"the Absolute can be thought to exist only as Personality, as a Spirit, Who in His Thought contains the Ground of all Truth, in His Feeling the Source of all Goodness, in His inner psychic Activity-His Will-the creative Ground of all Being, and, inasmuch as He enjoys the harmonious union of these three factors, He is also the Fountain-head of aesthetic Beauty." With such a Deity, we can, as theistic philosophers, look the whole speculative world in the face, and say,— THIS is our GOD; we have waited for HIM, and HE will save us: HE will be our GUIDE even unto death. CHAPTER XI. RECENT THEISTIC THOUGHT ON FUNCTIONS OF REASON IN MAN. It was very well said by Professor Thomas Hill Green that philosophy is the result of a progressive effort towards a fully articulated conception of the world as rational. The ancient world seems to us to present nothing more striking than its faith in the greatness, power, and beauty of reason. We do not admit any purpose of the Divine Reason historically to dethrone reason in man from this sceptred sway. We even maintain the end to have been the stimulation of reason, "at the ultimate bound of her wit," to new flights in her sovereign greatness. To-day, no less than in Kantian days, the postulates of the reason are those which in this work we seek to maintain God, Freedom, and Immortality. However splendid the testimony offered by character and conscience in the past, theistic philosophy has believed the time to have come for that testimony to be supplemented by a nobler witness of reason-as the universal element in all things, the unity which harmonises diversity -than any since the world was. Recent theistic philosophy has, we think it may be said, postulated with more firmness that the power and functions of reason in man-its creative its creative power whereby it forms ideals intellectual, moral, and æsthetic, which it never ceases in the effort to realise, and its functions that disclose capacities for science and art, philosophy and religion-all point to a theistic interpretation. It has more boldly grasped the inherent force and universal sweep of the laws of reason, the essential oneness of reason in man with the higher reason in God, the Supreme Reason, Whose idea finds expression in all truths and laws. It has taken reason in us to imply an Absolute Reason, believing that "The truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed; We are made in His image to witness Him." It has clearly seen the loving and eternal Reason that resides in the Sufficient Reason or Ultimate Ground it postulates for all other proofs or grounds. It has more truly found reason to be that which, as having its centre and source in God, hath no need of the sun, neither of that "sweet regent of the sky," the moon, for it is a light unto itself, and the final light of all things that are in the world. Hence the truth of what Professor Samuel Harris has said, |