or self-consciousness means, and the mystery of personality, both of God and man, is at once revealed. If the personality of man meant limitation only, the term infinite would have no rational meaning, but be only a senseless name. Even a stone in its essential unity with universal gravitation unconsciously transcends all limitation, but man in his thought consciously transcends all limitation even in his idea of universal gravitation, for he knows that it means universal attraction and universal repulsion. Thus the idea of personality is identical with the idea of the absolute infinity of God. The idea of God as the everlasting God, the Creator and Righteous Judge of all the earth, and of man in the image of God, possessed by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, as given in Genesis and the other four books of the Pentateuch, is more moral and spiritual than the idea of God and man held by the evolutionists and agnostics. With them it is evidently right and proper for the strong and best to crush the weak; yet the weakest may be the fittest to survive, and those which do survive may be the worst. Their theory justifies all the cruel persecutions of all the true and good by the multitudinous, undeveloped, morally bad. It justifies our cruel treatment of the natives in South Africa, from the Cape to the Zambesi, and our late war with the Boers. Cecil Rhodes professed to be helping God, according to the doctrine of evolution. Many advocated the Boer war on the same principle. Indeed, if evolution by blind natural selection were true, all the crimes and sins of this and every other country could not be condemned, for the simple reason that the people were not sufficiently evolved to see the evil of their doings, and that the God of some evolutionists was too helpless to prevent them, whilst the God of another class is no God at

all but pure naturalism. The Bible account of sin fixes the responsibility of the practice of evil on man, who has a knowledge of good and evil. Even if sin has blinded the minds of men to much that is evil, if they would only do the good they know and abstain from the evil, the whole condition of things would soon be changed for the better.

Contrary to the teaching of the Bible, the dominant teaching of the agnostics and evolutionists throws the blame of moral evil, sin and crime on men's social environment instead of on man's moral choice, and overlooks the fact that all environment is made by man. What higher motive can be presented to man than that of using the means God has given him to reform himself and to do his best in helping to reform others; in other words, for man 'to love God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and his neighbour as himself.' It is not possible in the nature of things to avoid condemning and punishing wrong-doing. If wrong-doing were not condemned and punished by men, we should soon have hell upon earth. To condemn is in complete harmony with the will of God as revealed in the Old and New Testaments, and is at the same time the dictate of reason. Although punishment of itself is no remedy for an evil heart of unbelief, it is in part a great protection of the upright and of the weak citizens. 'Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?' If so, how can God judge the world? or how otherwise can society protect itself from reprobate evil doers? Righteous laws are liberties; thus good civil government is necessarily based on righteousness, and man's power of choice.

As already intimated, the God of the Pentateuch is more moral and spiritual, and more accordant with sound logical philosophy, than the God of the Agnostic

evolutionist. One of the latest exponents of the God of agnosticism and evolution gives his idea of God in the following words: When I say God, I mean the mysterious power which is finding its expression in the universe and is present in the tiniest atom of the wondrous whole.' Who can suppose this to be a more satisfactory view of God than that given by Moses?

IT

CHAPTER XVI

EGO ONTOLOGY AND IMMORTALITY

T is necessary to explain a little more fully some of the more important points in connection with our main theme, but before doing so we must call attention to the generally recognized proofs for the existence of God: the teleological, cosmological, and the ontological. All three 'proofs' depend on, and centre in, a right understanding of the Ego in the triplicity of Thought as the Absolute Ratio of the totality of Being; they form a triple unity in Thought, while in a special and fundamental sense the ontological includes the two former proofs.

Ontology is substantially one with Thought as Absolute Ratio of all existence, for the absolute ratio is the universal ratio that contains all ratios, just as the absolute, universal, concrete notion contains all particular notions, and the universal reason contains all particular reasons. The Absolute Ego contains all Egos, the absolute Idea all ideas, the absolute self-consciousness all self-conscious beings, the universal Personality all personalities, while thought, as thought, is the universal' all in all,' containing all that is. Thought, then, is the Absolute and Infinite. It is the Absolute because it contains all relativity. An absolute that is not relative is a mere empty name-nothing at all. Thought is Infinite because An Infinite that contains no

it contains all finites.

finite is like an absolute without relativity, a mere empty name. Thought, then, as self-consciousness, as personality, is essentially Being, and is the only form of Being that is intelligibly conscious of itself as at once both Absolute and Infinite. In the highest sense, it is the only absolute Ratio, because it and it alone knows itself as both Subject and Object, as at once I and Me; I as subject, me as object, including all that is, for without a created universe, thought as Ratio, I as subject, me as object, would be mere empty names. There is, and can be, only one Infinite, just as there is only one Absolute, and though the two terms express different thoughts, they have their unity and identity in Thought as the Absolute Ratio. This being so, it follows that absolute notion, absolute idea, absolute reason, absolute spirit, and absolute personality have each and all their perfect and absolute identity in Thought as the all-embracing middle term of the entire universe. It is impossible that there ever was, or ever can be, anything better, greater, or more perfect than Thought. It is the absolutely perfect Beingthe all-knowing, perfect love, truth and righteous

ness.

There is nothing more tender and more powerful than Thought. Thought is the absolute Creator, Preserver and Governor of the universe, and that is God, with man' in the image of God.' As man in his substantial and essential nature is thought, reason, selfconsciousness, spirit, and a person, so God is thought, reason, self-consciousness, Spirit, the absolute personality of all personalities, the First and the Last, and that is the Ego of all Egos. Thought is the infinite and absolute being of man, therefore it is at the same time the infinite and absolute Being of God. It is the Being present in man than which he cannot think a greater and more perfect to exist, and which he cannot