hesiod with the mythical element.
If myths like these are in any sense diseased words about
the sun, we must go further and call them immortalised
words, words that have attained eternal significance by dying
of the disease that afflicted them. The same remarks apply
to all the solar myths and lunar stories — to Achilles, Endy-
mion, Kephalos, and all the rest. As solar myths these tales
had died to the Greeks. As poems, highly capable of artistic
treatment in sculpture or in verse, pregnant with humanity,
fit to form the subject of dramatic presentation or ethical
n

1 62 Is God Knowable-?
debate, they remain of incalculable value. The soul of the
nation was in them. And that is their value to us " (" The
Greek Poets," Second Series, by J. A. Symonds, pp. 27-28).
Out of the rude and formless chaos, out of the elemental
forces of nature, and out of the perplexities of human life,
the Greeks contrived to shape a system of order and of
beauty. Along the line of mythological development they
reached the great conception of the personality of the gods.
They did not deify abstractions, nor make gods of abstract
unities of time or place or force. Whatever were the moral
and physical limitations under which the gods lay, they
were, according to the Greek conception, at least living, con
crete, self-conscious beings. They represented the national
striving of the Greeks after order, harmony, and truth ; and
mythology served at least to lift them above the abstract
conception of the divine, which is only the empty notion
of being in general. Those who believed in Zeus and in
Apollo were nearer the truth and had a more adequate
conception of .the moral and spiritual order of the world
than those who sought the source- and explanation of life in
physical substances or physical changes. The life of the
people was in the mythology ; it was ¦ only the speculative
intellect which was interested in the dance of atoms or the
results of blind chance. At all events many of these
mythological characters gave to the Greeks splendid examples
of human endeavour, of high devotion to duty, and of the
victory of mind over matter. From these they learned
lessons of abiding worth. If at times they revolted against
the non-morality of these myths and rose in indignation
against the caprice of the gods, that simply showed that they
had again outgrown their more primitive belief, and were
seeking for a faith more in harmony with their advanced
intellectual and moral life.

The Greek Solution. 163
Although they could not reach the conception of a
personal god of power, wisdom, and goodness sufficiently
great to discharge the duties of supreme governor of the
universe, yet in moments of supreme endeavour and of
high-wrought endurance the Greeks approached very nearly
to that great and true thought* At such times the Zeus of
passion and intrigue retired from view, was lost sight of,
and Zeus, "the greatest and most glorious," was invoked
with perfect trust, and his help was relied on as the
supreme power who would cause all righteous enterprise
to prosper, and would visit with punishment the evil-doer
and the oath-breaker. As early as Homer this somewhat
vague monotheism may be discerned ; while in the later
Greek poets it becomes more and more defined. The
tragic element of Greek life and thought finds expression in
this conflict between the underlying moral order of the
world and the . concrete manifestations of unrighteousness
and wrong-doing in human history. A Hebrew could face
the problem, recognise its gravity and wait for a solution,
for he could say, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right ? " But a Greek, who could not look up with unbounded
reverence and unquestioning trust to the god of his worship,
who could only make progress in knowledge, and find a
ground for hope by a revolution among the gods and a de
throning of the ancient divine powers, was unable to ask such
a question, or give the necessary answer in the affirmative.
The progress of Greek thought and life is marked by
revolution after revolution. It is true, indeed, that the
revolutions take place not on earth, but among the gods
themselves. The ancient nature powers are banished, and
a newer dynasty takes their place ; but the real revolution
is in the thought of the Greeks themselves. For a long
time they strove to reach the divine by a process of

1 64 Is God Knowable ?
purification of mythological deities ; and they failed to reach
the goal by that path. Then began another and a more
conscious way of reaching the end they longed for. Under
the teaching of their poets, they came to larger thoughts of
the moral order of the world. .^Eschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides, each in his own way was a preacher of righteous
ness to the Greeks. Under their guidance the Greeks came
to have a firmer grasp of the realities of life. They flourished
in the time when Greek patriotism was at its brightest,
and when there was more of a national life among them
than there ever was before or after. So iEschylus took
the ancient legends of his race and wove them into tragedies
of the highest order. They became flexible in his hands,
are filled with the fulness of all that had been achieved in
Greek history and endeavour, and speak to that and all
succeeding generations of law and order, and serene and
inflexible justice as the foundation of the world. Sophocles
also in his day taught his countrymen the worth and
meaning of human life, and gave them a new idea- of
manhood and womanhood. These poets represented their
countrymen, and gave expression to their deeper thoughts
and higher aspirations, and reveal to us the advance of the
Greeks in their knowledge of themselves and of the world
and of the gods.
Thus the mythology and the poetry of the Greeks kept
pace with their widening thought and deepening experience
of life. In some ways the Greeks advanced beyond the other
heathen nations of the world. We have already pointed
out that the higher gods were not mere personifications,
but were conceived to be persons with a certain fixed and
independent will and personality of their own. Even at
their highest and best, however, the characters of the gods
only kept pace with the growing intelligence of the people.

The Greek Solution. 165
They never rose above the ethical level of the time, and
in some phases of their character fell far below it. It has
been said with truth that the Greeks made their gods as
they went on in the course of their history, and they cer
tainly filled up the mythological outline with the fulness of
their national life and achievement. Yet there is a great
difference between the attitude of mind assumed by a people
to supreme beings who are simply the reflection of the
higher virtues of the national character, and the attitude
assumed in the presence of a power who is regarded as high
and holy, pure and spiritual, with a character and purpose
of His own, which He always acts on and perpetually holds
in view. In the one case there is no inflexible standard of
moral conduct, no weight of personal holiness to weigh the
people down or lift them up on the wings of lofty aspira
tion after wisdom, righteousness, and truth. The virtues
of the gods are the virtues of the people, and their limitations
and imperfections are theirs also. The demands made on
the worshippers are not severe. They are only such as
tradition and custom have sanctioned. When, however,
the God whom a people worshipped is regarded as having
a personal character and purpose of His own ; when He is
not the mere reflection of the national character, but dis
tinct and separate, having a steady moral purpose, directed
to aims which He regards, and the nation does not regard ;
when, in short, a nation has a God whom to worship and
to serve demands a constant strain and moral effort, then
there is a sure guarantee for moral and spiritual progress.
In the one event the people have made their gods, and do
not feel the reverence and adoration which belong to
their worship. In the other event the nation feels that God
has made them, not they themselves, and they fall prostrate
before their Maker.

1 66 Is God Knowable ?
The limitations of nature, power, and office which lay
on the gods left all the more room for the development of
the conception of human freedom and independence. Par
ticular deities could be resisted and overcome, and penalties
by no means followed necessarily on want of obedience.
For the particular deities never reached independence of
the other deities of the system ; at all events, supreme fate
ultimately ruled them all. This phase of Greek thought
was also national and characteristic. They were not un
aware of the darkness and tragic mystery of life. Now
and then they seemed to look for a moment at the coming
twilight of the gods and the reign of chaos which would
again return, or they would steadily contemplate the suffer
ings of Prometheus, and dwell with unimaginable pity on
the pathos of that woeful story. The sadness and the
pathos of human suffering are certainly present, not only
in undertone as it were. The Norse myths force the suffer
ing and despair to the front, and cause them to give expres
sion to the woe, the wonder, and the hope of men. But the
Greeks seem to veil the sorrow, and to cover up the gloom
of life, and learn to think only of the bright, joyous, and
pleasant aspects of the world. " To eliminate the mys
terious and the terrible, to accentuate the joyous and the
profitable for human uses, was the truest instinct of the
Greeks." So their national life culminated and decayed, and
their progress was only in thought and art, and not a pro
gress of moral and spiritual life.
If neither by a purified mythology nor by a poetry un
surpassed in ancient literature, could Greece come to a
knowledge of God, did she make any more progress
towards that end by her philosophical speculation on the
origin and causes of things ? In course of time they had
quite outgrown the mythological elements of their religion,

The Greek Solution. 167
and could find no abiding solution of the problems of life
on that line. They could not find a god of power, wisdom,
and purity equal to the task of the government of the
world.' But the idea of a Cosmos or ordered world had
taken possession of their hearts and minds, and ruled their
conceptions. At all costs they kept hold of the order and
harmony of the Cosmos, and instinctively turned away
from the steady contemplation of the sin, despair, and dis
order of the world. The natural boldness and keenness of
Greek intelligence seems somehow to have been blunted
in the presence of moral evil. They evaded its presence
and dwelt with ever-increasing delight on those aspects of
the world and of human life in which moral evil was least
felt or perceived. Thus Greek art set itself to the repre
sentation of life and nature on its bright and sunny side.
The shadows of death were left out of account, and all
things were shown in the clear light of day.
No doubt there arose out of this very limitation a clear
increase of life and strength. Leaving darkness and gloom
in the background, and concentrating their strength on what
was beautiful and fruitful of gladness, the Greeks were able
to make for themselves a clear space for the dwelling-place
of light, beauty, and harmony. By ignoring the mystery
and the gloom of life, they constructed for themselves a
fair world of beauty, and strove to make the most of the
things which were in some sense fair and true and good.
But- the darkness and the gloom were not overcome ; they
were only ignored, and at any moment might invade the
light, and chaos might come again. The little place of
light, the fair and beautiful world -of Greek art, was dearly
purchased by the exclusion of the deeper mystery and
agony of being. And there was needed, even in this
sphere, where human work has been most perfect, a re-

1 68 Is God Knowable?
cognition of the darker phases of human life and a direct
acknowledgment of and victory over the forces of death.
Art would not be equal to its task until the human spirit
had won the victory over death. Death had to be looked
at fairly, frankly, and consciously, and its dark possibilities
explored and vanquished. Then art might come to its
fulness, and become the expression of hope and expectation
triumphant over pain. Greek art won the success it had
simply by shutting its eyes to misery and pain. But pain
is one of the most universal forms of human experience,
and therefore what ignores it is only a passing phase of
life, and cannot abide. While, therefore, Greek art remains
as the most perfect expression of a beauty of a limited
range, on a one-sided view of life, it could not be for any
length of time a resting-place for the human spirit in its
travail and labour, in this changeful world.
The bright and joyous beings embodied in Greek art,
some of whom, even in the agonies of death, die with a
smile on their lips, set forth the ideal of human strength
and endeavour. These forms live in the pages of the poets
and in the marble of the sculptor. They exert a strange
fascination on subsequent ages. To all of us in some moods
of mind, and to some people always, they represent all that
is pleasant or desirable in life. Many have consciously
striven to confine their life within these bounds, and for a
little while, as in the Florence of the Renaissance, they have
succeeded. But it could be no adequate dwelling-place for
the human spirit, and the golden house and palace of art is-
soon shattered by the crash of elemental forces from with
out, or by the explosive power of the moral and spiritual
forces innate in man. It is not necessary to deny that
Greek art is itself a spiritual achievement of a unique and
remarkable order, and a permanent gain to the human

The Greek Solution. 169
family. But its limitations are so numerous, and its range
of moral effort so limited that the human spirit can dwell
in it only for a time, and must press onwards and outwards
for a place of larger bounds in which it may find space and
liberty. The purified mythology, the literature and the art of
Greece were great, and were full of spiritual elements.
But the speculative thought of Greece was perhaps the
greatest manifestation of Greek freedom and intelligence.
As we remarked formerly in another relation, we find two
great tendencies at work in Greek thought,- — tendencies
which have always reappeared in the history of speculative
thought, and are quite alive at the present hour. At present
many are inclined to regard the physical tendency of early
Greek speculation as the proper type and model of fertile
productive thought, and are disposed to regard the more
spiritual philosophy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as a
reaction and a retrogression. On the other hand, some of
the present leaders of philosophic thought find in Plato and
Aristotle hints and anticipations of the later philosophy
which, originating in Kant, has, according to them, found
its consummation in Hegel. Into this great controversy
we do not propose to enter. It is undeniable that in
Socrates Greek thought reached a conception of divine
energy and activity which, in some respects, advanced far
beyond any other unaided conception of the human mind
in regard to the nature of God. " In the case of Socrates it
is beyond question, both from the most trustworthy records
of his own conversations and even more from the deve
lopments, by his most devoted disciples, of ideas that they
owed avowedly to his inspiration, that he gave the con
clusive and determining impulse to a veneration for the
Divinity — to Oelov — as distinguished from and above the

1 70 Is God Knowable ?
mythological gods. The tone of his instructions was thus
to give permanence to the previously fugitive monotheistic
element of Greek religion, but by no means a presumptuous
definition of form, and especially to attach to the recognition
of it a sacred sense of absolute dependence and of moral
responsibility " (" The Age of Pericles," by W. W. Lloyd,
vol. ii., p. 300).
The Greek theogonies are closely connected with the
dynastic wars of the gods ; and as these gods were conceived
to have a beginning in time, the Greek intelligence was
driven to the recognition of a power behind and above
these gods, which power ultimately was alone recognized
as divine. The powers of evil and death were uncontrolled
by the gods ; though, on the other hand, the gods were
supposed to be free from their dominion. This power 01
necessity, destiny, or fate never attained to freedom or
personality in the Greek mythology. Fate works, but
works blindly, without choice, freedom, or foresight, and
remains as a dark unsolved enigma. The belief and
thought of the people tended either towards the deification
of an inanimate law of the universe ruling all, even the
gods themselves, or towards the personal power of the gods,
who acted either according to inclination or caprice, or
according to the highest wisdom. And the alternative
came to be whether they were to regard the gods as
absolutely subjected to the power of destiny, or whether
they were to raise their conception of the character of the
gods, and enlarge it sufficiently to make their gods equal to
the task of overcoming the blind fate which lay at the heart
of things.
The Greeks grappled with this problem, and sought for
a solution with a tenacity which was sublime. If they
failed to find the solution, the cause of the failure was their

