E.

Because all predicates of God are negative, and therefore furnish no real knowledge. We answer: (a) Predicates derived from our consciousness, such as spirit, love, and holiness, are positive. (b) The terms "infinite" and "absolute," moreover, express not merely a negative but a positive idea-the idea, in the former case, of the absence of all limit, the idea that the object thus described goes on and on forever; the idea, in the latter case, of entire self-sufficiency. Since predicates of God, therefore, are not merely negative, the argument mentioned above furnishes no valid reason why we may not know him.

Versus Sir William Hamilton, Metaphysics, 530-"The absolute and the infinite can each only be conceived as a negation of the thinkable; in other words, of the absolute and infinite we have no conception at all." Hamilton here confounds the infinite, or the absence of all limits, with the indefinite, or the absence of all known limits. Per contra, see Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 248, and Philosophy of the Infinite, 272"Negation of one thing is possible only by affirmation of another." Porter, Human Intellect, 652-"If the Sandwich Islanders, for lack of name, had called the ox a nothog, the use of a negative appellation would not necessarily authorize the inference of a want of definite conceptions or positive knowledge." So with the infinite or notfinite, the unconditioned or not-conditioned, the independent or not-dependent,-these names do not imply that we cannot conceive and know it as something positive. Spencer, First Principles, 92—“Our consciousness of the Absolute, indefinite though it is, is positive, and not negative."

Schurman, Agnosticism, 100, speaks of "the farce of nescience playing at omniscience in setting the bounds of science." "The agnostic," he says, "sets up the invisible picture of a Grand Être, formless and colorless in itself, absolutely separated from man and from the world-blank within and void without-its very existence indistinguishable from its non-existence, and, bowing down before this idolatrous creation, he pours out his soul in lamentations over the incognizableness of such a mysterious and awful non-entity. . . . The truth is that the agnostic's abstraction of a Deity is unknown, only because it is unreal." See McCosh, Intuitions, 194, note; Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 363. God is not necessarily infinite in every respect. He is infinite only in every excellence. A plane which is unlimited in the one respect of length may be limited in another respect, such as breadth. Our doctrine here is not therefore inconsistent with what immediately follows.

F. Because to know is to limit or define. Hence the Absolute as unlimited, and the Infinite as undefined, cannot be known. We answer: (a) God is absolute, not as existing in no relation, but as existing in no necessary relation; and (b) God is infinite, not as excluding all coexistence of the finite with himself, but as being the ground of the finite, and so unfettered by it. (c) God is actually limited by the unchangeableness of his own attributes and personal distinctions, as well as by his self-chosen relations to the universe he has created and to humanity in the person of Christ. God is therefore limited and defined in such a sense as to render knowledge of him possible.

Versus Mansel, Limitations of Religious Thought, 75-84, 93-95; cf. Spinoza: "Omnis determinatio est negatio;" hence to define God is to deny him. But we reply that perfection is inseparable from limitation. Man can be other than he is: not so God, at least internally. But this limitation, inherent in his unchangeable attributes and personal distinctions, is God's perfection. Externally, all limitations upon God are self-limitations, and so are consistent with his perfection. That God should not be able thus to limit himself in creation and redemption would render all self-sacrifice in him impossible, and so would subject him to the greatest of limitations. We may say therefore that God's 1. Perfection involves his limitation to (a) personality, (b) trinity, (c) righteousness; 2. Revelation involves his self-limitation in (a) decree, (b) creation, (c) preservation, (d) government, (e) education of the world; 3. Redemption involves

his infinite self-limitation in the (a) person and (b) work of Jesus Christ; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 87-101, and in Bap. Quar. Rev.. Jan. 1891: 521-532.

Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 135-"The infinite is not the quantitative all; the absolute is not the unrelated... Both absolute and infinite mean only the independent ground of things." Julius Miller, Doct. Sin, Introduc., 10—“Religion has to do, not with an Object that must let itself be known because its very existence is contingent upon its being known, but with the Object in relation to whom we are truly subject, dependent upon him, and waiting until he manifest himself." James Martineau, Study of Religion, 1:346-"We must not confound the infinite with the total.... The self-abnegation of infinity is but a form of self-assertion, and the only form in which it can reveal itself.... However instantaneous the omniscient thought, however sure the almighty power, the execution has to be distributed in time, and must have an order of successive steps; on no other terms can the eternal become temporal, and the infinite articulately speak in the finite."

