44 A GREAT CONFESSION CHAP. 



natural phenomena to an intelligible 

 order. But the reformed idea is now to 

 be that our own intelligence is the one 

 abounding fountain of error and decep- 

 tion. It is not merely to be disciplined 

 and corrected, but it is to be eliminated 

 altogether. It is to be hounded off and 

 shouted down. 



It is very clear what all this must end 

 in. The demand made upon us in its 

 literal fulness is a demand impossible and 

 absurd. We cannot stand outside our- 

 selves. We cannot look with eyes other 

 than our own. We cannot think except 

 with the faculties of our own intellectual 

 nature. It is impossible, and if it were 

 possible, it would be absurd. We are 

 ourselves a part of nature born in it, 

 and born of it. The analogies which 

 the disciplined intellect sees in external 

 nature are therefore not presumably 

 false, but presumably true, or at the 



