101 
us, “ is the certainty to which intelligence has from the first 
been progressing” (p. 108). He traces an ideal picture of the 
growth of the doctrine of God from the time when “the rudest 
savages imagined the causes of all things to be creatures of 
flesh and blood like themselves” (p. 109), through the period 
when persons who would “ consider it impious ” to “ think of 
the creative power as in all respects anthropomorphous ” 
do yet regard it as “in some respects anthropomorphous,” 
(p. 110), to the time when men have become convinced of 
“ the impiety of the pious ” (p. 110), and have come finally to 
regard it as their “ highest wisdom and their highest duty to 
regard that through which all things exist as The Unknow- 
able ” (p. 113).* 
5. It is a question whether our progress be not altogether 
the other way ; whether so far from confessing that we know 
less of God, we are not feeling that we know more of Him ; 
whether savages ever did regard the heavenly powers as 
“ creatures of flesh and blood like ourselves whether, great 
as is the mystery in which it has pleased God to enshroud 
Himself, He has not thought fit, in the course of the ages, to 
dispel some of the darkness which had formerly surrounded 
Him. But that there is a certain amount of truth in what Mr. 
Spencer says, cannot be denied. That there is a sense in which 
God transcends our conceptions, there can be no doubt. The 
Scriptures tell us this as plainly as Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
* He goes on to say, — “An immense majority will refuse, with more or 
less of indignation, a belief seeming to them so shadowy and indefinite. 
Having always embodied the Ultimate Cause so far as was needful to its 
mental realisation, they must necessarily resent the substitution of an 
Ultimate Cause which cannot be mentally realised at all. ‘You offer us,’ 
they say, ‘ an unthinkable abstraction in place of a being towards whom we 
may entertain definite feelings. Though we are told that the Absolute is 
real, yet since we are not allowed to conceive it, it might as well be a pure 
negation. Instead of a power which we can regard as having some sympathy 
with us, you would have us contemplate a Power to which no emotion what- 
ever can be ascribed. And so we are to be deprived of the very substance 
of our faith.’ This kind of protest,” he continues, “ of necessity accompanies 
every change from a lower creed to a higher.” Which creed is the “lower” 
and which the “ higher ” may be yet for some time a matter of debate. And 
it is somewhat strange to find Mr. Spencer putting in the mouth of Christians 
words which attribute “ emotions ” to God. Though such language may be 
loosely and inaccurately used, it is at least contradicted by the first Article 
of the Church of England. It would be interesting to observe, moreover, 
what our scientific men would say if Space, or Time, or Matter, or Motion, 
which Mr. Spencer has proved to be equally unthinkable with the “ Ultimate 
Cause,” were substituted for it in Mr. Spencer’s pages. There would pro- 
bably be a considerable outcry, not unmingled with expressions of scorn for 
philosophical pedantries. And not without reason. 
VOL. XVII. I 
