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168

True Philosophy begins with God.

[LECT.

come from, they set bounds to human thinking which cannot be ignored. And then all system building must take into account all the faculties of mind, and build on logical lines. Moreover, if we are building for mankind we must take in the whole man no part can be ignored. The moral nature must be satisfied, the consciousness of God must be regarded, and the seeking instinct must be led to the something true to match it. We cannot make man over to suit our philosophy, so let ours be the wiser plan of making our philosophy fit the constitution of man. Now, no philosophy can hope to live among men, who live and grow, that does not begin with God as First Cause, go on with "God in whom we live and move and have our being," and aim at God as the final good and ultimate destiny of man. No philosophy which mirrors not forth the mind of God can find response from all the mind of man. A philosophy that is built up on scientific theory or fact even, will be stranded at the first advance of science. Spencer's philosophy is built on the science of a day just passing by. Lionel Beale knows what he says, when he speaks about physiology, and the world of scientists will listen to him. He says that Mr. Spencer's books are so full of a physiology already so far behind the age, that ten years from now no man who knows anything about science will read them, except as a literary curiosity. And the same thing is true of every philosophy which ignores the God-consciousness in man, as the king of all our faculties, and lays its foundations in any thing less than the Eternal Creator.

This thought is perhaps new to you and will need a little fuller proof. You grant, I think, that all our reasoning must be on the line of the mental constitution. For instance, the mind must believe in cause and effect, no effect without a cause. on that line we go back and back, and cannot rest until we rest

Now

1 Mr. Cook's Boston Lectures, 1883.

III.]

Design or Chance?

169

in a First Cause. The only explanation within reach of man's mind of cause and its effect is will, our own will resulting in phenomena, and so our only rational hypothesis of the First Cause is that of an almighty will-vastly more easily believed than Mr. Spencer's contradictory statements about the well-expounded unknowable. And science with common sense cannot disprove the hypothesis of WILL. Again, from time immemorial men have thought that marks of design showed a designer; Socrates illustrates it by a statue, Paley by a watch. Order, and relation of means to special ends, imply design, an intelligent purpose, hence a conscious mind.

Even those who reject the argument or hypothesis of design, unconsciously use the very words that necessarily imply a designer. We read of "provisions" of nature; of "the purpose of an organ;" something is so "in order that" something else may be; and such language is simply unavoidable, because the thing implied is a necessary truth. The more thoroughly Nature is studied in all its varieties and gradations and adaptations, the more overwhelming becomes the necessity to admit a preconceived plan, and hence an over-ruling mind. The test of a hypothesis is to ask "whether it is warranted by the facts, and is perceived veritably to represent nature." The hypothesis of design can stand these tests. No true scientist can do aught else with this hypothesis than accumulate proofs to establish it whether he will or not. Universal common sense accepts it, and Christianity teaches it an essential doctrine.

The

The only alternative is the hypothesis of chance. universe came to be thus either as the work of a mind and will with intelligent design, or all came about by chance. Common sense does not carry on business on the line of chance. Science always asks, "What is this for ?" and cannot find one proof of chance where she brings a teeming million for design; and

170

"What is Truth?"

[LECT.

Christianity knows nothing of chance: only a lonely, misty, newphilosophy tells us by a circumlocution of large words that all came about by chance. Science tells us about laws; and with every new discovery the Christian rejoices with the scientist, because he has found a new trace of the Lawgiver. Science rejoices at every new evidence of unity in Nature; the Christian rejoices with him, for it gives new proof that the great First Cause is one. Science has to do with secondary causes, but these imply a final First Cause. In fact the evidences of a God in the universe are as actual and as full as the proof to one man's consciousness, that there is a conscious mind in another man. And what will you think of a philosophy that ignores these things? Atheism is an insult to humanity, and Spencerian agnosticism was seen to be an insult to logic; on no hypothesis but that of an eternal omnipresent God, can the problems of humanity be solved. We have now climbed far up these heights again on lines of pure reasoning, and with every advance we see traces of the absolute-foot-steps of the Infinite One. And the hope grows young again that perhaps we may really find this God, and reach him, and thus satisfy the perennial cravings of the human heart for the Infinite All-father. And this bring us to the last stage of my argument in

CHAPTER V.

