Kennedy on Man's Relations to God.

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Saviour' of His people. He in the flesh is reigning in his place as Son, and he reigns there as his people's Head. He is 'a Son over his own house.' This Sonship represents His mediatorial sovereignty."

This is surely dangerous ground. We would hesitate to say that our blessed Lord was out of his place as a Son, when he became the servant of his Father. Though the glory of his eternal Sonship was veiled from human sight under that form, and under the darkening cloud of his sufferings, the obedience which he rendered to the law was that of a Son, and on this account was specially pleasing to the Father. It was as the Son of God that he said, "I delight to do thy will, O my God." It was as viewed in the same light that God repeatedly declared during his day of service, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." And though, by his resurrection, he was "declared to be the Son of God with power," and may be said to have entered into the glory of his Sonship, we are not prepared to speak of his "passing into his place" as the Son. The filial character of his obedience was the result of the wondrous constitution of his person, by which he who was the Son became a servant; but in becoming a servant he never ceased to be a Son, and to act and suffer as a Son. The veil of suffering being now withdrawn, we behold Jesus exalted. But we must carefully distinguish between his essential glory as the Son of God, and his mediatorial glory as the Sovereign of his church. Our author seems at least to confound or identify his Sonship with his Headship. When the apostle speaks of Christ being faithful "as a Son over his own house," he is contrasting, not his present Sonship with his previous servitude, but his eternal Sonship as God, with Moses who was only a servant (Heb. iii. 5, 6). The ineffable relation between the Father and the Son, qualifying the latter specially for our redemption, opens up deeper questions.

In conclusion, we deeply regret that we should have been obliged to indicate opinions so widely apart from those which Mr Kennedy has advanced, and have only to express our hope, that the discussion may lead to clearer, ampler, and more Scriptural views of the important topics which he handles with so much real earnestness and ability.

ART. VIII.—The Philosophy of Nescience; or, Hamilton and Mansel on Religious Thought.

By Professor J. R. HERRICK, D.D., Bangor Theological Seminary.*

MAN

ANSEL'S Bampton Lecture on "The Limits of Religious Thought," was published some ten years ago. It was the application of Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned to Religious Thinking. Such application was not made to any great extent by the master himself. This was done most vigorously by the ablest disciple, doubtless, of the renowned philosopher. The work is carefully prepared, and logically it is very able. It should also be said, that in it valuable suggestions are made in respect to objections to some of the doctrines of religion. But that which gives to the work its special and permanent interest, as well as a temporary notoriety, is the main assumption of Mansel in regard to the possibilities of thought as wholly conditioned and relative.

He first affirms that the difficulties to be encountered are the same in theology as in philosophy, no greater in the one sphere than in the other. This position may be accepted, and, taken by itself, needs not to be controverted.

This granted, the philosophi-theologian lays down his grand postulate, which is to be applied, he argues, both in philosophy and theology, and which is substantially this: Our thinking cannot possibly reach beyond the relative and conditioned. In neither sphere can we think the infinite. We cannot know truth relating to the infinite, and yet we must believe it— therefore, Hamilton and Mansel would say, we are bound to believe it. To the acute logician this seems the easiest way of cutting up scepticism by the roots, and of establishing Christian truth in its place. Wherefore, on this basis, Mansel chooses to conduct his argument; he need not have done so, but his choice is, to attempt the establishment of Christianity and the refutation of scepticism by calling to his aid the philosophy of nescience, or ignorance.

Certainly we are not to assume or allow the assumption, come from whatever source it may, that reason can discover all truth, all necessary truth-just that which is essential to salvationwithout revelation. But whether reason can apprehend divine things, and such as are revealed, is one question; whether divine things and truths of the infinite are opposed to reason, or it to them, is quite a different question, and one so important as to render it not a vain thing to inquire as to the validity of

*From Bibliotheca Sacra, July 1869.

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Mansel's assumption. Does his argument justify his conclusion, or would it, by making impossible any philosophy of religion, act against the Christian system itself?

It is but fair and honourable, while desirable for our own satisfaction, that we first understand what Mansel teaches ; and, in order to this, let him, so far as possible, speak for himself.

We would here start with the fact already expressed, that the lecturer holds the limits of religious thought to be only a species of the limits of all thought; or, in other words, the limits of religious and philosophical thought are the same. "An examination of the limits of religious thought," he affirms, "is an indispensable preliminary to all religious philosophy. And the limits of religious thought are but a special manifestation of the limits of thought in general."* Mansel proceeds to shew satisfactorily, as he seems to think, that no rational theology is possible, because a knowledge of the infinite is impossible. A knowledge of God would imply a knowledge of the infinite, absolute, and first cause. Nay, our author holds these to be the very ideas by which God is to be defined, and on this admission excludes a rational theology from the field, for since the above ideas in respect to knowledge are only negative, we try to think them, but cannot. This logic, which is but an application of Hamilton's assumption, that we have no positive ideas of the infinite and absolute, would reduce all our possible knowledge of God to a mere negative, if not to a zero.

