THE AFFIRMATIVE SIDE OF AGNOSTICISM. 229 



it is far from making certain what is the natnre of this Energy, 

 which is scientifically as unknowable as the inherent natnre of 

 matter or of force. But there is a knowledge beyond knowledge ; 

 that is, a knowledge of truths which are not ascertained by logi- 

 cal processes from observed phenomena, and are not, therefore, 

 demonstrable by logical processes from observed phenomena. We 

 know all aesthetic, all ethical, all spiritual truths by other means 

 than scientific processes. Into these truths we come by looking be- 

 yond the sphere of sense ; by looking beyond the larger domain of 

 logical deduction ; by aesthetic, moral, spiritual perception. We 

 know that God is, because we commune with him as a personal 

 friend and he is " nearer than breathing, closer than hands and 

 feet " ; we know that we are immortal — not shall be — because we 

 have in ourselves a consciousness of life which physical pain and 

 decay can not injure or impair. Thus our faith may be truth- 

 fully described as a knowledge beyond knowledge ; but it is not 

 any less certain and trustworthy because it transcends scientific 

 tests and demonstrations. 



I hope I have given a definite and tolerably clear answer to 

 what seem to me to be the two questions implied in your cor- 

 respondence. There is a knowledge beyond knowledge. The 

 error of agnosticism is not in its denials ; it is in its psychology ; it 

 is in the fact that it ignores a part and that the larger and more 

 important part of man's mentality — his power to perceive directly 

 and immediately a world not cognizable, directly or indirectly, by 

 the senses ; that power which alone makes him a being of taste, of 

 affections, of moral or spiritual capacity. The answer to agnosti- 

 cism is not in maintaining that by the scientific process we can 

 arrive at certainty concerning truths which are not scientific ; it is 

 by a recognition of what you have called rneta-nosticism, the pow- 

 er of grasping knowledge beyond knowledge ; though the word 

 meta-nosticism, at least in so far as Scripture use is relied on 

 for its meaning, hardly conveys, it appears to me, though it 

 does imply, the idea which you purpose it shall convey in the 

 future. Yours sincerely, 



Lyman Abbott. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



Dealing with the uncorrected mistranslations of the New Ver- 

 sion, Rev. Treadwell Walden says : * 



It may now be imagined with what interest and expectation we looked for- 

 ward to the New Version, realizing full well the difficulty of reproducing the 

 original in this place and elsewhere more faithfully, and of making a change so 



* An Undeveloped Chapter in the Life of Christ. The Great Meaning of the Word 

 Metanoia, lost in the Old Version, unreeovered in the New, pp. 14, IV, 18, 38, 39. 



