xi and Conclusions in another. 225 



transcending their data, and belonging to the spiritual 

 and Divine world. So that no proof is shown for the 

 assertion that religious knowledge is necessarily un- 

 attainable ; the way is open to consider the evidence 

 that may be adduced for it ; and Agnosticism is but a 

 temporary blindness, caused by too exclusive attention 

 to merely physical data, and to mathematical methods 

 of reasoning from them, which can never lead to 

 conclusions transcending these data. As the mere 

 perceptive faculty cannot attain to the truths of 

 science, so the mere reasoning faculty cannot attain 

 to spiritual knowledge. 1 The root of the spiritual 

 faculty is not in the logical intellect which reasons 

 from data in the world of nature to conclusions in 

 the same ; it is in the instinctive capacity, transcending 

 all mere logic, whereby we learn to understand the 

 minds, the thoughts, and the feelings of our fellow- 

 men. 



But the agnostic objection will still be made : 

 " We have no reason to believe that our ideas have 

 any resemblance to the reality of things. For any- 

 thing we know, the appearances of things may be to 

 their realities only as speech to thought, or writing to 

 speech a system of symbols which give information 

 about the realities which they represent, without re- 

 sembling those realities or partaking of their nature. 

 Infinite is a word of magnitude ; and if Space and 

 Time, in which alone magnitude can be expressed, 

 are mere forms of our own thought, we can have no- 

 1 1 Cor. ii. 14. 

 Q 



