him here, you will have to suffer, wall which surrounded the yard, and father." to the ground on the other side. The poor father, mounted upon the trunk of a fig-tree, holding on by its branches, with bursting heart, and straining eyes, and breath suspended, saw his son, the idol of his soul, pass with the lightness of a deer, the space which separated the village from an olive plantation, and disappear among the trees. "Never mind, never mind," exclaimed the father, "save yourself, that is the first thing to be thought of." Without listening to his father, Ventura took the corpse upon his shoulder, threw it into the well, turned to the old man, who followed him in an agony of distress, asked for his blessing, sprang with one bound, upon the TO BE CONTINUED. [ORIGINAL] SAPPHICS. SUGGESTED BY 66 THE QUIP" OF GEORGE Herbert. IV. [ ORIGINAL..] PROBLEMS OF THE AGE. THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CREED DEMONSTRATED IN THE CONSTITUTIVE IDEA OF REASON. As soon as we open the eye of reason we become spectators of the creation. The word creation in this proposition is to be understood not in a loose and popular sense, but in a strict and scientific one. We intend to say, not merely that we behold certain existing objects, but that we behold them in their relation to their first and suWe are witnesses of the preme cause. creative act by which the Creator and his work are simultaneously disclosed to the mind. This is the original constitutive principle of reason, its primal light preceding all knowledge and thought, and being their condition. It is the idea which contains in itself, radically and in principle, all possible development of thought and knowledge, according to the law of growth connatural to the human intelligence. cludes-God with all his attributes: the work of God or the created universe; and the relation between the two, that is, the relation of God to the universe as first cause in the order of creation, and final cause in the order of the ultimate end and destination of things. The different portions of this idea are inseparable from each other. That is, our reason cannot affirm God separately from the affirmation of the creative act, or affirm the creative act separately from the affirmation of God. The being of God is disclosed to us only by the creation, and the creation is intelligible to us only in the light given by the idea of God.* God reveals himself to our reason as creator, It in and by means of the creative act. This is the limit of our natural light, and beyond it we cannot see anything by a natural mode, either in God, or in the universe. The idea of God must not be confounded with that distinct and explicit conception which a philosopher or wellinstructed Christian possesses. If the human mind possessed this knowledge by an original intuition, every human being would have it, without instruction, from the very first moment of the complete use of reason, and could never lose it. The idea of God is the affirmation of himself as pure, eternal, necessary being, the original and first principle of all existence, which he makes to the reason in creating it, and which constitutes the rational light and life of the soul. This constitutive, ideal principle of the soul's intelligence exists at first in a kind of embryonic state. The soul is more in a state of potentiality to intelligence, than intelligence in act. The idea of God is obscurely enwrapped and enfolded in the substance of the soul, imperfectly evolved in its most primitive acts of rational consciousness, and implicitly contained but not actually explicated in every thought that it thinks, even the most simple and rudimental. The intelligence must be educated, in order to bring out this obscure and implicit idea of God into a distinct conception in the reflective consciousness. This education begins with the action of the material, sensible world on the soul through the body, and specifically through the brain. The human soul was not created to exist and act under the simple conditions of pure spirit; but as is incorporated in a material body. The body is not a temporary habitation, like the envelope of a larva, but an integral part of man. The intelligence is awakened to activity through the senses, and all its perceptions of the intelligible are through the medium of the sensible. The sensible world is a grand system of outward and visible signs representing the spiritual and intelligible world. Language is the science and art of subsidiary signs, the equivalents of the phenomena of the sensible world and of all that we apprehend through them; and forming the medium for communicating thought among men. For this reason, all language so far as it represents the conceptions of men concerning the spiritual word is metaphorical; and even the word spirit is a figure taken from the sensible world. When the obscure idea is completely evolved, and the soul educated, through these outward and sensible media, the reflective consciousness attains to the distinct conception of God. This education may be imperfect, and the reflective consciousness may have but an incomplete conception expressed in language by an inadequate formula; but the idea is indestructible, and the mental conception of it can never be totally corrupted. This would be equivalent to the cessation of all thought, the annihilation of all conception of being and truth, and the extinction of all rational life in the soul. It is a mere negation of thought, which cannot be thought at all, and a mere non-entity. There is no such thing as absolute scepticism. Partial scepticism is possible. Revelation may be denied as to its complete conception, but the idea expressed in revelation cannot be utterly denied. The being of God may be denied, as to its complete conception, but not completely as to the idea itself. No sceptic or atheist can make any statement of his doubt or disbelief, which does not contain an affirmation of that ultimate idea under the conception of real and necessary being and truth. Much less can he enunciate any scientific formulas respecting philosophy, history, or any positive object, without doing so. Vast numbers of men are ignorant of the true and formed conception of God, but every one of them affirms the idea in every distinct thought which he thinks; and every human language, however rude, embodies and perpetuates it under forms and conceptions which are remotely derived from the original and infallible speech of the primitive revelation. Although the mass of mankind cannot evolve the idea of God into a distinct conception, and even gentile philosophy failed to enunciate this conception in an adequate form, yet when this conception is clearly and perfectly enunciated by pure theistic and Christian philosophy, reason is able to recognize it as the expression of its own primitive and ultimate idea. It perceives that the object which it has always beheld by an obscure intuition, is God, as proposed in the first article of the Christian formula. The Christian church, in instructing the uninstructed or partially instructed mind in pure theism, interprets to it, and explicates for it, its own obscure intuition. Thus it is able to see the truth of the being of God; not as a new, hitherto unknown idea, received on pure authority, or by a long deduction from more ultimate truths, or