The Greek Solution. 17*
ignorance of the facts of the divine manifestation, and not
from any want of thoroughness or of intellectual insight on
their part. Socrates gave the impulse to the Greek mind
which culminated in the speculations of Plato and of
Aristotle. In his arguments and discussions on the nature
of the gods he was ever ready to appeal to the general
belief of mankind, and ever sought to deepen in mankind
the feeling of reverence towards the divine. The Deity,
Socrates held, could be known, if not in itself, yet in its
works as a providence governing the world in freedom and
in righteousness. Having once grasped the thought of a
divine providence, and having distinguished the God who
orders and holds together the world from the other deities,
divine providence becomes more and more concrete to the
apprehension of Socrates. The one Supreme God, who
manifests Himself in the physical and moral order of the
world, is not identified with the Zeus of the popular reli
gious belief; and, indeed, Socrates seems never to have
thought of the relation of this Supreme God to the gods of
the people of Greece. He does not hesitate to use the
names of the gods of the popular religion, nor does he
hesitate to ascribe omnipotence and omniscience to them ;
but it would appear that the contradiction which emerges
when his conception of the divine is extended to the hosts
of the popular gods never became patent to his mind. The
Divine Being only became concrete to his apprehension in
the order of providence ; but what the Supreme Being was
in Himself, or in relation to the gods, whether we are to
think of Him as personal or impersonal remains vague and
undefined. What human thought saw through Socrates
was the conception of a divine order in the world, — an
order produced by the action of a God who orders and
holds together the universal Cosmos.

172 Is God Knowable ?
With Plato this Supreme God is essentially the Good.
Notwithstanding the number and variety of the writings of
Plato and the abundance of topics intimately connected
with our problem contained in his works, he appears to
have studiously avoided direct statements upon the subject
of the divine nature. He speaks in the " Timseus " of the
difficulty of investigating and of finding the Framer and
Father of the universe, and of the impossibility of express
ing the idea of the Supreme Good in terms comprehensible
by all. Other ideas might be expressed in intelligible
terms, but the idea of God was so much greater than other
ideas, that Plato avoids the attempt to speak of it in definite
language. Now and then he comes closer to his problem,
and the conception of the Demiurgus may be regarded as
the highest thought Plato could reach on this subject. In
language somewhat vague he shadows forth the place,
sphere, and power of the Demiurgus. He is one, not
merely an abstract unity, but one who has the power to
think, to will freely, one who transcends the world, is
separated and distinguished from the other deities of
the world's system. Closely connected with the Platonic
doctrine of the Demiurgus is his doctrine of Ideas. Our
general conceptions, and the signs by which we express
them, have their corresponding objects in the intelligible
world. Ideas have, according to Plato, a real existence,
and are the only things worth our knowing, the only
worthy objects of thought. They do not change, they
are one and the same always, and have an independent
existence of their own. The things of sense are fleeting,
dependent on space and time, but ideas are above space
and time, independent of our conceptions, and belong to a
world of their own. They are not even the thoughts of
God, but the object of His thoughts, and form the rule

The Greek Solution. 173
and method of His working when He shaped the void into
a world of sense. God and ideas are the only things which
really have existence, and the sensible world has existence
only in so far as it partakes of the nature of the idea.
Sometimes Plato goes so far as to name the ideas " Eternal
Gods ; " but he strives consistently to keep the ideas from
attaining to an existence external to and independent of
God. For he ever seeks to set forth God as the idea in
which all other ideas have their root and ground. And the
idea of God comprehends all other ideas ; He is the One in
whom all imperfect types meet, and are embraced in one
unity. It would lead us too far afield were we to describe
the way of the formation of the world according to Plato,
or to count the number of intermediate agencies between
the Supreme Idea and the world of sense, all of which
are conceived to be present and operative in the formation
and administration of the universe. The God of Plato is
the Supreme Good ; and this highest and most perfect Idea
manifests itself in the intelligible world of ideas, and every
idea presents some form or aspect of the good.
This monotheistic conception of the Divine, great and
refined as it undoubtedly is, remains vague and undefined.
There is no trace in his speculations of a living God, who
is personally free and unconditioned. His God is at the
best only a Demiurgus, who is not the creator, but only
the maker of the world. His action is conditioned by a
matter which is independent and pre-existent. He is but
an artist, and his work is conditioned by the nature of the
material he has to deal with. No doubt Plato reduces
matter almost to nothingness, and leaves to it only the
indeterminate possibility of existence. But even in this
vague form it has substance enough to land the system
of Plato in an irreconcilable dualism between idea and

174 Is God Knowable?
matter. Along with this dualistic remainder there is
also the pantheistic element of which he cannot get rid.
All substance partakes of the Divine essence, and ulti
mately the sum of all existence is God. Both the world-
soul and the human soul partake, in however inferior a
degree, of the Divine essence. Nor is there in the system
of Plato any possibility of freedom, either as a starting-
point or as a goal for the gods or for men. The Supreme
Good is helpless in the hands of fate. Much as Plato
accomplished, and far-reaching as was his thought, yet
the terrible destiny, which formed the undertone of Greek
thought and life, stood unchanged as the background of
his highest thought also. Destiny assigns to all things
their limits, and presents even to God a limit over which
He cannot pass. The Demiurgus and his working, ideas
and their order, the supreme good and its purpose, are
after all only playthings in the hands of this inscrutable
Destiny, which, with unconscious elementary force, rules
and determines everything. When analyzed to its elements,
the deity of Plato is simply a function of the universe, ruled
by it, not the ruler of it. At all events, the relation of God
to the world does not, with Plato, rise above the conception
of an artist or master-builder to whom his material is given,
and who works under conditions.
On the other hand, the relation of God to the world is
considered by Aristotle as the last end and final cause of
the world. The deity of Plato is an intelligent power who
knows the world, and works for. the forming, ordering, and
sustaining of the world. The Deity of Aristotle is pure
intelligence, who is himself the object of his thought, and
has no other object of thought than himself. God has not
made nor formed the world, for the world is from eternity ;
but He is nevertheless the goal and crowning consumma-

The Greek Solution. 175
tion of the world. All the efforts and strivings of particular
beings are directed to this end ; but this movement of the
world is not controlled nor directed by God. Nature is so
far independent that all her efforts and all forms of being
within her are produced out of the immanent power within
nature. The power within nature is constantly solicited
and drawn forth by the existence of the pure intelligence
whom Aristotle names God. But the pure intelligence is
incessantly occupied with itself; and were the world or
particular things to be the object of his thought or of his
care, he would cease to be the changeless being he is, and
would change from better to worse or from worse to better.
This changeless intelligence sits apart, the object of all
finite striving, yet himself unseeking, and not caring that he
is sought.With this as the fundamental thought of his system,
Aristotle has lost hold of the thought of Divine providence ;
nor has he discussed the questions of whether goodness,
justice, and freedom can be predicated of this pure intelli
gence ; nor has the relation of God to the good and evil in
the world much interest for him. The one predicate he'
insists on is that the Divine is a thinking being, who thinks
himself. Of course it is difficult to win a way of conceiving
of any possible relation of such a being to the order of the
world or to particular beings. One of the latest commen
tators on Aristotle tries with all his might to surmount this
difficulty, and surmounts it in characteristic Hegelian
fashion. " The work of reason in thinking things suggests
the question,. How can immaterial thought come to receive
material things ? Only, it is obvious, in virtue of some
community between thought and things. Over and above
therefore passive reason, which receives, combines, and
compares the various objects of thought, Aristotle recognises

176 Is God Knowable?
a creative reason which makes objects of thought, which
renders the world intelligible, and bestows on the materials
of knowledge those ideas or categories which make them
accessible to thought; just as the sun communicates to
material objects that light without which colour would be
invisible, and sight could have no object. Hence reason is
as it were the constant support of an intelligible world;
and Aristotle, while assigning reason to the soul of man,
describes it as coming from without, and would seem
almost to identify it with God as the eternal and omni
present thinker. Even in man, in short, reason realises
something of essential characteristic of absolute thought, —
the unity of thought as subject with thought as object "
(" Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle," by Mr. Edwin
Wallace, pp. 92-3). Mr. Wallace in another paragraph
thus sums up the Aristotelian conception of God : " God to
Aristotle is the first of all substances, the necessary first
source of movement, who is Himself unmoved ; a Being
with everlasting life and perfect blessedness, engaged in
never-ending self-contemplation ; acting on the world as the
primary object of love, in which reason and desire fall into
unity. The moral virtues are too dependent on material,
bodily, and terrestrial conditions to be ascribed to God :
but the perfect simplicity and immutability of His nature
brings Him the purest and serenest pleasure" ("Outlines
of the Philosophy of Aristotle," p. 73). In the introduction
to his edition of Aristotle's Psychology, Mr. Wallace
enters at length into the Aristotelian doctrine of creative
reason, of which discussion it is only necessary here to say,
that he has unconsciously brought to it, as it appears to us,
the categories of the Hegelian philosophy. But we need
not enter on the discussion. For taking it as Mr. Wallace
puts it, we get no nearer to a true conception of God,

The Greek Solution. \TJ
whether we regard Him as the first mover, Himself un
moved, or as the universal thinker, who has Himself as the
only and exclusive object of thought, or as the goal and
consummation of the world's progress.
It remains to consider what Clough has called the
"Stoic- Epicurean" acceptance of the world. To this "Stoic-
Epicurean " attitude many influences are now tending.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, it is the starting-
point of the work on " Natural Religion ; " it underlies the
statements of Matthew Arnold ; and it is the goal to
which Mr. Spencer's system of philosophy tends. We
find a good and clear exposition of it in the volume of
Mr. Symonds, from which we have already quoted. He
tells us that it is desirable to recover this "Stoic-Epicurean"
acceptance, and to face with meek serenity the problems of
the world in which we live. The growth of rationalism
and the removal of ancient beliefs by the discoveries of
science have tended, Mr. Symonds tells us, to remove old
landmarks, and made it necessary to win for ourselves a
theory of conduct which shall be human, and which shall
be based on our knowledge of nature. " Our vices and
our virtues differ from those of the Greeks four centuries
before the Christian era. It does not therefore follow that
we have not some vices from which they were free, and
that they had not virtues in which we are deficient. The
real point to ascertain with regard to ourselves and to
them is the basis upon which the conceptions of morality
in either period have rested. Modern morality has
hitherto been theological ; it has implied the will of a
Divine Governor. Greek morality was radically scientific :
the faith on which it eventually leaned was a belief in
t/jvo-is, in the order of the universe, wherein gods, human
societies, and individual human beings had their proper

1 78 Is God Knowable ?
places. The conception of morality as the law for man,
regarded as a social being forming part and parcel of the
Cosmos, was implicit in the whole Greek view of life ; it
received poetical expression from the tragedians ; it trans
pired in the conversations of Socrates, in the specula
tions of Plato, in the more organised system of Aristotle "
("The Greek Poets," by J. A. Symonds, Second Series,
pp. 384-5). Mr. Symonds finds that the Greek conception of
morality obtains its highest expression in the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius. We quote his exposition : " Our conscious
ness reflects* the order of the universe, and enables us to
become more than automatically partakers in its movement. '
To obey this reason is the end of philosophy, the fulfilment
of the purpose for which man exists. By doing so, we are
in harmony with the world, and take our proper place in
the scale of beings. Nothing can happen to us independent
of this order; and therefore nothing, rightly understood,
can happen to our hurt. If disease and affliction fall upon
us, we must remember that we are the limbs and organs of
the whole, and that our suffering is necessary for its well-
being. We are thus the citizens of a vast state, members
of the universal economy. What affects the whole for
good is good for us ; and even when it seems to be evil, we
must hold fast to the faith that it is good beyond our ken.
Our selfishness is swallowed up in the complete and total
interest. Our virtues are social and not personal. Our
happiness is relative to the general welfare, not contained
in any private pleasure or indulgence of an individual
caprice" ("The Greek Poets," pp. 386-7).
The first thing we note in these extracts is the antithesis
between theology and science. It is assumed by Mr.
Symonds that theology is unscientific, or beyond the scope
of scientific method. He seems to be of the opinion, that

