276 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



Of the essence of God we can know nothing. 

 Even of matter we are ignorant as to its essence. 

 From the existence of the world, we infer the exist- 

 ence of God ; for our primary intuitions teach us 

 that there can be no effect without a cause. The 

 evidences of order and design in the universe, prove 

 the existence of a Creator who is intelligent, who 

 has power and will, and who, therefore, is personal, 

 and not the blind fate and impersonal energy and 

 unknowable entity of the agnostic. 



Gods of the Positivist and the Agnostic. 



The gods of the heathen were manifold and 

 grotesque, but what shall we say of the objects 

 which the positivist and agnostic propose for our 

 worship and love ? 



The Greeks and Romans gave Divine honors to 

 demi-gods and heroes. Comte, one of the apostles 

 of modern Agnosticism, affects to recoil before such 

 gross idolatry ; but is he more of a philosopher, or 

 less of an idolater, when he proclaims that it is not 

 man taken individually, or any particular man, but 

 man taken collectively, man considered in the ag- 

 gregate, that is to be regarded as the object of our 

 cult ? The Roman and the Athenian worshipped 

 Apollo and Hercules, Jupiter and Venus ; Comte 



eternal reason, pervading the natural and the moral world, if 

 to postulate a rational cause for a rational universe is called 

 Gnosticism, then I am a gnostic, and a humble follower of the 

 greatest thinkers of our race, from Plato and the author of the 

 Fourth Gospel to Kant and Hegel." The Nineteenth Century, 

 Dec., 1894; see also. "The Christian Agnostic and the Chris- 

 tian Gnostic," by the Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D. D., C. S. P., 

 in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1891. 



