3l6 /iSSJVS IN PHTLOSOPHY 



Supremacy, and that the success of any new the- 

 ology will depend upon its setting out from the 

 same transcendent base. The problem is, keeping 

 upon this highest theme in accord with Augustine, 

 with Calvin, and with Edwards, and avoiding any 

 compromise of its true exaltation, to find a new 

 way, more genuinely divine and more expressive 

 of the spirit of Christ than theirs, to carry out the 

 sovereign reign of God, to display its reality, and 

 to accord to it commensurate results. In all this, 

 in its wide but unfortunately vague generality, I 

 agree with Dr. Gordon ; as, I doubt not, many of 

 you also agree. But from the method — so far as 

 one can gather it from his various writings, especially 

 his Christ of To-day^ — by which Dr. Gordon would 

 aim to render more rational the omnipresent su- 

 premacy of God, I presume many of you would 

 seriously dissent ; and so, too, do I, — though doubt- 

 less for extremely different reasons. 



You, I presume, would dissent on the ground that 

 Dr. Gordon's belief in an immanent God savours too 

 much of pantheism and of rationalism. I, too, dis- 

 sent from the pantheistic trend of his theory ; but 

 I dissent from his method much more, because I 

 feel that, however rationalistic, it is still not ration- 

 alistic enough. It admits far too much of the mystic 



^ G. A. Gordon : T/ie Christ of To-day. Boston : Houghton, 

 Mifflin and Co., 1894. 



