AGNOSTICISM AND MR. PAGE ROBERTS.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—Without being brief, I must have been obscure, for you have misunderstood me. I never for one moment thought of urging " those unfortunate people who do not believe that God,
is a governing mind to set up the idea of God in the place of God." 1 said that thousands of lives were incoherent,. neither one thing nor another ; that if there were no God, still men ought to settle some rule for themselves, if they are to get all out of life which is possible ; that even a life of " common- place pleasure," if it is to be fulfilled, needed regulation. My phrase, " God or no God, this anarchy ought to cease," may be explained by your phrase, " Positivists are bound, of course, to do what they hold to be their duty, whether they recognise a God or not."
The real purpose of my sermon, however, was to urge upon those who do believe in God, but whose belief is of that feeble, unregulating kind which is so common, to make their belief into a sovereign power,—to " grow " in the grace which by God's law is their endowment, to " work out " their salvation. And lest any should be disposed to say that belief in God is only a product of evolution, I answered that to know the way by which a truth is reached does not make it untrue ; and that if God teaches us of himself by evolution—and I neither affirmed nor denied that this is his method—it is our duty to accept his. revelation. By "idea of God," I mean human apprehension of God, apprehension which may be loose or intense, which may pass from the former state into the latter ; and to help. my hearers to bring about this conversion was the aim of my sermon. Principal Caird, in his last book, speaks of the pro- cess by which " our idea of God has been reached," and suggests that the " highest proof of an idea may be an account of the- process by which it has been reached."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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