it is far from making certain what is the nature of this Energy, which is scientifically as unknowable as the inherent nature of matter or of force. But there is a knowledge beyond knowledge; that is, a knowledge of truths which are not ascertained by logical processes from observed phenomena, and are not, therefore, demonstrable by logical processes from observed phenomena. We know all æsthetic, all ethical, all spiritual truths by other means than scientific processes. Into these truths we come by looking beyond the sphere of sense; by looking beyond the larger domain of logical deduction; by æsthetic, moral, spiritual perception. We know that God is, because we commune with him as a personal friend and he is "nearer than breathing, closer than hands and feet"; we know that we are immortal—not shall be—because we have in ourselves a consciousness of life which physical pain and decay can not injure or impair. Thus our faith may be truthfully described as a knowledge beyond knowledge; but it is not any less certain and trustworthy because it transcends scientific tests and demonstrations.
I hope I have given a definite and tolerably clear answer to what seem to me to be the two questions implied in your correspondence. There is a knowledge beyond knowledge. The error of agnosticism is not in its denials; it is in its psychology; it is in the fact that it ignores a part and that the larger and more important part of man's mentality—his power to perceive directly and immediately a world not cognizable, directly or indirectly, by the senses; that power which alone makes him a being of taste, of affections, of moral or spiritual capacity. The answer to agnosticism is not in maintaining that by the scientific process we can arrive at certainty concerning truths which are not scientific; it is by a recognition of what you have called meta-nosticism, the power of grasping knowledge beyond knowledge; though the word meta-nosticism, at least in so far as Scripture use is relied on for its meaning, hardly conveys, it appears to me, though it does imply, the idea which you purpose it shall convey in the future.
| Yours sincerely, |
| Lyman Abbott. |
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Dealing with the uncorrected mistranslations of the New Version, Rev. Treadwell Walden says:[1]
- ↑ An Undeveloped Chapter in the Life of Christ. The Great Meaning of the Word Metanoia, lost in the Old Version, unrecovered in the New, pp. 14, IV, 18, 38, 39.
