Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 17:65 (Jan 1860)
Article: Limits Of Religious Thought Adjusted
Author: Laurens P. Hickok

BSac 17:65 (Jan 1860) p. 64

Limits Of Religious Thought Adjusted

Rev. L. P. Hickok

How may we attain the thought of a being who is personal, creative, and at the same time infinite and absolute? This general question, in some way, underlies all the speculations which, through varied processes, eventuate in theism, pantheism, atheism, and universal scepticism. Its comprehensiveness and complication of difficulties can be appreciated only after long and patient toiling for a solution. From the first dawnings of philosophical thought, it has engaged and exhausted the powers of the human mind more than any or perhaps all other speculative inquiries, with which philosophy has been conversant. The position thus attained enables us, now, to look back upon the track gone over, and forward in the sure direction, to a satisfactory answer. The impassable limits, which have hitherto seemed to lie directly across the path, will be found in truth to be only guiding and

BSac 17:65 (Jan 1860) p. 65

conservative lines on each hand, with the open way, between, to the recognition of a personal and absolute Deity, without hesitation or contradiction. It is practicable accurately to adjust the limits of religious thought.

In the compass which may be allowed to this Article, an outline of the subject with little detail is all that can be attempted; yet will care be taken to make the investigation clear and plain. The general method needs first to attain the present state of speculation on this question, and then to indicate the steps yet to be taken for a full solution.

Two prominent names may be used as the representatives of the present aspect of the discussion, viz. Sir William Hamilton, whose views may be found by our readers in the edition of his Works edited by O. W. Wight: Philosophy of the Conditioned; and Henry Longueville Mansell, B. D., in his Bampton Lectures: Limits of Religious Thought.

Hamilton gives the distinction between the infinite and the absolute, by calling the first “the unconditionally unlimited,” meaning that which is beyond all limits, and “the unconditionally limited,” meaning a whole beyond all conditions. When then, from any point, we seek the immensity of space on all sides; or from any instant, the eternity of time up and down its successions, we are in pursuit of the infinite; when we take the immensity of space or the eternity of time as each a concrete whole, we assume to have the absolute. So, also, with the changing phenomena of nature: as we go up the series for its origin, we are in search of the infinite; and as we take the whole in one, we assume the absolute. To follow events, through all causes, up to a First Cause, and find the many in the One, is a search for the infinite; and to take any cause...