think of a round square, or that a part is equal to the whole. But we can think that God is infinite and eternal.
Crod Incomprehensible.
3. When it is said that God can be known, it is not meant that He can be comprehended. To comprehend is to have a complete and exhaustive knowledge of an object. It is to understand its na- ture and its relations. We cannot comprehend force, and specially vital force. We see its eifect, but we cannot understand its nature or the mode in which it acts. It would be strange that we should know more of God than of ourselves, or of the most familiar objects of sense. God is past finding out. We cannot understand the Almighty unto perfection. To comprehend is (1.) To know the essence as well as the attributes of an object. (2.) It is to know not some only, but all of its attributes. (8.) To know the relation in which these attributes stand to each other and to the substance to which they belong. (4.) To know the relation in which the object known stands to all other objects. Such knowledge is clearly impossible in a creature, either of itself or of anything out of itself. It is, however, substantially thus that the transcenden- talists claim to know God.
Our Knowledge of Grod Partial.
4. It is included in what has been said, that our knowledge of God is partial and inadequate. There is infinitely more in God tlian we have any idea of; and what we do know, we know im- perfectly. We know that God knows ; but there is much in his mode of knowing, and in its relation to its objects, which we cannot understand. We know that He acts ; but we do not know how He acts, or the relation which his activity bears to time, or things out of Himself. We know that He feels ; that He loves, pities, is merciful, is gracious ; that He hates sin. But this emotional ele- ment of the divine nature is covered with an obscurity as great, but no greater, than that which rests over his thoughts or purposes. Here again our ignorance, or rather, the limitation of our knowledge concerning God, finds a parallel in our ignorance of ourself. There are potentialities in our nature of which, in our present state of existence, we have no idea. And even as to what we are now, we know but little. We know that we perceive, think, and act ; we do not know how. It is perfectly inscrutable to us how the mind takes cognizance of matter ; how the soul acts on the body, or the body on the mind. But because our knowledge of ourselves is