We conclude, therefore, that the apostle Paul, in this famous passage, overturns the whole principle of verbal Orthodoxy. He takes away its foundation. Not denying the reality and permanence of religious experience, not denying the saving power of truth, he declares that no expressed system of truth is permanent. The basis of doctrinal Orthodoxy is the assumption that its own particular form of belief is essential to salvation. But the apostle declares that _all_ forms are transient, and, therefore, _none_ essential. All statement is a limitation, and the moment that we make a definition, we say something which is incomplete. When Paul says, “We know in part,” he says the same thing which is said by Kant, by Sir William Hamilton, by Auguste Comte, by Mr. Mansell, and most modern thinkers, when they declare the relativity of knowledge. All thinking is limitation. “To think,” says Sir William Hamilton, “is to condition.” We only know a thing, says this school, by its being different from something else. The school of Kant declares all knowledge to be phenomenal, and that all phenomenal knowledge consists of two parts—the part given by the thing, and the part added by the mind. Herbert Spencer (in “First Principles”) insists on the certainty of the existence of things in themselves, but also on their absolute and eternal unknowableness. According to John Stuart Mill, the same view of the unknowableness of Noumena is taken by M. Auguste Comte. These modern philosophers, it will be seen, go much farther than Paul, and lay down positions which inaugurate a universal scepticism. According to them there is nothing certain and nothing fixed. Mr. Mansell virtually teaches us that we cannot know anything of God, duty, or immortality; and that faith means, taking for granted on some outward authority. To use a striking expression of President James Walker, “We are not to believe, but to make believe.” That is, we are not to believe with our intellect, but with our will. Or, in other words, we are to believe not what is true, but what is expedient. This he calls regulative truth, as opposed to speculative truth. But this is by no means the doctrine of the apostle Paul. He teaches the certainty of substantive knowledge, but the fallibility of formal knowledge. He thus avoids the two extremes of dogmatism on the one side, and scepticism on the other. The substance of Gnosis, which is the sight of truth, is a reality, and, like all that is real, has its root in God, and shares his eternity. The form of Gnosis is subjective, relative, and transient. Everything which is seen is temporal; only that which is not seen is eternal. All that takes outward, visible form, comes under the law of change; the roots of our knowledge, fixed in God, are unchangeable. § 7. The three Tendencies in the Church.