1. The church universally has acted upon it; and none have employed it more vigorously than those who have in terms most bitterly opposed it. One of the class just referred to affirms that the Bible is the standard of truth. "Admit," says a friend standing by, "that it would be if it were what it purports to be; but what evidence is there that this is the case." Thereupon the champion presents evidence from the fathers, and evidence from the book itself; and finally closes by saying, that such an array of evidence is ample to satisfy any reasonable man of its truth and validity. His argument is undoubtedly satisfactory; but if he has not appealed to a reasonable man, i. e. to the Reason, i. e., if he has not acknowledged a standard for the standard, and thus has not tacitly, unconsciously and yet decisively employed the Reason as the highest standard of truth, then his conduct has for us no adequate expression.
2. Nicodemus and Christ, in express terms, recognized the validity of this standard. Said the ruler to Christ, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."—John III. 2. In these words, he both recognized the validity of the standard, and the fact that its requirements had been met. But decisively emphatic are the words of our Saviour: "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father."—John XV. 24. As if he had said, "While I appeared among them simply as a man, I had no right to claim from them a belief in my mission; but when I had given them adequate and ample evidence of my heavenly character, when, in a word, I had by my works satisfied all the rational demands for evidence which they could make, then no excuse remained for their rejection of me."
The doctrine of this treatise, that man may know the truth, and know God, is one which will never be too largely reflected upon by the human mind, or too fully illustrated in human thought. In no better strain can we bring our work to a close than by offering some reflections on those words of Jesus Christ which have formed the title of our book.
"Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, 'If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"—John VIII. 31, 32. Throughout all the acts of Christ, as recorded in John and especially during the last days of his life, there may be traced the marks of a super-human effort to express to the Jews, in the most skilful manner, the nature and purport of his mission. He appeared to them a man; and yet it would seem as if the Godhead in him struggled with language to overcome its infirmities, and express with perfectest skill his extraordinary character and work. But "he came unto his own, and his own received him not." Being then such, even the Divine Man, Jesus Christ possessed in his own right an absolute and exhaustive metaphysic. We study out some laws in some of their applications; he knew all laws in all their applications. In these his last days he was engaged in making the most profound and highly philosophical revelations to his followers that one being ever made to another. Or does the reader prefer to call them religious? Very well: for here Religion and Philosophy are identical. Being engaged in such a labor, it is certain that no merely human teacher ever used words with the careful balancing, the skilful selection, the certain exactitude, that Jesus did. Hence in the most emphatic sense may it be said, that, whether he used figurative or literal language, he meant just what he said. The terms used in the text quoted are literal terms, and undoubtedly the passage is to be taken in its most literal signification. In these words then, in this passage of the highest philosophical import, is to be found the basis of the whole a priori philosophy. They were spoken of the most important truths, those which pertain to the soul's everlasting welfare; but as the greater includes the less, so do they include all lesser science. In positive and unmistakable terms has Christ declared the fact of knowledge. God knows all truth. In so far as we also know the truth, in so far are we like him. And mark, this is knowledge, a purely intellectual act. Love is indeed a condition of the act, but it is not the very act itself.
On this subject it is believed that the Christian church has failed to assert the most accurate doctrine. Too generally has this knowledge been termed a spiritual knowledge, meaning thereby, a sort of an impression of happiness made upon the spiritual sensibility; and this state of bliss has been represented as in the highest degree desirable. Beyond all question it is true, that, when the spiritual person, with the eye of Reason, sees, and thus knows the truth, seeing it and knowing it because his whole being, will, and intellect is consecrated to, wrapt in the effort, and he is searching for it as for hid treasures, there will roll over his soul some ripples of that ineffable Delight which is a boundless ocean in Deity. But this state of the Sensibility follows after, and is dependent upon, the act of love, and the act of knowledge. There should be, there was made in Christ's mind, a distinction in the various psychical modifications of him who had sold all that he had to buy the one pearl. The words of Christ are to be taken, then, as the words of the perfect philosopher, and the perfect religionist. Bearing, as he did, the destiny of a world on his heart, and burdened beyond all utterance by the mighty load, his soul was full of the theme for which he was suffering, he could speak to man only of his highest needs and his highest capabilities. The truth which man may know, then, is not only eternal,—all truth is eternal,—but it is that eternal truth most important to him, the a priori laws of the spiritual person and of all his relations. The what he is, the why he is, and the what he ought to become, are the objects of his examination. When, then, a spiritual person has performed his highest act, the act of unconditional and entire consecration to the search after the truth, i. e. to God; and when, having done this he ever after puts away all lusts of the flesh, he shall in this condition become absorbed, wrapt away in the contemplation