352 
other hand, to be a mark of any doctrine which reason precludes 
our holding, that it depends on the phenomenal. 
It must be repeated, that in postulating our religious 
foundations, we ventured on no previous speculations as to 
the character, or mode of action, or knowledge, or any 
“attributes” of the Supreme. We have contemplated Him 
solely as the Moral Arbiter of a world that knows itself 
responsible — both He and the conscious beings ruled by 
Him, being in relation with the true-always. We must, if 
consistent in our argument, bring all proposed doctrines of 
Religion to the same moral test. At least we 
io° g y n not pd- should for the present have nothing to proceed 
mary in our U p 0 n, if we began with an cc priori Theology. As 
moral beings we approach the Supreme only as a 
Moral Governor ; and can allow indeed of no abstract theolo- 
gical, or other conclusions that might possibly come into 
collision with His, and our own natures, as moral, and so 
unhinge all Responsibility. 
136. We saw quite enough, in our examination of the Eleatic 
Ontology (§ 60, &c.) to warn us against relying 
themXeco? on ^he so-called metaphysical ideas of simplicity, 
sciousness or perfection and the like. In such speculations we 
scrulabif. 6 m ' should be dealing with subject-matter of which we 
have no consciousness and no experience. We can 
only think of the Supreme as related to the true-always and 
to the phenomenal, as really as we ourselves are, — abstracting 
the limitations which belong to our finitude. We cannot 
analyze our own consciousness ; nor yet our mode of 
becoming related with phenomena : still less can we under- 
stand the Divine consciousness or the Divine mode of 
Relation with our phenomena, or with any other classes 
of phenomena, — for they may be many. We only know 
that the Divine relation to both must be such as to befit the 
Judge of the moral system. We have neither proved, nor 
asked, more than this. How God “ knows,” and how (as 
some express themselves) He “ fore-knows,” we are not able 
to say; except that knowledge is a conscious possession of 
any conscious being, and that to hnoiu before acting is neces- 
sary to a wise being. — Knowing before our acting accom- 
panies our designing the act : but knowing the act of others 
before they do it, is not identical with our designing or 
destining their act. Knowledge in every case corresponds 
with the subject-matter, or it is not knowledge. 
137. All speculation e. g. as to our own knowledge of the 
true-always is limited to our consciousness ; and, as to our 
knowledge of the phenomenal, limited to our experience, and 