The Greek Solution. 179
any process of reasoning, or any morality which has regard
to the will of a Divine Governor, is ipso facto vitiated, and un
scientific. Mr. Symonds is only repeating the current cant of
our time. And their view is right and true, if the under
lying Greek conception be true. If nature be all, and if there
is nothing and no person beyond and above nature, then to
live according to nature may be an adequate rule of life.
If, however, it be scientific to have regard to facts, and if
the best theory be only a true explanation of the facts, then
the Greek view of morality is radically unscientific. If
the will of a Divine Governor be an operative factor in
the history of the world, to refuse to acknowledge such a
factor is . not science ; it is simply foolishness. The
fundamental fallacy lies in the unconscious assumption
made by Mr. Symonds, that to have regard to the will of a
Supreme Governor is to introduce elements of uncertainty,
caprice, and arbitrariness into morality, and to make
morality altogether capricious. How they have reached
this conclusion, or on what rational grounds they justify it,
it is difficult to say. One can understand how Marcus
Aurelius should strive to get rid of the thought of a Supreme
Ruler of the universe, when he could get no higher con
ception of God than that reached by the thinkers and poets
of Greece. One can understand how he should ardently
desire to be free, even in thought, from the caprice of the
gods. But that Mr. Symonds should think that faith in a
moral order of the world is greater than faith in a moral
ruler, or that nature is greater than God, is a fact sufficiently
surprising. Is it a stronger spring of action to say, " Find
your place in nature, and fulfil your function as part and
parcel of the cosmos," or to say, " Be ye perfect, as your
Father in heaven is perfect " ?
We do not deny or seek to extenuate any real gain won

1 80 Is God Knowable ?
for us by the efforts of the Greeks. We rather affirm that
there is a settled, physical, moral, and spiritual order in the
world. We do not deny that man has his place in nature,
and his duty as a member of the social and cosmical order ;
nor do we ignore that the world seems to have a principle
of life and movement in itself. Affirming all these as true
and undoubted, we none the less affirm that the rational
explanation of the origin and purpose of the world demands
an advance beyond anything we can find in the life and
thought of Greece. The serenity which Mr. Symonds
recommends is a serenity which is possible only when we
wilfully shut our eyes to the mysterious and the terrible,
and dwell exclusively on what makes for joy and gladness.
There are facts of history which did not come within the
knowledge of the Greeks, but which, on inquiry, might be
accessible to Mr. Symonds. These facts are embodied in
the literature of the Old Testament, in which we see God
coming to the help of man, not merely by the moral order,
beauty, and graciousness He has placed in the world, but
in more personal ways, speaking words which people could
understand, and doing personal deeds of mercy and
redemption which manifested His thoughts and ways as
the ordered world could not manifest them.
In what way the charge of being unscientific can be
brought against this conception we confess we do not
understand. It most certainly does not conflict with the
conception of an ordered world, in which all things move
and work according to law. " What a man sows that shall
he also reap," is as true in the Hebrew conception as it is
in the Greek, and it is also affirmed with even stronger
emphasis. But then the Hebrew conception goes further
than the Greek, and affirms the freedom, the intelligence,
the personality of God, and refuses to say that the ordered

The Greek Solution. 181
cosmos is the only way of divine manifestation. Is this the
conception which is regarded as unscientific? A conception
cannot be unscientific which is capable of verification by
scientific methods. The theistic hypothesis may be, nay,
has been verified in history and in the consciousness of
men. And the fact of a real fellowship between God and
man is as sure and true as any fact on which science builds.
The opposite hypothesis obtains a semblance of truth only
by ignoring a vast field of human experience, and by
refusing even to look at it.
We may pay too large a price for the Greek serenity of
mind, if we find we have to buy it at the cost of amputating
all that side of our nature which looks up to God, and looks
forward to eternal life. The Greeks themselves made the
experiment for us on a large scale, and for a lengthened
period, in the most favourable circumstances, and the
verdict of history is that their philosophy could not bear
the strain cast upon it by the burden of human hope and
the aspirations of the human heart. Greek religion failed
to meet the needs of Greek life, and Greek civilization
vanished. Other thinkers were at work in the time of
Marcus Aurelius with a brighter hope and a surer grasp of
fact than he, — men who did not with calm serenity of mind
look out with undisturbed equanimity on the perturbations
of the world and on the misery of men, but who, with a
passion of love and pity in their hearts, and with a firm
persuasion of the perpetual presence and abiding love of
the living God, went forth to right the Wrongs, to remove
the miseries of men. They rose to a height of impassioned
goodness never seen within the Greek or Roman world.
It was their theological conception which gave them their •
greatness and their power. So also their theological con
ception gave to Luther, to Calvin, to Knox, their mighty

182 Is God Knowable?
power for good in the sixteenth century. And yet forsooth
we are told that a theological basis for morality is unscien
tific. Well, so much the worse for science if this be so.
But what is unscientific is the narrowness which neglects
or ignores facts like these. It would be scientific to collect
all the facts, analyse them, classify them, and ascertain
whether, from a wide survey of the lives of individual men,
and from a close examination of the facts of history, the
divine action of the living God on the lives of men is really
an operative factor in the progress of men. If it be so, as
we believe it is, then the view which would frame a theory
of human conduct without reference to God is unscientific,
and unscientific simply because it refuses to deal with facts
which properly belong to the subject of inquiry.

IX.
THE CHRISTIAN SOLUTION.
THE Hebrew solution, as we have seen, of our problem,
was one mainly of hope. They trusted the Living
God, and held fast to Him, in the full and clear conviction
that, in the end, all perplexities would be removed, and in
the light of God all things would be truly and harmoniously
seen in true proportion and in fit relation. They were
able to keep their thought of God, and to maintain their
conception of Him as holy, just, and good ; as almighty
in power, of infinite wisdom and of supreme love, not
withstanding all the difficulties which surrounded their
position. The grand and unique possession of Israel was
in their sure knowledge of the Living God, who could speak
to them, to whom they could speak.
The Greek solution, although it contained many valuable
elements, did not issue in any clear conception of God, nor
in any abiding results of value to the race. For their
highest efforts of thought and their deepest strivings after
purity were not able to transform the principle from which
they started, nor were they ever able to reach the analysis
which seems to have been given to Israel, — the supreme
analysis which insists on the separation and distinction
between God and the world. With them, the Divine con
tinued to be entangled with the world, was only immanent

1 84 Is God Knowable?
in the world, or attained only to an abstract independence,
and, in any case, His being and action were conditioned by
the world. Still they did emphasize the immanence of
God in the world, and laid stress on one element which a
true solution must account for, and to which it must have
a special regard.
At all events, a true and adequate solution must recognise
a closer connection between God and the world than we
can obtain from the conception which looks on nature as' a
mechanism, fitted together by external means, for the
expression of a purpose beyond itself.- To the Greeks, the
world had a soul, a living principle within itself, in virtue
of which it could act, live, and work. And our later
philosophy and science has this conception for its funda
mental principle. To them there is a living principle in
nature, and the beauty, the harmony, and the manifold
inter-relations of things speak to them of an ever-acting,
ever-living power, which is always near, ever sustaining,
guiding, and moulding the plastic powers of the world to
newer forms of higher life. If our later philosophy and
science use the name of God at all, they for the most part
use the term to describe the power which they recognise
everywhere, in grass, flower, and tree, on earth and sea and
sky, which also they recognise as the inexhaustible source
of force and of life.
It is incumbent on us to recognise this habit of mind,
and to recognise also that the Christian solution ought to
contain in itself such a manifestation of the living power
seemingly inherent in nature as will amply meet and
satisfy all the reasonable expectations of all kinds of men.
If we are unable to make room for the principle of the
immanence of the Divine in nature, or if we cannot lay
hold of the tendency which lies at the basis of the

The Christian Solution. 185
evolution theory, .whether of Darwin or of Hegel, and show
its consistency with the Christian conception of God and
His relation to the world, then it is clear that this tendency
will pursue its own course, and, notwithstanding all logical
and other difficulties, will rest contented with the solution
set forth in the treatise on " Natural Religion." We are
persuaded, however, that the Christian solution is true
and adequate, for this among other reasons, because it has
laid hold of and made its own, and set in proper place and
relation the tendency of which we speak. There is a living
principle at work in nature, there is a divine presence in
the works of God, and there is in the Christian writings
abundant evidence that the main thought of modern science
and philosophy is a thought familiar to the writers of the
New Testament. Modern science and philosophy will have
done us a great service if it will force students of theology to
go back not merely to the history of theology, but to the
New Testament itself, to search out its meaning, to gather
together and to set forth in order and method its profound
teaching on the relation of God to the world.
That Greek literature and philosophy had a profound
influence on Christian theology is a proposition which
admits pf no doubt. From the middle of the second
century onwards there are abundant traces, both in the
way of resisting its influence and of yielding to it. On the
other hand, it is equally clear that Greek speculation has
had little or no direct influence on the writers of the New
Testament Scriptures. Their use of language, their
peculiar terms, and their view of all great doctrines,
have their origin, not in the use of Greek philosophy, but
in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the Septuagint version of
the Old Testament. The , scientific exegesis of the New
Testament has found, from lengthened experiment, that the

1 86 Is God Knowable?
true way of reaching a consistent view of the meaning of the
writers is to have regard, not so much to the history and
meaning of words as these are shown in classic writings,
as to the meaning of words in the Hebrew Scriptures and
in the Septuagint. A true exegesis has been led more and
more to discard the influence of Greek philosophy as a
factor in its interpretation. At all events, such influence is
indirect, and for the most part the writers are unconscious
of it. The categories, methods, and results of Greek
philosophy cannot serve as guides to the meaning of the
writers of the New Testament Scriptures.
It will not be necessary for us, therefore, to enter into
the controversy, which is yet unfinished, regarding the
relation of Alexandrian Eclecticism to the Scriptures of the
New Testament. The place of Philo, and of the tendencies
which culminated in Philo, in the history of human thought,
is one of abiding interest. It was the first attempt at a
fusion of Greek and Hebrew thought, an attempt to combine
the earnestness, the moral power, and sublime intensity of
the Hebrew with the speculative insight and calm serenity
of the Greek, It represents also the first surrender of the
Hebrew to the fascination of Hellenic culture. Without
entering into detail, we may say that Philo's reconciliation
amounts to a surrender of all that is distinctive and
peculiar to the Hebrew way of looking at creation, — a
surrender which was repeated by Maimonides, and in
larger measure and in grander proportions by Spinoza at
the beginning of the history of modern philosophy. These
Hebrew thinkers brought to their speculations the natural
characteristics of their race, as these were developed through
a long and peculiar history, and unconsciously gave to nature
what their national teachers ascribed to God. They took
the attributes of God and ascribed them to the Cosmos, so

The Christian Solution. 187
that their conception of the Cosmos is a greater, higher,
holier thing than we can find in the pages even of Plato or
of Aristotle.
We must content ourselves here with this brief allusion
to Philo, and to the tendency he unconsciously represented.
Neither the influence of Philo nor the Greek philosophy
had any direct effect on the writers of the New Testament.
And the New Testament solution of the problem of the
knowledge of God is altogether independent of any help
from Greece. Unless we mistake, however, we shall find
that in the New Testament we have all the elements of a
true solution, which gives to the Hellenic factor of modern
thought the widest scope and the most abiding satisfaction.
Philo and Spinoza present to us views which are in
adequate, which leave to God no self-consciousness and no
personality, while Paul and John present to us views
which conserve at once the doctrine of God and man and
of the world, and leave room for the widest research of
science and for the strongest claims of religion.
What, then, is the Christian solution ? It lies in the
Christian doctrine of the Christ, of the place He holds,
and of the work He does in the world. In the writings
of the Apostles, we find in the foreground the statement
that all things were created by the Word of God, are
sustained by Him, and are tending towards Him. He is
the beginning, middle, and end of creation. Where modern
philosophy can see only the persistence of force or the
evolution of an idea, where the Greeks could only find a
reason or an abstract intelligence, there the apostles saw
the presence and the working of the personal Word of God.
The existence, the methods, the law, the working of created
things are due to the living energy, wisdom, and power of
the Word of God. To His creative activity the worlds owe

1 88 Is God Knowable?
their being, to His sustaining activity their order and their
progress, and to the energy of His love they owe it that they
shall be brought into fellowship with God. True, indeed,
it is that both in the Scriptures and in theology the larger
part of both is taken up with the doctrines which set forth
the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ in their
bearing on the present state and ultimate destiny of man.
With great earnestness, skill, and success theologians
have toiled to set forth in systematic order the doctrines of
Christ and His work in themselves and in relation to
human needs. This work was the most urgent, and has a
most exact relation to the questions which most impera
tively demanded an answer. They are urgent questions
still, and, while men continue to feel that they are sinners
needing solvation, will continue to be so. But there are
other questions which press on us with a weight unknown
to our fathers. Under the stress and strain of the burdens
of their life, they searched the Scriptures, and in them
found that aspect of the revelation of Christ which suited
their need, and gave them courage and endurance for life
and work. It would appear that there is an inheritance
awaiting us also in the revelation of the Christ. He bore
the burdens of former generations ; will He not bear our
burdens also ? To doubt it would be to prove false to
the lessons of all recorded history.
May we then seek to lay on the Christ the burden of
the reconciliation between science and religion ? And may
we venture to promise to the Agnostic, that, without the
surrender of any vital principle of his creed, he will find
in the Christ the guiding principle of the world's life, the
creative impulse of science, the source and strength of all
that is harmonious and beautiful in art, and of all that is
good and true and heroic in human history? Is there

