76 MR. J. HASSELL 



Himself.-" And this knowledge we have in the Scriptures 

 of the Old and New Testaments^ and 



^ " This lamp from off the everlasting throne 

 Mercy took down ; and in the night of time 

 Stands, casting on the dark her gracious bow, 

 And evermore beseeching men, with tears, 

 And earnest sighs, to hear, believe, and live." 



Oiir work is done. We have shown that God can be known, 

 and is known, by His works ; that those things respecting the 

 nature of the Infinite which could not be discovered by 

 human reason, because it is finite, God has revealed in the 

 Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; and that this 

 revelation is in harmony with the religious sentiments and the 

 moral sense of man, and satisfy the cravings of the human 

 mind by making known the nature and occupation of the 

 future to which all are hastening. And thus we claim the 

 right to place over the assertion of the Agnostics, that God is 

 " Unknowable," the epitaph " Unreasonable,^' and append the 

 words of Robert Browning : — 



" God and the soul the only facts for me. 

 Prove them facts ? That they o'erpass my powers 

 Of proving proves them such : 

 Fact it is I know I know not something 

 Which is fact as much," 



The Chairman (D. Howard, Esq., V.P.C.S.)— I am sure we shall all 

 join in thanking Mr. Hassell for his valuable paper on a very important 

 subject. It is, perhaps, difficult for some of us to realise how great a need 

 there is for this sort of paper, beginning as it does at the beginning of the 

 questions that are connected with religious thought. I cannot help thinking 

 that the particular type of want of religious thought, Avhich goes by the 

 name of agnosticism, has a twofold cause. There is that weariness of mind 

 which most of us have felt in these days, when so much has to be read and 

 thought of, and which renders a great many subjects of human knowledge 

 simply unknowable, because we have not time to study them ; and thus 

 to many the most important truths of all take, in their minds, the same 

 position that the Zendavesta, or the early history of Roman law, or some of 

 the more recondite problems of modern science, may take in the case of 

 others, namely, that of things which life is really too short to enable them 

 to attend to. It is, I think, a strange habit of mind that can be content 

 with the less important, and leave the more important, subjects ; but, still 

 there are many such, and when people in that mental condition shelter 

 themselves behind the theoretical objection, that, as the common ex- 

 pression goes, God is unknowable, it becomes necessary that, in order to 

 deal with such persons, we should begin at the very beginning, as Mr. 



