GERMANISM." 



143 



of the Christian, not of His Attributes and His Prerogatives, 

 but of His Personality, and propound bare negations instead of 

 Him. The God in Whom we Christians believe cannot be "the 

 Infinite,'' because no evil whatever is included in His Being. He 

 cannot be " the Absolute,'' because the word in its exact sense 

 means that which has no connexion with anything else, and we 

 are only able to conceive of God as our Creator and Preserver, 

 and can know of Him only through His relations to His creatures. 

 Once more. He is not " the Unconditioned," because in that case 

 He could have no Attributes of any kind, but merely such nega- 

 tives as have been mentioned, which make one shiver, and which 

 are utterly irreconcileable with the Love which the Christian 

 scheme represents as the first and greatest Attribute of Deity. 

 Imagine yourself asked to love and adore " the Infinite," the 

 Absolute," or " the Unconditioned," or all three together ! 

 And if He 6e " all three together," then " there be three gods or 

 three lords." Surely any rational conception of God involves 

 the fact that He lives under conditions necessary to His 

 Being. Not only Christianity, but even some other religions 

 and philosophies, have believed Him to be Greatness, Good- 

 ness, Wisdom, Knowledge, Life, and Love, or at least Beneficence. 

 The belief of the Christian regards Him as conditioned in these 

 and many other ways. There is, to put it mildly, a very great 

 deal to be said in favour of that belief. And if German 

 philosophy offers us no better solution of the Universe than 

 one which demands the denial of the first conditions of a 

 Creator and Preserver of all things, the sooner we dismiss 

 German metaphysics and German theology the better. 



It is true, no doubt, that some metaphysicians — Dean Mansel, 

 for instance, explained " the Absolute " as that which had " no 

 necessary relation " with other beings or ideas.* But that was 

 only an attempt to wriggle out of a diflS.culty, and a very 

 unsuccessful one withal. For " Absolute " either means un- 

 related or it has no definite meaning whatever. That the God 

 we worship is neither "the Infinite," " the Unconditioned," nor 

 " the Absolute " has already been shown. I was rather blamed 

 years ago, at a meeting of this Institute, for speaking with 

 approval of Dean Hansel's Bampton Lectures, which adopt these 

 conceptions. I defended myself in my paper of 1883, just referred 

 to. I will, therefore, only point out now that Dean Mansel, great 



* I must refer to my paper read on February 5th, 1883, for my 

 authorities. 



