by Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his Social Evolution,1 none is equal to that one of Spinoza,2 quoted by Matthew Arnold :-"To know and love God is the highest blessedness of men and of all men alike."3 But love must follow knowledge; without knowledge there can be no true love, though there may be a superstitious fear or reverence; and therefore it may be said that the Knowledge of God is the essence of Religion; or rather, the Search for that Knowledge, since the Search must necessarily be as infinite as the Object of it. Hence Dean Farrar well named his book of religious characters Seekers after God; although he omitted the name of the greatest seeker,-Jesus; regarding him, of course, as the person sought; wherefore it would appear that he ought

1 p. 89.

2

The love of God is man's only true good. Only the knowledge of God will enable us to subdue the hurtful passions. This knowledge in turn leads to the love of God, which is the soul's union with him.". Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., p. 86.

8 Essays in Criticism, p. 366.

to have entitled his work Seekers after Jesus.

Whether the existence of God,—that is, of a Being worthy of Man's love,―be a reasonable supposition is not now in question. Mankind, becoming unconsciously more and more cognisant of the qualities of Life, has deducted therefrom the postulate of God; somewhat as the mathematician, examining the qualities of figures of three dimensions, deducts the postulate of the straight line. It is a deduction, because the line is inherent in those figures; but it is also a postulate, because the line cannot be proved to exist apart from them.

The mathematical analogy, however, can be pressed no farther; for no sooner is the existence of God granted than the problem proposes itself, how to find him; in other words, how to prove the postulate.

Cardinal Newman wrote in his Apologia pro Vità Suâ that "the being of a God was as certain to him as the certainty of his own. existence, though when he tried to put the grounds of that certainty into logical shape

he found a difficulty in doing so, in mood and figure, to his satisfaction."1 Still from that indefinable assurance all the process of his thoughts started.

Both to the theologian and the philosopher this point affords an equal footing. "Not only is the omnipresence of something which passes comprehension," wrote Mr. Herbert Spencer, "that most abstract belief which is common to all Religions, which becomes the more distinct in proportion as they develop, and which remains after their discordant elements have been mutually cancelled, but it is that belief which the most unsparing criticism of each leaves unquestionable, or rather makes ever clearer. has nothing to fear from the most inexorable logic, but on the contrary is a belief which the most inexorable logic shows to be more profoundly true than any Religion supposes.

1 p. 241.

"2

It

2 First Principles, 1882, p. 45. Quoted by Dean Stanley in his Christian Institutions, p. 337. The passage does not, however, occur in the edition of 1900.

The existence of God having been thus conceived by the human mind, Religion becomes spontaneously instituted, as the means whereby the necessary Search for Knowledge of God may be carried on.

But just in proportion as Religion becomes formulated and grows into an ecclesiastical System, so does her Search for the Knowledge of God cease; and it is the object of this book to show that in fact the Poet, not the Priest1-Art, not the Church-is the divinely - appointed Seeker for that Knowledge, by whose means it is unceasingly prosecuted.

With whatever temerarious feelings I may approach such a task, I have the full assurance within myself that I do so without prejudice and with the most uncontaminated desire for the truth; nor do I wish anything better than that the timid should now turn back from following the foot

1 I should have liked to have avoided the use of this word, which is obnoxious to many worthy sects; yet surely the ancient appellation alone comprehensively designates the official expounders of sacred mysteries, Catholic or extra Ecclesiam.

steps of my pen and leave me to a smaller audience.

And first, inasmuch as some may object that such a work is superfluous, it is necessary to consider what is that special Knowledge of God that the Christian Religion claims to possess; on what ground it rests, and whether its foundations be secure.

Dean Stanley once wrote that "the religious creed of the people of England is a general belief in Providence and in a future life." The word creed is not, of course, here used in its technical sense, and one wishes that the words a general belief in Providence did not quite so closely suggest the old bogy of Fate. But, besides this, it is difficult to think that the common conception of Religion is so simple. The human mind loves a mystery, and there are not wanting intimations that the scheme of salvation in vogue is something far more intricate.

1

1 Quoting with approval "a celebrated Roman Catholic divine." Christian Institutions, p. 307.