risen to the sublimest view of the universe, and have become lost and bewildered in contemplating the wonderful arrangement which connects the various chains of sequence under the uniformity of correlation and continuity-after we have again and again turned to the vast problem merely to feel ourselves more and more surrounded with mystery at every step it surely is encouraging to feel that, although the widest scientific knowledge fails to reveal more than a faint outline of God's existence, we may at least feel his presence in our souls, elevating and purifying our affections, and at the same time investing life with an infinite meaning and a significant beauty.

In other words, while we concede the supremacy of reason, we cannot deny that there are deep emotional experiences and profound spiritual agitations peculiar to our nature, for which science, in its ordinary sense, has no response.

It is true there have been instances, as in the Stoical philosophy, when a purely intellectual culture produced some rare examples of character and human greatness. The characters of

Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus will always occupy prominent positions in the world's history, and it is therefore but simple justice that we should pay the respect due to these illustrious specimens of the school of Zeno. In admitting, however, that there is a greatness in the best representatives of Stoicism which fairly demands our admiration, we cannot deny that it is a greatness purchased at the sacrifice of some of the best and finest feelings of our nature.

"Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm, and tames the fury of the waters around it," is an excellent precept; but in the largest sense of human development it is not enough. It admirably sets forth the rule of conduct observed by a philosopher who, in the midst of great moral corruption, preserved his own manliness and integrity; but it does not meet the ordinary demands of human nature. It is impossible to deny the greatness of this illustrious emperor and eminent philosopher; but it is equally impossible to shut our eyes to the fact that even in the midst of his intellectual and

*Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

moral attainments, he was invariably overshadowed by that spirit of sadness which is the inevitable result of Stoicism. It is well that we should pause before this noble soul, and, in our admiration, derive those influences which will most assuredly elevate and ennoble us; but it is equally well that we should discriminate carefully between Marcus Aurelius as an exceptional character, and Marcus Aurelius as the direct product of Stoicism. I know that the Stoical philosophy, in attempting to cultivate virtue without hope, possesses a certain charm which we cannot fail to appreciate. It is, indeed, grand achievement, when the intellectual nature so thoroughly predominates as to bring the whole man under its control; but it is an unhealthy condition nevertheless. Because it is divorced from sentiment, Stoicism mars the beauty of the world, and bids the human soul drift into sadness and despair, rather than encourage those dreams and aspirations which emanate from all true religion and all sound philosophy. While the Stoics are correct in discountenancing fear, they are incorrect in suppressing feeling.

There is a sense in which it is perfectly true to say that the more we know of the laws which govern the universe, and the nearer we come, through such knowledge, to the God who made those laws, the less cause will we have for fear; but it is not true that the more we know, the feebler must be our hope. The scientific statement that God is unknowable, may, for the moment, stagger our faith and diminish our religious enthusiasm; but, we may depend upon it, there will come a reaction in favor of religion and the reality of those dreams of peace and beauty which our spiritual consciousness suggests. Besides, the mode of reasoning which asserts that God is unknowable, assumes necessarily that He is already partially known, and thus becomes its own contradiction. Indeed, it places science in the anomalous position of asserting that a thing is unknowable, of which we know nothing.

Without a partial knowledge, is it not simply impossible to predict probable consequences? If we know nothing of God-being completely without evidences as to His character and existence where do scientists derive the premises of

their argument by which they seek to prove that He is unknowable? Surely, the more carefully we examine the subject, the more clearly must it appear that absolute nescience is as incompatible with science as it is with religion. Reduced to its last analysis, the assertion that God is unknowable is a simple absurdity, and can only exist where scientists and philosophers are wilfully blind to the first principles of reasoning. It is one thing for scientists to repudiate the anthropomorphic conceptions with which theology has surrounded the Ruler of the universe; but it is quite another to pronounce the whole subject of theological speculation an idle and profitless dream.

Admitting that an increasing scientific knowledge will necessarily dissipate many of the formulas under which theologians have sought to render God comprehensible, there must always remain a sense in which the God of the scientist will resemble the God of the Christian. Because the one proceeds from a scientific conviction, and the other from a religious impression strengthened by revealed religion, there must be a degree of unlikeness between them; but be