186 W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D., ON 
religion is quite a different thing, for religion requires an asscnt 
to certain transcendental propositions ; philosophy is not the same ; 
it requires no such assent. Without scepticism in natural philo- 
sophy we should never have had Bacon. If people had been content 
to believe that the sun turned round the earth, we should have had 
no trueastronomy. So we must distinguish between the two. The 
sceptical philosopher therefore, who, ike Kant, calls attention to 
the means whereby we have investigated philosophical questions, 
and rather casts a shadow over the preconceived notions of men, 
is a true professor of philosophy, and has brought in an epoch in 
philosophy which I think the paper has clearly pointed out. 
The Venerable Archdeacon Sryciair, D.D.—I should like to say 
that I attribute a very high value to this paper. It is very 
delightful to me to recognize the old truths which we heard at 
Oxford so clearly set forth, particularly from this point of view,— 
that the argument seems to me to place the different trains of 
thought and reasoning, which lead us up towards the existence of 
the Almighty and the groundwork of our religion and faith, all 
in a true position, and to show them in their true light. The 
study of Kant’s philosophy has been a great comfort to myself, 
and his principles are what I have always rested in with regard to 
my own intellectual attitude towards belief. The paper looks at 
the relation between belief and reason from the purely metaphysical 
point of view; and we cannot, in the present day of keen intel- 
lectual activity and enquiry, present our faith to a thinking, 
critical, and cultivated worid unless it has a proper co-ordination, 
as far as possible, to the current of intellectual thought. I conceive 
that the Kantian attitude is the soundest and best. It acknow- 
ledges and accounts for the various lines of argument by which 
untrained minds endeavour to verify to themselves the existence 
of God. It does more than that; it suggests that finally the basis 
of the pure and true belief must rest upon moral grounds; and 
upon those moral grounds, if I may say so, from a natural point of 
view. It is exceedingly important in the present day that we 
should not proceed on grounds that are untenable. It seems to — 
me that a good deal of the misunderstanding that exists between 
men of science and culture and men of faith may be accounted for 
by the fact that faith is not placed before them in its proper 
relation, For instance, agnosticism, rightly understood, is, I think, 
from one point of view, the legitimate mental attitude; we can 