The Christian Solution. 189
not in the doctrine of the Christ and of His mediatorial
position as the Head of all created things, precisely that
aspect of truth which meets the need of our time ? The
most prevalent conception of our time, and perhaps the
deepest conviction of the scientific world, is the persuasion
of the continuity of existence and the necessary related-
ness of all phases of being. It is not likely that anything
will shake the steadfastness of this conviction. Is it
necessary that we should try to do so ? If it could be
shown that the man of science need not be called on to
sacrifice the strongest convictions he has, nor in any
way palter with his love of truth ; if it could be shown
that the artist's love of harmony, beauty, and loveliness is
true and right ; and that the moralist's persuasion of the
supreme moral order of the universe is true and good ; if it
could be shown that all of these convictions can be held in
harmony with other truths which are needlessly supposed
to be inconsistent with them, then we shall have found the
true reconciliation between religion and science, and our
knowledge of the truths of science shall no longer be held
to be incompatible with our knowledge of God.
It seems to me that this reconciliation is proved in the
Apostle's doctrine of the creative and sustaining activity of
the Lord Jesus Christ. This aspect of Him and of His
work is not confined to any one of the writers of the New
Testament. It is common to most of them. He is called
"The Beginning of the creation of God" (Rev. iii. 14),
the primary Source of the creation. It may not be
possible to define precisely what the relation is which is
here described as the Beginning of the creation of God,
but that it is a relation of the closest kind is very evident.
The relation is, of course, not physical or mechanical, nor
is it to be regarded as if the Eternal Word were identified

1 90 Is God Knowable ?
with the world-soul of the Stoic philosophy. It is,
however, of such a kind that the order of creation and its
laws spring from Him who is its head, all its principles
find their origin and goal in Him, " through whom also
God made the worlds" (Heb. i. 2). More clearly does this
appear in that passage of the Epistle to the Colossians
which is thus paraphrased by Bishop Lightfoot : " He is
the perfect image, the visible representation of the unseen
God; He is the Firstborn, the absolute Heir of the Father,
begotten before the ages ; the Lord of the universe by
virtue of primogeniture, and by virtue also of creative
agency. For in and through Him the whole world was
created, things in heaven and things on earth, things
visible to the outward eye, and things cognisable by the
inward perception. His supremacy is absolute and
universal. All powers in heaven and earth are subject to
Him. This subjection extends even to the most exalted
and most potent of angelic beings, whether they be called
Thrones or Dominations or Princedoms or Powers, or
whatever title of dignity men may confer upon them.
Yes ; He is first and He is last. Through Him as the
Mediatorial Word the universe has been created ; and
unto Him as the final goal it is tending. He is pre-existent
and self-existent before all the worlds. And in Him as the
binding and sustaining power, universal nature coheres and
subsists" (Lightfoot on Colossians, p. 210).
A passage of this nature is well worthy of the serious
consideration of thoughtful men at the present time. For
at least there is this much shown by it, that the apostle is
in full sympathy with the characteristic tendency of the
present age, and, like the seekers after truth who live now,
desired to unify our knowledge, and to see the world in the
light of one great principle. Paul, too, desires to find the

The Christian Solution. 191
synthetic bond, which will bind all force, all nature, all life
into one organic unity ; and as much as Mr. Spencer or as
Hegel he seeks a principle which will help him thus to
conceive the world as one ; and he has found his principle
and set it forth in the passage referred to, and in other
passages of his epistles. The unity of nature and the
greatness of creation are intensely felt by the Apostle, and
in this feeling he is in perfect sympathy with the Old
Testament, the writers of which always see the phenomena
of nature under one great unity in the light of Him " who
layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, who
maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings
of the wind."
The author of " Natural Religion " lays great stress on
unity as the main element in religious thought and feeling,
and the object of worship for him is the unity in the uni
verse. He sees, indeed, that " nature suggests but a part,
and the less important part, of the idea for which we are
seeking an expression." He is constrained to widen the
meaning of the word nature, and to bring within its mean
ing all that other people have meant by the word God.
" For nature presents herself to us as a goddess of un-
weariable vigour and unclouded happiness, but without
any trouble or any compunction in her eye, without a
conscience and without a heart. But God, as the word is
used: by ancient prophets and modern poets, — God, if the
word have not lost in our ears some of its mean
ing through the feebleness of the preachers who have
undertaken to interpret it, conveys all this beauty and
greatness and glory, and conveys besides whatever more
awful forces stir within the human heart, whatever binds
them in families and orders them in states. He is the
Inspirer of Icings, the Revealer of laws, the Reconciler of

192 Is God Knowable ?
nations, the Redeemer of labour, the Queller of tyrants, the
Reformer of Churches, the Guide of the human race towards
an unknown goal " ("Natural Religion," pp. 88-9). Yes,
God is all that this eloquent passage describes Him to be,
and more. Not to speak, however, of the impossibility of
attributing all these qualities to nature, we wish now to show
how the teaching of the apostles has anticipated all that,
on this topic, the author of " Natural Religion " has to say.
For in the passage already quoted, Paul has revealed to
us a greater and a grander unity in the universe than we
have elsewhere been able to find. It is not the unity of a
formal abstraction, but it is the unity of a rational principle,
which gives coherence and subsistence to everything that is.
This unity was dimly foreseen by the greatest thinkers of
Greece, who were unable to give to it a complete expression.
This, however, Paul is able to do, and he does it, not in a
formal treatise, nor seemingly of set purpose, but because it
was necessary for him to set forth what was true, in oppo
sition to the false views beginning to be formed. This only
serves to prove how great is the thought which finds
expression in the Epistle to the Colossians. It is part of
the doctrine of the Christ which the apostles held ; and,
when error arose, he only needed to set forth the truth
regarding Christ in this new relation. So when speculations
arose about the relation of God to the world, and, on the one
hand, a number of intermediate agencies were placed
between the Creator and the visible creation, and, on the
other hand, a tendency was manifested to identify them,
Paul had simply to extend the doctrine of the Christ in
order to show how, by means of Him and His activity, God
transcended the world, and yet was immanent in the
world. For in Him "as the binding and sustaining power
universal nature coheres and subsists."

The Christian Solution. 193
Here, then, we find the possibility of meeting the claims
of science in all its departments of work. When we take
the simpler and more universal laws which govern the action
of all material being, when we take, for example, the law of
gravitation, which seems to bind the material universe into
one, and place it side by side with the apostle's statement,
we gain a new insight into the meaning of Old Testament
words, "The strength of the hills is His also." In some
fashion, by us not understood, the universal force which is
manifest in the world is in the hand of Him " by whom all
things consist." We do not here come into conflict with any
datum or result of science. For the concern of science is
with the force itself and its way of working, and not with
the origin and cause of it. The apostle passes into regions
where science cannot come, and enables us to give a rational
explanation of the strength that is in the hills and of the
life that is in the world. The forces of the world are
rational forces, even those which keep the planets in their
courses, and those also which appear in the in*incts ot
the ant and the bee, and in the organized life of society.
Thus, with the thought of the apostle in our minds, we can
descend deeper and ascend higher than we can do under the
guidance of the author of " Natural Religion ; " we can lay
the foundation of the earth in the activity of Him by whom
all things consist, and can ascend to the things which are
above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God, and
see His perfected kingdom of peace and purity and blessed
ness. Thus, then, there is a unity in the works of God ; but the
unity is not self-contained. It is not a unity caused by a
great world-soul, as the Stoic and Pantheist thought. It is
a unity which arises from the action of Him who alone is
worthy to be called the wisdom and the power of God. He
13

194 Is God Knowable?
who is the head, the source of the being and the order of
the world, is also the head of the new creation. As Bishop
Lightfoot says, " His mediatorial function in the Church is
represented as flowing from His mediatorial function in the
world. With ourselves this idea has retired into the back
ground. Though in the creed common to all the Churches
we profess our belief in Him as the Being ' through whom
all things were created;' yet in reality this confession seems
to exercise very little influence on our thoughts. And the
loss is serious. How much our theological conceptions
Buffer in breadth and fulness by the neglect a moment's
reflection will show. How much more hearty would be the
sympathy of theologians with the revelations of science and
developments of history if they habitually connected them
with the operations of the same Divine Word who is the
centre of all their religious aspirations, it is needless to say.
Through the recognition of this idea, with all the consequences
which flow from it, as a living influence, more than in any
other way, may we hope to strike the chorus of that vaster
music which results only from the harmony of know
ledge and faith, of reverence and research " (Lightfoot on
Colossians, pp. 182-3).
The recognition of this idea places us in a new relation
to science and research. We can move with freedom among
all the revelations which science is disclosing to us of the
wondrous world in which we live. For the larger our views
of the magnitude of the world, and the wider our concep
tions of the order and beauty of it grow, the more exalted
must be our thoughts of Him who has made and sustained
the universe. We can yield ourselves with all loyalty to
the guidance of science, suffer it to lead us into the
wondrous grandeur of the world, and let it teach us the
grand rhythm of law which makes all things to move in

The Christian Solution. 195
harmonious order. We can accompany our great scientific
teachers without distrust while they show us the law and
measure and correlation of force, and disclose to us the con
stitution of the physical world. We can follow them with
no reluctant step when they show us how all life is one
in plan and outline, and each kind of life is related to all
the kinds of life which are in the world. Nor ought we to
mistrust or find fault with our scientific leaders when they .
seek to make plain to us the organic unity of the world,
and the unity which also underlies the development of
history. Nor must they find fault with us when we bring to the
results of their labours something which they cannot give us.
We bring to science and its great results a higher thought
than any suggested to scientific men by the phenomena of
their more limited spheres of work. This is, indeed, what
they themselves are doing every day. They are seeking a
reason for law and order. They are not contented merely
to observe facts, to make experiments, and to discover laws.
The literature of the present hour teems with publications
which have no other reason for their existence than to
answer the ultimate questions which every discovery that
widens the boundaries of the known ask in a more urgent
manner. It is at this point where we must part company
with them; and here we say that in the doctrine of the
Divine Word we have the sure and certain answer to the
ultimate questions of science and philosophy.
For the answers given by speculative science are con
fessedly untrustworthy. No sooner is a solution offered
by any one school than its utter inadequacy is pointed out
by another school, and all of them without exception do
violence to the facts, and are utterly irreconcilable with our
higher conceptions and holiest instincts. On scientific

196 Is God Knowable ?
principles it is our duty to take up the solution suggested
by the Apostle Paul, and at least try how our scientific
knowledge looks in the light of it. We have already seen
low the doctrine of the Christ enables us to find a hopeful
meaning in the religions of the world, and how it satisfies
all the needs of man. If it be so in the sphere of human
history, which is the most complex sphere of inquiry, shall
it not be so also in the more limited sphere of strictly
scientific work? The Christ is in the laws of the inorganic
world, shaping them for life; the Christ is in the organic
world, moulding it for spiritual life ; and the Christ is in
the spiritual world, binding it together into the one unity
of the Kingdom of God, that " God may be all in all. "
The Christ is set in the heart of the world's life, and in
the fulness of time became flesh. The Pauline doctrine
agrees with the Johannine, although John puts the matter
in a clearer form. With John, the Logos of the Father is at
the same time the eternal Logos of the world, through whom
the Divine light shines into creation. The prologue to the
Gospel according to John is rich in suggestion for the solution
of our problem. In simple, sublime sentences John writes,
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God, the same was in the beginning
with God, all things were made by Him, and without Him
was not anything made that was made. In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men." In these few words
we have an account of the origin, progress, and purpose
of creation. The Word of God is the maker of things,
the upholder of all that is. And He is also the mediator
between God and the world. It belongs to Him as the
Eternal Word of God not only to have His home in God but
also to have His home in the world. Thus to Him are to
be referred the life and the order which are in creation,

The Christian Solution. 197
and He is the ground and source of all reason in the universe,
be it the unconscious reason in the physical world, or the
conscious reason of man. All the powers of existence are
instruments to carry out His will.
In what way and by what means the Eternal Word
fulfils this activity we are unable to define. But it is plain
that somehow the Logos is the life and light of creation.
It is also plain from the teaching of science and philo
sophy that somehow man represents the unity of creation.
He is the microcosmos in whom are contained the laws and
tendencies of the world. In man are all the forces of the
world, and in him they are embraced in a higher unity. If,
then, in man are the consensus and reconciliation so far
of all the opposite tendencies in the world ; if in the unity
of his self-consciousness opposing qualities are blended,
then we see how the activity of the Logos in the creation
has become the incarnation of the Logos in the man Christ
Jesus. When the Word became flesh, He united Himself
to the creation in a new way, and He communicated Himself
to creation in reality and fulness. He was in all things
that were made, moulding them and guiding them to a
purposed end. He was in the aspiration of all human
hearts, and is the goal of their aspirations. It would seem,
however, as if His power and guidance were imparted to
the creature from without and from above, and in a manner
which was partly external. For not until the fulness of
time could the Eternal Word communicate Himself to the
creation, or enter with completeness under the conditions
of created life. But in the fulness of time the Word became
flesh, and dwelt among us, and the circle of being was made
complete by the union of the Eternal Logos with the
highest creature, and in Him creation has found its goal.
While the New Testament sets forth the creative and sus-

