208 Contemporary Evolution. 



Unknowable " must logically admit that this reproach and 

 this argument are nothing less than absurd. He must 

 recognise that there is no parity whatever between praise, 

 entreaty, and reverence as addressed to man, and praise, 

 entreaty, and reverence as addressed to God. It is con- 

 temptible to flatter men, because it is wrong, and con- 

 temptible to say that which we know not to be true ; 

 but to flatter God is simply impossible. Reverence of 

 an extreme kind paid to man is contemptible, because 

 it is a mode of lying, of asserting a disparity and a 

 superiority which in truth do not exist ; but with God 

 it is quite otherwise. No Oriental prostrations can 

 even approximately express the reverence with which 

 reason declares it fitting for a creature to approach his 

 Creator, regard being had to that Creator's majesty 

 alone. A worship which by every outward expression 

 should denote a reverence and adoration such as no 

 words could declare would, from this point of view, 

 surely be that which could alone deserve the epithet of 

 rational. 



2. The recognition of God's inconceivable greatness, 

 joined with our clear perception of all that is implied in 

 our own free will, must force on the student of this 

 modern controversy a special apprehension of the nature 

 of opposition to Him. If " the Unknowable " be all 

 that we are told It is, if, in other words, God exists, 

 a Being of absolute beauty and holiness, it follows as a 



