Chase. J 1^" [Feb. 7, 



things as they are, experiences a shock when we find that there is no more 

 resemblance between the material type and the spiritual reality, than there 

 is between the letters of the alphabet and the ideas which they serve to 

 convey from one intelligence to another. We then begin to see the im- 

 portance of distinguishing the secondary or delegated cause, both from its 

 immediate consequence and from the Great First Cause ; we understand 

 the shrewdness which led the scholastic wranglers to say that there is no 

 light in the sun, no sound in a bell, no sweetness in sugar, no fragrance in 

 a rose, no heat in fire, no cold in ice, no hardness in a diamond ; the funda- 

 mental doctrine of Berkeley, as expounded by Kant, that " all phenomena 

 are merely subjective representations in consciousness," becomes very sug- 

 gestive ; we learn that the universe, as we know it, could only have been 

 made by intelligence, and that it can only be upheld by intelligence ; we 

 know that our consciousness, limited in all directions as it is, has, never- 

 theless, enough delegated power and authority to enable it to make, uphold, 

 direct and govern all the subjective realities which are essential to its own 

 welfare ; we know, also, that such delegated power and authority could 

 only have been delegated by a still higher subjective Spiritual Being. 



Must we then reject all belief in objecti ve reality ? By no means. Even 

 the apparent immobility and disk-like shape of the earth, as w r ell as the con- 

 stanl daily and yearly apparent motions of the heavenly bodies, have a prac- 

 tical and relative truth which we are compelled to act upon and which is 

 always helpful. We can never attain to absolute knowledge of anything 

 which we have not made our own by subjective experience, but we have a 

 real or practical knowdedge of everything that awakens an instinctive be- 

 lief in its reality. Some men will doubtless continue to argue for ages to 

 come, as others have argued for ages past, on the one hand against the pos- 

 sibility of motion, on the other against the possibility of free agencj r . But 

 the former will show their practical disbelief in their own theories by their 

 own bodily changes of place ; the latter, by their continual exercise of free- 

 agency, their satisfaction when they have done right, and their remorse 

 when they have done wrong. There is nothing so self-evident that men 

 may not try either to refute it or to make it plainer, and mystify them- 

 selves by so doing. Arguments have been framed to prove that black is 

 white, that one equals two, that Achilles could not overtake a tortoise, and 

 the fallacies have been so artfully covered that many persons have tried in 

 vain to detect them ; nevertheless they have not been beguiled into ac- 

 cepting any of the specious sophisms, although they may have had their 

 faith shaken in the infallibility of the reasoning faculties. 



The proper co-operation of all our faculties will always lead us to such 

 truth as God intended we should reach by their help. The difference be- 

 tween the lower, obscure, problematical or practical truth, and the higher, 

 self-evident, subjective or absolute truth, is an indication of educational 

 purpose. If we arc satisfied to rest in the lower, we have no right to com- 

 plain that the higher is hidden from us ; if we shut our eyes to the self- 

 evidence that is offered us in one direction, we have no right to ask for 



