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REV. CHANCELLOR LIAS, M.A., ON 



thinker thougli he was, was involved in a serious inconsistency 

 by the deference he paid to the German metaphysicians, and 

 that Mr. Herbert Spencer made use of that inconsistency to 

 bolster up his proof that God was "unthinkable'' and "un- 

 knowable/' Yet some of Dean Hansel's points in his Bampton 

 Lectures were incontrovertible, and magnificently put. The 

 fact, however unfortunate, that his undue deference to German 

 metaphysicians enabled Mr. Spencer to make use of him as a 

 champion of Agnosticism, does not destroy the value of his 

 other work. It is on this ground that I was able to rescue his 

 memory from that reproach in my paper of 1883. For 

 Mr. Spencer not only showed that, on the abstract idea principle, 

 God was " unthinkable," but he delivered himself up to be 

 smitten " hip and thigh " by his antagonists by adding that a 

 " First Cause," and not only a First Cause, but space, time, 

 matter, motion, force, and consciousness, were also "un- 

 thinkable." It is quite clear that, whether all these ideas are 

 "unthinkable" or not, we do "think" a good deal about 

 them, and should be madmen if we did not do so. Nor is it 

 difficult to show that it is not unreasonable to think about 

 things of which we do not know everything. Though we do not 

 know everything about a great many things, it is still absolute 

 folly to refuse to know as much about them as we can. More- 

 over, what Mr. Spencer meant was, not that his category of facts 

 was altogether "unthinkable," but only ultimately unthink- 

 able, which is a very difierent thing. So I ventured to point out 

 that, as with space, time, matter, motion, and the rest, if we could 

 not know all about them, we could at least know something. 

 And if we cannot know all about God, we can at least know enough 

 about Him, to enable us to honour and obey Him ; and this is 

 a good deal. I further suggested that the reason why all these 

 other facts were ultimately unthinkable was because each of 

 them, if pursued to its source, ran up into the mystery which 

 enshrouds the Ultimate Being of Him Who created them.* Dean 



* I did not fall in, until much later than my papers to which I have 

 referred, with a passage from that wise, honest, and far-seeing Divine of 

 the fifth century a.d., Theodoret, who sums up the whole Agnostic con- 

 troversy in a few lines. " Do you know God ? " says the Anomoean to 

 the Orthodox. " Yes," replies the Orthodox. The dialogue goes on. "A. — 

 Do you know Him as He knows Himself ? 0. — No. A. — Then you do 

 not know Him. 0. — know Him as it is possible for one in the nature of 

 man to know Him. A. — Then you know Him in one way and He knows 



