HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 235 
and easily with the whole body of our knowledge. 
The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the widest and 
deepest truth which the study of nature can disclose 
to us, that there exists a power to which no limit in 
time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenom- 
ena of the universe, whether they be what we call 
material or what we call spiritual phenomena, are 
manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power. Now 
this assertion, which Mr. Spencer has so elaborately 
set forth as a scientific truth —nay, as the ultimate 
truth of science, as the truth upon which the whole 
structure of human knowledge philosophically rests 
—this assertion is identical with the assertion of an 
eternal Power, not ourselves, that forms the speculative 
basis of all religions. When Carlyle speaks of the 
universe as in very truth the star-domed city of God, 
and reminds us that through every crystal and through 
every grass blade, but most through every living 
soul, the glory of a present God still beams, he means 
pretty much the same thing that Mr. Spencer means, 
save that he speaks with the language of poetry, with 
language coloured by emotion, and not with the precise, 
formal, and colourless language of science. By many 
critics who forget that names are but the counters 
rather than the hard money of thought, objections 
have been raised to the use of such a phrase as the 
Unknowable, whereby to describe the power that is 
manifest in every event of the universe. Yet, when 
the Hebrew prophet declared that “ by him were laid 
the foundations of the deep,” but reminded us “ Who 
by searching can find him out ?” he meant pretty much 
what Mr. Spencer means when he speaks of a power 
that is inscrutable in itself, yet is revealed from moment 
