274 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



more highly developed, when the work of Evolu- 

 tion is farther advanced than it now is, we may per- 

 haps be able to comprehend the Divine nature, and 

 have an adequate notion of the Divine perfections. 

 Christian Agnosticism tells us that not even the 

 blessed in Heaven, who see the whole of the Divine 

 nature, can ever have, even after millions and 

 billions of ages, a knowledge which shall be com- 

 mensurate in depth with the Divine Object of their 

 adoration and love. They shall see God in the clear 

 light of the Beatific Vision, facie ad faciem, and 

 shall know as they are known. Nothing shall be 

 hidden from them. Their intelligence will be illu- 

 mined by the light of God's glory. The veil that 

 now intervenes between the Creator and the crea- 

 ture will be removed, and the created intellect will be 

 in the veritable presence of the Divine Essence. But 

 even then, it will be impossible to have an adequate 

 or a comprehensive knowledge of God. He will, as 

 the Scholastics phrase it, be known totus sed non 

 totaliter. The soul will always have new beauties 

 undiscovered, fresh glories to arrest its enraptured 

 gaze, and unfathomable abysses of love and wisdom 

 to contemplate, whose immensity will be as great 

 after millions of aeons shall have elapsed, as when 

 it was ushered into the Divine Presence, when it 

 caught the first glimpse of the glory of the Beatific 

 Vision, and experienced the first thrills of ecstasy in 

 the contemplation of the fathomless, limitless ocean 

 of God's infinite perfections. The soul will know 

 God, but its knowledge will always be limited by 

 the fact that it is created, that it is finite, that it is 



