112 THE RECONCILIATION. 



suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the object 

 of their worship to themselves. Not in asserting a tran- 

 scendant difference, but in asserting a certain likeness, con- 

 sists the element of their creed which they think essential. 

 It is true that from the time when the rudest savages imag- 

 ined the causes of all things to be creatures of flesh and blood 

 like themselves, down to our own time, the degree of as- 

 sumed likeness has been diminishing. But though a bodily 

 form and substance similar to that of man, has long since 

 ceased, among cultivated races, to be a literally-conceived 

 attribute of the Ultimate Cause — though the grosser human 

 desires have been also rejected as unfit elements of the con- 

 ception — though there is some hesitation in ascribing even 

 the higher human feelings, save in greatly idealized shapes ; 

 yet it is still thought not only proper, but imperative, to 

 ascribe the most abstract qualities of our nature. To think 

 of the Creative Power as in all respects anthropomorphous, 

 is now considered impious by men who yet hold themselves 

 bound to think of the Creative Power as in some respects 

 anthropomorphous; and who do not see that the one pro- 

 ceeding is but an evanescent form of the other. And then, 

 most marvellous of all, this course is persisted in even by 

 those who contend that we are wholly unable to frame any 

 conception whatever of the Creative Power. After it has 

 been shown that every supposition respecting the genesis of 

 the Universe commits us to alternative impossibilities of 

 thought — after it has been shown that each attempt to con- 

 ceive real existence ends in an intellectual suicide — after it 

 has been shown why, by the very constitution of our minds, 

 we are eternally debarred from thinking of the Absolute ; it 

 is still asserted that we ought to think of the Absolute thus 

 and thus. In all imaginable ways we find thrust upon us the 

 truth, that we are not permitted to know — nay are not even 

 permitted to conceive — that Reality which is behind the 

 veil of Appearance ; and yet it is said to be our duty to be- 

 lieve (and in so far to conceive) that this Reality exists in a 



