218 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CEEED OF SCIENCE. 



of the evidence, and the degree and kind of verification 

 possible. And let all the conceptions which we bring 

 to bear in the discussion be filled only with the facts of 

 experience, and be emptied of their old fictions, question- 

 begging hypotheses, and unreal, unknown elements. Let 

 the notions of matter and substance, creation and cause, 

 providence and purpose, be freed from their unknown 

 and hypothetical contents, which are incapable of verifi- 

 cation, and be filled only with the facts taught by ex- 

 perience or science, which facts these symbols alone 

 represent, and for which alone they should stand. Were 

 this duly done, then indeed we might receive a corre- 

 spondingly positive and scientific answer to our old 

 metaphysical inquiries. 



However, this may succeed, it has become gradually 

 clear to man, partly from the failure of the great meta- 

 physicians, who have, twice within the past two hundred 

 years, attempted in vain to take the problem of the 

 universe by storm, and partly from the express teaching 

 of two of the greatest amongst them, Kant and Hume, 

 that the human mind could not advance beyond pheno- 

 mena ; that it knew nothing even of its own wonderful 

 self beyond its phenomenal modes and affections; and 

 that whatever problem might remain for philosophy, 

 whether in determining the conditions and boundaries 

 of the knowing faculties, or in weaving into systematic 

 unity the final conceptions and laws handed in by 

 Science, still, that the business of Science herself was 

 to trace and discover a systematic order in the several 

 departments of phenomena presented by Nature, external 

 or human. Further, men have begun to perceive more 

 clearly that a knowledge of phenomena and their con- 

 stant conjunctions, as it is all that we can know, so it is 

 all that we really require to know ; and that such know- 



