over us and hears our prayers, who will guide us if we are faithful to him, who is all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, is a by- gone conception. Mr. Harrison says of Mr. Spencer's paper: " It is the last word of the Agnostic philosophy in its contro- versy with Theology. That word is deci- sive ... as a summary of philosophical conclusions in the Theological problem it seems to me frankly unanswerable." They seem likewise to be agreed that mankind cannot do without some religion. The problem, then, which each discusses in his own way is — what is to be the religion of the future ? We have, in com- pany with one philosopher, laughed at the so-called religion of the unknowable; and we have endeavored to show that if that be laughable, a fortiori so is the religion of humanity. What, then, is the net re- sult of our enquiry? Surely this: that the philosophers who would destroy Theism and Christianity, can not give us a religion in their place; and that the destruction of Theism is the destruction of religion. "Which is the harder ques- tion," asked a great Christian thinker of our day, " whether the world can do with- out a religion, or whether we can find a substitute for Christianity ? " Our philoso- phers answer the former question in the negative, and attempt to answer the latter in the affirmative — we have seen with what indifferent success. And if they fail whose ability is unquestioned, and to whose interest it is to do all in their power to succeed, we may confess the attempt to be hopeless. It is well, then, for those who occupy their minds with the specula- tion on these subjects which is now so rife, and who are unsettled in their reli- gious convictions, to face frankly and honestly the central issue of the whole controversy. Modern philosophy may profess to prove that we can have no knowledge of God or of immortality ; but let us not deceive ourselves as to the re- sult of such proof. It can give us no ideal vision and no practical hope to re- place those it would destroy. It professes to offer us the tree of knowledge; but if we accept it, we must give up all hope of the tree of life. It says to us, as the ser- pent did of old, "Ye shall be as gods." But this is false. We have seen that it is untrue. Its hopes are delusive, its re- ligion a lifeless skeleton. This does not prove it to be false; but it makes a sensi- ble man less content to accept it finally as true. The inquirer who clearly sees this is led to look back at its initial assump- tion — that the faith and the hope of the believer in God are unreasonable. And that is aril we wish. Let the glamor of "advanced thought" and the dream of "the progress of humanity " lose their brightness and fade away ; let men so- berly and earnestly strive to ascertain whether they cannot find in their own hearts and minds, in their own experience and observation of mankind and the world, sufficient reason to preserve thera from the hopeless pessimism,* which is so ill-disguised by the clothes of the old religion, and their path will be illumined. Their minds will be enlightened, and faith will return to them. What natural reason and earnestness for knowledge commence God's grace will complete. Facienti quod in se est Dens suam non denegat gratiam. This was the hope which the old scholas- tics held out for the heathen who had not found God; and it is surely no less appli- cable to those who, in our day, have lost him in the mazes of philosophical specu- lation. It is hard to hear a "still small voice "in the din of controversy; and it is hard to distinguish the sun of truth through a cloud of words. But he who is determined, in all earnestness and pa- tience, to hear the voice if it is to be heard, and to see the sun if it is really to be seen, will, sooner or later, succeed in his endeavor. Whether it will be soon or late no man can say ; but the time will come when, during a momentary lull in human disputing, the divine voice will come dis- tinctly and unmistakably on the ear of the attentive listener; when the clouds will disperse and reveal the sun in his glory. Wilfrid Ward.
- I may be allowed to refer, in this connection, to the
opening chapter of Mr. W. S. Lilly's remarkable book entitled " Ancient Religion and Modern Thought." He insists with much force upon the fact that the Ag- nostic's position, once he fully realizes it, must make his view of life irremediably pessimistic From The Spectator. THE "CLOTHES OF RELIGION." In a brilliant paper contributed to the June number of the N'ational Review by Mr. Wilfrid Ward, on what he terms the " Clothes of Religion," that very able es- sayist turns the tables on Mr. Frederic Harrison after the same fashion in which Mr. Frederic Harrison had turned them on Mr. Herbert Spencer, and shows that if Mr. Spencer were something of a mo- nomaniac in supposing that the unknow- able could afford an adequate objtct of religious worship, Mr. Harrison is even a
