HO THE RECONCILIATION. 



while Religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it 

 contemplates is ultimate and absolute. 



Religion and Science are therefore necessary correla- 

 tives. As already hinted, they stand respectively for those 

 two antithetical modes of consciousness which cannot exist 

 asunder. A known cannot be thought of apart from an un- 

 known; nor can an unknown be thought of apart from a 

 known. And by consequence neither can become more dis- 

 tinct without giving greater distinctness to the other. To 

 carry further a metaphor before used, — they are the positive 

 and negative poles of thought; of which neither can gain 

 in intensity without increasing the intensity of the other. 



§ 31. Thus the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power 

 manifested to us through all phenomena, has been growing 

 ever clearer; and must eventually be freed from its imper- 

 fections. The certainty that on the one hand such a Power 

 exists, while on the other hand its nature transcends intui- 

 tion and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards 

 which intelligence has from the first been progressing. To 

 this conclusion Science inevitably arrives as it reaches its 

 confines; while to this conclusion Religion is irresistibly 

 driven by criticism. And satisfying as it does the demands 

 of the most rigorous logic at the same time that it gives the 

 religious sentiment the widest possible sphere of action, it 

 is the conclusion we are bound to accept without reserve or 

 qualification. 



Some do indeed allege that though the Ultimate Cause 

 of things cannot really be thought of by us as having speci- 

 fied attributes, it is yet incumbent upon us to assert these 

 attributes. Though the forms of our consciousness are such 

 that the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be 

 brought within them, we are nevertheless told that we must 

 represent the Absolute to ourselves under these forms. As 

 writes Mr Mansel, in the work from which I have already 

 quoted largely — " It is our duty, then, to think of God as 



