thought, or as expressions of their own personal convictions. Busy merchants and tired lawyers, and even college presidents, would hardly have ventured seriously to express their opinions upon questions and problems in the realm of mind and spirit, which have engaged the attention of the greatest minds of all ages.

Mr. Fiske, himself, who was largely instrumental in the introduction of Mr. Spencer's philosophy to the American public, abandoned the agnostic faith in the closing years of his life, and arrayed himself on the side of Christianity in its revelation of a future life.

It may be asserted with truth, that the philosophy of agnosticism has had its day; certainly, that the great journals of British thought and the exponents of British scholarship, now the strongest and the most reasonable of the world, are passing it by as contradictory and unthinkable.

NOTE SIX

AGNOSTICISM

THE ordinary conception of the meaning of the term is the simple idea of negation. It is the assertion of ignorance from lack of evidence. But this conception is evidently an illusion which conveys the idea of harmless intellectual modesty and reasonableness in the system which goes by the name.

What is Mr. Spencer's whole system of philosophy, unfolded in many volumes upon every variety of philosophical subjects, but a labored attempt to prove positively that God is unknowable, to break down revelation, to demonstrate that it is impossible.

Dr. Orr, in his work "The Christian View of God and the World," a most valuable contribution to theological literature, quotes Professor Huxley's definition of Agnosticism. He says, Professor Huxley, the inventor of the term " (Agnosticism) "has given us his explanation of it. 'Agnosticism' he says, 'in fact is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle.' .. Positively, the principle may be thus expressed; in matters of the intellect follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other

consideration. And negatively, in matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the Agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him." "Agnosticism, in the Nineteenth Century, February, 1899." This, however is not a faith, as he says, but a method, which in its application may yield positive or negative results as the case may be. Behind it at the same time, lies, in his case, the conviction, that real answers to the great questions of religion are "not merely impossible, but theoretically inconceivable." Ibid, p. 182.

NOTE SEVEN

IMAGINATION DELUSIVE FACULTY

BISHOP BUTLER's warning against imagination as "the author of all error," needs some explanation, in justice to his psychology. Mr. Gladstone has the following comment upon the passage where the expression occurs, in the First Chapter of the Analogy :

"It is singular that what Butler denounces is not the imagination,' but 'imagination,' as if he were dealing with a process rather than a faculty. But we can hardly dwell upon this since he proceeds to describe it as a faculty; and, moreover, assigns to it a sphere.' The mischievous products of this abusive practice were, we must suppose, those of which Butler was cognizant, and with which he deals so largely in his work. But these, mentioned almost in every page, are not in truth errors of the imagination, but of unbridled fancy and caprice; of unbalanced, ill-regulated judgment. It seems probable that this is one of the rare instances in which Butler, relaxing the firmness of his hold, forgets himself and assumes license in the use of words. Sometimes, though rarely, he deals with schemes purely metaphysical; but these, if erroneous, are not errors of the imagination properly so called.

Mr. Gladstone, contrary to his custom, throughout his work upon Butler, hardly does him justice, in this passage, and in his explanation is inadequate.

Butler is opening his Analogy with the chapter upon a future life which he devotes to a reply to the arguments against life after the death of the body. He calls these arguments "imaginary presumptions," which "silence the voice of reason." He is not giving a psychological definition of imagination, but he alludes to it as a "delusive faculty" in its effect upon beliefs in unseen things, in spiritual realities. The future life is in the unseen. Imagination can give no picture of it, therefore it fails and breaks down. It identifies reality with what it has seen, and therefore to a mind which has formed the habit of depending upon the imagination for its beliefs, it is helpless because it can form no picture of the unseen. I think this is Butler's meaning and if so, as is not unusual with him, he is right.

The Duke of Argyle in the "Unity of Nature," defines imagination as "the mental power by which we handle the elementary conceptions, derived from our mental constitution, in contact and in harmony with external things, and by which we recombine these conceptions in an endless variety of forms."

