The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which
are not seen are eternal

FOURTH EDITION.

NEW YORK

MACMILLAN AND CO.

1876

μὴ σκοπούντων ἡμῶν τὰ βλεπόμενα, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὴ βλεπόμενα· τὰ γὰρ βλεπόμενα, πρόσκαιρα· τὰ δὲ μὴ βλεπόμενα, αἰώνια. Πρὸς Κορινθίους, Β'. δ'.

"God hath endowed us with different faculties, suitable and proportional to the different objects that engage them. We discover sensible things by our senses, rational things by our reason, things intellectual by understanding; but divine and celestial things he has reserved for the exercise of our faith, which is a kind of divine and superior sense in the soul. Our reason and understanding may at some times snatch a glimpse, but cannot take a steady and adequate prospect of things so far above their reach and sphere. Thus, by the help of natural reason, I may know there is a God, the first cause and original of all things; but his essence, attributes, and will, are hid within the veil of inaccessible light, and cannot be discerned by us but through faith in his divine revelation. He that walks without this light, walks in darkness, though he may strike out some faint and glimmering sparkles of his own. And he that, out of the gross and wooden dictates of his natural reason, carves out a religion to himself, is but a more refined idolater than those who worship stocks and stones, hammering an idol out of his fancy, and adoring the works of his own imagination. For this reason God is nowhere said to be jealous, but upon the account of his worship."-Pilgrim's Progress, Part III.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

We have reason to think that notwithstanding all we have said, the position we take is not yet clearly understood, and we would therefore utilise the Preface to our Third Edition to put ourselves right with the public on this vital point.

To begin with the scientific side of our argument, we must once more make the statement that it is not we who are the dogmatists, but rather that school of scientific men who assert the incompatibility of science with Christianity.

Persistent as they have been in their endeavours to close the door leading from the seen to the unseen, we as resolutely maintain that it must be left open.

This class take credit to themselves for having thus barred the entrance to a throng of superstitious fancies which would inevitably rush through an open avenueforgetting that they have by the same act barred the way to all the higher aspirations of man.

But though we have founded no argument for immortality on the existence of these higher aspirations, we cannot allow our adversaries to bar the way upon the plea that it would inevitably be the resort of unworthy passengers.

If it be the King's highway it must be left open; if the unseen universe be a reality, surely we are not to dismiss it from our minds lest some people might entertain absurd views regarding its relation to the present visible universe. Such fancies are no new thing in the progress of knowl