CONCLUSION. 227 



universally apply the idea of existence falsely, and 

 only by long effort learn that what we take for 

 existence is but phenomenal would not this dis- 

 covery have been hailed as the very answer that was 

 sought, and as a step of most hopeful augury ? This 

 means that man is in a diseased, a wanting state.* 

 It is tb- starting-point of inquiry, not the end. It 

 seems like the end only because we have not been 

 asking the right question. We have been seeking 

 wrongly, but God has answered us aright. 



For it is wonderful to see what a new light arises, 

 and what doors open, when we take as a guide to our 

 thoughts this idea of a false feeling, arising from a 

 wanting state, in man. It is, in one aspect, one of 

 the least results, though in another it is the sum of 

 all, that our whole thought, our very science, is made 

 Christian. 



Inconceivable tilings are given us through this 

 knowledge respecting man, which comes to us in the 

 deceptive guise of an inability on his part to know. 

 It were not possible to have believed that so much 



See Chapter IX., p. 183. 



152 



