34 THE KEY. CANON E. B. GIRDLESTONE^ M.A., ON 



Sj)ace and time, wliicli are the very warp and woof of 

 our existence, are not to Him what they are to us. We 

 can no more see Him or comprehend Him than we can see 

 or comprehend a molecule or an atom. How then can we 

 study His ways ? 



It is to human nature — its most spiritual part — that we must 

 turn if we want to catch even a whisper of His real nature. 



" Show me thyself," said a Bishop of Antioch more than 

 seventeen centuries ago, " show me thyself, and I will show 

 thee God." And so Descartes said, " Nature conceals God, 

 man reveals God." Here then is the call to the man of 

 science. If the existence of a planet can be inferred fi-om 

 the movements of other bodies, may not the existence of 

 the Great Spirit be gathered from certain perturbations of 

 the human spirit. 



I am persuaded that the phenomena of human life and 

 history may be studied far more scientifically than has been 

 done hitherto in order to find illustrations of the Divine 

 character and methods. It is true that these are not ahvays 

 patent ; they do not lie on the surface ; for He is One who 

 hides Himself and Avhat is still more remarkable, He restrains 

 the use of His own power and permits Himself to be resisted 

 and apparently thwarted by man or by some evil power 

 behind man. 



At times we stand abashed and silenced as we realise that 

 there are vast regions of existence of which we know next 

 to nothing. I do not speak of the stellar but of the 

 spiritual heavens. The Bible possesses a imiforra system of 

 psycliology, of morals, and (I think) of metaphysics. Its 

 writers are convinced that we live on the borders of two 

 worlds whose laws are analogous — I will not say identical — 

 and that the material world is a nursery for the spiritual. 

 May not scientific men look into this spiritual world? Do 

 they not recognise psychology as science ? May they not 

 investigate on scientific principles its immaterial side, 

 where three empires meet, the psychological; the ethical, 

 and the spiritual ? Both parties now recognise the impas- 

 sable gulf in nature between body and soul, and both agree 

 that these two are marvellously blended into one in luiman 

 life. We cannot even be conscious of the material without 

 exercising the immaterial. 



I am not pleading for metaphysics, though I for one do 

 not think they are yet played out, and I see no reason why 

 the words " subjective and objective " should not be baptized 



