differently acquired, and, according to our phraseology, which is used for distinction only, in different spheres, for anything we can tell they may belong, as the best minds have ever imagined, to the same great tree of knowledge. Dogmatics, however, which are what John Smith calls "the thin speculations of philosophy," mingled with more or less spiritual truth, may well seek to avoid an encounter with science and the scientific intellect. The theologian if an encounter on any point is forced upon him, feeling himself destitute of facts that form an immovable ground for the man of science, is too much inclined, as has been said, " auf Gott zurückzugreifen, um mit ihm, als einer bequemen Hypothese, die Erklärung desselben, die ihnen zu viele Mühe macht, zum Schein zu geben." But this hypothetical function of the Deity is the creation of a bad philosophy. The relations of God made known in Scripture, as has been observed again and again, are essentially spiritual, and the means by which we are to know this Being is true to the great design of the contents of revelation, in cultivating our spiritual affections. These contents are not philosophical, either in the metaphysical or scientific sense. They do not really, nor by profession, complete the mere incompetences of reason. They neither furnish answers to metaphysical inquiries nor do they give scientific results, unless those that are subject to revision, as all such answers and results coming from the intellect of man must ever be. It is not to be wondered at, that men, basing these so-called scientific conclusions on Scripture statements, and not on observed physical facts which alone could warrant them, should be compelled to relinquish their position by the advancement of scientific inquiry. The mistake lies in identifying, as some do, these conclusions with spiritual truth. It were to be wished that those who are, as it is said, for the Bible as against modern science, knew a little more of both. It is time we were beyond the position of those who say all revelation and no reason, or of those who say all reason and no revelation, and recognised what, we think, must be the basal belief of every thoughtful mind, that “ no truth can contradict any truth;" that we are not, on the one hand, outside of revelation such absolutely drivelling creatures as some imagine us to be; nor, on the other, such independent rational beings as others think; that, as we cannot "call spirits from the vasty deep," so neither can we educe from our own consciousness all that world of spiritual truth, of life and light, which we find the soul of man dowered with the capacity of appreciating.

In the position we have indicated it is possible to stand above mere controversy on the question of the relation of the Bible to science, and prepare the way for others who may be able to display the consonance of all truth.

CHAPTER XVI.

RELIGIOUS IDEAS AND METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTIONS, WITH REFERENCE TO SOME RECENT SPECULATION ON THE UNKNOW ABLE, AND THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.

̓Αγνώστῳ θεῷ.

THERE is an opinion regarding religion and other forms of truth pretty generally received at present, and which has much to render it acceptable to some minds. It is in keeping with the spirit of philosophical unity and desire for systematising so universal in man, and also with that love for all forms of truth which such a spirit and desire engender. The opinion I speak of is, that a reconciliation may be effected between the two forms of truth, religious and scientific, that are so often opposed, by stripping from religion that which peculiarly and strictly belongs to it, and by lopping off from science that which is distinctively its own. The motto of those who make this attempt is good,—in all erroneous things there is a soul of truth, a sort of rough generalisation, like other striking sayings that have been long current. The method of working out the problem of reconciliation is, however, far from correct, and the result, as might be anticipated, is neither satisfactory to scientific nor religious truth. The representation drawn is, that in science "positive knowledge does not and never can fill the whole region of possible thought; at the uttermost reach of discovery there arises and must ever arise the question,-What lies beyond ? "* What is the explanation of that explanation? is always the question after any new relations are discovered; and every addition, so far from lessening the unknown, merely brings the known into wider contact with the unknown. So that mental life shows two antithetical modes of action, on the one hand, science seeking the relations of ascertained phenomena; and on the other, religion busying itself with the "unascertained something which phenomena and their relations imply." Science is concerned with the known, but as, according to the theory now stated, there must always be something transcending knowledge, there must always be room for religion, which

*Herbert Spencer, "First Principles," p. 16.

