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in, not only to one another, but also to a superior intellect. In this course, however, I shall take nothing for granted but what is well known and generally intelligible. That God is a Spirit, is the concurrent voice of all men, wherever a belief in the one God is professed, or the idea of a Divine Being is diffused. God is a Spirit, and therefore an omniscient intellect and an all-mighty will are unanimously attributed to Him. This axiom, with which a child even of the most ordinary intelligence can associate some kind of meaning, is at the same time the fundamental principle which is involved in all that the deepest thinker can know of God. The same faculties, therefore, that make up the essence and the two functions of created spirits—understanding and will—may, without hesitation, be attributed to the uncreated Spirit; and although this attribution must be understood according to the exalted standard of the infinite distance between the creature and the Creator, still it is made properly and not merely by way of figure.

      But now, in Holy Writ, and in the language of pious adoration and prayer, among other nations as well as the Jewish, a multitude of properties, faculties, and senses are ascribed to the Deity in perfectly anthropomorphic descriptions and imagery. Thus mention is even made of His eye, His ear, His guiding hand, His mighty arm, and the omnipotent breath of His mouth. In so far as these are admitted to be mere images there can be no objection to them, and it is not easy to see how they can lead to any abuse. And this is equally the case even with such expressions as it is plain can only be applicable to the Deity in a figurative sense—for instance, when human passions are ascribed to Him—since, if employed properly and literally, they all involve more or less of imperfection. And in the same way, where no forgetfulness is possible or conceivable, it can only be in a figurative sense that it is allowable to speak of memory. And with still less propriety can the faculty of conscience, in its human sense, be ascribed to God. His balance of justice—His regulative thought—is something very different from our mere sense of right. To ascribe conscience to the Deity would be to confound the judge on the bench with the criminal at the bar. Even the first man, as long as he was yet innocent, knew not conscience. For the sense of guilt, and the faculty of perceiving it, must at the very earliest have come simultaneously with the transgression itself, if it was not, rather, consequent upon it. In the application to the Deity of such figurative language, great license is of course allowable. The question, however, which concerns us in a philosophical point of view is whether, in the same proper sense as understanding and will, so also the other faculties which are so peculiarly distinctive of man—reason and fancy, or the soul—can be attributed to the Divine Being. Now it is at once evident that, far beyond all other figurative expressions, it would be perfectly unsuitable to ascribe fancy to God. We feel clearly enough that by so doing we should be leaving the safe ground of truth for the treacherous domain of mythology. That inner mine of intellectual riches which man in his weak measure finds in the faculty of fancy, is, in the case of the Divine Being, furnished once and for all by His omnipotent will; which of itself creates and produces its object, and, unlike created beings, is not confined to any limited data or to a choice between them. Here, then, the Almighty will itself is the full fatherly heart—embracing, nourishing, and sustaining all creatures—or even the living maternal womb of eternal generation, and requires no new and special faculty for this end. In the next place, as to the soul: the expression of the soul of God does, indeed, occur in some of the less known Christian writers of the first centuries of the church, but it soon fell into disuse—from a fear, probably, of its leading to a confusion of idea, and being identified with a mere soul of the world. But however that may be, the soul is simply a passive faculty, and therefore, on that account alone, is highly inappropriate as applied to God. That third property which in the Divine nature is associated with an omniscient intelligence or understanding, and an omnipotent will, can not be called the soul of God, but is even the spirit of love, in which both understanding and will unite and are one. And if this third property be added to the axiomatic definition of the Deity already alluded to, then in the proposition, God is a spirit of love, the double predicate in its essential import involves all that man in general, and even the profoundest thinker, can properly know of God. All besides is a mere expansion or elucidation of this primary and fundamental thought. Moreover, if it is not allowable to ascribe fancy or a soul to God, so neither can He be spoken of as possessing reason as an essential faculty in the same proper sense as understanding and will are attributed to Him. God is indeed the author of reason; and the sound reason is even that which adheres to the center of truth, as He, in creating it, designed and ordered. But from this it does not by any means follow that He is himself the reason which He has created, or that He is even one with it. Were it so, then the advocates of absolute science, the rationalists, would be in the right; in such a case, the knowledge of God were in truth a science of reason, inasmuch as like can only be known by like.

      But now, if it be not reason, but rather understanding, that, with the co-operation of all the other faculties both of soul and spirit, is the proper organ for acquiring a knowledge of the divine, and the only means by which man can arrive at a right apprehension thereof; then is the knowledge of God simply and entirely a science of experience, although of a high and peculiar kind, by reason of the finiteness and frailty of man as compared with such an object. As the fancy is the apprehension or seizing of an object, the reason a combination or distinction, so the understanding is the faculty which penetrates, and, in its highest degree, clearly sees through its object. We understand a phenomenon, a sensation, an object, when we have discerned its inmost meaning, its peculiar character and proper significance. And the same is the case even when this object be a speech and communication addressed to us—a word or discourse given us to extract its meaning. If we have discerned the design which is involved in such a communication, its real meaning and purpose, then may we be said to have understood it, even though some minutiæ in the expression may still remain unintelligible, which, as not belonging essentially to the whole, we put aside and leave unconsidered. There are, therefore, many steps and degrees in understanding—very different phases and species of it. A familiar instance will, perhaps, elucidate this matter. We will suppose the case of an extremely rare and remarkable, or, perhaps, hitherto wholly unknown, plant, brought to our country from a foreign clime. The naturalist, having examined its structure and organs, assigns it to a particular class of the higher botanical genera, where it either belongs to some lower species or forms an exception. The chemist, again, when the plant is brought before his notice, conjectures, from certain other characters, that it is formed of such or such elementary parts; while the physician, on other grounds, concludes that in certain diseases it will probably serve as a remedy, equally if not more efficacious than other herbs or roots previously employed for that purpose. Now, if the two last have judged correctly, if their conjectures be confirmed by trial and experiment, then will all the three have understood the plant, and each in his own department have learned and discerned its intrinsic character. Again: how slowly, step by step and gradually, do men attain to the understanding of some ancient, foreign, and difficult language. It commences, perhaps, with the long and difficult deciphering of a manuscript or inscription, with an alphabet incomplete or imperfectly known, and after much painful labor the final discovery of its true meaning is made perhaps by some fortunate accident which all at once throws a full light upon it. A remarkable instance, in our own days, will both elucidate the matter, and serve at the same time to prove how a higher Providence regulates even the progress of science. For more than a millenium and a half had the hieroglyphics of an ancient race remained unintelligible to and undeciphered by a posterity of aliens, when at last, amid the recent commotions and tempests of the political world, a happy accident brought the secret to light. Who can forget the brilliant and dazzling expectations which hailed the departure of the French expedition for Egypt? How was all Europe electrified at the bold project of planting at the foot of the Pyramids a colony of European art and civilization. The enterprise itself failed, and was soon forgotten amid still more important events and greater revolutions; and the humble monument with its triple inscription, which was carried away from Egypt, is all, if we may so speak, that remains of it. But that has unquestionably founded a great epoch in the peaceful empire of science.[18] For a whole generation the learned labored to decipher it with but slow and very imperfect success, when at last a happy coincidence presents itself, and suddenly the key is found. And although of the seven hundred secret symbols, scarcely more than one hundred are as yet made out, still even these have opened a wide vista into the spacious domain of the dark origines of man’s history. And this was effected at a time when man had just

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