[247] "Essays, Philosophical and Theological," Truebner and Co., First Series, 1866, p. 190. "Every relative disability may be read two ways. A disqualification in the nature of thought for knowing _x_ is, from the other side, a disqualification in the nature of _x_ from being known. To say then that the First Cause is wholly removed from our apprehension is not simply a disclaimer of faculty on our part: it is a charge of inability against the First Cause too. The dictum about it is this: 'It is a Being that may exist out of knowledge, but that is precluded from entering within the sphere of knowledge.' We are told in one breath that this Being must be in every sense 'perfect, complete, total--including in itself all power, and transcending all law' (p. 38); and in another that this perfect and omnipotent One is totally incapable of revealing any one of an infinite store of attributes. Need we point out the contradictions which this position involves? If you abide by it, you deny the Absolute and Infinite in the very act of affirming it, for, in debarring the First Cause from self-revelation, you impose a limit on its nature. And in the very act of declaring the First Cause incognizable, you do not permit it to remain unknown. For that only is unknown, of which you can neither affirm nor deny any predicate; here you deny the power of self-disclosure to the 'Absolute,' of which therefore something is known;--viz., that nothing can be known!" [248] Loc. cit. p. 108. [249] Loc. cit. p. 43. [250] Loc. cit. p. 46. [251] Mr. J. Martineau, in his "Essays," vol. i. p. 211, observes, "Mr. Spencer's conditions of pious worship are hard to satisfy; there must be between the Divine and human no communion of thought, relations of conscience, or approach of affection." ... "But you cannot constitute a religion out of mystery alone, any more than out of knowledge alone; nor can you measure the relation of doctrines to humility and piety by the mere amount of conscious darkness which they leave. All worship, being directed to what is _above_ us and transcends our comprehension, stands in presence of a mystery. But not all that stands before a mystery is worship." [252] "Lay Sermons," p. 20. [253] Loc. cit. p. 109. [254] Loc. cit. p. 111. [255] In this criticism on Mr. Herbert Spencer, the Author finds he has been anticipated by Mr. James Martineau. (See "Essays," vol. i. p. 208.) [256] Loc. cit. p. 29. [257] The Author means by this, that it is _directly_ and _immediately_ the act of God, the word "supernatural" being used in a sense convenient for the purposes of this work, and not in its ordinary theological sense. [258] The phrase "order of nature" is not here used in its theological sense as distinguished from the "order of grace," but as a term, here convenient, to denote actions not due to direct and immediate Divine intervention.