ength."[N] This distinction Hamilton endeavoured to
extend from the domain of Christian theology to that of philosophical
speculation in general; to show that the unconditioned, as it is
suggested in philosophy, no less than as it connects itself with revealed
religion, is an object of belief, not of positive conception; and,
consequently, that men cannot escape from mystery by rejecting
revelation. "Above all," he says, "I am confirmed in my belief by the
harmony between the doctrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed
truth.... For this philosophy is professedly a scientific demonstration
of the impossibility of that 'wisdom in high matters' which the Apostle
prohibits us even to attempt; and it proposes, from the limitation of the
human powers, from our impotence to comprehend what, however, we must
admit, to show articulately why the 'secret things of God,' cannot but be
to man 'past finding out.'"[O] Faith in the inconceivable must thus
become the ultimate refuge, even of the pantheist and the atheist, no
less than of the Christian; the difference being, that while the last
takes his stand on a faith which is in agreement alike with the authority
of Scripture and the needs of human nature, the two former are driven to
one which is equally opposed to both, as well as to the pretensions of
their own philosophy.

[N] _Works_, vol. i., p, 233.

[O] _Discussions_, p. 625.

Deny the Trinity; deny the Personality of God: there yet remains that
which no man can deny as the law of his own consciousness--_Time_.
Conditioned existence is existence in time: to attain to a philosophy of
the unconditioned, we must rise to the conception of existence out of
time. The attempt may be made in two ways, and in two only. Either we
may endeavour to conceive an absolutely first moment of time, beyond
which is an existence having no duration and no succession; or we may
endeavour to conceive time as an unlimited duration, containing an
infinite series of successive antecedents and consequents, each
conditioned in itself, but forming altogether an unconditioned whole. In
other words, we may endeavour, with the Eleatics, to conceive pure
existence apart and distinct from all phenomenal change; or we may
endeavour, with Heraclitus, to conceive the universe as a system of
incessant changes, immutable only in the law of its own mutability; for
these two systems may be regarded as the type of all subsequent
attempts. Both, howe