299 
It is not given to many authors to keep either themselves 
or their readers awake through a work of five hundred pages. 
It is really a comfort to find that in the course of a little time 
our author is himself again. Id stead of that most damaging 
criticism which those who have heard Huxley or Tyndall dis- 
coursing on the properties of matter would know how to 
append to those portions which I have underlined^, I prefer 
that the author should himself give the couf de grace to his 
own double when he figures as a man of pseudo-science : — 
“ To assert self-existence is the denial of causation, and when we deny 
causation we also deny commencement. We must add to the absolute 
impossibility of conceiving this, the fact that we have to endow matter with 
all the powers of mind, and give to that which is dead all the properties of 
life, making matter to all intents and purposes God. Doing this we fall into 
the old heathen homage of Nature and worship Power, the phenomenal God. 
To worship Power only, Dr. Arnold said, is devil-worship” (p. 44). 
In the next page but one Mr. Eeynolds expresses his belief 
that^ — 
“ The integration of all natural forces into a single agency,— one grand 
entity, God, — is the grandest conception of humanity, the profoundest of 
scientific truths ” (p. 46 ;. 
This, I suppose, looks at the matter from a scientific stand- 
point, and is not quite satisfactory ; because it does not ascribe 
the knowledge of God entirely to His revelation of Himself, 
but rather to a conception of humanity. 
Another close-lying sentence is better : — 
“ The production of matter out of nothing is the real mystery ; but as we 
are not only obliged to assume some cause, but also a first cause, or we cannot 
speak of causation, we say, — ‘ All things are of God.’ ” 
Here the agnostic interposes that this explanation is a 
petitio principii. How do we know this ? Our answer can 
only be that we have a revelation from God Himself ; which, 
on most certain ground of evidence, we commend to his 
acceptance. 
This revelation informs us that no man hath seen God at 
any time : the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of 
the Father, He hath declared Him. 
And what, then, is the declaration ? 
God is Spirit {Ilvevf.ia 6 0£oc), and they that worship Him 
must worship him in spirit and in truth. 
This announcement sweeps away all pantheism, and all 
man-worship and devil-worship. It shows the nature of God 
to be absolutely separate from, although the originator of, that 
of every creature. He alone is SPIRIT, inhabiting eternity, 
dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, before 
X 2 