198 Is God Knowable ?
taining activity of the Logos in many parts of it, it yet does
so in a summary way and without detailed exposition. The
explanation may be that this was not the most necessary
or most essential part of the doctrine of Christ which it
concerned men most to know. At all events, the fact is
that most of the New Testament is directed to the exposi
tion of the doctrine of Christ in relation to sinful men, and
to a history of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Now if the New Testament contains a real revelation of God,
these truths are certainly the most important for man to
know. And it is not wonderful that their exposition occupies
the larger part of the New Testament, and that the burden
of it should be the proclamation of the Christ as the Revealer
of God and the Saviour of sin-laden men. Obviously also
it was to be expected that the Church would lay stress on
the topics which had received a detailed exposition in the
pages of the New Testament. While, therefore, in Scripture
and in theology Christ is set forth as the Revealer of God
and the Saviour of men, it is in these respects that we are
first to seek for a verification of the doctrine of the Christ
in the history of the world and in the lives of men. In
our time, all truth is subjected to a stringent verification ;
at all events, there is a theoretic claim to that effect.
Sometimes, indeed, theories attain a wide circulation,
and are acted on, even while their advocates admit that
they cannot receive a complete verification. Passing from
that, however, we submit that the doctrine of the Christ
as the Revealer of God and the Reconciler of man to God,
has been verified, and has received a larger proof and a
more complete verification than any scientific theory in
vogue now-a-days. The law of the conservation of energy
after all the illustrations and confirmation it has received
is incapable of proof, and is held mainly on the ground of

The Christian Solution. 199
scientific faith. The theory of evolution, which year by
year obtains a greater number of advocates, is held and
believed, not because it has been proved, but because it
enables men to look at life as a unity. It is still a matter
of faith and- not of knowledge.
Now our contention is that the action, the influence, and
the power exerted by the Lord Jesus Christ on men
for these nineteen centuries can be plainly traced and
abundantly verified. He brought to the nations a wider
thought of brotherhood than they had previously known.
He revealed to them a Kingdom of God in which there was
to be no distinction of race or kin, in which there was to be
neither male nor female, barbarian, Scythian, bond or free,
but all, of whatsoever colour, race, or people, had the right of
citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven. He gave them a new
pattern of life and a new measure of purity, and also a new
motive to inspire them and a goal which might be reached.
Notwithstanding the imperfections and corruptions and
sins which have disfigured the history of Christendom, it
yet remains true and undoubted that Christianity is a living
historical proof of the action of the Christ on the lives of
men. Many attempts have been made to reduce the history
of Christianity to the level of ordinary history, and men
have refused to acknowledge in it any higher rule or
achievement than may be found, say, in the history of
Greece and Rome. Let us take such a work as " Gesta
Christi," in which Mr. Brace gives the history of human
progress under Christianity, and we find in it a detailed
proof of the influence of Christianity on the practices, customs,
laws, and morals of the European nations, from the first to
the nineteenth century. Or take such a work as the treatise
on Christian Ethics by Bishop Martensen of Denmark, and
we find in it a powerful statement of the indirect influence

200 Is God Knowable ?
which Christianity has wielded even over those who main
tain an attitude of conscious opposition to its direct claims.
By its influence they have been set free from many super
stitions and from many degrading vices, and though uncon
scious of the debt they owe to Christ, they are indebted to
Him notwithstanding. The Spirit of Christ is in the air we
breathe ; and the institutions amid which we live are
moulded and pervaded by the influence of Christ.
This appears more clearly when we examine the direct
testimony of the Christian consciousness. This is a fact
which is on the level of science, which may be tested and
ascertained by the use of the most rigorous scientific method.
It is not necessary to bring it to the test of the individual
consciousness, though that test may also be used. For the
Christian consciousness has embodied itself in life, in history,
and in literature, and stands in the history of Christendom
as a series of facts level to the comprehension of all. What
is the cause of this unique thing, which we find in Chris
tian life and literature ? On the face of it, it professes to
be an impassioned attachment to One who lived and died
eighteen hundred years ago, who rose again from the dead,
and liveth and worketh to-day. The literature of Christianity
proceeds on the assumption that Christ is a person who
caa give help and sympathy to sorely tried people in the
perplexities of life, who can deliver from evil, and give
wisdom and guidance in the hour of need. And the testi
mony of millions is, that they have really got from Him the
sympathy, the help, the wisdom, and the guidance which
they sought. A true hypothesis is one which will explain
and account for all the facts, and this assumption of a living
Christ in living fellowship with men to-day is the only
explanation which seems to bear any relation to the facts
of Christian hie,

The Christian Solution. 201
Any other explanation we have ever seen simply ignores
the facts, or explains the facts as due to an illusion.
Plainly, however, the theory of illusion will not serve for an
explanation. For one thing, the people who say that they
owe the renewal of their life and the inspiration of their
hope to the action and influence of the living Chist, can
show a real result in their purified life and changed cha
racter. They are, besides, sober-minded people, who bear
themselves wisely and manfully in all relations, and their
character and conduct show no signs of an illusive in
fluence. How are we to account for a purified life of a
community ? How are we to account for the changed habits
of men ? Of the facts there cannot be the slightest doubt,
and the cause assigned bears all the scientific marks of a
vera causa. To-day it is true, as it has been true through
all the ages of Christianity, that an attachment to Christ
purifies all the springs of action, quickens men to a larger
life, and sends them to live lives of purity and self-denial
and active beneficence. We submit, then, that here is a
phenomenon well worthy of the strictest investigation of
science. The Christian explanation is that the Christ is
a living Person who can help and guide and purify human
life to-day, and this explanation has been verified a thou
sand times and in a thousand ways.
If then the direct influence of the living Christ on the
race, on separate nations and communities, and on individ
uals, is a proposition which can be verified now and here ;
if, further, this influence is of a kind so rare, so powerful, and
so personal as cannot be accounted for by any other suppo
sition than that Christ is a living person who works still,
then we have other results to follow of an important kind.
The verification we have obtained from an examination of
history and from an examination of the Christian conscious-

202 Is God Knowable ?
ness will give us confidence to seek the verification of
the action of the Eternal Word in other spheres also. From
the action of the Living Christ as it can be traced in
recorded history, we go back to learn all that it is given to
us to know of the person, work, and sphere of the Christ in
the world and in His relation to God. We have a good
foundation for our search in what we actually know of His
influence on human life. We know that He has rescued
men from the dominion of evil, we know that He has roused
them to impassioned goodness ; we know that He has
inspired them with a passionate love of truth, and a hatred
of lies, with passionate resistance of oppression and wrong
doing, and with an ardent longing to relieve suffering, to
right the wrongs and remove the burdens of the heavy
laden. These are statements capable of the most exact
verification. We pass from this historical influence of the living Christ
to study the influence and action of the Christ which lie
outside of recorded history. We find that those who knew
Him best foretold the nature of that redeeming power
which He was to exert on human life. They foretold it
simply because they knew Him, what He was, whence He
came, and for what purpose He took on Him our human
nature. Because they knew these things regarding Him
they were able to complete the circle of His activity, and to
show that He was not only the mediator between God and
man, but He was the uniting bond of inorganic matter, and
the moving principle of the organic world. We have only
to prolong the curve and complete it to find that great
principle of unity which science and philosophy has ever
sought, and sought in vain. " Of Him, and through Him,
and to Him are all" things." He is the wisdom in whom
the foundations of the world were laid, the reason which the

The Christian Solution. 203
Greeks sought for and dimly saw in the very heart of things ;
and He is the abiding principle of providence in the world.
Nay, He is also the person whom the Greeks sought for
amidst the wars of the gods ; and their highest conception
of the gods was a dim foreshadowing of the great reality
which has its complete expression in the Christ.
It may not be so easy to trace the activity of the Logos
in the working and in the sustaining of the world as it is to
trace the working and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ
in the history of Christendom and in the lives of men. It
is possible and may sometimes be right to neglect the study
of causes and origins, and to confine ourselves to the study
of facts, with a view to obtain the laws of their working.
It is not in this sphere that any collision can arise between
our scientific knowledge and our religious life ; our complaint
is that science neglects or forgets to take into account facts
the number of which is quite incalculable. Let science have
regard to all the facts, and the antagonism will cease to be.
Our proposition is to substitute for the " unknowable " and
" inscrutable force '' of Mr. Herbert Spencer the action of
One whom we know. If we carry this thought with us to
the works of Mr. Spencer, we are enabled to lay hold of all
the vast miscellaneous information he has gathered, and to
use all his positive gain for our own purposes. The real
achievements of science and philosophy will serve as illus
trations of the activity of the Eternal Word in His relation
to "the world. We have only to substitute for the power
which Mr. Spencer does not know the action of the Power
we know, and all the known relations of the "unknowable"
at once become the action of Him, " in whom was life, and
the life was the light of man." There is no more difficulty
in verifying the action of the Logos in nature and in history
than there is in verifying the action qf the "inscrutable

204 Is God Knowable ?
force," the transformations of which, according to Mr.
Spencer, have made the universe. We have, however, this
advantage, that we can pass from the Eternal Word to the
worlds He has made, without sustaining that shock to our
intelligence which almost paralyses us when we attempt
to pass from the " unknowable " of Mr. Spencer to the
known world.
We have also this other advantage. We have a sure
and certain ground of hope for science and for humanity.
We may, without losing hold of any rational faculty we
possess, understand how non-living matter adapted itself to
the use of all forms of life, how simple forms of life were
succeeded by more complex forms, how on the basis of the
physical and organic world arose the structure of intelligent,
moral, and spiritual life. On the ordinary theory of evolution
we lose hold of all rationality, and allow ourselves to sink
to the level of those for whom arbitrariness and chance rule
the world. From mechanical causation only chance results
can come, and any one result satisfies its causation as well
as another. When, however, we bring the teaching of Paul
and John to the facts and the gradation of being on which
the theory of evolution attempts to found itself, they are
at once illuminated by a higher, purer light. In some way
unknown to us, these facts illustrate for us the mode of
action of the Eternal Logos, which is also the Logos of the
world. The world could organize itself, because the Logos
was in the world, and the genera and species of living
things could successively come into existence, because on
them was the Divine compulsion of Him who made the
worlds and appointed for every living thing its place in the
sphere of being, its nature, and the laws and conditions of
its life. Thus we find a sufficient explanation both of the
permanence of living things and of the progress to forms

The Christian Solution. 205
of being more and more complex, We have still indeed to
make our own science, to ascertain, classify, and place in
order the facts and laws of matter and of life. We have
to find out the natural order of creation, and to make our
theory correspond to the facts under the stern compulsion
of nature herself, which exacts tremendous .penalties for
our failures. But we cannot without intellectual con
fusion proceed on the supposition that the principle of
progress is in things themselves. We might possibly con
ceive of permanence as an inherent principle in things
which have once attained to being. And, on the other
hand, we might conceive of endless change as an inherent
law of things. But the unique union of permanence and
change which we call progress from less to more, from the
less complex to the more complex, from the less perfect to the
more perfect, is inconceivable apart from intelligence and
purpose. Such a progress has been attained in the history
of nature, and the researches of natural history have been
a demonstration of the fact. Evolution itself is based on
the supposition of progress, at least up to the present time,
and it prophesies hopefully of the future.
As our historical investigations proceed, and our know
ledge of the past history of men widens year by year, we
find that in this sphere also there has been progress of a
marked kind. In the European nations and among Chris
tian peoples the social and political and personal virtues
have made giant progress. So much has this been the case
that the principle of classification has itself been changed,
and we have no hesitation in reckoning among the vices
which tend to disorganize and destroy society some
qualities and actions which our ancestors reckoned among
the virtues. As we have already said, we can trace these
changes and that progress historically to the Christ. The

206 Is God Knowable ?
testimony of history is plain and unambiguous to this effect.
The Christian world is a world of love because it has found
the Christ, and the possibility of progress is not exhausted,
for He liveth to guide the nations onwards and upwards to
a greater and a higher attainment yet.
To sum up our argument in this chapter. We have made
only one assumption, — an assumption amply justified on
historical grounds. We have assumed the influence and
the activity of the Lord Jesus Christ as a living factor in the
historical progress of the nations ; we have sought to
indicate where the proof and verification of His influence
may be found. We have shown that in the objective facts
of history, as well as in the Christian consciousness, we
have the living action of the Christ. From this we apply
the knowledge we have received from Christian history to
the times which were before the historical coming of the
Christ; and in the striving of the nations after truth and light
and love we have found the traces of His activity. From
history we have only to prolong the inquiry backwards into
nature, and we shall find in the history of the organic
world and in the wondrous story which science tells us of
the evolution of all forms of living things, the influence
and the action of the Word of God. The striving and the
struggle and the groaning of creation obtain a larger mean
ing, "for the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for
the manifestation of the sons of- God." The Word of God
was in the organic creation as a great striving. Still back
wards we are free to pass, and to find in the phenomena and
laws of the inorganic world the first beginnings of the work
of Him in whom the Creator and the creation meet. And
so the whole creation is bound together in the one unity of
the Divine Word ; God lives and moves in all, and in Him all
things live and move and have their being.

The Christian Solution. 207
" And so the Word had breath, and wrought
With human hands the creed of creeds
In loveliness of perfect deeds
More strong than all poetic thought ;
" Which he may read who binds the sheaf
Or builds the house or digs the grave,
And those wild eyes that watch the wave
In roarings round the coral reef."
Tennyson : In Memoriam.