This definition is true as far as it goes, but it cannot be accepted as a full expression of the powers and scope of imagination. Imagination is founded upon memory, but it is something more than memory. The power of memory supplies the substance which imagination works up into its fabrics; the stones and the timber which it uses in the construction of its buildings. It has no power to create materials, but only to combine them in endless varieties, at the same time calling in reason and the other faculties to its aid. Imagination is not only dependent upon memory for the materials of its creations, but it is largely dependent upon feeling. It derives the inspiration which quickens its activity from sentiment. One mind is cold in the presence of an object; another is kindled with sympathetic intelligence and emotion. In the former the representation of the object which memory recalls is cold and dull; in the other it is warm and lifelike. Both for the memory which furnishes the materials and for the imagination which works them up into new creations, the power of feeling is the quality which measures the difference between a dull and a vivid imagination. Again imagination is not confined for its materials to conceptions of external objects furnished it by memory or by direct observation. It may use ideas and motives and feelings

which appear in consciousness. It may add to them or subtract from them, reproducing them in other forms, interpreting them in other relations, and this wide range of imagination needs a wider definition than that of the Duke of Argyle.

Imagination is thus creative and active. It is a power which enables us with the materials in our own minds to go out of ourselves and see into the minds of others, and feel their sorrows and understand their wants.

It is a powerful ally of the reason in its capacity to form an image of things, so that the reason can see the relation of the parts and form a conception of the whole.

In some of these higher functions it is so near to the reason that, as Mozley says with penetrative insight, we come unconsciously and practically "to identify it with reason" and to mistake its verdict for reason's verdict.

When mistaken for reason it becomes a powerful obstacle both to reason and faith in the realm of spiritual things. Apart from Revelation and from Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, man instinctively seeks to grasp the idea of the personality of God. He calls in his imagination to construct a conception of God's personality, but at once he is foiled. Imagination can make no headway. God is a spirit and inconceivable under the forms of matter. Again we stand in the presence of Death, with the still form, the helpless hands, the cold passivity of inorganic matter from which the life has fled. The imagination gives way. It can form no conception of disembodied spirit. It yields to the impressions of sense and is powerless to transcend them, and yet it is in relation to such subjects identified with reason. The passive imagination thus becomes a powerful ally for scepticism and materialistic negation. It requires but little reflection to understand that in relation to spiritual things this form of imagination is the most fruitful source of delusion and unbelief to the human mind. Even the most well regulated minds are conscious of the tendency. This is the imagination which Butler repudiates, and against which his chapter on the Future Life is directed.

Canon Mozley's chapter in the Bampton Lectures on the Influence of Imagination upon Belief, is worthy of careful study.

NOTE EIGHT

BALFOUR AND PROFESSOR WALLACE ON REASON

"WHAT kind of a universe would that be which we could understand? If it were intelligible (by us) would it be credible?" Balfour, Foundations of Belief, p. 279.

"What were a world which we did NOT understand, had not in any measure understood? A world full of fears rather than hopes; a perpetual uncertainty; a grisly mystery, which made darkness cover the earth and gross darkness its peoples. The world which reason claims is one where she may go forever on and never die; a world where nothing can be called utterly unknowable, though much may remain forever unknown; a world where, as humanity accumulates more and more its intellectual and spiritual capital, we shall move about more and more freely, i. e., more and more wisely, as becomes those who are called to inherit the kingdom." Gifford Lectures, Professor Wallace, p. 97.

NOTE NINE

CAUSES OF ASCETICISM

THE literal interpretation of the severe maxims of the New Testament of privation and sacrifice and entire separation from the world, may have been necessary, and if necessary, must have been intended, during the first proclamation of Christianity in the heathen world. We in a Christian land, the inheritors of the education of Christianity for two thousand years, have only the faintest conception of the dead conscience and the moral insensibility of paganism. To arouse it from its slumber necessarily involved a shock to the social order. The inward transformation of character demanded a break with the established customs and order of human life. To impress the heathen mind it was necessary to disparage the seen and to exalt the unseen. But this principle carried to the literal extreme, which resulted in asceticism, would have necessarily destroyed Christianity in the home of its birth. Christ came, not to destroy God's order for the world, but to fulfil it by imparting to human nature the spirit of regeneration which