Knowledge of God. 53 was ever brutish enough to imagine that a stone fell or a star shone, or fruit was sweet, because the god inside made it fall, shine, or be sweet; nor will we, at the bidding of materialists, worship the levers, the pulleys, the cranks, the cords of Nature, and forget the Holy One. We cannot detach Him from the world, no, not if we would; nor cut the wires of the great Operator, nor demagnetise His needle; matter may be as the iron, but mind is the magnetic energy coming into it; matter is set in motion, mind is the energy which sets it in motionthe mind of God. The more thoughtful a man is, the more firmly will he be established in the ancient faith-"he may even find in the evidence of the intimate relation between mental activity and physical changes in the brain the most satisfactory grounds which science can afford, for the belief that the phenomena of the material universe are the expressions of an Infinite Mind and Will, of which man's is the finite representative." 1 There are two reasons, apart from a special creation, why materialists ought to accept the doctrine of a Personal God: -I, God, though essentially incomprehensible, can be, and is, known of; 2, We know of God, even as we know of mathematical truths. 1. Allowing that God, as to essence, is unsearchable; that we can only know the relative and finite, because the Infinite, the Eternal, the Almighty, can alone look into the Divine Nature, or understand how and why God is; nevertheless, we may know of God. The finite, indeed, has no proportion in comparison with the Infinite, nor the imperfect with the Perfect; but those who, on account of this ignorance, would deprive God of Personality, and represent Him as Power, do not render Him more intelligible; they degrade Him, define Him to be Power without motive, Wisdom without purpose, Love without object. We cannot accept the definition. Looking at Nature we behold government by law, the lower existences serve with blind obedience; ascending, we find in plants an obscure vibration of life; amongst animals, consciousness; within man, a high principle of intelligence. This intelligence leads "Mental Physiology:" Dr. W. B. Carpenter. to the conviction that wisdom is at the heart of things, and that the world is a manifestation of wisdom. Without intelligence man sinks into the brute, without consciousness the brute is as a plant, without vibration of life the plant becomes inorganic matter. Holding fast by intelligence as our guide, we find that in the measure an organism is enriched, so are moral and intellectual faculties, delicate sensations, memory, imagination, reason, will, possessed. This is a great reality. Further-knowing, by physical and mental analogy and process, that the lesser cannot contain the greater, nor the irrational be parent of reason, nor any finite thing exist of itself, we obtain conviction that there is a supreme Wisdom; and we rightly endue that Wisdom with the highest mode of being-Personality. 2. The things thus known of God form part of our knowledge in much the same way that mathematical truth is wrought in our mind. Our consciousness says "We think ; that which thinks exists." To this axiom or primitive truth, ego, is added the consciousness of other existence, non ego. Then we advance in thought-" We imperfect beings cannot be self-existent, but exist by will of the Perfect." If so, space, duration, the universe in its vast display of existence, are manifestations of the great Existence. By the duration of hour, day, year, we obtain a notion of time, if not of eternity; by the extent of an edifice, by motions in space, acquire an idea of space, if not of infinitude; by triangles, globes, squares, attain to knowledge of mathematics; still pursuing, we advance, rising from concrete to pure abstract truths, until we rest in Him who is the grand Entity-" I am that I am," in whom, by whom, and for whom, all things exist. We add-all religions agree, in whatever else they differ, in affirming that their Faith came by more or less direct Revelation from on High. Far from saying "In this they all lie," we acknowledge the universal testimony that apart from Revelation can be no reliable, no constraining verity concerning the Eternal. It is not the one false element common to them all, not falsification by lying prophet, not Priests of the Physical Universe. 55 fallacious imprimatur of indispensable priest; but the outcome of all that highest human intelligence could discover, divine, or receive. In their highest moments the best and truest of our race have actually communed with the Sublime, and from Him consciously obtained the noble, the beneficent, the commanding fascinations, the pure wisdom, the glorious truths, which constitute the Faith that is on the earth. Other men marred this which came from God; but we thankfully acknowledge, as Divine, whatever of purity and truth became the parent of noble character. We sum our process of reasoning into a very brief statement. Denial of the Supernatural is incapable of scientific proof. Love of and belief in the Divine take their place in all history and experience. We proved that in all reasoning a First Cause is admitted, of whom all beings and existences are the manifestation. We found that the highest conception of God is Personality. As to Revelation of the Godhead, we perceived it in the world's phenomena. We saw that the universe is not eternal, not self-made, but created, and that our theology is scientific. Afterward, with due consideration for and against the Bible, we accepted its record of Creation as more intelligible than the atheistic account, and as more correct. We concluded the argument with two reasons for accepting the Personality of God as a truth. Honour is due to those devout men whose science fits them to be priests of the physical universe, to unfold its mysteries and explain its powers. Tracing natural things to natural source and cause, they show that the provisions of Nature are not from the sun-god, but from the Lord God. Their understanding enables them to rejoice in the light, behold the enlargement, reverence the dignity of the Divine Word-the letter stationary, the meaning progressive. Entering within the curtains of the literal word, these men proceed in spirit to the most holy place of the sanctuary. Drawing near with the incense of devotion, kindled by the light of science in the well-prepared vessel of an experienced intellect, they worship before the mercy-seat of Jehovah. Then coming forth to exercise their office, they consecrate every school of thought, every lecture room, as temples in which are expounded the will, the design, the work of Him in whom they live and move, and have their being. "Bless'd are they Who in this fleshy world, the elect of Heaven, S. T. Coleridge, Religious Musings. STUDY III. THE THRESHOLD OF CREATION. "Thou from primeval nothingness didst call First chaos, then existence ;-Lord, on Thee Spring forth from Thee; of light, joy, harmony, SIR J. BOWRING. SOME of us limit, and lightly toy with the Creator's attributes; profess to scale the awful heights of infinity, and to build a godless world by means of mechanism devised by human intellect. It is in vain—we cannot so build, nor thus ascend; the genesis of an atom is not less mysterious than the birth of a planet. No doubt a particle of matter is less complex than the universe, but that particle, all in all, is infinite. This particle and that universe are not known as they exist in themselves, but as our senses represent them; consequently, it is impossible to know what matter is, or whether it really has any action of its own, or prove that "it is the origin of all that exists." It is simply preposterous to imagine that we shall ever scientifically trace the continuity of molecular processes into the phenomena of consciousness, and materially explain how our consciousness, by means of imagination, makes itself at home in other and far-distant worlds. Other men, thinking thereby to honour the Almighty, speak of the universe as created by the breath, fashioned by the touch, and launched from the hand of God: likening Him to a mechanic, and His work to a machine. Whereas, the phenomena of the world, and the vast synthesis of energies within us in manifold contact with vaster energies without us, can never be known in objective existence, or as to the essential nature of their cause, but simply as affecting our consciousness; therefore, to say that Divine energy produced |