26 The Fundamentals best appliances of research, cannot come to speech with God or obtain reliable information concerning Him, can only build up an imaginary picture, like an exaggerated or overgrown man, and call that God— in other words, can only make a God after his own image and in his own likeness without being sure whether any corresponding reality stands behind it, or even if there is, whether that reality can be said to come up to the measure of a Divine Being or be entitled to be designated God. The agnostic does hot deny that behind the phenomena of the universe there may be a Power, but whether there is or not, and if there is, whether that Power is a Force or a Person, are among the things unknown and unknowable, so that practically, God feeing outside and beyond the sphere of man’s knowledge, it can never be of consequence whether there be a God or not—■ it can never be more than a subject of curious speculation, like that which engages the leisure time of some astronomers, whether there be inhabitants in the planet Mars or not. As thus expounded, the creed of the agnostic is open to serious objections. t. • I t entirely ignores the spiritual factor in man’s nature, —e ither denying the soul’s existence altogether, or viewing it as merely a function of the body; or, if regarding it as a sepa- rate entity distinct from the body, and using its faculties to ap- prehend and reason about external objects, yet denying its ability to discern spiritual realities. On either alternative, it is contradicted by both Scripture and experience. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible proceeds upon the assumption that man is more than “six feet of clay,” “curiously carved and wondrously articulated,” that “there is a spirit in man,” and that this spirit has power not only to apprehend things unseen but to come into touch with God and to be touched by Him, or, in Scripture phrase, to see and know God and to be seen and known by Him. Nor can it be denied that man is conscious of being thore than animated matter, and of having power to apprehend more than comes within the range of his senses, for
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