ween an act of human volitional energy and the raising
of an arm. There are the facts, demonstrable and undeniable, but the
_how_ of those facts, no man on this earth knoweth or perhaps ever will
know. Well may Browning profess himself content to endure in patience
the ignorance which is our lot here, if only at length "thy great
creation-thought thou wilt make known to me". The "great
creation-thought" cannot be known now. Watson is as sure of it as his
spiritual ancestor:--

I trust it not this bounded ken.

But though the "creation-thought" cannot be fathomed, though we cannot
_comprehend_ the nature of the ultimate Reality, the fact of the great
existence and omnipresence is clearly _apprehensible_, and therefore
must be acknowledged as a demonstrated fact by every man.

And, if such be the case, in what sense is God "unknown"? Unknown,
certainly, in the sense that he is unseen, but we now know that the
only real things are those of the invisible world. God is unknown
because incomprehensible, now and always, here and hereafter, in this
life and in all possible lives. The Infinite must ever be beyond the
_comprehension_ of the finite.

Though saint and sage their powers unite
To fathom that abyss of light,
Ah! still that altar stands.[4]

But the Divine is not beyond the _apprehension_ of man's mind, and as
far as I can by diligent reading of Mr. Spencer attain to his innermost
meaning, I do not think he denies this fact, as he most unquestionably
does not deny the validity of religious motion, which, arguing against
the Positivist philosophy, he rightly contends cannot, in its highest
sense, be associated with any being other than the Highest of all
beings. "What's in a name?" I ask, and whether a man calls himself
theist or agnostic--so that he does admit something greater than man,
and does give us scope and opportunity for the exercise of those powers
and emotions which refuse to be bounded by, or satisfied with, the
merely phenomenal and transitory, but are ever seeking for communion
with the Noumenal and the Eternal--in my judgment matters very little.
There is a higher synthesis in which partial truths are being
constantly taken up and reconciled in some fuller and more luminous
expression, and I have no doubt that that scientific reconciliation of
materialism and spiritualism which is now progressing so rapidly will
eventually be effected between those who now call themselves theists