light of modern reflection I am going to try and place before you the fact of God's existence; then I shall explain, as far as I can, the nature of God in relation to man; and then I shall insist upon that most important fact-a communion between God and man. That is the sum and substance of what I mean by this phrase 'THE IDEA OF GOD.'

8. Now the very first thing I must ask you to realise is this, that consciousness is one thing, and that thought is another. Thought will go along with consciousness up to a certain point, and seem to be almost identical with it; but after every distinct thought has vanished, there may still be a consciousness left behind. Let us try and

realise this. Thought cannot monopolise the sphere of consciousness; when you have done thinking, over and above all definite thought there may remain a consciousness which you cannot express in the terms of thought.

I will illustrate this. You know that space exists. You have an undeniable consciousness that space exists, but you cannot put the whole of this consciousness into thought. Every mode of description leaves something unexpressed. Let us try. Space is either limited or it is unlimited; but you cannot conceive of space as limited, that is to say, you cannot conceive a barrier being put down beyond which there shall be nothing, because beyond any conceivable barrier there must still be space; therefore you cannot conceive of space as limited. And you cannot conceive of space as unlimited. You may say it goes on for ever and ever. You think

you have a definite conception or thought there, but you have not. The instant you have stopped thinking, beyond your last 'ever' you mentally put down a barrier. Your mind refuses to entertain the conception of infinite space-it is unthinkable. You cannot conceive, then, that space is unlimited. Well, then, what do we arrive at, if you cannot conceive of space as limited nor unlimited, and yet you are conscious of space? Why, we arrive at this, that we have an undeniable consciousness about space which cannot be put into thought. You know that it is, that it must be one of two things, but you cannot think of it as being either. You have in short a consciousness, but your consciousness has outrun your thought.

Again, you have a certain consciousness concerning the existence of the universe, but you cannot put this into any intelligible terms of thought. It baffles you just as space baffled you. Let us try. This universe is either self-existent-it exists by itself-or else it is selfcreated, that is, it has created itself; or else some one created it-say God created it; but each one of these three propositions is unthinkable. You cannot imagine this universe as self-existent, because that is to imagine a thing which does not depend upon any antecedent cause; that is to say, self-existence implies the existence of something which has no beginning, and thought refuses to entertain that conception. Again, when you say this universe was self-created, you only get to another form of the same difficulty. Self-creation implies a potential universe passing into an actual universe,

and thought cannot conceive of such a thing as that. Thought cannot conceive of anything which has no existence suddenly becoming an actual existence; in other words creating itself; because, as we have just pointed out, you cannot conceive of a thing which has no beginning. Nor can you conceive of the universe as having been created by God. For even if you had established the existence of God, you would still have to establish that of matter. Is God identical with matter?--assume that He is then how came matter? Did that which was not, make itself? Did that which is, become something out of nothing? The proposition is strictly unthinkable. But if you do away with matter, and talk of God as distinct from matter, the same difficulty arises, the inconceivability of imagining the beginning of God, or the creation of something out of nothing. So you see you cannot imagine or put into thought the existence of the universe as selfexistent, or self-created, or God-created. But it does exist, or something we call the universe exists, and it must, as far as our thinking powers will reach, have come about in one of the three above-mentioned ways, each of which is unthinkable. Again consciousness has transcended thought.

Once more and lastly. God is conceived of in the mind as either existing somewhere, or everywhere, or nowhere. You may be a Theist, or a Pantheist, or an Atheist. When you speak of Atheism you mean the non-existence of God. But Atheism is inconceivable. You cannot look upon the orderly universe, and then deliberately say, 'Nothing has originated this, no living

principle, no orderly or intelligent principle has been at work here.' Therefore Atheism is inconceivable, because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence—the selfexistence of the universe; but then Pantheism-the doctrine that God is everything and everything is God—and Theism, or the doctrine that God is somewhere, are as unthinkable as Atheism, for, as Mr. Herbert Spencer points out, whoever admits that Atheism is untenable, because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that Atheism, Theism and Pantheism, are all equally untenable, because they all involve the same impossible idea. Yet in thinking of God, it is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere, and whether that assumption be made nakedly or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable.

Thus the consciousness of God transcends thoughttranscends the sphere of definable knowledge-though not the sphere of experience. You have a consciousness which enables you to say there must be something which we cannot by thinking find out behind the Universe-there is an omnipresent, incomprehensible power, as it were, at the back of all these outward phenomena, that, for want of some better word, I will call God, and when I say there must be, I mean that I have a consciousness that there is. Something which I choose to call God exists, but He is unthinkable.

Once again consciousness has outrun thought.

9. Now then I have reached an important point. It is

none other than this-the reconciliation between Science and Religion; it is to be found in this one fact, which is common to both of them-the confession upon purely intellectual grounds of a force or power incomprehensible and omnipresent (we call it omnipresent because we cannot mentally assign to it any limits; we call it incomprehensible because it cannot be comprehended by any forms of thought)—the existence of such a power is a fact which science confesses, and it is also a fact which religion confesses. There then is an impregnable ground upon which you may build the religious consciousness. It is not only a matter of sentiment, although it is that, but science also confesses it-that is to say, the existence of this omnipresent and incomprehensible power is a matter of knowledge; and you may be sure that science will never destroy that fundamental ground, without which it cannot move one step.

Hold this conclusion fast, I beseech you, and don't think that these speculations are vain and idle: a reconciliation between the principles of science and religion is no vain thing, for are we not constantly told that the tendency of science is to destroy religion? I tell you science can never destroy religion, because when they are pushed to their extreme limits, both science and religion confess the fundamental fact on which each stands, both postulate the same hypothesis of a reality underlying all phenomena. Viewed scientifically religion is impregnable, but as Mr. H. Spencer points out historically it is equally so, for 'the Universality of Religious ideas, their independent evolution among different