X.
THE CONCEPTION OF GOD.
" T HAVE long thought that without an eternal Logos
X you must have an eternal cosmos ; and I therefore sus
pect that a mono-personal Theism is impotent against the
Pantheist. So that since the controversy has passed from its
old atheistic phases, I doubt if either Deist or Socinian or
Mohammedan will be able to cope with the Pantheist. In
short, I doubt if any but a Trinitarian can do so adequately.
[How does the admission of an eternal Logos negative an
eternal cosmos?] I don't so clearly see it as I feel it. But
if God had not always a Son, He must have always had a
world, and if He had always a Son, personality and con
scious life, with reciprocal love, must have always existed.
We at least get out of the Nirvana, or the Indian sleep of
Brahma. Besides, the doctrine of an eternal Logos har
monises with the notion of a God essentially active and per
fect within himself" ( " Colloquiae Peripateticse," p, 96).
Thus Dr. John Duncan, that deep and subtle thinker, of
whose great thoughts so few have been preserved, expressed
the issue before modern thought a few years ago. The
issue has become plainer since then, and what he calls
mono-personal Theism has, in one of its most able and
eloquent advocates, postulated matter "as a datum objective
to God." And even with the aid of this dualism he has

The Conception of God. 209
fought a losing battle. For the solitary god of his imagina
tion is a god without love, and has no object of love save
this objective datum.
It is not our purpose here to set forth the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity, nor to defend it. This has already
been done to our hands in the great dogmatic treatises of
our own and former times. What we seek to do is simply
to show that the Christian conception of God is worthy to
take its place beside and above any conception of God
yet formulated in human language or conceived by human
thought. The conception of God which theology has been
able to grasp does, indeed, set forth the doctrine of Scripture,
but only in an imperfect fashion, as theologians are them
selves the first to confess. The truth is that the development
of theology is a development up to the Scriptural conception
of God. Nor has the statement yet reached the height and
depth of the sublime doctrine of the Living God' contained
in the Scriptures. God is, as Dr. Duncan said, " perfect
within Himself." In the Godhead there are personality,
conscious life, and social life. There are mutual love,
intercourse, and communion in God, and there are abiding
distinctions in the One God.
We note the great conception of the fatherhood of God
which is made emphatic in the New Testament. The traces
of this conception in the Gentile world are physical, as
among the Jews it was national. But in the Christian con
ception the Fatherhood of God is spiritual and personal.
And Fatherhood is declared to be a permanent feature of
the nature of the Living God. It implies also a spiritual
and personal relation of sonship in the Godhead, and
further implies that the mutual love and holiness of Father
and Son find expression in the Holy Spirit, also in personal
form subsisting. " In the unity of Him who is One, we

210 Is God Knozvable ?
acknowledge the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in
the interaction of whom we see love fulfilled." Into this
divine and sacred fellowship created life is received, so
that our fellowship may be with the Father and with the
Son. Fearlessly the Scriptures speak of God as the giver
and sustainer of a life like His own ; and of man as capable
of receiving God, and of God as willing to give Himself to
man. For man is created in the image of God, and the Son
of God is also Son of man, and, therefore, the Creator
and the creation may be one in spiritual and personal
fellowship. When we have regard to the simple, sublime statements
of Scripture, and seek to form our conception of God accord
ing to them, we find that the highest words of Scripture are
these three: God is Spirit; God is light; God is love. We
venture to transcribe the statements of Dr. Westcott on
these three sentences : —
"(i) God is spirit. The statement obviously refers to
the Divine nature and not to the Divine personality. The
parallel phrases are a sufficient proof of this. God is not
'a spirit' as one of many, but 'spirit.' As spirit, He is
absolutely raised above all limitations of succession (time
and space) into which all thoughts of change and transi-
toriness are resolved.
" (2) God is light. The statement again is absolute as to
the nature of God, and not as to His actions (not ' a light '
or ' the light of men '). The phrase expresses unlimited
self-communication, diffusiveness. Light is by shining ;
darkness alone bounds. And, further, the communication
of light is of that which is pure and glorious. Such is God
toward all finite being, the condition of life and action.
He reveals Himself through the works of creation which
reflect His perfections in a form answering to the powers

The Conception of God. 2 1 1
of man, and yet God is not to be fully apprehended by man
as He is.
" (3) God is love. In this declaration the idea of
' personality ' is first revealed, and, in the case of God,
necessarily of a self-sufficing personality. The idea of
God is not only that of an unlimited self-communication,
but a self-communication which calls out and receives a
response, which requires the recognition not only of glory
but of goodness. And this love is original and not occa
sioned. It corresponds to the innermost nature of God,
and finds its source in Him and not in man. It is not like
the love which is called out in the finite by the sense of
imperfection, but is the expression of perfect benevolence "
(Westcott's "Epistles of John," pp. 160-1).
Holding fast to the conception of God set forth in these
three sentences, and refusing to be entangled in discussions
about the absolute and the infinite, we obtain an idea of
God which satisfies every demand of the intelligence and
every claim of the heart. We are not led away by abstrac
tions, we are in contact with concrete realities. We learn
that in His innermost being God is spirit, light, and love.
He gives Himself and has in Himself love in the giving
and in the receiving of it. He is Himself at once the object
of love and the response which love gives to love. In the
One Godhead we have the unity of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit; and in the prologue to the Gospel according to John
the interaction of Divine energy and love is described in
itself and apart from any relation to the world. For in
these opening verses the relation of the Word to God is
a relation of love, and the personal energy of the Word
tends ever towards God, and He Himself is God. He is
the Word, and the Life Eternal who has His home in God,
and through whom He is manifested to the world in creative

212 Is God Knowable ?
and redeeming energy, and by whom creaturehood has at
tained fellowship with God : " The life was manifested,"
" The Word became flesh." Thus we find at the basis of
the Christian conception of God not " mona-personality," to
use Dr, Duncan's expression, but personality in relation. Not
a solitary God, but a social God is the God whom Christians
worship, one God, and yet a God who is His own object,
and who does not abide in solitary isolation separate and
apart, but in the fulness of living energy can both give and
receive love within the perfect social unity of the Godhead.
Taking this conception thus roughly outlined, we proceed
to compare with it what modern thought calls " the
developed conception of God." We believe that nothing
less than the full-orbed developed conception of God as it is
given us in the New Testament will suffice to cope with and
to overcome the subtle Pantheism of the present hour.
From this point of view, Biblical Theology is the best
apologetic. Arguments based on mere theism fall short ot
the mark, and can neither convince nor persuade those
whom the negative spirit holds in bondage. For on all sides
the tendency is to Pantheism. Materialism and Deism
have had their day, and are effete. We avail ourselves
of the words of Dr. H. B. Smith to describe this tendency : —
" In the Pantheistic unbelief, philosophy, as though conscious
of its full power, asserts its absolute supremacy. By the
assumed universality of its principles, by the undeniable
comprehensiveness of its aims, by the vigour of its logic
and the steadiness of its processes ; by its high ideal cha
racter, by its claim to be the result of the concentrated
thought of the race, and to contain in itself all that is essen
tial in the Christian faith, and to give the law and the ex
planation to all other sciences ; this system seizes with an
almost demoniacal power upon minds that would laugh to

The Conception of God. 213
scorn the dreary fantasies of the East, that see the rotten
ness of bare Materialism, and that feel something of the
inherent might of Christianity. Never did a philosophy
take such an attitude towards the Christian faith ; it does
not make it a superstition as did Atheism; it does not
neglect it, as does our popular philosophy; it does not
scout its mysteries, as does our irrational common-sense ;
nor does it attenuate it into a mere ethical system ; but it
grants it to be the highest possible form of man's religious
nature, it strives to transform its grandest truths unto philo
sophical principles ; it says that only one thing is higher,
and that is Pantheism. It claims to have transmuted
Christianity into philosophy, and to stand above it, trium
phant, dominant, exultant. And thus it is the most daring,
subtle, consistent, destructive, and energetic philosophy
which ever reared its front against the Christian faith. It
has the merit of recognising the grandeur of Christianity ;
it has the audacity to boast that itself is more sublime. It
professes to have systematized all thought ; to have posses
sion of the aboriginal substance and the perfect law of its
development ; to be able to unfold all our ideas in their
right connections, and to explain nature, mind, art, history,
all other philosophies, and also Christianity. All this, it
says, is but the unfolding of its own inner life. It weaves
its subtle dialectics around everything, that thus it may
drag all into its terrific vortex. It has a word for almost
every man excepting for the Christian established in his
faith. By the very extravagance of its pretensions it
seduces many ; by its harmony with the life of sense it
attracts those who love the world ; and by its ideal character
it sways such as would fain be lifted above the illusions
of sense and the visions of imagination and the contradic
tions of the understanding into a region of rarer air,

214 Is God Knowable f
where reason sways a universal sceptre. Its system
includes all things. God is all things, or, rather, all is God.
He that knows this system knows and has God. And it
claims that it thus gives a higher idea of Deity than when He
is limited by a definite personality ; assuming, without any
philosophical ground, that person is in its nature finite and
cannot be connected with infinite attributes. It professes
to give man a system which shall make him wise, and it is
with the oldest temptation, Ye shall be as gods. Thus does
philosophy, in its most daring mood, accept the alternative ;
and it gives us the choice between Christ and Spinoza.
And this is the alternative of our time" (H. B. Smith,
D.D., "Faith and Philosophy," pp. io-n).
The years that have elapsed since Dr. Smith wrote these
memorable words have served to confirm their truth and
their far-seeing wisdom. The alternative is clearer now
than when he wrote. For now science has in its specula
tive aspect entered the field, and its solution of the problem
tends ever towards Spinoza. And the latest aspect of philo
sophical inquiry, the Hegelian revival in Britain, has taken
the exact position which Dr. Smith prophetically foretold.
Speaking of the Hegelian philosophy, Professor Edward
Caird says, "Such idealism has a close relation to Chris
tianity; it may be said to be but Christianity theorized. It
has often been asserted that Hegel's philosophy of religion
is but an artificial accommodation to Christian doctrine of a
philosophy which has no inherent relation to Christianity.
If, however, we regard the actual development of that
philosophy it would be truer to say that it was the study
of Christian ideas that first produced it. What delivered
Hegel from the mysticism in which the later philosophies of
Fichte and Schelling tended to lose themselves, and led him,
in his own language, to regard the absolute 'not as substance

The Conception of God. 215
but as subject ' — what made him recognise with Fichte that
the absolute is spiritual, and yet enabled him with Schelling
to see in nature, as the opposite of spirit, the very means of
its realization, — was his thorough appreciation of the ethical
and religious necessity of Christianity. In the great Chris
tian aphorism that ' he who loses his life alone can save it,'
he found a key to the difficulties of ethics, a reconciliation
of hedonism and asceticism. For what this saying implies
is that a spiritual or self-conscious being is one who is in
contradiction with himself when he makes his individual
self his end. In opposing his own interest to that of others,
he is preventing their interests from becoming his : all things
are his and his only who has died to himself. But if this
be the truth of morality, it is something more, for 'morality
is the nature of things.' We cannot separate the law of
the life of man from the law of the world wherein he
lives. And if it is the nature of things, as it is the nature
of spirit, that he who loses his life shall save it, the world
must be referred to a spiritual principle, and the Christian
doctrine of the nature of God is only the converse of the
Christian law of ethics " (Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. xvi.,
p. 102).
Dr. Smith did not mention one possibility in the passage
we have quoted. It evidently did not occur to him to sup
pose it possible that any phase of pantheistic thought should
ever suppose itself to be identified 'with Christianity. For
pantheistic systems have contented themselves with ex
plaining Christianity, and by showing how it could be
taken up in the vaster philosophy they had discovered.
Professor Caird claims that the system of metaphysics he
expounds is "Christianity theorized." It is so theorised that
no one can recognise it. He has laid hold of one of the
Christian principles, a most important principle no doubt,

216 Is God Knowable?
and extended its application indefinitely. But the concep
tion of nature as the opposite of spirit, and the very means
of its realization, brings in something which is quite foreign
to the nature of Christianity. For Christianity regards the
Eternal Spirit as perfect, as in Himself " the ever-blessed
God," not requiring nature or any other for His realisation.
To the Christian, God is the fount of being, the source of all
life and goodness, and there is in Him no becoming or
imperfection, and, therefore, this theorizing of Christianity
must be rejected as essentially opposed to Christianity.
Further, as this spirit comes to the realization of itself
only through its opposite, through nature, it can become
self-conscious in no other way than through this conflict of
contradictions. In other words, the universal spirit has no
self-consciousness as such ; it comes to consciousness only
through particular beings. We do not know what may be
the goal of the Hegelian philosophy, nor whether in their
view the universal spirit shall ever attain to self-conscious
ness. We have never been able to find out. But whether
it be so or no, certainly this strange conception bears no
resemblance to the Christian doctrine of the Living God.
Nor can we find any place in this philosophy for Him for
Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, and
through Whom are all things. He is lost and swallowed
up in the endless toil of the negative. And His personal
work for man and with man becomes part of the whirl of
an impersonal idea, that circles by imperative necessity
through all the grooves of change. Nor is there much light
to be obtained from the great formula of which Professor
Caird speaks, when he describes what he regards as Hegel's
great discovery, the absolute looked at " not as substance
but as subject." For by this- way of looking at the absolute,
or by this way of regarding the Living God, He ceases to

