to be postulated. Eternal causation, of the universe itself or of universal causes, would only refer back the difficulty eternally, and besides explaining nothing, would be absolutely unthinkable. Our "nature," "being," common sense," therefore, necessitates the assumption of a First Cause.

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Compelled as we are by the laws of our being to make this assumption, when we turn also to the objective facts of nature we are necessitated by reason to accept the same truth. Space, time, matter, motion, force—all these, when resolved into their ultimate elements in thought, present to us a known and an unknown side, a conditioned and an unconditioned form of existence; they each in turn declare themselves the effects of an inscrutable Power working from beneath and by them. "Ultimate scientific ideas, then, are all representative of realities that cannot be comprehended. After no matter how great a progress in the colligation of facts and the establishment of generalizations ever wider and wider-after the merging of limited and derivative truths in truths that are larger and deeper has been carried no matter how far, the fundamental truth remains as much beyond reach as ever. The explanation of that which is explicable does but bring out into greater clearness the inexplicableness of that which remains behind." For were it otherwise, these powers themselves, or each of them, would be self-existing, since "it is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere."

Not only so-not only are we compelled by the constitution of our being, and by the external facts of nature, to this conclusion of an inscrutable Primal Verity, but when we examine the three great systems which have undertaken to account for the mystery of existenceatheism, pantheism, theism-we find underneath each the same radical assumption. Atheism or materialism, which maintains the doctrine of the self-existence of the universe, assumes a primal unknown cause for the universe in the very expression of its doctrine as that of self-existence-a self and an existence both, in their ultimate analysis, utterly inscrutable to us. "The assertion that the universe is selfexistent does not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence; and so leaves us with a mere re-statement of the mystery." It denies a First Cause, and in the very terms of its doctrine gives us a cause; which, moreover, as to the unknowable fact, leaves us where we were.

Pantheism, also, or the doctrine of the self-creation of the universe, lands us in the same result. For "really to conceive self-creation is to

conceive potential existence passing [into actual existence by some inherent 'necessity; which we cannot do. If represented in thought at all, potential existence must be represented as something, that is, as an actual existence; to suppose that it can be represented as nothing involves two absurdities—that nothing is more than a negation, and can be positively represented in thought; and that one nothing is distinguished from all other nothings by its power to develop into something." But if that potential something be an actual something, then it is the inscrutable cause we seek; otherwise we are brought back, as in materialism, to the mere cognition of the present existence of the universe, involving the like inscrutable cause as before. That something therefore which creates itself is in fact the inscrutable cause of itself; else we have the alternative of a creation without a cause— a thing of which no idea is possible." Thus pantheism, like materialism, assumes in its very structure the Primal Inscrutable Power.

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So, of course, does theism. 'Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic and the theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element."

Passing inwards to the structure of our own minds we are brought to a like conclusion of an unconditioned cause. We find here a similar double fact as in nature-a known and an unknown element, a conditioned and an unconditioned state. Here, too, the cause of the known or conditioned state is precisely the unknown or unconditioned state or raw material from which feeling and thought emerge into the conditioned consciousness. "Our consciousness of the unconditioned being literally the unconditioned consciousness, or raw material of thought to which in thinking we give definite forms, it follows that an ever-present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence." The structure of our own minds therefore compels the like declaration of an inscrutable unknown power working through our consciousness even as it works through the external world. And that that power is one and the same in nature and in us is proved by its processes of working; or, again, were it not the same there would be two unconditioned powers-which is impossible. It is therefore the One Power that works in all and through all; and if our own natures, and the external world, and the systems by which we interpret the universe to ourselves, and the inmost structure of our intelligence itself, if these all unite in the declaration of that One Supreme Existence, they also unite in testifying to the impenetrableness of the clouds and

darkness round about it—the incomprehensibleness of the one eternal reality.

Look where we may then, we are presented by an ultimate fact and power transcending knowledge. Now comes the question what we are to think that this power is. Is it something real or only a negation-the negation of conceivability? "The Absolute is conceived merely by the negation of conceivability," writes Sir W. Hamilton. "The Absolute and the Infinite," says Mr. Mansel, 66 are thus like the Inconceivable and the Incomprehensible, names indicating, not an object of thought or of consciousness at all, but the mere absence of the conditions under which thought is possible." That is to say, according to Hamilton and Mansel, we cannot affirm the positive existence of anything beyond phenomena. Is this so? Does it not follow that if the Infinite is a negation it is a nonexistence? "Unavoidable," says Spencer, 66 as this conclusion seems, it involves, I think, a grave error;" and from this point Spencer's chief merit, as the verifier of the doctrine of a First Cause, has its rise. The whole argument is masterly and thoroughly convincing. It occupies the last ten pages of the chapter on "The Relativity of all Knowledge."1 To give, or to do justice to his argument here is impossible. Take one paragraph from the outset :

