Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/268

 manifestation of the energy of an infinite life, in "which it is a joy to be lost. To me the doctrine of an eternal continuity of development has no terrors; for, believing matter to be, in its ultimate essence, spiritual, I see in every cosmic revolution a 'change from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' I can look down the uncreated, unbeginning past without the sickness of bewildered faith. My Father worketh hitherto. My sense of eternal order is no longer jarred by the sudden appearance in the universe of a dead, inane substance foreign to God and spiritual being."

All religions, properly so called, conceive of phenomena as the outcome of an eternal, incomprehensible power, "which makes for righteousness" throughout the universe. Every irreligious system, on the other hand, regards the phenomenal altogether apart from its source. The question then arises. Which way of looking at the mighty enigma is the more philosophic? The positivists reply, and Mr. Bradlaugh replies, "Aye know nothing of the source, nor can know." But their parade of ignorance almost presupposes the reality of that of which they profess to be ignorant.

"The same intellectual constitution which makes science possible—the impulse to seek after the reason of things and their completeness—implies in its very germ an already existing, though inarticulate, belief in ultimate substance and in an infinite unity. Further, the very fact that our mental faculties cannot work without suggesting this dim majesty which is beyond their ken, compels a constant reference thereto, which,