Though we cannot know things finite, as they are in themselves, we know at all events that they are. And this applies to our perception of the Infinite also. We do not know through our senses what it is, but we know through our very senses that it is. We feel the pressure of the Infinite in the Finite, and unless we had that feeling, we should have no true and safe foundation for whatever we may afterwards believe of the Infinite. Some critics have urged that what I call the Infinite ... is the Indefinite only. Of course it is.... We can know the Infinite as the Indefinite only, or as the partially defined. We try to define it, and to know it more and more, but we never finish it. The whole history of religion represents the continuous progress of the human definition of the Infinite, but however far that definition may advance, it will never exhaust the Infinite. Could we define it all, it would cease to be the Infinite, it would cease to be the Unknown, it would cease to be the Inconceivable or the Divine.

Chips.

What we feel through the pressure on all our senses is the pressure of the Infinite. Our senses, if I may say so, feel nothing but the Infinite, and out of that plenitude they apprehend the Finite. To apprehend the Finite is the same as to define the Infinite.

Chips.

We accept the primitive savage with nothing but his five senses. These five senses supply him with a knowledge of finite things; the problem is how such a being ever comes to think or speak of anything not finite, but infinite. It is his senses which give him the first impression of infinite things, and force him to the admission of the infinite. Everything of which his senses cannot perceive a limit is to a primitive savage, or to any man in an early stage of intellectual activity, unlimited or infinite. Man sees to a certain point, and there his eyesight breaks down. But exactly where his eyesight breaks down, there presses upon him, whether he likes it or not, the perception of the unlimited or infinite. It may be said this is not perception in the ordinary sense of the word. No more it is, but still less is it mere reasoning. In perceiving the infinite, we neither count, nor measure, nor compare, nor name. We know not what it is, but we know that it is, and we know it because we actually feel it and are brought in contact with it. If it seems too bold to say that man actually sees the invisible, let us say that he suffers from the invisible, and this invisible is only a special name for the infinite. The infinite, therefore, instead of being merely a late abstraction, is really implied in the earliest manifestations of our sensuous knowledge. It was true from the very first, but it was not yet defined or named. If the infinite had not from the very first been present in our sensuous perceptions, such a word as infinite would be a sound and nothing else. With every finite perception there is a concomitant perception or a concomitant sentiment or presentiment of the infinite; from the very first act of touch, or hearing, or sight, we are brought in contact, not only with the visible, but also at the same time with an invisible universe. We have in this that without which no religion would have been possible, we have in that perception of the infinite the root of the whole historical development of religion.

Hibbert Lectures.

No thought, no name is ever entirely lost. When we here in this ancient Abbey,[2] which was built on the ruins of a still more ancient Roman temple, seek for a name for the invisible, the infinite that surrounds us on every side, the unknown, the true Self of the world, and the true Self of ourselves—we too, feeling once more like children kneeling in a small dark room, can hardly find a better name than 'Our Father, which art in Heaven.'

Hibbert Lectures.

The idea of the infinite, which is at the root of all religious thought, is not simply evolved by reason out of nothing, but supplied to us, in its original form, by our senses. Beyond, behind, beneath, and within the finite, the infinite is always present to our senses. It presses upon us, it grows upon us from every side. What we call finite in space and time, in form and word, is nothing but a veil or a net which we ourselves have thrown over the infinite. The finite by itself, without the infinite, is simply inconceivable; as inconceivable as the infinite without the finite. As reason deals with the finite materials supplied to us by our senses, faith, or whatever else we like to call it, deals with the infinite that underlies the finite. What we call sense, reason, and faith are three functions of one and the same perceptive self; but without sense both reason and faith are impossible, at least to human beings like ourselves.

Hibbert Lectures.

