Dedication.
TO MY FELLOW-STUDENTS AND FRIENDS OF ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY WHO HAVE READ MANSEL AND REJECTED
HIS TEACHINGS,
This Little Treatise
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
Contents
[PREFACE.]
[KNOW THE TRUTH.]
[PART I.]
[PART II.]
[PART III.]
[REVIEW OF "LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT."]
[REVIEW OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S "FIRST PRINCIPLES."]
["ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS."]
["ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS."]
["THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE."]
["THE RECONCILIATION."]
[CONCLUSION.]
PREFACE.
This book has been written simply in the interest of Truth. It was because the doctrines of the Hamiltonian School were believed to be dangerous errors, which this process of thought exposes, that it was undertaken.
Logically, and in the final analysis, there can be but two systems of philosophical theology in the world. The one will be Pantheism, or Atheism,—both of which contain the same essential principle, but viewed from different standpoints,—the other will be a pure Theism. In the schools of Brahma and Buddh, or in the schools of Christ, the truth is to be found. And this is so because every teacher is to be held responsible for all which can be logically deduced from his system; and every erroneous result which can be so deduced is decisive of the presence of an error in principle in the foundation; and all schemes of philosophy, by such a trial, are seen to be based on one of these two classes of schools. Just here a quotation from Dr. Laurens Hickok's "Rational Psychology" will be in point:
"Except as we determine the absolute to be personality wholly out of and beyond all the conditions and modes of space and time, we can by no possibility leave nature for the supernatural. The clear-sighted and honest intellect, resting in this conclusion that the conditions of space and time cannot be transcended, will be Atheistic; while the deluded intellect, which has put the false play of the discursive understanding in its abstract speculations for the decisions of an all-embracing reason, and deems itself so fortunate as to have found a deity within the modes of space and time, will be Pantheistic. The Pantheism will be ideal and transcendent, when it reaches its conclusions by a logical process in the abstract law of thought; and it will be material and empiric, when it concludes from the fixed connections of cause and effect in the generalized law of nature; but in neither case is the Pantheism any other than Atheism, for the Deity, circumscribed in the conditions of space and time with nature, is but nature still, and, whether in abstract thought or generalized reality, is no God."
The Hamiltonian system is logically Atheism. Perceiving that the Deity cannot be found in Nature, it denies that he can be known at all. What the mind cannot know at all, it is irrational to believe. If man cannot know that God is, and have a clear sight of his attributes as a rational ground of confidence in what he says, it is the height of blind credulity to believe in him. And more; if man cannot have such knowledge, he has no standard by which to measure teachings, and be sure he has the truth. Under such circumstances, faith is impossible. Faith can only be based on Reason. If there is no Reason, there can be no faith. Hence he who talks about faith, and denies Reason, does not know what faith is. The logician rightfully held that God could not be found in Nature; but he was just as wrong in asserting that man is wholly in Nature and cannot know God, as he was right in the former instance. The acceptance of his one truth, and one error, compels man to be an Atheist; because then he has no faculty by which to know aught of God; and few thorough men will accept blind credulity as the basis of Religion.
The author's sense of obligation to President Hickok cannot be too strongly stated. But for his works, it is believed that this little treatise could never have been written. Indeed, the author looks for but scanty credit on the score of originality, since most of what he has written he has learned, directly or indirectly, from that profound thinker. He has deemed it his chief work, to apply the principles developed by others to the exposure of a great error. And if he shall be judged to have accomplished this, his ambition will have been satisfied.