Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/87

Rh out God?' And I bow to the authority of Christ, who tells me, 'No man hath seen God at any time'; 'God is a Spirit'; 'Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.' And, in so holding, I am in full accord with the Church. I say with her, 'We know Thee now by faith'; 'The Father is incomprehensible (im-mensus)'; 'There is but one God, eternal, incorporeal, indivisible, beyond reach of suffering, infinite'—in short, a profound and inscrutable Being. Nor do I find that Catholic theology, for 1800 years, has ever swerved from a clear and outspoken confession of this agnosticism. So early as the second century, we read in Justin Martyr, 'Can a man know God, as he knows arithmetic or astronomy? Assuredly not.' Irenaeus, in the same century, repeatedly speaks of God as 'indefinable, incomprehensible, invisible.' That bold thinker in the third century, Clement of Alexandria, declares (with Mr. Spencer) that the process of theology is, with regard to its doctrine of God, negative and agnostic, always 'setting forth what God is not, rather than what he is.' All the great fathers of the fourth century echo the same statement. St. Augustine is strong on the point. John of Damascus, the greatest theologian of the East, says bluntly, 'It is impossible for the lower nature to know the higher.' Indeed, it would be a mere waste of time to adduce any more of the great Catholic theologians by name. They are all 'agnostics' to a man. And M. Emile Bumouf is quite right when he says, 'Les docteurs Chrétiens sont unanimes à déclarer que leur dieu est caché et incompréhensible, qu'il est plein de mystères, qu'il est l'objet de la foi et non pas de la raison.'"

Thus there is nothing new under the sun, not even in the highest flights of modern philosophy; and no man, with all the fathers of the Church at his back, need hesitate to say, "I am a Christian agnostic." Yet all who concur in this will, I am sure, warmly welcome a powerful auxiliary like Mr. Herbert Spencer, if only he remain true to the principles so lucidly set forth in the last number of this review ("Popular Science Monthly," January, 1884). For although he might not himself care to qualify his philosophy by the adjective "Christian," fearing thereby to limit-as a philosopher is bound not to do—his perfect freedom of speculation, still his guidance is none the less valuable to those who are approaching the same subject from a different side. The Christian, indeed, is, of all men, the most absolutely bound-over to be truthful. When, therefore, any great leader of thought arises, whether in the higher or the lower departments of human inquiry, the liegeman of a "God of truth" must needs feel such reverence as Dante expressed for Aristotle, "the great