THE RECONCILIATION. HI 



personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is in- 

 finite." 



That this is not the conclusion here adopted, needs hard- 

 ly be said. If there be any meaning in the foregoing argu- 

 ments, duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personal- 

 ity. Our duty is to submit ourselves with all humility to the 

 established limits of our intelligence ; and not perversely to 

 rebel against them. Let those who can, believe that there is 

 eternal war set between our intellectual faculties and our 

 moral obligations. I for one, admit no such radical vice in 

 the constitution of things. 



This which to most will seem an essentially irreligious 

 position, is an essentially religious one — nay is the religious 

 one, to which, as already shown, all others are but approxi- 

 mations. In the estimate it implies of the Ultimate Cause, it 

 does not fall short of the alternative position, but exceeds it. 

 Those who espouse this alternative position, make the erro- 

 neous assumption that the choice is between personality and 

 something lower than personality; whereas the choice is 

 rather between personality and something higher. Is it not 

 just possible that there is a mode of being as much tran- 

 scending Intelligence and Will, as these transcend mechani- 

 cal motion? It is true that we are totally unable to conceive 

 any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for 

 questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse. Have we 

 not seen how utterly incompetent our minds are to form 

 even an approach to a conception of that which underlies all 

 phenomena ? Is it not proved that this incompetency is the 

 incompetency of the Conditioned to grasp the Uncondi- 

 tioned? Does it not follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot 

 in any respect be conceived by us because it is in every re- 

 spect greater than can be conceived? And may we not 

 therefore rightly refrain from assigning to it any attributes 

 whatever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as they 

 must be from our own natures, are not elevations but degra- 

 dations? Indeed it seems somewhat strange that men should 



