Chase] 1^4 [Feb. 7, 



self evidence is not attainable, only qualified judges are competent to de- 

 cide mooted questions. 



Philosophy neither needs nor seeks any suppression of facts, and it is 

 not fettered by any theories, however skilfully they may be framed or 

 however haughtily they may be set forth. It grants to science the right of 

 self-imposed limitation to the field of material phenomena, and it accepts 

 material laws as the true keys to material facts, but it looks to moral and 

 spiritual laws as the only keys to the facts of moral and spiritual life. It 

 does not go to a doctor for legal advice, or to a theologian for scientific in- 

 struction ; it cares little for a deaf man's judgment of a symphony of 

 Beethoven, or for a scientific theorist's views upon a question of religious 

 experience ; but it welcomes from every quarter, from Religion, Ethics and 

 Science alike, any new revelation of the eternal truths of God, and it al- 

 ways strives to reach such clear insight into the harmonies of truth as will 

 help it to dispel the mists of human error. No truth is so insignificant that 

 its place would be better filled by a plausible falsehood ; none is so formida- 

 ble that it can overthrow any other truth. The "maybe" of the shrewdest 

 conjecture, the "perhaps " of the wisest hypothesis, may be helpful to the 

 investigator, and the philosopher will always gladly accept every well- 

 established result to which they may lead ; but they count for nothing 

 against the "surely" of self-evidence or the "therefore " of experimental 

 knowledge. 



"A thoughtful writer," cited by Dr. Pusey in a late Oxford sermon, 

 says : "Special studies, which bring into play any special aptitude of in- 

 telligence without paralyzing the rest, are conformable to the wants of 

 nature. Exclusive studies, which amass a sort of conjectural life upon one 

 point of the mind, leaving the rest in inaction, are but abnormally developing 

 the excresences of intellectual life ; so when special science forms men who 

 are eminent, exclusive science produces judgments which are false. Ex- 

 clusive science is the only one injurious to religion, but it is also the only 

 one opposed to it. What withholds man from faith is not the knowledge 

 of nature which any one has, but the knowledge of religion which he has 

 not." 



The Christian philosopher would gladly share this knowledge with others, 

 but he can point out no other way for its attainment than that of direct 

 revelation. He is often astonished at the condescension of God ; he asks, 

 with David, "what is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the son of 

 man, that thou visitest him ?" If any satisfactory answer can be found to the 

 question he believes that it should be sought by looking upwards, and not 

 downwards ; by following the leadings of the highest spiritual truths, and 

 not by founding the quagmires of material truth ; by studying the records 

 of Supreme Power and Wisdom, not by stopping short at the laws of proto- 

 plasm and chemical affinity and molecular motion. 



The materialist boasts of the positive knowledge which can be attained 

 by the senses, and regards nothing as worthy of investigation which can- 

 not be verified by sensorial observation and experiment. The Christian 



