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and enable us to affirm “ with absolute certainty ” many things about Him 
besides the fact of His existence. 
I might have strengthened the argument in paragraphs 27 and 29 if I 
had referred to those pioneers of progress in past ages to whom we owe 
our present civil and religious liberty. Professor Harrison, in his papers on 
Positivism, has often spoken with the utmost enthusiasm of these men ; 
but it never appears in the least to strike him what a monstrous injustice it is 
that they should have suffered, as they did suffer, wrongs so cruel, tortures 
so fiendish, in a cause so holy, and that they should have endured them 
with the noblest fortitude to the end, while we, who perhaps neither have, 
nor would have, raised a finger in defence of the cause, are enjoying the 
blessings their miseries have won for us. “ Other men laboured and ye have 
entered into their labours,” says Jesus Christ, with a complacency which 
would be simply intolerable were there no world where each labourer received 
his due. If there be no such world, then the present order of things is an 
iniquity so hideous, that it may fairly be pleaded in justification of any crime 
on the part of those who are included within it. 
I have not placed Mr. Spencer’s name at the head of this paper, though I 
have not scrupled to criticise some of his statements. For it is rather with 
the practical consequences of those statements than with the statements 
themselves that I wished chiefly to deal. I wish to speak with all respect 
of a thinker whose fame has spread throughout the world. Nor have I 
the least desire to fasten on him any conclusions which he would desire to 
repudiate. My object is, if possible, to correct some floating ideas of the 
age, derived to a great extent from the system which originated with him. 
Whatever be Mr. Spencer’s idea of our relations to God, whether I have 
correctly represented his words or not, the notion is widely prevalent just 
now that, while science is definite, tangible, intelligible, religion is concerned 
only with what is phantasmal, indefinite, imaginary. As God is unknow- 
able, he is practically — so we are told — nothing at all to us. It is just there 
where the interpreters of Mr. Spencer’s philosophy go wrong. As He is in 
Himself, in the “breadth, length, depth, and height” of His Being, God is 
beyond our power to grasp. But what He is to us, that we know perfectly 
well. Nor is this merely subjective knowledge. In the words, “What He 
is to us,” it is not the conceptions we subjectively form of Him, but the 
objective manifestations of His Nature, that are referred to. This is what 
the Scriptures tell us. If St. Paul, when he speaks of knowing God, corrects 
himself, and says “ or rather are known by God,” he means that, whether we 
can know God in all the fulness of His Being or not, there can be no mistake 
about the fact that we are brought into “ knowable ” relations to Him, and 
that the very fact of those relations enables us to know a good deal about the 
nature of Him to Whom we are thus related. If, in fine, the words, “ I know 
God,” in their strictest literal interpretation be incorrect, at least there is 
nothing illogical or unphilosophical in the statement, “ I know Whom I 
have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have 
committed unto Him against that day.” 
