feeling and character may be right. But this can be so only when the feelings and the character are right. Any testing of opinions by their conformity with our own feelings and character necessarily presupposes knowledge of what feeling is right and what is wrong. And, further, the very act of testing an opinion in this way is an act of thought, and not a feeling; the comparing of character and feelings and judging which is right is an intellectual act; and the standard of judgment between right and wrong is the truth and law of reason, and is not in the feelings.

III. Feeling and willing may be used, with the qualifications just mentioned, in testing the reality of knowledge in general, and in verifying particular beliefs.

1. Our feelings, choices and volitions, the whole practical side of our constitution protest against agnosticism as really and effectively as do our reason and our knowledge. Mr. Spencer's doctrine that the absolute being, the ultimate ground and deepest reality of the universe, is unknowable, is contradictory to reason and knowledge. If the true and ultimate reality is unknowable all reality is unknowable; what we take for reality is merely phenomenon, and what we take for knowledge is merely illusion. Mr. Spencer himself contradicts his own agnosticism by declaring his knowledge of the unknowable; for he declares that the Unknowable ground and reality of phenomena is absolute being, exists, is power, is everywhere present, and is manifested in all the ongoing of the universe. To the agnostic, belief in the existence of an unknowable absolute as the ultimate ground and reality is self-contradictory; even a genius like Herbert Spencer cannot enunciate the doctrine without contradicting himself. And if the Absolute Reality is unknowable all reality is unknowable and knowledge is impossible.

This agnosticism is equally contradictory to the rational constitution of man on its practical side. To say that the ultimate reality of things is unknowable, and yet to insist that it ought to be the object of reverence and even of religious homage and that we ought willingly to order our actions in coöperation with the manifestation of the unknowable as it reveals itself in the evolution of the universe, is certainly absurd. We are told that religion is legitimate in the sphere of feeling and that imagination may picture the unknowable, in whatever form it will, as an object of worship. But can a sane man revere and love and serve what is unknown and unknowable? Especially can he worship what he knows is a fiction of his own imagination and revere it as the Absolute Being? So also Hamilton and Mansel declare that the Absolute is unknowable, that what is knowledge and truth and right and love to us may not be knowledge, truth, right and love to God; and yet that

we ought to love, adore and serve him. The doctrine contradicts both the pure or speculative Reason and the practical. It is alike absurd and immoral. If that, which is most real in the universe and is the ground of all that is, may be unreason and not reason, may be the contrary of all which we know as true, right, perfect and good, may be the antagonist of all which human reason approves as the objects of our highest aspirations, our best affections and our noblest endeavors, then our whole moral and practical nature not less than our rational is an abortion and a lie. Man has no scope for his aspirations, affections and powers. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" becomes the only true account of human existence. No philosophy or science which involves this can ever gain wide or permanent control of the mind of man.

2. The practical side of our being also implies objective reality. Fear, joy, pity, anger imply an object of fear, joy, pity and anger. If these feelings are purely subjective the feelings themselves cannot exist. In an important sense we perceive objective reality through all the feelings as really as through sensation. Our feelings are a sort of reaction on the outward object. A philosophy which denies that the feelings imply objective reality, would deny that our feelings have any relevancy to the world in which we live and thus would annihilate all motives. Such a philosophy cannot be believed.

It is equally true that choice and volition imply objective reality. All enterprise and energy assume the reality of the universe as the sphere of action, and of the objects sought by enterprise and energy. The man striving with all his might to remove an obstacle, to overcome an enemy, to gain house and land cannot doubt the reality of the objects. A philosophy which denies the objective reality of things is as fatal to all energy as it is to all knowledge. Man cannot believe it. Man is a part of the universe. It acts on him and he reacts on it, not in his intellect alone, but also in his feelings and his will. And this reaction, whether in knowledge, feeling, choice or exertion, is always attesting the reality of its object.

3. And since we are so constituted that we judge some feelings, aims and actions to be worthy and noble and others unworthy and ignoble, a true philosophy must teach that the universe gives scope to our intensest action for the realization of our highest aspirations and our noblest ends. A philosophy which denies this is Pessimism; it denies that life is worth living; it declares that the universe gives no scope for feeling, or action or achievement of any worth. The Reason, the Feelings, the Will revolt from it. The truth of opinions is tested by their bearing on action and character, their teachings as to what are the highest ends of human life, and their power to quicken and guide to the realization of those ends.

And the practical side of humanity also attests the reality of man's spiritual being and of the objects of his highest aspirations and endeavor. For men live but a little time. If the universe is to give realization to their highest hopes, satisfaction to what is best in their affections, scope for their noblest endeavors, their lives must be more than "little breezes" which

"dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs forever;"

they must be immortal. And this practical attestation of the reality of the spiritual is precisely the same in kind with the practical attestation of the physical, which in fact compels the belief in its objective reality. Man perceives the reality both of the spiritual and the physical through his feelings, choices, volitions and exertions as really as he perceives outward reality through the senses. There is a true and profound philosophy in one of the "preliminary principles" of the Presbyterian "Form of Government;" "Truth is in order to goodness; and the great touchstone of truth is its tendency to promote holiness, according to our Saviour's rule, by their fruits shall ye know them.' There is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Some scientists teach that, as the inevitable result of evolution, the whole universe will come to a stop and all life and motion forever cease. Our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the conclusion. In accordance with the foregoing principles the impossibility of this belief and the revolt and resentment of the heart against it are founded in a true philosophy. It is safe to predict that any theory which necessarily involves this conclusion will never gain currency among men. In like manner, when we are told that the universe gives no scope for the realization of our spiritual aspirations and that the objects of them have no reality, that our endeavors to attain the noblest ends of our being must be abortive, and that the progress of science is destined to chill and still all such aspirations and endeavors forever, our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the conclusion. And this revolt and resistance also are justified by true philosophy; and we may safely predict that a theory involving such a conclusion will never control the action and history of mankind.