The Conception of God. 217
be self-sufficing, and an object becomes necessary as the
co-relative of this subject. The contents of the one will
soon be equivalent to the contents of the other. The Scrip
tures regard the Living God as one who has His object
within Himself, and the statement of Dr. Duncan quoted at
the beginning of this chapter stands good.
Our purpose at present is not to criticise the metaphysics
of Professor Edward Caird. As metaphysics we do not
...touch it here ; our purpose is to state some reasons why we
cannot accept his metaphysics as theorised Christianity, or,
indeed, accept it as Christianity at all. No doubt it deserves
a more detailed treatment than we can give it. For it is a
phase of thought which for many reasons has a great fasci
nation for many minds. It is, however, but a passing phase
for all that, and has this drawback, that it can scarcely be
stated in intelligible language. At all events, if Christianity
is to be theorised, it must be in another way than this. It
must be in some way which will conserve the facts, and
permit us to recognise in the theory some resemblance to
the history and the doctrines of the New Testament. It is
possible that we shall never be able to make our theory
large enough to include all the facts of Christianity, but even
in that case it is better to wait for further light, than by our
theory to make all that is vital in Christianity become mere
factors in an ambitious theory of knowledge.
We pass to the consideration of a question whieh bulks
largely in almost all works of the Agnostic kind. In our
second chapter we spoke at some length of personality.
We refer to what we have said there, and take it for granted
in the present discussion. Although the methods of science
and philosophy are such as leave no room for personality,
that does not prevent them from bringing forward, when
ever we venture to speak of a known God, the objection

2 1 8 Is God Knowable ?
that personality is a limitation, and cannot be applied tc
the absolute. It might be answered that, according to their
method of work, personality cannot be applied to the relative.
For whatever personality be, it lies outside of, and has
obtained no recognition from science or philosophy. Not
to insist on this, however, let us look fairly at the objection.
It occurs so frequently in all sorts of books that it is worth
our while to look at it. Here is the objection as set , forth
by the author of " Natural Religion " : — " Personality entire
has never been attributed in any theology to deities. Per
sonality, as we know it, involves mortality. Deities are
usually supposed immortal. Personality involves a body.
The highest theologies have declared God to be incorporeal.
May we then fall back upon the will and say, Theologies
attributed to deities a will like that of human beings ? But
again the highest theologies assert that the Divine will is
high above the human; that there is no searching of it; that
as the heaven is high above the earth, so are His ways than
our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts" ("Natural
Religion," p. 16).
The writer begs the whole question when he says,
" Personality involves mortality." How does he know ?
He can only affirm this when he denies the immortality
of man, and not till then. Suppose man immortal, and
the statement falls to the ground. Suppose, too, that wc
know a living One Who has died, and is alive for ever
more, and the question equally falls to the ground. Let
us turn the argument round, and apply it to the ques
tions discussed so eloquently in the pages of " Natural
Religion." Truth, we should say, if we were to speak of it
in the spirit of the foregoing quotations, is an opinion in the
minds of men. Truth, as we know it, involves the exercise
of man's thinking powers, which are dependent on the body

The Conception of God. 219
of man. But man is mortal, and has a body, and, therefore,
truth cannot be absolute ; nor can it be worthy of the
supreme devotion of the soul of man. No doubt the author
of " Natural Religion " would make short work of such an
argument, and would at once show the fallacy of the state
ment about truth. But the statement serves to bring out
the fallacy in his own argument. Is it the essential note
of personality that it be mortal, or corporeal ? Is it not,
on the other hand, the characteristic mark of personality
that it is self-conscious, has intelligence, will, affection ? Nor
is there any difficulty in conceiving personality to subsist
and to persist beyond the changes of death and the grave.
Weak as all his illustrations are, the weakest of all them is'
that which refers to the highest theologies which assert
that God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. For the
highest theologies say that God has thoughts ; and thoughts
imply a thinker, as ways imply one whose ways they are.
However high and transcendent the thought of God may be,
and however different His ways from the ways of man, yet
to the highest theology they are still thoughts, and, according
to the passage quoted, are claimed by God in express terms
as "My thoughts." Instead of personality let us read in
telligence in the foregoing extract. No doubt such a change
would be an advantage to his argument. For it is possible
to regard intelligence as an abstract quality of being, while
personality refuses to be so handled. But even on those
terms might we not say that intelligence is mortal, is cor
poreal, and, therefore, we cannot extend its action beyond
the range of purely human activity ? It may easily be
shown that if we accepted his argument against personality,
we shall be bound to extend it until the whole fabric raised
in his work is cast down to the ground.
The somewhat rough and popular mode of statement on

220 Is God Knowable?
the part of the author «f "Natural Religion" is expressed
in a more subtle and comprehensive manner by Mr. Spencer.
In his argument he takes full advantage of the concession of
Dean Mansel, who had said, " It is our duty, then, to think
of God as personal ; and it is our duty to believe that He is
infinite." This gave Mr. Spencer an admirable opportunity
of protesting against admitting a " radical vice" in the con
stitution of things ; and Mr. Spencer made full use of his
opportunity. He will not "believe that there is eternal war
set between our intellectual faculties and our moral obliga
tions ; " and then he proceeds, " This, which to most will
seem an essentially irreligious position, is an essentially
religious one — nay, is the religious one to which, as already
shown, all others are but approximations. In the estimate it
implies of the ultimate cause it does not fall short of the alter
native position, but exceeds it. Those who espouse this
alternative position make the erroneous assumption that the
choice is between personality and something lower than per
sonality; whereas the choice is rather between personality
and something higher. Is it not just possible that there is
a mode of being as much transcending intelligence and will
as these transcend mechanical motion ? It is true we are
totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being.
But this is not a reason for questioning its existence ; it is
rather the reverse. Have we not seen how utterly incom
petent our minds are to form even an approach to a concep
tion of that which underlies all phenomena ? Is it not proved
that this incompetency is the incompetency of the Con
ditioned to grasp the Unconditioned ? " (" First Principles,"
p. 109). Mr. Spencer in this passage uses freely the large
wealth and vague possibilities of the unknown. It is quite
possible that in the unknown there may be higher modes of
being than we know. But it is not open to Mr. Spencer to

The Conception of God. 221
make use of the possibility of these. For his own procedure
in his philosophy has been, not to use the highest modes of
being which we know to explain the lower, but the opposite.
He may not be allowed to use the retort he has used, for
his own philosophy is the condemnation of it. He postulates
nothing but force and its persistence, and from these he
undertakes to explain all science, all philosophy, all nature.
But this force is certainly a lower thing than intelligence
and will and consciousness, and the alternative he rejects
is .the one he must accept. The alternative is between
personality and something lower, and can be nothing else,
if we are to judge of what the alternative must be from the
philosophy of Mr. Spencer.
The reasonable course is to exhaust the higher powers
and forces known to us, and to make use of all available
means to obtain an intelligible view of the world before we
take refuge in the wealth of the unknown. And surely if
Mr. Spencer has been able- to accomplish so much as he
thinks he has done with the help of one postulate alone —
if force in his hands in itself and in its applications has
grown to the goodly dimensions of these portly volumes,
surely when we call on the forces of will, consciousness, and
intelligence to help us in the building up of a world, we shall
accomplish more than Mr. Spencer has done. He formally
objects to speak of the ultimate cause as intelligent because
the ultimate cause may be something higher. He really
does not attribute intelligence to the ultimate cause because
he has found that the only thing needed is the persistence
of force.
Mr. Spencer has carried his analysis back to what is
final for him, — the antithesis' between the known and the
unknown, or, to speak more accurately, between the know-
able and the unknowable. Then he stops and insists that

222 Is God Knowable ?
there is no further progress that way. We suppose that a
number of people will decline to take Mr. Spencer's word
for this. He confessedly cannot tell whether there is a
way or not. He has taken his position in a dogmatic
fashion, and were we to inquire into the reasons why he
took his stand here we should get no reasonable answer.
For on inquiry into the reasons of his procedure we
find that he ought, on the same principles, to have taken up
his position a good way removed from his present stand
point. If these reasons are good for preventing people
from penetrating further into the charmed circle of the
unknowable, they are equally good for the denial of all
knowledge whatsoever. And Mr. Spencer must take his
stand on necessary and eternal ignorance.
Men have therefore not listened to the voice of Mr.
Spencer. They proceed to look at the limits which he
calls the Unknowable, and to look at the action of the force
he has labelled the " Inscrutable." And they have found
open paths, and the known forces of intelligence, will,
and freedom at work everywhere in the sphere which
Mr. Spencer calls the unknowable. They find that when
they apply the forces they know in themselves and in
history to the problems of nature and to the problems of
our knowledge of God, they are fit and adequate for the
explanation of them. While Mr. Spencer is telling us that
we shall never know anything save the known manifesta
tions of the unknowable force, behold this unknowable force
has become known to us, and we find that our own
personality is akin to Him who is the Maker and Upholder
of the worlds. It is certainly not easy to understand how the
inscrutable force which lies at the basis of existence accord
ing to Mr. Spencer should become the self-conscious force
which I recognise in myself. On the other hand, if we

The Conception of God. 223
take the Christian conception of God, as One who can be
in some measure the known and obeyed and loved, we
fill up the dark inscrutable background of being with the
living God, who has come forth to manifest Himself to us,
and to speak to us words we can understand, and do deeds
of kindness and of love.
We must, however, come to somewhat closer quarters with
the argument which is current in many quarters at present.
We mean the argument that personality is a limitation and
therefore cannot be applied to God. This argument passes
from pen to pen ; it drifts downward from the more learned
to the less learned, and passes outwards in ever-widening
circles until we find it everywhere to-day. It is a conveni
ent phrase, handy, compact, easily launched at an opponent,
and warranted to do execution. Personality is a limitation, it
is true; and in what sense is it true ? Before, however, we
answer the question we shall listen to a word of exhorta
tion from Mr. Graham, the author of " The Creed of Science,"
who in a calm, benignant mood counsels us to submit to
the inevitable, or, to put it in an Irish fashion, advises us
" to commit suicide to save ourselves from slaughter."
"Theology," he tells us, " may dislike the seemingly pantheistic
notion, and may refuse it for a time ; but in the end she
will accept it. And there are evident proofs, notwithstand
ing a tacit agreement to ignore the fact and an unwillingness
to acknowledge it, that even the most dogmatic Churches
can, with time, slowly change and accommodate their
theological conceptions. Development is possible even
within the most dogmatic Christian Church, notwithstanding
the very narrow range allowed for it by the dogma of
infallibility. The advance of knowledge and the wider
vision of truth can still infuse fresh life into the old
religious doctrines ; they can still ' wake a soul under the

224 Is God Knowable?
ribs of death;' to which, of themselves, petrified scholastic
propositions and metaphysical dogmas respecting God so
surely tend. And there is no manner of doubt that the
imperative necessity is being felt and silently accepted by
all theologies desirous of preserving a continued life, of
re-shaping their conceptions of the Creator, His ways and His
works, more in accordance with the great revelation vouch
safed to men through the scientific discoveries of the past
three hundred years.
"In particular this conception of God will not suit the
theology which insists on ascribing to Him the attributes,
at once metaphysical and specially human, of personality
and consciousness ; the former being the precise one that
is so difficult to get any clear conception of even in ourselves,
and both, especially consciousness, being, as Fichte and
other philosophers have irrefutably demonstrated, inappli
cable and directly contradictory to the notion of an absolute
being. For consciousness and personality, whatever else
they imply, clearly imply the notion of limits and
conditions, neither of which can, without contradiction, be
applied to an absolute and unconditioned Being, to a
transcendent, tremendous, and universal Power, the chief fact
in our knowledge of which is precisely its freedom from all
the limits which govern and bind our finite being " (" The
Creed of Science," pp. 363-4). The quotation shows how
even men who write on such high topics as " the Creed of
Science " may unthinkingly repeat, and repeat without ex
amination, what they have received from others, and which
has passed without question in the circles in which they
themselves move. There is no more hackneyed quotation
than the one " personality is a limit "' while God is illimi
table. Where is the contradiction, where is the inconsis
tency of applying the two ideas to the same being? It

The Conception of God. 225
would be contradictory to speak of a round square, but
there is no contradiction in speaking of a white or a
crimson square. So the adjectives personal and absolute
are not logical contradictions, nor are they contradictory in
fact. When we speak of the absolute we speak of it as a
predicate of pure being, and what we mean is simply that
the absolute is complete in itself, it has no conditions save
the conditions contained in itself. When we speak of
personality we ascribe it to being, regarded as pure
spiritual being ; and we simply mean that absolute personal
being is and must be self-conscious, rational, and ethical ;
must answer to the idea of spirit. Why may not the
absolute Being be self-conscious ? To deny this to Him
would be to deny to Him one of the perfections which
even finite being may have.
But the truth is that Mr. Graham is under the bondage
of the " scientific discoveries of the past three hundred
years." We do not in the least seek to disparage the
greatness or the fruitfulness of the scientific work of recent
times. But it is possible to make too much of them. For
there are questions on which these discoveries have thrown
no light whatsoever. As much was known about contradic
tions before they were made as since, and no new light can
come from that quarter to tell us anything of the nature of
pure being or what attributes we may venture to ascribe to
it. For all the discoveries of science are simply finite, and
relate to matters within the bounds of time and space.
The contradiction can only emerge when the attempt is
made to conceive of spirit by a conception derived from
space considered as boundless. It may be conceded that
boundless space cannot be conceived as personal. But an
infinite spirit is entirely different, and the theology which
Mr. Graham invites to an euthanasia has discovered this long
IS

