recorded in IIoly Scripture? And if so, what relation does the Scripture Record bear to our knowledge of God obtained by the process of natural reason? Is reason in accord with revelation or not? or in the case of any discrepancy between them, must reason, as Deism and Rationalism maintain, take precedence of revelation as chief judge in questions of religious truth, so that nothing is to be received on the testimony of Scripture except that which is capable of rational demonstration? Or, on the other hand, is reason, as the orthodox view maintains, to be subordinated to revelation as to the highest and only certain source of divine knowledge, and that by which the intuitions of reason must be shaped and developed ?

Such are the questions with which, in the first place, we have to deal, In attempting their solution, we must direct attention first to the rights, nature, and limits of reason, and to the witness of history as to its performances in comparison with the requirements of our religious nature, and more especially with reference to the contributions made by conscience to natural theology. Having done this, we must next examine the inner nature and laws of divine revelation, and attempt to ascertain its true worth, necessity, possibility, and recognisability by us, so as in the last place to draw conclusions as to the relation in which the one stands to the other.

Among these are certainly some rather dry and unattractive questions, in respect of which we must arm ourselves with patience; but they are all of the greatest practical importance. You meet a thousand times in life with those who in dealing with any religious question make at once their appeal to reason, and insist on forthwith rejecting aught that lies beyond its sphere, without however being able to render any clear account of the nature and proper limits of the knowledge thus derived, or of the relation in which such knowledge stands to the religious needs of man. I would invite you, therefore, to inquire seriously whether such persons are not really bowing down before an idol of the mind, which, while itself of very questionable worth, demands as much implicit faith from its worshippers as divine revelation itself.

We shall first, therefore, turn our attention to

I-NATURAL THEOLOGY, OR THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD DERIVED FROM NATURE AND REASON.

It is a reproach not seldom laid upon the faith of Christians by those who have ever on their lips

"Science and Reason highest powers in man,”—

that it fails to recognise the rights and powers of reason and conscience as organs of divine knowledge, or at least does so very imperfectly; that it treats reason as an unformed, sickly child, and, subjecting it to an unbearable yoke, deprives it, in that crushed and slavish condition, of any healthy use of its faculties. Let us see whether there be any truth in this allegation.

And first as to the prerogatives which rightly belong to reason, it must be acknowledged that its incapacity has often been so grossly exaggerated by certain orthodox writers as to give some colour to this accusation. But here a distinction must be made between the exaggerations of individuals and the true doctrine of the Church and Holy Scripture. So little does the Bible demand a mere blind faith, that on the contrary it requires a spirit of examination in all things (1 Thess. v. 21; 1 Cor. x. 15; 1 John iv. 1 ff.). It often exhorts us to follow the Divine footsteps in the works of creation (Ps. civ.; Is. xl. 26 et passim); it affirms it to be the duty of all men, even of the heathen, to seek the Lord if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him; because He is not far from any one of us, and we also are His offspring (Acts xvii. 27-29, xiv. 17); it recognises the existence in man of a spiritual eye, by means of which he obtains and possesses light in respect to his relation to God (Matt. vi. 22, 23; Luke xi. 34-36); and it ascribes to the very heathen, and consequently to the human intellect per se, independently of the revelation contained in Scripture, a capacity for obtaining from creation and from conscience a certain amount of real knowledge as to the nature and will of God. On this point I would merely call your attention to Rom. i. 19, 20: that which may be known of God is manifest in them (the Gentiles); for God (Himself) hath manifested it to them; since from the creation of the world His invisible attributes have through His works suffered themselves to be scen'in the con

templation of reason, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse; and to Rom. ii. 14, 15 (comp. Rom. i. 32): these, having not the law (once given to Israel), are unto themselves a law; as showing the work of the law (the conduct required by the law and will of God) written in their hearts (as for Israel it was written on the tables of stone), their conscience bearing witness to it, etc.

There is, therefore, according to Scripture, first, a natural knowledge of God which, since the creation, has been obtainable by man through a rational contemplation of His works, and which so obtrudes itself on man as to deprive of all means of exculpation those who reject it. Just as the outer world presents itself to the senses for external recognition, so God in and by the world presents Himself to reason for internal recog nition. And this doctrine of the apostle of the Gentiles is not only almost literally repeated in so many words by Gentile philosophers, as e.g. by Aristotle (de Mundo, c. 6): "Although invisible to every mortal nature, God is yet manifested by His works;" and by Cicero (Tusc. i. 29): "Thou seest not God, and yet thou knowest Him from His works,"-but also has its truth practically demonstrated by the various forms of religion, however imperfect, of all heathen nations.1 And so again as to conscience: the law and will of God respecting human conduct, manifesting itself as a moral law and divine revelation in the hearts of all men, was equally well known to those who spoke of the conscience as, on the one hand, "irrefragable and immutable, recompensing every good action," and on the other, as "arrows of the gods penetrating the heart of the ungodly (Cicero), who "night and day bear about within, their own accuser" (Juvenal); and again, as "a holy spirit settled in the inmost heart and watching over all actions, whether good or evil" (Seneca and the Laws of Menu).

