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a few indistinct objects near at hand may be dimly discerned through the 
vapour ; beyond these all is invisible. It is with the few objects clearly 
discerned that science deals ; it may deal conjecturally or empirically with 
the objects dimly discerned ; all the rest is the sphere with which religion 
has to deal.* It is precisely here that I would wish to demur to Mr. Spencer’s 
view, if I rightly understand his meaning. I wish to deny emphatically 
that, while science deals with what is within, and religion only with what 
is outside the sphere of our mental vision, science deals with all that is 
permitted to be seen, and religion only with all that is hidden by the fog. 
And, even if I do not rightly understand his meaning, I would still desire to 
combat that which is supposed to be his teaching, or represented to be so 
by a host of writers who call themselves Agnostics. I would say that it is 
not with the unknowable, as such, that religion professes to deal, but with 
what is known ; and the distinction between religion and science is not that 
the latter deals with the knowable and the former with the unknowable, 
but that the former deals with physical and metaphysical, the latter with 
moral and spiritual facts. And, as the man in the fog knows that he 
experiences sensations and goes through processes which are connected with 
objects other than those he can see, so religion deals with a class of 
experiences and of processes which are directly derived from contact with 
the unseen. 
The KpixiTov Tpevdog of Dean Mansel’s treatise is supposed by many to be 
his view that all conceptions of God are not absolute, but relative. But 
the truth or falsehood of this remark depends upon the meaning we attach 
to those words. Two meanings of the word “ absolute ” will be found in § 17 
of this paper, but there is a third sense in which it is constantly used which 
is altogether different ; it is used as equivalent to “ entire.”f If we suppose 
Dean Mansel to mean that our conceptions of God cannot possibly be true, 
but are simply proportionate to some unknown truth, we are bound to pro- 
test against his language ; if, on the other hand, he means that our concep- 
tions of God do not represent Him as a being entirely unconnected with 
everything else, but are derived from the relation or connexion in which He 
stands to us, we should hardly, I suppose, feel ourselves strongly moved to 
contradict him. When Clement of Alexandria teaches that God is above 
space, and time, and name, and conception, J we should not reject his doc- 
trine ; but when we come to add that He is above being and outside of 
all relation, or even when, like Clement in the passage above cited, we 
say that we know not what He is, but that we know what He is not, we feel 
that this is, practically at least, to represent Him as non-existent. We 
* See note on p. 108. 
t As in Mill, Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 43, 
“The Absolute must be absolutely something, either absolutely this or 
absolutely that.” But the absolute, in the strict sense of the word, cannot 
be “ absolutely ” anything, because this would involve relation. 
t Strom., book v. ch. ii. It may be observed that Athanasius (see p. 107) 
is only quoting his master, Clement. 
