mere word-building. They contain, in pretentious and often invalid form, the real substance of the truth which we need to recognize in our present contest with the philosophy (?) of nescience. So far as they pretend to knowledge beyond the limitations of all knowledge, they are fallacious. So far as they insist upon the correspondence between thought and real being, so far as they afford a ground for insisting upon the objective validity of those acts of the soul by which the eternal realities of the divine are conveyed, in the form of necessary ideas and principles, to the soul, they are true and helpful counter-irritants of positivism.

Mr. Mansel is indeed right in his metaphysics when he criticizes these German philosophers for their failure to found their systems in a criticism of consciousness. But much of his own criticism is as abstract and contradictory of the contents of consciousness as are the systems he criticizes. The critic of philosophy should no more enter the battle in the vale of Valhalla than the philosopher himself. Joining in this battle, he may find that he has unwittingly given a sword thrust, not to the shade of an opponent, but to the real person of a friend. We can posit the incomprehensible, but not the self-contradictory, through faith. We, too, believe with Mr. Mansel that "to know God as he is, man must himself be God," if by this sentence is meant that no adequate and complete revelation of the divine is possible within the finite organon of revelation, and that all our knowledge of the divine must therefore be fragmentary and unsatisfying. But we quite dissent, if by this sentence is meant that no revelation at all corresponding to his being is possible for God, and that the organon of revelation can give us no ground for affirming the objective validity of its own work. The necessary forms of sense-perception may be only some among many unknown forms of knowledge; and they certainly give conditions to all our perceptions of things of sense. But to affirm that they are only regulative, that we have no right to aver the real correspondence of things to the forms, is a step beyond toward the gulf of utter scepticism. Surely the very

conditions of all knowledge aver it to be limited. But it may, nevertheless, contain postulates and intimations and intuitions which reveal the absolute truth beyond. Only a perfect analysis, ending in complete breaking up of all the foundations of thinking, can warrant us in saying that this partial is, though confessedly partial, also unfaithful to the reality of things.

Thus much, then, seems true of this first class of difficulties inherent in the concept of God. Only so much of the divine is known as has been revealed to us. The unrevealed God is the unknown God of Mr. Spencer and his followers. Of the infinite whole which is back of and beyond all the divine self-revelation, we can only say that it is there. We are driven to the affirmation by the constant unrest and dissatisfaction which we find in all known forms of the concept, regarded as fit to satisfy in full the desires of the rational soul for knowledge. That which is transcendental in God also stimulates us to the the sense of awe, mystery, and worship before the unknown. To God unrevealed, to that in the depths of the divine being which he has not disclosed to us, we cannot say that any of our terms of knowledge apply. We know God as a person; but we feel that our conception of personality does not adequately represent the whole being of God. We believe in him-granted that we know him— as the Absolute; but we also believe that the word and the idea of the absolute does not adequately represent God. The heart affirms him as Heavenly Father; but the term father, sweetest of all in which to express our more practical relations, we are confident is quite below the unrevealed reality of God. He is first cause and causa sui - so revealed to us; but terms of condition and causality do not fully set him forth. We summon all the glorious names with which men have learned to address the Eternal One, and taken all together they give, when analyzed, in one grand picture the sum-total of the self-revelation of God; but they do not tell us of the more beyond, except to affirm that it is there.

In criticizing the second class of difficulties found within

the concept of God, we shall need to remember the truths just stated. These difficulties, however, unlike those of the first class, present themselves in forms of thought which demand criticism and contain positive contents of objective validity. Yet a false philosophy of nescience would have us treat both classes alike. With the claims of nescience fully carried out, metaphysics is transcendentalism. With it, therefore, difficulties which require research into the foundations of knowledge are transcendental difficulties. Of course, then, it finds the concept of God not merely inadequate; it finds every possible concept self-contradictory. This its theology is the spurious child of its false philosophy. To it the sphere of infinite being is not light in the centre, but is shaded into obscurity along its infinite stretches in every direction from the centre of light; to it there is only darkness, formlessness, and void in all the vault of infinite being. That is to say, such results in philosophy and theology as these, nescience claims in general terms as the precious boon of all mankind. But in the special terms in which even the claim is made, whenever it defines itself, there lie always concealed vast stores of positive knowledge. The very treasures of truth, formally banished by deliberate act of judgment from the kingdom are smuggled in again by some naïve unconscious decree of judgment. To know as much as Mr. Spencer, for instance, knows in his denial of the divine self-revelation, is almost enough for a wise man to know of God. "A great deal, it appears," as Father Dalgrains sarcastically remarks, "is known about the Unknowable." The Unknowable is indeed expected to move feeling and influence the practical life; for it is printed in large letters to excite fear, it is conjectured, "like grenadiers' caps."