of the truth; then his spiritual eye will be open, and will dart with its far-glancing, searching gaze throughout the mysteries of the Universe, and he will know the truth. Before, when he was absorbed in the pursuit of the things of Sense, he could see almost no a priori principles at all, and what he did see, only in their practical bearing upon those material and transitory things which perish with their using; but now balancing himself on tireless pinion in the upper ether, anon he stoops to notice the largest and highest and most important of those objects which formerly with so much painful and painstaking labor he climbed the rugged heights of sense to examine, and having touched upon them cursorily, to supply the need of the hour, he again spreads his powerful God-given wings of faith and love, and soars upward, upward, upward, towards the eternal Sun, the infinite Person, the final Truth, God. Then does he come to comprehend, "to know, with all saints, what is the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God." Then do the pure a priori laws, especially those of the relations of spiritual persons, i. e. of the moral government of God, come full into the field of his vision. Then in the clear blaze, in the noonday effulgence of the ineffable, eternal Sun, does he see the Law which binds God as it binds man,—that Law so terrible in its demands upon him who had violated it, that the infinite Person himself could find no other way of escape for sinning man but in sending "his only-begotten Son into the world." And he who is lifted up to this knowledge needs no other revelation. All other knowledge is a child's lesson-book to him. All lower study is tasteless; all lower life is neglected, forgotten. He studies forever the pure equations of truth; he lives in the bosom of God. Such an one may all his life-long have been utterly ignorant of books. A poor negro on some rice plantation, he may have learned of God only by the hearing of the ear, but by one act, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he has passed all the gradations of earthly knowledge, and taken his seat on the topmost form in heaven. He received little instruction from men; but forevermore God is his teacher.
This of which we have been speaking is, be it remembered, no rhapsody of the imagination. It is a simple literal fact respecting man's intellect. It is the same in kind, though of far nobler import, as if upon this act of consecration there should be revealed to every consecrated one, in a sudden overwhelming burst of light, the whole a priori system of the physical Universe. This is not so revealed because it is not essential, and so would only gratify curiosity. The other and the higher is revealed, because it is essential to man's spiritual life.
In the culminating act, then, of a spiritual person, in the unreserved, the absolute consecration of the whole being to the search after truth, do we find that common goal to which an a priori philosophy inevitably leads us, and which the purest, Christ's, religion teaches us. Thus does it appear that in their highest idea Philosophy and Religion are identical. The Rock upon which both alike are grounded is eternal. The principles of both have the highest possible evidence, for they are self-evident; and, having them given by the intuition of the Reason, a man can cipher out the whole natural scheme of the Universe as he would cipher out a problem in equations. He has not done it, because he is wicked; and God has given him the Bible, as the mathematical astronomy of the moral heavens, as a school-book to lead him back to the goal of his lost purity.
How beautiful, then, art thou, O Religion, supernal daughter of the Deity! how noble in thy magnificent preëminence! how dazzling in thy transcendent loveliness! Thou sittest afar on a throne of pearl; thy diadem the Morning Stars, thy robe the glory of God. Founded is thy throne on Eternity; and from eternity to eternity all thy laws are enduring truth. Sitting thus, O Queen, more firmly throned than the snow-capped mountains, calmer than the ocean's depths, in the surety of thy self-conscious integrity and truth, thou mayest, with mien of noblest dignity, in unwavering confidence, throw down the gauntlet of thy challenge to the assembled doubters of the Universe.
It may be that to some minds, unaccustomed to venturing out fearlessly on the ocean of thought, with an unwavering trust in the pole-star truth in the human soul, certain of the positions attained and maintained in this volume will seem to involve the destruction of all essential distinction between the Creator and the created. If the universe is a definite and limited object, some created being may, at some period, come to know every atom of it. Moreover, if there is a definite number of the qualities and attributes—the endowments of Deity, some one may learn the number, and what they are, and come at length to have a knowledge equal to God's knowledge. Even if this possibility should be admitted,—which it is not, for a reason to appear further on,—yet it would in no way involve that the creature had, in any the least degree, reduced the difference in kind which subsists between him and the Creator. A consideration of the following distinctive marks will, it would seem, be decisive upon this point.
God is self-existent. His creatures are dependent upon him. Self-existence is an essential, inherent, untransferable attribute of Deity; and so is not a possible attainment for any creature. Every creature is necessarily dependent upon the Creator every moment, for his continuance in being. Let him attain ever so high a state of knowledge; let him, if the supposition were rational, acquire a knowledge equal to that of Deity; let him be endowed with all the power he could use, and he would not have made, nor could he make an effort even, in the direction of removing his dependence upon his Creator. In the very height of his glory, in the acme of his attainment, it would need only that God rest an instant, cease to sustain him, and he would not be, he would have gone out, as the light goes out on a burner when one turns the faucet.