It is then in accordance with the general conviction among all nations that Holy Scripture has thus assigned to reason a definite province in the domain of theology; a capacity, nay, an inward necessity for independent search after God, and the traces of His presence both in the material world without and the spiritual world within. The impulse towards and capacity

On this and what follows, comp. Delitzsch's excellent work, System der Christl. Apologetik, Leipzig 1869, p. 63 ff. and p. 161 ff.

for this search is the divine patent of nobility in the human spirit, and the Christian must not forego his inalienable right to claim it.

Even the Reformers, who so strongly (especially Luther) insisted at times on the incapacity of natural reason, by no nieans called this right in question. So, for instance, Luther himself in the Disputation vom Menschen: "It is a settled point that reason is among all things in the life of man the chiefest and the best, nay, something divine-a sun, and as it were a god placed over the government of things in this life. And this glory God has not withdrawn from reason since the Fall, but rather confirmed her in it." And in another place (the tract Von den Klostergelübden) he also writes: "Whatever is opposed to reason is certainly much more opposed to God. How should not that be contrary to truth divine which is opposed to human truth and right reason?" It cannot therefore be maintained that the Christian Church thinks lightly of

reason.

But still the question remains, how far the province of reason extends. What are the limitations of that knowledge of which reason is the source? Or is there any such knowledge at all? To elucidate this question, we must first come to some understanding in respect to the difficult preliminary question, variously answered by the profoundest thinkers both in ancient and modern times, as to the nature and idea of reason itself. The attempt has constantly been made to elucidate the idea of reason by comparison or contrast with that of the understanding. But here we can hardly rest satisfied with Kant's mode of distinguishing the two, when he makes the understanding to be the faculty which contains the categorics or logical forms of thought and judgment, and reason the faculty containing ideas or forms of conclusion. The distinction between these two activities of thought seems to us much too subtle for us to assign them to two distinct mental faculties. But the other distinction, which regards the understanding as the organ of logical notions, and reason that of ideas, is probably correct, and is generally accepted. The former gathers from the outer world of sense perceptions and presentments, which it proceeds to combine in general categories. The latter pursues the material presented to it by the

senses and the understanding to its ultimate basis, in order, if possible, to apprehend it in its innermost ground and unity of being. Just then as notions are products of formal logical processes of thought, so are ideas the products of "real radical apprehension." Kant, however, in assuming that (excepting only the appetitive faculty with its categorical imperative) there is no proof of there being any real existence corresponding to the ideas of reason, seems to have-overlooked the fact that the very (German) word Vernehmen (perceive or apprehend), from which Vernunft (reason) is derived, points to something real and actual, which presents itself to the apprehension of the reason; and that such apprehension may therefore be like the contemplation of the world of sense by the understanding, a genuine source of experimental certainty. This "real something" is the Supersensuous. Jacobi, therefore, was right in vindicating against Kant the true significance of the ideaconstructing activity of reason, and defining it as the faculty which apprehends the supersensuous. Only, we must remember, that the activities of reason are not exclusively directed towards the supersensuous, but in general towards the central unity and essence of the object contemplated: the last basis or ground of each phenomenon. This impulse to seek after and discover the substantial unity in everything which is made an object of thought is characteristic of all the operations of this faculty. It is at once analytical, resolving phenomena into their ultimate grounds, and synthetical, combining these grounds so discovered into ideal unities.

And now, supposing reason by a like impulse to endeavour to combine all these ideas into one yet deeper absolute idea, and to pursue in thought the ultimate ground of all being, i.e. God; can it (we must ask) by its own innate power, and through contemplation of the external world and the witness. of conscience, arrive at such knowledge and apprehension as to be able permanently to satisfy man's religious needs? Or must it for that end be stimulated and guided in its search after the only One and the True by supernatural revelations ?

These questions bring us to the great fundamental antithesis between Holy Scripture and modern philosophy. Whereas Kant himself frankly denied the existence in reason of any power to arrive at certain knowledge in divine things, his