I. The negation of the Christian view.

I. Dogmatic Atheism has not so many advocates--at least in this country--as at some former times ; but, instead, we have a wide prevalence of that new form of negation which is called Agnosticism. I have already referred to this as one of the alternatives to which the mind is driven in its denial of the supernatural view of Christ's Person; but it is new necessary to consider it on its own merits. The thought may occur that this widespread phase of present-day unbelief is not properly described as "negation," seeing that all it affirms is, that it "does not know." It does not say, "There is no God," but only that it does not know that there is one. Its ground is that of ignorance, lack of evidence, suspense of judgment--not positive denial. This plea, however, is on various grounds inadmissible. It is certainly not the case that thorough-going, reasoned-out Agnosticism, as we have it, for example, in the works of Mr. Spencer, is simply the modest assertion that it does not know whether there is a God or not. It is the dogmatic affirmation, based on an examination of the nature and limits of human intelligence, that God--or, in Mr. Spencer's phrase, the Power which manifests itself in consciousness and in the outward universe--is unknowable.1 But in all its forms, even the mildest, Agnosticism is entitled to be regarded as a negation of the Christian view, for two reasons. First, in affirming that God is not, or cannot be, known, it directly negates, not only the truths of God's natural Revelation, which Christianity presupposes, but the specific Christian assertion that God can be and is known through the of His historical Revelations, and supremely through His Son Jesus Christ. "The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."1 And, second, if God exists, it is impossible in the nature of things that there should not be evidence of His existence, and therefore the denial of such evidence is actually tantamount to the denial of His existence. Why do I say this? It is because the truths about God differs from every other truth in just this respect, that if it is truth it must be capable of a certain measure of rational demonstration. For God is not simply one Being among others. He is the necessary Being. He is the Being whose existence is necessarily involved in the existence of every other being. Thin whole universe, ourselves as part of it, stands in a relation of necessary dependence upon Him. God, therefore, is unlike every other being our thought can take account of. Oilier beings may exist, and we may have no evidence of their existence. But it is rationally inconceivable that such an all-comprehending Reality as we call God should exist, and that through Him the whole material and spiritual universe should come into being, arid yet no trace be found connecting this universe with its Author--so vast an effect with its cause. If even man, for however short a space of time, sets foot on an uninhabited island, we expect, if we visit his retreat, to find some traces of his occupation How much more, if this universe owes its existence to infinite wisdom and power, if God is unceasingly present and active in every part of it, must we expect to find evidence of thin fact? Therefore, I say that denial of all evidence for God's existence is equivalent to the affirmation that there is no God. If God is, thought must be able, nay, is compelled, to take account of His existence. It must explore the relations in which He stands to us and to than world. An obligation rests on it to do so. To think of God is a duty of love, but it is also a task of science. Mr. Spencer is so far in agreement with the views just expressed, that he maintains that our thought is compelled to posit the existence of an absolute Being as the ground and cause of than universe, though of than nature of this ultimate reality he holds that we can form no conception. The reason given is, that our minds, being finite and conditioned in their thinking, cannot form a conception of an existence which lies outside these conditions.1 The question, however, is pertinent--If the mind is thus hemmed up within the limits of its finitude, how does it get to know even that an Absolute exists? Or if we can so far transcend the limits of our thought as to know that the Absolute exists--which is a disproof of the position that thought is restricted wholly to the finite--why may we not also have some knowledge of its nature? It is not difficult to show that, in his endeavours to extricate himself from these difficulties, Mr. Spencer involves himself in a mass of self-contradictions. He tells us, e.g., in every variety of phrase, that we cannot know the Absolute, but almost in the same breath he tells us that we have an idea of the Absolute which our minds are compelled to form,2--that it is a positive, and not, as Sir William Hamilton and Mr. Mansel held, a merely negative conception,3--nay, that we have not only a conception, but a direct and immediate consciousness of this Absolute, blending itself with all our thoughts and feelings, and recognisable by us as such.4 Again, if we ask, What is meant by the Absolute? it is defined as that which exists out of all relations, and for this reason the possibility of a knowledge of it is denied.5 But if we inquire further what ground we have for affirming the existence of such an Absolute, existing out of all relations, we find that the only ground alleged is the knowledge we have of it as standing in relations.6 For this, which Mr. Spencer names the Absolute, is simply the Infinite Power which he elsewhere tells us manifests itself in all that is--in nature and in consciousness--and is a constituent element in every idea we can form. The Absolute, therefore, stands in relation to both matter and mind--has, so far as we can see, its very nature in that relation. It is not, it turns out, a Being which exists out of all relations, but rather, like the Christian God, a self-revealing Power, manifesting itself, if not directly yet indirectly, in its workings in the worlds of matter and of mind. How strange to speak of a Power thus continually manifesting itself in innumerable ways, the consciousness of which, on Mr. Spencer's own showing,1 constantly wells up within us, as absolutely unknown or unknowable!

