Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-09-14
A WISE AGNOSTICISM.

SLOW unsearchable are His iudp
ments, and His ways past finding OUT
St Paul cries out, when he has gone as
far as man ever went in comprehend
ing, with the aid of inspiration, the Di-
vine plans and providences. A wise
agnostic will plant itself where Paul
paused in reyerent wonder, and confess
that His ways can not be traced by
finite intelligence. In agnosticism all
depends on what it is that we profess
not to know. We know that He is,
and that He is the rewarder of them
that diligently seek Him; but we do not
know how He exists, or what He NAV
in our case give as a reward for dill
gently seeking Him. We know "that
we have a building of God" but our
poor little heads reel when we try to
measure the building. We know that
He governs all things. and is always
governing; but we do not know the
plan of His government, except in such
parts as He has revealed. All that we
know of Him is so related to things we
can not know that it is presumptuous
in us to consider our theodicies as maps
of His ways. We see bits of the holy
highways on which He moves, but we
can not follow His burning chariot and
trace the lines along which it moves.
We are always seeking out "parts of
His ways" we are looking at mount
aims whose tops are lost for us,
not in low-lying clouds, but in noon
day sunbeams. We see the sides of
an arch bending little to meet in a
keystone that we can not hope to see, so
high it scars. How could it be other
wise? Shall finite creature compre-
bend the infinite mind? Shall souls
bred in sin perceive all the qualities
that enter into perfect holiness? And
what is the largest meaning of the new
science, with its vast outlines, and I'M
accountable facts, and dizzying general
izations, but an unfolding of the grand
eur and immensely of the Divine move
ments? What hope to find Him beyond
the vast globes of light that blaze far off
in the midnight sky, or down in those
microscopic depths where new oceans
seem to roll the waves of life against
undiscoverable shores! And how could
He himself tell us the story of His ever
lasting epic, or unfold the splendid
drama whose endless professions are in
His mind alone? Set child of five
years to studying geometry, and you
may have shred of hope that he will
learn it; but that child is Plato in COM
parison with a man studying the Divine
ways. The happiness of men such as
we is to know that God lives and rules,
that He cares for us with fatherly sOlic-
itude, that He is ALWAYS and everywhere
bn off l,n Ill h.,
man mismanagement, that He rewards
righteousness and Furnishes iniquity;
but how He lives His life of love and
kingship we can not know. We must
take on these subjects the instruction
which He gives us as facts which we
may trust our hearts upon, but can not
hope to understand.
We know in our hearts the work of
the Spirit; in our trials the graces of pa
thence and endurance; in our daily lives
the power of temptation and the deliv-
erance wrought by our faith; in the face
of bereavement the need of confidence
in the Divine pity; in the face of death
the value of the anchor of Christian
hope. We know that our religion meets
our deepest wants; that the Bible de-
scribes our natures thoroughly and mi
nutely; that the best and wisest men
have received reverently the Christian
faith; that under Christian influences
the world has moved into the brightness
of our civilization; that after all the cent
uries it has been in the world our re-
ligion is strong and commanding, not
dead nor dying; that our faith is better
than we, so that we must still look up
to it, not down upon it; that the charac-
ter of Jesus grows on the world as more
and more majestic in its beauty, and
symmetry, and purity; that to the poor
our faith is an inestimable blessing, and
to the rich discipline in them that re-
| ceive it; that no other faith which has
| system of morals, recognition of
final responsibility and revelation of
future rewards, completes with ours for
our confidence. A thousand such things
we know. Our ignorance of things be-
You'd our power does not defeat the
precious value of such knowledge.
We do not know, we can not trace,
Gods ways. What shall we doP Shall
the child who sees the ocean tumbling
on the shore at his feet doubt that it ex-
lists because he can not see the farther
. SHOlCS. VIC ulSliuS Vic SlCdu-
fastness of gravitation because we
neither know what it is nor how il
works its beneficent effects? Shall one
cry to the sun: / do not believe in you
because / can not go to you? Shall we
reject the light because nobody has
found one smallest film of the other
highway on which light travels? Will
a man refuse to breathe because he car
not climb to the top of our atmosphere
One must say: / know not-at the ROOT
of the daffodil and on the edge of the
/ glacier. in the solitude of the sea anG
the busy city of the ants. We live il
( mystery and upon mystery; but we de
know the Joy of sunshine and of love
the comfort of clothing and of compan
ionship. the grace of God and the hope
| of the life to come. Let us keep oul
knoUs firmly, though there be things WI
I can not know. Not until the world W.
/ live in has had the last mystery pluckeC
out of its bosom need we even begin Il
complain of the righteousness of the
world to which we hasten.-N w
| Christian Advocate.
>H
Christian BOldness.
We are told that when the Jews saw
the boldness of Peter and John they