In proof that the various elements of this concept of God correspond to certain positive and definite contents of consciousness, we cite the following facts of experience. And first of all, the very dispute shows the reality and persistence of human convictions as to the subject in dispute. If the concept of God in some form or other perdures, and the

difficulties which attach themselves to it perdure, this of itself tends to assure us that in some positive contents of human thought we must seek the reason, and in part the answer, for these difficulties. There is something where so much dust of controversy arises; so much intellectual fuss is not about absolutely nothing.

And farther, the manner of stating and discussing the concept with its difficulties clearly shows certain definite forms of the positive contents of consciousness which give rise to these difficulties. Nothing is more certain than that men have certain definite conceptions which they name God; that they believe in the objective validity of their conceptions ; that they insist upon the fatherhood of the Infinite, the personality of the Absolute, and upon many other alleged verities of religious sort. But the persistence of the concept of God, and of its difficulties in these special and definite forms, shows that the philosophical treatment of the concept in regard to these forms is at once a gift to, and a demand upon, the human soul. In considering, then, the personality of the Absolute and other similar questions, to resolve all the phenomena into impotency and try to sweep them off the board of analytic dissection with one majestic wave of the hand is merest child's play. There have been many attempts to put out the candle of theology's logic, as preparatory to putting out the light of the human soul, in whose indestructible thought, feeling, and purpose positive theologic truth has its warm hearth, its fruitful womb. "Put out the light, and then-put out the light." The extinguisher has fallen upon the tallow and wick of argument; but the light, the soul in which the truth of God shines, will not therefore be put out.

And farther, in proof of the unceasing demand made by this concept upon the critical faculty, to find in the elements of the concept real knowledge of objective verity, we are to notice how the soul of the destructive critic avers the impracticability of his own attempt at destruction, when in the very act. So often as the giants of destructive criticism go

over the field of proof and cut down the ripe stalks of the theologic harvest, they are forced to leave enough seed to sow again the entire field. The sentence which the author of "First Principles" quotes with much evident approval,"A God understood would be no God at all," - contains a certain undoubted truth; .we cannot perfectly comprehend God. But it is a long way from this sentence to the one with which he closes the same chapter on " ultimate religious ideas," and declares, as the result of conclusive argument, "The Power which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." Mr. Spencer himself knows it is not "utterly inscrutable." For he has himself made the illogical, but inevitable leap from thought to being, has learned to call the objective reality a Power, and spell it with a capital, has found it manifested in the universe. And if manifested by the universe, may we not examine the form of manifestation, and conclude something as to the nature of the Power? No; for the Power is utterly inscrutable. Yes; for it is manifested in the universe, and known as Power. There is something more to note in all this than the imbecility of language, or even the impotency of human thought about the Absolute; there is pre-eminently to note the strength of the soul's postulates and primitive convictions triumphing over the logic of nescience.

Nor does the writer from whom Mr. Spencer quotes so largely escape making an example of himself to the theologian, even though engaged in offices supposed friendly to theology. It is a singular anomaly when the philosophy which fights so valiantly to rescue the objective in the region of sense-perception from the clutch of sceptical idealism surrenders without a blow in defence when the objective in the region of truths necessary to religion is attacked by a sceptical positivism. In the Absolute and the Infinite, written in capitals to excite veneration, and arrived at through impotency and the consciousness of "counter inabilities," we have no interest at all. With such terms, handled in purely abstract fashion by either philosopher or critic of philosophy,