"Observe in the first place, that every one of the arguments by which the relativity of our knowledge is demonstrated, distinctly postulates the positive existence of something beyond the relative. To say, that we cannot know the Absolute is, by implication, to affirm that there is an Absolute. In the very denial of our power to learn what the Absolute is, there lies hidden the assumption that it is; and the making of this assumption proves that the Absolute has been present to the mind, not as a nothing, but as a something. Similarly with every step in the reasoning by which this doctrine is upheld. The Nomenon, everywhere named as the antithesis of the Phenomenon, is throughout necessarily thought of as an actuality. It is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a Reality of which they are appearances; for appearance without reality is unthinkable. Strike out from the argument the terms Unconditioned, Infinite, Absolute, with their equivalents, and in place of them write, 'negation of conceivability,' or 'absence of the conditions under which thought is possible,' and you find that the argument becomes nonsense. Truly to realize in thought any one of the propositions of which the argument consists, the Unconditioned must be represented as positive and not negative. How then can it be a legitimate conclusion from the argument, that our consciousness of it is negative? An argument, the very construction of which assigns to a certain term a certain meaning, but which ends in showing

1 "First Principles," 3rd edition.

that this term has no such meaning, is simply an elaborate suicide. Clearly, then, the very demonstration that a definite consciousness of the Absolute is impossible to us unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it.”

Or the following from pages 90-91 :—

"We are conscious of the Relative as existence under conditions and limits; it is impossible that these conditions and limits can be thought of apart from something to which they give the form; the abstraction of these conditions and limits, is, by the hypothesis, the abstraction of them only; consequently there must be a residuary consciousness of something which filled up their outlines; and this indefinite something constitutes our consciousness of the Nonrelative or Absolute. Impossible though it is to give to this consciousness any qualitative or quantitative expression whatever, it is not the less certain that it remains with us as a positive and indestructible element of thought."

"This consciousness (of the Absolute) is not the abstract of any one group of thoughts, ideas or conceptions; but it is the abstract of all thoughts, ideas or conceptions. That which is common to them all, and cannot be got rid of, is what we predicate by the word existence. Dissociated as this becomes from each of its modes, it remains as an indefinite consciousness of something constant under all modes-of being apart from its appearances. The distinction we feel between special and general existence is the distinction between that which is changeable in us and that which is unchangeable. The contrast between the Absolute and the Relative in our minds, is really the contrast between that mental element which exists absolutely, and those which exist relatively."

And the summing up :

"We have seen how, in the very assertion that all our knowledge, properly so called, is Relative, there is involved the assertion that there exists a Non-relative. We have seen how, in each step of the argument by which this doctrine is established, the same assumption is made. We have seen how, from the very necessity of thinking in relations, it follows that the Relative is itself inconceivable except as related to a real Non-relative. We have seen that unless a real Non-relative or Absolute be postulated, the Relative itself becomes absolute; and so brings the argument to a contradiction. And on contemplating the process of thought, we have equally seen how impossible it is to get rid of the consciousness of an actuality lying behind appearances; and how, from this impossibility, results our indestructible belief in that actuality."

This is by no means the complete doctrine, though an essential constituent of the doctrine of a First Cause, as presented by Spencer; but an understanding of so much, and a perception of the practical conditions of the question-the whole agitated and perplexed relation of religion and science, and the requirements of humanity at the present day-will lead us to hail this demonstration of Primal Being as the step onwards which the human mind at this day requires to take towards a permanent foundation of positive belief. To some, however, the best proof of its truth will be found

in the answer which the doctrine furnishes to materialism—which we will give here :—

"In the first place, it is clear that by self-existence we especially mean, an existence independent of any other-not produced by any other: the assertion of self-existence is simply an indirect denial of creation. In thus excluding the idea of any antecedent cause, we necessarily exclude the idea of a beginning; for to admit the idea of beginning-to admit that there was a time when the existence had not commenced, is to admit that its commencement was determined by something, or was caused; which is a contradiction. Self-existence, therefore, necessarily means existence without a beginning; and to form a conception of existence is to form a conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past time, implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility. To this let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in any sense be an explanation of the universe. No one will say that the existence of an object at the present moment is made easier to understand by the discovery that it existed an hour ago, or a day ago, or a year ago; and if its existence now is not made in the least degree more comprehensible by its existence during some previous finite period of time, then no accumulation of such finite periods, even could we extend them to an infinite period, would make it more comprehensible. Thus the atheistic theory is not only absolutely unthinkable, but, even if it were thinkable, would not be a solution."

verse.

So far, we have made good our original statement that the modern relation of science and religion is distinctly different from that of any former time, implying, as it does, the complete oversetting of the doc trine of materialism, and the rigorous establishment of an actual, though Unknown and Unknowable Power as the Cause of the uniAll other doctrines or isms as to the radical mystery of life are at rest, therefore, receive their quietus in this finally demonstrated ultimate Verity. Clear it is, that from this position neither philosophy nor religion can go back: it is a definite stage in world-progress, a rescinding on all sides of the old and vague affirmings and denyings; a sweeping away finally of the metaphysical cobwebs of vain and endless disputings; and a definite substitution of an underlying veritable fact, which can never again be lost. There has been brought about nothing less than what its author rightly conceives as "a revolution of thought fruitful in beneficial consequences." We owe this to Herbert Spencer, in whom and his work, every New Churchman has a very special interest, as a something whose meaning for him is this-The Lord working in the mind of science, and through this special agent, by the natural considerations given him to offer, yielding to the Church the natural groundwork and medium for a permanent establishment of her own higher truths. Nay, we might,