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in the idea of a revelation. Reason has in natural religion a 
great foundation in the ideas of God, responsibility, and a 
future. On that foundation it can stand and deal with matters 
of fact, of experience, of human and divine testimony, as it 
regards revelations of God to men. It will demand the 
healthiest exercise of all the faculties; not degrading itselt 
however, by denying realities, simply because it cannot answer 
every question about manner or mode. 
3. Science is systematic knowledge. And yet we are told by 
Buchner that “ every science, and especially every philosophy, 
that seeks reality instead of appearance, truth instead of pretence, 
must necessarily be atheistic/' and he adds that in scientific 
matters the word God is only another expression for our 
ignorance."* Now, is it reason that says all this ? Distinguish 
between reason and reasoning, and the whole thing is plain. 
It is no fault of the eye that the medium through which it looks 
seems to distort the object. Even in its own name men of 
science may insult reason. And so too it is with philosophy. 
It is to be regretted that Hamilton should ever have said that 
the last and highest consecration of all true religion must be 
an altar, “To the unknown and unknowable God. It is 
also to be regretted that Mansel should have travelled through 
the sciences of numbers, of magnitude, and of morals, that he 
might smite reason in the face by declaring “that the infinite 
is not an object of human [thought at all." If the weapon 
which is thus put into the hands of men be a legitimate one, 
it has an edge which no arguments about faith can ever brea ” 
or blunt, but which must cut clean into the heart of the highest 
interests of men, even as we have seen it do, when used by such 
men as Buchner. If the finite be the only object of real or 
positive knowledge; if the “co-existence of the infinite and 
the finite in any manner whatever is inconceivable by reason ; 
if “moral reason is not entitled to implicit confidence,, then 
religion is an impossibility, and science, instead of being an 
illumined temple, is only a dark cave in which blind men 
struggle for results which can never be realized. We cannot 
reasonably feel astonished that Buchner should say that 
“ Science is a continual struggle with the notion of God," when 
in the teachings of Christian philosophers it is maintained that 
reason cannot know God. This is virtually to exclude reason 
from both science and religion. 
4. Our object in this paper is to maintain that reason is 
common to science and religion, that in both there is revelation 
* Buchner : Man, Pad, Present, and Future, p. 329. 