Perfect personality excludes, not self-determination, but determination from without, determination by another. God's self-limitations are the self-limitations of love, and therefore the evidences of his perfection. They are signs, not of weakness but of power. God has limited himself to the method of evolution, gradually unfolding himself in nature and in history. The government of sinners by a holy God involves constant self-repression. The education of the race is a long process of divine forbearance; Herder: "The limitations of the pupil are limitations of the teacher also." In inspiration, God limits himself by the human element through which he works. Above all, in the person and work of Christ, we have infinite self-limitation: Infinity narrows itself down to a point in the incarnation, and holiness endures the agonies of the Cross. God's promises are also self-limitations. Thus both nature and grace are self-imposed restrictions upon God, and these self-limitations are the means by which he reveals himself. See Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1: 189, 195; Porter, Human Intellect, 653; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 130; Calderwood, Philos. Infinite, 168; McCosh,, Intuitions, 186; Hickok, Rational Cosmology, 85; Martineau, Study of Religion, 2: 85, 86, 362; Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1: 189-191.

G. Because all knowledge is relative to the knowing agent; that is, what we know, we know, not as it is objectively, but only as it is related to our own senses and faculties. In reply: (a) We grant that we can know only that which has relation to our faculties. But this is simply to say that we know only that which we come into mental contact with, that is, we know only what we know. But, (b) We deny that what we come into mental contact with is known by us as other than it is. So far as it is known at all, it is known as it is. In other words, the laws of our knowing are not merely arbitrary and regulative, but correspond to the nature of things. We conclude that, in theology, we are equally warranted in assuming that the laws of our thought are laws of God's thought, and that the results of normally conducted thinking with regard to God correspond to the objective reality.

Versus Sir Wm. Hamilton, Metaph., 96-116, and Herbert Spencer, First Principles, 68-97. This doctrine of relativity is derived from Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, who holds that a priori judgments are simply "regulative." But we reply that when our primitive beliefs are found to be simply regulative, they will cease to regulate. The forms of thought are also facts of nature. The mind does not, like the glass of a kaleidoscope, itself furnish the forms; it recognizes these as having an existence external to itself. The mind reads its ideas, not into nature, but in nature. Our intuitions are not green goggles, which make all the world seem green: they are the lenses of a microscope, which enable us to see what is objectively real (Royce, Spirit of Mod. Philos., 125). Kant called our understanding "the legislator of nature." But it is so, only as discoverer of nature's laws, not as creator of them. Human reason does impose its laws and forms upon the universe; but, in doing this, it interprets the real meaning of the universe.

Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge: "All judgment implies an objective truth according

to which we judge, which constitutes the standard, and with which we have something in common, i. e., our minds are part of an infinite and eternal Mind." French aphorism: "When you are right, you are more right than you think you are." God will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion. Kant vainly wrote "No thoroughfare" over the reason in its highest exercise. Martineau, Study of Religion, 1: 135, 136-" Over against Kant's assumption that the mind cannot know anything outside of itself, we may set Comte's equally unwarrantable assumption that the mind cannot know itself or its states. We cannot have philosophy without assumptions. You dogmatize if you say that the forms correspond with reality; but you equally dogmatize if you say that they do not. . . . 79-That our cognitive faculties correspond to things as they are, is much less surprising than that they should correspond to things as they are not." W. T. Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 1:22, exposes Herbert Spencer's self-contradiction: "All knowledge is, not absolute, but relative; our knowledge of this fact however is, not relative, but absolute."

Ritschl, Justification and Reconciliation, 3: 16-21, sets out with a correct statement of the nature of knowledge, and gives in his adhesion to the doctrine of Lotze, as distinguished from that of Kant. Ritschl's statement may be summarized as follows: "We deal, not with the abstract God of metaphysics, but with the God self-limited, who is revealed in Christ. We do not know either things or God apart from their phenomena or manifestations, as Plato imagined; we do not know phenomena or manifestations alone, without knowing either things or God, as Kant supposed; but we do know both things and God in their phenomena or manifestations, as Lotze taught. We hold to no mystical union with God, back of all experience in religion, as Pietism does; soul is always and only active, and religion is the activity of the human spirit, in which feeling, knowing and willing combine in an intelligible order."