The ancestors of our race did not only believe in divine powers more or less manifest to their senses, in rivers and mountains, in the sky and the sun, in the thunder and rain, but their senses likewise suggested to them two of the most essential elements of all religion: the concept of the infinite, and the concept of law and order, as revealed before them, the one in the golden sea behind the dawn, the other in the daily path of the sun.... These two concepts, which sooner or later must be taken in and minded by every human being, were at first no more than an impulse, but their impulsive force would not rest till it had beaten into the minds of the fathers of our race the deep and indelible impression that 'all is right,' and filled them with a hope, and more than a hope, that 'all will be right.'

Hibbert Lectures.

The real religious instinct or impulse is the perception of the infinite.

Hibbert Lectures.

All objects which we perceive and afterwards conceive and name must be circumscribed, must have been separated from their surroundings, must be measurable, and can thus only become perceivable and knowable and namable.... They are therefore finite in their very nature.... If finiteness is a necessary characteristic of our ordinary knowledge, it requires but little reflection to perceive that limitation or finiteness, in whatever sense we use it, always implies a something beyond. We are told that our mind is so constituted, whether it is our fault or not, that we cannot conceive an absolute limit. Beyond every limit we must always take it for granted that there is something else. But what is the reason of this? The reason why we cannot conceive an absolute limit is because we never perceive an absolute limit; or in other words, because in perceiving the finite we always perceive the infinite also.... There is no limit which has not two sides, the one turned towards us, the other turned towards what is beyond; and it is that Beyond which from the earliest days has formed the only real foundation of all that we call transcendental in our perceptual, as well as in our conceptual, Knowledge.

Gifford Lectures, I.

The infinite was not discovered behind the veil of nature only, though its manifestation in physical phenomena was no doubt the most primitive and the most fertile source of mythological and religious ideas. There were two more manifestations of the infinite and the unknown, which must not be neglected, if we wish to gain a complete insight into the theogonic process through which the human mind had to pass from its earliest days. The infinite disclosed itself not only in nature but likewise in man, looked upon as an object, and lastly in man looked upon as a subject. Man looked upon as an object, as a living thing, was felt to be more than a mere part of nature. There was something in man, whether it was called breath or spirit or soul or mind, which was perceived and yet not perceived, which was behind the veil of the body, and from a very early time was believed to remain free from decay, even when illness and death had destroyed the body in which it seemed to dwell. There was nothing to force even the simplest peasant to believe that because he saw his father dead, and his body decaying, therefore what was known as the man himself, call it his soul or his mind or his person, had vanished altogether out of existence. A philosopher may arrive at such an idea, but a man of ordinary understanding, though terrified by the aspect of death, would rather be inclined to believe that what he had known and loved and called his father or mother must be somewhere, though no longer in the body.... It is perhaps too much to say that such a belief was universal; but it certainly was and is still very widely spread. In fact it constitutes a very large portion of religion and religious worship.

Gifford Lectures, I.

Nature, Man, and Self are the three great manifestations in which the infinite in some shape or other has been perceived, and every one of these perceptions has in its historical development contributed to what may be called religion.

Gifford Lectures, I.

Like all other experiences, our religious experience begins with the senses. Though the senses seem to deliver to us finite experiences only, many, if not all, of them can be shown to involve something beyond the Known, something unknown, something which I claim the liberty to call infinite. In this way the human mind was led to the recognition of undefined, infinite agents or agencies beyond, behind, and within our finite experience. The feelings of fear, awe, reverence, and love excited by the manifestations of some of these agents or powers began to react on the human mind, and thus produced what we call Natural Religion in its lowest and simplest form—fear, awe, reverence, and love of the gods.

Gifford Lectures, I.

The perception of the Infinite can be shown by historical evidence to be the one element shared in common by all religions. Only we must not forget that, like every other concept, that of the Infinite also had to pass through many phases in its historical evolution, beginning with the simple negation of what is finite, and the assertion of an invisible Beyond, and leading up to a perceptive belief in that most real Infinite in which we live and move and have our being.

Gifford Lectures, IV.