Ill 
not impersonal Being, that His nature corresponds bu ? e f 3 th of at the 
with the true-always, and has real relation with all Supreme, 
phenomena also ; that His nature and ours there- 
fore correspond, with that difference only which belongs to our 
Finitude and His Supremacy ; — all these conclusions are far 
more substantial than any abstract descriptions beforehand of 
what men might call “ His Attributes.” But we have done more 
than this. We have examined what we mean by Groodness, 
and distinguished the goodness of the Supreme and the good- 
ness of the Finite, quoad naturam and quoad actum, both as 
to the beginnings of good and its continuance. 
99. We have found, too, that our method has enabled us 
to expose and reject the old Eleatic and Humanitarian philo- 
sophies so inextricably mixed up with all the ordinary 
disquisitions on the Divine attributes. If we persevere in 
this method, we shall find that we escape many of those 
difficulties with which theorists, forgetful of all 
that Personality involves, have burdened the higher 0 f ^pr-wli del! 
Christian Deontology. Any who would dispute as the 
our ultimate and most advanced conclusions must 
dispute them in the first instance ; for we cannot change our 
premisses, or take that for true in an argument for Responsi- 
bility, which is not to be maintained also in Religion, and 
throughout. Religion and the essential “ facts of human 
nature ” cannot be put asunder. Those facts are fundamental. 
Let any one look into himself, and decide whether the 
foundations of our argument are even disputable by a rational 
being ? Beginning, of course, from the simplest Bimple 
assumption, viz., that there never was universal Ontology with 
Nothing (for if there had been, this present uni- us ‘ 
verse could not have arisen), we see, further, there never 
was Universal Unconsciousness, for the same reason, viz., 
that if there had been, Consciousness could never have arisen. 
(§ 9, 29.) It seems, therefore, that the “ true-always 33 is 
the ground both of being, and of consciousness. No sooner 
is any being conscious of himself than he is conscious of 
being. Let any one consider therefore whether consciousness 
does not imply in its essence relation of some kind to the 
prcecedentia, the true-always (§ 65). 
100. When once we perceive that there must be a con3 §o°g n be 9 iD 0 f 
Supreme Conscious Being, we find it impossible to reS»te£ s 
question that His relation to the true-always must 
be perfect. A finite conscious being, on the other hand, 
directly he knows himself as a conscious being, knows that he 
has not always been, and that his relation to the true-always 
is limited, though real and essential. The relation of any 
