In the ordinary sense of knowledge we cannot have any knowledge of God; our very idea of God implies that He is beyond our powers of perception and understanding. Then what can we do? Shut our eyes and be silent? That will not satisfy creatures such as we are. We must speak, but all our words apply to things perceptible or intelligible. The old Buddhists used to say, The only thing we can say of God is No, No! He is not this, He is not that. Whatever we can see or understand, He is not that. But again I say that kind of self-denial will not satisfy such creatures as we are. What can we do? We can only give the best we have. Now the best we have or know on earth is Love, therefore we say God is Love or loving. Love is entire self-surrender, we can go no further in our conception of what is best. And yet how poor a name it is in comparison of what we want to name. Our idea of love includes, as you say, humility, a looking up and worshipping. Can we say that of God's love? Depend upon it, the best we say is but poor endeavour,--it is well we should know it,--and yet, if it is the best we have and can give, we need not be ashamed. _Life._ And now that generations after generations have passed away, with their languages--adoring and worshipping the Name of God--preaching and dying in the Name of God--thinking and meditating on the Name of God--there the old word stands still, breathing to us the pure air of the dawn of humanity, carrying with it all the thoughts and sighs, the doubts and tears, of our bygone brethren, and still rising up to heaven with the same sound from the basilicas of Rome and the temples of Benares, as if embracing by its simple spell millions and millions of hearts in their longing desire to give utterance to the unutterable, to express the inexpressible. _Life._ THE DIVINE It was, after all, the Jew who, in the great history of the world, was destined to solve the riddle of the Divine in man. It was the soil of Jewish thought that in the end gave birth to the true conception of the relation between the Divine in nature and the Divine in man. _Gifford Lectures, III._