But Dr. C. M. Mead, Ritschl's Place in the History of Doctrine, has well shown that Ritschl has not followed Lotze. His "value-judgments" are simply an application to theology of the "regulative" principle of Kant. He holds that we can know things not as they are in themselves, but only as they are for us. We reply that what things are worth for us depends on what they are in themselves. Ritschl regards the doctrines of Christ's precxistence, divinity and atonement as intrusions of metaphysics into theology, matters about which we cannot know, and with which we have nothing to do. There is no propitiation or mystical union with Christ; and Christ is our Example, but not our atoning Savior. Ritschl does well in recognizing that love in us gives eyes to the mind, and enables us to see the beauty of Christ and his truth. But our judgment is not, as he holds, a merely subjective value-judgment,-it is a coming in contact with objective fact. On the theory of knowledge held by Kant, Hamilton and Spencer, see Bishop Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884: 13; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 297-336; J. S. Mill, Examination, 1: 113-134; Herbert, Modern Realism Examined; M. B. Anderson, art.: “Hamilton," in Johnson's Encyclopædia; McCosh, Intuitions, 139–146, 340, 341, and Christianity and Positivism, 97-123; Maurice, What is Revelation? Alden, Intellectual Philosophy, 48-79, esp. 71-79; Porter, Hum. Intellect, 523; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 103; Bib. Sac. April, 1868: 341; Princeton Rev., 1861: 122; Bowne, Review of Herbert Spencer, 76; Bowen, in Princeton Rev., March, 1878: 445–448; Mind, April, 1878: 257; Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 117; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 109-113; Iverach, in Present Day Tracts, 5: No. 29; Martineau, Study of Religion, 1: 79, 120, 121, 135, 136.

3. In God's actual revelation of himself and certain of these relations.-As we do not in this place attempt a positive proof of God's existence or of man's capacity for the knowledge of God, so we do not now attempt to prove that God has brought himself into contact with man's mind by revelation. We shall consider the grounds of this belief hereafter. Our aim at present is simply to show that, granting the fact of revelation, a scientific theology is possible. This has been denied upon the following grounds :

A. That revelation, as a making known, is necessarily internal and subjective either a mode of intelligence, or a quickening of man's cognitive powers-and hence can furnish no objective facts such as constitute the proper material for science.

Morell, Philos. Religion, 128-131, 143-"The Bible cannot in strict accuracy of language be called a revelation, since a revelation always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living mind." F. W. Newman, Phases of Faith, 152—“ Of our moral and spiritual God we know nothing without-everything within." Theodore Parker: "Verbal revelation can never communicate a simple idea like that of God, Justice, Love, Religion"; see review of Parker in Bib. Sac., 18: 24-27. James Martineau, Seat of Authority in Religion: "As many minds as there are that know God at first hand, so many revealing acts there have been, and as many as know him at second hand are strangers to revelation"; so, assuming external revelation to be impossible, Martineau subjects all the proofs of such revelation to unfair destructive criticism. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1: 185—" As all revelation is originally an inner living experience, the springing up of religious truth in the heart, no external event can belong in itself to revelation, no matter whether it be naturally or supernaturally brought about." Professor George M. Forbes: "Nothing can be revealed to us which we do not grasp with our reason. It follows that, so far as reason acts normally, it is a part of revelation." Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 30-"The revelation of God is the growth of the idea of God."

In reply to this objection, urged mainly by idealists in philosophy, (a) We grant that revelation, to be effective, must be the means of inducing a new mode of intelligence, or in other words, must be understood. We grant that this understanding of divine things is impossible without a quickening of man's cognitive powers. We grant, moreover, that revelation, when originally imparted, was often internal and subjective.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 51-53, on Gal. 1: 16" to reveal his Son in me": "The revelation on the way to Damascus would not have enlightened Paul, had it been merely a vision to his eye. Nothing can be revealed to us which has not been revealed in us. The eye does not see the beauty of the landscape, nor the ear hear the beauty of music. So flesh and blood do not reveal Christ to us. Without the teaching of the Spirit, the external facts will be only like the letters of a book to a child that cannot read." We may say with Channing: "I am more sure that my rational nature is from God, than that any book is the expression of his will."

(b)

But we deny that external revelation is therefore useless or impossible. Even if religious ideas sprang wholly from within, an external revelation might stir up the dormant powers of the mind. Religious ideas, however, do not spring wholly from within. External revelation can impart them. Man can reveal himself to man by external communications, and, if God has equal power with man, God can reveal himself to man in like manner.

