The stage of Science represented by the French Encyclopædists was immediately hostile to each and every form of religion. This second stage, however, has a choice. It can, like Hamilton or Mansel, let religious belief alone, as pertaining to the unknown and unknowable—which may be _believed_ in as much as one likes; or it may “strip off,” as Spencer does, “determinations from a religion,” by which it is distinguished from other religions, and show their truth to consist in a common doctrine held by all, to-wit: “The truth of things is unknowable.” Thus the scientific man can baffle all attacks from the religious standpoint; nay, he can even elicit the most unbounded approval, while he saps the entire structure of Christianity. Says Spencer (p. 46): “Science and Religion agree in this, that the power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable.” He goes on to show that though this harmony exists, yet it is broken by the inconsistency of Religion: “For every religion, setting out with the tacit assertion of a mystery, forthwith proceeds to give some solution of this mystery, and so asserts that it is not a mystery passing human comprehension.” In this confession he admits that all religions agree in professing to _reveal_ the solution of the Mystery of the Universe to man; and they agree, moreover, that man, as simply a being of sense and reflection, cannot comprehend the revelation; but that he must first pass through a profound mediation—be _regenerated_, not merely in his heart, but in _intellect_ also. The misty limitations (“vagueness and confusion”) of the imagination must give way to the purifying dialectic of pure thought before one can see the Eternal Verities.