2 2 6 Is God Knowable ?
ago. " God is not space filling by way of extension ; God is
not extensive, but intensive, because God is spirit.
Mr. Graham is kind enough to inform us that personality
and consciousness have been demonstrated to be contra
dictory to the notion of an absolute being. Fichte is the
philosopher he especially mentions. Fichte's achievement
in philosophy is not great, and has had no permanent
influence on more recent investigation. We may set over
against his opinion the views of men whose work has been
greater, and whose influence is likely to be more lasting.
Let us take Ulrici, or, as our space is waning, let us take
Lotze, who has really and seriously argued this question.*
* We quote the following summary of his results, which have been
laboriously won through many pages of masterly investigation : —
•' Sel'bstheit, das Wesen aller Personlichkeit, beruht nicht auf einer
geschehenen oder geschehenden Entgegensetzung des Ich gegen ein
Nicht-Ich, sondern besteht in einem unmittelbaren Fursichsein,
welches umgekehrt den Grund der Mdglichkeit jenes Gegensatzes,
da, wo er auftritt, bildet. Selbstbewusstsein ist die durch die Mittel
der Erkeuntniss zu Stande kommende Deutung dieses Fiirsichseins, und
auch diese ist keineswegs nothwendig an de Unterscheidung des Ich
von einem substantiell ihm gegenilberstehenden Nicht-Ich gebunden.
" In der Natur des endlichen Geistes als solchen liegt der Grund, dass
die Entwicklung.seines personlichen Bewusstseins nur durch Einwirkun-
gen des Weltganzen, welches er nicht ist, also durch Anregung des Nicht-
Ich geschehen kann, nicht deshalb, weil er des Gegensatzes zu einem
Fremden bediirfte, um fiir sich zu sein, sondern weil er auch in dieser
Riicksicht, wie in jeder andern, die Bedingungen seiner Existenz nicht
in sich selbst hat. Diese Beschraukung begegnet uns nicht in dem
Wesen des Unendlichen ; ihm allein ist deshalb ein Fursichsein
MSglich, welches weder der Einleitung noch der fortdauernden Entwick-
lung durch Etwas bedarf, was nicht Es selbst ist, sondern in ewiger
aufangsloser innerer Bewegung sich in sich selbst erhalt.
" Vollkommene Personlichkeit ist nur in Gott, alien endlichen Geistern
nur eine schwache Nachahmung derselben beschieden ; die Endlichkeit
des Endlichen is nicht eine erzeugende Bedingung fiir sie, sondern eine
hindernde Schranke ihrer Ausbildung " (Lotze : Mikrokosmus, vol iii.,
PP- 575-6).

The Conception of God. 227
Lotze has not, as Mr. Graham has done, settled a
question of such momentous issues in an off-hand way.
Nor can it be settled by a series of repetitions of an opinion
based on no investigation, but first assumed by one, and
then borrowed by others. Lotze's work must first be
examined, and his position subverted, ere this glib conclu
sion can be maintained. Lotze's contention is that "person
ality does not depend upon a present or past contraposition
of the ego to the non-ego;" on the contrary, the possibility of
such a contraposition arises solely from the fact of person
ality. The only distinction which is. necessary for self-con
sciousness is not that of self and not-self, but the distinction
between a thinker and his thought. The question has got
into a state of utter haziness through the endless talk of philo
sophy about self and not-self, about subject and object, so that
it is difficult to get face to face with the plain and simple issue.
When we brush aside the metaphysical and psychological
verbiage which surrounds the question, and really get into
close grapple with it, we find we have, each of us, a direct
feeling of self. The knowledge of self may grow as all
other knowledge grows, but the feeling of self is as much
present in the child as it is in the grown man. What is the
cause of this feeling of self, and of the consciousness of self-
identity across all the waves of change ? The occasion of
the manifestation is found when we learn to distinguish
what is not self from self, when, in short, by reason of the
distinction between other things and ourselves, we become
conscious of self, and mere consciousness becomes self-con
sciousness. Through the contraposition of the not-self,
the self becomes aware of itself, and when once this self-
reflection has occurred, then the self-conscious spirit becomes
its own object.
It is no doubt true that in a finite spirit the development

228 Is God Knowable?
of personal consciousness takes place under external in
fluences ; but even in this case self-consciousness is not
begotten through the influence of external factors, it is the
result of the action of the finite spirit itself, in its struggle
and reaction against the conditions of its environment. It
cannot be maintained, however, with any pretence of reason,
that conditions are causes, or because the finite spirit attains
to self-consciousness through the struggle with the non-ego,
that it is therefore a product of its conditions. With finite
spirits, self-consciousness is a growth and development,
because they are dependent spirits. But the notion of self-
consciousness does not necessarily involve the idea' ot
development. Given a self-consciousness in one who is'
capable of a self-existence, which needs neither initiation
nor continuous development by means of anything alien to
itself, but maintains itself in an eternal movement within its
own essence, and, as Lotze observes, we have then the true
notion of self-consciousness ; and this is not limitation of
self, but realization of self.
Our self-consciousness is developed, yet that is no reason
why all self-consciousness should be so, any more than the
fact that an existence is derived is a reason why all exis
tence should be derived. But the pantheistic notion which
Mr. Graham commends to us speaks of a Power which is un
derived, self-existent, with all the fulness of being in itself.
We grant all he says affirmatively about this Power, and
we go further and say this Power would be imperfect, yea,
more imperfect than man, were it not conscious of itself and
of its own perfections. By saying of the Power who made
the universe that it is a self-conscious power, we only say
that the infinite source of all life, intelligence, and activity
exists for itself and knows what it is thinking and doing.
Is this to make it imperfect, or to ascribe to it any limita-

The Conception of God. 229
tions ? It is strange that any one should think so, more
especially Mr. Graham, who, without knowing the conse
quences of his position, has departed from the teaching of
Spinoza, and has introduced into the systems of his masters
the utterly alien conception of " purpose." Spinoza knew
what he was about when he tabooed purpose. For once
admit the idea of purpose, and mechanical necessity becomes
an inadequate method, and you reach at a bound the
knowledge of the purpose on the part of the agent who
makes and upholds the world, and from that to self-con
sciousness there is only one step, a step which must logically
be taken.
¦ Fichte made the dogma, and others have repeated the
dogma that the infinite cannot be personal without limita
tion. Lotze, has shown, on the contrary, that full person
ality is possible only to the infinite. For the infinite alone
has full and perfect knowledge of itself. We do not know
ourselves perfectly or completely. Many parts of our
nature are obscure to ourselves, and we have not supreme
control over ourselves, nay, we are driven whither we would
not, and ourselves are unknown to ourselves. This is only to
say that we are imperfect beings, who neither in personality
nor in anything else have attained to perfection. But where
self is, who has perfect knowledge, perfect control over itself,
and perfect activity, then there may be full personality,
but not till then. No other conception of the infinite is
tenable for a moment except that which regards it as
perfect in power, in wisdom, in self-knowledge, and in
self-control. Thus then we are constrained by reason itself to ascribe
perfect personality to the infinite and absolute. And this
ascription is in accordance with the lessons which are
taught by the history of creation itself. Science teaches us

230 Is God Knowable ?
to see creation mounting up by successive steps from non
living to living matter, from the vegetable world to the
animal world, from the animal world to man, to personal
, beings who attain to some knowledge of themselves.
Science shows us a universal tendency of life towards
personality ; it seems to be the law of life. How explain
this tendency to personality, and how explain the crowning
achievement- of life, persons in relation to each other
forming a society, in which love strives to reign, if there is
at the heart of things only an impersonal principle ? This
were only to flout reason and to give us an unintelligible
world. The curious thing is that it is in the interests of the
greatness and the grandeur of the ultimate Reality that
Agnostics proceed to deny any real affirmations regarding
it. Yet Mr. Spencer quotes from Dean Mansel, and quotes
with approval the following sentence : — " It is obvious the
Infinite cannot be distinguished as such from the finite
by the absence of any quality which the finite possesses ;
for such absence would be a limitation." We admit that
this sentence occurs as one of a series in the logical
gymnastic exercises of the Dean. But then it has an
unusual quality of depth and clearness of insight in it.
So much is this the case that we have only to follow it to
be safely led out of the Agnostic mood. Let us follow it.
The infinite is all that the finite is, and more. The finite
is living, conscious intelligence, and the infinite is living
conscious intelligence on an infinite scale and in an absolute
degree. Beauty, harmony, love are in the finite, therefore
the absence of them in the infinite would be a limitation.
No doubt, in forgetfulness apparently, Mr. Spencer proceeds
to say that to ascribe living conscious intelligence to the
infinite is fetichism of the lowest order. It is passing

The Conception of God. 231
strange. The infinite may possess all power, may be the
source of all law, may impress itself in rhythmic order on
all the domains of being; and yet if the infinite knows itself,
if we venture to think that it can speak and manifest itself
to the brightest creature it has made, then Mr. Spencer
lifts his hands in pity over the blindness which can think
a thought so unworthy of the dignity of the infinite. On the
whole we prefer to follow the guidance of the luminous
• sentence quoted from Dean Mansel.
Let us seriously ask the question, Does the ascription of
life, intelligence, personality to God militate in any degree
against the dignity of the Infinite ? Our Agnostic friends
seem to be really anxious on this point. It may not be out
of place to remind them that the reverence they profess
towards the unknown power which is in and beyond all
phenomena has been borrowed from the reverence which
Christians feel towards Him who dwelleth in fight which is
inaccessible and full of glory. While we affirm that our
knowledge of God is true and trustworthy, we by no means
affirm that it is adequate or exhaustive. " We know in
part," and in the end, when we have come to the limit of
our knowledge, we cast ourselves prostrate in adoration
before Him and say, " O the depth of. the riches both of the
wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are
His judgments, and His ways past finding out." But even
then we go on to affirm, " For of Him, and through Him,
and unto Him are all things. To Him be the glory for ever,
amen." The reverence they feel for the unknowable Power
cannot equal in depth or fervour the reverence felt in the
presence of the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
wise God. But this is a God who can be known, and
known because He has manifested Himself, in nature, in
history, and in redemption.

232 Is God Knowable ?
Mr. Graham recommends to us, as a larger, wider
thought, " the conception of Spinoza, reproduced by Goethe
and Spencer." And he recommends it thus : " This con
ception of a grand Reality, whose phenomenal projections
in space and in our consciousness alone are knowable, is
a great as well as philosophical conception, ana probably
that with which all thinking men will finally close as the
worthiest that finite faculty can frame of Deity. It has the
merit of reconciling most of what science has been teaching,
with all that philosophy — whose special business it is to
decide upon the question — has yet been able to agree upon.
Further, and this is important, it satisfies the demands of
the imagination, as shown by its general acceptance by
imaginations of the grand order, as those of Goethe, Words
worth, Shelley, Carlyle ; it falls in also with the instinctive
beliefs of the human race, which at bottom, and even in its
own blind wisdom, both believed in God and acknowledged
His final incomprehensibility " (" Creed of Science," p. 360).
It is rather sad that Ulrici and Lotze among philosophers,
that Browning and Tennyson among poets, that even
Carlyle and Wordsworth, have broken the harmony, and
have definitely refused to take their place amongst the
thinking men who, according to Mr. Graham, will finally
close with the Spinozistic conception as the worthiest that
man can form of Deity. Another Hebrew than Spinoza
had a conception, which he thus expressed : " Lift up your
eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things,
that bringeth out their hosts by number : He calleth them
all by names ; by the greatness of His might, for that He
is strong in power, not one faileth." Nay, the conception of
the Hebrew prophet finds in the magnificence of the world
only a fresh tribute to the greatness of the Creator : " Hast
thou not known ? hast thou not heard that the everlasting

The Conception of God. 233
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth
not nor is weary ? there is no searching of His under
standing." We claim for the Christian conception of God the merit
of reconciling all that science has really attained to, with all
that the truest philosophy has won regarding the ultimate
problems of human knowledge. We have seen that the
Christian conception of God meets and brings into unity
all the tendencies of life in its striving upwards to the con
sciousness of itself. We have seen that it is the answer
to the travail of the nations after truth and light and duty ;
that in its full-orbed completeness it has also met and
solved for man, or given to man the hope of a solution of
all the problems of thought and life which have perplexed
the minds and tried the spirits of the most thoughtful of our
race. And it accomplishes this without the sacrifice of
any of our holiest instincts, without the thwarting of our
highest purposes, and without the loss of our highest
aspirations. The Christ has set His seal on these also.
"If it were not so, I would have told you." And the
Christian conception of God gives us the assurance of
perpetual progress in life, in love, and in knowledge, and
the promise of a time when " that which is in part shall
be done away," and " I shall know even as also I have
been known."

FINIS.

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