ON OUR KEY TO THE ABSOLUTE.

The cry of the human heart and mind has ever been "What is truth ?" Where her foundations? What her goal? Finite man will explore and touch and know the infinite source and end of all. All philosophical attempts, ever and ever renewed, satisfy the mind for only a moment and then turn to ashes. The latest attempt, agnosticism, conceived in Kant, bred in Hamilton, and full-fledged in Spencer, cuts

III.]

Philosophical Answers

171

away the foundation of all hope in our search after truth; would satisfy us with the husks of relative symbols, and leaves us, every one,

"An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light :

And with no language but a cry."

Science and thought have more than hinted at the existence of an Infinite God. Is there then no bridge between us and the Infinite one? No link of real truth to bind the human and divine ?1 Kant left all stranded on an "if." Fichte tried to get rid of the difficulty by saying there was no chasm, there was nothing but human thought, all beyond, the mere shadow of our minds. That could not satisfy man very long. Shelling tried to bridge the chasm by taking us back to the very beginning, where finite and infinite lay in one original indifference, and thence differentiated into finite and infinite, continuing in unbroken rythm, maintaining an eternal and necessary correspondence. But that fundamental mixture of finite and infinite could no more bear the light of logic than Bain's double-faced somewhat made up of matter and mind. Hegel would bridge the chasm by making the absolute the fountain and goal of all, the absolute revealing himself in the developments of man, making man thus an incarnation of God, partial in the individual, complete in the race. The effort, you see, ever was to unite God and man. But this attempt of Hegel is too abstract, too speculative to be practically workable by man. Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Lotze, Hamilton, Descartes, and others, bridge the chasm over simply by faith, resting here on our moral nature, there on the veracity of God, as revealed in the human heart which he has made. But that involves too large a span for the bridge of faith, which seeks to carry the world of man

1See Christian Philosophy Quarterly, Jan. 1883, "The Incarnation and Modern Thought," by Behrends.

172

Permanent Satisfaction.

[LECT.

safely over. Schopenhauer and Mallock and others despair of the problem: think the order of nature not beneficent: all is dark and life hardly worth living at all. Spencer and his agnostic fellow-thinkers pooh-pooh the whole subject. There is no such thing as a relation between the human and the divine, and the most religious thing we can do is to bury the whole question forever, and mark on the tombstone-"Mysterious, Unknowable." But must this be the final result of all our search ?— Nothing but despair for the highest hopes of human hearts? The conscience of mankind protests against the fundamental tenet of agnosticism as an outrage upon our moral nature, making our loftiest thought a lie, and turning conscious existence into a calamity. Pure reason cannot show that the mind is not a reflection of the infinite mind; that our consciousness, which unifies and studies the universe, is not akin to the consciousness which gave the universe her form and decrees; that our reason is not true reason, because in some way or other it is the reason of God; that the lines along which our thoughts run, the necessary trend of our mental flight do not indicate the fundamental constitution of all thought, human or divine. Nay, reason suggests all this, but to affirm it would be too near making unproved assumptions, which we wish to avoid. And yet in this uncertainty, we cannot thrive, humanity droops, our holiest aspirations lie stifled, crushed. We long to burst these barriers, and breathe the free mountain air, whence we can behold the All-Father, and hear his very voice in our own souls, instead of these hollow mocking echoes of "environments." And when those good men tell us to spring over the chasm, and scale those heights by faith, "Nay," replies the human heart; "the the way is too indefinite, the facts too dim, for sturdy faith of manhood."

And is there then no further help for human need? We consult all who have grappled with these deep subjects, from

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