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PART SECOND

RECENT PHILOSOPHY OF THEISM

(GOD)

CHAPTER V.

RECENT THOUGHT ON THE BEING AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.

WE have now to speak of the advances of recent theistic philosophy, as touching the proofs of the Being and Attributes of God, not confining ourselves to "natural theology," or a priori natural knowledge of God, but, passing outward and upward at length into the impregnable positions, wise interpretations, and rich moral demonstrations, of Christian Theism. In them the true strength, and, we will add, originality, of theistic thought, are reached. For what indeed is Christian Theism but Theism in the highest-Theism, that is to say, raised to its highest power? Or who that has followed the course of recent thought can feel otherwise than that there have been both a deepening sense of the impotence and insufficiency of Natural Theism, and a quickened desire for a Theism that leads not a still life, but is of such real and living sort as is Christian Theism, with its ethical and not

merely metaphysical attributes? It was the philosopher Braniss who said that "the conceptions of speculative philosophy, where they are most profound, come nearest to the Christian doctrine; nor need we be anxious lest speculative philosophy should ever reach a height from which it may look down and say that the Christian element is left behind. No thought can transcend the Christian idea, for it is truth in itself." There can be no doubt of the advances made in recent theistic philosophy in the larger apprehension and truer representation of the God idea, for it has happened according to the words of Goethe, in our late philosophy of theism -and it is no unimportant, though still incomplete, result that it should be so

"That every one on the best of what he knows
The name of God, yea, of his God, bestows."

"Dass jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt,
Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt."

"If he

So necessary, indeed, is God to every man. does not believe in the Eternal Reason, he believes in unreason; if he does not accept as the truth the living God, he believes in the idol of inanimate matter." Nothing has been wanting in the way the theistic hypothesis of a self-existent Deity has had its reasonableness and scientific character set forth, with a view to reducing the mystery of self-existence which must meet us somewhere at last-to its lowest terms. There does not seem to be for

UNCONDITIONED BEING.

89

us any more ultimate fact than that of being: the that of being is for us most certain of all things; but the how of being remains inscrutable. I, as a finite being, may not be able to find out how being comes to be, or is made, since for anything I know -only the Infinite may be capable of comprehending this. But thought has felt ever more surely drawn to postulate the necessity of independent, self-existent being, if the perceived fact of being is to become intelligible. Hence it has held fast to the unconditioned Being called God as, in fact, first and deepest implication of our being. Fichte was able to say: "We must end at last by resting all existence, which demands an extrinsic foundation, upon a Being the fountain of Whose life is within Himself; by allying the fugitive phenomena which colour the stream of time with ever-changing hues to an eternal and unchanging essence." The ultimate goal of theistic philosophy has been clearly realised to be infinite and unconditioned reality, which is found in God, Whose action is always perfect. Than such perfect, unconditioned action as we find in Him, there is for us nothing more ultimate. We deem ourselves justified in saying that, in recent philosophical thought, there has been clearer emphasis laid on self-activity as the essence of being, so far as the conception of being has in philosophy reached its highest. Recent philosophy of theism, in trying to deal with the ever-present Kampf that is found in Nature, has advanced

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