1893 From the Library of Prof. A. P. PEABODY 82 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by GEORGE SCHEDEL, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. OF DIVINE FAITH. In the beginning was the Word, ST. JOHN. CONSCIOUS of having done our utmost to avoid enthusiasm in a matter whose thrilling nature scarcely allows of sedate and mature reflection, and trusting that we shall prove that we have not been carried away by the current of our imagination, we shall begin by attempting to state our conclusions in a few words. A preliminary remark cannot, however, be dispensed with, for it carries with it the whole gist of our undertaking. It is to the effect, that our conclusions, whether right or wrong, are in fixed relation with our knowledge and that they cannot be supposed, when grounded on Tradition either symbolical or mythic, to extend beyond that portion of the human race of which such records are extant. In limiting Revelation to the knowledge of the Existence of God revealed as the Almighty and to be trusted in as such; in finding all in all in that eventful fact, which, cleared from Theology, stands forth as the Word or His Name revealed in the Attributes which constitute that Word; in maintain on any ing that Theology can ground none of her assertions other basis than the Trust or Faith which those Attributes have ever inspired, we are fully aware of the clamors such conclusions will excite, not only in the ranks of Philosophy, but still more in those of Theology. Philosophy, already pretty well convinced by the vain attempts of philosophers themselves of the inanity and mutual contradictions of the à priori and à posteriori proofs of the Existence of God, may indeed be induced to give a fair hearing to the plain statement of the question at issue. Philosophy having merely adopted a negative position is almost disinterested in the admission on rational grounds of the proofs of the Revelation of the Existence of the Almighty under Attributes which alone have ever constituted His Word or Name. Not so Theology; when the peculiar and distinct character of the knowledge Man has of God is once admitted,--the Nature and the Ways of Him whose Word or Name forms as the Almighty the only ground of Trust or Faith, are also removed by that very fact beyond the grasp of human conception. Theology stands convicted of deceit on the very admission of the Existence of the Supreme Being having been revealed. If we find ourselves obliged to have recourse to desultory preliminaries in order to make ourselves understood when we would say that in the fact of the Revelation of God as the Almighty resides the real ground of Trust in Him as such, and that His Word, or Name, or Attributes, which are the same, constitute His Law, being the call that awakened Man into Life,—if in short the plain and bare statement of that great fact be adduced as the firm ground of Faith, it is because it is met with an exclamation of surprise and by the question of what Revelation we allude to, for if Heathen Theology had, according to Warburton, Revela |