Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/152

Rh to which we can compare him; of course we can have no image of him in the mind.

There has been enough dogmatism respecting the nature, essence, and personality of God—respecting the Metaphysics of the Deity, and that by men who, perhaps, did not thoroughly understand all about the nature, essence, and metaphysics of Man. It avails nothing. Meanwhile the greatest religious souls that have ever been, are content to fall back on the Sentiment and the Idea of God, and confess that none by searching can perfectly find Him out. They can say, therefore, with an old Heathen, “Since he cannot be fully declared by any one name, though compounded of never so many, therefore is he rather to be called by every name, he being both one and all things; so that [to express the whole of God] either everything must be called by his name, or he by the name of everything.” “Call him, therefore,” says another Pagan, “by all names, for all can express but a whisper of Him; call him rather by no name, for none can declare his Power, Wisdom, and Goodness.”

Malebranche says, with as much philosophy as piety, “One ought not so much to call God a Spirit, in order to express positively what he is, as in order to signify that he is not Matter. He is a being infinitely perfect. Of this we cannot doubt. But in the same manner we ought