self, if known to us at all, could only be made known to us through some portion of our individual nature; and that which speaks to any part of our individual nature must of necessity be itself embodied. To recognise God as God, would itself be to separate God from other beings; and to separate God from other beings is to embody Him in a distinct form. The very recognition, therefore, of a presence which we distinguish as divine, implies that we are not in a region of infinitude. where there is no distinction between one thing and another, but that we are in a world where God Himself is so distinct from other things that He is able at once to be distinguished from them.

We pass now to the second conception of the nature of infinitude-that entertained by the Agnostic. In his view, that which conveys the nearest symbol of infinitude is matter. The Gnostic reached his conception of the infinite by a process of subtraction-by lopping off one by one all the material elements from the tree of life. The Agnostic, on the other hand, believes that the effort to realise the infinite can only be made by a process of addition-by adding material field to field until we have arrived at the conception of a space without limit and a universe without bounds.

Here, however, the Agnostic himself pauses and draws back. Holding, as he does, that the effort to realise the infinite can only be made by the

extension of matter, he holds not less strongly and distinctly that every such effort must prove a complete failure.1 He denies that, in point of fact, any attempt to reach the conception of an infinitely large material universe has ever been followed, or can ever be followed, by success. He asks us to figure in our imagination, if we can, the image of such an infinite universe. The moment we have figured any universe at all, we have ipso facto denied its infinitude. What is the reason that we are able to figure any object? It is simply because every object in the world is finite or limited-is bounded or marked off from other things by a certain definite form. If I am able to conceive the form of a house, it is just because the form of a house is separated from the forms of other things. If the house were identical with the ground on which it stands, I could not possibly conceive it; it is because it is an object distinct from other objects that I have any perception of it at all. And this distinction, let us remember, is a limit. It is the distinction of one thing from another which prevents that thing from being infinite; if it were infinite it would be incapable of being distinguished, which is only, in other words, to say that it would be incapable of being known. On this ground the Agnostic rejects the material,

1 Agnosticism here includes more than the mere empiricist'; it comprehends the school of Mansel and Hamilton.

as he had rejected the spiritual Infinite viewed as an object of possible knowledge. Both are to him alike unknowable; the recognition of either would to him involve a contradiction in terms. Constructed as they are by two opposite methods -the one by the diminution, the other by the enlargement, of the world of sense-they are both alike to him incapable of presentation to the human consciousness, and unable to be expressed in terms of human knowledge. The Agnostic therefore asks, not without a show of plausibility, what we expect to gain by our search for the supernatural. He points us to the fact that, sooner or later, we must be brought in our investigation to that adamantine wall against which the intellect of man has dashed itself in vain-the idea of infinitude. He reminds us that, to represent that idea would be to destroy the very thing which it represents; and he warns us to abandon beforehand an effort which, however protracted, can only end in ignominious failure, and only produce an exhaustion of those intellectual powers which might be more fitly expended on themes of practical usefulness.

Can this adamantine wall be broken down? That is the question which, according to the popular notion, should now lie before the theologian. A rampart has been constructed by the Agnostic against the possibility of Divine knowledge, and

it is naturally held that the first duty of the Christian apologist is, to bend his efforts towards its destruction. Has it ever occurred to us that there is a preliminary question, and a question which, if answered satisfactorily, would render the putting of the other superfluous? Before asking whether the wall can be broken down, would it not be well to ask whether the wall is really the barrier it professes to be? Before inquiring if there is any means by which we can gain a conception of infinitude, would it not be well to inquire whether we need to gain such a conception in order to acquire a knowledge of God? For our part, we are convinced that we do not. We feel sure that the barrier raised by Agnosticism against the possibility of Divine knowledge has been erected in the wrong place, and is therefore no barrier at all. We are persuaded that the solution of the question whether man has or has not a power to know the infinite, so far from being a problem which awaits him on the threshold of religious speculation, is a problem which can only begin when he has already reached a knowledge of God; and we shall endeavour, as briefly as we can, to set forth and explain the grounds on which we have arrived at this conclusion.

We have seen that there is an opposition between the Gnostic and the Agnostic as to the possibilities of human nature. The former holds

that human nature is potentially unlimited, and that man is able to comprehend the infinite; the latter holds that human nature is confined within the boundaries of time and sense, and that therefore the infinite can never be an object of man's knowledge. From these opposite standpoints, the Gnostic and the Agnostic have assumed different attitudes towards religion: the former, from his belief in man's power to know the infinite, concludes, as a matter of course, that he has power to know God; the latter, from his conviction that man can never know the infinite, proceeds, by one bound, to the conclusion that he can never know God. Now, diverse as these systems are, there is, strange to say, one point in which they are agreed; they both assume that the knowledge of God is identical with the knowledge of the infinite. They both take for granted that the essence of God is His infinitude, and from that premiss they quite logically conclude that, if infinitude cannot be known, God is therefore unknowable. But we deny that the premiss, on which the conclusion rests, is itself sound; we deny that the essence of God is infinitude. And our reason for the denial is this: infinitude cannot be the essence of anything either divine, human, or material. Infinitude is not an essence: it is a quality or attribute; it is a certain degree of intensity possessed by an object already existing. The object must be al

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