It is necessary to seek aid here from the "Philosophy of the Conditioned;" and Mansel again postulates that the absolute, because one and simple, cannot be conceived. In a wellrounded sentence, weighty in form, rather than for its matter, and one that seems to be a kind of summary of the author's theory, he says: "The absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious; it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple; it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be conceived by absence of difference; it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it. The one and the many regarded as the beginning of existence are thus alike incomprehensible." If we would know the application he will make of this last remark, he will presently tell us, "The fundamental conceptions of rational theology being thus self-destructive, we may naturally expect to find the same antagonism manifested in their special manifestations."+

Mansel, not content with what he has already said, goes on to argue from consciousness the impossibility of reaching the

*Mansel's "Limits of Religious Thought," p. 62. + Ibid, p. 79. Ibid.

We

infinite. We must think, he holds, if we think at all, under these conditions: first, distinction between one object and another; second, relation between subject and object; third, succession and duration in time; and fourth, personality, which he affirms to be limited and relationed, and hence not adequate to reach the infinite. "For though the mere abstract expression of the infinite, when regarded as indicating nothing more than the negation of limitation and therefore of conceivability, is not contradictory in itself, it becomes so the instant we attempt to apply it in reasoning to any object of thought. A thing, an object, an attribute, a person, or any other term signifying one out of many possible objects of consciousness, is, by the very relation, necessarily declared to be finite. An infinite thing, or object, or attribute, or person is, therefore, in the same moment declared to be both finite and infinite. cannot, therefore, start from any abstract assumption of the divine infinity, or reason downward to any object of human thought. And, on the other hand, if all human attributes are conceived under the conditions of difference, and relation, and time, and personality, we cannot represent in thought any such attribute magnified to infinity; for this, again, is to conceive it as finite and infinite at the same time. We can conceive such attributes at the utmost [not wholly inconceivable, then] only indefinitely; that is to say, we may withdraw our thought for the moment from the fact of their being limited, but we cannot conceive them as infinite; that is to say, we cannot possibly think of the absence of the limit, for the instant we attempt to do so, the antagonistic elements of the conception exclude one another and annihilate the whole"-exclude one another and annihilate the whole.* *

It might well be observed that the above positions rest upon the false assumption that there is, and can be no thinking through meditation, the apperception of ideas, or by any intuition or rational insight whatsoever, only by some process of ratiocination. through syllogisms to a logical conclusion.

But in his philosophy the disciple is as his master. Hamilton says: "The unconditioned is incognisable and inconceivable; its notion being only negative of the conditioned, which last alone can be positively known or conceived." This is his statement of his theory, in distinction from those of Kant, Schelling, and Cousin. In further explaining it, he adds: "In our opinion the mind can conceive, and consequently can know, only the limited and the_conditionally limited. The unconditionally unlimited or the Infinite, the unconditionally limited or the Absolute, cannot be positively construed to the

*

"Limits of Religious Thought," p. 107 (and third Lecture, passim).

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mind; they can be conceived only by thinking away from, or abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself is realised consequently the notion of the unconditioned is only negative-negative of the conceivable itself.” And again: "As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of positive thought, thought necessarily supposes conditions. To think is to condition; and conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought.. Thought is only of the conditioned, because, as we have said, to think is simply to condition. The absolute is conceived merely by a negation of conceivability, and all that we know is only known as

"Won from the void and formless infinite." "

"t

Masson, criticising Sir William Hamilton, says, according to him, "All science is the science of the phenomenal or conditional or relative, and philosophy is the science of this science.

In every way, therefore, an ontology or knowledge of things in themselves, of noumena or self-subsisting actualities as distinct from phenomena, must be declared impossible. More expressly in human philosophy must ontology or speculation of the absolute be ab initio given up."‡

And from such premises what is the conclusion? What, doubtless, some would not refuse to accept, that we are bound to believe the infinite, bound to believe what we cannot think, and take as valid truths such as in thought are self-contradictory and absurd. To other some, however, the conclusion from these premises does not appear legitimate or satisfactory, and we frankly confess ourselves to be among the number.

The doctrine thus stated, there may, we think, be opposed to this nescience philosophy and its application a threefold objection: first, that its advocates shew in its use a want of self-consistency; second, as philosophy, the radical position is false; and third, if philosophy is to help theology, we must turn our nescience into science.

1. The advocates of the nescience philosophy are not selfconsistent. In some of their attempts to make their philosophy available in respect to religious subjects, they seem self-contradictory, although in stating this part of the objection, the milder term, "not self-consistent," is used.

We may do well to begin here with the master. And not to seem alone in making the charge against so eminent a man as Hamilton, we may speak in the very words of Masson.

*

"Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton," p. 454 (Wight's ed.). + lbid., p. 456.

"Recent British Philosophy," p. 115.