ture that we can find no gap or hole through which to introduce, on a sudden, so tremendous a fact as a spiritual being. If we start without one, we shall end without

one.

It is not a peculiarity of theology that it has to make room for its chief fact at the outset: it is common to all sciences. Their character is decided by their ultimate scope. The highest fact to be dealt with is the measure of any theory which includes it. The science which deals with inorganic being remains within the limits imposed by its scope. The science of mere life is bounded by that conception. The science of human life begins and ends in the human sphere. Each as it proceeds becomes sensible that it is incomplete and abstract, and that further facts are necessary to enable it to deal fully even with its limited subject matter. Were there nothing in the world but inorganic matter, the laws of inorganic matter would represent the sum of possible knowledge. But they do not: because life, which is a factor in the world as well as inorganic matter, interferes with and complicates them. Hence, so far as completeness is the object of philosophical knowledge, the science of inorganic matter is perpetually feeling its limited scope. Its phenomena cannot be wholly separated from the intrusion of life. But knowledge does not become complete by recognizing its incompleteness on this lower level. It must start again, and include in a more comprehensive sweep the whole set of phenomena of life. The same thing occurs in connexion with human life. This is a new element, and introduces a large number of complications into the problems of mere life. And if it is to be dealt with at all, it cannot be allowed to fall in as an accident or a detail, it must govern the whole conception of the

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science which proposes to deal with it. In the same way the Existence and power of God will never be adequately interpreted if it is allowed simply to put in an appearance at the end, to eke out the onesidedness of some mechanical or non-theological assumptions. The world is different as a whole if the Existence of God is taken into consideration, and the science which is to combine the world and God must have both factors in its premisses. The test of its validity I will then be its inner coherence. It cannot from the nature of things point out of itself to a wider view of things in which its assumptions could be tested and verified. It is, for us, the end of things, and its discussions include all that can be known. The science of inorganic nature loses itself in the wider science of life; the science of life in that of human nature; the science of human nature in the science of God. Further than this we cannot go and, for that very reason, the facts which are the peculiar property of theology are given and not proved.

The systematic continuity of theology as a science is, or should be, expressed in life by a consistent and unswerving unity of motive. All things which man has to do are two-sided. There is their outward insignificant form, and their inner meaning which is eternally significant. It is the latter which must be taken into account by those whose lives profess to be governed by a spiritual idea. It is the only thing which needs to be taken into account, for it is the only part of our action which we can fully control. Our circumstances are not in our own hands; the use we make of them-the principles by which we deal with them—are in our hands altogether.

1 Cf. E. Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. i. ch. i., esp. pp. 31-35.

No misfortune crushes out the spiritual element in life, or makes this spiritual self-development impossible. And no part of life is so secular that it cannot be brought under spiritual rules, except what is positively sinful. To the religious man, therefore, politics, as well as private life, art, and science, and literature, will be to him varying modes of realizing his one life purpose, whensoever he is brought in contact with them. This is not religious interference; it is the expression, in fact, of the ultimate condition of human life, man's relation with God.

Not only must the theological point of view be dominant throughout experience, but the personal conception of God must be continuous throughout theology. There are reasons in the moral nature and elsewhere which point to the Personality of God; and this notion, when once accepted, must condition all our treatment of the Divine action. It is a new point of departure, which must influence all our thought about God. We have already called attention to the importance of this in connexion with the Divine Omnipotence and the question of evil. The difficulty of this problem will always be made infinitely more perplexing than it is, unless the personal notion rules the conception of omnipotence and thus saves us from a mechanical or material group of associations. The same is true of all theological problems.

There is one other point in regard of which the mode in which God is conceived is all-important. The personal conception of the Nature of God lends itself to the sacramental mode of self-revelation. So far as we know, no personality communicates with another save through a medium of some sort. Language, gestures, the laws of thought and will and the like, are the means employed by men; nature, history, the Church of Christ, the specially sacramental ordinances, are the means

employed by God. It must have been already noticed that our thoughts were leading us this way. We now see that the Personality of God is in some sense the explanation of the whole method of dealing with men which Christianity reveals. This is only another way of expressing what we have already said, that all life is ultimately spiritual in its character, and requires spiritual premisses in order that we may interpret it rightly and fully. But the recognition of the fact that mediated self-revelation is the natural mode in which a personal being communicates with others, draws the connexion of the various parts of theology yet more closely together. The whole is now grouped round the central belief in a personal God.

But though thus coherent within itself, Theology is far from telling us all that we could wish to know, or doing for us all that the mind in its desire for completeness leads us to attempt. For it leaves us, so far as we can see, in a permanent dualism: matter and spirit remain for us permanently separate; matter, or rather a world in which matter is an element, is the permanent veil between spirit and spirit. There is no way that we can see at present for getting rid of this opposition. And though we may be sure of this as a fact, it is impossible to rest content with it. There is one direction in which a solution seems possible, but even this turns out on examination to be partial only. The difficulty is partly solved in the idea of creation. The Will of God is the source from which matter and spirit both took their origin. But the solution is, as we say, partial only. For creation and the created world bring us into contact with the most intractable of all the elements with which Theology has to deal—the form of time we have to explain how the changeless

Counsels of God took shape in time. This, as we have seen more than once already, is the hinge of all the questions which we have had to regard as finally insoluble. We cannot understand how God expresses Himself and His Purposes in the form of temporal succession. Yet this incapacity is but another way of reminding ourselves that we are limited in speculative matters by our experience, and that any knowledge which may come to us from without the bounds of experience is given us by God: we know that God does certain things-that He has created and redeemed the world; but we cannot explain them.

If, then, we find that Theology is in some places less clear than we could wish, if revelation turns out to be more closely connected with the order of nature than we had supposed, it does not follow that it is all on wrong lines, and that the Faith must be deserted for some system which promises greater exactness. The Faith of Christ can only be held to fail when it is demonstrated that it is less clear than it ought to be, seeing what its nature and scope are; or that revelation is too closely bound up with physical conditions to be a real communication from God. Both these are theoretical considerations, and are not, strictly speaking, within our power to decide, seeing the amount of the knowledge we possess. All that we can expect to do is to become more familiar by degrees with the handiwork of God in the world; to advance in our knowledge of the power and significance of the Incarnation; and to feel more and more at home in the society in which the Father has embodied His love for men-the one Father, from whom are all things, and we unto Him.

The Church and Sacraments.-The Church-S. Cyprian De Unitate Ecclesiæ. Vincentius Lirin. Commonitorium,