As regards theological results, therefore, there is nothing novel or peculiar in Hamilton's teaching; nor was he one who would have regarded novelty in theology as a recommendation. The peculiarity of his system, by which his reputation as a philosopher must ultimately stand or fall, is the manner in which he endeavoured to connect these theological conclusions with psychological principles; and thus to vindicate on philosophical grounds the position which Catholic divines had been compelled to take in the interests of dogmatic truth. That the absolute nature of God, as a supertemporal and yet personal Being, must be believed in as a fact, though inaccessible to reason as regards the manner of its possibility, is a position admitted, almost without exception, by divines who acknowledge the mystery of a personal Absolute--still more by those who acknowledge the yet deeper mystery of a Trinity in Unity. "We believe and know," says Bishop Sanderson of the mysteries of the Christian faith, "and that with fulness of assurance, that all these things are so as they are revealed in the Holy Scriptures, because the mouth of God, who is Truth itself, and cannot lie, hath spoken them; and our own reason upon this ground teacheth us to submit ourselves and it to _the obedience of faith_, for the [Greek: to hoti], that so it is. But then, for the [Greek: to pos], Nicodemus his question, _How can these things be?_ it is no more possible for our weak understandings to comprehend that, than it is for the eyes of bats or owls to look steadfastly upon the body of the sun, when he shineth forth in his greatest strength."[N] This distinction Hamilton endeavoured to extend from the domain of Christian theology to that of philosophical speculation in general; to show that the unconditioned, as it is suggested in philosophy, no less than as it connects itself with revealed religion, is an object of belief, not of positive conception; and, consequently, that men cannot escape from mystery by rejecting revelation. "Above all," he says, "I am confirmed in my belief by the harmony between the doctrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed truth.... For this philosophy is professedly a scientific demonstration of the impossibility of that 'wisdom in high matters' which the Apostle prohibits us even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, however, we must admit, to show articulately why the 'secret things of God,' cannot but be to man 'past finding out.'"[O] Faith in the inconceivable must thus become the ultimate refuge, even of the pantheist and the atheist, no less than of the Christian; the difference being, that while the last takes his stand on a faith which is in agreement alike with the authority of Scripture and the needs of human nature, the two former are driven to one which is equally opposed to both, as well as to the pretensions of their own philosophy.