THE BEING OF GOD. 91 
other views of creation in a somewhat grotesque manner. But it 
is a matter of the most vital importance to see how the very views 
which are sometimes thought to be destructive of any belief in 
God are found to be not one whit more antagonistic to a belief in 
God, when worked out reasonably and when not taken as mere 
weapons to fight faith, than those of a different nature, and it is 
very instructive to find how a particular attack on faith has 
failed. The real result of modern thought seems to me to be this, 
that with regard to ‘“ Agnosticism”’ (it is a most perplexing word 
from the Greek, and one wishes there was something simpler to 
express it in English), the mere fact of not knowing a thing is no 
evidence of its non-existence. Which of us understands the 
telephone? Which of us has the faintest knowledge of what 
electricity is? Which of us has the dimmest conception of the 
forces of gravitation? On those points Iam an Agnostic. I have 
not a full comprehension of any one of those points, and yet one’s 
whole practical life is made up of the acceptance of such things, 
and therefore the one poivt in the argument of Agnosticism—that 
full knowledge is necessary to belief—is a thing that the more one 
thinks of it the more aksurd it is. The fact that every thinker 
who seems to have tried hard to get away from the acknowledg- 
ment of design underlying creation has to come back to underlying 
laws, suggests the question, ‘If there be laws who and where the 
law-giver?” Those who have tried to escape from belief by 
Agnosticism find themselves compelled to acknowledge underlying 
verities. It seems to me we may consider that if we follow, upon 
the lines of this paper, the study of modern thought and the 
investigation of nature we shall find that though men may 
proceed by difficult paths, if that study be fairly and honestly 
followed, it leads up to God. (Applause.) 
The Rev. Joun Tuckwett, M.R.A.S.—There is an allusion to a 
subject in the paper which seems to me to be of very great 
importance, and I should like, if I may, to call attention to it so 
that it may be a little more fully considered than it has yet been. 
In the paper we have some very felicitous expressions concerning 
the method of creation. It is suggested that “we may remind 
ourselves that it is impossible to conceive of the Eternal Self- 
existent Being as subsisting without thought.” We all concur 
in that view—‘and the expression or externalization of His 
thoughts was the beginning of matter.” That is very mysterious— 