4. The greater part of human actions are acts of faith. In every enterprize a man risks something of the present to win something in the future. He does it in faith that events will be according to his calculations. If he succeeds he knows that his calculations were according to the realities of the universe; that is, according to truth; for truth is reality intellectually apprehended. If he fails, he knows that he was

* Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. p. 344.

in error. In either case by his voluntary action he acquires knowledge of reality. And in this way a great part of human knowledge is acquired.

But a man may aim at unworthy ends. The universe makes both good and evil possible to him. If now he can ascertain any principles determining what are the highest possibilities of his being, those principles must be true; because those highest possibilities are what the universe itself makes possible to him in his reaction on it.

Man is so constituted that principles of action present themselves in his consciousness as regulative of his thinking, and feeling and willing. He distinguishes the reasonable from the absurd, the true from the false, the right from the wrong, the perfect from the imperfect, the worthy from the unworthy. In the true, the right, the perfect and the worthy he recognizes the highest possibility and supreme good of his being. In reference to these there are problems which thrust themselves for solution on every generation, questions which every age must answer. Are the highest possibilities and noblest ends of human life attained by acting in supreme selfishness or in universal love? by lives of self-indulgence and ease and being ministered unto or by lives of energy and service? by lives conformed to the negations of materialism or to the large and positive principles, promises and hopes of Christianity? These are legitimate criteria of knowledge. The materialist appeals to these and similar criteria as constantly and as earnestly as the theist. By these criteria the experience of the race is establishing the supremacy of the law of love and the reality of man's spiritual interests and relations. Christianity has already advanced far in proving itself true by its effects. When in the lapse of time its principles are all realized and its promises fulfilled in the civilization of mankind, the demonstration will be complete.

IV. The errors and superficiality of skeptical and materialistic scientists rest largely on their disregarding the real relations of knowing, feeling and willing and attempting to construct a science of the universe as if it were an object of thought alone.

1. It is this which leads them to reject, in theory, all argument from final causes. I say in theory; because in fact they habitually use it in their scientific investigations.

Man's knowledge in all departments is closely connected with the satisfaction of his feelings and the accomplishment of his purposes. He accepts the statements of fact and method accordance with which enables him to accomplish his designs. He accepts as true the principles which enable him to realize what both the reason and experience of man pronounce right, and perfect and of true worth. The practical Reason is as real a factor in his knowledge as the Speculative. The

recognition of final causes is in the essence of his knowledge, as really as the recognition of efficient causes. Ner does the knowledge of the efficient, preclude the reality of the final cause. Some unmusical person once described the playing of a great violinist as scraping catgut with horse-hair. It is a correct description. But it would be foolish to insist that this physical force and its instruments are all that science can recognize in the performance, and that it knows nothing of it as the intentional production of enchanting music. As Bulwer says: "Science is not a club-room; it is an ocean; it is as open to the cockboat as to the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots and another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? Why say to the intellect, 'The deeps of philosophy are pre-occupied?"" 2. The principles which have been presented expose the error that the scientific spirit is the pure love of the truth, defecated from all admixture of feeling, preference or choice. Of the love of the truth in this sense Mr. Lecky says that it "is perhaps the highest attribute of humanity;" that they who possess it "will invariably come to value such a disposition more than any particular doctrines to which it may lead them; they will deny the necessity of correct opinions;" that is, love of the truth will entirely cease, being displaced by love for a certain disposition or feeling; love of the truth will be displaced by love for the love of the truth. Mr. Lecky goes so far as to insist that children ought not to be religiously trained lest it should prejudice them. This would equally imply that the child ought not to be trained to virtue, since this training also implies doctrine. The necessary inference would be that a child must not be taught to love God and his neighbor lest he should be biased and prejudiced. Professor Huxley characterizes a religious belief founded on the spiritual aspirations and needs of the soul as immoral. Prof. Clifford, in his essay on the "Ethics of belief," says that to believe even the truth without scientific investigation and evidence is morally wrong and incurs guilt; and that if a busy man has not time to investigate he must not believe. But a large part of human actions are ventures on beliefs which have not scientific evidence, in the sense in which Prof. Clifford uses the phrase, and which nevertheless are beliefs so decisive that men venture on them property, reputation and even life. Would the professor call all these acts sin and say that the actors incur guilt; that is, that they deserve punishment?

In this conception of the love of the truth the mistake of our modern illuminati is that they conceive of man as divided against himself; they isolate the intellect from all the other constituents of humanity. They do not join with crass practical materialism in saying that man liveth by bread alone. Their maxim is, rather, that man liveth by intellect