tials of what is divine, and which thus descends with the elementary controversy about religion, from the actual objective evidence to be sought for on its behalf, to—what is clearly a lower stratum—a criticism of our subjective faculties for the apprehension of natural, and especially of supernatural and positive revelation, and of the possibility of finite phenomena of any kind yielding evidence regarding what is infinite. An adjustment of these questions, capable of explaining the manner in which the human understanding is enabled to rise, on the ladder of available evidence, from the relative and finite phenomena of the mental and material worlds, to the region of religion or the supernatural, and which should also be in analogy with the Scottish philosophical account of our notions and original judgments respecting the qualities of mind and matter, would supplement what is still a defect in our national metaphysics.
A mental experience of the divinity of the gospel system, which is gained by acting it out in the details of a holy life, is certainly a practical escape from those questions of science. Without this, even the speculative task of the theologian cannot be accomplished, and it is chiefly in order to foster and render intelligent that habit of life that the task is worth his toil. But his work is not then done. Those to whom the written word is the centre of all truth, regarding the “things unseen and eternal,” and the moral mystery of human life, cannot count valueless, thoughtful answers to such questions as refer to the manner in which the positive evidence of religion
