593 (Chase. 
1884.] 
420. Revelation. 
The foundation of all knowledge is revelation, which is always self-evi- 
dent and infallible. The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understand- 
ing. All that we have and all that we are come from Him. In the interpre- 
tations of revelation, we are left in some measure to ourselves. While the 
self-evidence is given to us, we combine, in various ways, premises which 
we accept on account of their self-evidence or supposed self-evidence ; in 
that combination we are liable to mistakes and fallacies of judgment. All 
truth is God’s, allerroris man’s, They therefore makea fatal mistake who 
would set up the decisions of fallible judgment against the revelations 
which are offered for the acceptance of their own faith, or those which 
have been clearly apprehended through the faith of others, in truths which 
have been made self-evident to them, 
421. Fallacy of Agnosticism. 
We have no right to question the assertion of any individual that he 
does not know God. Neither has any one a right to say that God is un- 
knowable. Receptivity, power, and knowledge, are the three funda- 
mental axioms of all science and of all truth. So far as either of them is 
finite it is dependent upon something superior to itself. The agnostic, who 
recognizes a Supreme Power and who fails also to recognize a Supreme 
Receptivity and a Supreme Wisdom, has but a partial view. If in his 
teachings he implies, in any way, that human receptivity or human wis- 
dom can be superior to any other receptivity or wisdom, he is guilty 
of arrogance and cannot shield himself under any assumption of 
humility, The only power of which we have any practical knowledge, is 
that of will; and will itself is always directed by purpose, So far as man, 
through the exercise of his purpose, his will and his intelligence, controls 
the powers of nature, he is imitating the Supreme control. Although it 
is true that we cannot “find out the Almighty unto perfection,”’ and 
although it is also true that we should avoid any narrow anthropomorph- 
ism, there is no doubt that the purpose, the will, and the wisdom of man 
differ from those of the Almighty, not in kind, but only in degree, and 
that in these respects man has been created in the image of his Maker. 
422. The Oxygen Unit. 
Marignac (Ann. de Ohim. et de Phys., March, 1884), in his late re-exami- 
nation of some of the atomic weights, considers that Prout’s law is only 
approximate, and that, since the numbers which express tho atomic weights 
only represent ratios, there is no reason for taking the hydrogen unit in 
preference to 16 or 100; but the choice of 16 is justified by its practical 
advantage. It allows us to represent the atomic weights of the greatest 
number of elements, and especially of those which are most important, by 
the most simple possible integers and with the least difference from the 
The fact that the atomic weights exhibit 
rigorous results of experiment. 
