DEDUCTIVE DEMONSTRATION IMPOSSIBLE.

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which the discoursings of reason are concerned. We have had occasion in a former work to point out the growing recognition of the impossibility of deductive demonstration of the Being of God, and we are in agreement with the statement of a recent able writer that "a science of concrete existences cannot be demonstrative." God, who is "the ground and source and moving Spirit of all reality, must be the most concrete object of our thought. By no possibility, therefore, can a theology or science of God follow the demonstrative method of mathematics." Logical demonstration is here out of the question, for where should we find a major premiss for such a conclusion? This impossibility of syllogistic proof for God or for an outer world was insisted on by F. W. Newman, in his work on 'The Soul,' in connection with which he remarks that "perhaps there is no outer world, and our internal sensations are the universe." Further, "There are persons who say that substance and matter are illusive terms, and that a substance is nothing but a congeries of forces, coherent and repulsive." Yes, but the soul or thinking self at least is real, and it were irrational to suppose the Infinite Mind, the Energising Reason, to be other than real. Theism has no wish to do other than freely acknowledge how much of our theistic conception we owe to tradition and inheritance, as well as to education and personal reasoning-how much of it has been the result of gradual expansion for

us and communication to us, as well as of our own mental and moral evolution. The theistic argument has more and more been seen to rest on solid basis of cumulative proof, and to be reached by methods of proof of most comprehensive, subtle, and unwonted character. Not forgetful is the philosophy of which we speak of the truth of the poet's words

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers

Which of themselves our minds impress:
That we can feed this mind of ours

In a wise passiveness.

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?"

Surely we have come better to appreciate the fact that the proofs of God stand out for us not along the mere lines of ratiocinative faculty, but within the inner realm of spirit in man; not within the sole compass of the physical world, but much more in the deeps of our own nature. Yes, until we seek God in this inward way He must remain to us a veiled Deity-the so-called Deus absconditus— a hidden God. The manifold processes involved, intuitive, empirical, reflective, inspirational, inductive, deductive, intellectual, ethical, and emotional, have all been more adequately recognised in recent times in their partial but essential working towards the one all-embracing conclusion. May we not say

LARGENESS OF THEISTIC PROOF.

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theism has come, largely through the wondrous feeling of being which is ours, to ask, with Goethe

"The All-Embracer,

All-Sustainer,

Holds and sustains He not
Thee, me, Himself?"

"Der Allumfasser,

Der Allerhalter,

Fasst und erhält er nicht

Dich, mich, sich selbst?"

We believe it may be justly said that recent philosophy of theism has more correctly appreciated the fact that the proofs for the Being of God are not to be understood in the mere lumen siccum of reason, but through the insight of the spiritual reason-reason, that is to say, not as it might appear in "an intellectual all in all," but as influenced in its movement by the sweep of man's purest and largest affectional nature. Emerson was not wrong when he said that "the affections are the wings by which the intellect launches on the void, and is borne across it." The words of Pascal have lost none of their truth, save for a sheer barren intellectualism, when he says, "Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît pas," for reasons the heart still has, of which reason, as such, may know nothing. Truly has it been averred that our beliefs here are built upon no dry strand of reason, but ride upon the flood of our affections. Surely the absurd and irrational character of the scientific

absolutism that would allow no risks of belief, no ventures of faith, however the heart might impel or the will incline, save in so far as the scientific method of verification or objective certitude may be applied, has been made sufficiently manifest. Are we really to come to this, that no truth shall be of interest for us, save that which has been thus verified? If so, then, as Professor William James has lately remarked, "the truth of truths might come in merely oracular or affirmative form, and she" (the spirit of scientific absolutism) "would decline to look at it."

The philosophy of theism is surely bound to maintain belief in things in this connection which it may not be able so to raise from being matters of faith as to make them matters of rational tabulation or philosophical testing. God exists prior to, and is more than, all our arguments, and nothing less than Himself is able to prove Him to us, which indeed He does by and in life. Theistic philosophy sees and feels, as we believe, that if God is God, the proofs of His Being and working must meet us, not here and there, but throughout all time, and over all creation, so as to make "one thing of all theology." Hence, as matter of fact, we do find a strong stress laid by it on God as the Prius, and the Immanent Principle, and the Final Cause of all this mighty world we see. To it all knowledge, as Professor Flint has said, implies and may contribute to the knowledge of

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God. It understands, as he suggests, how liable so comprehensive an idea as that of God is to be assailed from such standpoints as those of infinity, or of being, or of causality, or of personality, or of rectitude. Consequently it is not dismayed if many fail to rise to the height of its great argument. It remembers the words of Ulrici, that "modern theology, which so readily gives up the proofs for the existence of God, abandons thereby not only its own position as a science; but also, in principle, annihilates faith, and the religion of which it is the theology." And so it has taken heart, believing that to it belongs that genuine knowledge which is of God as ὁ ἀληθινός—the true God—and has sought to rescue the theistic arguments, in the way Ulrici and others so nobly exemplified, from the confusion of thought which has so often rested upon them. them. It has, in so doing, been more careful, at least in its wisest representations, to seek and exhibit the true and real in which they have had their rise, and to be little content with the treatment that left us nothing but criticism of them as logical proofs, and even that criticism as often as not of a rather cheap sort. It thus tries to carry out what may be of truth in Schopenhauer's contention, that the proofs for the Divine Being are "keraunological" rather than theoretic, based upon needs of will rather than notions of the intellect. This place and importance, for theistic belief, of will, affection, emotion