as the result of a number of probabilities; but as a truth which constitutes the ultimate ground of its own rational existence, and is only unfolded and disclosed to it in its own consciousness by the word and teaching of the instructor, who gives distinct voice to its own inarticulate or defectively uttered affirmation of God. So it is, that God affirms himself to the reason originally by the creative act which is first apprehended by the reason through the medium of the sensible, and interpreted by the sensible signs of language to the uninstructed. Thus we know God by creation, and the creation comes into the most immediate contact with us on its sensible side. It has been said above, that we cannot separate the creative act from God in the primitive idea of reason. It is not meant by this that reason has IV. [ ORIGINAL..] PROBLEMS OF T THE REVELATION OF GOD IN THE CREED As soon as we open the eye of re son we become spectators of the cr tion. The word creation in this position is to be understood not loose and popular sense, but in a and scientific one. We intend not merely that we behold cer isting objects, but that we beh in their relation to their fir preme cause. We are witne creative act by which the ( his work are simultaneously the mind. This is the orig tive principle of reason, it preceding all knowledg and being their condit idea which contains in and in principle, all 1 ment of thought and cording to the law of ral to the human i cludes-God with the work of God verse; and the 1 two, that is, the 1 universe as firs creation, and fi of the ultimate things. The idea are insep That is, our r separately fr creative act, separately fi The being only by the is intelligi given by t veals hims * A carefu will show tha is not mean of evolution which is sho tion. i ar and although creadistinctly perceive & as being more codecting subject himse ctly in contact with his reflecting faculties. The of God is limited to that expresses by the similitude exhibited in the creation. ve conceptions of God in the e order are therefore derived he imitations, or representa of the divine attributes in the ard of created existences. An infiand, to natural powers, impassable Lass, separates us from the immediate auition of the Divine Essence. The highest contemplative cannot cross this chasm; and the ultimatum of mystic theology is no more than the confession that the essence of God is unseen and invisible to any merely human intuition, unknown and unknowable by the natural power of any finite intelligence. We know ut Deus sit, si - non quid sit Deus-that God is, but not what he is. We know that God is, by Put this the affirmation of his being to reason.* We form conceptions that enable our reflective faculties to grasp this affirmediately mation, by means of the created ob 25 or so to jects in which he manifests his attri tis and must butes, and through which, as through and of this signs and symbols, images and pictures, But this he represents his perfections. essay in conformity This is the doctrine of St. Paul, the itsents being as ab- great father of Christian theology. evatingent, and "Quis enim hominum, scit quæ sunt ader. False con- hominis, nisi spiritus hominis qui in 23 scrammate accu ipso est? Ita, et quæ Dei sunt, nemo wen the two terms, being cognovit, nisi Spiritus Dei." ce; but when these false "For what man knoweth the things e corrected, and the idea of a man, but the spirit of man which mto light, the very is in him? So the things also that x it is expressed clearly are of God, no one knoweth but the ca brod as alone necessary, cre- intuition of his own essence and of ing from the free will of the God alone has naturally the immediate Cand creation, are thus simul- the interior life and activity of his own an asr affirmed in the creative act being within himself. ang the soul; although God is ated as first and creation second, "Quod notum est Dei manifestum That is, after we have demonstrated that which is involved in the idea of being. hings world, stood by is eternal self distinctcreative act, a the showing › works. per speculum in ue, the beautiful, the good, the first cause, the ultimate reason of things, etc. Real and necessary being, considered as the ground of the continit gent and as facing the created intellect, est adequately embraces and represents sted all. This intuition enters into all thought and is inseparable from the activity of the intelligent mind. The intellect always does and must apprehend the real, which is identical with the ideal, in its thought; and when this reality or verity which it apprehends is reflected on, it always yields up two elements, the necessary and the contingent, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the conditioned. In apprehending God, we necessarily apprehend that the soul which apprehends and the creation by which it apprehends him, must exist. In apprehending creation, we apprehend that God must be in order that the creation may have existence. If we could suppose reason to begin with the idea of God, pure and simple, we could not show how it could arrive at any idea of the creature. Neither could we, beginning with the exclusive idea of the conditioned, deduce the idea of the absolute and necessary. We can never arrive by discursive reasoning, by reflection, by, logic, by deduction or induction, at any truth, not included in the principles or intuitions with which we start. Demonstration discovers no new truth, but only discloses what is contained in the intuitions of reason. It explicates, but does not create. All that we know therefore about being and existences is contained implicitly in our original intuition. rough a glass in an or more literally, in , or allegory "* aderstand the attributes elations of God as these elligible to our minds by rived from created things, s in a mirror, the image of eflected. The original and idea of God given to reason onstitution-but given only on de of it which faces creation, ding therefore in itself creation its relation to the creator—may be presented in various forms. It must e distinctly borne in mind that our natural intuition is not an intuition of the substance or essence of the divine being, or an intuition of God by that uncreated light in which he sees himself and his works. God presents himself to the natural reason as Idea, or the first principle of intelligence and the intelligible, by the intelligibility which he gives to the creation. He does not disclose himself in his personality to the intellectual vision, but affirms himself to reason by a divine judgment. Our natural knowledge of God is therefore exclusively in the ideal order. The intuition from which this knowledge is derived may be called the intuition of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute, the necessary, the * 1 Cor. il 11; Rom. i. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xiii. 12. Real being is the immediate object apprehended by reason, as St. Thomas teaches, after Åristotle. "Ens namque est objectum intellectus primum, cum nihil sciri possit, nisi ipsum quod est ens in actu, ut dicitur in 9 Met. Unde nec oppositum ejus intelligere potest intellectus, non ens." "For being is the primary object of the intellect, since nothing can be known but that which is being in act, as it is said in the 9 Met. Wherefore the intellect cannot |