peculiarly concerns itself with that which transcends experience. These two, the known and unknown, are thus reckoned two acknowledged facts, and any extreme on the one side or the other is merely an exaggeration of a great truth. To bring the extremes together needs only that each gives up its extravagances. To drop from each that which each holds as its own, and so enable them to unite on some ultimate something which both can hold, is the road to reconciliation. It is remarked by the propounder of this scheme of reconciliation, that, if religion and science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be the deepest and widest and most certain of all facts, viz., that the power which the universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable. The reason for this being apparently, that ultimate scientific ideas, such as space, time, cause, etc., are all representative of realities that cannot be comprehended, and that ultimate religious ideas are, according to a certain school in psychology, of the same nature; and in this point of an incomprehensible omnipotent Power to which science brings us, we have the consciousness of that on which religion builds, and also the ground of its coalescence with science.*

The more general criticism that may be made on such a view of religion and science as that just summarised is, that it is more nearly a representation of what is called metaphysics and science, and never once touches the religious consciousness, or spiritual truths, properly so-called, related to that consciousness. As an exposition of the metaphysical element in thought it may be exact, but it must be added that the writer of it has entirely missed the sphere of truth at which he was professedly aiming. As to any attempted reconciliation of the sphere on which he has really fallen with that of positive science, I am very much inclined to think that such a reconciliation is wholly unnecessary, were it possible, which I am persuaded is not the case. Positive science is clear and explicable and always legitimate, dealing as it does with facts of sensible experience, to which it can always be compelled to refer. Metaphysics as a science is altogether illegitimate. It is true of it what the writer, to whom reference has been made, says untruly of religious truth, that it transcends experience. But how that which transcends experience has need of reconciliation with experience we are unable to see. Many of

Strauss, in his last work, has practically taken up this position; "ob wir Gott oder Universum sagen," appears to him the same. "Wir fordern für unser Universum dieselbe Pietät, wie der Fromme alten stils für Seinen Gott."

the questions which are commonly assigned to metaphysics can be otherwise perfectly well explained, and others of them are problems that no science can solve. Questions are often discussed that are vaguely called metaphysical; but this phraseology has come to have something like a popular meaning, and signifies not unfrequently that these questions are of rather an abstruse nature, and have been banished from true scientific investigation and relegated not, as some writers would have us believe, to the sphere of religious consciousness, but to the realms of dream and moonshine, in other words, to metaphysics. Many subjects of thought that have long been held by some thinkers as peculiarly belonging to metaphysics, and round which, accordingly, a strange charm has been thrown by metaphysical imaginings, are such as these,-space and time, the idea of an external world, rectitude, duty, and other abstractions, as also whether God is a reality, whose existence is manifest to us à priori by the constitution of our natural faculties. Because these and other questions have arisen and must, perhaps, always be started by men, we may be compelled to follow them; but we are by no means compelled (and this should always be remembered) to use the means for their investigation so often resorted to, and as little are we bound to erect a science or related sphere for their home. Their natural home, I speak now of the form in which they are generally put, is in the phantasmagoria of the human mind. The fact is, that the phase of thought which Mr. Spencer mistakes for a religious one is that of general speculation, excluding, of course, from this scientific inquiry, and approaches more nearly a kind of intellectual exercise of imagination, a ranging forth upon ideas either in themselves or in their origin imaginary, weaving them into many fanciful results, combining, enlarging, unfolding all the scattered, broken hints of things or ideas of things, and bodying them forth into a world of transcendent intellectual and imaginative glory. It is imagination working in the leash of logic. What is the general speculation of most ages, when it transcends experience whether spiritual or natural, other than this we have named? We can have no wish to despise it. It has proved in some respects, and in individual instances, a noble exercise of mind, a splendid joy, and some of the greatest thoughts have come to us through this means; but we must be careful to distinguish it, not only, as Mr. Spencer has done under a different name, from scientific knowledge, but also from religious thought, both of which are based on experience. The whole realm of so-called metaphysical investigation, on the contrary, resembles just such a mental