But, after all, as we by and by discover, this Inscrutable Power of Mr. Spencer's is not absolutely unknowable. It soon becomes apparent that there are quite a number of affirmations we are able to make regarding it, some of them almost of a theistic character. They are made, I admit, generally under a kind of protest,2 yet it is difficult to see why, if they are not seriously meant--if they do not convey some modicum of knowledge--they should be made at all. According to Mr. Spencer, this ultimate reality is a Power: it is a force, the nearest analogue to which is our own will:3 it is infinite, it is eternal, it is omnipresent;4 it is an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed;5 it is the Cause of the universe, standing to it in a relation similar to that of the creative power of the Christian conception.6 Numerous other statements might be quoted all more or less implying knowledge, --as, e.g., that "the Power manifested throughout the Universe distinguished as material, is the same Power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness ": while the necessity we are under to think of the external energy in terms of the internal energy gives rather a spiritualistic than a materialistic aspect to the Universe."1This I take leave to say, so far from being Agnosticism, would more correctly be described as a qualified Gnosticism.2 Mr. Spencer's so-called Agnosticism is not an agnostic system at but a of non-material all, system or semi-spiritual Pantheism. If we know all that these statements imply about the Absolute, there is no bar in principle to our knowing a great deal more. A significant proof of this is the development which the system has received in the hands of one of Mr. Spencer's disciples, Mr. Fiske, who in his Cosmic Philosophy, and still more in his book on The Idea of God, has wrought it out into a kind of Theism. He discards the term "Unknowable," and writes: "It is enough to remind the reader that Deity is unknowable, just in so far as it is not manifested to consciousness through the phenomenal world; knowable, just in so far as it is thus manifested; unknowable, in so far as infinite and absolute; knowable, in the order of its phenomenal manifestations; knowable, in a symbolic way, as the Power which is disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the universe; knowable, as tire eternal Source of a Moral Law, which is implicated with each action of our lives, arid in obedience to which lies our only guaranty of the happiness which is incorruptible, and which neither inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can take away. Thus, though we may not by searching find out God, though we may not compass infinitude, or attain to absolute knowledge, we may at least know all that it concerns us to know, as intelligent and responsible beings."1

It has riot been left for Mr. Spencer to discover that, in the depths of His absolute Being, as well as in the plenitude of the modes of His revealed Being, there is that in God which must always pass our comprehension,--that in the present state of existence it is only very dimly and distantly, and by large use of "symbolic conceptions," that we can approximate to a right knowledge of God. This is affirmed in the Bible quite as strongly as it is by the agnostic philosophers. "Canst thou by searching find out God?"2 "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!"3 "Now I know in part."4 In this sense we cant speak of a Christian Agnosticism.5 This incomprehensibility, however, is held in Scripture to arise, not from any inherent or incurable defect in the human faculties, but simply from the vastness of the object, in the knowledge of which, nevertheless, the mind may continually be growing. The universe itself in its immeasurable extent vastly transcends our present powers of knowledge . how much more the Author of the universe? This, accordingly, is not the point we have in dispute with Mr. Spencer. The point is not whether, in the depths of His absolute existence, there is much in God that must remain unknown to us; but whether He cannot be known by us in His revealed relations to ourselves, and to the world of which we form a part; whether these relations are not also in their measure a true expressions of His nature and character, so that through them we come to know something of Him, even of His absolute Being--though we cannot know all? When, now, the Agnostic tells us that knowledge of this kind is impossible to us, see in what contradiction he lands himself. Here is a man who says, "I know nothing of God; He is absolutely beyond my ken; I cannot form the faintest conception of what He is" And yet he knows so much about God as to be able to say beforehand that He cannot possibly enter into relations with human beings by which He might become known to them. This is a proposition of which the Agnostic, on his own showing, can never have any evidence. If God is unknowable, how can we know this much about Him--that He cannot in any mode or form enter into relations with us by which He might be known? Only on one supposition can this be maintained. If, indeed, as Mr. Spencer thinks, the nature of God and the intelligence of man are two things absolutely disparate--if, as Spinoza said, to speak of God taking on Him the nature of man is as absurd as to speak of a circle taking on it the nature of the square,1--then not only is God unknowable, but the whole Christian system is a priori ruled out of consideration. This, however, is a proposition which can never be proved, and we have seen that the attempt to prove and work with it only entangled Mr. Spencer in a mass of difficulties. There is really, on his own principles, no reason why he should not admit the possibility of a relative knowledge of God, as true in its way as the knowledge which we have of space, time, matter, force, or cause,--all which notions, as well as that of the Absolute, he tells us are prolific of intellectual contradictions.2 Why, for instance, should we more hesitate to speak of God as Intelligence than to speak of Him as Power; why shrink from attributing to Him the attribute of Personality any more than that of Cause?3 The whole objection, therefore, falls to the ground with the intellectual theory on which it is founded. For once grant that the nature of God and the intelligence of man are not thus foreign to each other, as Spencer supposes; grant that man is made in time image of God, and bears in some measure His likeness--then man's mind is not wholly shut up within the limits of the finite--there is an absolute element in it, kindred with the absolute reason of God, and real knowledge both of God and of the nature of things without us is possible.