One Being of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and that we have, in consequence, kept our knowledge of Him wholly apart from our other knowledge, instead of centring all our knowledge in it, because we feel it to be "the light of all our seeing," as well as "a lamp to our feet." In other words, our knowledge of God is in this case not a living, all-diffusive knowledge. Only a dead knowledge of Him is an unprogressive knowledge. That, I admit, is unprogressive. It may fade away and be effaced, but it does not grow, does not absorb and assimilate, and thereby transmute and glorify all our other knowledge.

Growth in the knowledge of God is a kind of progress which can have absolutely no end, for the truth to be realised is infinite truth; truth unlimited by time or space; truth involved in all actual existence, and containing the fulness of inexhaustible possibilities. It is, I shall conclude by adding, a kind of progress which underlies and determines all other progress. Whenever our views of truth, of righteousnes, of love, of happiness rise above experience; whenever we have ideals of existence and conduct which transcend the actual world and actual life; whenever we have longings for a perfection and blessedness which finite things and finite persons cannot confer upon us, our minds and hearts are really, although it may be unconsciously, feeling after

God, if haply they may find Him. It is only in and through God that there is anything to correspond to these ideals and longings. If man be himself the highest and best of beings, how comes it that all the noblest of his race should be haunted and possessed as they are by aspirations after what is higher and better than themselves-by visions of a truth, beauty, and holiness which they have not yet attained-by desires for a blessedness which neither earth nor humanity can bestow? Must not, in that case, his ideals be mere dreams-his longings mere delusions? Pessimists like Schopenhauer and Hartmann and their followers, openly avow that they believe them to be so; that the history of the world is but the series of illusions through which these ideals and longings have impelled humanity; that our ideals never have been and never will be realised; that our longings never have been and never will be satisfied, for, "behold, all is vanity." I believe them to be quite logical in so thinking, seeing that they have ceased to believe in God, who is the ideal which alone gives meaning to all true ideals, who can alone satisfy the deeper spiritual longings of the heart, and likeness to whom is the goal of all mental, moral, and religious progress. Of course if the pessimists can persuade mankind that the sources of progress are not the truths and affections by which Infinite Goodness is drawing men

to itself, but mere fictions of their own brains and flatteries of their own hearts, progress must soon cease. When a delusion is seen through, the power of it is gone. But pessimists will not, we may trust, succeed. They will mislead for a time, as they are now misleading, certain unstable minds; but the main result of their activity must be just the opposite of what they anticipate. It must be that men will prize more the doctrines the most opposite to the dreary view of life and history which they promulgate. Pessimism must send the philosophical few back with deepened reverence and quickened insight to Plato, in order to master more thoroughly, and take to heart. more seriously, his great message to the world, that the actual and the ideal meet and harmonise in God, who is at once the First and the Final Cause, the Absolute Idea, the Highest Good; and it must increase the gratitude of the many, whether learned or unlearned, for the Gospel which has taught them that to glorify God is an end in which there is no illusion, and to enjoy Him a good which never disappoints. God, as the presupposition of all elevating ideals, and the object of all ennobling desires, is the primary source and the ultimate explanation of all progress.1

1 See Appendix VIII.

LECTURE III.

THE NATURE, CONDITIONS, AND LIMITS OF

THEISTIC PROOF.

I.

If we believe that there is one God-the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of all finite beings-we ought to have reasons or grounds for this belief. We can have no right to believe it simply because we wish or will to believe it. The grounds or reasons which we have for our belief must be to us proofs of God's existence. Those who affirm that God exists, and yet deny that His existence can be proved, must either maintain a position obviously erroneous, or use the term proof in some extraordinary sense, fitted only to perplex and mislead. True and weighty, therefore, seem to me these words of one of the most distinguished of living German philosophers: "The proofs for the existence of God, after having long played a great part in philosophy and theology, have in recent times, especially since Kant's famous critique, fallen into

disrepute. Since then, the opinion has been widely spread, both among believers and unbelievers, that the existence of God does not admit of being proved. Even theologians readily assent to this opinion, deride the vain attempts, and imagine that in so doing they are serving the faith which they preach. But the proofs for the existence of God coincide with the grounds for the belief in God; they are simply the real grounds of the belief established and expounded in a scientific manner. If there be no such proofs, there are also no such grounds; and a belief which has no ground, if possible at all, can be no proper belief, but an arbitrary, self-made, subjective opinion. Yes, religious belief must sink to the level of the mere illusion or fixed idea of a mind which is insane if contradicted by all reality, all facts scientifically established, and the theory of the universe which such facts support and justify."1

The proofs of God's existence must be, in fact, simply His own manifestations; the ways in which He makes Himself known; the phenomena on which His power and character are imprinted. They can neither be, properly speaking, our reasonings, nor our analyses of the principles involved in our reasonings. Our reasonings are worth nothing except in so far as they are expositions of God's modes of manifestation; and even when our rea

1 Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, i.