MODIFICATIONS IN THE IDEA OF GOD^ ETC. 43 



forces and laws at Avork in phenomena, of which science 

 is at iDresent nnable to take acconnt. Whether it will ever 

 be able to take account of them is a question. For my own 

 part, I am convinced that though recent scientific research 

 has done a vast deal to explain to us Iloxo things are, it has not 

 approached eveninfinitesimally nearer to the discovery of the 

 reasons xchy they are. It has formulated the laws of many 

 forces. But it can tell us no more of the nature or origin 

 of force itself than it could tell us centuries ago. A vast 

 number of scientific men are now ready to confess the 

 difference between observations of the laws of nature and 

 determination of the causes which have produced those laws. 



Some years ago I read a paper before the Institute on 

 tlie agnosticism Avhicli was at that time jjrevalent. There 

 were two points which, in that paper, I set myself to prove. 

 The first was, that God is not an abstract meta- 

 physical idea, but a living Being — the very opposite 

 of an abstraction — the source of all existence, and the cause 

 of all causation. The second object I had in view Avas to 

 establish the truth that even if the idea of God was ultimately 

 unthinkable, the same fact might be predicated of everything' 

 else ; and that as the fact that everything in nature 

 ultimately runs up into a mystery does not prevent us from 

 thinking about and from knowing a great deal about each 

 individual fact in nature, so in like manner it does not 

 prevent us either from thinking, or even knowing, a great 

 deal about God. 



Later still I wrote a paper in which I pointed out how an 

 examination of the facts of the universe led us to the 

 conclusion that mere mechanical or material facts weiv 

 the lowest in the order of things, that above them towered, 

 in an ascending scale, mental, moral, and finally spiritual 

 facts, and that, so far as I could see, the ultimate fact of 

 all was Love. I deduced the conclusion that material 

 forces, which include all those with which science under- 

 takes to deal, Avere dominated by mental, moral, and 

 spiritual forces ; and that the ultimate cause of all, eternal 

 love, made it reasonable to postulate a Being to whom 

 prayer for "everything"* may not improperly be addressed, 

 One Avhose main object — perhaps 1 might say Avhose only 

 object — IS the Avelfare of the sentient beings to whom He 

 has imparted a share in His existence. 



* Phil, iv, 6. 



