PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM. LECTURE I. THE FINAL PROBLEM. My first words must give expression to the emotion Personal. which I feel on finding myself once more admitted to speak officially within the walls of this ancient university, with which, as student, graduate, and professor, I have been connected for sixty years. For it is sixty years in this November since I first cast eyes of wonder on the academic walls which now carry so many memories in my mind, and which to-day are associated with an extraordinary responsibility. In the evening of life, in reluctant response to the unexpected invitation of the patrons of the Gifford Trust, I find myself, in the presence of my countrymen, called to say honestly the best that may be in me concerning the supreme problem of human life, our relation to which at last determines the answers to all questions which A The final problem and Simonides. can engage the mind of man. No words that I can find are sufficient to represent my sense of the honour thus conferred, or the responsibility thus imposed, upon one who believed that he had bid a final farewell to appearances in public of this sort, in order to wind up his account with this mysterious life of sense. It is an appalling problem which confronts me, and, indeed, confronts us all, for all must dispose of it in the conduct of life; and I am now required to handle it intellectually. One may not be ready to say with Pliny, that all religions are the offspring of human weakness and fear; and that what God is, if indeed God be anything distinct from the world in which we find ourselves, it is beyond man's understanding to know. Yet even the boldest thinker, when confronted by the ultimate problem of existence, may well desire to imitate the philosophic caution of Simonides, when he was asked, What God was?-in first demanding a day to think about the answer, then two days more, and after that continuously doubling the required time, when the time already granted had come to an end; but without ever finding that he was able to produce the required answer; rather becoming more apt to suspect that the answer carried him beyond the range of human intelligence. Often in the course of these last months I have wished that I could indulge in this prudent procrastination, taking not more days only but more years to ponder this infinite problem. But |