91 
other hand, it has been affirmed, that our knowledge of God 
may be limited to the phenomenal, and yet be true, and not 
merely adequate to present need. The antagonism 
of these views is superficial. The “ Regulative Xtiy Than 
knowledge,” to which the former would confine us, anta s°* 
could not of course be imagined to be out of relation 
with the “ true-always : ” and the Anthropomorphism, which 
would be content with the phenomenal, could not afford to give 
up all that lies beyond phenomena. There is little, then, to choose 
between the philosophy which denies us the real knowledge 
of God, while giving us a substitute for knowledge suitable 
to our present state ; and the philosophy which would regard 
the Divine being as “ altogether such an one as ourselves.” 
57. It is undeniable, however, that both these phi- 
losophies have possessed themselves of that ground speculative 630 
which it is our business here to traverse, 
example of a development of the former, we may 
take a passage from an eloquent prelate of the last century 
As an 
“ Shall I affirm, 0 God, that Thou wast before my existence, even from 
everlasting? No : I must not place Thy being in such relation with mine. 
I must not say ‘ Thou wast,’ for that would mark succession, and time 
past. Thou Art, and it is only an immovable present, indivisible and 
infinite, that I may ascribe to Thee. It must not be said that Thou hast 
always been, but that Thou art. For this term ‘ always’ would not describe 
permanence, but continuity. And what I have said of the Example of 
past, I may say of the future. It is not Thou shalt be, but the Pantheistic 
Thou art. The stream glides along the bank, but the bank pietlsm * 
moves not. It has but a motionless relation to that which flows by.” 
The entanglement of thought here will be found most extreme. 
58. The following, however, taken from a well-known religious 
writer of our own day, while exhibiting the recoil in some 
minds from this Pantheism of the assertors of the unknow- 
ableness ” of God, equally confuses the phenomenal with the 
true-always : — 
“ ‘ He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and 
are’ I conclude, then, that St. Paul regarded this statement 
as the one great protest against Pantheism And ^ ^ f 
here is a sentiment of Aratus, which may be turned to either the xa Humani- 
account. It may justify the old Homeric notion of men having tanan view> 
a Divine parentage. It may assert the proud notion of sages ( that men by 
wisdom can make themselves gods ( for we also are His offspring’ 
The Apostle cannot urge the Athenians to abandon idolatry, he cannot 
urge them to make that change which involves such a convulsion in the 
whole moral being, which cuts asunder so many links of old affection, if 
