MODIFICATIONS IN THE IDEA OP GOD, ETC. /£> 



I may indicate, howevei% that where defenders of a higher rank 

 for intellect would join issue is upon the amount of credit to be 

 allowed to it as a creative power. They would say that what Mr. 

 Lias allows is insuflScient. Where he deals with intellectual 

 operation they would say that he has before him only a 

 passive and receptive function, that he is, in short, too close tO' 

 Locke and Mill and Spencer — not sufficiently Kantian or Hegelian, 

 He has a right to bo so, but perhaps he may hardly relish these 

 congeners, and he probably prefers still the company of Mansel in 

 his conceptualism, as he did when he wrote his previous paper 

 some years ago. 



Third. In the reference to science few will be found to disagree 

 with Mr. Lias when he maintains that materialism is out of date. 

 I think that it reached its high-water mark in Britain in Tyndall's 

 famous paean at Belfast. That blast Avoke the echoes over Britain, 

 but no peal like it has been heard since that time. The fact was 

 that Tyndall was a student and expounder of the physical sciences ; 

 in them he buried himself, and for other fields of observation and 

 induction he had neither opportunity nor special talent. But what 

 has gone on since Tyndall's time ? Not least impressive of 

 changes has been the widening of the term " science " to include 

 study of human nature as well as of the external world. We do 

 not now look for explanations of the varieties of men's personal 

 character in the recesses of physiology, nor for explanations of 

 national character in the geographical and climatic circumstances 

 which one nation deals with in one way, and another nation in 

 another. The British Association has widened its range to include 

 the study of the sciences of mental life : first economics was ad- 

 mitted; then anthropology; latest education; and now psychology 

 and ethics may almost be heard clamouring at the gate. 



As an honorary member of the Institute I have pleasure in 

 emphasizing, on these points, the fact that Mr. Lias's position in 

 this paper is in accordance with the general trend of recent ad- 

 vances on the side of the mental and moral sciences, and also of 

 theology, as I read the signs of the times. 



Rev. W. F. KiMM, M.A. — The meanings of the names El, Shaddai, 

 etc., are discussed, and it is inferred that the moral attributes of 

 God were unknown to Abraham. But we have much more than 

 these names to guide us ; we have the history of the patriarch and 

 of preceding times, and Chancellor Lias gives us sufficient reason 



