353 
Intellectual 
contradictions 
involved in the 
popular notion 
of “ Predesti- 
nation.” 
memories of the past, and forecasting of the possible future. In 
this sense, both conscious and experimental knowledge may be 
termed relative. But the Divine consciousness of the true- 
always transcends ours, and the Divine relation to the pheno- 
menal we cannot measure. They are parallel to a certain 
limit, so that we may perceive what they are not ; but we 
cannot ascertain all that they are. Morally they correspond 
with ours, — we saw the necessity of a moral Governor in 
relation like ourselves with the true-always. There we must 
pause. God's knowedge is such that He governs this moral 
creation aright. 
138. To identify God's Knowledge with what some for in- 
stance have termed Predestination, is to identify the pheno- 
menal with the Divine consciousness ; which would 
be Pantheistic. In that case there is nothing con- 
tingent ; all the grounds of our Deontology are 
destroyed, and we depose at once Morality and 
the Supreme Moral Ruler. Any alleged Revela- 
tion, which cannot say to us “ ought " or u ought not " is, 
on the face of it, impossible. Indeed it were a contradiction in 
terms, to ash us to accept a Revelation which tells us that it is 
certain beforehand, that we cannot accept, or reject it — every 
incident in the whole career of every conscious agent being 
certain to fall out in the way “ predestined." The advocates 
of this marvellous hypothesis — (predestinated to advocate it, 
we must suppose, as others are predestinated to wonder at 
it, and bear,) — are in this further dilemma, that they call this 
Predestination “ Eternal ", — that is, it always was. It was 
no divine act, but a state of things always existing : God 
Himself not being at liberty to choose. They therefore 
explain their very term “ Predestination " as an apologetic 
euphemism for what others call “ fate " — there being they 
say, “ neither past, present or future with God." 
139. Now we have, and can have, nothing to do with any such 
doctrine, until we have abandoned the belief in our 
Responsibility as real Agents, and in the Supreme 
Ruler who is in relation with the true-always as such, and 
with the phenomenal as such. Such an interpretation of an 
alleged Revelation, must be false. 
The Stoics' dilemma, that of any two proposed contradictory 
events one or other will eventually take place, and that 
what is ultimately a fact was never untrue, is similar to the 
Predestinarian's fallacy, that because either the affirmative or 
the negative in some matters will take place, it may 
be known as certain beforehand. It is to confound p r e- 
knowledge of the phenomenal with knowledge of destinariaaa. 
2 u 2 
And Moral. 