Rogers, in his Eclipse of Faith, asks pointedly: "If Messrs. Morell and Newman can teach by a book, cannot God do the same?" Lotze, Microcosmos, 2: 660 (book?, chup. 4), speaks of revelation as "either contained in some divine act of historic occurrence, or continually repeated in men's hearts." But in fact there is no alternative here; the strength of the Christian creed is that God's revelation is both external and internal; see Gore, in Lux Mundi, 338. Rainy, in Critical Review, 1: 1-21, weil says that Martineau unwarrantably isolates the witness of God to the individual soul. The inward needs to be combined with the outward, in order to make sure that it is not a vagary of the imagination. We need to distinguish God's revelations from our own fancies. Hence, before giving the internal, God commonly gives us the external, as a standard by which to try our impressions. We are finite and sinful, and we need authority. The external revelation commends itself as authoritative to the heart which recognizes its own spiritual needs. External authority evokes the inward witness and gives added clearness to it, but only historical revelation furnishes indubitable proof that God is love, and gives us assurance that our longings after God are not in vain.

(c) Hence God's revelation may be, and, as we shall hereafter see, it is, in great part, an external revelation in works and words. The universe is a revelation of God; God's works in nature precede God's words in history. We claim, moreover, that, in many cases where truth was originally communicated internally, the same Spirit who communicated it has brought about an external record of it, so that the internal revelation might be handed down to others than those who first received it.

We must not limit revelation to the Scriptures. The eternal Word antedated the written word, and through the eternal Word God is made known in nature and in history. Internal revelation is preceded by, and conditioned upon, external revelation. In point of time earth comes before man, and sensation before perception. Action best expresses character, and historic revelation is more by deeds than by words. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., 1: 231-264-"The Word is not in the Scriptures alone. The whole creation reveals the Word. In nature God shows his power; in incarnation his grace and truth. Scripture testifies of these, but Scripture is not the essential Word. The Scripture is truly apprehended and appropriated when in it and through it we see the living and present Christ. It does not bind men to itself alone, but it points them to the Christ of whom it testifies. Christ is the authority. In the Scriptures he points us to himself and demands our faith in him. This faith, once begotten, leads us to new appropriation of Scripture, but also to new criticism of Scripture. We find Christ more and more in Scripture, and yet we judge Scripture more and more by the standard which we find in Christ."

Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 71-82: "There is but one authority-Christ. His Spirit works in many ways, but chiefly in two: first, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and secondly, the leading of the church into the truth. The latter is not to be isolated or separated from the former. Scripture is law to the Christian consciousness, and Christian consciousness in time becomes law to the Scripture-interpreting, criticizing, verifying it. The word and the spirit answer to each other. Scripture and faith are coördinate. Protestantism has exaggerated the first; Romanism the second. Martineau fails to grasp the coördination of Scripture and faith."

(d) With this external record we shall also see that there is given under proper conditions a special influence of God's Spirit, so to quicken our cognitive powers that the external record reproduces in our minds the ideas with which the minds of the writers were at first divinely filled.

We may illustrate the need of internal revelation from Egyptology, which is impossible so long as the external revelation in the hieroglyphics is uninterpreted; from the ticking of the clock in a dark room, where only the lit candle enables us to tell the time; from the landscape spread out around the Rigi in Switzerland, invisible until the first rays of the sun touch the snowy mountain peaks. External revelation (pavépwơɩs, Rom. 1: 19, 20) must be supplemented by internal revelation (àπokádvis, 1 Cor. 2: 10, 12). Christ is the organ of external, the Holy Spirit the organ of internal, revelation. In Christ (2 Cor. 1: 20) are "the yea" and "the Amen "--the objective certainty and the subjective certitude, the reality and the realization.

Objective certainty must become subjective certitude in order to a scientific theology. Before conversion we have the first, the external truth of Christ; only at conversion and after conversion do we have the second, "Christ formed in us" (Gal. 4: 19). We have objective revelation at Sinai (Ex. 20: 22); subjective revelation in Elisha's knowledge of Gehazi (2 K. 5:26). James Russell Lowell, Winter Evening Hymn to my Fire: "Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets: at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words! how swift recede Time's shadows! and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvil of the brain. It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast throbbing hammers of the poet's thought!"

(e) Internal revelations thus recorded, and external revelations thus interpreted, both furnish objective facts which may serve as proper material for science. Although revelation in its widest sense may include, and as constituting the ground of the possibility of theology does include, both