One more remark and I will bring this portion of the subject to a close. The affirmation made by this philosophy that certain things are unthinkable is fallacious. What do we mean by “unthinkable”? It may mean many things; first, that the subject cannot be made in any sense an object of thought. This, in fact, is the only legitimate use of the word. But in this sense the affirmation cannot be true of even Mr. Herbert Spencer’s unknown and unknowable God, for it is evident that he does manage to reason and think about him somehow. It may mean a being respecting whom we may know much and attain a knowledge continually progressing, but respecting whom there is much which is unknown. This unknown is called unthinkable. But it is not unthinkable. It has only not yet become the subject of our knowledge, and is no more unthinkable than any other unknown truth. Or that may be pronounced to be unthinkable respecting which our conceptions are wanting in definiteness and precision. But to designate such things as unthinkable is an abuse of language. Or that may be designated as unthinkable of which our conceptions fail fully to represent the reality. As far as they go, they may be true, but there may be something beyond of a similar kind, which they do not embrace. This is the only sense in which it can be affirmed that God is unthinkable, but the assertion is altogether misleading. The only correct meaning of the expression is when some particular thing is affirmed to exist and at the same time contradictions co‐exist in it. The actual co‐existence of these two contradictions is unthinkable, but nothing more. Thus the existence of a round square is unthinkable, so would the affirmation that the divine power was at the same time both limited and unlimited. But in no other sense is a conception unthinkable. To affirm that the cause of all things is unthinkable because our conceptions of Him do not measure the entire depths of His being is simply misleading. I have gone into this question because it is evident that if God is unthinkable a revelation of Him is impossible, and if a revelation of Him is impossible, all miracles affirmed to have been wrought in attestation of one must be delusions. CHAPTER VI. THE OBJECTION THAT MIRACLES ARE CONTRARY TO REASON CONSIDERED.