iversity certainly takes in all varieties of Knowledge in its own line,
but still that it has a line of its own. It contemplates, it occupies a
certain order, a certain platform, of Knowledge. I understand the remark;
but I own to you, I do not understand how it can be made to apply to the
matter in hand. I cannot so construct my definition of the subject-matter
of University Knowledge, and so draw my boundary lines around it, as to
include therein the other sciences commonly studied at Universities, and
to exclude the science of Religion. For instance, are we to limit our idea
of University Knowledge by the evidence of our senses? then we exclude
ethics; by intuition? we exclude history; by testimony? we exclude
metaphysics; by abstract reasoning? we exclude physics. Is not the being
of a God reported to us by testimony, handed down by history, inferred by
an inductive process, brought home to us by metaphysical necessity, urged
on us by the suggestions of our conscience? It is a truth in the natural
order, as well as in the supernatural. So much for its origin; and, when
obtained, what is it worth? Is it a great truth or a small one? Is it a
comprehensive truth? Say that no other religious idea whatever were given
but it, and you have enough to fill the mind; you have at once a whole
dogmatic system. The word "God" is a Theology in itself, indivisibly one,
inexhaustibly various, from the vastness and the simplicity of its
meaning. Admit a God, and you introduce among the subjects of your
knowledge, a fact encompassing, closing in upon, absorbing, every other
fact conceivable. How can we investigate any part of any order of
Knowledge, and stop short of that which enters into every order? All true
principles run over with it, all phenomena converge to it; it is truly the
First and the Last. In word indeed, and in idea, it is easy enough to
divide Knowledge into human and divine, secular and religious, and to lay
down that we will address ourselves to the one without interfering with
the other; but it is impossible in fact. Granting that divine truth
differs in kind from human, so do human truths differ in kind one from
another. If the knowledge of the Creator is in a different order from
knowledge of the creature, so, in like manner, metaphysical science is in
a different order from physical, physics from history, history from
ethics. You will soon break up into fragments the whole circle of secular
knowledge, if you begin