our earnest endeavor must be directed to the recognition
of the ways of Providence, the means it uses, and the historical
phenomena in which it manifests itself; and we must show their
connection with the general principle above mentioned. But in noticing
the recognition of the plan of Divine Providence generally, I have
implicitly touched upon a prominent question of the day, viz., that of
the possibility of knowing God; or rather--since public opinion has
ceased to allow it to be a matter of question--the doctrine that it is
impossible to know God. In direct contravention of what is commanded in
holy Scripture as the highest duty--that we should not merely love, but
know God--the prevalent dogma involves the denial of what is there
said--namely, that it is the Spirit, _der Geist_, that leads into truth,
knows all things, penetrates even into the deep things of the Godhead.
While the Divine Being is thus placed beyond our knowledge and outside
the limit of all human things, we have the convenient license of
wandering as far as we list, in the direction of our own fancies. We are
freed from the obligation to refer our knowledge to the Divine and True.
On the other hand, the vanity and egoism which characterize our
knowledge find, in this false position, ample justification; and the
pious modesty which puts far from itself the knowledge of God can well
estimate how much furtherance thereby accrues to its own wayward and
vain strivings. I have been unwilling to leave out of sight the
connection between our thesis--that Reason governs and has governed the
world--and the question of the possibility of a knowledge of God,
chiefly that I might not lose the opportunity of mentioning the
imputation against philosophy of being shy of noticing religious truths,
or of having occasion to be so; in which is insinuated the suspicion
that it has anything but a clear conscience in the presence of these
truths. So far from this being the case, the fact is that in recent
times philosophy has been obliged to defend the domain of religion
against the attacks of several theological systems. In the Christian
religion God has revealed Himself--that is, He has given us to
understand what He is, with the result that He is no longer a concealed
or secret existence. And this possibility of knowing Him, thus afforded
us, renders such knowledge a duty. God wishes for His children no
narrow-hearted souls or empty heads, but those whose spirit is of i