"Nor need you inquire why man cannot comprehend all he can conceive of, for he likewise can conceive of much that he cannot comprehend. If I were to prove to you that your mind is ignorant of everything that lies within its grasp, would you grant me that it is impossible for it to conceive of what lies beyond it? Should I not be justified, then, in saying, 'One of the alternatives which bring God to nought at the bar of your judgment must be true and the other false; Creation exists, you feel the need for an end; must not that end be a noble one? Now, if in man matter is conterminous with intelligence, why can you not be satisfied to grant that human intelligence ends where the light begins of those superior spheres for which is reserved the intuition of the God who, to you, is merely an insoluble problem?
"The species lower than man have no comprehension of the universe; you have. Why should there not be, above man again, species more intelligent than he? Before using his powers to take measure of God, would not man do well to know more about himself? Before defying the stars that give him light, before attacking transcendent truths, ought he not rather to verify the truths that immediately concern him?
"But I should answer the negations of doubt by negation. Well, then, I ask you: Is there here on earth a single thing so self-evident that I am bound to believe in it? I will show you in a minute that you believe firmly in things that can act and yet are not beings, that can give birth to thought and yet are not spirits, in living abstractions which the understanding cannot grasp under any shape, which nowhere exist, but which you can everywhere find; which have no possible names—though you have given them names; which, like the God in human form whom you conceive of, perish before the inexplicable, the incomprehensible, and the absurd. And I will ask you: If you admit these things, why do you reserve your doubts for God?
"You believe in Number as the foundation on which rests the edifice of what you call the exact sciences. Without number mathematics are impossible. Well, then, what impossible being, to whom life everlasting should be granted, could ever finish counting—and in what sufficiently concise language could he utter—the numbers contained in the infinite number of which the existence is demonstrated by your reason. Ask the greatest human genius, and suppose him to sit for a thousand years leaning on a table, his head in his hands, what would he answer?
"You know neither where number begins, where it pauses, nor where it ends. Now you call it time, anon you call it space; by number only does anything exist; but for number all substance would be one and the same; it alone differentiates and modifies matter. Number is to your mind what it is to matter, an intangible agent. But will you then make a god of it? Is it a being? Is it a breath of God sent forth to organize the material universe, wherein nothing takes shape but as a result of divisibility which is an effect of number? The most minute as well as the most immense objects in creation are distinguished from each other by quantity, quality, dimension, and force,—are not these all conditions of number? That number is infinite is a fact proved to your intellect, but of which no material proof is obtainable. A mathematician will tell you that infinity of number is certain, but cannot be demonstrated. And, my dear Pastor, believers will tell you that God is Number endowed with motion, to be felt but not proved. He, like the unit, is the origin of number though having nothing in common with numbers. The existence of Number depends on that of the unit, which is not a number, but the parent of them all. And God, dear Pastor Becker, is a stupendous Unit, having nothing in common with His creations, but their Parent nevertheless.
"You must grant me that you are equally ignorant as to where number begins or ends, and as to where created eternity begins or ends? Why, then, if you believe in number, should you deny God? Does not creation hold a place between the infinite of inorganic substances and the infinite of the Divine spheres, as the unit stands between the infinite of fractions—lately termed decimals—and the infinite numbers you call whole numbers? Men alone on earth comprehend number, the first step to the forecourt leading to God, and even there reason stumbles. What! you can neither measure nor grasp the primary abstraction proposed to you, and you want to apply your puny standard to the ends of God's purpose? What if I should cast you into the bottomless depths of Motion, the force which organizes number?
"If I were to tell you that the universe is nothing but Number and Motion, we should already, you see, be speaking a different language. I understand both terms; you do not. What, then, if I should go on to say that motion and number are generated by the Word? This term, the Supreme Reason of seers and prophets, who of old heard the voice of God that overthrew St. Paul, is a laughing-stock to you—you men, though your own visible works—communities, monuments, actions, and passions—all are the outcome of your own feeble Word; and though without speech you would still be no higher than the Orang of the woods, the great ape that is so nearly akin to the Negro.
"Well, you believe firmly in number and motion, inexplicable and incomprehensible as force and result, though I might apply to their existence the same logical dilemma as just now relieved you of the necessity of acknowledging that of God. You, a powerful reasoner, will surely relieve me of the necessity for proving that the Infinite must be everywhere the same, and that it is inevitably one? God alone is the Infinite, for there obviously cannot be two Infinites. If, to use words in their human sense, anything proved to you here on earth strikes you as infinite, you may be sure you have in that a glimpse of one aspect of God.
"To proceed: you have found for yourselves a place in the Infinite of number; you have fitted it to your stature by creating arithmetic—if you can be said to create anything—the basis on which everything is built up, even society. Arithmetic, or the use of number, has organized the moral world, just as number, the only thing in which your professing Atheists believe, organizes physical creation. This science of numbers ought to be absolute, like everything that is intrinsically true; but it is, in fact, purely relative, it has no absolute existence. You can give no proof of its reality.
"To begin with, though this science is apt at summing up organized substances, it is impotent as applied to organizing forces, since these are infinite, whereas the former are finite. Man, whose intellect can conceive of the Infinite, cannot deal with it as a whole; if he could, he would be God. Hence your arithmetic, as applied to finite things and not to the Infinite, is true in relation to the details you apprehend, but false in relation to the whole which you cannot apprehend. Though nature does not vary in her organizing forces and her elementary causes, which are infinite, she is never the same in her finite results. Hence in all nature you will find no two objects exactly alike.