In the culminating act, then, of a spiritual person, in the unreserved, the absolute consecration of the whole being to the search after truth, do we find that common goal to which an _a priori_ philosophy inevitably leads us, and which the purest, Christ's, religion teaches us. Thus does it appear that in their highest idea Philosophy and Religion are identical. The Rock upon which both alike are grounded is eternal. The principles of both have the highest possible evidence, for they are self-evident; and, having them given by the intuition of the Reason, a man can cipher out the whole natural scheme of the Universe as he would cipher out a problem in equations. He has not done it, because he is wicked; and God has given him the Bible, as the mathematical astronomy of the moral heavens, as a school-book to lead him back to the goal of his lost purity. How beautiful, then, art thou, O Religion, supernal daughter of the Deity! how noble in thy magnificent preeminence! how dazzling in thy transcendent loveliness! Thou sittest afar on a throne of pearl; thy diadem the Morning Stars, thy robe the glory of God. Founded is thy throne on Eternity; and from eternity to eternity all thy laws are enduring truth. Sitting thus, O Queen, more firmly throned than the snow-capped mountains, calmer than the ocean's depths, in the surety of thy self-conscious integrity and truth, thou mayest, with mien of noblest dignity, in unwavering confidence, throw down the gauntlet of thy challenge to the assembled doubters of the Universe. It may be that to some minds, unaccustomed to venturing out fearlessly on the ocean of thought, with an unwavering trust in the pole-star truth in the human soul, certain of the positions attained and maintained in this volume will seem to involve the destruction of all essential distinction between the Creator and the created. If the universe is a definite and limited object, some created being may, at some period, come to know every atom of it. Moreover, if there is a definite number of the qualities and attributes--the endowments of Deity, some one may learn the number, and what they are, and come at length to have a knowledge equal to God's knowledge. Even if this possibility should be admitted,--which it is not, for a reason to appear further on,--yet it would in no way involve that the creature had, in any the least degree, reduced the difference in _kind_ which subsists between him and the Creator. A consideration of the following distinctive marks will, it would seem, be decisive upon this point.